With her newfound intelligence, Jazzork was given a pamphlet about zombies. She was surprised by how easily she could read it. For a moment, she felt like some great orc scholar.
Standing beside her was a female orc with gentler features. This was Jazzork's nanny, Yaragg.
Back on their homeworld, Ugg Ogg, Yaragg had lost an arm and a leg, yet she still rose to become head servant to the royal family.
That alone showed she was no ordinary woman. Here, though, she had both arms and both legs again.
"Jazzork, are you reading? Let me read it for you," Yaragg offered.
"Nana Yaragg, there is no need. I am smart," Jazzork said with a proud lift of her chin.
After getting the main point of the pamphlet, Jazzork turned to the crowd and let out a roar. The chattering orcs fell silent at once.
"Do not get bitten," Jazzork said, raising the pamphlet high. "I am very smart and read fast. It says here that Devil Chief Randomizer will be ashamed of you if you get bitten. Understand?"
"Hu ha," the orcs answered as one.
Yaragg still looked doubtful, so she took the pamphlet and read it for herself while Jazzork waved it around like a banner.
The child had always been a hooligan. At least now, after being taken in by Randomizer, she seemed to be taking things seriously.
But when Yaragg looked at the pamphlet, she found nothing in it about honor or shame. Her eye twitched at once.
Yaragg knew she had to help Jazzork without making her lose face, so she clapped her hands loudly.
"No bites. No claw wounds. No liquid from stink creatures, big or small. Understand?" Yaragg said.
"No damage?" one of the orcs asked, raising his hand.
"Yes. No damage. Damage bad. Damage dead," Yaragg said.
The orcs looked at one another as if a great truth had just been laid before them. Then they began to chant, the way they always did when they wanted to hammer something into their heads before a fight.
"Kill zombie. No damage."
"Kill zombie. No damage."
"Kill zombie. No damage."
Fear of death did not weigh heavily on them. In their eyes, Devil Chief Randomizer had already killed more than a million, and still he stood there as though it cost him nothing.
Orcs respected strength above all else, and once Randomizer passed one hundred thousand kills, the matter had been settled in their hearts. He was their chief now.
Seeing them all fired up, Jazzork seized the moment.
"We split into one hundred teams. Big Mama Gabby will count who wins," Jazzork said, having wisely decided not to count it herself.
"Winner gets all the meat. Last place gets leafy soup."
The roar that answered her shook the air, and then the orcs rushed off in every direction.
At first glance, it looked like chaos, but it was not. They already knew where each of them belonged without any long talk. Twenty-five shield bearers in front. Twenty-five spearmen behind them. Twenty-five swordsmen. Then came the slingshot users.
Their weapons were not forged steel, but made from steel rebar and hardened stone.
Far cheaper than regular weapons, and still well suited for orcs, who liked their arms heavy.
Near the entrance closest to where Radeon was, Gabby opened three more passages. Their walls were rough and cave-like, and each one was large enough to cover more than an acre.
[Username: Insectoid Devourer (Noelani)]
[Age: 21] [Level: 20]
[Next Level: 139/140]
[Race: Ant-Hive]
[Class: (SSS-Rank) World Devourer]
[World Devourer Skills]
[Form of the Devourer]
[Digestive Domain]
[Existential Consumption]
...
[Username: Insectoid Ant Queen (Makamae)]
[Age: 21] [Level: 20]
[Next Level: 139/140]
[Race: Ant-Hive]
[Class: (S-Rank) Carapace Conjurer]
[Carapace Conjurer Skills]
[Device Birthing]
[Structural Breed]
[Carapace Assimilation]
...
[Username: Insectoid Deceiver (Kunahihi)]
[Age: 21] [Level: 20]
[Next Level: 139/140]
[Race: Ant-Hive]
[Class: (SS-Rank) Hive Hijacker]
[Hive Hijacker Skills]
[Hivemind Mimicry]
[Species Mimicry]
[Mind Hijacking]
Gabby had chosen those three alone because they showed the best potential out of every bug they had found so far.
There were king bugs, super soldiers, and workers, true enough, but all of them bowed to a queen in the end.
Noelani was the largest and fattest of the three, much like a Giant Forest Ant. When she stretched her legs, she towered over Makamae and Kunahihi.
She climbed to the top of the cave and used Digestive Domain. At once, her skin turned acidic, and everything around her began to sizzle.
Gabby had already made sure her tunnel was resistant to corrosion, so the skill would not eat through the structure itself.
Makamae came next. Unlike the slim figure she had worn a day ago, she had already begun self-fertilizing with the skills she possessed.
The first things she birthed were long, thin eggs twisted in a helix shape. They looked dead at a glance, but they were not. After those came smaller eggs, some red and some yellow.
Her passage had been reinforced to endure heavy impacts. Makamae spat on the tips of the long eggs and fixed them to the ceiling, then regurgitated meatball-like feed beside each one, sticking the lumps close to the thin egg towers.
The juices ran over the shells. At once, long stingers pushed out from within and pierced down. They began to suck in the feed, and as they drank, their soft and limp look vanished.
