A sleek and crimson ant patiently waited in front of the microwave. The ant’s height was 1.5 meters tall and its length was 2 meters tall with its abdomen taking up most of the space. Disturbingly there were no hair or bristles on the ant’s body, its streamlined appearance being off-putting.

As the food made circles inside the microwave, the timer slowly ticked down. The only constant sound was the noises coming from the microwave.

“BEEP!” “BEEP!”

When the microwave’s timer finally hit zero. The obnoxious alarm broke the peace.

Hearing the noise, the ant using its compound eyes, and agile legs cleverly opened the microwave. Inside was a heated pre-packaged food. The ant carefully and precisely used its pincer to grab ahold of the food.

Too much pressure would have turned the food into a sloppy mess, wasting what little patience its master had.

As the ant picked up the food with its pincer it cleverly navigated the kitchen and the house. A smaller house wouldn’t have been able to accommodate such a large insect, but considering that this neighborhood was made for families of Monster Tamers, the houses were huge.

When the ant finally reached a particular room, it stopped in its tracks and waited patiently for the master to open the door. Inside the room, the ant could pick up on the sound of the aggrieved clicking of a mouse, and its master mumbling to himself in irritation.

The noises only stopped when the irritated teen opened the door. The door revealed a teen of average height and of average looks. There was nothing about him that stood out, he had black hair and brown eyes, with an average physique.

Everything about him could be considered average-looking, he wasn’t handsome but he wasn’t ugly either.

The teen, whose name was Felix, stood at the door with his bird’s nest of hair and an irritated look—in a bad mood, opened the door because he smelled the aroma of the food in the ant’s pincer traveling inside his room. Not only that he had a special connection with the ant, so he could sense its presence outside the door.

“Thank you number 1.”

Felix, although irritated, would never take out his anger on his monsters. They were his friends and he wouldn’t treat them less than what they deserved.

The ant as if to show its happiness swayed its head and antenna, as it dropped the food that was being clutched by its pincer onto its master’s hand. Felix rubbed the head of the ant, with much force to not get his hand stuck on the ant’s head.

Unlike typical insects, his monster ants did not have an exoskeleton. So instead of their surface being smooth and clean, it was sticky and fleshy. The flesh was weird and easily malleable, but it wasn’t like there were no advantages either.

Normal insect-type monsters would be easily killed if someone could crush through their exoskeleton and destroy their vital organs. But, Felix’s monsters didn’t have these so-called vital organs; they were made out of flesh.

Although it lowered their defense, it greatly increased their resilience.

 Seeing as its task was done the ant bulldozed towards Felix, what was strange about this action was that there was no impact!

Instead of a collision between Felix and the ant, it was as if the ant was an ink that was dropped on top of a canvas. The crimson ant was greedily absorbed by this so-called canvas. When the ant was fully absorbed inside Felix’s body, he inspected the inside of his body.

Felix was not an average teen as a person with a contracted monster, he received feedback from his contracted monster. This feedback was usually different because monsters aren’t the same.

If you had contracted a bird-type monster, the feedback you would receive would usually be higher agility. The feedback Felix received was the ability to inspect the inside of his body, allowing him to easily see his organs and blood vessels.

A dream-like ability for any medical practitioner was in the hands of Felix.

Nonetheless, Felix used this ability to check his heart and the blood vessels inside his body. Those with entomophobia would have probably passed out, because inside of Felix’s body were multiple ants traveling through the many blood vessels inside his body.

It was weird and disgusting, but Felix had already gotten used to this site.

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His first contracted monster was actually located inside his heart, it was a small and tiny ant queen. Whose abdomen made up 90% of its body and wore a little crown on her head. He named it Mu. It was diligently giving birth to ants inside his heart, while the colony took care of the offspring.

Many worker ants brought ‘food’, materials from Felix’s body to the queen ant. In the beginning, he was heavily disgusted when he found out about this, but then he realized that it actually brought no harm to his body.

