Chapter 43 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

This battle was filled with the marvellous inventions of the different ant nations. While there are a lot of prototypes, some designs have already become quite standard.

I watched as ants made last-minute checks on their planes before getting on board and firing up the skill engines. There were seven different airports that were close enough for the battle, and rapidly more and more planes started to take off, climbing ever higher to reach engagement height.

The most numerous design in use was an airframe one and a half metres in length and four metres in wingspan. Three ants made this plane work, making it a terror on the battlefield. There were two configurations most used: one where an experienced air bullet user lay just above the skill engine and, through an ingenious method, timed its attack to shoot through the propeller at targets directly in front of it.

The second configuration had an ant placed behind the pilot ant who dropped bombs or used an equivalent skill for a similar effect. The last ant was the one that supplied and kept the skill engine running.

This design has been refined constantly, and the double wings of the plane make it incredibly manoeuvrable, one of the main reasons airships are no longer used in battle. There are more complicated aircraft designs and even dedicated bombers which are incredibly large compared to the fighter, but those would not fare well in this battle. Currently, they are used elsewhere to devastate colonies or soften up fortresses.

The most impressive and advanced aircraft on this battlefield was the AW7B. Its airframe was three and a half metres in length with a 7-metre wingspan. Its massive and powerful skill engine was fuelled and maintained by two ants: one needed to have a fire-type skill and another an air-type skill to make this skill engine work and allow it to produce enough power to fly at incredible speeds while carrying such a heavy load.

There was a reason why ‘7’ was in its name. There was one pilot and four ants that lay inside the wings. They used skills like the air bullet to devastate anything unlucky enough to get in the way of this airplane. With the two ants for the skill engine, it brought the number of ants to seven.

A smaller version required only 5 ants and was the second most used airframe on this battlefield. Operating this kind of warplane required a lot of training and skill. For that reason, whenever possible, the ants would jump out if their plane was damaged and use air glide items to return safely to the ground. Unfortunately, many landed in enemy territory, and their fates were not kind.

It took some time to get so many planes off the ground, but it was magnificent to see them flying over the lake toward each other, most focusing on gaining air superiority. However, some were trying to destroy the ships that were closing in on the island.

The battle in the skies was fierce, and soon fiery streaks of broken plane parts started to fall into the water. It didn't take long until the ships were in engagement range, and spells and devices called cannons added their sounds to the battlefield.

The most numerous ships were about four metres in length and usually had 12 to 20 ants who operated the ship. The largest vessels, however, reached the size of 12 metres and could have over 150 ants. That number fluctuated a lot depending on which type of ant was on board.

Some of the soldier ants could get pretty large, but mostly these types of ants were used on the numerous battlefields that didn't take place on top of water. When the ranged battle began between the ships, it didn't take long for chaos to ensue.

The battle soon turned into a hellscape. Hundreds of devastating attacks screamed through the air, searching for targets and quite often hitting ships, causing massive damage. While the weather was clear, it soon looked like it was raining fire as the airplanes above continued to destroy each other.

On occasion, a plane got close enough to a ship without being shot down to drop a bomb, sinking a ship and making ants abandon ship. Unfortunately, their chances of survival were close to zero, as the water in the lake, over the course of the war, attracted many fish who were more than happy to eat any ant unlucky enough to find themselves in the water and still alive.

It was a feeding ground where fish fought for the free food. While some of the fish were big enough to endanger some of the ships, they simply didn't have the need to attack them directly as there was so much food already in the water.

Slowly, ships got closer and closer to the island and started to offload some of the troops to start holding the island. This place was, however, was a nightmare for any soldier. Over many months, the industrial ants and many different armies had made this entire place a maze of underground tunnels, trenches, bunkers, and above-ground fortifications.

It was one of the most chaotic battlefields in the war, and the soldiers already on the island, who had been starving and continuously fighting each other, barely knew who were their allies and who they needed to kill.

It was a fierce battle that only came to a close because the sun was starting to set. The planes had to land and get new skilled engine operators to continue flying throughout the day, but by the end of the day, 600 planes had sunk to the bottom of the lake, along with over 50 ships, joining hundreds of other ships and planes already sunk before this battle.

The fate of the island was yet to be decided. Tonight, however, was not a time for rest; everyone worked unceasingly to repair as many planes and ships as possible.

While this was happening, the largest offensive was taking place where a combined 120 million ants either attacked or defended a nearly 300-kilometre front. One of the sides was using modified trains to surprise and push through the front lines so they could break through and advance deep into enemy territory, cutting off supply lines and hopefully encircling millions of enemy fighters.

This entire attack had been planned for a month, during which soldiers and supplies were brought up, and constant deceptions were executed to hide the exact details of what was happening.

The attacking side had numerical superiority of nearly 30 million, yet without the train tactic that could only be used in a few locations where train tracks were located, the line would have barely advanced. That, however, was to be expected; the breakthrough points were the real goal, and something that for the first time in this war made battle lines advance with rapid speed.

The fighting was brutal, but when the defensive lines started to crumble and then began to retreat, it turned into a massacre. That didn’t stop until the attacking army reached the capital, having occupied almost half of one of the biggest nations in the ant world in less than a week.

It was an incredible shift of power and marked the turning point of the war, as one side was now fighting on a losing foot. Time continued to tick by as numerous battles happened and heroes were born.

The constant war had pushed the resources of every nation to their limits, and many civilians now starved simply because there was too little food and too few workers to continue producing it all. This endless slaughter, however, forged new leaders who were stronger than the ones that caused this disaster, which helped bring this war ever closer to ending.