It Begins with Some Scouts

     Several quests have been put out for adventurers to come patrol the Holy Empire of Westlande's various small villages and camping areas for the nomadic people. Recently, one of the villages has been hit a few times, so a more directed quest has drawn adventurers to a small village deep in the desert. Sandstone buildings dot the area, and there's even a few small farms that have been made to eke out in this hot area, with cactuses that bear fruit and other edible succulents that survive well in the heat.

     Said village mostly consists of hunters, which is why it's troublesome that they've been having issues with being raided so often. One would think they'd be able to repel the raiders! But no, they haven't been able to thus far. Not for lack of trying, but because the ants seem to be more willing to run than fight for the most part.

     And so the party gathers at the designated village, waiting to see if the raiders come once more, so that they can be defeated in short order!

    Merek places on the casual nice dark attire he often wears, with the beltcape about the waist and a belt of potions. There's a look to the village, and while he waits, the man takes a moment to look for herbs that he might find about.

Vertina had been in the capital picking up materials so she can recreate some of the local styles of liquor once her brewery is finished when she caught word of the strange ant issues out in the desert. She may not be all 'into' the game like some people, but she still feels a bit of loyalty to the home nation of her race so the Salamander martial artist has grabbed one of the quests to go out and investigate.

Somehow she's not surprised that one of the first people she spots at the spot is Merek. That guy really seems to get around. She wrinkles her nose a little though. "No offense buddy, but you do realize black in the desert heat isn't a great combination right?"

A Salamander with a monocle was currently talking with a member of the local hunters.  Mostly, he was asking questions specific to the ants themselves.  What did they do?  Where did they come from?  Stuff like that, attempting to scout more information out before wildly going into strange places without any information what so ever.  

The Salamander was dressed in the fashion of a butler, as opposed to traditional adventuring gear.  Perhaps he was here for someone else?  Was there going to be some bigshot (or perhaps someone who thought they were some bigshot) going to show up?

Well, so far no.  Occasionally, however, he offers a pitcher of ice water to those who ask for some.  If anything, he is prepared.

Goldenblade has arrived at the village on a borrowed peko, and when she reins in, she goes ass over teakettle into the dirt. The peko just look at her, perhaps smugly. She picks herself up, and takes the peko's lead, dragging it over to a hitching rail, where it can drink from a trough and amuse itself however pekos amuse themselves. Dusting herself off, she looks around, spots Merek, and heads over. He's a constant feature of adventures, so following him seems appropriate. "Hello to you," she greets him, looking around and smiling to Vertina as well. This is apparently her home as well, and the heat doesn't bother her much. As they say, it's a dry heat. That's not to say she won't accept a splash of ice water into her canteen. "Thanks," she says to Yobi Kin. She knows that working outdoors means you should stay hydrated, the moreso in this place.

    Setsuna stops at the edge of the gathering as he finds a flat object he can sit/lean on. Taking a moment he pulls off one of his boots and pours the sand out of it before putting it back on. The creators of the game did not really need to recreate how annoying sand was. He moves closer in and spots the Peko, "That was the smart move."

    A quest to kill some monsters?

    Yuuki's in!

    The energetic imp is currently saving her energy, leaning back in a chair in the shade. She's chewing on a long piece of straw, while watching the horizon for any signs of movement. Occasionally she leans over to take a sip of icey water from a glass on a table beside her.

    As Yobi Kin comes up to provide a refill, Yuuki grins up at him, "Thanks!" She takes another sip before going back to observing, "Guard duty is just the best."

Miho has picked up a quest she needed to get out into the world after her binge of weapon forging. She really did need to get out so here she was. She would take note of the people arriving for this quest. "This should be a standard monster hunt, right? Nothing too fancy I hope? The name's Miho."

She'll note as she goes to start finding a good spot to lay in wait with her bow.

    Giant ants.

    Eh, it could be worse.

    Mizuki's decked out in desert clothes, flowy white clothing. "So... we need to catch every ant befrore it gets away. I'm a tiger, not a cheetah, but hopefully that's good enough. Just how fast do they go?" she asks the hunters to try and describe.

    Someone has ice water! "Oh, nice!" Mizuki will happily take a big sip. "Thanks!"

It's places like that that make Proteus' choice of wardrobe more utilitarian than style. The cloak and hood combination keeps the sun off of her and allows the Imp to move about without too much trouble. Still, she's sure she's going to be working up a sweat sooner rather than later, what with the desperate request having been submitted.

The Archaeologist listens as the people of the village are questioned, her eyes gazing outwards and watching the sands beyond while Yobi looks for the details. It was refreshing for someone else to ask the questions for a change, really. "I am perfectly expecting that the complication is that ants can dig much more efficiently than people can." Proteus mentions. "I am not holding out expectations that raiding monsters are going to be simply dispatched cleanly." She pauses. "What is it with ravenous insects lately?" She asks no one in particular.

