CHAPTER 790: ANTS AND DUNGEON (3)

"Complicated magic term," he added quickly. "Think of it like... a constant thread between us. I tug, they feel it."

He made a small gesture with his fingers, as if pinching an invisible string.

Lira watched that motion, eyes narrowing in quiet thought. Serelith just snorted.

"So the ’foolish prince consort’ rumors were wrong," she said lazily, tipping her head to one side. "You’re actually useful?"

Her tone was light, but there was a real edge under it—anger at those rumors that had spread through other courts, at the people who had laughed at Elowen for choosing him. She hid it under teasing, because that was easier.

Mikhailis put a hand to his chest and leaned back a little on the cushion, as if struck by an invisible arrow.

"I’m wounded," he said. "In spirit this time, not just ribs."

He even added a small wince, just to sell it.

Cerys made a soft, almost inaudible snort, like she was trying very hard not to smile.

Elowen’s cheeks colored faintly.

"He has his uses," she said before she could stop herself.

The words slipped out fast, honest and unpolished. As soon as she heard how it sounded, her eyes widened a fraction.

Serelith’s smile changed.

It went slow and wicked, like a cat discovering a new toy.

"Oh? Your Majesty, do elaborate," she purred. "For research purposes, of course. Rodion can record it."

I am fully capable of archival, Rodion cut in. Shall I create a "List of Verified Uses for Subject Mikhailis"?

Elowen’s blush deepened, travelling all the way to the tips of her ears.

"Serelith," she warned, but the effect was ruined by the way her fingers tightened on Mikhailis’s wrist under the table instead of letting go.

Lira looked down quickly, hiding her smile behind the sleeve of her robe. The corner of her mouth still betrayed her.

Cerys pretended to focus on the edge of the tent, gaze fixed on some invisible threat outside, but one of her brows rose by a tiny degree.

Mikhailis coughed into his hand, partly to cover his own laughter, partly to rescue Elowen before Serelith decided to get more specific.

"Well," he said, eyes glinting, "at least the fool managed to charm the queen."

He said it lightly, but his gaze met Elowen’s for half a heartbeat.

In that instant, the joke wasn’t just a joke.

I know what they said about you for choosing me, he thought. Let me carry that weight and turn it into something we can laugh at.

Elowen slapped his arm lightly, fingers flicking against the bruised muscle of his bicep. The hit wasn’t strong enough to hurt, but he still made a small "ow" sound, because it made her lips twitch.

"Continue, idiot," she muttered, looking away as if the projection was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

Serelith laughed, low and pleased.

Lira let out a small breath that almost sounded like relief.

Even Cerys’s lips twitched for a moment before she forced her expression back into something stern and neutral, the way a knight should look in front of their queen.

The tension in the tent loosened, just a little.

The lamps felt warmer again. The air didn’t seem quite so tight.

The projection above the table shifted.

Rodion zoomed the feed out, stitching together multiple scout perspectives into a single image. For a moment, the view jumped and blurred—as if several pairs of eyes were trying to agree where to look—then stabilised into a wide shot that hung in the air like a ghostly painting.

The first floor of the Ashen River dungeon unfolded before them.

A colossal cavern stretched into the distance, far larger than the part Mikhailis had already physically walked. The ceiling disappeared into darkness, but here and there faint stalactite shapes glimmered, catching stray mana light like tiny stars.

The floor was broken into uneven terraces of black stone, each at a slightly different height, creating natural steps and drops. Between them, yawning pits opened, their depths glowing faintly with slow-moving light, like someone had poured liquid moonlight into the cracks.

Narrow bridges of rock and crystal linked the terraces. Some looked natural; others looked like something—or someone—had carved them on purpose. They crisscrossed in tangled patterns that made the whole place feel like a giant spiderweb spun by a god with bad patience.

Three massive portal structures hung suspended in the air above a central plaza of stone.

They weren’t neat circles.

Each was shaped like a warped ring, edges jagged and uneven, as if someone had torn a hole in the world and then tried to frame the damage with stone and metal and failed halfway through. Around them floated incomplete frameworks of ancient architecture—half-collapsed pillars, broken arches, shards of intricate carvings that spoke of a design far older than the dungeon’s current bones.

Within each ring, light churned.

One pulsed with a deep, angry red, its surface rippling like molten metal that refused to cool. Occasionally, a darker streak ran through it, like a vein of something thicker.

