“There are innumerable speculations to what happens to a lifeform after transcending Tier 12. Whether it be Divine Ascension or qualifying to transcend the plane in which our world currently resides, however, none have been documented. In fact, the last time an organism was even documented to have actually achieved evolution to the 12th Tier was a few hundred years ago during the Pecipial War. The event that has been credited as the reason why there is a sorely lacking number of Upper Tier lifeforms. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in that war, and even more among the lower Tiers. The world had been in a terrible state because of that war. Seas were evaporated, Mountains rendered to Sinkholes, the Sky wept, and the earth turned and mourned because of all the bloodshed. But now, a few hundred years later, the only indication of the battle were dense forests where the seas lay, bottomless ravines, lands of rolling magma and endless deserts. I say all this to help you visualize what Tier 12 lifeforms are capable of, and with the knowledge that every 4 Tiers there is an exponential increase in power. I find it hard to believe that there are any who exist beyond the current ceiling of power. Well, at least they don’t exist in the world of us mortals.”

- Words documented from the 2nd Headmaster of the School of Praegressus

{Crete POV}

Patrolling was a lot less interesting than I had imagined it to be. Other than the occasional weevil trying to lay some eggs in the bark of the Mother Tree, there wasn’t much to defend against. I made full use of my skill in the meantime, however.

There was a wide array of plant life to obtain material from but not all was particularly useful in making concoctions to boost abilities, however. For example, I came across a plant labeled Poison Ivy that induced mild to moderate itching and discomfort if applied to the skin or ingested. Another one called Poison Hemlock was listed as potentially fatal by the skill. So I realized my plans of expanding the kinds of things I could make with the skill would have to be put on hold for a while so I could identify everything. I didn’t want to have accidentally killed myself, or worse yet my siblings, by carelessly mixing in a poisonous plant.

I also had to make sure that the things I was mixing together wouldn’t result in something possibly toxic either- Ah- so much work. But I couldn’t complain, there were no immediate threats, so I was able to tackle all those issues in due time. It was also quite refreshing to see my brothers and sisters interact with one another, and every now and then I could see Vito trying to teach the others some dos and don’ts I’d told him. That brought me to the next “issue”.

My sister Althaia had confronted me not long after our meeting with the queen and begged me to teach her how I saved Vito with ordinary moss lying around. After she explained her reason behind wanting to be able to do that, I felt sympathetic with her feeling of helplessness, but that didn’t make the job any less impossible… I didn’t want to break her precious little termite heart though, so I told her to just observe me when I was mixing and making my own ‘medicines’.

I was hesitant to call them that because the creations before me were undeserving of the word. Althaia’s concern motivated me to make healing my main focus for the moment, but the effects of my creations were disappointing, to say the least. Unlike the Glowing Moss back in the feeding chamber, the flora on the surface wasn’t focused on healing, and the information provided by the school was very vague.

The most I would get out of a description was along the lines of “can be mixed with a few nearby plants to produce a minor healing effect” or “when mixed with a catalyzing reagent, it produces a substance that if ingested provides healing over a long period”. The obscure statements didn’t affect my enthusiasm, however, because I was learning more than ever with the help of my skill, and my trusty assistant. I also realized that the information displayed for ingredients differs with intentions. For example, when I inspected the Poison Hemlock thinking about healing, all it told me was that it was potentially fatal and hinted for me not to ingest it. But when I was thinking about possibly weaponizing it, the skill changed the displayed information into something else.

The information it now displayed outlined the ability of the plant to be mixed with Poison Ivy and some other plants, resulting in itching, nerve numbing poison… Another thing I realized is the information displayed would only ever include plants I’ve already inspected. It was apparent that the skill was very reliant on research and testing- right up my alley. Concerning the area in which I would carry out those experiments, however, I realized it would be necessary to carve out an area away from everyone else for my experiments, preferably away from the surface.

So with a goal and a vision, I set about to accomplish all that I could on my first day of patrol duty. The ball of fire in the sky was directly above the Mother Tree. Beating down on the 8 of us, the workers, who were carrying away food, as well as the stoic general overseeing us. The phenomenon known as “day” took us only a little while to get used to. And aside from the initial panic of eventually being roasted alive, only abated by the general telling us it would only be in the sky for half a day before something called “night” occurred, we adapted quite well to life above ground.

