The ant jumped out of the hole.
Its jaws snapped open and pointed toward his neck.
The Krell scout grabbed the stone hammer Ben had made and jumped up to meet the attack.
BAM.
The hammer hit cleanly.
The ant soldier flew into the wall.
But more ants poured out of the hole right after.
They dropped down one after another and swarmed over the Krell.
Seeing this, Elvira gritted her teeth.
She pointed forward and shouted, "My beloved, withstand this...
Lightning Magic!
Chain Lightning!"
She expected her spell to stun everything for a short time.
That would give Ben a chance to let his consumption skill finish its job and eat the ant king completely.
Once the ant king died, control of the ant soldiers would pass to the ant princess.
Elvira had already thought that far.
Even if she fainted after casting, she believed her chain lightning would stun all of them for at least a second.
That one second should be enough for Ben to recover and take care of the rest.
As she expected, right after she released the spell, her vision went dark.
She fell unconscious.
Lightning burst out and jumped through every body nearby.
It did not spare the Krell scout either.
Ben felt his head spin.
His muscles twitched and cramped.
Then a screen appeared in front of his eyes, and his mood changed at once.
[Ant king consumed. Acquired 129 biomass, and Ant king body part, enhanced carapace.]
The ant king's body dropped to the ground, lifeless.
Feeling his body recover, Ben quickly looked around.
Many ant soldiers lay collapsed on the ground.
He checked the ant princess as well.
She stood in place like a statue, completely still.
When he looked beyond her, his eyes widened.
He rushed forward and took Elvira from the Krell scout's arms.
He checked her pulse.
'Thank God she is alright.
Just overexertion.
Is this like mana deviation?'
Elvira had told him about mana problems before, and he had been curious.
What actually happened when someone ran out of mana?
In most stories and games he knew, running out of mana usually did nothing serious.
Maybe there was a small penalty, but it was never something permanent like qi deviation in cultivation novels.
He looked back once, hesitated, then hardened his gaze.
He turned and ran toward their base with Elvira in his arms.
The two Krell scouts followed behind him.
One looked badly wounded.
It had lost an arm, and its carapace was cracked open, exposing purplish flesh.
The other one only had light damage.
Ben kept his eyes on the path ahead, but his senses stayed locked on the tunnel behind him.
"Seems no one is coming after me.
Tch, what a loss.
I should have taken at least one of the ant princesses," he muttered.
He was sure the ant princess would use this chance to escape far away.
That meant he had lost a valuable asset.
Now he needed to think of another way to get a stable biomass farm.
Halfway back, Ben suddenly stopped.
The tunnel began to shake.
He turned his head to the side.
Something big was moving toward them.
'Dammit.
One after another.' At this point, Ben felt certain that bad luck followed him in this new life.
Problems never came alone.
'Where is my plot armor or lucky encounter?' he cursed in his mind.
He had transmigrated and received a system.
It gave him abilities that should have been cheats, but his path so far had not been easy at all.
Protagonists usually got lucky by this stage.
They would find some treasure by accident, something that just happened to solve their current problem.
But not him.
He faced crisis after crisis, and even after expanding the base and sending out scouts, he still had not found a gemstone mine.
He clicked his tongue and kicked off the ground, increasing his pace.
He sprinted toward the base.
Fighting was not an option.
He carried Elvira on his back.
His mana was nearly empty.
The biomass he had gained had healed his wounds, but without mana, his combat power was limited.
His only hope now was the trap he had prepared at the base.
A deafening boom sounded.
The wall in front of him cracked wide open.
Through the broken rock, he saw a massive hole full of jagged teeth.
He still could not see the full creature.
What he saw looked like a moving pit.
It turned toward him like a black void and swallowed everything in front of it.
As the tunnel collapsed and widened, he got a clearer view.
The body was still hidden, but a larger section of the jaws became visible.
'Is this the Hell Worm Elvira mentioned?' he thought.
Elvira had told him about a giant worm that randomly moved between floors.
People treated it as a natural disaster.
'Fuck.
With that size, even my trap will not work.'
He thought about using salt, since it was a worm, but he had none in stock to even test the idea.
And even if he had salt, he would need a huge amount to cover a creature that big.
He could not even see its full length now.
'Metamorphosis.'
He burned the last of his mana and created two extra stone arms.
BANG.
BANG.
He began digging a new tunnel at full speed to escape from the Hell Worm.
If he led it to his base, it would only destroy everything there.
His hands moved fast.
He dug just wide enough for his own body to squeeze through.
'Shit.
Shit.' He could feel the jaws closing in behind him.
Every second stretched out.
He had dug like this thousands of times before, but now every movement felt slow.
"Faster.
Faster," he shouted at himself.
His four arms blurred as they tore through the stone.
The sound of the ground being chewed up behind him grew louder.
The cracking of the tunnel walls felt like a countdown to his death.
Dust filled the air.
System messages flashed in front of his eyes as he gained more stone blocks, but he ignored them.
In a few seconds, he had dug five blocks deep.
It was still not enough to fully avoid the Hell Worm's path.
Adrenaline surged through him.
His speed increased again.
He could feel the worm's presence now.
It was only one block away.
[Ding! You get 1 Stone Block!]
[Ding! You get 1 Stone Block!]
Ben's lips twisted into a resigned smile.
He turned his head to the side.
Sharp.
Rotten-smelling.
Pure darkness.
That was all he saw.
"Is this it?
Game over?"