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The air was damp, the kind of wet chill that seeped into bone and skin. Arthur stepped forward slowly, his boots crunching on uneven stone. The cave stretched endlessly before him, its jagged ceilings dripping with mineral growths that sparkled faintly in the dark. A faint greenish mist hovered close to the ground, glowing faintly with bioluminescence, and the echoes of chittering screeches ricocheted from wall to wall like whispers of restless creatures.
The system's text flickered faintly in his vision:
[Legacy Shadow Legion Dungeon – Level 8]
Arthur exhaled through his nose, the sound sharp in the cavern's silence. "I knew it would be something like this…" His voice carried, bouncing back to him, a reminder of how empty and how not empty this place was.
Then it came. The unmistakable sound. Fast skitters, claws scraping against rock, hundreds of legs moving in unison just out of sight.
Arthur narrowed his violet gaze. "Ants," he muttered, his tone almost disdainful. His eyes swept the cavern walls. Dozens no, hundreds of holes riddled the stone like a massive weird looking honeycomb.
Without delay, Kamish's Twinblade appeared in his grasp, its red edges glowing with power. He didn't grip it to strike. Instead, he raised his hand slightly, and the weapon began to float, spinning faster and faster, its razor edges catching the faint cave-light until it became a rotating disc of death.
Arthur tilted his chin, expression calm. "Go."
With a single push of Ruler's Authority, the twinblade shot forward like a blazing comet of steel. It tore into one of the larger tunnels, carving through stone as if the rock itself offered no resistance.
The cave screamed.
Shrieks burst out from within, shrill and piercing, the sound of dozens of chitinous bodies being split apart. The weapon kept going, cutting through passage after passage, slicing into anything that dared move in its path. The screeches became a chorus, then a frenzy panic, pain, death.
Arthur waited, one hand still raised, his expression impassive. A few moments later, the twinblade returned, spinning slower until it landed neatly in his grip. The edges dripped with foul, green ichor that hissed faintly as it touched the stone.
He turned the weapon, examining it with a slight wrinkle of his nose. "Ugh." With a simple move of his wrist, he made a small cutting gesture in the air, and the blood vanished, burned away in a violet glow.
The cave quieted, but not for long. The tunnels still writhed with motion. His senses picked up more vibrations beneath his feet, deeper tremors coming from somewhere far below. They were watching. Waiting. Endless in numbers.
Arthur's lips pressed into a thin line as he started forward, the faint crunch of stone under his boots returning. "For some reason," he muttered under his breath, "I don't even want them as part of my shadow soldiers…" His voice was flat, tinged with distaste. "Too… repulsive."
He paused only long enough to rest the twinblade against his shoulder, eyes narrowing as more screeches echoed ahead. The cavern air grew heavier, Arthur rolled his shoulders once, calm, prepared.
"Fine," he said quietly, his tone almost casual. "Crawl out of your holes…"
Arthur took three more steps into the cavern before it started.
It came from the walls, the ceiling, the floor itself like the stone was alive. And then the first crack split the silence. A fissure tore open on his left, and from it spilled the monsters.
Ants.
Not the kind he remembered from Earth, but ugly giant, Six-legged monstrosities with mandibles like steel guillotines, eyes glimmering in clusters of sickly green, chitin so thick it scraped stone as they poured out. First dozens. Then hundreds. Then thousands. The entire cave became a living tide of ants.
Arthur exhaled slowly through his nose, unfazed. His violet eyes glowed brighter, the cavern shadows stretching unnaturally at his feet as if bowing to their king. A corner of his mouth curved upward.
"And of course..." he said lightly, shifting his grip on the twinblade, "it seems they got pissed." His tone was calm, almost amused. He twirled the weapon once, its edge slicing the air. "Good. This will be a nice warm-up… before I face off with your king."
The swarm shrieked as one and charged.
Arthur moved.
