Too Stubborn to Die

Book 3: Chapter 45

There was a surprising degree of organization when they spotted their enemy. The squads reacted cautiously, separating into their respective groups, and using a series of defensive Skills and trap Skills to set up their battlefields to their advantage before engaging their enemies.

Aaron, on the other hand, gave a little nod to Zero and charged into the thick of it.

“Wait up!” Talia screamed after him and flew into the air as her avatar took life. “I’m not letting you get all the kills!”

“Better keep up then!”

But for all his words of bravado, Aaron remembered his discussion with Yendal and thumbed his ring as he neared their enemy. He would take this seriously but slowly, at least until they reached stiff resistance. This was an opportunity for improvement, and he wasn’t about to waste it.

He remembered his patron god’s words. If she really could defeat such powerful beasts when she was this level, then he was slacking off. And that thought drove him to try even harder. And not just because he wanted to impress her the next time they met. But because the implication was that he wasn’t reaching even close to his potential.

However, Yendal was Yendal. That said, he had something she didn’t. A particularly special soul.

There was a real possibility that it simply wasn’t possible to match the martial god via pure martial prowess—not without spending an inordinate amount of time training, at least—but Aaron reminded himself that he didn’t have to rely on pure martial prowess. Sure, he agreed with her that falling back on extensive energy output was a shortcut, one that was making him lazy and weak. However, that didn’t mean the solution was to completely copy her, and he wondered if he could use this opportunity to further strengthen his bond with his spirit and use it to help hone his senses.

Crashing down into the battle, he studied the ants rushing toward him and engaged.

The battle started in a confusing flurry of attacks that normal people wouldn’t have been able to keep up with. But every attack was perfectly landed as Aaron intended it to.

He used no more power than necessary, aiming for weak spots even though he could take out these relatively weak ants without doing so. And at first, it was more of a refresher than anything else, going through the basics. He had been doing this for a while now, continuing on from what he had been doing in his previous fights since arriving on this world. Reminding himself of everything he had learned. Footwork, precision, and reading the enemy. All of it.

However, the vanguard of the ants was nothing special, and simple attacks were more than enough to chop through dozens within less than a minute. And soon, corpses were piling up all over the place, despite Aaron not actually pushing himself particularly hard.

He got a bad feeling, though. The battle seemed too easy, and the only reason he kept going as he was was that he didn’t sense any powerful energy signals.

“Come on, this all you got?”

Aaron crashed into the next line of ants, crushing several beneath his spiked gauntlets within seconds.

However, a second later, he pulled back a little. It was an unusual problem to have, but his attacks had actually landed heavier than he had planned them to, completely splattering several bodies into pieces as he blasted them apart.

His body felt unruly, and controlling himself as he once had was now noticeably harder as his strength had grown so much. But there was more to it than that.

It was his core. His true core was a serious upgrade, and if his concentration lapsed, then extraordinary power fluctuated out of it. That power and hyper-charged his attacks, blowing his enemies into literal pieces.

And while on the surface that mightn’t have seemed like a bad problem to have, his joints and muscles felt an ache afterwards. It was nothing serious, especially compared to his insane healing, but Aaron could feel that there was a problem just waiting to happen if he wasn’t careful. He was also burning energy just a bit faster than he was regenerating it, and that wouldn’t do. Not in a battle like this.

Taking several deep breaths after slaughtering another line of ants, he calmed himself before his next engagement. Massive power was good, but he needed it to be under his control.

And just as he slowed down a little, he felt a pulse of hunger radiate from his ring. It was enjoying this, and lines started to etch across its surface as its energy intake seemingly increased before his very eyes.

“What the?”

Aaron shook his head, forced to refocus on the fight as dozens of ants attacked from all around. But he hadn’t missed it. It was as if new details were being drawn onto the ring, and it was undeniable that he had grown stronger somehow, and it was pulling more and more energy from him now.

There was a silver lining to this, though. He felt a weight lifted off his shoulders. His true core was easier to control, as its excessive energy was greedily being sucked up by the ring before it could accumulate and threaten his soul and body.

Aaron dipped into this feeling as he threw punches at the oncoming ants, crushing their bodies under his fists. But that wasn’t all, he was cycling throughout it, and drawing in more and more aether from [ Reap ] with each enemy slain.

And in response, his core sped up, churning out more energy than he could have ever imagined possible. It was well and truly beyond what he should have commanded. A stupid amount of energy for someone still clinging to an E-grade Class and Profession.

But the ring sucked it all up, and not even for a second did he feel that his soul was in any true jeopardy.

