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Chapter 1312 - Anthony On Tour - Survival (Barely)
🕑 Added 2024-02-20 05:23:18 +0000 UTCLess of a cliff, but still a cliff. This is it for me today. My hands hurt!
Now, obviously the gravity well I created is pulling in the opposite direction from the black sun chewing up every piece of the planet it can get its little grubby hands on. However, it's not enough to counteract the force, not even remotely. Despite deploying the spell, the lake is still going crazy, the air is still screaming past me, and the boat itself is starting to lift up out of the water.
But the railing hasn’t broken! Whoo! I’ll take the wins where I can get them.
I get the feeling the well is doing just enough to take the edge off, which is nice, sure, but it isn’t enough to save my backside.
For that, I’m going to have to rely on the industrious ant and brathian mages hard at work beneath me, and inside the ships of the rest of the fleet. All I can do is float, three legs hooked around a wooden beam, as I watch my spell consume and consume and consume.
It's apocalyptic up there.
Spiralling pillars of water have towered all the way up and they too are spiralling down into the core, along with ever increasing chunks of Greystone. I’m really hoping the spell is only ripping into the outer shell of the mountain and not any inhabited areas. I get the feeling the bulk of the added rock, or at least a mega-thick layer of it, is just there for defence and for show, which I hope continues to be the case. The golgari might have brought this upon themselves, but I don’t think they would care all that much if several thousand of their citizens got mushed inside a black hole.
There are several spirals forming around the black sun, revolving around it and each other as they circle the drain down to oblivion. Rock, water, air and everything else it can reach is there, being yoinked in. Someone should shoot some fire at it, so all the nations are represented in the destruction.
Snap.
I don’t like the sound of that.
Snap!
I really don’t like the sound of that!
As well I shouldn’t. With one final shuddering pull, the railing snaps free from the deck, and all of a sudden, I take flight.
Ahhhhhh nards! Flying is freeing and all, but I didn’t want to experience it like this!
[Eldest! Take hold!]
[What?]
I turn just in time to see something whip up towards me from the deck below and I snag it in my mandibles. It’s a rope, a great chonking thick one. Some of the mages below deck must have used some wind magic or something to send it flying at me.
[Thanks! Make sure the rope is braced to something sturdy!]
Not that I like to draw attention to it, but I’m rather heavy, after all.
[Not to worry! We’ve secured it to the keel.]
SNAP!
[That broke.]
Dang.
I crunch my mandibles shut, severing the rope. Any further damage to the ship is going to put my siblings at risk and that’s not worth it. Without anything to tether me down, I rise faster and faster. Once I’m free of the gravity well, my acceleration increases even further.
Well, Anthony, you giant moron, you really did it this time. Finally, after so many close calls, you’re finally going to get turned into pulp by your own spell. There should be some sort of award for idiocy of this magnitude. Not only for the impressive scale of the poor decisions made, but also their regularity.
A normal person, certainly a normal ant, would have learned from their mistakes after the first, absolutely after the second, near-death experience. Me, though? Oho! Absolutely not. I’m made of sterner stuff.
The scene above my head as I rise toward it defies description. An unreasonable level of destruction, a seemingly unending appetite for chaos. The black sun is a silent, still, monstrous entity, difficult even to look at.
Rising rapidly now, there isn’t much I can do to save myself anymore. My brains have turned to sludge after their heroic efforts in creating this mess, and it’s not like I can swim through the air back down to the ship.
Or CAN I?
No. No I can’t. Nice try, though.
Yeesh, how high up am I at this point? Pretty darn high, a couple hundred metres for sure. Honestly, would the fall be worse than being crushed within a black hole? That’s a stupid question, of course it would be.
Well. I had a good run. It’s hard not to get misty-eyed, thinking of my family and my siblings. Except ants don’t have tear ducts, but I’ll ignore that. The Queen, my mother in this life, certainly gets my vote for ‘best mother’ that I’ve ever had. Not exactly a difficult award to win, in retrospect. The Queen spoke to me, that pretty much put her over the top straight away.
I didn’t have brothers or sisters as a human, that I’m aware of, anyway. I was separated from the family home at a young age… so it’s possible, I suppose? But those theoretical siblings can’t compare to the incredible sense of worth and wellbeing I get from my sisters. My thousands upon thousands upon thousands of sisters.
I wonder if Vibrant could outrun a black hole?
I kick off a passing rock and roll myself over, I don’t want to look up at the black hole, I’d rather look down at the fleet. Looks like they’re going to hang in there. That’s great. Although, I can barely see them from this high up.
The squeeze is getting pretty intense now, I must be getting close-ish. Any second now, my carapace will collapse and I’m going to get squished. If I had some gravity mana to work with…..
Wait a sec…
I do have gravity mana? And tons of it?!
YOU IDIOT, ANTHONY!
My gravity mana gland! I reforged it into Resonant Well Stone! It turns gravitational energy into mana, and there’s a freaking heck of a lot of gravitational energy around me right now!
Ohpleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.
Brains! Work!
I flush my system full of regeneration fluid in the vague hope it will help my brains, but even if it doesn’t, I need them to push.
Summoning all my myriad minds, I empty the gravitational mana gland and weave the fastest, roughest, ugliest gravity well I can possibly imagine, then fire the spell out, desperately hoping it works at all!
And miracle of miracle, I freeze in place.
Oh so carefully, I roll over and look up.
The centre of the gravity bomb is still almost a kilometre away… maybe… it’s hard to tell, but much closer and I would have been torn apart for sure. Yikes.