Vertina accepts an offer of ice water from the sharply dressed Salamander. "Thanks! Just because we're desert dwellers doesn't mean we can get away without keeping hydrated."

    Merek would look to people when he notes that people notice him. "Ah, well I kind of like it," he states to Vertina. Then a nod along to Goldenblade, while he smiles, "Good to see you as well." The man takes a canteen, and walking along to Yobi, "I would like a water! If that's alright, I appreciate it!"

     Yobi gets some very basic answers, that... well, mostly they haven't /seen/ what the ants do, because as of yet whenever the black things approached they would usually just quickly raid and run away when combat starts. They did seem able to use their front legs like arms though, walking on four legs as if they were some sort of ant-centaur if there wasn't a human part. They think that, most likely, they're just worker ants rather than fighters. But they did manage to kill one the other day.

     Which is why, as the sun goes down, the ground begins to rumble and shake. And out of a suddenly-open hole int the ground comes out, not workers, but... a mix of angry RED colored ants and Yellow ants that follow behind them. The red ants seem to be wielding some sort of primitive sword made out of ant mandibles, and the yellow ants have a mixture of staves and primitive bows.

     And they immediately begin to open fire, the yellow ants unleashing a wave of earth spikes that break up through the ground between the buildings, then retract back into the earth. It seems, for whatever reason, they don't... want to really destroy the buildings!

    Merek looks to the nice army of ants that would be coming their way. "Looks like they are trying to take the village, we should get people to safety while we fend away the enemies," the man notes, then he draws Shadow Eclipse, nodding a bit. The man looks to Goldenblade, "Front line with me?" he asks, then he maneuvers along and into the ants, swinging the weapon in two sweeps along at rangers.

    The sun sets and...

    Yuuki has fallen asleep in her chair.

    That is until the ground starts to rumble. Yuuki's cup shudders along the table before falling to the ground and smashing. Yuuki quickly jumps up at the sudden sound, looking around. She watches as a hole opens up, ants beginning to pour out of it. And-

"THEY HAVE SWORDS!" Yuuki exlaims happily.

    The imp stands there, watching as the wizard ants begin to unleash earth spikes around the village. Even more surprised, she says, "And magic! Hahahaha. This is great!"

    Yuuki finally draws her sword, before rushing forward to meet the charge of the ARMY ANTS. She launches a couple of slashes at the red insects, testing their swords skills against her own.

    "Uhh, they don't look like they're running... You didn't say they had _weapons_!" Mizuki exclaims as the ants approach, and then... attack the hunters?! "Shit, are you okay?!" She rushes over to get between the hunters and the rangers and spits a great plume of flame, sweeping it around in front of her like a flamethrower!

Goldenblade waits around the town, told they're there to defend it, so she'll join Yuuki under the awning during the day, and like Yuuki, had fallen asleep. Because rest when you can. But when the earth trembles and the ants emerge, she's up, and looking around frantically to see what's up. Merek's shout gets her attention, but, "Front rank? You're in the middle of everyone!" That's a bit past her sensibility threshhold, and she remains back on the porch, under the awning, and instead draws her bow, letting fly with arrows, returning fire at the ranged combat ants. She tries to concentrate her fire, to take one down before moving on to the next, but it's a tangled mess as everyone sorts everything out.

There comes the ants it looks like, a whole bunch of ants it seems. She'll take a moment to ready her bow as she moves to line up a shot iwth one ofg the yellow ants that are coming in she'll light up an fire arrow and start fireing at them one after another with a grin on her face.

"Oh for a can of raid."

She's a bit in solo mode but she will attempt to keep her allies locations in mind.

"Don't let them swarm you!"

    Setsuna was happy that the sun was setting finally and the temperature was cooling. The waiting though, this wasn't the first quest that Setsuna had to sit around and wait for the bad guys to show up, maybe he should look into inventing a rubics cube. No books, nothing to fidget with, no smart phones, no wonder people have taken up hobbies like cooking or blacksmithing.
     Setsuna does finally get a break for the boredom as the ground splits open and ants spill forth. As the ants throw magic spells, rain arrows and swing their sword at the air Setsuna drifts back to the rear as he pulls his staff from his inventory. "Let me show you insects how to move the earth, " He calls forth a spire of earth to erupt up under one of the rangers and misses by a few inches. If the ant was an adventurer Setsuna is sure the ant would laugh, probably sounding like snoopy.

And there's the ants marching on the horizon. Smart creatures, coming out at twilight when the desert is starting to cool off. "Great!" She chugs down her water and passes the glass back to butler-mander. "I love an enemy that's punctual to their own beatdown -- whoa!" She can feel the earth magic rumbling through the groun with her own elemental attunement. "Careful, they've got some elemental power too!"

