The tunnel was long, dark and narrow, but it was completely safe. I didn’t see the corpses of my friend lying inside so that was a good start. Time seems to lose its meaning in this spaciously congested yet ominously empty tunnel- Hollow from the inside but filled with an astral gloom, where the passing wind echoed in the tune of flute mourning for its loneliness.

“I should have finished the fight sooner and ran after the others.” In my own selfish desire to understand the hoppers strength, I had put my team through the excruciating experience of abandoning one of their own in order to save their own lives. Even though it was I, who had insisted to stay behind, and fight the hopper alone. I knew Genma must have been feeling awful; so I rushed.

[Haste] was already a part of my body as a passive skill, while [acceleration] had a long cooldown. It was straining enough to invoke hatred from me, considering every second mattered on the battlefield. I eventually used [Haste demon] in order to get that little oomph to my speed, and hoped for the best regarding the situation on the other side.

‘Just don’t be fighting with the others, please!’ I was being sarcastic. I was actually hoping to catch them before they left. After all, ‘Mission before death’ was my team’s motto.

But when I got to the other side, what I saw was a mess.

“We need to go save him!”

“You selfishly let him stay there! What were you thinking? How could you let him stay behind alone?”

Genma was trying to rally the others and Pyro was helping him. A crowd of ants, all emotionally quaint and physically similar looking, watched them from the sides. I could see David talking to someone – an ant much similar to the foreign crowd, though drastically stronger in appearance and aura.

I had heard my new friends talk about honor in death and I had also begun to understand their reason, but my initiations must have charmed them, producing this result.

Dark was pacing left and right in worry. Then my eyes meet With Mink; who opened his mandibles wide in shock upon seeing me alive and kicking.

“Hey guyj’…” he spoke with a foolish childlike charm to his words, staring between me and the others.

No matter what anyone though, for me, this was a warm welcome. I stepped forward with some weight in my steps to get their attention. I succeeded and silence dawned between us as we looked at each other. My team members stood gawking at me in front of the giant army of dark red ants with amusingly huge mandibles; whose stagnant aura declared that they weren’t much individually: not even close to a new ranker from my colony.

There was not a single mutation among their ranks. Every single one of them looked like the product of the same mold: large mandibles, dark orange spear shaped heads, purplish abdomens, and a fiery tint to their exoskeletons.

“Who are you? State your purpose!” One of the more robust ants shouted from the crowd. It tried to antagonize me, pick on me, but his leaking strength was no more than a candle fume flickering under the wayward wind. He was weak even for an ant. He was a second ranker, with nothing but racial skills under his status. His shout meant naught to me.

One look behind him and I could understand his, or rather the whole crowds reason to ignore, or rather, abstain, from individual strength. This reason looked foolish to me though.

“I-“

“You are back!” Yelled Genma.

“Stand down.” The big foreign ant standing with David commanded to the crowd of soldiers, as Genma came striding toward me.

“Did you kill it?” asked Pyro, welcoming me in his own witty greeting.

“Yes, I did,” I replied, confounded.

“What are you talking about?” asked Mink, still staring between us.

“Good grief you are back. Now I won’t have to drag the others to the farm.” Commented David as he ignored Pyro’s enthusiasm and Minks confusion. Nodding, I asked him, “What now?” noticing a surprising glow of eccentric happiness on his face.

“First meet Yuvi ‘The thinker’, the commander of the 10th battalion of the Army.” Whom I politely greeted as he asked me, “I heard you took it upon yourself to fight a Hopper to help them cross the tunnel. Is that true?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied to which he amusingly stroked my head with his antennas.

“Well, I’ll be dammed. Are you sure he’s still an ant?” he asked David who laughed along with him.

“We aren’t sure, sir. We aren’t sure.” And others joined him with laughter.

“Ah, come on David, I thought we were past this sir bullshit?” To which David simply shook his antennas, and much to my surprise gave me a welcoming pat on the back.

