The fast Leveling paradigm started with the ants.

The combatants had to have a Vajra, and both heat and acid resistance, because they were operating outside the city. Their rides had to be Shield-filtered to keep the alkali dust out of anything moving, and made from corrosion-immune materials, or it would be pitted and worn after only a single trip outside.

That was actually fine, as the Briggs and Rantha teams loved having stuff to work on to improve, and having more battlewagons, flitters, and transports able to traverse the wastes outside the city was hardly a bad thing from the viewpoint of the city. All such transports were registered and could be mobilized at need.

Naturally the BR teams were joined by G&G people eager for their own Levels, and the BR squads were assembling their own crews of followers and Marktells to guide. They synched up using their Bands, unreliable as they could be in the charged dusts of the desert, but the Marktells had not failed as yet, and Marktells to Bands to Marktells relays using Marked left back in the city worked perfectly fine, if a second or two slower.

The ants of the Janus wastes were persistent, tenacious, and dangerous. The workers were about a foot long, and a silica-based lifeform, with mandibles that could shave away good steel, and multi-hued carapaces derived from the minerals found about their hives and the composition of the creatures they ate. They were the ultimate scavengers of the wastes, as well as a united force that could eventually drag down just about anything stupid enough to dare their swarms.

Those swarms were Karma mines.

The ant soldiers were three feet long, had glittering mandibles as hard as diamond, and poisonous acid-injecting stingers. They protected the workers who ranged over the wastes, looking for the living and the dead to dismember and haul back to the crystalline ant-hill for supplies.

The ants were scavengers and the primary prey of a lot of predators. Sand wurms picked them off and ran quickly, before they could be swarmed. The various scorpions snatched them up and scuttled away. Thunder beetles pulped them and munched away. Wyverns swooped down to snack on them. Quartz wasps zoomed in to pluck them up.

In return, if they were slow or stupid, the ants swarmed and ate them. They were fully capable of digging down after wurms too slow to get away, prying open the plating of any of their enemies, and tearing them apart.

The ants were the number one pest that kept trying to get into the city, with their hunters and foragers wandering up the walls and getting popped off continually by the automated defenses there, their bodies quickly snatched up by waiting wurms or scorpions checking regularly for such free morsels. If they weren’t discreet enough, those fellows were popped off by heavier wall guns, which brought in more ants to munch on them, continuing the process.

A marching nest, where the whole army went into motion to find a better place, was something that had to be blasted apart with sonic cannons or a lot of slugthrowers, as the ants were basically immune to heat and radiant energies. Sending vehicles after them was basically asking for disassembled and gnawed vehicles, and for the appetizers within to trigger death benefits.

Naturally, these incredibly dangerous little buggers were numerous, committed, largely fearless, still coughed up small nexals, and started a whole tide of encounters as they were killed.

Still, the scuttling suckers blew apart pretty quick under Hammers and Sun Strikes, and everybody got to practice their choice of missile weapons or melee combat. It was also extremely good practice for battling horde creatures, and yeah, Swarmbane Tokens were very quickly a highly desired thing.

Hammers crushed, mindclaws ripped, slugthrowers tossed Sun Shots, and ants in their hundreds were soon crushed and scattered across the glittering sands as everyone retreated steadily from the advancing swarm. The battlewagon drifted back behind them, providing covering fire to the flanks and emergency escape if something happened, as well as overwatch against the inevitable things coming to investigate.

“Wurm from the north!” barked out Corporal Kombu, seeing the blip pop up on the tremor sensor they’d put down.

“Woo hoo!” Kiapa Rantha called out, up for the first wurm to arrive. Her team fanned out in that direction as she stomped and made lots of noise to draw it in, mindclaws up to inflict the wounds that would keep it on the surface after it swallowed her.

Them teeth were gooooood money, and their Gear improvements had to come out of their own earnings, after all.

“Scorp to the east!” called out Carrie Rantha from her rotating top of the battlewagon, indicating where one of the ten-legged crystalline white scorpioids of this desert had shaken itself free from the sands, and was watching the dozens of newbies ant-slaying with great interest. “We’ve a wyvern coming in from high northwest!” she added, eyes able to pierce the haze of the desert that foiled radar and kept sight lines down to a couple hundred yards. “Looks like a two-headed type!” she added, as the sniper teams with their rifles turned and made ready to snipe, their guns already glowing with Nimbus light.

There was one normal type of wyvern, and four mutant versions. The normal one had pale underwings and belly, to match the haze from below, but its top and back were a riot of different crystalline colors, dependent on what it ate. The four mutant varieties were the Burning Wyvern, which basically breathed out a plasma lance; the Dazzler, which was semi-transparent and crystalline, and which could mesmerize anything looking on it in light; the two-headed variety; and the Spewer, which could vomit acid that could dissolve steel in seconds and whose blistered scales wept acid and poison.

The long rifles would take it down as soon as it came down out of the haze.

“Just got another wurm track northeast, and a rumble spot!” Corporal Kombu called out for everyone’s benefit.

“Hooty-hoo!” Shiera Rantha called out, ready for some wurm teeth and inspecting the gizzards of one.