That's when the chunks of stone start bursting out of the ground and rumbling towards the village! But Vertina stands her ground, striking a channeling pose as the stones rumbling in around her.

Then shatter into stone shards as the martial artist meets the rush of rock with her fist and splits it apart!
But that's not all, as she uses her own Earth alignment to seize several of the chunks as the pillars crumble apart, and send them hurtling in an arc over the advancing march to crash down amongst the ranks of the yellow ranger ants trying to keep cover behind them.

As the ground rumbles, Proteus looks down. "Tch." She emits, moments before she quickly launches herself away from ground zero and towards a safe place to land. She flicks her hands as she watches the initial cacaphony push back the defenders... But now the Adventurers are present. "Let's see if we can narrow down the scope of the problem a bit." She states, her hands tracing patterns in the air as an input box appears before her: ( ! 8 #

The Omen ability activates, and a series of runes begin forming in the air around her, a complex grid of possibility and potential splaying out from every enemy. There's just one problem.

It's too much at once. Proteus' teeth clench as she stares into the waves of clashing potential and possibility, and her hands dance as she tries to isolate one opportunity over another... but the future is refusing to change. Or rather, she's unable to filter the flood of data enough to give useful directions to the others. "Gggh! It's too much!" She hisses. "What /are/ these things?!"

Yobi was in places nearly before his presence was asked for.  Pouring a glass of water before being where he was before.  Was he just that fast?  Was he psychic?  Was he abusing godhand powers?  Was he actually a twin blade?  WHO KNOWS?!

However, it was refreshing water.

However, one of the first victims of the initial assault was the pitcher of water, smashed out of his hand with the initial assault from the YELLOW ants.  Frowning, the Salamander watched the pitcher hit the ground, cracking and spilling its contents.  

"How troubling," he says, seemingly put off, but not /angry/.  Instead, he turns towards the ants, "Oh I see our uninvited guests have arrived," he says, now standing near Proteus.  Noting the lack of damage happening to the buildings, causes an eyebrow to raise.  However, observations have to come second to...

With a burst of speed, he was right in front of one of the army ants, his hands flashing in a burst of lightning-fast speed aiming for the places between joints.  Aiming to avoid striking directly at their carapaces, and instead strike where he knows his blows will do the most damage.

"Sir, you have been politely asked to leave by those who inhabit this village.  Now kindly see yourselves out, or I shall be forced to get...violent."

     MEREK is able to dash into the ranks, managing to avoid the army ants long enough to get in and attack the back line of ranger ants, even taking one of the massive swarm out! Unfortunately, this means that he is now in the middle of a swarm of angry red army ants AND the yellow rangers. From behind, he's almost immediately back attacked by the red ants with the pincer swords!

     YUUKI dashes in much like Merek, but she meets with the front line of the army ants, who meet her in kind, chittering away almost... cheerfully at the start of the combat, while they take hits, and even lose some, they begin to return hits in kind with those mandible swords, swinging towards Yuuki with reckless abandon! They /almost/ seem happy, but that's just a trick of the light, right?

     Mizuki's fireball sadly strays off its aim as it's sent flying towards the ranger ants, the mage rangers putting up barriers that deflect it the rest of the way! The mages seem to be focusing on defense right now, as the retaliation comes from the bow-wielding rangers instead!

     Meanwhile, GOLDENBLADE unleashes a volley of arrows right after the rangers loose theirs, sticking into several of the rangers' armor, just barely seeming to penetrate the thick chitin!

     Much like Goldenblade, MIHO unleashes arrows that strike true, sticking out of the rangers and even downing some of the swarm! It's... starting to have an affect, as those rangers begin to slowly go down in numbers, almost a third of them having already fallen to the Adventurer's Assault!

     And VERTINA crushes several of them under her stony assault, the mages and rangers seeming to be making panicked little chitters in response! This was not the village they had hoped to easily take! But still, it should be easily taken care of.

     PROTEUS attempts to see the omens of all of the ants at once, but between shielding from the mages and the sheer number of them, it's just a jumble of chaos and confusion that is hard to understand.

     Finally, YOBI KIN unleashes a wave of piercing strikes to the ARMY ANTS, causing damage to some of them, but ultimately they don't seem to lose too many numbers... and then... just as was warned.

     The army ants begin to swarm around the melee fighters, swinging with strange precision with those pincer blades!

    Merek looks around to see that the ants are sweeping into the party, he notes that the enemies are skilled. He nods a bit while he spins the blade about, then he would lift up the free hand while he calls upon a little Earth Magic. <<"I am going to shift the sand, you all use that to advantage!">> The man begins to swing up rock cradles from the sand while each one begins to try and match the ants, guiding them into an advantageous position for the party to fight! "Let's even the playing field!" He would dance along with the magic, then he takes a lift of the hand to bring a full on divine shield to protect from the weapon as well.

