The forge was cold, but the intent was burning hot.
Ji Han held the Frost-Iron Cleaver—or what remained of it—on the anvil. The bone edge was gone. In its place, he held a massive, hooked digging spike ripped from the Isopod's leg.
"The angle is wrong," Lin Qinghe said. She was standing over him, her eyes narrowed. "If you fuse it straight, the force will shatter your wrist on impact. You need a curve. Thirty degrees. Like a beak."
Ji Han adjusted the spike. "Like this?"
"Yes. It transforms the linear force into rotational torque. It punches through armor rather than bouncing off."
Ji Han closed his eyes and poured his Qi into the joint. Fusion. The Black Iron groaned, accepting the alien chitin. The weld held.
He stood up, hefting the new weapon. It was hideous. A heavy iron bar with a butcher's blade on one side and a terrifying, curved beak on the other. It was a tool designed for murder in the dark.
[System Notification: Weapon Upgraded.] [Frost-Iron War Pick.] [Attributes: Armor Piercing (High), Durability (High).]
"Good," Lin Qinghe nodded. "Now, the door."
They spent the next shift cladding the granite slab. They used the Isopod's back plates, hammering them into the stone with iron nails Ji Han cold-forged on the spot. The door transformed from a cracking rock into a scaled shield, shimmering with oil-slick darkness.
When they re-sealed the tunnel, the silence was different. The scratching was still there, but the thudding impacts against the door sounded duller. The armor absorbed the shock.
Ji Han sat down, wiping sweat from his brow. He looked at Lin Qinghe. She was staring at the door, her brow furrowed, tracing the patterns of the scratching sounds in the air with her finger.
"You look troubled," Ji Han said. "The defense is holding."
"That is why I am troubled," she whispered.
She turned to him. The firelight caught the sharp angles of her face—a face that had once commanded armies.
"Ji Han, you are a logistics officer. You understand supply chains. I am a General. I understand intent."
"It's a bug swarm," Ji Han said, taking a bite of dried root. "They want heat. It's biological."
"No," she cut him off sharply. "Biological hunger is chaotic. A starving mob pushes forward blindly. They trample each other. They attack the closest point."
She pointed to the sealed door.
"For the last three shifts, the impacts have been concentrated on the bottom left corner. The wedge point. The weakest structural point of the seal."
Ji Han froze. He hadn't noticed. He had just been swinging his axe.
"You think they're probing?"
"I think they are being directed," Lin Qinghe said, her voice turning cold. "The Isopods did not come first. The beetles came first—scouts. They found the resistance. Then the heavy infantry came to break the wall. When that failed..."
She looked at the ceiling of their tunnel.
"If you were a siege commander, and the front gate held, what would you do?"
Ji Han thought about it. "I'd cut the supply line. Or... I'd flank."
"Exactly."
CRACK.
The sound didn't come from the door. It came from the wall behind them.
Ji Han spun around.
The wall of the Granite Tunnel—the solid bedrock they thought was impenetrable—splintered. A section of rock the size of a man's head was pushed inward.
Not by a blunt force. By acid.
Green, hissing foam bubbled through the rock, dissolving the granite like sugar.
"Acid!" Lin Qinghe screamed. "They are bypassing the door! They are melting the walls!"
Ji Han grabbed his War Pick. "How did they know?"
"Because something intelligent is telling them where to dig!"
A hole dissolved in the wall, revealing a tunnel of bubbling slime. A creature squeezed through—long, segmented, and glowing with a pulsating green sack on its back.
[System Notification: Enemy Detected.] [Acid-Spitter Larva (Level 1).] [Ability: Corrosive Bile.]
It reared back to spit.
"Move!"
Ji Han tackled Lin Qinghe, rolling them both behind the pile of root-fuel just as a stream of acid splashed where they had been standing. The stone floor hissed and pitted.
"They have a queen," Lin Qinghe gasped, scrambling up. "Or a King. A Hive Mind. We aren't fighting wildlife, Ji Han. We are fighting an army."
Ji Han looked at the melting wall. Then he looked at Lin Qinghe.
If she hadn't analyzed the pattern... if she hadn't noticed the shift in tactics... they would have been dissolved in their sleep.
"Tactical assessment?" Ji Han asked, gripping his War Pick.
"Kill the breach unit," she ordered, her voice snapping with authority. "Then plug the hole with Black Iron. Granite dissolves; the Black Iron ore is resistant to Qi corrosion. And Ji Han?"
"Yeah?"
"Stop treating them like bugs. Treat them like soldiers. If we don't kill the Commander, the siege never ends."
Ji Han grinned. It was a feral expression.
"Understood, General."
He charged the acid-spitter. He didn't hack. He swung the curved beak of the War Pick.
THUNK.
The spike punched through the soft, glowing acid sac. The creature exploded in a cloud of steam.
"One down," Ji Han panted. "A million to go."