I opened my mandibles, and keeping the ends straight, I pierced the head of the worker ant in front of me, who couldn’t handle the sudden change in the situation.

*Bam*

My mandible pierced through his head like it was made of dirt and my momentum lifted his body off the ground and he collided with the ants behind him.

{Push has risen to lv 8}

“Gwack!!”

“OREYA!!”

I jerked my head to take out my pincers from his head, and noticed three workers jumping on me.

I panicked slightly, but then a cocktail of concentration, fast processing, haste, clarity and willpower activated and made my world slow down.

{Fast processing has risen to lv 7}, {Clarity has risen to lv 10}, {Willpower has risen to lv 7}

{Because clarity has risen to lv 10, Night vision is available to you.}

Night Vision: Now the low light of night won’t hold you back from perceiving all that you want to.

I saw my team leader and vice leaders coming from my side, snatching two of those airborne ants, and pulling them away from me.

The last one opened his mandibles wide with an enraged face and descended upon me, but he missed his mark and his head collided with mine.

*Ting*

[Skill: Head butt gained.]

His body descended upon me, and he grunted as he fell.

“No!!!”

Team leader hurriedly snatched the head of the ant she was facing, and ran toward me with her face filed with worry, when she saw the ant over my body stand up.

She came near, but then stopped when she saw that the enemy had already died, but the method or rather my leg which had pierced its chest stunned her.

“What the!?”

But she did have much time to take care of me. Seeing her being distracted, three workers had suddenly pounced on her and were trying to keep her busy.

I on the other hand checked my leg which had literally turned into a spike, and pierced the body of the worker ant.

{Spike has risen to lv 3}, {Mana Clad has risen to lv 3}

I retracted my leg and marveled at how sharp it had turned just from using the skill spike.

I let go and my leg once again turned back to normal.

Grinning, I looked at my team members fighting off with the enemy black ant’s, and stood up.

I sprinted toward my team leader who was having a rough time fighting now six ants on her own, and stopped running.

I slid on the floor toward one of the ants attacking her and extended my leg toward his head.

{Slide has risen to level 10}

{Slide has reached its maximum level}

And is presenting you with the option to:

Attack or defend.

I snorted at the options given and continued with my attack.

*Ting*

[Skill: Tackle gained.]

Tackle: Tackle requires technique and allows one disrupts their opponent’s center of gravity, and take him down. It’s a technique rather than skill and every level up give more knowledge.

“Watch out!” Someone shouted, but it was already late by then.

“Let’s see what tackle can do.” And activated the skill, but instead of having any physical or magical effect, it rather gave me knowledge about how I could subdue that ant who had his defenseless back facing me.

Using the momentum from my slide, I held onto his abdomen, and pulled him down.

His legs couldn’t handle the sudden pull and his body crumbled.

{Tackle has risen to lv 2}

My spike turned leg cleanly pierced the workers head, as it fell directly, or rather I made it fall directly over it, and only his lifeless body dropped on the ground, as I retracted my spike.

But my leg also returned to normal, as if the transformation wasn’t permanent or able to hold on for too long.

The worker on my left hurriedly retreated, but a fireball handled his case, and I, stepping over his body walked toward my fourth kill of the day.

“Ahh!” It screamed and hurriedly retreated, but I pounced on him anyways.

He hurriedly closed his mandible which out of my bad luck was directly around my antennas.

{Mandible mastery has risen to lv 9}

Thank god, I had noticed the sudden movement, and moved my antennas back in time. Otherwise, it would have been bad. Being shunned and made to leave the colony bad.

Turning bald and dying a virgin bad.

{Faith has risen to lv 9}

Anyways, angered at the ant for retaliating and not dying quickly, I lost my reason. Greed started acting inside my soul and for some reason fury activated on its own.

.

.

.

{Fury has risen to lv 9}, {Willpower has risen to lv 8}, {Mandible mastery has risen to lv 10}, {Spike has risen to lv 5}, {Concentration has risen to lv 8}, {Martial arts mastery has risen by lv 4}

{Mandible mastery has reached its maximum level and has evolved into intermediate Mandible mastery (1).}

*Ting*

[Skill: Mend wave gained.]

Mend wave: Closing your mandibles will release a shock wave which will not only push everyone around you away, but also deal upon them blunt damage.

The damage and power depends upon the skill level.

Cost: 3Mp.

The sound of them constant skill up messages woke me up and I looked up, seemingly lost about all that had happened. The effect of fury turned off and I noticed something hanging from my mandibles.

It was the head of the ant I was fighting with. I looked around and saw that its body was lying before me, completely ransacked.

Its legs were not cut, but had been brutally torn off from his body, and were lying on the side. Its body had hole the size of my legs in it, and my legs were drenched in his fluids.

I gulped and once again looked at the head hanging from my mandibles and saw that my mandibles were piercing its eyes.

“Wha-!”

I threw its decapitated head away, and crawled back from the carnage which my tired body and my low mana told me was created by me.

I looked back and saw the only enemy ant left alive looking at me in dread. His body was shaking feverously and he was holding onto my vice captains legs as his only hope.

Even my team mates acted stiff, when I faced them.

