The enormous Thousand-Legion Ant Hill now sat firmly at the center of the cavern.
It had already begun continuously producing black ants.
"If it ever truly breaks free from the seal," Akasei said calmly, "I'll come and kill it immediately."
"A Catastrophe-Class monster cannot be allowed to roam the world."
Inside a dungeon, it was one thing.
But once such creatures stepped outside…
the phrase "nation-destroying" would no longer be just a title.
"Mm. I understand," Rei replied.
He raised a hand.
Sea of Fire and Dense Thorns manifested around the ant hill, forming a circular perimeter.
The moment any black ant hatched—
it was immediately burned to ash.
For the foreseeable future, he could simply come here regularly to harvest souls.
"So what's the plan now?" Akasei asked, grinning as he clasped his hands behind his head.
"What are you thinking, Akasei?"
Akasei rolled up his sleeves.
"Obviously—we keep clearing dungeons!"
"On my way out earlier, I took a quick look at the surrounding terrain. I've already memorized all the Fourth-Tier dungeons nearby."
Rei smiled brightly.
"Sounds good."
With the issue of soul supply solved, the weight in his chest finally felt lighter.
The two of them exited the cave.
After stepping out, Akasei tossed a blacksteel gate over the entrance, then took out a scroll and sealed the area completely.
Iz's scrolls really were incredibly useful.
Scrolls allowed people who couldn't use magic to still cast spells.
The power of a scroll depended entirely on who crafted it.
Scrolls left behind by Iz Parult were probably impossible to purchase on the open market.
Once the place was securely sealed,
Rei and Akasei set out again, clearing dozens more dungeons.
Now that the Thousand-Legion Ant Hill served as his safety net, Rei could sacrifice souls far more boldly than before.
Previously, he had always worried about running out of souls.
While weaker monsters would increase in number after sacrifices,
the returns still rarely justified the cost.
But now—
whenever they encountered a Fourth-Tier dungeon, Rei would immediately sacrifice 50,000 souls in one go.
Even if the efficiency decayed, it didn't matter.
He had souls to spare.
He had tried sacrificing 100,000 souls once.
But the diminishing returns were simply too severe.
It only produced twelve Catastrophe-Class monsters.
Double the sacrifice…
yet only two additional monsters.
That trade-off was far too wasteful.
Coming out with Akasei had absolutely been the right decision.
If Rei had fought these Fourth-Tier Catastrophe monsters himself, he would have been exhausted to death.
But now, with a Level 6 warrior leading the charge—
Rei's job was simply to follow behind and collect the profits.
One person opened the map.
The other farmed the rewards.
A perfect division of labor.
Before long, they had completely swept through every Fourth-Tier dungeon in the Thousand-Cavern Expanse of the Remote Domain.
In total—
they cleared fifty-six Fourth-Tier dungeons.
The materials they collected were worth over 120 million gold coins.
Split evenly between the two—
each walked away with 60 million gold.
"…Holy hell."
Akasei stared at his storage space.
It was filled with mountains of materials stacked endlessly.
"We're seriously rich now."
Normally, adventurers could search for months without even encountering a single Catastrophe-Class monster.
Now they were harvesting ten at a time in a single trip.
Sure, in remote wilderness areas, wild Fourth-Tier or Fifth-Tier monsters could occasionally appear.
But even Lord-Class monsters were extremely rare.
Let alone Catastrophe-Class ones.
While Catastrophe monsters were incredibly dangerous to humanity—
they were also incredibly hard to find.
Even Fifth-Tier dungeons were difficult to locate under normal circumstances.
Afterward, Rei visited several Third-Tier dungeons to test some new ideas using soul sacrifices.
Soul sacrifices could actually enhance monsters directly.
However—
once enhanced, the monsters weren't under his control, and the enhancement couldn't directly raise their tier or grade.
The rewards didn't increase either.
It was basically like casting a berserk buff on them.
