Monsters are not stupid

"Monsters aren't dumb."

Lea flicked the blood off of her sword, gazing warily. Screams filled the air, not dampened by the humid air in the slightest. Men, women, children, none were spared from the atrocity before her eyes.

Shink! She stabbed yet another monster. It has six legs, grotesquely contorting as it squealed. It didn't die immediately. No, even as she pushed her sword farther in, it was still clacking its mandibles, trying to grab at her. 'Monsters aren't stupid.' Oh if only she had listened.

Lea was an adventurer or at least that was her job. A novice for sure, but she had earned the title of group leader due to her excellent sword skills. Not the wisest choice, it turned out. But the three others were adamant; the strongest person leads the team. And so they had set off.

Their destination was the Pine Woods. An innocent name, hiding one of the most dangerous spots for novices to accept missions. She absentmindedly rotated her sword, killing the monstrous ant in front of her before turning to the next.

No, novices weren't even supposed to the adventure here. They had only gotten the contract through one of the party members, John's, connections. After all, they were confident in their skill. Lea herself had trained as a noble guard. John was a noble's son. Then there was Eni and Eri, the two twins. Eni was an assassin, and Eri was a cleric. Even though they were twins, they had acted completely opposite too, serving as the party's entertainment. And so they had taken on the contract, not oblivious, but certainly overconfident in their ability. She dodged the next monster's lung, dragging her sword through its carapace as it whooshed by.

Well, she knew that now. Their contract was simple too. In fact, they had completed it easily, it was just deep into the forest. Their task was just to collect some Cherry Sap, a specialty of the trees in Pine Woods.

At first the trees were normal-sized. As they went deeper, however, the originally dense treeline gave way to sparse trees with truly massive trunks. Some were even too wide to wrap all of their hands around! The cherry sap was produced from the cherry sap tree, but it wasn't any of those massive ones, but a small, unassuming tree, not even three feet tall. It only grew around these big trees, actually tapping into their roots for its own sustenance. Lea panted. She once again flicked her sword.

It took them three hours to finally find a tree, deep inside the Pine Forest. The monsters they had faced were weak, almost even more than the usual ones from the novice areas, but nobody had paid any mind. After all, it was their first time in a party together, so maybe they just synergized very well. Oh, they were so very wrong. Lea's face dropped in sorrow.

Not an hour into their trip, Eni had said he saw eyes in the bushes, even some antennae, but when they looked there was nothing. John had teased Eni, calling him paranoid. Lea knew that John actually had the hots for Eri, but his way of showing it had been poured into bullying the only other guy in the party, despite the girls' complaints. Another ant jumped, one of its mandibles scraping her left thigh. She cut its head off at the joint.

Around two hours in, they had reached a small village just outside the forest. They decided to rest there, waiting for their client to arrive. That was where everything went wrong. Caught in the latest spree of killing, John had accidentally let a monster escape, a true rookie move. He couldn't even describe what it looked like to anyone else either, so they just hadn't worried about it. When they got back, the guard had asked them if they had experienced any difficulty, to which John had laughed him off, bragging about how good they were. Only Lea had caught the guard's narrowed eyes.

He waved them along anyway, and they went to the tavern to celebrate and rest. And then, it happened. Not even twenty minutes after they reached the village, there were the sounds of bells ringing. It was the signal for a monster attack. The bells, rang five times, and Lea froze. The other three might not have known what that meant, but she had.

Two bells were the standard for monster attacks. There would be minimum casualties. Three bells meant there would be some difficulty, but they would pull through, the monsters weren't strong or the horde wasn't that big. Four bells meant a real threat to the village itself and was the signal for the old, women, and children to evacuate while the militia held off the horde. Even then, they might pull through. Five bells was despair. While everyone still evacuated, the fifth bell was for the defending soldiers. The fifth bell meant certain death.

When Lea's group had gotten through the front gates, John had laughed. "This won't be that bad," he had said. "It's just a couple of weak little ants." Every eye had swung towards him. Soon though, they had no time to berate him for his words. The original 100 ants turned into 200, then 300, then 400. They were endless. Lea caught an ant's mandibles from behind, barely avoiding getting snapped in half.

She was the only one left now. Not of the group, for the other three had been overwhelmed not long into the battle. No, of the three hundred defending men and women, she was the last one standing. She smiled bitterly. A cruel victory that was.

Dozens upon dozens of ants surrounded her. She had retreated to the center of the village, in a small walled circle right in the center. That was the only reason she had survived this long, the ants only coming one at a time, sometimes from the front, sometimes from the back. As if they were playing with her. Her eyes drooped. She was so tired… Her sword propped her up from the ground.

Silence. Lea had expected the end, a crunch of her body in an ant's mandibles, but there was nothing. She opened her eyes.

The ant in front of her was frozen. No, it was shivering. She stabbed it, running out of her would-be grave. Frantically looking around her, she witnessed a shock. All of the ants were frozen, shivering in fear. Then they slowly turned towards the entrance. Lea let out a gasp. They… They bowed?

What she saw Lea would never forget. A young man, seemingly in his twenties, with strikingly blonde hair. He wore a lab coat, in which his hands were deposited as he curiously looked around as if he wasn't in the middle of carnage. He spotted her, and a smile captured his face as he picked up his face to come before her. "Hi," he said.

"You must be Leanne."