Having received the orders we got to our positions and the wait began.

I, who had thought that maybe the squad leader would make his camp somewhere alone in secrecy, couldn’t absorb him moving with the team who had his member eaten by the spider.

It confused me even more that no one objected his orders either.

I asked my team leader about it and she said, “Having the squad leader keeping eye on us is the biggest obstacle, and shame for a team leader. This action from the squad leader is equal to him taking the chain of command from the black leader’s hand. Remember don’t let that ever happen to you. Not only will it drain all of your previously earned respect in the gutter, but also brand you as incompetent.”

And having my mind broadened, I left my leader alone and got on position.

After all when even the teams were stationed in a formation, why wouldn’t we handle the work by dividing it?

The scouts got the best position of us all because they have the hawk eye skill which allows them to see far.

And the rest of us got stationed such that all of us together would be able to cover a lot of area, without moving.

But for some reason, I got the area with the least amount of traffic.

If I was some hotheaded brute then I would have protested and gained bad remarks on our mission report, but I wasn’t a bad egg and I didn’t care about such superficial things. It only meant that I could be lax with my spying, and waste some time on other stuff.

And thus our observation started.

Day1:

No ants left the mound at 0400.

At 0500, activity started happening outside the mound, and their patrolling groups became alert.

At 0600 about a thousand, maybe more ants came running out of the mound and started fighting each other.

“It’s a morning activity.” The scout whispered to me when he saw me acting like I was in the motion of calling the team leader.

“Even we do it.” He said.

At 0700, their training activity stopped, and they went back inside the mound. And at the same time the guards came out to keep eye on every and all the intruder, who would be eventually joining them on the day.

“They are less like guards and more like living alarms. Their most important task is to run to the commander when they notice an anomaly. The rest of the work is handled by the soldiers.” The scout explained.

Following them at 0900, the scavengers came out of the mound one by one and spread across the whole forest.

At 0800 the soldiers came out in a file and went in the direction where our red team was stationed.

I counted their numbers and fast processing helped me. I counted a total of 4000 ants leaving the mound.

The scout once again whispered me to say, “The soldiers also work to keep the colony saturated with food. But they will be hunting big and strong monsters unlike what we scavengers face.”

And once again he compared them to us and said, “Our soldiers also do it.”

"Okay boys, now it's free time. You can do whatever you want."

Team leader relayed her message to us and our official break came.

And in this free time I decided to use it to evolve my skills.

Looking through the skill list I found that I had Glare, Manners, Breath control, and Feather fall waiting to evolve.

I started with glare and the fun times began.

Glare has reached its maximum level

And is presenting you with the option to

Overwhelm or see through.

It had always been me who had gotten overwhelmed by the others and seeing how it was finally my turn to do something about it, my spirit rose.

*Ting*

[Skill: Eye of terror gained.]

Eye of terror: stun the other party for three seconds and affects them with weakness.

When in state of weakness they will have their stats decreased by 3%. Each level increases the weakness effect by 3%.

Was it a usefully skill? I tried it on the caterpillar sitting near me to see how useful it was and it shriveled like someone had poured salt over it.

Even my team member who wasn't too far away from me called out to me.

"Hey, what was that? You weren't attacked right?"

I told him it was okay and marveled at the skill I got out from a simple glare.

I wondered what I would get out from taunt. After all both of those skills were gained simultaneously and worked great with each other.

Next I choose feather fall and it evolved on its own into Glide. At first I kind of thought, these self evolving skills as cheap, but taking into account the number of times Feather fall had helped me, I was sure that the evolution would be a great asset to have too.

And the skill description proved me right too.

{Feather fall has evolved into Glide.}

Glide: Allows you to sour through the sky like a bird. You aren't able to actually able to fly, but glide helps you move around like a leaf in wind.

Consumption: 1Mp/min.

And it was one hell of a skill.

It description was rudimentary, but it conveyed everything which it needed to convey.

If feather fall was a skill which allowed me to descent slowly in turns of a sudden fall, then glide allowed me to gain control over my descent and change directions as I liked.

I wanted to try it out by jumping from the branch, but controlled my excitement and moved onto the next skill.

The next was breath control, and I for some reason had high expectations from it. Even my skill foreboding was saying that this was the skill that would define me or maybe not.

Breath control has reached its maximum level.

