A/N: In the previous chapter I made a minor mistake, the number of people that can be teleported was six in total, not five. It has been fixed, sorry for the possible inconvenience this may have caused.
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The vision of Bai Zemin and the five people he chose to join him inside the battleship dimmed for an instant after activating the teleportation circle. The six felt as if their bodies were passing through a thin membrane of something none of them could really touch or understand before everything returned to normal.
When they opened the eyes they had subconsciously closed, the place they found themselves in was completely different from the place they had been a second ago.
The group seemed to have been teleported to a currently empty room of approximately 80 square meters and were standing right in the middle of a white magic circle similar to the one on top of the Sky Destroyer but several times the size. The walls seemed to be made of some kind of special gray metal alloy but except for that, the only thing noticeable was the sliding door that was already open just a few meters ahead.
Bai Zemin looked at the people behind him and said in a serious voice, “I’ll go in the front. Xia Ya, you come right behind me. Meng Qi in the center. Liang Jing, you’re in charge of scouting. Nangong Lingxin, your job is to protect Meng Qi. Feng Tian Wu, you’ll be in charge of taking out enemies from a distance or pushing them back with your flames. Are we all clear?”
“Yes!”
“Understood.”
“Cough! Ok…”
“…”
The five people nodded and indicated their agreement at Bai Zemin’s orders.
He nodded in satisfaction and silently pulled Annihilation of the Falling Sky out from inside his body. With a single thought, Bai Zemin imagined the composition and shape of a simple, normal sword only a meter long.
A flash of golden light enveloped the golden greatsword and an instant later its size had shrunk to about half its previous length. Its form had become more compact and manageable compared to the past.
In this kind of confined place, there was no way Bai Zemin could use a greatsword as the colossal size of the weapon would be obstructed by the walls and ceiling of the battleship, therefore, he had no choice but to change his combat style in here.
It was no exaggeration to say that the current battle power of Bai Zemin had decreased tremendously inside the battleship. However, that didn’t matter too much since Bai Zemin had no intention of destroying the ship; he wanted to bring it home as healthy as possible, not a piece of broken metal destroyed by his own attacks.
Liang Jing went into stealth mode and in an instant, Bai Zemin felt the assassin whose job was really an interesting mystery move off.
“Let’s move.”
Bai Zemin waved his hand and led the rest, quickly following in the footsteps of Liang Jing who would be the person to point out the places to avoid. In addition to Liang Jing, Bai Zemin also had his skill God of War’s Will, which would immediately alert him if an enemy with murderous intent towards him appeared nearby.
The group advanced while keeping their guard up, walking through the long corridors of the battleship cautiously. The walls of the corridors were a shiny metallic gray and felt cold and smooth to the touch while the floor seemed to be made of white marble with small black polka dots; an interesting combination.
After walking around and circling for about ten minutes, the group did not meet any enemies unlike what they had expected to find. It was around that time when Liang Jing ran up to Bai Zemin and came out of stealth mode.
“Leader.” The man who despite being a Second Order existence looked to be as old and skinny as a walking skeleton staggered as he coughed and walked towards the group.
“Liang Jing, what did you discover?”
Liang Jing shook his head and covered his mouth as he coughed fiercely and said with his face red because of lack of air, “There is a metal door up ahead, I tried to open it but there is a magic circle there. There’s also something strange on the wall, I think it’s a security camera.”
“I see… Good job.” Bai Zemin nodded, but after a moment’s thought, he decided to lead everyone to the metal door anyway.
A minute or two later and after taking several twists and turns through what seemed to be an endless labyrinth, the group of six led by Bai Zemin finally caught sight of the door Liang Jing was talking about. It was a typical metal door from any movie with spaceships recorded before the apocalypse except that it had a small dark blue magic circle at the top.
“Meng Qi.” Bai Zemin looked behind him and called out.
Meng Qi nodded and without saying a single word stepped forward; this was her task after all.
Nangong Lingxin followed closely behind and just for safety’s sake activated her skill, raising a multicolored energy barrier in front of her and Meng Qi’s body to prevent any kind of trouble.
Better safe than sorry, more so when the matter in question involved magic circles that were still mostly a mystery to all of them.
As Bai Zemin watched his sister working, as the minutes passed, he noticed that she slowly began to frown and he subconsciously frowned when he realized that it didn’t seem to bring good news.
Indeed, after about five minutes, Meng Qi turned to look at Bai Zemin and said in a guilty voice:
“Big brother, I can’t do it. This magic circle, despite being small, has an attack rune which I saw earlier in one of the magic circles in the library.”
Bai Zemin frowned tightly and said in a low voice, “If we destroy the door…?”
Meng Qi shook her head and said in a serious voice, “Don’t do it. The magic circle will attack us.”
Those present couldn’t help but frown harder and harder. If they couldn’t advance here then they could go look for more paths since the battleship was huge, however, what would happen if they ran into more closed doors? Wouldn’t they be wasting their time stupidly?
Bai Zemin also didn’t want to risk smashing the door open.
