Chapter 41 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

It started slowly, where only active soldiers were used before the mobilization began. Some nations had quite large active military forces, but that was to be expected from the larger nations who still waged war against other nations to claim colonizable territory. But those wars were a bit different and had many more rules of engagement so things wouldn't escalate.

But now, the very first battle was about to happen, showing how bad this war was going to be. 100,000 ants crossed the border into enemy territory and were soon met with fortifications defended by 20,000 ants.

Back in the day, the 100,000 would have rolled over the 20,000 quite quickly, but this was the age of skills, and old tactics would no longer work, especially because defending had been made easier than attacking because of the skill.

The army approached a large section of a river crossing that was fortified. The attacking armies used mages with earth manipulation skills to make the crossing even easier, but even before they were able to cross the river, they came under heavy fire from the most common skill of a regular soldier: air bullets.

It was a skill developed by a genius champion a while ago in a different era. When modern militaries realized this skill was easily learned and its potential on the battlefield, it became standard for almost every army. Nowadays, of course, many militaries have developed different skills based on this one, some even under completely different elements, but the basics stayed the same.

You need to concentrate and channel the skill between your antennae. This will give you the best accuracy when firing. Once sufficiently charged, releasing it will cause a concentrated force of air to shoot out at high velocity, and a hit in the vitals would kill a regular ant in one shot.

So, halfway across the river, the first attacks started to land, killing many in the first volley. While the attacking force fired back, they were doing minimal damage to the defenders because they were behind fortifications.

An order to charge was given, and the attacking army started to rush towards the fortifications to bring the fight into close range, which would mitigate the defensive advantage the fortifications gave. Yet, when they got closer, a different kind of skill started to be used.

It was a combination skill where one of the ants concentrated on firing as many bullets as possible while two others supplied the mana. This was not an accurate skill as the ant didn’t have much time to properly aim, but he didn't have to; there were so many targets who all met a wall of air bullets ripping them to shreds.

Now, there were elite soldiers that could easily be called champions who were defensively strong enough that, while the air bullets were an annoyance, they weren't going to hurt them no matter how many hit.

To defend against ants like that, the defending army had their own elite soldiers. While some used more traditional champion skills, some had also trained and modified the regular air bullet skill to such a degree that they could even punch through the strongest defences.

The battle was chaotic, but the defenders had much better tactics as their current general was one of the volunteers who fought in the fountain war. He had heard and even seen what the future of warfare might look like and purposely chose to climb the military ranks for the exact reason that has come to pass.

The attacking army's leadership was not stupid, but they weren't brilliant. Instead of pulling back, they continued their front charge but decided to start a siege bombarding the fortifications. They had at first wanted to save the mana those specialised ants needed to cast their magic when they reached the first proper colony, but it seems that the first fortifications were tougher than they expected.

Their attacks that arced over the battlefield and landed inside the fortifications did the first real damage to the defenders, but they soon got a taste of their own medicine as similar spells started to land onto their soldiers.

The battle lasted for four days before the attackers pulled back out of engagement range, having suffered major losses of nearly 40,000 soldiers and only killing about 9,000 defenders. Over the coming days, more and more supplies reached both armies, and slowly troops were being replaced.

This was the first fight, and soon many followed all over the ant nations. Not all went like this, and most of the time the attackers won. But slowly, commanders and generals adapted to the new warfare, and breaking through defences started to become harder and harder.

Only a few armies were able to advance enough in the first week to reach a major colony, mostly thanks to the use of aircraft or ships. What followed was not what usually happened. Conquered colonies with a strong presence of the enemy army usually just accepted this fact and did what the occupiers told them to. But now, individuals had more say in their lives, and since almost every ant got military training and learned some skills, a new kind of warfare was born.

Completely unassuming worker ants now launched surprise attacks against their occupiers, in most cases causing heavy casualties during the short fights between smaller groups. It was a nightmare for the attacking army, and soon things got a lot worse for the defenders as the attackers became more brutal in trying to assert dominance.

Soon, the entire colony was a battleground where no one knew who or at what time was going to try to kill you. This caused a lot of civilian deaths and would most likely not be an isolated incident as the war continued.

The war continued to escalate, and some battles had already lasted days, killing tens of thousands. The worst situations were happening in colonies that were fortified. The attackers needed to use large-scale spells to weaken enemy defenses, but doing so resulted in many civilian deaths.

As armies were unable to advance above ground, a slower battlefield started to emerge underground. Ants with specific skills dug tunnels. Many had skills to keep the digging silent, so many times enemy tunnelers broke into each other's tunnels, and brutal fighting followed.

Three weeks in, and already a million soldiers and 300,000 civilians had died, and the war had only just begun with no end in sight. More and more fronts became stalemates, with attacking armies losing tens of thousands every hour.

Because of that, the war did slow down a bit, but overall, the death toll just kept climbing. Entire regions were left completely devastated, especially in the countries where multiple enemy fronts pushed deep into their nation.

While I was focused on this, an annoying thing started to happen, and finally, a few months into the war, I couldn’t take it anymore. Adventurers had started to assassinate each other in waystations. While this had happened before, it was never at this scale.

The reason was that many of the dungeon guilds, as they called them, started to more seriously fight over territory. And finally, what broke my patience was a full-on fight in one of the waystations where almost 30 adventurers were attacked by 70 adventurers. It was a slaughter.

Now, I had no problems with them fighting each other. What I had a problem with was that they were doing that inside the waystations. To fix that, I had a brilliant idea and made a new quest that everyone who had the necklace would receive.

That should teach them not to attack anyone in the waystations, and I could finally get back to properly looking at the World War Ant that was happening. It was incredibly fascinating to watch all the battles and how they continued to innovate, making more and more outlandish devices and specific skills to gain the upper hand.