Though they called it a wall, the only real fortress wall was around the lord's residence. What they were relying on now was little more than a tall fence built to keep out bandits and monsters.
To the ants, who excelled in rough terrain, that level of wall was no different from a mere hill.
So they opted for a somewhat simple and brutish strategy: charging straight at it with their bodies to break through and climb over.
"Look there. Among them, there are ones that are particularly huge and slightly different in color. They must have Magic Resistance."
"Does that even matter right now!? The bastards are climbing the wall!"
Baskal bellowed at his subordinate, who was panicking at the sight of the soldier ants that merely staggered briefly from magic strikes before dragging their massive bodies forward again.
They were putting up some resistance of their own, but it wasn't enough against the ants that pressed on relentlessly.
'Are these the rumored magical beasts? The Abyssal Monsters!'
They had poured oil and set it ablaze, creating a wall of fire even at the cost of burning buildings and supplies.
They desperately thrust spears, showing that climbing this wall would cost no small sacrifice.
But the ants didn't so much as blink.
When one caught fire and burned to death, two or three more used their comrade's corpse to burst through the flames and scale the wall.
It was the same even when spears and arrows pierced their bodies.
Monsters that seemed ignorant of fear or pain, charging forward blindly.
No cheers or trumpets to boost morale.
Just the rustling scrape of bodies colliding.
"Ugh, uwaaaak!"
"Stay back! Get lost, please!"
By then, terror was spreading faster among Baskal's men, who were desperately holding their ground.
Seeing ants crawling up the wall, grabbing comrades with their jaws and dragging them away, or blood spraying from severed limbs, Baskal's subordinates fell into panic, their faces draining of color.
"Control your fear. Those bastards are dying in droves too!"
Baskal barely held onto his sanity and shouted.
In his eyes as commander, the ants were indeed taking heavy losses.
If everyone overcame their fear and held their positions, it seemed winnable.
'Damn it, to these pathetic things!'
Baskal swung his sword directly, cleaving the head of a soldier ant that had scaled the wall clean in two, grinding his teeth.
If he'd had just a bit more time to prepare or more forces at his disposal, he was sure he could have won handily.
"Th-the wall is collapsing!"
But reality didn't care for his thoughts.
Finally, one section of the wall crumbled outright.
A soldier ant that had completed its first-stage evolution was the protagonist.
Instinctively targeting the weakest point, it had assaulted the wall alongside worker ants, then shattered it with raw power and barreled in like a chariot.
"My lord, you must retreat!"
"Don't make me laugh. If we flee from here, where do we even go? It's crawling with enemies no better than those monsters."
The defensive line was pushed back from the wall into the inner town.
Baskal and his close aides eventually abandoned the wall, fighting the invading ants there.
And at his subordinate's plea to flee even now, Baskal gnashed his teeth.
This place held all the fruits of his labors over the years.
Even if he escaped with just a fraction of his forces, rebuilding would demand too much time, effort, and luck.
Returning to those weak, struggling days was something even he couldn't accept.
"Live here or die here!"
Baskal charged at a soldier ant that crushed one of his men underfoot and beheaded him in a single snap of its massive jaws.
'What power...!'
His mana-charged sword clashed against the soldier ant's jaw and was repelled. His arms trembled, eyes widening.
For a man who had slain dozens and absorbed their strength, believing no knight in the land surpassed him, this was a shock.
"But is that all you've got?!"
In that instant, his sword glowed blue, glancing off the ant's jaw before swinging back to slice its head in two.
The soldier ant's strategy was pure overwhelming force, and a veteran fighter like Baskal knew how to redirect it against them.
"Ha..."
Yet Baskal, having single-handedly slain the massive soldier ant, let out a hollow laugh at the sight before him.
Three more soldier ants were approaching him.
The war raged on.
The ants prioritized attacking and killing Baskal's men among the panicking crowds.
With their supposed safe haven fallen, the people forcibly held by Baskal's forces seized the chance to flee in all directions.
His men, whose usual task was capturing runaways, couldn't catch them now.
"R-run... kughk."
"No! Ron!"
Instead, those who had once hunted vagrants like a game, reveling in their strength as predators, were now collapsing as the hunted.
They were neither hunters nor predators anymore.
Just powerless prey, torn apart by monsters that killed out of pure necessity, deaf to words.
The only way to survive was to win the fight.
"Calamity... calamity! The beginning of the end!"
"You idiot."