A rumble spot meant a thunder beetle had heard the ruckus going on here, and was trundling over to investigate. It was actually more millipede than beetle, with many underlying legs carrying along its armored shell, and capable of generating literal sonic booms that could pulverize carapaces, shred steel, and liquify flesh.

It was also the preferred prey of the crystal rocs, which were the apex predator of the wastes. One showing up during the day meant a roc was probably already on its way to eat the damn thing, but it would certainly reach us first.

Only way to kill it easy was to flip it over and blow out its underside, and you best check your sonic resistance at the door. Oh, and its pincers could snap right through a few inches of steel, so don’t expect being in a tin can of any size to save you.

There was an explosion of spray as the first wurm surfaced, and claws, Hammer-axes and Swords did their thing. Kiapa whooped as trifold jaws opened, and she jumped in feet first. The wurm immediately turned to run, revolving to keep its wounds away from the sand, pushing across the sand.

Seeing that, the Lightning Scorp immediately began scuttling in its direction, seeing buffet plates galore shining in its lidless crystalline eyes. The experienced Ranthas and Briggs promptly went to intercept, moving over the sands with speed that naturally made the scorpion wary, even if they were just a fraction of its size.

Ants were being pulped and crushed non-stop, a lot of marksmanship training being put to work, Sun Shots popping crystalline carapaces and blowing apart their widdle insectile heads, so fun, so fun.

“Third wurm contact coming around from the southeast!” They were getting a good turnout today.

“Yay!” Delilah Rantha called out happily. She really needed some funds for her team.

A stereo-sonic wyvern’s scream pitched to freak just about anything out came looping down over everyone, and the ants were all paralyzed for a second when they heard it.

Six long guns barked, and scales harder than steel protested as they were punched right through. Four rounds to the double hearts, two to the heads, and a second series of shots as it wobbled and began to fall from the sky to complete the work.

Hadn’t even had to Interdict the thing.

“We got wasps coming in from the north-northeast!” Carrie sang out, squinting as she cupped her ear, hearing the ultrasonic hum of wings being beat far too quickly. The quartz wasps were actually the preferred prey of the wyverns, and the primary predator of the ants, as well as the most frequently encountered predator, due to their flying ability and how hard it was to see them at a distance.

The team began to bend the area of conflict around, which would draw the six-foot wasps in over atop the ants, with predictable effects. What would not be predictable is when the Interdiction went off, and the damn phrenic things found that no, King Gravity did NOT think they could fly, thank you, and they plummeted down among the ants. Hilarity would promptly ensue.

Chelsea Rantha whooped as she came up behind the lightning scorp as the tail, pulsing with black veins that indicated poison, sent ineffectual lightning charges into two other Rantha and Brigg teams drawing its attention to the front. She jumped in over the tail, grabbed it and came down and over with it, punching it deep into the back of its own carapace.

Davo Briggs’ Hammer came down on it an eyeblink later, compressing that poison sac and sending the acidic toxin into the scorp before it could pull the stinger back, and gave it a taste of its own, um, so-not-a-medicine. Opportunistic soulblades chopped off its pincers as it convulsed in agony, and it began the kicking dance that would end in paralysis and death in under a minute. Everyone carefully backed up, while the gyrations definitely got the attention of the ants, who veered that way, sensing a meal.

Kiapa came carving her way up out of the wurm a quarter-mile in the distance, which had slowed to a halt and was seemingly resting until a golden soulblade carved a path out and she could emerge covered in sizzling gore and clutching a big nexal in her hand. Her team cheered, and rushed out to join her even as the wasps came in from the other direction to join the fun, their transparent wings moving impossibly fast for something so large, and then abruptly began to spiral helplessly down into the ant swarm below.

The newbies didn’t mind the distraction, as suddenly rolling balls of stinging, biting insects were chewing on and stinging one another, and finally began to make some headway against the numbers of the ants.

The thunder beetle came racing in like a tank, multiple legs working overtime as it headed for the action, namely the trail of dead left behind. It wasn’t too concerned about attackers, given its size and weight, so when the two Beacon psis exerted their combined power and put up a Ward Wall under its right side, it just trundled right over it.

Two Ranthas and four Briggs brothers hit its side and heaved.

There was a loud thundercrack that blew the sand out around the beetle, but that didn’t save it as it was heaved up, displaying its wide underside and scores of writhing legs to the waiting volley of guns.

Sun Shots blew into its underside in explosions of gore and whorls of psychic energy being unleashed. Dozens of stout legs went flying in sprays of goo and unpalatable flesh, and rounds drove deep into the vitals normally protected by a shell thick enough to normally defy even that caliber of firepower.

On its backside, it could only scrabble at the air and try to shift its weight, and the lifting team made sure that wasn’t going to happen. Another volley of concentrated Sun Shots, and any deliberate motion abruptly stopped as the shots found vital points discovered by killing prior beetles.

“I see Glazed coming, up in the sky!” Carrie sang out, which was both an alarming fact and something most of them just ignored. It did mean the kill teams had to hurry and salvage the key stuff out of the dead.

They’d met the crystal roc before, and he was surprisingly cool about not attacking them and instead eating all the stuff laying around. But that meant he’d chomp down the nexals, so they had to quick harvest them first...