Entering the cave or the farm, I looked around and saw tunnels, many of them. The farm was like a sponge with hundred of holes.

And while I was looking around, marveling at the architect which the termite workers had created, David came by my side and spoke,

“The walls are of darker shade than the ones in our home. Do you know what that means?”

I actually had no clue about the walls. They looked the same to me, but according to him, there was a deeper meaning to the color than what we understood.

“These walls are darker due to the presence of the toxins in their saliva have.” This was news to me. I knew I was able to use poisonous attacks when I needed, but my saliva wasn’t poisonous! And neither did I want it to gain any such attributes.

Then he looked at the kids and reminded them to be alert when fighting the termites.

“Your bodies are not strong enough to handle the poison, so use your brains ad handle them with care.”

It scared Tiny and the others knowing that their lives could be in danger. And the thing is I hadn’t told them what we were there for.

So When Bill asked me why e needed to fight the termites I told him I had found a way to help them level up and this was their reaction.

“No way!”

“We can level up? Then does that mean we can become rankers too!?”

“Big brother is that true?”

“How could you say that Bill? Do you think he’ll lie to us?”

“Okay, Okay, alright. No need to get so heated over nothing.” I told them that although the skill said that it would disturb experience to everyone, but I needed to test whether it would work on Novices too or not.

Though when I told them that it might not work their faces lost their excited expression, but they didn’t fight again.

And Bill even thanked me for trying to help them get stronger and it felt good. Like being rewarded big time for the small effort I had put in for their sake.

Though Tiny was still scared about the poison, which I then ensured im then no poison will work on them.

“And why is that?” David asked me feeling amused at my behavior.

“Because [Heal] can purify poisons too.”

“Are you for real?” David lost his cool there for a minute and returned back to his usual self, but seeing the faces of Tiny and the other, he returned back to act his part of a wise leader.

“Ahem… Well if you say that it’s okay then it’s good and all, but you all should still be attentive when killing them. After all, prevention is better than cure. And who knows out of bad luck someone might die before your brother is able to use his skill.”

“Yeah…” That was like a wakeup call to me.

‘Have I become too dependent on my skills and am forgetting common sense?’ It was probably true too. Because I would have never would have said anything like ‘I can cure you, so go and get bitten by termites’ before.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that. I was wrong.” I apologized and it made David frown. He probably thought that he had made me look bad in front of my brothers, so he tried to get things rolling in his way by complimenting me, saying I am a great ant and what not. And I had to forcefully stop him from embarrassing me.

“Just stop your sad story” and you.” pointing at me Mink asked, “Now tell us what we should do?”

And we were going to do what were supposed to.

“Well, first is to see whether they can gain experience or not.”

“So? What should we do?”

Seeing how eager he was I decided to give him the most important task.

“You can go and bring us a termite for a little experiment and bring him alive.”

“Does he need to be kicking too?”

“Haha… no, just bring him alive and try not to hurt him too much.”

“O-okay.” And that he ran into one of the tunnels.

“Does he even know where to find them?” I mumbled and David who was looking at the spectacle spoke with a chuckle.

“Everyone knows about that, other than the first timers. And don’t worry, they are held in cages so he won’t need to hurt it too much.”

That was news to me. “Then you should have said sooner. We could have directly gone to their cages.”

But according to him that wasn’t possible.

“There are no free meals here. Fighting termites is like a ritual here. Only those who are able to kill one are allowed to join the army. And if somehow the termite wins, we release it. This promise of being freed upon winning is what keeps them motivated and under control.”

I asked him whether they really release the termites upon winning, but he smirked and I understood that such wasn’t the case.

“You probably understand that we don’t release them right? It’s just a way to keep them calm and contained. You know it’s always a sight to see the termites happily cheering for the being brought out for the challenge.”

Hearing about it was a shocker, but contemplating and understanding what it truly showed bout an ant’s nature was what gave me the chills.

Not only did it show how sadistic we ants really are, but also that most ants don’t care about anything other the prosperity of their own colony.

*Sigh*

Sighing I cleared my mind of these oppressive thoughts and went onwards with the mission.

I told them to accept the request I am sending them and enter in a party with me.

“Okay.”

“Sure.”

“Whatever you say big brother.”

And they accepted my request.

You have formed a party with four nameless ants. Please choose a party name. It can be changed afterwards.

“What now.” Tiny asked me and I asked them to decide on a name for our party. And the names they came up with… I have nothing to say about them.

“How about The fantastic five”

“Hero and the four musketeers.”

“Best ants of the world.”

“The blasters.”

And thankfully we had Bill with us and we rolled with his suggestion in the end.

You have created party – Brothers forever. You are the leader of this party.

You will have experience shared between each other equally. No matter who kills it, the experience will be shared equally. All party members need to be in a meter radius of the leader for it to take effect.