And is presenting you with the option to:

Blow or Conserve.

'Aren’t those actually the opposite of each other?’ If blow meant external use then Conserve probably meant some kind of external use of breath.

But my understanding about the word blow allowed me to see what it would lead too, and I happily choose it

*Ting*

[Skill: Air bullet gained.]

Air bullet: allows you to compress the all the air you have breathed and fire it into a single direction.

Every skill up allows you to have better control and increases the pressure you can apply on the air to be compressed.

Consumption: 1Mp/bullet

Was there any need to say what I had just gotten my hands upon?

And once again choosing the caterpillar as my target, I breathed as hard as I could, and activated breath which automatically compressed the air in my mouth, and opening which, a projectile the size of a small pebble slew away and past by the caterpillar without touching it.

The recoil sent my head hurling to the back and a shock spread across my body.

It struck the branch behind it and chipped away at the indestructible bark.

My eyes opened wide seeing the destruction it had caused, and the green caterpillar started crawling away from me.

"Pfft." A laugh escaped my mouth when I saw the caterpillar pouting with his read face while crawling away.

The scout asked me, what I was doing and I replied with silence.

"Just don't create any trouble. Okay."

Anyways, the last skill waiting for evolution was manners. And it was the skill I was least excited about.

{Manners has reached its maximum level}

And is presenting you with the option to be:

Courteous or Routine

*Sigh*

‘Giving me such big words without any explanations, the system is a bad girl.’ I thought, deliberated, and after much rigorous brainstorming came to the conclusion to simply choose the smaller and word of the choices given.

But the skill given by the choice made me jump up.

*Ting*

[Skill: Memorize gained.]

Memorize: Allows you to store one skill that can be activate at a later time without any preparation.

The number of skills stored depends upon the level.

1Mp/slot. Mana consumption doubles for every consecutive skill stored.

I had thought that manners would give me a useless skill, but breaking all the bonds it evolved into a pretty hardcore skill.

I noticed a translucent box which had appeared at the top left corner of my sight.

Though it was empty, a small description did hover near it, which perfectly told me what it was.

It was an empty skill slot. It was a small slot where I could see my stored skills.

'So, if I save my air bullet in the skill slot, then I won't need to prepare it?' I thought and once again took a big breath, and just as the concentrated ball of air formed inside my mouth I activated memorize, and the ball vanished.

At the same time an image corresponding to the bullet appeared in the slot, followed by a message which read,

[Air ball has been slotted.]

I didn't try the skill right there because it used mana, both for creating the air ball and for slotting it.

After all the two air balls and the slotting had already drained all of my mana, which I could do nothing about.

Next was the ant language skill but it only displayed a message and didn’t evolve.

Please reach the maximum level with nine more insect languages.

And by this time the black ant soldiers returned back to the mound dragging behind several small sized counterpart of the big frog I had seen on my return from the bee hive.

Our wait continued and by 1700, the scavengers started returning from their duties too.

The night came and it was going to pass silently, when I saw an ant creating a ruckus at the entrance to the mound.

I couldn’t see too clarity and activated Clarity, which made the view somewhat better.

{Clarity has risen to lv 8}

It wasn't anything special and only mildly intriguing at first, but the situation turned a whole Lot interesting when the ant started shouting something at the guards and the guards had to beat him to stop him from being a nuisance.

I called out to my team leader for her to see the spectacle and she answered with, "We are already watching."

But the small skirmish of sorts soon ended, when an ant that looked quite high ranked came running out from inside the mound and took the prisoner with him.

The scene did nothing other than to make us confused, and in question.

"A rogue?" I asked.

"Maybe mental." Vice captain laughed and laughed alone.

Nothing else happened and the rest of the night passed away uneventfully.

The next two days also passed in boredom.

I cultivated in all of my free time and increased my mana capacity from 3 to 7, while mana sense gained two levels.

Thought the enemy soldiers left the mound on each day at the same time, they didn't leave toward the same direction.

On the first day they went toward the North West. On the second day they went toward the green team and on the final day of our spying they went toward the squad leader’s team.

For some reason they didn't enter the forest and avoided it.

At the end of the third day we sent the report back to the headquarters, with the result that the enemies leave their mound sharply at eight in the morning and return six hours later.

And the next day our army arrived.