Even among Baskal's inner circle, some began deserting, unable to conquer their fear.
Baskal clicked his tongue at the sight of a mage dropping his weapon and fleeing, glaring ahead with sunken eyes.
Dozens of ants had already surrounded him.
Their faces devoid of expression, massive ants encircled him, antennae twitching.
A situation that would burst most men's hearts.
"...Are you truly the Heralds of Doom?"
Even then, raising his sword, he muttered blankly.
"Of course you won't answer."
Naturally, the ants surrounding him charged silently.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"...?"
Something noisy was happening. Even from this basement, it was clear.
And as time passed, the commotion grew closer.
She sensed something was wrong when the shouts and screams from people became vividly audible.
"Lady Seira!"
"Rogers?!"
At that moment, someone smashed through the door with a bang and burst into her prison.
Her eyes widened at the face of the former family butler, whom she'd thought dead.
"Y-you're alive?"
"That night, they failed to confirm the kill, so I barely escaped. Shamelessly, I couldn't come rescue you afterward."
Rogers, axe in hand, broke the door and freed her from the chains she'd hung in for days.
"What in the world is happening?"
"We must flee now. M-monsters have appeared!"
"What do you...?"
Leaning on him with trembling legs, Seira fell into confusion, unable to comprehend.
But no long explanation was needed.
The moment they ascended to the surface—a chaos that was hell itself—she understood what was unfolding.
"Ahh..."
Seira stared at the scene in shock, sighing blankly.
Her hometown, trampled by the bandit Baskal's scum, was now falling to ferocious monsters.
The Baskal forces, tyrannical victors who had stripped them of everything, were now helpless prey before the monsters, being torn apart alive savagely.
"The citizens..."
But to the invading ants, anything that moved was just food.
They cared nothing for the complex human power struggles, interests, or statuses—and had no way to anyway.
At most, they obsessed a bit more over special prey with abundant mana.
"Hurry and flee. Those monsters are the Heralds of Doom—they kill without discriminating humans."
Rogers grabbed her arm with a trembling voice and pulled.
But Seira's feet wouldn't move easily.
The residents caught in the massacre were ending up as mere meat lumps, just like Baskal's men.
In that brief time, the horrific sights burned into her frozen eyes were legion.
A mother begging the uncomprehending monsters to spare her child was bisected by a worker ant's jaws in one strike, and the leftover infant was devoured mercilessly.
Those dragged out from hidden basements were being torn apart alive by waiting small ants, their body parts carried off somewhere.
She couldn't fathom what they planned with that mass of human flesh.
These horrific monsters seemed poised for something beyond mere consumption.
'The Heralds of Doom?'
At the very least, from what she saw, Rogers' terrified words were no exaggeration.
Fundamentally unlike Baskal's forces, who had invaded to subjugate and enslave.
Only destruction and slaughter.
'Is this really the end?'
Instinctively imagining the worst, Seira shuddered.
Visions of monsters numbering tens, hundreds of times more, overrunning the land.
Dragged along by Rogers as they fled, she couldn't tear her eyes from the shocking scene.
"Seek refuge with Lord Edmond first. He'll surely take you in."
Finally escaping the city, Rogers and Seira hurried desperately before the ants could pursue.
With vivid memories of whatever cataclysm had befallen this place.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙[Your subordinates are certain of victory]
'Not a few people escaped. Pursuit would probably be futile.'
After crushing Baskal's resistance and beginning the massacre, it wasn't just Seira watching the ants.
In stark contrast to the hellish scene, he observed calmly and quietly, gazing troubled at Baskal's corpse, limbs methodically dismantled.
Baskal had been strong. So the ants handled his body with special care.
Not out of respect for a warrior. Simply because it was precious, mana-rich prey.
"Let me ask one thing. Earlier, that guy called even this a trial from his god. Just to be sure—is there someone like me in that world? Another Deity using this system, I mean."
「Contact with other deities possible via Divine Community」
"It's locked behind a function restriction...!"
Having cautiously voiced his suspicion, he gritted his teeth.
As time passed, it grew clearer he wasn't in a normal state.
'No clue. Guess I'll just keep doing what I've been.'
If Baskal was indeed a subordinate of another Deity as he suspected, then the ants' actions were tantamount to a declaration of war.
But even if so, there was nothing he could do.
Abandoning complex thoughts, he shook his head.
For his own safety if nothing else, the ants needed to keep growing stronger.