To begin with, it was questionable whether he would be able to accomplish such a thing but even if his power was sufficient there was no way Bai Zemin would do something so stupid without even having any idea of how powerful the door’s magic circle was.
Just when Bai Zemin and the others were in a dilemma that they didn’t seem to be able to get out of any time soon, the small deep blue magic circle glimmered and the next moment a weak but beautiful voice came from inside:
“I see you have a pretty smart young lady on your team, young human.”
Bai Zemin felt a shiver run through his entire body and his face went white. He immediately took a step forward as he executed a swift slash with his sword and shouted aloud, “Blood Barrier!”
Bai Zemin’s left hand opened and a large torrent of red blood shot forward before spreading across the entire door and covering it with a bright crimson glow. This was a blood barrier that had been strengthened by 300 points of Mana!
“Triple Energy Barrier!” Nangong Lingxin was also not slow to erect her own barrier.
Crimson-colored flames burned in Feng Tian Wu’s hands as Xia Ya activated Wolf Pack and boosted everyone’s natural stats by a wide margin.
Everyone looked towards the door that was now isolated by two powerful barriers as if they were about to face a mighty enemy, apprehensive that something bad might happen in this environment unfamiliar to them.
A weak chuckle followed by the sound of someone coughing sounded beyond the two barriers, the glow of the magic circle was no longer visible but the sound still rang out from the walls.
“There is no need to be so vigilant…. If I had wanted to harm you, there would be no need to alert you with my voice, right?”
Hearing the other party’s words, words clearly belonging to a woman, everyone looked at each other in consternation. It was true that if someone wanted to cause harm to another existence they wouldn’t alert the target stupidly and would take advantage of the surprise factor and so the words of whoever was speaking made a lot of sense.
However, it wasn’t as if they could trust anyone unwary, was it? Much less considering that an hour ago they had been fighting to the death against enemies coming out of this very battleship.
After thinking about it for a moment, Bai Zemin decided to try to communicate with the other side. Still, he did not let his guard down nor did he immediately withdraw the blood barrier he had erected. He gestured to Meng Qi telling her to retreat to the back of the group together with Feng Tian Wu and Liang Jing, was only then did he feel a little more at ease.
He looked in the direction of the door and said in a deep voice, “You are the queen of the weaver ants aren’t you?”
Bai Zemin’s words, rather than a question sounded like an affirmation.
Indeed, the reply from the other side was something that in reality everyone already knew in their hearts.
“… Let’s just say I’m the queen of the weaver ants for now, but within the next sixty minutes I won’t be anymore.”
Bai Zemin frowned like the rest of them at the sound of the ant queen’s voice. Not only did the ant queen’s words suggest something but the tone of her voice seemed to be proof of what she was suggesting.
“Young one of the human race, how about we have a talk?” The ant queen’s voice rang out again after several seconds of silence, making a proposal that no one expected.
“Talk?” Bai Zemin repeated in surprise.
He had come here with the intention of fighting to the death against whatever was inside the battleship in order to claim the reward that rightfully belonged to him, as well as the treasures that the king of the former Kang Kingdom himself gave him before he departed forever.
Now that the party that should be his enemy was proposing to have a chat over tea Bai Zemin was naturally surprised beyond words!
“Right, a conversation.”
The ant queen’s voice sounded again, sweet but increasingly weak:
“Since we both have enough intelligence, I think we can have a good talk before deciding what to do next…. Of course, if you want to fight then we can do it that way as well…. But I’m afraid that regardless of whether you come out the winner or not, the losses you will suffer will not only be the near-total destruction of the Sky Destroyer.”
The ant queen’s words, despite sounding like a threat, were not. Bai Zemin could tell from the tone of voice the other side was using that, rather than a threat, what the ant queen was saying was simply the natural logic and inevitable future of the events in case a battle between the two sides broke out here.
Bai Zemin was sure that the other party was at the very least a mid-level, possibly peak Third Order existence. If he were to fight such a being, Bai Zemin would have to give his 100% and the Sky Destroyer would probably be at least 60-70% destroyed. Moreover, as the ant queen had just pointed out, in this place where there was no room to run and where the shockwaves could travel farther due to the corridors, the weaker existences had a high chance of perishing.
Seeing that the other side did not answer right away as if thinking her proposal over seriously, the ant queen spoke again:
“I will be waiting for you in the command room. I will open all the doors that will bring you here and turn on the screens in every corner where you can see a map of the battleship.”
The ant queen’s words had barely fallen when Bai Zemin and the others heard the sound of something sliding, probably the door opening.
“Young warrior of the human race, I have only 58 minutes left to talk with you… I hope you can make a decision soon.”
The ant queen’s words had barely fallen when the fluctuation of mana and magic coming from the magic circle on the door stopped being felt in the surroundings.
It was clear that the ant queen had cut off communication now and it was solely up to Bai Zemin to decide what to do next.
In addition, from the queen ant’s somewhat intricate tone of voice, there seemed to be a story to listen to.