Miho is doing all right as she cuts down some of the rangers, she sees there's more of them to go, there's no intent on her part to stop taking them out. She will however leap to a new position as she does not want to get into close combat with these things. She knows there's a lot more to take out, she'll bolt away. She has her bow out and she loads two arrows at a time as the Miho as she keeps going. Shooting and moving now as she keeps trying to take the yellow ants down.

"Come one don't let up on this! Support the melee fighters!"

Goldenblade had not expected the ranged attacks to be harder to deal with than the melee, but it seems the ranged attack ants really didn't like what she was doing, and her HP plummets as the barrage is too dispersed to dodge. With no shield, dodging is all she'd got, and her HP sinks lower as it turns out she's not -that- fast.

"That's not working," she grumbles, ditching her bow and drawing the swords she carries at each hip, leaping into the fray, where, ironically, it seems safer. At least they're not firing arrows into the melee. She jabs into the RANGER ants with mighty thrusts, using the thrusting tips of her swords for the increased penetration, and her best armor-piercing attacks.

    "They have MAGES?!" Mizuki shouts, surprised. "No fair! I mean, aside from the game generally being unfair in Adventurers' favor..." She tries to deflect the arrows with a wind wall, but enough still hit her to take a chunk out of her HP. "Rrgh... no more mister nice guy!" She stomps a foot, flinging herself over the red ants into the midst of the yellow ants with a stone catapult, drawing her daggers in midair. "I mean, I was already out to kill you, but..."

    She aims to land on an ant, piercing chitin with daggers and using were fang strength to tear the holes wider... and if that takes down one ant, she pounces to the next and repeats!

Trying to encircle the melee, well that was an obvious ploy.  One that the Butler was ready for.  He moves, with an otherworldly speed around the attempts to strike him from multiple angles.  However, he specifically does not break up their attempts to encircle him...but instead keeps them busy with his movements.  Inwardly, thinking that it is better they attempt to attack him, as opposed to getting towards their ranged line.

Especially as they have magical lines.  Wait, they have magical lines?  Oh.

This is bad.  This is very bad.  It seems like he's going to have to take this more seriously.  "Forgive me, mistress, but it appears I will have to endanger these fine clothes," he says, with a hint of slight regret...as he pauses in his maneuvers for just a moment.  He holds a hand out, aiming to cause the bugs confusion.  

He slowly removes each glove.  Pocketing each one...until each hand lights themselves on fire.  He then motions for the insects to come once more.  Now, his strikes leave trails of flame as he punches for the ants.  Aiming to strike the places between their chitin, as well as SEAR what he strikes.  

He moves, like a flash, aiming to strike at those all around him, aiming to leave a nasty barrage of flame and ant blood everywhere.  

    Setsuna use to be an adventurer till he took an arrow to the leg, ok he was still an adventurer but still it hurt. Ripping the arrow out of his arm he growls, "Damn bugs. You don't see the undead complaining about being killed. Here let me show you. "
    Tapping his staff on the earth a couple of times, a magic circle appears under him as the summoning begins, " I call upon the fallen kin of those we protect. Your descendants need your help. Rid them of this infestation." The undead skeletons spring up out ofthe ground like daisies charging the ant archers in a blind blitz.

The omens couldn't be read, and thus Proteus couldn't provide any useful information to the others. Her support at the moment is somewhat... lacking. And just as unfortunately, the ants' assault comes in hot and fast. Proteus leaps, flipping backwards to evade the first blade only to get bracketed by a wave of arrows. "No!" She yells moments before she brings up an arm to attempt to bound the incoming blade away... But there is a miscalculation. The hidden bracer doesn't catch the incoming strike and the blade carves a painful line across Proteus. "Damn, not again...!" She mutters, and launches upwards, leaping away to land atop one of the nearby buildings. "They have mages. Well, I have a solution for that." He hands move again. N + , #

Her hands flare with seething dark energy as she spreads them outwards towards the bug mages. "Let's see how this deals with an ant colony. Twisted thoughts, lines gone away. Shattered pieces of truth to lodge in the dreams like splinters... Now /break/!" A moment later, the energy pulses outwards, attempting a wide-area mental crush strike upon the opposition with a potent Mind Shock.

    Yuuki takes down some of the army ants with her swings. Only for more to come in to take their place with their own sword strikes. Yuuki parries one blade to the side, "Wider stance, you're off balance!" She moves her sword into place to block another, "You need more speed!" She spins out of the way of a third sword, "Not bad, not bad." She then jumps, backflipping as a pincer blade slices low where her legs would have been.

