After taking over the ant nest, I started boosting my underground Detection whenever I moved around.
I'd acquired a taste for it.
In more ways than one.
The ants were quite delicious.
Probably because of their acid attacks — they were sour.
And that sourness hit just right.
Of course, I could only say that because I had the Acid Resistance Skill. Without it, eating them would probably deal damage.
Also, the larvae were mildly sweet and tasty.
Since they were Monsters, there were no pupae.
I figured the larvae probably evolved directly into adult ants.
There were eggs too, but those would likely become food once they hatched, so I wrapped them in silk and left them alone.
I was keeping them alive as future provisions for when my own eggs hatched.
Wrapped in silk, they couldn't move freely even after hatching, so even if they hatched before my eggs, I had nothing to worry about.
The nest was an excellent base, and it doubled as a delicious food source.
Everything a girl could ask for.
So, while searching for more ant nests — and also hoping to stumble across a hot spring — I kept my underground Detection running at full power.
Travel was smooth going.
By sticking to paths that avoided Human race towns and highways, I was able to expand my range of operations without running into any major trouble.
I did take down a few Monsters along the way, and wiped out some bandit-types, but nothing to write home about.
As a result, my Mastermind's map had grown considerably wider.
With a range this large, I could use Teleport to escape to my heart's content.
As long as I didn't let my guard down, there was virtually no risk of the Demon King catching me.
Even if he did, the egg insurance meant the worst-case scenario was off the table.
But I couldn't keep running forever.
My connection to the Demon King liaison had been severed.
That could only mean one thing: the liaison had lost the contest against the Demon King and been consumed instead.
Demon King liaison — I haven't forgotten the scales you stripped off me.
Which meant my plan to keep fleeing while pulling off soul hijacks was completely shot.
My only realistic shot at beating the Demon King was gone.
That left me with two possible courses of action.
The first was to keep running.
The Demon King had beaten me in a fight, but the Queen's subjugation was still ongoing.
A fresh Queen had just been fully subjugated recently, leaving three more.
Those three would be done soon.
For some reason, my own Evolution seemed to have sped up the subjugation process.
I couldn't beat the Demon King yet, but once I'd integrated all the remaining Queens, I'd be able to fight on equal footing or better.
Holding out and playing defense until that time came was Option One.
The second option was to negotiate a ceasefire with the Demon King.
Even now, my immortality was off the charts.
I couldn't beat the Demon King, sure — but that just meant neither of us could finish the other off.
I couldn't beat the Demon King, and the Demon King couldn't kill me.
A stalemate.
On top of that, the Demon King had already deflected my soul attack.
The immediate threat had been neutralized.
Given that situation, if I sincerely apologized and withdrew from the Queen subjugation, there was a nonzero chance he'd forgive me.
The Demon King had only fought me because I attacked him first — so if I humbly said "I'm sorry, I won't attack anymore, please forgive me" with genuine sincerity, maybe we could work something out.
That was the optimistic thinking, anyway.
In reality, neither the Demon King nor I could do much more against each other.
Even after integrating all the remaining Queens, honestly, whether I could beat that Demon King was debatable.
And realistically, unless he was some kind of administrator-level being, forcing a draw would be the absolute best I could hope for against him.
To be blunt, deep down I really just didn't want to fight the Demon King anymore.
The risk was way too high.
I needed to deal with the world's problems as quickly as possible, but once that was done, I wanted to spend the rest of my days in peace.
Eat good food, sleep, repeat.
Who in their right mind would volunteer to fight a monster that made giant beasts look tame?
That said, if the Demon King was the vindictive type, I could still end up being hunted down even after all this.
Which was why I'd rather integrate the remaining Queens and build up enough strength to hold my ground.
I could always apologize later — that was what I wanted to believe.
Well, a lot of it depended on the Demon King's personality.
Ideally, I'd avoid a decisive battle entirely, though it might come to that eventually.
So the plan was to stick with Option One — fleeing — for the time being, and pull the trigger on Option Two when the moment was right.
Just as I'd settled on my future course of action, I detected a hollow space underground.
There was a significant cavity at considerable depth.
It was so deep that my Detection could barely graze the ceiling at the very edge of its effective range.
It felt like an ant nest — but it was too deep for that.
And the ceiling looked unnaturally sturdy, almost artificial.
I had a bad feeling about this.
An artificial structure, this far underground.
Given the level of civilization I'd observed among the Human race so far, I doubted they even had the technology to dig this deep, let alone build an artificial chamber down here.
Besides, I was currently in an uninhabited forest.
The kind of deep, remote forest that even adventurers wouldn't venture into.
Would humans build something underground in a place like this?
Could they?
I had to investigate.
If my suspicions were correct, this mysterious underground facility absolutely had to be checked out.
My prediction was almost certainly right.
The question was whether it was still active.
I hoped not, but just in case — if it was alive, I had to stop it no matter what.
No matter what danger lay ahead.
Steel in my resolve, I began to dig.