Chapter 183: Birth of the Low-Budget Ant King
With Ronin's trio taking the lead, Benket led the remnants of his squad into the hollow.
The lightless shaft spiraled down into the earth. Vanessa habitually tossed out Glow-Stones. The dim, flickering light was just enough to reveal the geography of the cavern, but it was enough to make the group pause in revulsion.
A stomach-churning stench wafted from below. Ronin pulled out his gas mask and strapped it on.
He knew exactly what the smell was. A Chimera Ant nest was a structural masterpiece of dirt, spit, and excrement. Even though this nest was atypically built into ancient stone, the biological waste was everywhere.
Aside from the filth, the tunnels were littered with corpses.
Spiders.
Dark brown drag marks on the stone floor indicated that the giant arachnids from the skyscraper city had been systematically hunted and hauled into the depths.
The unit didn't stop to examine the butchery, but their active En confirmed that a side chamber off the main shaft was packed with a massive amount of residual arachnid signatures—all flickering on the verge of extinction.
Something tall and powerful was in that room, tending to the "livestock." It sensed the intruders but made no move to intercept them, seemingly too occupied with its work to care about a few more ants at the door.
Benket's squad took the bait, peeling off to investigate the side chamber while Ronin's trio pushed deeper. Ronin ignored the sounds of combat that erupted behind them.
After descending another hundred meters, the environment changed.
A soft, bioluminescent glow filtered up from the floor below, accompanied by a rhythmic, wet skittering.
The giant ant that had confronted Ronin's clone at the entrance was there, waiting for them.
Only this time, she was seated on a throne.
It was a garish, golden chair encrusted with raw, uncut gemstones—loot scavenged from the ruins and crudely assembled.
Behind the throne stood two of the Great Trees, their branches heavy with pulsating pods. Most were small, but a few were nearing maturity. It was clear now: these trees were the biological foundries for the monsters that fueled the beast tides.
But Ronin's focus was on the immediate vicinity of the throne.
He sensed two massive signatures flanking the Queen. They possessed aura capacities roughly equal to the guardian serpent he had just vaporized.
Royal Guards, Ronin thought. But why only two? And why do they feel so... unrefined?
"You cannot stop the inevitable," a voice vibrated in their minds.
From behind the Great Trees, hundreds of giant spiders began to crawl out of the darkness. But they weren't attacking the ants. They were emerging from the very holes Ronin had seen on the cavern ceiling earlier.
The spiders aren't enemies, Ronin realized, watching them move toward the trees. They're the delivery system. They bring the meat to the factory.
He began to retreat subtly as the spiders swarmed the clearing.
"So, you've come to kill me?" the Queen's telepathic voice sneered. "I smell a familiar scent on you, outsider. I do not know what became of your clan, but since you failed to guard the gates and let these 'flavorful' humans in, you can no longer stop our ascension!"
The taunt made Ronin's brow twitch. She recognized me as a Kurta?
He pulled off his mask, exposing his crimson Mangekyō Sharingan.
The Queen stared at his eyes, a look of genuine confusion crossing her inhuman features. She had never seen the Scarlet Eyes take this form.
Ronin didn't wait for her to solve the riddle.
"Amaterasu!"
Black flames ignited in mid-air. But as expected, the moment the fire appeared, it began to shrink, caught in the spatial paradox surrounding the Queen. The flames dwindled toward a single point, unable to make contact with her hide.
The "Limitless" defense was active.
But Ronin was ready for it.
He focused his left eye. Amenotokotachi.
He didn't freeze the fire. He froze the plane of space between the fire and the Queen.
In the Jujutsu Kaisen lore he remembered, the only way to bypass a "Limitless" barrier was a spatial cleave—an attack that targeted the world itself. Ronin's left eye was the perfect tool for that logic.
By locking the space into a rigid, non-expanding state, he negated the paradox's ability to halve the distance.
The black flames suddenly stopped shrinking. They surged forward, expanding with a violent roar as they bridged the final centimeter.
The Queen's face twisted in the first expression of pure terror Ronin had seen on a monster.
RRRRIP!
Before the flames could touch her, an arm burst through the Queen's abdomen from the inside.
A spray of translucent blood erupted, momentarily dousing the initial sparks of the black fire. In that same heartbeat, a silhouette covered in green mucus tore itself out of the Queen's shattered womb, using the momentum to spring clear of the throne.
"NO! IT IS TOO SOON!" the Queen shrieked, her voice a physical shockwave of agony. Her concern was directed entirely at the creature that had just abandoned her.
Ronin's gaze locked onto the new figure.
It was a bipedal creature with green chitinous skin. It possessed human-like limbs, but its face was a rigid, insectoid mask, and a long, prehensile tail flicked behind it.
Compared to the majestic, terrifying aura of Meruem, this "King" looked... unfinished. He resembled the first form of Cell from Dragon Ball—more beast than man, a creature of raw biological potential.
The Amaterasu, having been briefly delayed by the blood, finally took hold. The Queen was engulfed in black flames. Within five seconds, she was a screaming pillar of fire. By the tenth second, she was ash.
The Queen was dead.
Mashur and Vanessa moved to Ronin's sides, weapons ready.
Opposite them, flanking the "Budget" Ant King, two more figures emerged from the Great Trees.
They had humanoid frames but were distinctly more beastly than the King—one looked like a hybrid of a wolf and a centipede, the other a winged, multi-eyed horror.
The "New World" had officially arrived. And it was hungry.
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