Monsters surround me and I prepare for combat, the mender really did love her surprises didn't she? Back in the game, the area that's supposed to hold the mender's boots— another cave, just like the gloves. — didn't have monsters who can silence mages.

  Yet they're here, right now, forcing me to fight with my dagger instead of my spells. The vibrations produced by the activated blade are thankfully still there, fighting these things won't be a matter of hurting them and rather, who between us lasts longer.

  That being said, I've already killed a bunch of them, maybe half a hundred, maybe close to it, I wasn't counting and I'm not planning to.

  With my physical recovery passive and— half. — of the mender's gear working to keep me physically able throughout the fight, I know that it won't be me who falls first. The number of monsters here may be a lot, but I'm stronger than them and they are weaker than me.

  Quality against quantity doesn't matter when I can easily kill all of them, the biggest variable right now is whether or not I collapse from the pain before all the monsters are killed. I've gone through worse things than getting bitten, and I don't think exhaustion is possible in my current state so the chances of me actually losing is quite low, isn't it?

  My body moved before I could think about it and I lunged for the termite to my left, the tip of my dagger piercing the tough chitin on its head with the ease of a shovel digging through dirt.

  Green blood flows out as my weapon digs deep into the termite's flesh. I pull my dagger out and kick the twitching corpse away from me, then I rush for another termite, I slash upward, cutting between the open mandibles of one of the gigantic insects.

  A loud screech pierces my ear as my blade makes quick work of the termite's mouth, green spittle splashes on my face, I raise my arm to stop more of them from reaching me. I twist my wrist and reverse my grip on the dagger and slash downward, doubling the wound I gave the termite moments ago.

  The termite flailed, but only for a second, I quickly grabbed the mandibles of the giant insect and pushed outward. Using the strength of my legs, I lift it above my head and slam it down to the ground.

  "You know, I expected you all to be smaller." I say breathlessly to the smashed termite. I'm just a kid and the size difference between me and the physical specimens that the main characters were is nothing to scoff at.

  The termites should only reach my knees, instead they're as tall as me.

  Well, that doesn't really help them in a fight and I can still kill them as effortlessly as back when I was still a player.

  Every slash takes a life, and wherever my dagger swings, blood would flow. The blade cuts the termite's carapace without resistance and no matter how many there are, the colony couldn't overpower me.

  The termites use their crushing weight and pile on top of me? I easily push them aside, and like a group of pins faced with a rolling bowling ball, they stumble and fall away, scattering like dust. I start killing them while they're down and commence a massacre that fills the floor with dead insects.

  After some time, another one of the castes capable of silencing my spells arrive, I glare at it, if this thing silences me again, I'll struggle even more.

  I jump and land on the head of the termite in front of me, then without hesitation, I start running, using the rushing horde as a platform that gets me closer to the anti-magic termite. As a bonus, every termite I step off of dies from the force of my jump, their bellies being softer than clouds doesn't help increase their chances of survival either.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  They may just be insects, but the horde weren't stupid, they know when they're rushing towards an empty space and that their target has gone off somewhere. And so, moments after I started termite hopping, they suddenly began to turn around and start targeting me again.

  When the termites began climbing on top of their kin, I didn't fight them and instead used the open space to maneuver past the insects smart enough to chase after me. I swerve away from them as much as I can, dodging their strikes and jumping on them whenever the chance comes up.

  As tempting as it is to kill them, I didn't have much time before another wave of silencing scream reached me and stopped me from using magic for another 15 minutes. 14? 13? Bah! Who cares!

  My speed increases as I rush towards the giant termite, this particular caste looks completely different from the standard termite or even the warrior caste.

  Where those two have gigantic heads and mandibles the length of an adult human's arm and the thickness of a tree branch, the anti-magical caste has a large abdomen and a slim mouth that looks like a whistle, I can already hear the holes on its head whistling so that means it's absorbing air in preparation to release its signature— and let's be honest here, only. — attack.

  Stopping it before it shoots me is starting to get harder with every passing moment, more termites have climbed on top of their fellow workers and they are fighting me every step of the way.

  Moving past them with sheer speed is impossible now as well, I can't just ignore them because as much as I like to brag about my strength and how they can't kill me, the termites can still hurt me. And wounds often mean that I become weaker.

  There's the question of me needing to figure out how to kill them all in one go but I guess I underestimated their numbers earlier, it is a problem and I can struggle because of it.

  Left with no other choice, I just start climbing them again, no matter how high they pile up, I rush upward, my gloves catching the ridges of their carapace and using them as a stepping stone to go even higher.

  Their numbers are stopping me from moving forward normally, but what if I jump from above and fall down on the anti-magic termite like some kind of projectile? What can they do then?

  As it turns out? Nothing.

  Jumping from the top, then diving down to my target, that was the solution to my current problem.

  The moment that I land, my dagger moves downward, the momentum further pushed by my arms, it hits the head of the termite in seconds and green blood gushes out of the inflicted wound. I slash to the side while the dagger is still inside of the insect, opening up the gash.

  I raise my leg and kick it from above, it flails but I quickly hold onto the gaps of its carapace, keeping myself steady while pulling my hand back for another stab. My dagger plunges itself for the second time, I open up the wound, the termite flails some more, but finally, finally, it dies.

  And my magic is back now too.

  Laughter bubbled out of my throat as I gather mana into my throat, my senses are back up and as my vision slowly turns back to being blue, I can feel the magic in the air calling to me.

  "[Wind Blast]." As the Pricorian words get uttered, the runes in my dagger glow, the weapon starts to vibrate even more. A single slash easily beheads a nearby termite, the blade is now more effective and I can use it to rip and tear through these insects but that will take too long.

  My hand comes up, then just as quickly, it goes down, seconds later, violent bursts of wind start to tear through the termites. Blades made with nothing but air, they shouldn't be that effective, yet they are.

  If I didn't react fast enough and ducked down to crawl under a dead termite, the blender of wind would have killed me too.

  Well, sort of, my spells shouldn't be strong enough to kill me, crippling me is another story though.

  And if something like this can hurt me badly enough that I need to make a bunch of prosthetics, then the termites simply didn't stand a chance.

  They were already struggling when I wasn't using a spell so it's only natural that [Gale-Blade] tore through their numbers and wiped them out.

  When I got up, this part of the cavern had emptied, and I'm not sure why no more termites are coming up here to fill in the gaps their dead kin left behind— gaps being an understatement. — but they have stopped coming.

  And that allowed me to move forward, my feet carried me deeper into the nest and ten steps later, my system notified me of a new change.

  [Intermediate Night Vision > Masterful Night Vision]