Turi was stuck. The nest was leaving, and it was far too risky for Turi to attack such an enormous group of ants. Even if he did, it was surely impossible for him to be able to gather the essence cores of the ants he killed.

So, was his hunting trip over? Turi really didn’t want to fly around the increasingly empty city for days to be able to make the same gains that he had in a single day hunting this small nest. Could he find another? Turi hadn’t checked the outskirts of the city anywhere except for the western side of the city.

A part of his brain that hadn’t been active in days switched on.

‘Diplomacy is the answer.’

Turi looked at the injured queen and the large group of ants. He didn’t know how much time they would spend running away before settling down elsewhere, but Turi could do a good deal of damage if he didn’t care to gather the essence cores. He could simply bombard them with stone spikes from above, where they couldn’t reach him. If the queen was even a tiny bit smart, it’d be open to diplomacy.

Turi wished he could grin, but that wasn’t an ability that a beak could enable. The best that he could do was look happy in general.

Now, the question was; how did he go about this? Turi didn’t know, and, for some reason, he didn’t really care. Turi just wanted this to be over so that he could go and get answers from the Evergreens.

Despite this, Turi made himself take care of the situation properly. Firstly, Turi would need to be careful with his words. Even a slight, subtle or even outright unintentional threat could cause everything to go down in flames.

Second, Turi would need to find out the situation further. His current outline was to have them pay him essence cores in exchange for Turi harassing and slowing their enemies down, but that hinged on the idea that they were being pursued.

Turi couldn’t think of much else to add to his mental list of things to be careful about, and so he slowly started to descend. The spitting ants spat their acid at him, but his only response was to roll his eyes.

Turi stayed as close as he could safely be, and, when he was just above the queen, channeled essence into the organ in his throat.

“I am Ascenturi, the Ascension Crow. Do you have any way to communicate, ants?” Turi asked. The queen, who had already been staring up at him cautiously, didn’t look like she acknowledged him whatsoever, but Turi wasn’t sure. The queen, with its compound eyes and mandibles, wasn’t very expressive.

Even if she had heard him, anything further hinged on whether or not she could communicate, but after twenty or so seconds, Turi was almost certain that they couldn’t speak.

‘I suppose I’ll have to cut my losses and leave,’ Turi thought, and he sighed. ‘I’ll look for another nest to the East and-‘ Turi’s thoughts suddenly came to a stop as a presence pushed at the edges of his mind.

Turi’s formidable mind pushed back, and almost immediately, the presence shattered, and the queen stumbled.

‘Did it just attack my mind? Or was it trying to communicate?’

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Was that you?” Turi asked, “Nod for yes, shake your head for no.”

The queen nodded almost immediately, and Turi was fairly confident that she had to be intelligent.

“That was a communication attempt, then?” Turi asked, and the queen nodded. Almost immediately afterwards, the presence appeared at the edge of his mind once more, and Turi, almost by instinct, tried to crush it, but held himself back at the last moment.

How did he know it wasn’t an attack? Turi didn’t want to let this strange ant queen into his mind and let it launch an attack.

However, his doubts disappeared immediately when he thought of how fragile the presence was. Even if it was an attack, Turi was confident that he could easily repel an attack. In fact, Turi almost wanted her to attack him; with how powerful his mind was, a way to attack through it would be dangerous in his hands; or, rather, his talons.

Turi opened his mind to the presence, and he felt it do… something, and suddenly, Turi felt overwhelmed.

He felt a connection to every single ant nearby; from the queen, Andromeda, to the lesser queens still within the ant nests, to the spitting ant that had just spat at him and to the worker ant carrying the leg of the enormous ant corpse.

Immediately afterwards, Turi felt a crushing presence try to crush his mind. It was Andromeda, and through the link, he could tell that she had every intention to kill him.

Her presence was incomparably stronger than it had been before, now that she had a direct method of attack through the link that Turi assumed to be a hive mind.

Turi would have been worried, but the mental fight was almost over before it even began. Turi’s mind had spiked in strength the moment the attack had begun due to his nature as a Turi crow, and almost immediately afterwards, Turi was almost shocked by how pathetic the attack seemed.

Eagerly, Turi tried to attack Andromeda’s mind, but he had no clue how to do it. He tried to push his will through the link, but it simply didn’t work; it was like trying to plug a charger into a solid wall.

‘How is that fair?’ Turi mentally grumbled.

“Leave, or I will crush your mind, crow.” Andromeda said, and Turi tilted his head. The way that the words simply appeared in his head was strangely reminiscent of the God-creature’s.

Turi shook his head, clearing himself of the distraction.

“You can’t.” Turi stated simply, “Now, negotiate. I’ll help you out for essence cores.”

Turi could feel the ant’s mind pulsing with rage. It turned its head away from him petulantly, like a child turning their back on their parents, but quickly regathered herself and responded.

“There is nothing a crow can do to help us. My nest will delay them for long enough, and my ants will remake a nest in days once we settle. You will get no essence cores from me, crow.”

“Ascenturi, not crow,” Turi corrected, but he was already leaving. There was nothing for him here anymore, and he was tired of delaying his search for answers. He wanted to ascend to the third realm ASAP so that he could give himself some sort of knowledge-related ability.

Right now, Turi hadn’t even gained all that much knowledge, and he regretted it a lot. His second realm variant species, the ‘Ascended Crow’, was focused more on keeping Turi alive, and didn’t help him absorb knowledge whatsoever.

Turi severed the link that connected him to the ants, and immediately felt relieved. The sheer number of ants made it difficult to function.

‘Where do I go next?’

Turi was strong now, but was it strong enough to get the answers that he wanted from the Evergreens? Possibly, but was ‘possibly’ good enough for him?

Turi arrived at his stone hut and got comfortable as he fell into thought.

‘How can I gain power quickly?’ Turi wondered, and his thoughts strayed to the strange world in his head. It was still there, and grew stronger every time he ascended his intelligence.

Could he do something with it? Turi already knew the answer; yes, he could. The scale was proof enough of it. However, could he do something with it that would tangibly make him stronger?

Turi had avoided the world in the corner of his mind for ages now, but he hardly felt anything whenever he thought of it anymore. The only thing that worried him was that he would get caught up in morals again, and Turi didn’t want that. He had spent far too long avoiding thinking of them to return to it now.

Was it worth it to delve deeper into the world in his mind? Turi shook his head. He had other ways to get stronger; ones that were guaranteed, rather than a baseless guess.