Meneo in particular adapted very quickly to patrol duty as he was finally able to find something that he could do without equal. Dynamis was damn near glued to Rock while he questioned him about if he could lift this boulder or that log, to which the general always fervently agreed. Amore on the other hand was more of a troubling case. The motherly instinct she had was extended to the workers and he was shuttling about trying to help any one of them she saw struggling to either pierce the bark or pull out some weevil larva.

Not wanting to disturb any of the 3 I decided to ask Vito and his other 2 students for their help instead, shamelessly disrupting their lesson. That got me a displeased stare from the aspiring teacher but hearing he would be helping me construct a place of research transitioned into expectation. So shaking my head internally, I agreed to his requests to use my research material for his lessons.

The labor secure, I was now in search of land, and scanning my eyes over the nearby prospects I found the ideal place to build my lab. A few tens of meters away from the mother tree, lay a nice little clearing devoid of the carapace high grass that plagued the rest of the field. Gesturing for the others to follow me, I made my way over to it before stopping right above the exposed soil. I was hoping for something subterranean so I had to make sure the entrance into the ground wouldn’t be easily flooded. So taking inspiration from how the termite mound’s entrance was a few meters elevated above ground level, I decided that would be the way I’d do it.

Not wanting to waste any time, I immediately started hacking away at the soil with my mandibles, and I felt the soft earth easily displace under their pressure; I instructed the others to use the displaced soil to prop up around the entrance before continuing, however. I found myself lost in the repetitiveness of the action, and my mind wandered to the future. While I thought about where my ability would be at the end of the 7-day patrol, and where would the strength of my siblings be, I came to a realization. In all the mysteriousness and curiosity I had towards the enemy the Queen spoke of, I never considered that my assignment to the Mountain Pass would also involve them…

My selfish desires had blinded me from the fact that the Mountain Pass was labeled by even Rock, whose strength trounced the 8 of us combined, as the most dangerous area to patrol. I felt my body come to a stop as I understood that once more my curiosity had almost cost me dearly. Even if I was able to survive, could I guarantee that they would? With that train of thought the last vestiges of unwillingness I held towards the Queen’s decision disappeared. Truly she was wiser than I was, for she had been considering the safety as a whole…

That was a quality I had to learn and always apply to my decision-making process, well for as long as my siblings were affected by it. And coming out of the daze I observed the work of my body. Behind me was what I estimated to be about a 10-meter-long slanted tunnel descending at an increasingly steep angle. What was supposed to only be one termite wide, however, was now being extended by the few behind me, who had already adopted a methodical approach to the task. Two termites were carrying away the excavated earth, while the other two ensured at least 3 of us would be able to walk side by side in the tunnel. I gauged the distance so far and I decided it was deep enough.

Now came the hardest part, hollowing out the workspace. However, around an hour later I realized it was only hard when you did it alone, as 4 extra pairs of mandibles exponentially decreased the difficulty of the task. So before the 5 of us now lay a rectangular area of about 15 meters long by 7 meters wide, and it extended about 3 meters upwards.

However, the sturdiness of the floors and walls was a result of our continuous compression. While at the roof of the space we had already dug out another dozen one termite wide tunnels to act as ventilation. The stray beams of sunlight that found their way through the ventilation holes provided a small amount of light to the room, creating a beautiful ambiance.

Looking at it above ground, there was just a mess of dirt extending out of the ground, about 2 meters, which surrounded the entrance to what I now called the “Lab”. Not far from the entrance though were another few, albeit smaller, uneven spirals of earth jutting out of the ground for a few meters. Taking a step back to observe the scene, it appeared as though the entrance was the mouth of a resting behemoth and the ventilation holes, the spikes on its back. Not too bad for an hour of work if I do say so myself, but now came the most tedious part, interior design.

I needed a proper source of light and a place to store ingredients. So after describing the substitute for glowing moss I had found a while back, I instructed the other 4 to go retrieve a few, while I worked on the other stuff. The biggest problem I had with concocting so far was that whenever liquid was involved, transportability went out the window. I had found a way to work around that in my exploration of the local flora as well, but I still needed a main place to store the concoctions.

Beginning to work on the furthest wall away from the entrance, I hollowed out a few spaces in it to act as storage areas for ingredients. And after doing that I chose to use the remaining dirt to fashion something on the ground to the side of the ingredient wall. I started by first compressing the soil on the floor, even further, in 5 circular areas where I intended to place them. I then used the loose soil to surround the area around them while pressing the soil together to form 5 cylindrical containers.