And we set off toward the farm.

“Hey…” Genma whispered as we walked. “Are you hurt?” He asked. I shook my antennas and said, “It was a surprisingly easy fight.”

“I know you did what you thought was right, but don’t overdo it, alright.”

“…okay.”

“Can you tell me how you killed it?” Pyro intervened during our moment, making Genma return back to his position.

I conveyed to him a loose recollection of my fight with the hopper, and he silently listened to my every word like a kid. I remembered Tiny and Bill who used to behave similarly to my stories.

‘I wonder what they are doing now. They are probably already out in the wild, writing their own adventure. I just hope nothing bad happens to them.’ Then I remembered I could talk with them if I wanted too; I was still bonded with them, after all. But considering that I also had some questions I needed answers to, I decided to quench my thoughts first.

“Hey, pyro…” I said and he quickly replied.

“What?”

“I have been meaning to ask you this for the longest time now. Can you tell me why we had to meet Yuvi and his battalion?”

He first looked at me amazed, and then pondered about something, before he finally decided to divulge the hidden truth behind our mission. It wasn’t really a hidden truth really, but for me, it was a mystery much similar to the world beyond the shade.

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“Firstly, this is not his full battalion. It’s just one of the ten teams he commands. The rest are probably still in the army doing their duty.”

“There are hundreds of them here!” I was astonished by the sheer size of their single team. There was simply no comparison between us and them. It should not be forgotten that a normal scavenger or other teams in my colony only numbered a total of ten members.

“Amazing right?”

“Sure is, brother. It sure is.” Amazed, I stared at their numbers. And once I looked closely, I found the reason behind the unusual strength I had felt from them. Individually they were weak. I have already told that. But the moment they started walking, they synchronized from individuals into a collective machine with the mind walking right beside us at the center. Their strides created force. Their Gait and collectiveness amplified it. Their coordination created momentum, improving their movement as they marched ahead.

It was an amazing display of strength in numbers- A glimpse at the army’s true strength. Mesmerized as I was, I wasn’t about to let go of this opportunity to farm some answers out of Pyro now that David wasn’t paying attention.

“What else can you tell me? Does the commander need our help with something?"

“It's us who need his help.” he fervently replied, much to my surprise. “God bless David for getting carried away by the calamity and meeting the commander; otherwise, who knows what he might have done this time to save our colony."

"Save our colony from the upcoming calamity?" Confused I asked. ‘Just how many problems is our colony facing?’

"No, from starvation," He seriously said. "Commander Yuvi is going to help us get a bigger cut from the farm."

"He can?" I asked shaking; still not so sure about what he meant by ‘a bigger cut’.

"You bet he can. The farm is only still around because of commanders intervention. I hope our deal goes through though, our colony will be in big trouble, otherwise.”

I wanted to tell him to elaborate, but David intervened in just the moment to chide us.

“Look at them and look at us. Can't you walk more in sync like them? Let me keep some honor in front of commander Yuvi, please." He even talked about honor out of nowhere and then quickly looked away when our eyes meet.

Breathing, Pyro shook his antennas in retrospect; walking beside him, understanding his nature, I knew he wasn’t going to talk anymore, so I quietly patted his back with my antennae and decided to take a look at my abilities while I was at it.

Like always, I first called my second tier skills ready to unlock their special abilities. There were three of them: Shapeshifting, Rhythmic quake, and slipping steps of the ghosts. First up was shapeshifting?

{Shape shifting has reached level 10.}

[Special ability: Modification unlocked.]

[Modification: Allows you to increase or decrease your body shape by ten percent of your total biomass by filling air in the pockets under your external skeleton.]

‘Should I try it?’ Ten percent wasn’t a large increment, but it wasn’t small enough to go unnoticed either. Yet, I increased the size of my legs by the full allowed mass and surprisingly I felt slightly lighter and it suddenly became easier for me to walk. I noticed that my feet were wider at the base, giving me extra grip and cushion, leading to the improvement.