I roll back over and look down.
That’s a long way to drop.
Then the black sun flickers and disappears. And so does my gravity well.
Honestly. I’m fine with it.
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
Gardor
Is that why there are howling streams of water and air being sucked in? Cuz air and water are super heavy?
Nanashi
Pretty sure the lighter you are the less the Gravity bomb would pull on you.
andwhyisit
Nah, Anthony can't do any more gravity magic at this point, he is falling because the well is dry. Also ants are terrible swimmers and Anthony is heavy enough to sink like a stone. There won't be any ungainly floating happening, in air or water.
Nanashi
I have a question for Rino.. i demand Anthony and friends to be modded into Palworld.. o right it's a question.. uh would you be bothered if someone released a mod of that nature?
PercivalMT
It is written confusingly, but another interpretation is that they wouldn’t care that they had instigated the counter attack, by dropping a mountain on the ants, if a few thousand citizens died and would would take revenge any way
InfernalDrake
Gravity is a field force, it doesn't care about inertia. Whether something is heavy or not doesn't matter. It's would only matter if the mass being pulled is large enough to have it's own gravitational force.
Gardor
If it was lifting boats in the harbor, anyone outside was immediately killed. Anyone lighter than Anthony was sucked into the black hole.
Jac Onue
The first part of that sentence is "Golgari might've brought this upon themselves, but I don't think they would care" - he doesn't think they would care that it was their own fault, if a bunch of their people died. Anyway, assuming that black hole only ripped off the facade of the mountain, and not any of the living quarters inside, there shouldn't be any deaths.
alt31415
I dunno, I think there's a fairly big chance they didn't.
Gardor
"but I don’t think they would care all that much if several thousand of their citizens got mushed inside a black hole." Think this is a typo, cuz they probably would care, or at least hold it against Tony I forget, are there kill notifications in this story? Cuz there's zero chance people didn't die to his localized singularity.
McMax
So... Anthony ends hovering in the air like some floating ant messiah to the backdrop of a black hole. That actually sounds extremely badass.
Roombot
Yess gud chap thx rinoz 👌
Roombot
Oooooh yes please that POV
Roombot
Anthony at it again
alt31415
It's been shown, but we've also seen that as the bombs get stronger, even unraveling starts to be less effective as the bomb 'holds on' to its own mana.
alt31415
You know, I was wondering when that interaction would occur! Wondering for all of... 'checks notes' ever since Anthony started floating up this chapter.
Cindermoth
They probably don't have stuff to counter that on the fourth, but they might in the lower strata. Besides, it's been shown they can unravel the mana construct of the gravity bomb so long as it hasn't expanded yet. Thus diminishing it's strength significantly. Though for this particular spell they'd need an extreme amount of mages, maybe even more than they'd normally have available to a single army. And even then, in a battle that many mages needing to deal with just that spell would leave them very vulnerable to the ants.
Xultanis
"With all due respect Sir, the Golgari, the masters of stone, just threw an entire mountain at that ant. A reinforced mountain. It ate it. Plus a portion of their fortress. If you still want me to go on that suicide assassination mission, I'm sure the ants would love a few partially crumpled suits of Leggionaire armor to examine."
Anthony Romanov
This chapters were antmazing! Thank you for bringing this awesome story to us! Thank you so much 😍😍❤️❤️❤️
andwhyisit
After reading this I turned on the news and this supermassive black hole was being reported on: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-20/act-fastest-growing-black-hole-recorded-discovered-anu-research/103486262
Rodmin
But I believe that A.....nthony can save the world!
Anton Shomshor
Captain Planet could’ve saved the day
Koala Man
Oh that’s definitely the take the ants will have , there will be statues
fity0208
Did I just hear a collective moan from every cultist in the city?
Callum Macmillan
I believe everything would change if fire was put in there 😉
Crazy Abe
clearly he's going to crash through a legion ship, and then walk back to land, saving several of their idiots entirely by accident.
Shaitan
Really excited for all the reactions to this. Can't imagine the legion has much that could stop what he just did. Also can't imagine the Brathians accepting attempted murder of their trading fleet. Will also be interesting if other conglomerates take offense to this attack (if they think they can do it to one, what is to stop them doing it to another) and cut off trade.
BelligerentGnu
Ty for the chapters! Will there be a resolution before you go back to BoD?
Tsunami
Anthony casually hovering in front of his creation, Like A Boss, at the end looked staged. Not unintentional. Looked as if he was proclaiming to the world, "Yeah, that was me. What of it!?" Interesting opportunity for an outside POV.
Ether's Blessed One
Well, a small price if the Eldest had to lose their dignity to survive.
Lonez Zhavec
Those third person POV’s are gonna be majestic.
Koala Man
I wonder which legionnaire it was he spoke to? It will make things interesting if it was the commander and they were saved because of it … :)
Buck
You might consider looking into some voice to text software to save your hands.
Buck
Nice to have all the chapters today. Hopefully, you can complete this portion of the story arc when your hands recover. Good work. Enjoyed reading them.
Koala Man
Ya doofus Anthony, at least he’ll probably land in the water .. or will he do the ungainly float thing . Stay tuned for the next antscapade , same ant time same ant channel
No_Creative_Name
Keep your feet together when you hit the water! -Flushed Away
Kiongku
LoL at the avatar reference.
PercivalMT
Thanks for the big chapter drop tonight, Rino
Kiongku
R.I.P. hands