A place to store ingredients and mix liquid concoctions now acquired I decided to do some miscellaneous work until my siblings returned with the Sun Flowers. I was quite fond of decorating ever since my work on the colosseum and I went straight to work carving into the walls. It was then it happened, while I was working on the soil in the corner between the ingredient wall and the containers.

I was busy at work carving murals of termites accomplishing impossible tasks, a lonely but brave individual standing above the body of the Elder Shrew. Although I noticed the soil appeared to be a tad looser in that corner I didn’t really pay attention to it, and nothing happened until I was standing directly above it. The moment the last of my 6 legs touched the floor in that area, the ground collapsed underneath my waist, and I felt my body tumble down into a hole.

The darkness around me felt more ominous than ever before as I felt my body flipping over and over, picking up speed along the way. I probably rolled for a few meters before I stopped, based on the way my body was aching. But powering through the pain I got up and looked around me. I couldn’t see much but I was able to deduce I was in a tunnel of some sort.

Even more surprisingly however I could feel based on the way the walls of the tunnel felt when I ran my head across them and the clear mandible indentations that it was probably a termite who dug the hole. But I wasn’t sure, because for what reason could a termite has dug underground, so far away from the nest. The question I felt was the key to figuring out the abnormality behind what I had discovered, but I decided to investigate after I had told the others about what I found.

Turning my eyes further down the tunnel, however, I could see its walls slowly lose their mandible-like indentations as they widened and smoothened out. There was also an unusual curving path carved out in the tunnel right before it led to a dead end. The whole thing was a bit too weird for my comfort, so I made my way back up the hole in the tunnel I’d just fallen into while suppressing my building curiosity.

My siblings didn’t make me wait that long either though, as a few minutes after I made it back to the lab they arrived with a few of the glowing flowers between the mandibles. I once more marveled at the wonders above ground while noting that although very slowly, the flowers were losing their radiance.

“Hey, you guys, I came across this weird tunnel when I fell into a hole in the corner of the room. I want to check it out, but I don’t know if I should go by myself.” I let the idea of one of them accompanying me into this underground exploration set it.

“I don’t think you should go without asking Rock first though big brother… It’s best to see what he thinks to play it safe” Vito’s words and the triplets' nodding heads had once more reminded me of something I’d disregarded.

“Oh that’s right, I should ask him first…” I think I played it off well, and not giving them a chance to realize I’d forgotten about the general’s presence either as I briskly made my way above ground. It didn’t take us that long to find the general as he and Dynamis were currently engaged in what I could tell was some sort of rock-throwing contest. While the rest of my siblings were conveniently spectating while releasing some amusing “Oos and Ahs”.

“Hey Rock, I found some weird tunnels while I was making an underground area for experimentation and was wondering if it would be fine to investigate them…?” I interrupted my brother’s throw with my words, and I could see the general turn around to consider me and my words while thinking hard about them few a short while before responding.

“That is indeed weird… There shouldn’t be anything capable of digging in this area. And it couldn’t possibly be them… Hmmm- how big were the tunnels?” he asked after he finished thinking out loud.

“Well they were just big enough for a termite of my size to fit without squeezing but it oddly widened, and the walls weren’t as rough as the ones we make. There were also some mandible-like indentations along the wall, but they got cut off abruptly.” My words made him think even longer this time as he didn’t say anything for a long while until saying

“Okay, I think you should investigate because whether or not it is them, anything digging so close to the Mother Tree could damage our livelihood. Make sure you take another person with you at least though.” Although the instruction to bring another with me was a little concerning, I was pleased with his consent to let me investigate.

“Okay, I’ll make sure to bring someone else with me, and I’ll make sure I’m out before nightfall.” Rock nodded his head at my statement, and I turned towards my siblings contemplating who would be the best possible option. I was stuck between speed or endurance for a partner, someone who could escape very quickly, or someone who would be able to cover very long distances. Upon considering the unknown distance in which my investigation would take me, however, I concluded Meneo to be the safer option.

“Meneo, you’ll be coming with me. So make sure to rest properly, we’ll be heading out in a few” he nodded at me, and I could feel the seriousness in which he now operated in the gesture. So I acknowledged him by nodding back before trying to prepare some things I could probably use in the subterranean expedition.