Chapter 116

  Written by Bayzo Albion

  I pressed on along my marked trail, knuckles white around my knife hilts. My heart beat steady and deep, like a drum in the stifling quiet. My thoughts were crystal clear, laser-focused: *One by one... it'll be easier. Safer.*

  But Fate, that eternal trickster, had other ideas. At the edge of a clearing, amid the crunch of dry branches and fallen leaves, I spotted two at once.

  Massive, obsidian-black, their exoskeletons shimmering with a blue sheen in the dappled light piercing the canopy. The smaller one methodically probed the leaf litter with its antennae, scouting invisible paths. The larger, a seasoned guardian, stood sentinel, its bulky head swiveling slowly, scanning the surroundings. An aura of raw menace radiated from it, thick and palpable.

  Instinct screamed to retreat, but calculation won out. *If the enchantment hides my scent... I can separate them. Lure one away.*

  I stepped forward boldly, almost defiantly. A dry twig snapped under my boot with a crack like gunfire.

  In that instant, the guardian's antennae jerked, and it whirled toward the sound. Its faceted eyes—clusters of tiny lenses—locked onto me. Mandibles parted with a sickening click, revealing the inner maw, and it charged, bulldozing through the undergrowth.

  "Damn!" I snarled, instinctively raising my knives into a defensive stance.

  I parried its first lunging snap with a blade, deflecting the mandible aside in a clash of metal on chitin. But the creature's power was overwhelming. It didn't stop, slamming into me like a battering ram. I was hurled backward, tumbling across the ground, barely dodging the mandibles that thudded into the earth behind me, uprooting a clump of dirt and roots.

  Adrenaline surged through my veins like bitter fire. I scrambled up, side aching, and drove a knife into the joint of its foreleg. The beast let out a piercing, soul-chilling screech and sideswiped me like a raging bull. Air whooshed from my lungs in a ragged gasp; I flew back, crashing against a pine trunk. The world blurred, dark spots dancing in my vision. Somewhere distant, I heard her startled cry.

  *Get up! Now or never! Get up before it calls the whole horde!* My inner voice roared, sweeping away the pain with panicked urgency.

  I pushed off the tree and lunged, channeling every ounce of rage, fear, and residual mana into the assault. One knife stabbed into the crevice between thoracic segments. The other targeted the base of the head, seeking any vulnerability beneath the armor. The ant thrashed wildly, its legs flailing in spasms, dousing me in sticky hemolymph, but I clung on, plunging the blades in again and again until a cold, indifferent notification flashed:

  System: Victory. You have slain [Soldier Ant]. Experience +200.

  I collapsed to my knees, gulping air that refused to fill my battered lungs. Agony lanced through my body. A jagged gash burned on my side, just above the hip, courtesy of those mandibles. My hands shook so violently the knives nearly slipped from my grasp.

  Only then did I look up. The second ant, the smaller one, remained rooted in place. Unmoving. Its antennae twitched erratically, sensing the vibrations of its comrade's death, but it took no step forward or back. It was a blind scout, reliant on its guardian.

  A hysterical fury trembled through me. I rose unsteadily, like an executioner, and approached. With a swift, almost mechanical thrust, I buried a blade under its head, into the soft tissue. Again. It crumpled silently, offering no resistance.

  System: Victory. You have slain [Scout Ant]. Experience +99.

  I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, feeling cold sweat mingle with grime and blood, trickling down my cheeks. The bitter taste of fear and triumph lingered on my tongue.

  "Barely... barely made it," I rasped, my voice breaking into a wheeze.

  Only now, staring at the two lifeless forms, did a simple, horrifying truth sink in: my neat plan of "one at a time" wouldn't always hold. Reality wasn't a chessboard—it was a filthy, bloody slaughter. Sometimes Fate tossed you two at once. And for each such "gift," you'd pay in pain, terror, and blood. The next pair might be your last.

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  We didn't linger. I limped onward, teeth clenched against the fire in my side, pulling her along away from the clearing. With each step, my breathing steadied, fatigue giving way to reflection.

  *Why was the second one blind?.. It stood there, antennae flailing, but never attacked. Only the one charged me. And it was far deadlier.*

  I paused, leaning against a tree, eyes closed as the pieces fell into place.

