The three of them could handle anything and do anything Edgar could ever ask them to!

Or at least Gregory thought so until today…

Until those damn ants appeared…

One of them even knocked him out unconscious, and when he woke up he had quite a scene to see…

David was missing a leg, and the blades were nowhere to be seen!

They have failed!

For the first time ever they have failed!!

And it just had to be the one job that could forever change their lives!!

All because of those damn-

“Boss! Look!”, Gregory alerted his boss, pointing towards a tunnel that led to one of the BeetleField’s Gates.

And in front of the tunnel was a lone ant who, just a minute earlier, exited that tunnel and entered the city…

The ant’s name was Tan, and for the past minute he was just standing at the same spot, observing the falling city.

“AN ANT?!!?”, Edgar was enraged at the sight of yet another ant. He turned to Gregory and gave him a bag filled with Trao.

“Wha-”, Gregory caught the heavy bag.

“Listen, Gregory. Take that bag. There’s plenty of Trao in there. I don’t care how much your old man asks for, give it to him in exchange for the medicine David needs. Go now! Treat David’s wounds!”

“And you-”

“Don’t worry about me. I have a score to settle with the ants…”, Edgar turned to face David and said: “I will avenge you. And I will find out where the blades are… Now go with Gregory! He will treat your wounds! I’ll wait for you here when I’m finished with that filthy ant!”

David and Gregory listened to their boss and left…

“You ants will regret ever coming to BeetleField…”, Edgar said as he dashed towards the unsuspecting Tan…

* * *

1 meter above Tan and Edgar, eleven menacing assassins carefully remarked the situation below them…

“An ant, boss! An ant!”, Tetrius exclaimed.

“I can see that, Tetrius…”, Nihil, the boss of the eleven assassins, said.

“Should we attack him?”, Primus asked.

“Yeah! Let’s take him out!”, Quintus was excited.

“I am bloodthirsty, too, brothers! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…”, Octavus was suppressing his deadly instincts…

“Octavus is right! We should plan things out first!”, Sextus agreed.

“What is there to plan?? We can take out an ant any day, even blindfolded!!”, Secundus was frustrated.

“Are you all stupid! Look!”, Decimus pointed at a dung beetle that seemed to be going rapidly towards the lone ant.

“Wow! An angry dung beetle!”, Quartus was surprised.

“So what? We can still take them both out no problem!”, Septimus was certain.

“Hold up! Don’t you see that this ant is alone! Plus he doesn’t have the blade!! This one has some other kind of a blade! Wasporio said that there were two ants, both carrying Ozara’s blades!”, Nonus noticed.

“SILENCE!!”, Nihil demanded, “Nonus is correct… This is not one of the ants Lord Caesar mentioned… But still… it is an ant none the less…

Listen, my apprentices… This is what we’re gonna do… We’ll see what the dung beetle is going to do to the ant… if he attacks him, I want you to go down there and save the ant…”

“WHAT?!”, Tetrius was shoked.

“NONSENSE!!”, Quintus disapproved.

“SHUT UP!!”, Nihil’s patience ran out, “Let. Me. Finish.

You’re going to save the ant by kidnapping him.

You are allowed to wound the beetle and the ant, BUT you are not allowed to kill them nor use poison…”

“W-Why-”, Secundus did not undestand.

“BECAUSE, Secundus, if we were to murder the beetle, we would leave a trace behind us… A trace that the assassin wasps were, for some reason, in BeetleField…

And if we leave a trace like that behind us, citizens of this rotten city will start wondering… ‘Why are the wasps in our city??’… ‘Why did they kill one of our own??’… ‘Are they planning something?? A war perhaps??’…

And Lord Caesar was very clear about not wanting anyone in Castanea suspecting Hornest of anything until all preparations are done!

This is why you need to leave the beetle alive…

And about the ant… we will kidnap him in order to find out where his friends are… and find out we will… one way or another…

Do you understand now, Secundus?”

“I… I do, boss… I’m sorry…”, Secundus apologized.

“With all due respect, boss… but if we leave the beetle alive, won’t it, like… be able to tell his friends about us attacking him?”, Decimus pointed out.

“Yeah! Isn’t that a worse trail than just leaving sting-marks and poison behind??”, Primus said.

“… You are correct, I admit…”, Nihil thought for a few moments than ordered: “Which is why you’re going to make sure that the beetle isn’t able to speak anymore… Understood?”

“Now that’s more like it!”, Quartus smirked.

“Sir, yes, sir!”, Nonus was ready to strike.