This was unexpected, and he had to remind himself not to get too used to it. After all, he would almost certainly need to remove the ring when fighting the queen, and he didn’t want to blow himself up with his own core.

As he beat apart and killed the ants around him, Aaron took a second to look back. He was so focused on what he was doing that he had barely noticed Talia and Zero fighting. And they were now some distance away from him, with the squads even further back, stationed at the rear and dealing with straggler ants.

Perfect, he thought. The squad's purpose was to deal with the footsoldiers like these, but they needed to get to the jungle first. And Aaron was more than happy to thin their numbers along the way.

Returning his focus to the fight as the ants attempted to surround him with excessive numbers and charged with clicking mandibles, he met them with fists poised. But their attack was a little different this time.

As he closed the distance, dodging sharp, serrated mandibles, arcing beams of energy sparked across his skin and exploded into crackling power.

Aaron was actually thrown back a little, with minor wounds, and they hadn’t even touched him.

Luckily, the lightning wasn’t too strong, and he could easily tank the damage as he burst through them. But the electrified ants were a little more troublesome, filling their bodies up with the energy not so different from the exploding cultists.

Electricity blasted through his body as he punched these ants into oblivion, but the damage went both ways. And while Aaron could heal himself incredibly well and survive multiple deaths, there were a shit ton of ants, and there seemed to be more of the little bastards by the second.

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To keep them at bay, he used [ Spectral Bullet Punch ]. He had wanted to refrain from using Skills so that he could practice. But at this rate, he couldn’t be sure that he’d be able to keep the ring on, even with his [ Reap ] Skill stealing aether from all of his kills. He was simply eating too much damage from the electrified ants.

At that moment, though, he remembered his thoughts going into this battle, and leaned into his spirit senses. [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ]

was raised, and his spirit fought alongside his mortal self.With this combination, he could tell exactly what kinds of ants were rushing toward him and used simple, precise punches to kill or disable ordinary ants, hitting weak spots. Then switched to spectral bullets to kill electrified ones.

And to top it all off, he used fate-bending to map a path, reading several seconds into the future. The ants could do little against such an extraordinary combination, and soon, he was pushing their endless ranks back as quickly as he had at the start of their fight.

But the ants were far from being out of ideas, and as his slaughter got fiercer, and their losses larger, more seemed to swarm toward him.

Bolts of energy were shooting out from the crowd, and they pressed against one another to force the tide of ants forward against Aaron’s angry fists that cleaved rows after rows of the dogged beasts as they continued their mindless press.

He grunted as he shrugged off lightning damage and gave it back tenfold, blasting bits of ant all over the place. They might not have been done, but neither was he.

Minutes passed of this insane exchange went back and forth, literal mounds of ant corpses piling up, but they showed absolutely no care for it, continuing to scuttle toward the battle.

“How many of you little bastards are there?”

As if in response, the waves of ants seemed to grow thicker still, and it was mind-boggling just how many of the little beasts there were. And if not for [ Reap ], Aaron would have already been thick into his food reserves and possibly forced to retreat.

But if he could, he would save those reserves. He wanted that for the queen. Instead, he would have to focus on maximizing his efficiency and keeping his expenditure below his regeneration.

Within minutes of this exchange, a few wounds were starting to appear across Aaron. He healed them almost as quickly as he gained them, but was forced to take a step back, as the sheer persistence of the ants began to wear on him.

Worse still, as he looked up, he couldn’t even see the jungle anywhere. He was killing a stupid number of ants, but he was starting to wonder if he and the others could keep this up.

Not that it even came close to deterring him. He was as stubborn as ever and still had plenty of cards up his sleeve. He just hoped to save them for the more difficult fights that were no doubt soon to arrive.

He entered a flow state, so focused on the battle that the world around him faded. He punched, he kicked, he dodged, each motion as small as he could make it without compromising effectiveness. He made mistakes at first, scowling at the wasted energy, but as the battle went on, the mistakes became fewer and fewer. He got more used to his new energy levels and better at gauging what his enemies could take.

Like a rotund grim reaper, he flashed through the battlefield, and wherever he went, ants fell. First dozens, then hundreds, and then it reached the point where Aaron began to wonder if there was an end to a horde. No sooner had he thought this than he suddenly found a moment of reprieve, as he noticed that there were no more living ants around him.

But the battle was far from over, and he could hear another endless stampede approaching in the distance.

Filling the air around the dead ants was an eerie energy as well. It was no doubt what was calling them, and the reason the horde charging him down was only growing thicker and thicker. But what was he to do about it besides keep slaughtering them wave after wave?