“That’s interesting.” I mumbled and David, who was standing near me, heard and asked me what I meant.

“Well for one, according to the notification, the experience will be equally divided amongst the party members. Means unlike before, when we were distributed experience based on our contribution to the hunt, now we will be distributed equal experience no matter who kills what.”

And it made his eyes open in astonishment.

“That’s…”

“Amazing right?”

But he had different views. He was able to come up with a weakness which I didn’t think about.

“Although this skill of yours helps others, but don’t make party with strangers.”

When I asked him why, he said, “You know most of the time we fight to get stronger and that is the reason why we put so much effort in fights too. But what happens when the result of all the effort is nothing. You get equal reward to the one who did nothing. Won’t this make them hesitate and think, ‘What am I putting my life in danger?’ sure there are heroes who fight to protect, but not everyone is a hero you know.”

And this is why David was the team leader of team explorers and Mink who was the craziest of hem and probably the strongest too was not.

“So are you saying I should form party with those whom I have absolute confidence in?”

“Right.”

It was a good suggestion and I decided to keep his words in mind for the next time I’ll have to form party with stranger.

And right then Tiny got bored of waiting and called me.

“Big brother?”

I asked him what now and I told him that now we would wait for Dark to return, but before I could say more I felt Him returning with [Perception].

“Ah! Speak of the devil.”

And we saw him returning with three plum termites in tow. And it surprised me seeing the termites were not skin and bones like I had thought they would be, but actually looked healthier than most of us ants.

Their abdomen was almost fully stretched and their white skin was shining like pearly. I have to say, I had never seen such beautiful looking termites before.

Dark placed them down in front of me and went toward David without saying anything.

For one his expressions didn’t look too good and two there were signs of struggle on the body; like one didn’t have three legs and one had no antennas. Only the last one looked… complete.

I kept on looking at his retreating back as he called everyone to him and stared telling them something.

It intrigued and hurt me a little hurt seeing that he didn’t call me in their group meeting. I was also a part of their team after all.

“Anyways, let’s see whether you lot can gain experience or not.”

And I got back to the reason I had come there for.

I appraised the three termites and they turned out to be quite good.

All of them were rank 1 with levels, 7, 13 and 10.

It made me raise my eyebrows actually and thought out loud, “How are they holding these guys captive?”

I looked at Tiny and the others and saw that they were looking at the termite with a bit of fear in their eyes. This was the first time they would be killing someone after all. I didn’t want their first to be these corpses, but letting them fight with live and conscious rankers was like sending them directly to their deaths.

‘Well, let’s see whether they can gain experience or not before anything else.’

“So who will have the first go?”

Actually with a [Party systems] impartial method, it didn’t matter who killed, because the end result was going to be the same. Even I could have killed the termites and helped them level up, but I wanted them to know how it feels to kill somebody.

I knew Bill would come forward and he did step forward, exactly like how I had hoped he would.

“Let me do it first brother.”

“Sure.” I glanced once at Tiny and saw that although his eyes were wavering and his expressions were distorting, he was still looking directly at Bill and the termites without blinking.

“So how should I do it??” Bill asked me, and I told them the weak points of most insects.

“You see, there is a weak point which every insect has; their abdomen.”

The rest of the body is covered with exoskeleton other than the lower part of the abdomen. It’s the softest and the biggest target which every insect has other than their eyes and antennas. The others methods include cutting their necks, pulling out the antennas, gouging the eyeballs out. But your mandibles are neither sharp nor hard enough for tear through their exoskeleton, so you can stat with the abdomens.

Bill sat behind the termite with the lowest level of seven and started chewing through.

I didn’t knew what kind of method Dark had used to knock them out, but it was amazing seeing the termite not even flinching, even though it was being eaten alive.

*Karch*Karch*Karch*

Because his jaw wasn’t hard yet, his chewing produced a horrible sound, which made Tiny flinch.

Bu instead of cowering like I thought he would, he instead went forward and joined Bill in killing the termite. And following him Bills followers also joined in.

Five minutes later, the termite finally took his last breaths and died.

[You party killed a lv 7 termite]

{5 exp gained.}

And I could only laugh emptily.

I checked my status and saw that I was still far from leveling up.

But this wasn’t about me, and just then I heard the excited voices of Tiny and the others coming from in front of me. I looked and saw Tiny and one of bills goons glowing in a golden glow.

“They are evolving, already? What is happening?” forget about getting experience they were evolving as if 5 Experience was enough for them.

“Whoa!”

“Big brother, what is happening?”

“Holy shit, it worked!”

But as I was getting worked up thinking about how two of them had leveled up from killing one termite, David came up to me with seriousness I had never seen him show before.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to stop you now.”

“What happened!?” I asked.

“I don’t actually know what’s happening, but I think…”

And as I looked at his face, he replied with an urgent tone of voice,

“I think the termites are rebelling.”