They grew taut and sharp, fully stirred awake by the energy they had been given.
After that, Makamae opened the red eggs. Inside were three thin, beating membranes each.
She stacked them together, each one set to explode on impact.
The yellow eggs she placed carefully near the walls, like fragile treasures.
Those were the corrosive ones.
All of that came from her Device Birthing and Structural Breeding skills. After setting everything in place, she pulled out a book and waited for anything too strong to enter.
She had a clear fascination with how armies worked. After all, what queen would not want her hive to move with that kind of order and grace? Any hive-maker would.
Kunahihi, however, stood there with nothing at all.
She was the smallest of the three, barely three feet long. At a glance, she looked almost harmless, like a plush toy shaped into a louse.
Yet both Makamae and Noelani treated her as the most dangerous among them, and neither would go near her.
Her ability was to steal hives, and it was not limited to hive-ants. Kunahihi had done it before with simple wolf packs, pretending to be their leader. She had done it with wasps and even termites.
Because of that, she was almost always full while doing very little.
There had even been a time when Noelani wanted to use Existential Consumption on her and steal that ability for herself.
It ended badly. Noelani got nothing but a mouthful of barbed steel blades after Kunahihi used Mind Hijacking on her.
"How long do we wait, Mother Gabby?" Kunahihi asked through her mind waves, sending the thought up to Gabby two kilometers above.
"Just wait. It will be there soon," Gabby replied.
Out of all the streamers, Kunahihi wanted Gabby's place. Her instincts could not understand why Gabby still had not mated with Randomizer.
In Kunahihi's mind, that was pure incompetence. Even if he did not look insect-like at all, she was certain there had to be wasp blood somewhere in him, something her eggs could accept.
"Hehehe."
She was still cackling to herself when a head with part of its spine attached came flying her way from Randomizer's direction, tearing her out of the daydream.
The thing was hideous. Its head had opened into a grotesque flower of flesh, thick folds peeling back around a raw center. Near the top sat a small exposed brain.
It was a Zombie Commander, a third evolution zombie.
Kunahihi could feel it at once. The creature had once held strong mental energy, and its brainwashing frequency was close to her own.
She shifted into its shape. Her antennae twitched as they copied the zombie's mental signal. The closer she got, the better the mimicry became.
Then her six legs pulled back, her skin changed, and even her sweet flower-like scent turned into the stink of rot. At a glance, she looked like a zombie herself.
After that, Kunahihi climbed up the wall and hid in a dark corner, sticking stones, leaves, and twigs to her body for cover.
Gabby watched everything unfold, then contacted Hermes.
"All the queen ants are already in position," Gabby reported.
"Open the gate. Let's move to the second stage. Spray the zombie-attracting pheromones on me," Hermes said.
Gabby had already prepared the pheromone. Until then, Hermes could feel the zombies' attention pulling in too many directions.
A crimson mist was sprayed over him, coating his skin in a sticky invisible layer.
The moment the scent spread, the zombies became more aggressive at once, rushing toward Hermes at once.
Behind him, a weaker pheromone was sprayed as well, enough to lure part of the horde into the passages.
Hermes began cutting down the sneaky second evolution and third evolution zombies while letting some of the unevolved ones pass through.
The three insect queens started filtering the zombies in their own domains.
Anything too tough to kill quickly was taken down at once. Anything too fast was killed too. Anything that showed even a hint of thought was removed as well.
What they left behind were the witless ones, the kind that could only groan and stumble forward.
Looking at it from above, this hardly felt like an apocalypse at all. It looked more like a production line built for clean and ruthless efficiency.
The rest of the female streamers took the lead by example. Each of them had been raised to level ten, enough to make their abilities speak for themselves.
Soon the people saw what real elites looked like.
Fireballs streaked out. Sword lights flashed through the air.
"To think a sponsorship from Randomizer could make them this strong."
"Fire on the left! Blades on the right! They're tearing everything apart!"
One of the female streamers even drove a sports car straight into a pack of zombies, crushing the dead beneath its screaming steel.
"No way, no way, that was a sports car! Who drives one like that in an apocalypse?"
The people stared at their heroic figures and were soon convinced.
Before long, an organized line formed of those who wanted to complete the system task of killing twenty zombies within the allotted days.
Still, not everyone was satisfied.
To the more ambitious among them, those repeated announcements stirred something else entirely.
They were not inspired. They were bothered.
Why was it always Randomizer?
The constant booming from Randomizer's battle in the distance only fed that feeling. They wanted stronger enemies and better rewards too.
But Dexter looked at the floating pillars of treasure caches rising toward the sky platform in a different way.
His thinking was simple. Seize the chance now. Take the profit in front of him.
Aim for something bigger later, or stay with the crowd, cling to safety, and end up as just another forgotten name in the apocalypse.
After making sure he had secured his own twenty zombie kills, Dexter began to clap, drawing the attention of the other men around him.
"Everyone, may I have your attention for a brief moment?" he said.