    Landing again, Yuuki chuckles, "Nice one." But obviously not nice enough to get the Zekken!

    Yuuki dashes back into melee range again, seemingly unconcerned by the ant swarming. Her dark blade dances through the air, intercepting pincer sword strikes, before quickly lashing out in a counterstrike against the ARMY ANTS.

Vertina moves as soon as her improvised bombardment is done, leaving a faint crackle of lightning discharge in the air behind her as she bolts from where she was standing. She veers around several earth spells slung after her, but one of the ranger's manages to put an arrow in her shoulder with a more precise shot than the area denial spam. The Salamander stumbles for a moment, then hooks the claws of her fist weapon around the shaft and gives it a twist to yank it out.

"That hurt. But you missed anything vital. Bad move." She channels a bit of healing aura to make sure she's not going to get some manner of Infected or Poison status from the wound, but the damage was strong enough she can't get her HP meter to fill back up more than a fraction.

But she's not going to tell the enemy that actually did more damage than she's acting like.

     Rock Cradles begin to burst out of the ground, only for most of them to be broken back down by the mages, leaving jagged and wild pieces of rock that hinder the ants from their ability to be able to fight back!

     Miho's Bow once again strikes true, striking in to the yellow ranger ants, dealing major damage to them with her bows and taking out several of the swarm of ants!

     Meanwhile, Goldenblade continues to carve a path through the rangers, cutting and slicing through their ranks and leaving many of them on the ground, bleeding green ichor!

     Meanwhile, Mizuki seems to be crowdsurfing in the most violent way, jumping from ant to ant to deal major damage to the ants, taking down several of the swarm! The FIRE From Yobi is suppressed by a quick counter-spell by one of the Ranger Mages, protecting them from the attack!

     And then... Proteus' magic wracks through the rangers, and they begin to screech and shake wildly, staying in place as their minds are briefly shattered, each ant feeling alone, cut off briefly from their hivemind.

     Undead Skeletons tear through the ranks of the army ants, dealing damage to some of them, while Yuuki also continues to tear through the wild ranks of the ants!

     For those engaged in MELEE, the red ants begin to unleash... a deluge of ... acid?! Spewing it from their mouths, the acid would stick and be difficult to get off of themselves if they aren't able to dodge or protect themselves from it!

It wasn't QUITE a spell that was being used, but it was a natural magic none-the-less.  The spell hits the fire, causing a massive steam cloud to form around him, and of course, forcing him back lest he is burned by his own attack.  He skids back across the ground and forced to face the ant army face to face.  

"Hmm...this intelligence speaks of something more than simple instinct...there is something at the source of this, I think," he says mostly to himself.  Of course, if that were true...perhaps it was time to strike fear into the hearts of that animated force.

There is a burst of fire over his entire body.  Channeling the magic around himself as he lets out a burning yell.  It would be easily loud enough for the entire battlefield to hear it...and when it was complete an explosion of flame would burst out from him.  

The butler, now covered in flames comes back towards the ants, diving through the acid in a roll of flames.  He dives for the nearest of the ants, aiming to send a flaming kick into the solid bit of mass he could find, and send it flying.  He moves like a wildfire, aiming to burn through the numbers of ants he can before the flames return to normal.

Goldenblade gahs as the deluge of acid eats away at her HP bar. And her face. Aaaaand, wow, that's dropping her HP really far. So, melee -was- a bad plan, she was right the first time. Sadly, she's got to bail before she loses the last of her health, calling, "Sorry, guys, I'm done for." And she will retreat, bolting for one of the buildings and ducking inside, panting hard as she peeks out through the doorframe, then ducks back quickly.

Well someone scrambled the archers' heads so that's some of the pressure off. In turn Vertina shifts her attention back to the swarming army for a moment, and rubs the back of an arm across her nose briefly. "Right. Let's shake things up a bit!" She growls, and starts stomping her feet on the ground in some sort of half march, half tantrum. Which senses rumbles and vibrations through the sands to make them shift and disrupt stable footing!

Or that was the idea.

Unfortunately, since they're standing on four legs instead of two the Army Ants are a bit more stable than that. But there's still hope it's enough of a distraction for others to finish the job.

    Merek looks between the ants while he nods to Goldenblade, "Keep safe!" Then he maneuvers along until he begins to stand before the troops, "Ah, so you seem to be approaching me, not running away?" The man then lifts up both fists while he places the gloves together, then he smiles, "Alright, I have a new thing I want to try." He then begins to lift up both hands to swing towards the ants.
    Then he begins to dance along into the field of ants while he punches them with his fists, before he swings a hand into the dirt which would begin to draw it into a wave, "Ragnarok's Wave!" The man then would begin to take a defense position.

    "Don't worry, we've got this!" Yuuki waves to Goldenblade, before turning her attention back to the ants around her.