‘Isn’t this a great ability!? I wish this was a skill. It’s too good to stay in the background as a special ability.’

Motivated by the shocking ability, I dived into the mental world of skill evolutions forgetting everything about where I was. I was lucky in a way that I could concentrate so hard on something, but I didn’t know how big a problem this was for the others.

The next up was [Rhythmic quake]. As I said, I could concentrate very hard.

{Rhythmic quake has reached lv 10.}

[Special ability: Tremor unlocked]

[Tremor: Rhythmic quake has a slight chance of creating a tremor.]

With this, I knew what rhythmic quake would evolve into after reaching its full potential. It was one of those few skills which loved me too much to stay silent about its wish. It’s like, the skill itself had grown strong enough to decide the branch it wanted to move forward upon: like, Wind cannonball, which already had a design selected for its evolution.

{Slipping steps of the ghosts has reached level 10.}

[Special ability: spirit damage unlocked.]

[Spirit damage: Deal 10% of your magical damage when you pass through the body of your opponent.]

I hadn’t used slipping steps of the ghosts much until then. But I also had a premonition during the stage when I still had the foresight that my skills evolved predicting how I would need them in the future. I was delusional certainly, but

The special abilities were just appetizers, now it was time to start with the main course: the evolution of first tier skills. And first up on the list was Charge.

{Charge has reached level 10.}

[Your strength has increased by 1.]

[Charge has reached its maximum level. Under the influence of intermediate martial mastery at level ten, it has evolved into Rush.]

[Rush][Tier-2][Lv-25][Active]

[Improving upon the strengths of charge, rush accelerates you toward a target and decreases damage received during the rush by 1% per level.]

[Mana consumption increase by 2 according to the skills level]

To me, it felt like an inferior version of acceleration, which was essentially a different form of the skill- Blink. I was disappointed… not really. While Rush was only going to sip 50 mana at the maximum, acceleration was bound to eat more than 1000 mana at its maximum, although it then allowed me to jump over a kilometer in a blink. So it was a win-win situation, considering everything.

My next skill to break out of its bounds and grow wonderfully into pure destruction was Spike- the one skill with its countless uses.

{Spike has reached level 25} {Mana control has reached level 10}

[Spike is evolving and is giving you two options: Rise or fall]

I really wished reveal could also reveal the options of second tier skills. Then I wouldn’t have to use my wisdom and guess how the options worked. Still, considering Spike’s special ability that allowed me to grow spikes from my body, I could guess where the rise option was going toward. As for fall, I could only guess that spikes would somehow materialize midair and fall upon my opponents.

“It might be more mana extensive though.” I favored to opt 'rise' because I knew it would be some form of spear rising from the ground, but because I had no way of attacking airborne enemies, I decided to choose 'fall' instead.

[Spike has evolved into Falling stars]

[Falling star][Tier-3][Lv-50][Active]

[Pointed cones of stone fall from the sky dealing 5% damage each in a radius of five centimeters.]

[The damage zone increases by five centimeters per level, while the active time increases by half a second.]

[It consumes 100 mana upon activation and ten every second for the active period.]

Anticipation, I was boiling with it. I wanted to jump out of the ranks and get in a fight with the hoppers once again. If I am asked to denote one word to my feeling from the result, I would say I felt, marvelous.

My celebrations ended with bare hand mastery releasing another skill for reaching level 15 and then a nudge from behind woke me up.

{Intermediate bare hand mastery has risen to lv 15.}

[Skill: Battle Sense acquired]

[Battle sense][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Passive]

[It improves your overall mobility and survivability in battle.]

[+.1Agility/lv, +.1Dexterity/lv, +.1Endurance/lv]

Having lost myself to the wonderful world of skill, I didn’t notice it until I was called, but my antennas flared up when I finally understood the situation. We were surrounded.