“Where is the queen’s quarters?” Team leader asked the ant, but it didn’t answer, and when he did answer, he only said, “I don’t know.”

“Chh! Kill him.”

And vice leader took his head off.

Team leader looked at me for a second and sighed.

“Let’s go.” She said and we started walking one again.

We walked for another ten minutes and for some reason didn’t come across any enemy. The mound … appeared too empty and desolate to be considered an ant colony.

We did come across some teams of the enemy ants running towards us, but other than giving an ominous feeling they did do anything else.

We encountered no soldier other than the first five or so and only killed workers and novice ants on the way.

In an another skirmish, one ant finally said some something before dying, but I still think that he should have rather kept his mouth shut. That would have given him a painless death.

“Heee… Haha, you are all dead. You all only have a little time left to live. Kill as many as you can because soon you all will be dead too.” He said and vice leader stung him enough times to make him go into an epileptic shock.

His shouts and cries easily explained to us how much he was suffering, but no one pitied him. After all he had brought it upon himself.

He was killed to stop him from polluting our ears.

Though our team did feel the shudders when we heard those words, but we still kept on moving forward, and then the exit of the tunnel finally came.

My perception picked up thousands of ants in the huge cavern at the end of the tunnel and I stopped.

The other stopped and looked at me, and I told my team leader about my findings.

“Is that true?” She asked and affirmative, I replied

She then asked our scout to check whether what I said was true or not.

And giving a salute he slowly and silently crept toward the exit.

We waited for him and a minute later he came back.

“There really are ants there, but it’s safe. Let’s go.”

Upon exiting the tunnel we saw that there really were thousands of ants in the cavern and even more ants were coming from the various tunnels at the front and the sides.

I shuddered at the mere thought of facing so many enemies together, but then I noticed that all of them were our allies. I even saw our captain discussing with the other captains in the middle of the group.

Our scout went forward and picked one soldier to ask him what was happening, but other than cursing he didn’t explain much.

“What the fuck do I know? We have been waiting for the last ten minute for captains to do something about this situation, but they haven’t come up with a solution yet.”

The scout returned back with nothing new to address.

“Looks like only connections work in stressful times.” and saying that our team leader started walking toward her uncle or rather our brute captain.

I saw her jumping around him like a little kid and she conversed or rather interrogated him for ten whole minutes, before he made her return.

I saw our captain smiling warily after she left him. He sighed and once again got his attention on the matter at hand.

She came back and we asked her what was happening and she said, “No one knows. They say this mound is weird. You see all of these tunnels from where the ants are coming out from are the paths that we took to move forward.”

“What do you mean?” Vice commander asked tilting his head.

‘Is he trying to be cute?’ I thought.

“Humph, I mean this is the last room and all the tunnels end’s up here.”

I asked her, then where was the queen, and she said that everyone was trying to find her too.

We stayed standing there for a minute before team leader spoke, “Standing around does nothing other than to waste time. Let’s try to help our captain and find some clues.”

We nodded her heads and spread across the cavern. I also moved alone to see if I could find anything useful and noticed that the roof was too high. The cavern was more like a pit, rather than a room. And once again I noticed that the cavern looked newly dug out.

“Actually, what purpose does this room even serve?” I mumbled.

I brainstormed to think the reason and the only conclusion could come to was that we had been tricked, and that the mound wasn’t here.

Calming my panicking mind, I activated inspection, weakness tracking, Perception, and even sensitive hearing, but I found nothing.

{Sensitive hearing has risen to lv 8}

Sighing I looked up once again and prayed to god to help us, and as if he was prepping me for the upcoming future, something useful happened.

{Faith has risen to lv 10}, {Weakness tracking has risen to lv 10}

{Both Faith and Pity have reached their maximum levels}

And are evolving into …

*Ting*

{Skill: Heal gained.}

Heal: Can heal injuries by converting mana into divine power.

Effectiveness increases with level increase.

Cost: 2Mp/10Hp.

{Weakness tracking has reached its maximum level}

And is presenting you with the option to:

Record or retaliate

I sighed and thought to myself, was there even a need to ask my choice between such clear cut options.

“I choose to record.”

*Ting*

[Skill: Record gained.]

Record: Allows you to record the autonomy, biology, and even the experience of the entities you kill.

The more you kill the easier it become for you to kill. Increase 10% damage for every 10, 100, 1000… members of the same species that you kill.

And then my perception caught something.

I looked up to see what that thing was, and upon activating clarity I saw an ant head peeking from the roof.

It wasn’t actually peeking from the roof, but upon further inspection with clarity it turned out that there was space between the walls and the ceiling for ant to stay and there were ants there.

{Inspection has risen to lv 5}, {Perception has risen to lv 14}

At first I thought that maybe I was hallucinating, but when my eyes met with one and it hurriedly hid back in the groove my eyes bulged out and a shiver racked on my spine.

I hurriedly moved past all the ants and toward our captain to tell him we were about to be ambushed, but I was a tad bit too late.

*Sshshsh*

For my perception and everyone’s reaction, those various ‘Ah’s’ and curses told me that something was happening.

And following the others I once again looked above and saw that the whole Ceiling was coming down!

“Fuck!” I cried and ran for my life.