Re:Ant Lord-Chapter 121: Devours Clouds

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A pale lemon sun nudged over the thorn-elm crowns, dropping coins of light into the mist. Kai woke up when he had fallen asleep. His one shoulder propped against Shadeclaw’s warm bulk, spear across his knees, Miryam the egg cradled inside a scarf of woven leaf-cloth.

He checked the System quickly, no night ambush, all stats nominal and rose to stretch his new transform body. His silver hair flashed molten where sunbeams threaded, crimson armour shimmered with faint ruby runes. The Iron-Tusk boars grunted at the margins, rooting truffles, Moon-Wing perched high, head swivelling owl-like through three-sixty degrees.

"Today," Kai murmured, tightening his tabard, "we hunt for a personal den, a place to call home."

His immediate need was a lair, Hidden, so the Queen ants or any beast or worse, Thea’s vultures couldn’t sniff him.

It needs to be spacious, to raise a Ruler-class wyrmling. Rich, in area, water, and prey enough to feed his subordinates and grow together.

Forest fringes offered none of those. He needed a fortress the size of a myth. He started moving.

A few hours later...

Moon-Wing hooted twice, moving west. Kai scanned through the bond and saw a ridge of distant stone, frosted silver by dawn, the first finger of a colossal mountain-mass that rose beyond the treeline like a continent in miniature. Steep walls cut the sky. Cloud-belts ringed the upper third in spiral tiers. Even at forty kilometres’ distance the summit looked as big as Amber Bastion itself.

Kai’s pulse quickened. That looked worthy of a monarch.

"Pack up," he ordered. Shadeclaw shook dew from hybrid hide, boars snorted, iron tusks clinking. They set off at jog-march, Kai riding easy atop the larger boar, Map Overlay flickering translucent ahead.

Kai left the Border-Forest at dawn of the third day after achieving his ant monarch form, cresting the last cedar ridge with Shadeclaw padding silent at heel. Behind the Iron-Tusk boars, Hauler One and Hauler Two, tusks clinking beneath sacks of crystal plates. Moon-Wing spiralled somewhere high above, mapping thermals.

They marched south-west first, then due west, turning at a crooked finger of black basalt that locals called the Widow’s Knuckle. Every night Kai unrolled partial maps he’d scavenged from ruined caravans, cross-checked them with the System’s crude topography overlay, then marked a new course. He spent hours talking to Miryam the egg, letting star-milk soak its shell, promising the unborn wyrmling that one day she would look upon a sky wide enough for rulers to dance.

The farther they travelled, the emptier the world became. Villages thinned, patrol roads vanished, dunes fused into cracked shelves of yellow flint, then into undulating plains of coppery pumice that rang beneath the boars’ hooves. Only once did they meet life, a herd of glass-horn gazelles, three dozen strong, prints glowing as if coals lingered in their bones. Kai considered marking one, but their skittish herding speed would have wasted Aura better saved for stronger prey. He simply admired their ghostly beauty and let them bound away.

Shadeclaw proved a tireless scout. Every kilometer it ranged ahead, testing wind for apex scents. Twice it discovered scale-scars of ridge anacondas (six star rank leviathans beast) and steered the company wide. Kai offered it scraps of night-roach jerky as reward and felt the bond tighten.

The fourth dawn rose blood-orange and cold. Kai topped a shale crest and saw it at last.

A mountain. Or he struggled for scale, five mountains fused to one. They loomed out of haze like the ribs of a buried god, each fang capped by permanent white storms. At this distance he couldn’t judge height; he only felt it, pressure in ears, vacuum of wind swirling the upper quartz banners.

The System pinged muted yellow:

[Ding! System notifications: Uncharted Landmark Detected, Colossus-Class Topography]

Kai whistled. "Mount Everest multiplied by five," he mused, something he remembered from Earth geography lessons long ago. "Well, little Princess Egg," he said aloud, "that looks worthy of a lair."

Moon-Wing swooped low, hooted agreement. Shadeclaw’s hybrid hackles bristled, but with excitement, not fear.

"Let’s circle it clockwise," Kai ordered. If the massif truly offered hide-holes immune even to seven-star scan, he needed to prove it. He wanted north-face cliffs, south gullies, every blind canyon mapped before committing.

They set off, a speck caravan beneath the shadow of titans. It would be three full loops around before fate revealed the hidden door.

The base circumference alone took two days to skirt. Kai discovered right away why few maps bothered naming the range, natural walls dissuaded casual exploration. The spires sprouted from a single shield volcano that had split like a blooming stone flower. The "petals" were tiers of basalt, layered thicker than any citadel rampart and so steep that from certain angles the walls overhung travellers beneath.

He found only three possible approaches lower than seventy-degree slope:

Needle Gully, a corkscrew cleft heading east-north-east, floor littered with obsidian shards sharp as razors. Shadeclaw’s senses picked up hydra musk instantly, Kai chalked it red on his parchment.

Hanging Steps, south-west terraces like giant stairs worn by past glaciers. Wind shrieked through them so fiercely it carved columns of ice mid-air, stone-cold fountains. Cliff Wyrms infested ledges. Yellow chalk.

Veil-Fall Rift, north chute disguised as a seasonal wash. A slender waterfall sheeted its midsection year-round, fed by snowmelt unseen. Blue chalk for "promising."

Beyond those, nothing but killer slopes glazing from midday heat into black-glass rivers impossible to climb without flight or drilling rigs.

Between scouting sorties Kai set small camps inside basalt alcoves. At Night he studied micro-veins of star-ore on a nearby screen, assessing quality. Low, but ascending gradients suggested richer lodes deeper. He tested bore dust with System: trace concentrations promising.

The mountain tugged at him like gravity. A lair here, crowned by peaks that sliced storms, would stay hidden even from Queen’s eight-star generals unless they marched entire legions to search.

When he finally faced Veil-Fall Rift at dawn of day seven, Miryam the egg pulsed warm as if urging him forward.