I turned to take one last look at the seer and found her looking at me.

“What are you?” I heard her say in my mind.

Unanswered questions are the worst thing to be remembered by, but the seer didn’t exactly think like me. She probably found solace in mystery and excitement, looking at us, sitting at a high pedestal made from wishes and dreams and hopes of others. Like us. Otherwise, she would have waited for me to answer instead of unfolding her wings and flying away.

She wasn’t the only one who was left wondering. I would have like to learn her methods too.

“It’s unfortunate.” I just didn’t have a method of stealing her ways. I wish I did. Though, I did have a way of finding her again if I ever wanted to. My [Map] and [Record] were also mysterious in their own ways.

{Record has risen to lv 10}

[Record’s special ability: Capture is unlocked]

[Capture: Allows you to record an image of your object of interest on the map with one look.]

“Come on now. No need to get all emotional on your first meeting with her my friend. Let’s go before captain yells out again.” Pyro tried to scrap a layer of amusement from my reaction. I simply jumped off the flower to give him something to think about, just to get a reaction out of him. It worked out great.

“What the…?”

“Hey, come back here!”

I heard behind me as I quickly went past them and cushioned my fall with a feather of wind upon reaching the ground. Although I already had [Glide] -which was the evolved version of [Feather fall]- here I was trying to learn more about my skill and the best way to use them.

If there was something I had learned from the expanding funnel of death, it was the importance of using the right skill at the right time. Every skill has its pros and cons. Glide was simply not suitable for jumping to feel that rush of excitement. It was best used for sightseeing or to descend carrying a heavy load. Otherwise, feather fall was still the best skill to use, if one wanted to reach the ground in the shortest amount of time and survive to tell the tale, that is.

Another thing, their expressions upon seeing my suicide jump was priceless. It made pyro so aghast, he didn’t talk to me after arriving on the ground. David reprimanded me for breaking away from the team. While Dark tapped my back with his antennae, saying, “Now that will keep his loud mouth shut for some time.”

[Blunt resistance] increased in by one level and that’s that, but it was already sitting at lv 24, so that simple increase meant a lot in terms of stats because resistances only provided stats upon evolving.

{Blunt resistance has risen to lv 25}

{+ 1Endurance.}

{Blunt resistance has evolved into High blunt resistance.}

{Wind resistance has risen to lv 2}

Setting the notifications aside, I went forward to walk beside David. I had some questions to ask him. The whole disaster thing was still bugging me. I just wanted to know why we had to go through so much hardship just to hear ‘It has left the region’.

“What’s a monthly disaster captain?” I asked David, walking beside him as we moved north of our previous destination and gained distance from the sunflower.

He gave me a deep, scrutinizing look before he dropped his head and solemnly replied, “It’s the calamity which all ant colonies face. It strikes every month and robs us of our precious friends and colleagues.”

I guess, he could tell what I wanted to ask, because he followed with, “We have to get in touch with the winged seer's in order to know when it will strike next.”

“Can’t we defend against it?”

“No…” He said laughing weakly.

“We can’t fight it. We can only run away and hide; abandon colony until it passes. That’s the only way. That’s the only way.”

He then asked me to go back to my position and I had to reluctantly leave- even though my mind was still brewing dark and bubbling inceptions of linked bodies with great depths to their concepts.

Though David didn’t explain in detail, I was still able to pick out one thing from our conversation and the others silence; it was the knowledge that this disaster was a living creature. It was a monster with a vendetta against ants.

I say I picked up, but I couldn’t even begin to understand the dread which my colleague's silence hid in its rippling notes.

I was still a rookie with shallow experience. I thought I knew all about death and understood the pain of losing someone precious. But I hadn’t even begun to see the world. I was naïve and childish. And that’s why I couldn’t see the hint of darkness, the shuddering fear which the disasters hold had cast on the mind of my team members.

They had lived to tell the tale of it and they didn’t dare to say a word. Their actions spoke louder than their words. I just didn’t have the experience to understand the meaning behind their quiet. Hence, I changed the target to Genma and tried to find the answers from him.

“Have you seen this disaster?”

“No.”

“Oh…” I felt disappointed hearing his answer.

But being a friend of old, he spun a tale in order to fill my curiosity.

“We… me and Minnie… we were on a mission outside with our team when the disaster struck last time. So I didn’t get to face it with my friends. We lost one of our members to it though because he was injured and was resting at the colony.”

“Oh…” Then it struck me, “Wait… then doesn’t it mean….”

“Yes, you were given his position.”

“Is that also why the security was so tight during those days?”

“You can say that. We didn’t lose many this time, but the damages were still huge. They teach you these things during your zero days, but you were already up and moving at that time.” Shyly I Looked away from his eyes as he continued the tale. “The disaster is not called disaster just for a single reason. Even after the disaster passes, the next few days are considered critical because during this time the colony is at its weakest and many opportunist hunters eagerly wait for this time to attack. The black enemy ants also saw the chance and attacked us. Although we survived; thanks to you.” He happily told me and rubbed my head with his antennas.

