I exited my core space, a brilliant smile still plastered on my face.

“Did anything good happen?” Greta, who was the first one to look up from her bowl, asked.

“No, I’m just in a good mood.” I replied, making my way to the nearly empty pot.

How much time had passed? It’s always so hard to tell when I’m in the core.

“Oh, okay.” She went back to shoveling the soup into her mouth.

“So, what color did you choose?” Owen inquired. He was sitting right next to Greta, with Frank a few meters to the right.

“Azure.” I kept my answer brief as I was more focused on determining whether my enchantment had worked correctly or not.

I arrived in front of the pot and proceeded to pour another helping into my bowl. As soon as the delicious liquid touched its surface a brilliant azure began to cover the engraved dragons, even managing to tint the surroundings blue.

Nodding in satisfaction, I sat down next to Frank.

“Nice.” He remarked absentmindedly.

“Yeah.” I looked at his bowl. “Was there a reason you chose scarlet?” I tried to keep the conversation alive.

It would be interesting if he had a specific reason to do so, though I don’t really expect much. He’s still quite young after all. Nearly a child.

“Not really. It’s just that I always liked that color.” He stopped staring at his bowl and directed his gaze at me.

“I guess you had one if you are asking me like that.” The interest was plainly evident on his face.

“Well, you could say so.” I looked up, marveling at the beauty of the stars again. Sometimes I wish I had someone I could share my past life with who wouldn’t think I’m crazy.

Seeing that I wasn’t going to explain it, he shrugged and resumed eating.

The rest of the meal went by in a comfortable silence.

After watching Greta washing our dirty bowls and pot with smiles on our faces we finished packing up quickly.

I stood up and stretched, activating my mana vision while doing so. The others followed my example, their expressions showing that they didn’t like what was going to happen next.

Conjuring my bow and strapping it to my back, we started walking again. I was in the front with Owen and Greta protecting the sides and Frank being the rear guard.

Although I say it like that we went in a pretty loose formation due to the omnidirectional nature of the others senses. My mana vision traded that for increased accuracy, so I’m not really bothered by that.

“Do we really have to do this?” Owen complained.

“You know that time is of essence.” Frank replied, sending him an annoyed glare.

Owen sighed and resigned himself to his fate.

*Tap* *Tap*

Our feet softly burrowed into the ground with every step we took, the sounds they made nearly unnoticeable due to the crickets around us.

Occasionally a fearsome roar could faintly be heard from the direction of the mountains, thankfully meaning that the owners of these voices were very far away. Despite that, the mana fluctuations they emitted were like miniature suns that threatened to blind me.

How come that I can see the mana fluctuations of their attacks but not the beings they originated from? Given their monstrous power they should be just as blinding as their attacks.

While I was pondering I didn’t forget to regularly look around, inspecting the surroundings for a bright pink light, but the only things I found were a few dimmer ones loitering a few hundred meters away.

Aside from that the grass shone with an unusually bright green glow and the trees, which we encountered more frequently as we progressed, were even brighter. Though not to the level of being threatening, I made sure to keep an eye on them whenever we passed them.

If even superheated mass of gas can develop a consciousness, who says that a tree can’t?

The fact that we were in a ravine where there wasn’t even a speck of grass helped to calm me immensely when the mana levels of the vegetation started to rise the closer we got to the forest. It was certainly not normal, especially since plants tend to have minimal mana levels.

At the same time animals became more and more scarce, until the only ones we saw were far away.

What the hell is happening? Whatever it is, it’s influence doesn’t extend to the region that humans inhabit. Otherwise it would have been killed long ago.

So it is something native to this region? A plant monster perhaps?

“Guys, did you notice that there is something seriously wrong with the situation?” I asked. In the unlikely case they hadn’t, it should be better to inform them.

I turned around to see their expressions and noted that none of them seemed surprised by my words.

Greta rubbed her nose “The smell of plants has been becoming stronger and stronger over time, right? And I can’t really smell the presence of animals anymore.” She replied with a frown on her face.

“And there have been some strange sounds coming from our surroundings.” Owen added.

I frowned. Strange sounds?

Frank nodded at Owen’s words. “Yeah, it’s similar to that of an animal, but at the same time it isn’t.” he clarified.

If both of them are able to sense it, that would mean that something that we haven’t ever encountered is in the surroundings.

“Wait, it is coming closer!” Owens shouted and pointed at his right.

I looked around, seeing five massive but relatively dim pink lights moving towards our location. They vaguely had the shape of an ant, just far, far bigger than it should be. These ant-like things were at least 2 meter tall.

