Chapter 42: Buried
Mitch felt his arms throbbing in agony as they hung powerlessly to his sides. He might have blocked the queen’s kick, but the result left his two previously intact arms broken.
Yet, he was not worried about winning.
He stood up shakily, purposefully staggering a bit. He then pressed his back against the pillar, making sure he was as close to it as possible.
Glancing at the rest of the room told him that, excluding the half-dead guards, it was only him and the queen left.
But Mitch cared not whether they were alive or not. Unless he wanted them to, they would not be able to disrupt his plans.
Letting out a few shallow breaths, Mitch put on the best "desperate face" he could muster and braced.
The queen reached him the next moment. She snapped her jaw at Mitch’s neck, intending on killing the bug once and for all.
In that moment, Mitch turned extremely focused. His surroundings became clear, and his opponent’s attack showed a trajectory.
He slipped under her mandibles, revealing an athleticism unfit for someone on their last leg. Without any feedback, her teeth sunk into the stone pillar, crushing it and causing it to crumble.
Meanwhile, Mitch kicked off its base, propelling himself towards the next closest pillar.
’This will hurt...’
He grit his teeth and pushed his knee forward, making that the point of contact.
’Aaargh!
Two things shattered from the collision. His kneecap and the stone. His body folded, and he fell to the ground, this time not feigning injury.
Rumble
A powerful tremor spread through the cave as a result of these superhuman displays of power.
The queen did not realize what these kinds of tremors implied.
Fury blinded her, and Mitch’s vulnerable state did nothing to put out the blaze of rage she was feeling.
She disregarded the quaking and rushed towards him.
At that moment, Mitch tensed his facial muscles to prevent a grin from appearing.
Mitch had felt it several times while being punted by the queen. She weighed a ton, literally. In fact, she probably weighed several tons.
The combination of an already unstable structure, the broken support beams, and the living war tank barreling towards Mitch resulted in the stone ceiling finally being pushed past its limits.
The cavern started crumbling, boulders falling down towards Mitch and the queen.
As the catalyst to this situation, the queen was in the worst spot imaginable. Because she had been running towards Mitch, her current position was right in between two broken pillars.
In other words, she was directly beneath the most vulnerable spot of the cave ceiling.
One boulder after the other kept falling onto the queen’s exoskeleton. She could ignore the first few, but as more and more mass kept falling onto her back, she eventually kneeled.
Her head took a hit before she could even try standing up, and her brain began to rattle.
Boulders kept falling on her body, creating a pile of rocks reminiscent of a cairn from Tellus.
However, Mitch did not have the luxury to analyze the structure before him.
Although he wasn’t in as precarious of a situation as the queen, he was still sitting beneath a broken beam.
His smaller size allowed him to make simple maneuvers with his damaged arms. He pushed himself towards safety, trying his best to dodge any falling stones.
Unfortunately, there were just too many rocks. Constantly having to make turns and slither around already fallen boulders led to it taking too long for him to leave the danger zone.
In the end, a smaller boulder fell on his already injured leg. If before his kneecap would heal after resting and not exerting it too much, now the situation had taken a turn for the worse.
Mitch didn’t doubt that he would be able to heal as long as he rested for long enough. But he didn’t have the time to do that.
He was still deep in enemy territory, after all.
The remainder of his strength was used to push the rock away and crawl to safety.
The stress put on his injured arms made them hurt even more, but Mitch had no choice but to do it.
Finally out of danger, he had time to reflect on what had happened. The fight barely took a minute, but that made it even more dangerous.
He had gambled with his life a few times before today, but this was the first time he actually got seriously hurt for it. Compared to the current circumstances, his lacerated thighs were a joke.
He had lost fingers before, but this time he had two broken and two mangled arms.
But he had done it. He needed to kill the rest of the younger queens before he left this place, but at least the main queen was dead.
He had already checked the eggs from the smaller queen he killed previously, and he didn’t find any that looked to be future queen eggs.
Be would have to confirm it first, but if the rest of the queens only laid eggs for workers, leaving one alive as a source of food and combat training for the rats might be an option.
That is, if he made it out of here alive.
He might have killed the queen, but he had now become a sitting duck.
"If I am destined to die anyway, I might as well go out swinging."
Digging the queen out of the stone formation would take time and energy, both of which he lacked right now.
Not to mention that the queen might not even be dead yet. If she was still alive, leaving her buried in rubble would eventually suffocate her. As such, Mitch decided to not touch the pile of boulders.
Instead, he made his way towards the first guard ant he had killed.
Green blood was pooling from its headless neck, looking less than appetizing. But Mitch didn’t have the comfort of complaining right now.
He ripped off one of the ant’s legs and started stuffing his mouth with the meat.
As he swallowed, a weird feeling started spreading from his stomach, invigorating every part of his body.