At the moment, it seemed pretty useless.
Aside from the Thousand-Legion Ant Hill, they also encountered several War-Month exclusive monsters.
However, none of them possessed abilities as unique as the ant hill.
After several rounds of experimentation—
the sun slowly began to set.
If he had to be honest,
this had probably been the most satisfying hunting day Akasei had ever experienced.
Unfortunately—
it wasn't Harvest Month.
If it had been…
their gains might have multiplied several times over.
Rei shared the same sentiment.
Once you had experienced Harvest Month,
it was impossible to forget that feeling.
Sitting together on a hillside, the two looked at each other.
Akasei grinned.
"Celebrate a little?"
Rei nodded.
"Let's go."
"But before that…"
"I should collect the souls first."
Akasei brought Rei back to the sealed cavern.
Rei opened the sealed gate.
Immediately—
a dense swarm of black ants surged forward.
Flame Surge blasted inward instantly.
Sea of Fire clung to every inch of the cave entrance, spreading deeper into the chamber and scorching everything inside.
The soul count skyrocketed.
They had sacrificed 2.8 million souls across the fifty-six Fourth-Tier dungeons.
Now—
within just a few moments, it was all replenished.
[Souls — 10,000,000]
[Souls — 20,000,000]
[Souls — 30,000,000]
[Souls — 35,220,000]
…
In such a short time, over thirty million black ants had already been born.
The Thousand-Legion Ant Hill truly lived up to its reputation as a Catastrophe-Class monster.
If allowed to develop freely in the outside world for a while—
it could produce hundreds of millions of ants, forming a sky-darkening swarm that would devour entire nations.
Unfortunately—
while the quantity of these ants was enormous,
their quality was extremely low.
The strongest ants it produced were only Third-Tier.
Then again—
if it could produce even higher-tier ants,
that would be terrifying beyond measure.
The difference in strength between Fourth-Tier and Third-Tier monsters was enormous.
"Still… doesn't the monster tide in this area seem thinner again?" Rei asked while looking around.
Akasei gazed up at the sky.
"Yeah… who would've thought the Thousand-Legion Ant Hill had this kind of side effect."
Rei nodded thoughtfully.
"Maybe that's actually a good thing."
If a region's monster tide became too dense,
placing the Thousand-Legion Ant Hill there could convert the tide into low-tier ants.
It could also prevent the monster tide from condensing into powerful monsters.
What would that be called?
Biological pest control?
However, once the monster tide became thinner, the ant hill's production speed slowed again.
Fortunately, this was the wildlands.
Monster tides replenished themselves quickly—almost like air.
There wasn't much reason to worry.
As long as it kept producing ants,
the output would never truly become slow.
Over the next few days, harvesting hundreds of millions of souls should be effortless.
The souls of these black ants were classified as:
"Nearly Puppet-Like Vacant Spirituality."
That was probably the lowest possible tier of soul quality.
Rei experimented by not triggering his Noble Soul conversion, using only their original soul quality to ignite Soul Explosion.
Nothing exploded in the air.
It was like a silent fart—not even a sound.
But when he used Noble Soul conversion, a 1-soul Soul Explosion could snap the trunk of a large tree in half.
In terms of power, it was actually stronger than most normal Second-Tier spells.
However—
10 souls only produced five times the power of 1 soul.
100 souls produced roughly twenty-five times the power.
1,000 souls produced around seventy-five times the power.
5,000 souls produced only about 150 times the power.
Although using more souls did increase the power,
the diminishing returns were painfully obvious.
Clearly, there were still many intricacies in how souls could be used.
If an ordinary Death Priest wanted to explore these mysteries…
How many people would they have to kill just to conduct experiments?
…
Souls collected.
Seal restored.
Tomorrow, he would come back to harvest another batch of fresh souls.
When they finally returned to the City Within the Circle, Rei stretched his body lazily.
Today had truly been…
an enormous harvest.
..
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