"ARGH! There's more of the ants coming in from this direction!"
"We need to find a way out, or else we're doomed!"
Many adventurers experienced a great deal of difficulty when it came to the ants. There were issues with the way in which they operated that influenced their choices. Many adventurers that used to explore individually, were forced to form makeshift parties with other adventurers in order to cope with the increased difficulty of even traveling in the dungeon's tunnels.
The ants' concentration became less dense the more they spread out across the tunnels looking for esoteric ore deposits to extract and supply back to the queen ant. One of the possibilities that Rui had conceived of was the possibility that the ants would be able to use their sense of smell and easily locate sources of esoteric ore deposits.
The reason he held this hope was because he knew that insects held obscenely powerful senses of smell. Their ability to track via scent was absolutely gigantic, given their size. Some insects could even track certain things from thousands of kilometers away!
Ants were not at the top of the list in the animal kingdom but they were quite respectable in that regard. Rui hoped that there the ants would be able to track floors using their sense of smell, by smelling esoteric ore deposits. This way, he could track the ants tracking the esoteric ore deposits.
With his Riemannian Echo, he would always be the one to detect the fact that the ants had detected a new dungeon floor. And thus he would always find that floor through the ants before anyone else.
Thus, he would effectively turn the ants into his exploration team. That was his true ambition. If it panned out, his rate of success would become tremendously higher. One of the things that he would be able to prevent wasting hours in the Shionel Dungeon searching for new floors.
"Unfortunately… It doesn't seem like it will pan out," Rui murmured.
The ants did not seem to have the ability to track esoteric ore deposits using their sense of smell. In fact, from what Rui could see. The ants did not even have the ability to retain their sense of direction due to the planet's magnetic field being jammed inside the Shionel dungeon. Many of the ants that left the dungeon got lost and were unable to return home due to losing the path that they came from due to their sense of direction being sabotaged.
Furthermore, they did not have a great amount of success with finding esoteric ore deposits. For the most part, they spent their time finding minor ore deposits in the tunnels here and there, but the Shionel dungeon jammed senses too much for them to be able to track them across the entire dungeon,
"Shame," He shook his head.
"It's not working out?" Kane asked.
"It doesn't seem to be, no," Rui replied.
The two of them had spent some time in the dungeon observing whether the ants could be used to track new floors, but Rui had come to the unfortunate conclusion that they would not be of use in the long run.
"It's fine, the ants have already done us a huge favor," Rui smirked.
For the first time since the opening of the Shionel Confederation, the number of Martial Squires entering the dungeon daily had not only plateaued but had also begun a mild downward trend despite the recent influx of Martial Squires into the Shionel dungeon.
Although experts had predicted that this was only a temporary trend and that Martial Squires would begin exploring the dungeon once the situation with the ants had lightened and stabilized.
However, it meant that a lot of freelancers and independent Martial Squires looking for some small successes in the dungeon were becoming hesitant due to the increased risk and danger. While the contracted Martial Squires who were being patroned, or employed by certain companies, renegotiated with their patrons and employers for greater compensation for the greater risk being undertaken by them as they traveled the dungeon.
Regardless, part of the threat by Chairman Deacon and his little alliance in aggressively exploring the Shionel Dungeon by combining all their forces together had reduced. They couldn't deploy as many Martial Squire teams for exploration since the number of Martial Squires needed to protect each team had increased.
Rui and Kane on the other hand were much less stressed about. Rui could see every ant coming from kilometers away, and Kane made it so that they would ignore them every time.
The two of them set out in the dungeon and began exploring new paths in the Shionel Dungeon. Although the ants had not directly led them to a new floor, Rui suspected the existence of a dungeon floor further downwards well below the ant floor. The reason for this was that he had observed several ants returning to the ant floor from lower depths with significant injuries.
To Rui, this suggested the presence of a threat that was most likely static or fixed in one place.
Considering that monsters roaming around tunnels rarely stuck in one place, Rui had keenly deduced that the cause of the injuries that these ants had suffered that one time was due to accidentally entering a new floor, and being attacked by a monster. That was the most likely explanation in his mind.
"I've seen enough, the ants are useful, but this is the extent to which we can use them," Rui told Kane. "Let's get started, we have our own exploration to begin."
The two of them peered over a large tunnel that de-escalated downwards extremely steeply for quite some distance. This would be extremely dangerous and risky for humans, and potentially dangerous even for Martial Apprentices. But the two of them simply sky-walked downwards as they made their way down the tunnel, looking for a new adventure while still being extremely wary of anything dangerous.