  *So that's it. Alone, they're vulnerable. Their strength isn't in individuals—it's in the swarm. Together, they form a system. Maybe magic. Maybe a shared mind. That's when they become a true monster.*

  I glanced at my bloodied knives and smirked.

  "Turns out, singly, they're blind," I muttered. "But together, they see everything."

  My companion, walking beside me, tilted her head slightly, as if listening, but said nothing.

  I gripped the hilts tighter.

  *There it is. The key. I can't fight the horde head-on. But I can chip away at it, piece by piece. Pull the beast's teeth one at a time. Kill them like a chess master removing pieces from the board. Slowly. But surely.*

  I stepped forward, and the forest closed around us once more.

  We pushed deeper into the forest. The air thickened with rot and a sickly sweet sting that churned my stomach, while jagged beams of light turned the world an eerie green. Every step sent pain through my body—my leg dragged, the gash in my side throbbed—but the hunt burned hotter than the pain, searing weakness away.

  My focus narrowed to the goal. Each fallen ant wasn’t just a kill—it was proof. The System’s cold numbers became fuel, each death another step forward. With every strike, I grew stronger, sharper—less breakable than I’d been before.

  "We need to turn back," her voice cut through the haze, soft but sharp, like a blade slicing through the roar in my ears.

  I heard the words, but my mind, drunk on adrenaline and the mania of progression, dismissed them as noise. Inside, an intoxicating arithmetic spun endlessly: just ten more like that, and I'd be transformed. Stronger, faster, invincible. Twenty more, and no one in that cursed city could look down on me again. All those who laughed, who turned away... they'd cease to matter.

  "You're hurt," she said again, closer now. Her tone was as cool as ever, but for the first time, a flicker of something real crept in—not fear, but impatience, like a storm brewing beneath the surface. "If you keep pushing like this, you'll bleed out before you find your next target."

  I halted abruptly, whipping around to face her. My neck cracked from the strain, and fresh agony exploded in my side.

  "Die?" I let out a bitter laugh, wincing as a spasm twisted my face. "I'm alive because I keep going. Because I don't stop. Stopping is death. Don't you get that?"

  She met my gaze without blinking, her eyes flat as a storm-still lake, yet bottomless in their depth.

  "That's not perseverance. That's madness. Self-destruction."

  I gripped the hilts of my knives until my knuckles turned white, old scars on my palms aching in protest.

  "Madness? Maybe. But this madness is making me stronger. It's already changing me!" I shook my head, flinging beads of sticky sweat from my brow. "If I turn back now... I'll be stuck as I was. Weak. Worthless. And that would be worse than dying."

  She stepped closer—not threatening, but resolute. The air between us hummed with tension.

  "True strength comes not from charging headlong into danger, but from knowing when to retreat, so you can fight another day."

  Something inside me cracked and boiled over. A hot, blinding rage surged from my core.

  "You don't understand anything!" I hissed, my voice cracking into a ragged whisper laced with hatred. "To you, this is just another fight, tactics, survival! To me, it's my only chance! My chance to stop being nothing! Do you hear me? NOTHING!"

  She fell silent again. But her quiet wasn't submissive or frightened. It was thick, viscous like tar, and merciless as a death sentence. In it, I could read everything: her grasp of my drive, her utter rejection of my path. She saw through me—my fear, my vanity, all laid bare.

  I turned away sharply, grinding my teeth against the pain and fury, and limped onward, refusing to slow. The forest ahead thickened into an impenetrable wall of undergrowth, and through the pounding blood in my ears, I could hear it clearly now—the familiar, grinding scrape. Somewhere close, in this verdant gloom, more ants waited. More experience. More pain. And I marched straight toward it.

  I spotted it first. A massive soldier ant, twice the size of the ones we'd faced before. Its chitinous armor was scarred and rugged, almost like weathered stone. The mandibles, sharp and curved, gleamed in the dim light like polished scimitars. But it stood motionless, its head swaying faintly, antennae twitching to catch vibrations in the air. It was blind—and in its isolation, there was no vulnerability, only a feral, uncontainable fury of a creature severed from its swarm.

  "Lone one," I muttered, licking my cracked, dry lips. "Easy prey."