And so were his brothers…

* * *

Tan did not expect BeetleField, the biggest city in the whole of Castanea, to look this… this shallow… this empty… this depressing…

But what he expected the least was to suddenly be his in the stomach by a dashing dung beetle, who hit him with all of his might.

Tan flew upwards then fell hard on the ground, hitting his back and losing his breath.

“AH-”, Before he could even try to understand what was going on, the beetle hit him again – this time on the side of his chest.

Tan rolled on the ground for a bit.

“W-What? Who-”, he tried to ask, but instead of receiving an answer he was hit yet another time – this time on his head.

This made Tan dizzy. He also started bleeding from the place in which he received the powerful punch.

Edgar lifted the almost-unconscious ant and furiously shouted: “WHERE ARE THEY?! WHERE ARE THE OTHER TWO AND THE HERCULES BEETLE?!!? ANSWER ME!!”

But before he received any answer from Tan, Edgar was suddenly pulled back with the force of a dozen wasps.

Ten of the assassins all together pulled Edgar from Tan, throwing him on the ground.

“W-What the hel-”, one of the wasps stung him directly in the mouth, injuring his vocal cords.

“KHHKRHR-”, Edgar started choking on his own blood.

He tried his best to fight back… to turn over… to do anything! But the other wasps held him tightly… One wasp was holding each of his legs, two were sitting on his chest, and another was holding his head.

Edgar was helpless… unable to move or fight… unable to breathe...

Was this his end?

Tears formed in his eyes as he felt his life fading away…

He still had so much he wanted to do…

He still had so many things he wanted to do with Gregory and David…

He still wanted to tell the two of them that… he loved them…

They were his only friends and family…

He wanted to see them for one last time…

Just as he was about to lose consciousness forever, one of the wasps, to one holding his head, screamed: “HE’S TRYING TO GET AWAY!!”

On the other side, Tan, who could barely move, was trying to crawl back into the tunnel from which he came from… he was trying to hide. Hide from whatever was happening right now…

A few of the wasps let go of Edgar and went to Tan. Edgar took this opportunity to put all of the strength he had left to turn over, throwing off-balance most of the remaining wasps.

As soon as he did so, he started coughing up the blood stuck in his throat. He could finally breathe again…

But this did not matter… He had recognized his deadly opponents… they were none other than the assassin wasps… some of the deadliest bugs in all of Castanea!

If they wanted to kill him all they needed to do was inject their poison inside Edgar’s body, turning his blood black in a matter of a few dozen seconds, killing him…

Black… blood…

Edgar looked at the blood he was continuously coughing up.

It was green.

Pure green.

And it did not show any signs of turning black…

For some reason the wasp that stung him did not inject its deadly poison in Edgar’s body…

‘Just what the hell… is going on??’, Edgar had never been so confused and scared in his life.

And still his confusion kept rising, as the wasps did not seem to care that he was still alive. Instead – all of the wasps went to grab Tan and the blade Tan was carrying.

Two of the wasps carefully examined the blade. It, indeed, was not an Ozara’s blade, but instead just an ordinary Castanean wooden blade. The wasps broke it in half and threw it on the ground. They fell next to the trembling Edgar.

The other wasps carried Tan and flew upwards, where their boss was waiting.

“Mission accomplished, boss!”, Sextus was proud.

“You did well, apprentices… very good… I’m sure Lord Caesar will be very pleased…

Let’s get going then!”, Nihil ordered, and the rest listened.

And so the 11 assassins left, kidnapping Tan and making sure that their only witness was unable to tell anyone about what had occurred here…

‘D-Did they m-mention… C-Caesar?! One of the Lost Great Knights?!!?’, Edgar, who carefully listened to each word the wasps carelessly let out, recalled in his thoughts…

‘T-This is… This is big! Something big is going on!! And the ant… why did they kidnap the ant? I knew there had to be a big reason for why ants were here – and now wasps too!! I-I have to tell this to Gregory… to David… And when David’s ready we will – we will find out what’s going on! We will-’

Edgar tried to say something, but all that came out was another cough… ‘Weird’, he thought, and so he tried speaking again…

Nothing.

He tried again.

Still null.

Edgar started panicking.

‘N-No! No, this could not be happening!! NOO!!!’

He tried screaming. Shouting. He tried making any kind of noise.

But it was all in vain…

Edgar could not let out a single tone…

His vocal cords were permanently damaged… and he has lost the ability to speak…

He stood there, looking at the empty sky with an equally empty look in his eyes.

He could do nothing else but stand there, defeated… defeated, but still alive… in silence… in silence, crying…