The Martial Unity

"Ants?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Like, normal small ants? The type that are pretty easy to kill hopefully?"

"I'm afraid to disappoint you, but… these seem pretty non-standard," Rui murmured. "Come on, I found a pathway to it. We don't need to break through a bunch of tunnels this time."

The two of them quickly moved and followed a particular tunnel path that Rui guided him through before they eventually ran into an open wide space, yet it wasn't entirely unoccupied.

"Woah," Kane did a double take. "Is that… an anthill?!"

Even he could perceive the gigantic structure.

"It's an ant mountain, actually," Rui murmured as he sized up the gigantic structure. "It wouldn't be the first time a floor has contained a mountain-sized structure."

He recalled the sixteenth floor with the tree.

"So how many ants are there in the colony?" Kane gulped.

"Tens of thousands," Rui murmured. "On the low side as far as ant colonies go."

Rui could feel the various ants trickling in and out of the holes in the ant mountain, he could roughly gauge their number as he swept through them counting them in groups.

of thousands of Squire-level monsters?"

Kane," Rui replied, smirking. "We don't need to be Martial Seniors to take on Squire-level monsters. Monsters are not equivalent to Martial Artists. Otherwise, we would be completely doomed since monsters outnumber Martial Artists immensely. Martial Art techniques are what make the battle fair. Monsters do not possess

routines that allowed for hyper-efficient and effective applications of energy and power to produce superhuman results. This was why even as a Martial Apprentice whose body was identical to

basically as strong as a grade-two Martial Squire," Rui explained. "On top of that, they're usually stupid as hell, and so when

that's not always necessarily true, look at the Shionel taipans, a single bite from them is ending you even if they are much weaker," Kane pointed

is a nuanced matter, still, I'm pointing out a

he evaluated to be on par with grade-ten Martial Squires due to its vastly greater physique. That was a monster he did

he didn't feel much threat from the

do with

like he could predict them even without building a predictive model around the ants. Their movements and courses of action were so rigid,

predictive models, he was more interested

a sophisticated system," Rui murmured. "I wonder if that's true for

less about the science lessons," Kane scoffed.

alright, but I am curious as to what's going on here. They don't ever leave the dungeon considering we haven't run into one before, nor have there been any reports of ant

what the ants

good portion of the ants was on the ant mountain, working on the walls, seemingly gathering dirt from the floor

esoteric ore deposits

ants were able to detect and mineral and organic ore deposits, before proceeding

they would scurry into the ant mountain deep into a complex