    Just in time for tme to suddenly start spitting up acid. Well that's no fun. You can't sword fight with acid!

    Yuuki turns more towards her speed, quickly dashing forward as she starts to dart her way between the ants. She's able to stay one step ahead of them and their waves of acid. Which is a good thing. Her outfit doesn't exactly have a lot of material with which to withstand being melted!

    Making her way deeper into the group of red ants, Yuuki skids to a halt before spinning around. She raises her sword up, point forward, the blade beginning to glow. Yuuki then leaps back in the direction she came, twisting herself into a spin. Her Sword Arte activates, a whirlwind of air forming around her as she rockets forward, spinning, a thunderous roar following behind her as she lunges through the group of ARMY ANTS.

Miho is doing pretty well with dealing with the yellow ranger ants so far. she's helping to cut down more of them. The rest of the party is doing a pretty good job too. Some of the Ants may get close enough to bother her in melee. However, she draws her sword and is able to fend them off. She vaults away from them and lands again out of melee. With that out of the way, she'll focus her attack back with her bow as she starts to rain arrows down on the remaining Yellow Scouts.

"Come on we need to clear out the rest!"

    Setsuna watches as his undead skeletons melt with the acid from the red ants. " Eggs and Omelets I suppose." Taking stock of the ranged ant and Setsuna can't help but grin due to the thinning numbers. " Orb of darkness." A black orb of energy appears on top of his staff and Setsuna slings the staff forward throwing the orb like a lacrosse ball at one of the few remaining yellow ants.

The sight of the ants being launched into disarray is... satisfying, really. "They /can/ bleed." Proteus says from her perch, smiling under her hood. "Well, in that case, it's time to put an end to things." As the fight and acid rages below, her hands gesture, inputting another command into the world around her: V S M

Her hands shimmer with another subtle hum of amber light and she leaps downwards, slamming her hand into the sandy earth. While the ants might be adept at moving sand, they aren't the only one who can... As is promprly proven when throughout the area, pillars of sand and rock blast upwards, crushing and launching the enemies into the air. "Let's cut them down!"

    Mizuki turns towards the next yellow ant as the last one explodes into polygons under her but... there are no more. That just leaves the red ants, which are spitting nasty acid at people. "Oh no you don't!" She turns towards the remaining enemies, ears perked up and alert, watching for the next set of attacks... and then stomping her foot as she tries to put up a Rock Cradle to block some of them! But can she get the timing right?

     Acid is burned away as YOBI rolls through it with his flames, beginning to deal significant damage to the army ants, their numbers beginning to drop dramatically as another wave of fire rushes through their lines from MEREK as he uses Ragnarok's Wisdom as well! Finally, YUUKI is once again dashing through, rocketing, and lunging through the army ants, leaving an entire line just a pile of red pixels that slowly disperses!

     Meanwhile, MIHO continues her onslaught against the Yellow Rangers, her arrows steadily taking down ant after ant after ant, they seem to be focused more on trying to escape at this point, as the orb of darkness tears through their ranks! And finally, pillars of rock finish off the worst of them! And... the rest retreat, disappearing into that massive tunnel that they came from, shifting to holding their staves and bows in their pincers to escape faster on six feet!

     Meanwhile, Goldenblade gets into a house relatively safely! The building is full of various meats and vegetables, and she finds something.... striking. There is a hole in the middle of the room, and there was a worker ant's head poking through. That is, until it saw her. And... it rapidly retreats back into its hole, closing it up behind itself.

     Meanwhile, Mizuki puts up several rock cradles to give people cover to hide behind on their next attack! Speaking of the next attack, the Army Ants... get the RAGE status effect, their eyes all beginning to glow red as they begin to swarm the three that attacked them. Their stingers stab into the ground, several massive pillars of earth breaking through the ground to attempt to attack Yuuki, Merek, and Yobi!

     Meanwhile, the others are swarmed by the rest of the ants that aren't swarming those three, the army ants beginning to bite ferally at them rather than using their swords now, venomous fangs attempting to bite at the party!

Goldenblade calls for a Lander, and hands him a torch. "If one tries to sneak up through there, shake the torch at them. They're sending the non-combat ones to try and steal," she explains. "They'll back down if they see you." She adds mentally, "And if they don't back down, you'll scream and alert everyone." But now she's got an alternate project: checking the other buildings where supplies are stored to see if they've been broken into. She runs quickly to the next.

    Mizuki's use of earth magic protected others, but not herself! The pain may be dulled as ant fangs(?!?!?!) sink into her flesh, but seeing what's left of her HP change color as the POISON effect appears is plenty chilling! She Stone Catapults herself out of there, flinging herself in the direction of town, and drinks one of Uta's potions to cure the debuff. She looks at her sliver of remaining health, and at the distant fight, and shakes her head. "Sorry..." And then runs back towards town in search of a healer.

