"Sister-in-law?"
When Lily Winters heard that address, a spark of anger flickered across her face. But the moment she thought of Ethan, her irritation froze. For a heartbeat, she stood distracted—and that instant nearly cost her.
The stone creatures behind her roared and charged. The nearest one, its arm thick as a pillar, swung down toward her skull. Lily's body blurred—she vanished into a shadow, reappearing several meters away as the blow shattered the ground.
"Dogs can't spit out ivory… you just wait for me," she muttered coldly.
With a calm expression, Lily strolled through the battlefield like she was walking through a garden. A simple long knife shimmered in her hand, yet none of the rampaging monsters could even touch her shadow.
Meanwhile, Leo Fairwind watched from a safe distance. Seeing the beasts successfully drawn away from him, he slumped to the ground with relief.
"Finally," he sighed. "I can breathe again."
But peace never lasted long here.
Rustling.
A faint sound came from behind him.
"What the hell—?" Leo began, turning around—and froze.
A pair of massive jaws filled his vision.
Before he could react, those mandibles clamped around his waist, lifting him clean off the ground like a doll caught by a claw machine. Panic shot through him as he struggled, flailing his arms wildly.
From his upside-down view, he saw what held him—and nearly screamed.
A monstrous ant, its body glistening with crystalline scales, its height nearly equal to a man's, and its full length stretching five meters across.
Leo kicked and thrashed, but the jaws barely moved. It wasn't even straining. It was as if his struggle meant nothing.
The creature hoisted him higher, its grip firm but strangely careful. Instinct screamed that he was about to be eaten. In desperation, Leo drew his dark-gold-grade long knife and raised it for a slash—only to pause mid-swing.
Another of the giant ants stood nearby, holding a male student gently in its jaws.
Leo blinked. Both of them hung helplessly, but neither was bleeding.
"What's going on?" he gasped.
The student beside him, a lean boy with assassin-class gear—a simple dagger and light armor—was shrieking. "Help! Don't eat me! I swear I taste terrible!"
Leo stared back, dumbfounded. "Do you seriously think I can save you?"
That shut the boy up for a moment, confusion crossing his terrified face. The scene didn't feel like a monster attack anymore—it felt… wrong.
Then the boy's eyes widened. "Wait… maybe they're not eating us yet. Maybe they're storing us as food! You know—keeping us alive for later!"
Leo groaned. "Great. Food storage. Just what I needed to hear."
As if to confirm the nightmare, more giant ants emerged from the fog, each carrying a screaming student delicately between its jaws. Yet, incredibly, no one seemed hurt. They were terrified, but alive.
Then came a thunderous rumble from ahead.
Everyone's attention snapped forward—ants and stone creatures were colliding in a brutal clash.
But this wasn't a fight. It was a massacre.
The ants moved like soldiers—precise, relentless, unstoppable. Stone men shattered by the dozens, their bodies breaking apart under the ants' blows. In minutes, the battlefield was covered with piles of broken stone limbs and shattered torsos. Dust rose in a thick haze.
Leo's mouth dropped open. So did everyone else's.
"What's happening? Why are monsters fighting each other?" someone shouted.
"Since when do wild monsters attack their own kind?"
"I've never seen these giant ants before—where did they even come from?"
"Maybe they're the ones who made the stone men go berserk earlier?"
"Then what do they want with us?"
"Obvious—they're saving us for later, like snacks!"
The panic spread fast.
"No! I don't want to die like that! Why isn't anyone outside coming to save us?"
Leo, who had already seen too much weirdness today, rubbed his temples. "Don't tell me they're planning to lay eggs inside us or something…"
The moment the words left his mouth, every boy turned pale, and the girls started screaming.
To them, giant insects were far worse than any normal monster. The fear of the unknown crawled over their skin like cold hands.
Then, without warning, the ants lowered their heads and set the students down gently on the ground. Leo landed with a grunt, stunned. Everyone instinctively huddled together, trembling but unharmed.
And then—the ants simply turned and walked away.
"What… what just happened?" someone whispered.
Confusion rippled through the group. Ants were supposed to live in colonies underground, not wander around rescuing people. Why were they here? Why didn't they kill anyone?
Carefully, the students moved forward through the fog. After a few hundred meters, they stumbled into another crowd of survivors—more students, all wide-eyed and whispering the same questions.
Leo pushed through and froze.
A circle of giant ants had surrounded them all, their bodies forming a living barricade. Inside the ring were the human students; outside, the rampaging stone men smashed helplessly against the ants' defense.
The sight was surreal. The ants weren't trapping them—they were protecting them.
Leo stared, disbelief twisting his face. "They're… guarding us?"
He glanced at the battlefield beyond the barrier. Dozens of the newest stone golems—the stronger, upgraded kind—were being torn apart by the ants like toys.
Even Leo's top-tier weapon could only scratch those things, yet the ants dismantled them effortlessly, targeting their weak points with surgical precision.
"Unbelievable," Leo muttered. "They actually figured out their weaknesses… in minutes."
It dawned on him that brute force would never beat creatures like these. They weren't dumb beasts. They were organized—and intelligent.
The students whispered among themselves. Those who had been taken earlier were explaining what they'd seen.
They'd been surrounded by the strange gray fog, chased by hordes of stone men, until a black shadow rolled over the battlefield like a wave—smashing through the monsters like bowling pins. When the shadow unfolded, it became these ants.
At first, no one had believed it. How could ants "roll over" anything? Ants were supposed to crawl, not crash through stone armies like tanks. But the evidence was right in front of them—piles of shattered enemies and an army of silent guardians.
Hours passed, and still the ants stood guard.
Not one of them attacked a student. Not one even twitched aggressively.
Instead, they patrolled the circle's edge, defending anyone inside from wandering monsters. It was almost as if they'd been assigned the job of protecting every human trapped in this region.
Whispers grew louder:
"Maybe they were sent by the instructors?"
"Yeah, the teachers outside must've tamed them!"
"That has to be it—no wild monsters would act like this."
"Still… they're terrifying."
Despite the nervous talk, a flicker of hope spread. For the first time since entering this deadly zone, they weren't running—they were safe.
Leo glanced around at the others huddled close. Everyone's faces were pale but alive, their eyes darting between the towering ants.
He looked at the nearest ant—its body gleaming faintly in the red-tinged light, its mandibles stained with crushed stone. Its eyes, dark and reflective, almost seemed to study him back.
He didn't know whether to feel grateful or terrified. Maybe both.
Whatever these creatures were, they had changed the rules of this nightmare.
The ground trembled slightly as another stone man tried to break through the circle—and was instantly crushed by two ants working in perfect coordination. The rest of the swarm shifted smoothly, closing the gap.
Leo swallowed. "High IQ, combat formation, no aggression toward us… This isn't random. Someone's controlling them."
But who—or what—could command something like this?
No answer came. Only the echoing sounds of battle, fading as the last stone man fell.
The field went silent except for the hum of the ants' legs against the soil.
Dust drifted through the blood-red mist. The survivors stood quietly, hearts pounding, waiting for something else to happen. But the ants didn't move again.
For now, the nightmare world had grown strangely peaceful.
The monsters that should have been their death sentence… had become their protectors.
Leo exhaled, his voice barely a whisper. "Maybe the world's gone mad. Or maybe… someone up there still cares what happens to us."
And as the fog thickened, hiding the horizon, the faint clicking of the ants' mandibles echoed like a distant drumbeat—steady, alien, and oddly reassuring.
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