“Look! The power of the Antfolk… is something you humble, tiny humans could never hope to reach!”
At this moment, the wings on the back of Milonglong, who stood atop the Sandworm, buzzed incessantly!
“The incredibly powerful and noble Antfolk warrior! Lord Milonglong!!” Behind him, other Antfolk raised their weapons and cheered continuously!
“Then! Let’s end this farce!”
Milonglong held his spear high and knocked twice on the Sandworm’s head with a clack-clack!
The Sandworm beneath him seemed to understand the command, as a series of eerie shrieks erupted from deep within its spiral-shaped mouthparts.
“Keke… POOF—!”
In the next second, a giant rock condensed within the Sandworm’s mouthparts, and with its next breath, the boulder was hurled directly toward the carriage, which looked like a candle flicker in a gale!
CRASH!!
However, whether it was poor aim or if Milonglong intentionally meant to leave survivors, the boulder simply tore the entire roof off the carriage without harming the people sitting inside.
“Ugh…”
Feeling the oncoming gale, Reliel narrowed her pale blue eyes. She wrapped one arm tightly around the young girl in her embrace, while her other hand drew the longsword from her waist.
She could feel that in this moment of crisis, the speed of her heart, her blood, and her pulse were all several times faster than before!
In a place she could not see, the Serpent Tattoo wrapped around her left chest began to emerge from beneath her skin…
But… this time, it was clear there was no chance for Miss Younger Sister to verify this mysterious ability…
Because at this very moment, Milonglong and Ileya were locked in a gaze.
“Er…”
The instant his pitch-black compound eyes met those blood-red pupils, his two pairs of wings, which had been vibrating incessantly, came to an abrupt halt!
Along with them, it seemed the very flow of the blood in his body had stalled as well…
The person opposite him did not seem to be looking at him, but rather through his carapace, through his internal organs… and staring directly into his tiny soul.
[RUN! RUN!!]
His Danger Perception warned him repeatedly, but at this moment… Milonglong felt a shred of doubt toward this powerful talent that had saved him countless times.
……
What kind of joke is this… the other party… this humble human only looked at me once!
How could I be suppressed just like that?!
Ability… that’s it! She must have used some kind of “Deterrence” ability!
That’s the only reason I reached such a wrong conclusion…
“Heh… hehe… You want to scare Lord Milonglong away with such cheap tricks??”
Point!
The Antfolk warrior smiled stiffly and pointed his spear far ahead!
He no longer wanted to leave these humans alive!
It was better to kill all these uncertain factors that posed a threat as quickly as possible!
“Sons of Sand! These people are your bait! Devour them all!!”
As the high-pitched sound of wing-beating rang out again, the giant Sandworm… remained completely motionless.
That’s right, unlike the previous two times, the Sandworm did not give Milonglong the response he expected…
“Sons of Sand…?” Milonglong looked down at the Sandworm beneath his feet in confusion…
But the moment his gaze shifted downward, his compound eyes, which had a field of view several times wider than a human’s, saw… something white attached to the Sandworm’s body near the ground…
“What… is this?”
“Warrior… Lord…”
“Over here… there’s more here too! It looks like… bones?!”
Clack-clack-clack…
From sparse to dense, it only took a few seconds… the sound of densely packed bones clattering together made the scalps of Milonglong and his followers tingle!
Looking closely, one could see the reason the Sandworm’s giant body was no longer twisting was not because it didn’t want to, but because its body had been caught in a mass of black matter…
The soft Gobi desert soil they were standing on had turned into a thick, black swamp!
And those pairs of… tens of thousands of pale, ghastly bone hands were reaching out from that black swamp, appearing to grab anything they could reach!
Their purpose was to drag whatever they grabbed… into this black “swamp” overflowing with endless death…
At this moment… more than half of the Sandworm’s body had sunk in; if it didn’t break free now—
“Move… move already!!” Milonglong kept stabbing at the Sandworm beneath his feet with his spear!
This “Son of Sand” was raised by him from a young age; they were like brothers, like parent and child…
Milonglong naturally didn’t want to give up! He didn’t want it to sink into this eerie black swamp just like that…
“Ke… kekeke…” The Sandworm seemed to want to answer its master with all its might, but it could only twitch slightly and emit bursts of reluctant shrieks!
Yet, every time it tried to shift its body, its simple mind felt as if countless gazes were fixed upon it!
Those gazes made it feel incredibly rigid…
It was as if something even more terrifying than death was staring at it, staring at the black swamp beneath it!
“Ke… squeak…” And so, after twitching twice, its body gradually grew stiff… and the speed at which it sank increased instantly!
“Son of Sand! What… on earth is wrong with you!?”
Watching the Sandworm stop resisting, Milonglong’s body trembled slightly…
“Er… no good… we… we must run!!”
Some Antfolk could not bear the pressure of watching the giant ship sink as they faced death themselves… without waiting for a signal from Milonglong, they flapped their wings and tried to fly out of this swamp of death on their own!
But the moment their bodies moved, they felt the twisted gazes coming from all directions…
Hidden under the gravel, masked by the clouds, in the shadows of the rocks…
It seemed that pairs of malicious eyes were watching them, watching this area that was about to be dragged into “death”…
“Er…”
The Antfolk who had just taken flight instantly felt their bodies turn rigid; they were like statues in mid-air, falling straight down toward the darkness below!
Thud! Their bodies hit the ground, and in the next second… they were snatched up by the countless bone hands fighting over them…
Buzz… buzz–!!
It sounded like the buzzing of wings calling for help emanated from the bodies covered by the pale white bone hands…
But it was too fragmented for the other Antfolk to distinguish anything at all…
Gurgle… Within seconds, this Antfolk noble was dragged into that pitch-black death.
Why…
Milonglong was completely unable to understand why his kin, who had already taken to the air… would fall directly…
That guy… right! That human! She is the key to everything!!
This noble Antfolk warrior, like a drowning man clutching a piece of driftwood, shifted his gaze violently toward Ileya on the side.
“Human… as long as I kill you, this entire nightmare will end!!”
He tensed every muscle in his body and raised his spear! This strike… as long as he could kill the mastermind!!
Whoosh——!
But… the young lady, aimed at by this desperate throw, had no intention of dodging.
She simply crossed her arms and leaned back slowly… sitting upon a giant hand wrapped in black armor.
It seemed Milonglong’s all-out attack posed no threat to her at all…
It was even somewhat laughable.
And in fact, that was exactly the case.
Fly out!
Swish——!
Because amidst the shadow of the flying spear, a deboning knife abruptly flew out!
Clang! The sharp blade cut the wooden handle of the spear in half directly! Making this strike, which carried his conviction and overcame his fear, lose its direction!
Thud… The spearhead spun and stuck into the earth 20 meters away from Insmouth…
Completely useless.