The fires burn slowly out, still there but a deeper red than the blazing near blue they were a second ago.  It seemed, however, that was worth the effort...the swarm had been reduced, and it seems the mages were being routed by their magical forces.  So that was good...it was just clean up...

And then the enraged ants do something unexpected.  Nearly swept off his feet, a well-timed shield spell saves him from a brutal hit.  Hitting the ground on all fours, the butler looks up at the now berserking Ants.  Well, that was bad.  That was really really bad.

Back on his feet, he dives in again, aiming to match the fierceness of the swarm with his own flame-based martial arts.  Aiming to strike quick and brutally, as his flames once more burn brightly as he goes back on the offensive.  

Finally, he comes down, aiming a wave of flames to try and fry the nearest ants near him, aiming to try and force them back and away from him.

    Merek draws back the sword with him while he nods to the fleeing, "You all be safe, cover their retreat and let's take the fight to them!" the man announces. Then he begins to swivel along upon the hip, while he brings the weapon along into the ants with the flaming blade upon it.

"Great thinking Mizukichi!" Vertina calls to her friend even as she's turning and running away from the raging swarm. "Go on, get yourself safe." Her movements become a blurr with a burst of speed, which allows her to jump up, take a few steps straight up one of the stone pillars made, then jump off it to do the same on another, before finally coming to land on the peak. The ants continue to swarm around the spires but she is well out of reach for the moment.

Arms cross in front of herself briefly, flames crackling up her arms and licking around the claws of her fist weapons.. And then she steps over the edge to run straight -down- the side of the stone pillar directly towards the swarm below. "BANZAI!" She leaps off, lashing out with the flaming claws as she comes crashing down into the melee. Just fiery slice slice slice, she's actually not paying attention if she actually -hits- anything though, too caught up in the rush of the moment.

    Yuuki stops spinning after her last attack and skids to a halt. She turns around to check out the result of her attack...

    Only to see the ants all getting a dangerous red glow in their eyes. Yuuki quietly ohhhhhs, then says, "Berserk mode! Neat."

    A stinger slams into the ground, a pillar rising up to try and smash Yuuki. She spins out of the path of it, right as another rises up from a different direction. That one she jumps away from. A third pillar tries to cut her off, but Yuuki leaps onto it, letting it carry her upwards before she leaps off it, gaining more height.

    Yuuki turns in the air, sweeping her sword out. Flames burst to life around it. Yuuki then flips, raising her sword above her just as she start to plummet down.

    Yuuki quickly hits the ground amidst a group of raging ARMY ANTS, bringing her sword down to stab the ground as she does so. The flames dancing across her sword burst outwards, expanding around her to engulf the ants nearby.

    Setsuna sees the ants coming at him with anger in his eyes as he takes a deep breath and calls upon the earth itself to shield him. The sand forming layers upon layers of protection around him as he takes a deep breath and watches the poison fangs not get through the final layer and shoves the ant away. It may look like the ants coral him in nearer with teh other melee people but Setsuna meant to do this of course. Instead of attacking though he reaches out to the spirits, "Spirit of the wind protect us." For now all that could be seen is perhaps a light breeze picking up in the battlefield.

One of the problems with dropping into the middle of the enemies to attack is that... well... They can attack back. Unfortunately for Proteus, the ants act the way ants are wont to do, and they attack, swarming her under. "AGH! NOT AGAIN!" Once, and again, and then again, she is bitten over and over, and her HP bar rapidly begins dropping as the poison debuffs stack deeper and deeper. The Imp tries to lash out to push them back, but the moment she pushes back just gets her struck again. "I can't hold out against this. Why is it always the damned insects?!" She mutters. "Sorry everyone. I'm pulling out." She leaps, vaulting up onto the building once more and landing on one knee, grunting in pain... And then she leaps away, vanishing from sight... And the battle.

     Every single supply room has been broken into, but they haven't managed to steal much yet, is what Goldenblade finds as she begins to check each of the supply rooms. There is one that has been fully raided, though, the one with the backup weapons and armors that are used as backups when the Hunter's main gear started to wear down too much. The food stores have managed to not be hit too hard yet, and the spreading of the information makes it so that the food stores aren't hit much harder afterwards, each one losing maybe a crate of food from it.

     Mizuki is able to retreat unhindered as she flees, the ants... not seeming to persue her, even in their enraged state?

     Regardless, the flames... continue as Yobi unleashes even more of those waves of fire into the ants, burning them badly and causing them to burst into those red pixels! A flaming blade from Merek cuts through several of the ants as well! Vertina kind of ... leaps up into the middle of the ants! And... attacks! And... they all don't seem to be taking kindly to all this fire and are actively evading now.