“It looks like a two meter big version of an ant, be careful.” I informed them of what I saw.

“What is an ant?” Owen quietly asked in a confused tone.

I wanted to slap myself at this blunder. Of course they don’t know what an ant is! I guess these gigantic beings are this world’s version of ants. Hopefully they aren’t as numerous as their counterparts in my old world, otherwise we are seriously screwed.

“It’s an insect, okay?” I whispered.

The ants were just a few meters away, their antennas constantly probing around.

“Let’s slowly move back, maybe they won’t attack us.” I suggested.

I drew my bow just in case and stepped slowly moved back. I could hear the others footsteps coinciding with mine as I watched the oversized ants move towards us.

When they reached the edge of the road of destruction, their antennas began to feel around the ripped out roots of the grass.

“I see what you mean now.” Frank grimly said.

Seeing that they would quickly catch up to us at this rate, I began aiming my bow at their direction.

One of the ants promptly climbed down, the others not taking long to follow it.

We quickly found ourselves eye to eye with the insects that still had hints of blood covering their pinchers.

As soon as they had solid ground under them they launched themselves at us. We responded by firing arrows at them, two of which hit two of the ants in their beady eyes, sinking deep into them.

The other two arrows managed to penetrate their tough looking carapaces and one embedded themselves in what I believe to be a shoulder and another inside a leg.

Though the ones hit gave high pitches wails from them, they didn’t stop advancing.

We moved back with even faster speed, drawing our bows again while doing so. We shot the arrows again, this time they were better aimed due to the insects moving in a straight line.

Now, all of them imbedded themselves in their eyes. Unfortunately though that didn’t seem to stop them either, no, rather than that they even became faster.

Volley after volley was fired at them, every shit hitting them at spots that should have hurt immensely. It wasn’t until I had shot twelve arrows that the first finally collapsed. The rest quickly followed, the injuries they had sustained were just too severe.

After the last one fell, we began to slowly approach its corpse, our close combat weapons ready to kill it another time if necessary.

As I deactivated my mana vision to get a better look at it, the first thing that I noticed was its unusual green blood that flowed out from its nearly obliterated eyes.

It was an extremely gross sight to look at, especially because it was an insect, causing me to avert my gaze. But when I did so I saw the other corpses, which were just as gruesome.

A sigh came out of the deepest recesses of my heart. Let’s get this over with quickly.

We went to a corpse each and retrieved the core from its head, being careful to avoid any blood splatters when cracking their skulls open. I nearly gagged when I started to rummage through their mushy brains to retrieve the cores, though I think I was the only one.

Greta however handled two, another course of action enforced due to her being unable of doing anything productive while preparing our meals.

She did so with a disgusted frown on her face and shot a few hateful glares at us after the deed was done, which I elegantly ignored.

Remembering that we were still in the operating range of their colony I shouted “Let’s get out of here quickly!” I started sprinting forward, not leaving them any time to reply.

They quickly caught up and we ran at a speed that we would be able to hold as a long as our channels would be able to handle the strain.

“Why are we running?” Owen arrived next to me.

“If my assumptions are correct these ants-” He gave me that confused stare again. “Insects live in colonies, which would mean that, firstly: We could possibly have hundreds of thousands of those beasts chasing us.

And secondly: That we are in their territory.”

I looked deeply into his eyes, showing him that the situation was dead serious.

He gulped in response, his steps unconsciously becoming more powerful and faster. Frank and Greta, who had listened to our brief conversation, also started accelerating.

I struggled to breath evenly, the mere thought of a whole nest of those beasts coming after me was enough to cause me to nearly piss my pants.

“Then why are going so slowly? We should be doing our best to get out of here as fast as possible!” Frank remarked after he had calmed down a bit.

He is right, who knows whether these ants can somehow detect that we had killed their brethren. Even if they can’t, I don’t feel safe so deep within their territory.

We didn’t talk after that anymore as we were more occupied with finding a balance between mana consumption and our fear of being pursued.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to Teachers lessons on balance all those years ago.

Minutes passed, but the tension didn’t lessen up one bit. No, if anything it worsened over time as we began to see more and more of those beasts as we advanced. Fortunately, none of them noticed us so we were able to progress without any problems besides our channels slowly beginning to ache from the continuous strain.

Suddenly four brightly glowing spots appeared in my vision. When I looked closer, I noticed that they seemed to be even bigger versions of the already gigantic normal ones I had seen until now. And far more powerful too, if I’m not seeing things.

We stopped in unison, but seemingly at the same time those brightly glowing ants started to rush into our direction.

Shit! How were they able to sense us from this distance?