The second shimmered blue-white, the light layered in long horizontal ripples. It looked like a river seen from above, flowing sideways through the air, each wave following the last in calm, hypnotic rhythm.

The third was dimmer.

Its sickly green glow did not shine so much as seep. The light had a slow, pulsing rhythm, thudding in and out like a heartbeat. Watching it too long made the back of the neck prick, as if something on the other side was counting the people who were staring back.

Thin rivers of mana-laced liquid cut across the cavern floor, flowing toward cracks at the edges and disappearing into the dark. The liquid itself glowed faintly, soft blues and whites. Where it kissed the stone, small crystals sprouted like frost patterns, spreading slowly over time.

Around and between all of this, tiny moving dots swarmed.

The scouts.

From above, they looked like grains of shadow sliding over darker stone. Lines of pale glow crisscrossed the ground between them— Rodion’s translation of the pheromone trails, made visible for human eyes. It turned the cavern floor into a living map of shifting strokes and lines.

Mikhailis lifted his hand slightly, and the projection responded, zooming a little more, floating closer.

"First floor layout," he said, his voice slipping into a calmer, more analytical tone. This was his safe space—patterns, systems, things he could understand and name. "Anchor cavern. Three portal focuses. Multiple access paths. Our ants are establishing a grid."

He didn’t bother to hide the word anymore.

They all knew what those moving shadows were.

Lira had served him tea while a worker ant held his coat.

Serelith had patched up a wound in his shoulder while a Scurabon watched from the corner, perfectly still and perfectly ready.

Cerys had once followed a column of ants through a nighttime forest, blade drawn, until she finally believed his claim that they could guard her back as well as any human squad.

They knew.

The projection obligingly highlighted different squads in different shades.

One set of dots glowed faint gold as they spread toward the bridges, testing paths, moving in pairs across narrow ledges.

Another group lit up in soft green, wrapping around the base of a broken tower of stone and crystal, checking its stability, mapping blind spots and hiding edges.

A third shone pale violet as they moved toward the mana rivers, stopping just short of the glow, tasting the air, never touching the liquid itself.

"Look at that," Serelith murmured. "You’ve turned the dungeon into a blackboard."

"Division of labour?" Cerys asked, eyes narrowing as she watched the moving colors. Her mind was already turning it into formations, into flanks and vanguard lines, the way a knight did almost by instinct.

"Scouts at the front," Mikhailis said. "They’re the ones whose eyes we’re using now. Workers behind them, marking paths and checking for structural weakness. Soldiers forming a ring around the main burrow point to defend it if something gets curious."

He tapped a small glowing circle near one wall where a denser cluster of ants waited.

"Home base," he added. "If something big comes, they fall back to there."

Cerys grunted in approval.

"Not bad," she said. "They move cleaner than some human squads I’ve seen."

"That is because they listen," Rodion put in. Unlike certain human subjects whose names begin with M and end with -ikhailis.

Mikhailis ignored that.

Serelith leaned so close to the projection that the blue light painted fine lines across her face, highlighting the faint shadows under her eyes.

"The patterns..." she murmured. "They’re like ants."

He smiled faintly.

"Imagine that," he said.

He wanted to say more.

He wanted to talk about how ant colonies worked. How each small body meant almost nothing by itself, but in a group, with the right signals, became something terrifyingly efficient. How he had spent evenings on Earth watching ant nests just to calm his mind.

But there wasn’t time for that lecture.

And this was not a classroom.

In his mind, Rodion continued the explanation anyway, because Rodion never needed permission for that.

We are reading mana pressure gradients, the AI narrated. Density, flow direction, turbulence. Areas of high fluctuation correlate strongly with known monster spawning nodes and trap arrays. Low fluctuation zones are structurally stable but may hide latent functions.

Mikhailis exhaled lightly and translated out loud into simpler words.

"They’re sniffing out where it’s safe," he said. "Feeling the mana currents. Places where the dungeon is too ’loud’ are probably full of teeth, claws, or both. The quiet spots we can... adjust later. Dig, reinforce, maybe turn into our own paths."

Lira’s eyes followed the moving dots, then flicked to his face.

"So you’re... rewriting the dungeon from the inside," she said quietly. "A little at a time."

He shrugged.

"Best way to fix a bad house is from the beams," he said. "Not the paint."