     And with Yuuki's final burst of fire, the ants seem... to be done with all this nonsense. As a last group of them dies, the army ants almost immediately turn and retreat into the hole that they came from, the hole closing firmly behind them with several layers of rock and sand.

                VICTORY?

    Merek looks to the fleeing ants while he takes a moment to the sheath the weapon with him. There's a look to the party in thought, while he nods. The man maneuvers along to the front of the village while he takes the time to see if people need healing.

It takes a few moments for Vertina to wind down from her cyclone of fire-fu and notice the ants have either been cooked or decided to bugger off. Haha, bugger. Point is, there's not ants anymore. ".. Is that all? Did we win?"

    Yuuki looks around after her last attack, watching as the ants scatter and make their way back towards their hole. Yuuki finally pulls her sword out of the ground, moving it up to rest over her shoulder as she lets out a breath, "Phew! That's the great thing about monster waves like that. Even if they're not terribly strong, there's so many of them! Keeps things exciting."

    Yuuki stretches before sheathing her sword. She turns, starting to walk back towards the others, "Great work, everyone! That'll teach those ants a lesson. In some cases literally." Yuuki briefly rubs her chin, "I wonder if monsters can improve their sword skills..."

    Setsuna watches the enemy retreat and he looks at the others as they seem to be standing down, " Guess we will finish them next time? " With that said Setsuna simply sits on the ground and lets out an exhaustive sigh. " So giant ants now huh? Is there any insect in this world that is normal size?" His questions are meant more for the sarcasm then an actual question.

Landing after the final attack, the Butler watched as the ants started to retreat.  With perfect posture, he releases the magic, as his hands puff out and the heat lowers around his body.  Finally, he takes out the gloves from earlier and places them back on each hand as he moves back towards town proper.  

It appears that there is a new mystery to uncover.  He wonders if Proteus has something that can allow them to track them down, if not...then good old-fashioned tracking will have to do the trick.  

Still, it's strange behavior.  They were coming in like an army trying to take the land, instead of monsters.  

"No, they were not fighting like monsters down," he says towards the others.  "That was like military tactics, not beasts.  Even if you consider the nature of ants, this was with greater precision."

Miho is now not holding back as she focues on the main column of ants. There's a glow about the arrow she's drawn as she's chaging up some sort of attack she let it fle and soon it's over with the effort of the rest of the party once she's sure there are no more ants about.

"Where there are ants? There is a hive and a queen. We need to find where these things came from amd damn Yuuki you live up to the stories about you." She'll look over to Setsuna.

"Giant ants have been a thing going back to the 50s. American B movies /loved/ them."

Goldenblade has roused the Landers and they've driven back the thieves hoping to use the attack as a distraction, and when the attack waves are driven off, she looks to her fellow adventurers. "Good job. Sorry I couldn't do more. I think tonight was not my night." She takes a deep breath, nods about tactics. "Best not to ascribe anyting to them. They're computer programs, written by people. They can do anything people can imagine."

Vertina snorts softly. "They were more organized, hivemind or not... Kinda like those Undead over in Ninetails using actual military tactics. It's almost like monsters are adapting so they don't stop being a challenge."

The Butler turns his head towards Goldenblade, "Just a computer program? If you have forgotten, said program has locked our minds and merged our digital avatars with them. Saying 'they are just programs' is dangerously underselling anything in this world. It falls close to boarderline willful ignorance," he says, calmly, but not harshly. Instead with an even tone.

"Now, if you excuse me, I have other matters to attend to today."

Goldenblade eyes Yobi Kin, and replies, "I never said /just/, that's your words. And since we're all playing a game on a computer, a computer program controls everything, and so I was making a case that they were quite dangerous, as my tiny HP bar quite clearly demonstrates. So don't give -me- sass for your assumptions." Of course since he left, she's talking to his back.

    "I'm just glad with you all doing alright," Merek notes, then nods. "Don't ever feel the need to apologize for fleeing," he adds. There's a drink from the canteen of water, a look then to Yobi, "Merek, thank you for the water," he would note, with a nod along to people.

    Setsuna looks over at Miho and nods his head, " Yes the Queen is likely the cause behind all this and it will continue until the queen is defeated. However I fear that we are to beat up at the moment to make a rush for the Queen." His head turns in the direction the ants flee, "If the ants were this difficult on an attack, I can only imagine what else is down there waiting for us when we go hunting for them."

    "Hey, I'm with you on this." Yuuki agrees with Goldenblade, "I've seen devs make some weird games. Ants being able to become better swordsman... Swordsants? Definitely not that high up there on the weirdness scale."

    Though at the mention of a possible Queen, Yuuki lights up, "Oh! There's a Queen? We'll have to find her then. That sounds like it'll be a fun fight! Not to mention she'll probably drop some great loot."