Yet, I didn’t hear his last words. I was already panicking inside. I was actually almost three weeks old during this time. Meaning, it was time for the disaster to strike again. I peered long and hard at David’s wide back. Our conversation allowed me to have insights into David’s state of mind.

Our team was the only team of explorers in our colony. We also were the only ones who would resist the pit hunters charm and reach the seer. And the weight of getting the information about the disaster back to the colony was entirely on David because he was our leader.

Only now did I begin to see the weight that he carried. His reason behind the constant urge to walk faster; his decision of letting Genma die if it meant getting to the seer before she flew away; it all made sense now. For him, “The colony matters the most.” I muttered.

{Knowledge has risen to lv 11}

“Yes. You are right.” Pyro intertwined. “Our lives belong to the colony.” I hadn’t heard such calm from his voice before. He looked tired, yet brimming with a boundless sense of belonging at the same time.

I could hear his sense of responsibility from his words, and also his reason. He, no, none was there, fighting against giant beasts or traveling through death zones for their own benefits. Even the scavengers, the harvesters, and the soldiers, back home were doing their best for the colony. It was home. And it depended on us to keep thriving.

“Will you two stop talking and get a leg? We have to get to the other side of the tunnel before sunset. You don’t want to roam these meadows during the night.”

“Yes, yes, we are coming,” Genma yelled and gestured me to follow him. It was nice to see him displaying such confidence. I was truly happy for him. But this new tension strewn through my mind was hard to forget.

Walking through the ancient maze of foul leaves and decomposing brown bark, I saw different kind of insects roaming around us. Some were smaller than me, some about my size, but most of them were humongous: Insects with horns over their heads and wings on their back. Pristine mineral shells adorned their back, shining in a monochromic wave of colors. They were flying tanks.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Those are the horned beetles. They don’t like interruption when they are drinking flower nectar. Otherwise, they are composed of insects and keep much to themselves.” Pyro told me upon sensing my hesitation.

“Alright,” David stopped. “Don’t create any noise and move silently. We are in the hoppers territory now. Stay vigilant.”

Following this orders, we became silent. I even activated [Silent steps] and started using [3-D maneuver] in order to create an edge, also to increase my control.

Soon the light coming from the canopy of grass blades and the umbrella of shrubs and herbs diminished, indicating we were reaching our time limit. We found ourselves shadowed in a darkening wilderness with unknown vigilante’s waiting for us in the pits below or the grass above.

It took us a long, silent walk, and excruciatingly slow fifteen minutes to reach our destination, but it was enough time for my stamina preservation to level up and reach high stamina preservation, and for high mana regeneration to increase by one level.

{Stamina preservation has evolved into high Stamina preservation}

{+1Constitnution.}

“There it is,” David said from the front, keeping his voice low. “The tunnel,”

“We are finally here. I thought I was going to die.” Pyro took a breath of relief.

I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about this tunnel because everyone was concentrating on maintaining the silence, but a glance at it told me there was nothing special about it. It was just another hole in the ground. Although we were close, we hadn’t reached our destination yet. The only problem was that the tunnel was shrouded by grass shade and pillars of the towering green stalks. Meaning, it was the perfect place for a hunter to play hide and seek.

“Should we get going?” I asked David and he shook his antennas.

“We can’t. We have to wait. Many have lost their lives crossing this last stretch. We don’t want to become one of them.”

The night was still young and growing. It hadn’t taken over light yet. The cold though had started flowing already, eating away at the warmth seeped into the dirt and the plants. We stopped and hid underneath the shadow of the foliage a meter or two from the tunnel. It was the perfect distance. Not too close and not too far.

I thought David’ plan was to wait it out. My idea instead was to use my skills. [Ant sense] wasn’t planning to evolve anytime soon, so I had to work it out with it. But [Perception] had already combined with [Clarity] to create [Sight]. [Sight] was the skill which allowed me to clearly see everything and notice the presence of anyone in a meter of radius around me. Although my [Perception] had combined with sight, it hadn’t lost its effect. Instead, my sense of danger had grown from simply sense to the ability to see living beings in a certain range. The range was still small because of my skill level, but it I knew it was soon going to grow strong enough to become my third eye, and I was happy about it.

Yet, when I activated [Sight] nothing of value came into my view. Everything remained the same. I could clearly see even in my dark surrounding thanks to the special ability of [Clarity] ‘night vision’, but I saw no hoppers or others dangerous hunters in my sight because the tunnel and the area around it were out of my skills range.

“Can I be allowed to move a bit closer to the pit to check out if there’s anyone waiting for us? I can do that you know. I have the skill set to get it done.” I voiced out my opinion, but David had his own plans.

