Volume One: The Apocalypse Descends Chapter 20: Ant Swarm, New Weapon

Not daring to even look back, Xiang Chenguang hoisted a bundle of steel and ran out of Jianxin Street in one breath, only slowing down once the rustling, tide-like sound of footsteps had faded into silence.

Having sprinted over two hundred meters at full capacity while carrying nearly two hundred pounds of steel, even a person of his physique was left panting. He adjusted his breathing and looked back, only to see that the once clean and tidy Jianxin Street was now covered by a black carpet. Looking closer, he realized that the carpet was composed of black ants the size of domestic cats. They were densely packed, countless in number, covering the street like a dark, living layer. Xiang Chenguang did not suffer from trypophobia, but the sight still made his scalp tingle.

As he had suspected, the culprit behind the eerie situation on Jianxin Street was the giant army ants. Individually, these ants were not particularly strong—in a one-on-one fight, they might not even be able to defeat a monster mite. However, their numbers were overwhelming, they fought without fear of death, and they possessed a degree of organizational coordination. Even mid-tier otherworldly creatures lacking strong defenses would have to avoid the vanguard of such a massive army.

With his current abilities, as long as he was careful not to become surrounded, the giant army ants could not actually threaten his safety. He could even use his speed advantage to engage in guerrilla warfare, farming the ants for psychic points. But the giant army ants had a disgusting characteristic: once you killed one, you would inevitably be stained with their pheromones. This scent was nearly impossible to remove in the short term, and an endless stream of ants would follow the trail to hunt you down. Unless one could perform a long-distance relocation to escape their hunting range, one would be subject to constant sieges. Given that his home was less than two kilometers away, Xiang Chenguang dared not provoke them.

Wherever these ants went, no life could survive; victims were either forced to flee or were picked clean. Ordinary concrete walls could not stop them from burrowing, so he assumed everyone in the Jianxin Street area had met the same fate as the skeleton he had seen at the Xinxin Building Materials store.

He had originally thought the first main mission of the Doomsday Survival System would not be too difficult for most people to complete. In their own residential complex, out of more than 210 households, only the three families in Unit 2 of Building 1 had been unlucky enough to perish on the first day of the apocalypse. Even without the help of his family, most residents living below the fourth floor could have safely completed the mission. Even those above the fourth floor, provided they kept their windows shut and avoided making noise, had a reasonable chance of surviving the first three days. But the emergence of the giant army ants forced him to reevaluate the survival rate. For an ordinary person, encountering these ants meant almost certain death. It seemed that in the apocalypse, that mysterious, intangible element of luck remained paramount—perhaps even more so than before.

Collecting his thoughts, Xiang Chenguang turned back toward home. The appearance of the army ants revealed another detail: the connection between Earth and the other dimension was not always intermittent like the monster spawn point near their complex; some channels were persistent. Furthermore, since the Jianxin Street area had been devastated, the ants would undoubtedly expand their hunting grounds. The Old Government Compound residential area, less than two kilometers away, would likely be targeted soon.

Xiang Chenguang checked his task panel; there were 44 hours left on the countdown for the first main mission. It seemed he needed to start planning their relocation early. Living in an old complex in a small county town was not a long-term solution. For one thing, without maintenance, the power and water systems would eventually fail, making basic survival difficult. Relocation had always been inevitable, but they had intended to wait until the first mission was complete to see how the system and the world changed. Now, the threat of the army ants forced their hand. If the ants expanded their hunting range to their complex before the mission ended, they would have no choice but to move sooner.

Mulling over these thoughts, Xiang Chenguang walked home at a steady pace. He had cleared the path on his way out, and any newly spawned monsters with even a shred of intelligence would avoid the area after seeing the carnage left behind. The return trip was easy, with only a few mindless monster mites attempting to attack him, which he dispatched with a swing of his meteor hammer.

The journey that had taken over an hour on the way out took only about ten minutes on the return. At the intersection of Fuqian Street, he could see that the monster density toward the Lihe Bridge on Jianxin Avenue was even higher, reaching a point where the creatures were practically trampling one another. Some spider monsters and giant centipedes were even hunting monster mites to sate their hunger. It appeared that in their home dimension, these creatures included mites in their diet; they had only prioritized humans upon arriving on Earth. With no humans left to hunt in that area, they were forced to settle for mites.

When Xiang Chenguang arrived back at their building, he found his parents and Xiang Xiaoxiao battling a spider monster at the entrance to Unit 2. In truth, only Xiang Xiaoxiao was actively fighting, while his parents provided support. He Wan was on watch for flying monsters, and Xiang Dongliang was using a riot shield to deflect the spider's attacks, allowing Xiang Xiaoxiao to trade blows with the creature under his protection.

His parents spotted him as soon as he reached the intersection, but Xiang Xiaoxiao was too focused on the fight to notice. She was trying to break the spider's limbs with her riot baton, but with only 6 points in constitution and 5 in agility, her power was sufficient, but her speed was lacking; her strikes were consistently dodged.

Xiang Chenguang shook his head, dropped his meteor hammer, grabbed the steel-ball crossbow from his bundle, shouldered it, cocked it with one hand, took aim, and pulled the trigger. With a soft thud, a circular hole appeared in the spider monster's head.

Xiang Xiaoxiao had just been celebrating finally breaking one of the spider's limbs when it suddenly collapsed. She noticed the hole in its head a moment later and followed her parents' gaze to find Xiang Chenguang standing at the intersection with the black crossbow. The joyful smile on her face vanished, replaced by a cold huff as she glared at him, as if blaming him for meddling.