The first line of ants never even reached him. His blade spun outward in a perfect arc, a crescent of red steel that cleaved through carapace, severing limbs and heads in a single motion. He stepped into the gap their bodies left, pivoted on his heel, and brought the blade crashing upward, bisecting three more in a single, fluid strike.
A mandible snapped at his throat. He ducked under it, fist shooting forward like a cannonball. Chitin cracked, green ichor sprayed, the ant's skull imploded. Another lunged from the side; Arthur kicked sideways without even looking, his boot crashing into its head so hard it was hurled into the cavern wall, exploding into shards of chitin.
The swarm didn't stop. They were relentless, clawing over their own dead, screeching with animal fury.
Arthur's eyes burned violet, his movements growing sharper, faster. Kamish's twinblade became an extension of him spinning, cleaving, carving through monsters like wheat under a scythe. Each strike flowed into the next: a sweep to clear the ground, another arc to bisect an ant mid-leap, a thrust through another's gaping mouth followed by a brutal kick that hurled the corpse into the oncoming horde.
They never touched him. Not once.
One ant leapt high, dropping from above. Arthur simply raised his hand. Ruler's Authority seized it mid-air, froze it, and then crushed it with invisible force until its body collapsed inward with a sickening crunch. He flung the remains into the swarm, knocking others off their charge.
"Bugs will be Bugs," Arthur muttered, voice even, his gaze unblinking. He moved forward like a predator, every step another corpse.
The cave floor ran slick with green ichor. Severed legs and shattered mandibles littered the ground, crunching under his boots as he walked. His blade dripped constantly, but never dulled. He fought barehanded when he wanted to snapping necks, punching through chitin, kicking bodies into others to topple them like dominoes.
One lunged low, snapping at his legs. Arthur slammed his gauntleted fist downward, shattering its skull into the stone floor. Another charged from behind he pivoted, elbow crashing backward into its head, then spun the blade in a single clean circle, slicing through half a dozen more.
The swarm screamed louder, more frantic. The cavern shook under their sheer numbers.
Arthur only smiled faintly. "You'll have to do better than that."
And he vanished.
One heartbeat he was standing amidst the horde, the next he blurred forward in a violet streak, Speed Step carrying him like lightning through their ranks. He reappeared at the far side of the cavern, the twinblade stretched wide. For a moment nothing happened. Then the swarm behind him erupted bodies cleaved apart in perfect lines, collapsing in heaps, their screeches cut off all at once.
Silence fell.
Arthur stood tall, twinblade dripping, his chest rising and falling slowly, unhurried. Around him stretched a massacre the cavern piled high with broken insect corpses, ichor flowing in streams. Not one had touched him or managed to scratch him.
His violet gaze lifted toward the deepest tunnel, where a heavier vibration pulsed from it. Something vast, something older than these ants, angrier.
Arthur rested the Twinblade against his shoulder, eyes narrowing, a faint smirk tugging at his lips.
"Well," he said quietly, "looks like your king finally woke up."
The calm didn't last.
The stone shook. Dust rained down from the jagged ceiling as the very earth trembled under a force unlike the swarm before. And then a sound came.
A screech.
It wasn't just sound. It was a blade of pressure, a wall of oppressive force that slammed through the cavern. The vibration rattled stone, shattered smaller stalactites, and echoed so violently through the tunnels that even the corpses littering the ground seemed to shudder in its wake.
Arthur froze mid-step. His eyes widened, not in fear, but in recognition. His violet aura flickered like fire in the wind, as though the sound itself had reached inside and pushed against him.
Then his lips curled upward.
"That's what I'm talking about…" he murmured. His grip on Kamish's twinblade tightened until the veins on his forearm pulsed "A decent challenge."
Another screech boomed through the cavern, closer this time, so loud it made the very air quiver. Lesser creatures would have cowered, collapsed, begged for mercy.
Arthur only laughed under his breath, eyes burning brighter.
"Do not disappoint me, Ant King."
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Solo leveling in Westeros.
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want