“I know you are strong. But there is no need to be reckless. You don’t have to do everything, you know. We are a team, remember.” Having said that, he looked at Dark and nodded to him.

“Go, do your thing.”

“Alright,” Dark replied and vanished into the shadows.

“Hmm..’ it was an interesting way of using stealth. I wasn’t even sure whether Dark was really using stealth or something else he had gained from his unique evolution.

“What is he going to do?” I asked.

“Just create a bit for distraction.” There was confidence in David’s voice. Pride splashed from his eyes as he stared at the tunnel. As they say, experience is knowledge. It once again reminded me that this team had been through this route countless times already, and I was the first timer there. Though I could have brute forced my way through, fought the hoppers in order to enter the tunnel, but I didn’t have a method of bringing every along. I still wasn’t strong enough to take down hoppers in their own area.

Soon a ringing sound came from our west, quite a long distance away from us.

“You will see them leaving their hideouts and running toward the noise like complete morons. That’s who they are. They never learn and they never learn.” And just like Pyro predicated, I saw hoppers appear from their hideouts and run toward the distraction in excitement and complete disregard of security. They left no one behind in order to guard the tunnel and even clicked in excitement in order to tell their prey that they were coming.

Their corny ways of doing things reminded me of the incident where I was almost caught by three hoppers when I was running from the beehive and had only survived because someone else had gotten their attention.

Would I have survived if the butterfly hadn’t found herself wingless in the middle of their territory? I can’t be sure. David’s method just explained how important it is to understand the tendencies of your opponents. He understood hoppers curious nature and had devised a devilish plan in order to distract them. It was such a simple plan too, but it had slipped right through my mind. And if anything, I wouldn’t have ever thought of distracting the hoppers either.

No matter how high my wisdom and intelligence were, I didn’t have the required experience to think along these lines. I guess this was David’s expertise. The reason he was the leader and not someone reckless enough to make a run for it.

“See.” Pyro shook his head, “Fools, all of them.” and then Dark manifested back out of the shadow. Although I say shadow, there was still enough light to see him manifesting. He didn’t really manifest, he rather came out of the shadow. It was a neat ability. He shied away from me when I tried to ask him about it probably because of the Greedy glint in my eyes.

Why not ask him? My inner voice tried to move me, but I had grown strong enough to resist its call.

“Shut up.”

“Alright, ants stop clamoring and run. We need to get inside the tunnel before they come back.”

Raising our antennas straight in the air we ran for the tunnel. I didn’t know how much time we had, but I decided to stay at the back of the team, just in case. We had no problems though. We weren’t running over open land, but between the shades and through the hidden routes they had found during their previous runs.

“See? That’s how easy it is. They fall for the same trick every time. It’s like they don’t have minds. I haven’t seen such moronic insects anywhere else. I mean what the point of having such great strengths when even ants can fool you?” Pyro chimed amusingly, but David stopped him, “Don’t let the success of today get to your head. Remember, they have the room to make mistakes. We don’t. The moment we are caught, we’ll die. We have much at stake. We can’t make mistakes and letting success get to your mind is the easiest way of losing your focus and making mistakes. They might not be wise, but even a single one of them can kill the lot of us, so don’t get too-”

The thing is, Plans, in the end, are only plans. When the plan is solid and enough precautions are taken, they work out perfectly and without a hitch. But sometimes fate works in mysterious ways and the plan fails for no reason.

That’s what happened to us when David told us to be vigilant. We didn’t even have the time to become vigilant when a sound unique to an excited hopper rang in our vicinity.

“Well, well, well… Look what I found?” I felt a giant pull warm me of contact the moment the voice ringed. I could understand the language, but others couldn’t. For them, his words were the sound of death echoing before taking their life. For them, it mattered not what the words were, for, every click was the sound of the hopper arriving a step closer to us.

“Who knew taking a shit would work out in my favor? And here I thought I was going to miss out on the fun this beautiful evening.”

We weren’t running anymore. The others were overwhelmed by a sense of crisis as I looked to my left. Upon the tallest curve of a blade of grass whose young edge was almost touching the ground, stood a familiar figure staring at us with amusement in its eyes, and hunger dripping from its mouth.

“Shall we play?” it asked and David yelled, “Scat-!” almost, but then looked at me. And I said the words I had no choice but to utter, “I can handle… him.” There was no strength behind my words, but David could only pat my back and encourage me before he turned around to make a run for the tunnel.

“I-” Genma wanted to stay but I used [Rhythmic quake} and pushed him away as the hopper jumped toward us. “Leave” I yelled as Dark bound him in his tentacles and dragged Genma beside him.

“We’ll wait for you on the other side.” Were the last words I heard before the hopper fell in front of me?

“How amusing,” It said and attacked.