His brow bent, Aaron shot straight into the following wave. If they wanted to make this a battle of endurance, then he was happy to oblige.

Bodies exploded against his spiked gauntlets, and he spun into a dizzying array of attacks as he slaughtered a line through the enemy, ring still on his finger, and his movements perfectly placed.

He had turned into a storm, his movements so fast and destructive, like a whirlwind throwing up broken ants all over the place, and the spectacle was only enhanced by the flashes of lightning sparking all around as the ants tried to zap him.

There was little doubt Aaron was eating damage through it all, but nowhere near enough to stop his mad assault, and soon, he found himself falling into a rhythm, cycling energy and reaping aether, and it was almost starting to feel easy, until the next threat appeared.

Poison and corrosive ants.

The little bastards shot acidic, sizzling spittle, and when they were killed, they exploded into a puff of noxious fumes. The first few times, Aaron was caught off guard, and he was forced to create distance as he desperately cycled energy to keep himself alive.

It was a deadly shock, and he felt like his body was going offline for a second. But he wasn’t forced to resurrect, not yet at least.

“Watch out for the poison ants!” He shouted back, using his energy to amplify his voice across the battlefield.

If worst came to worst, at least he could survive a few deaths. If anything, he was more worried for the others. The fumes being released by the dead ants were no minor attack, and when he had breathed in the poison, he had immediately felt weak, moving closer to death.

It was so strong that even Talia and Zero could be endangered by such an attack, let alone the squads moving up behind them.

And something told Aaron that their enemy wasn’t even getting started, as he continued to bash his way through the endless lines of ants, slipping attacks and aiming his fists for weak spots, crushing one, two, and a third before taking a second to cycle.

But even after another dozen ants were beaten down before him, more took their place, and he continued to tirelessly throw punches.

He could tell that they had pushed the ants back a few miles by now, but what had started as relatively thin, sporadic pockets of ants spread across the plains had now turned into dense lines of warriors packed up tightly against one another, and for every ant he killed, it felt as if two took its place.

Nonetheless, he punched forward into the next line, killing an ant, but instead of moving forward, its body just splattered back against the ants behind it, forming a dense wall that not even Aaron’s punches could break through.

He was literally crushing hard bodies against one another, and creating a mush between his fists and the thick rows of ants, and not even that was enough to dissuade them for even a second.

And the moment the ants got a chance to return the attack, lightning and poison shot out, forcing him to retreat several steps. Flying backward to cycle and prepare himself for another round, he felt the ground collapse beneath him, and mandibles shot out from the dirt.

“Digging ants?!”

They grabbed hold of his ankles with sharp mandibles that drew blood, but a swift spin saw the ants torn into pieces. Yet it mattered little, as more were upon him before he could even move to better ground, and he was forced to dig deep and increase his speed to meet these relentless attacks, facing them with deadly fists, kicks, and both elbows and knees as he turned into a blinding flurry of death.

Even his forehead became a weapon, smashing through an unlucky ant or two as the mound of wiggling bodies attempted to engulf him.

He heard screams in the distance and looked up. There were literal waves of ants crashing down upon him like superorganisms that had joined together to create something bigger.

But Aaron just roared in defiance of it all, and returned with haymakers and [ Soul Shattering Strike ], falling back on the Skills he had resisted using up until now. And they blasted through the huge formations of ants with devastating results.

Then, with an angry grunt, he unleashed a chaingun of Spectral Bullets into the hordes of ants, pouring aether into his attacks to increase the relatively weak spectral fists into something that could kill on impact against the weaker ants, and that was when the true slaughter began.

His eyes were white and mad, and he started to laugh as he mowed them down, line after line, drawing in aether from all the kills as his spectral fists shot out at a seemingly ever-increasing speed, covering the entire plains in corpses.

But this wasn’t a style he wanted to rely upon, and the moment the ant lines had been culled a little, he flew straight back into them, fists poised as he landed vicious, but perfectly timed attacks.

He was Yendal’s student, but if they tried to use numbers against him, he was going to make them pay for it.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw his allies a hundred or so meters behind him, dealing with the broken lines of ants he had left behind.

And through it all, he felt something else bubbling within. It was experience, and it was fucking lot of it.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be getting a few levels from this,” he murmured as his fist blew straight through an ant’s head and continued onto the next.

However, despite all of the destruction he had wrought, ahead of him, a seemingly endless blanket of black, wiggling ants covered the land.

But he could also see something else in the distance.

Trees. Lots of them.