It seemed that his loyal ants knew that harvesting too much from his body would cause harm to their master, so they did it with control, making it a sustainable practice. Not only that, Felix felt his body was benefitting from this practice; he could feel his body getting healthier and a tad bit stronger every day.

It was a mutual relationship, with both benefiting from each other.

Of course, this wasn’t a normal situation because Mu was a rare monster, it was simply overpowered! Not only but most monsters would live inside their master’s Pocket Space, a dimension that only their master could open and close.

 Mu would be considered a colony monster: those who can give birth or create other monsters that could swarm opponents.

Any colony monsters would be highly regarded in the market. But the problem was never the price, but the opportunity to get one. It required a lot of connection or luck to get the weakest type of colony monster.

Although colony monsters were strong, they still had one fatal weakness. Any being that could easily overpower the swarm, could crush the leader. The death of the leader of the colony usually meant the death of the colony itself.

But of course, if a colony monster was contracted by a Monster Tamer, it would be irrational to think that would be the only monster they had. Many Monster Tamers liked to contract monsters that could help overcome the weakness of their other monsters, bringing a qualitative change to their strength.

Seeing as the ant safely shrank from its huge size to being barely larger than hemoglobin, Felix nodded. He still couldn’t fathom how the mechanism behind this worked, but all he knew was that, when they were inside his body, they were incomparably smaller than being outside.

Except for Mu, if he brought her out, she would barely be the size of his fingerprint. Which was quite weird. Seeing how she could pop out offsprings that eclipsed her figure by many sizes.

Taking the food inside his room, Felix hurriedly took out his cell phone. Anxiously calling his grandfather. While munching on the food.

It took quite a while for the phone to be picked up, but when it did. Felix with his mouth full of food hurriedly asked, “Granddad, did anything happen to mom and dad?”

The brief silence was suffocating to Felix. Luckily it was broken by a sigh from his grandfather.

“Oh Felix, you don’t have to worry about it, they just met an accident while exploring an island in the Fragmented World. Your mother already sent me a message using her monster, I just hadn’t had the time to contact you until now, I was planning to inform you later.”

“Are they okay? Also, what do you mean by an accident?”

“Felix, I can’t tell you what it's about, but just know that I’m getting some people to help your parents, just prepare for the exam you have in a week. Although I can easily get you into that school, I’d rather you prove that you deserve to get into the prestigious school, than be seen as a person who can only rely on their connections to get into things.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve called me about the exam many times, of course I’ve prepared hard enough.”

“Good, because I’ll be there to watch it in person.”

“Alright, see you there Granddad.”

Hanging up on the phone before he could be more nagging, Felix breathed a sigh of relief. He knew his parents worked a dangerous line of business, so it was rare for them to visit him. Their only way of contact was through messages delivered in his mailbox.

So when he didn’t receive it today, he got scared.

Seeing as everything was under control and his grandfather was going to send help to his parents, his tense nerves calmed down.

‘I wonder what the Fragmented World is about. Mom and Dad always travel there, and their experiences are always rich, but all I hear from the news is the horrific things that are happening inside the Fragmented World. I guess my strength isn’t qualified enough to travel that area yet.’

Letting out a sigh, Felix climbed onto his bed as he scrolled through YouTube. It was late, and the only reason he was even awake was because of the incident with his parents. There were many things on YouTube, but it was mainly dominated by people with monsters.

There was a video of someone skydiving with a bird-like monster, someone lava surfing on top of a turtle-like creature, and there was even footage of battles between different Monster Tamers. The culture of this world was rich.

When his eyes got tired from staring at the screen for too long, Felix napped off to a peaceful dream.

…

In a certain building, a meeting was being held by four people. An old man sternly looked at the rest of the three. His appearance was refined and held an aura of prestige. Although his hair was white, there were no wrinkles on his body. Only a sense of immense strength.

“I want you to go to the coordinates that I will provide you, find and rescue my children, if you can’t, don’t bother coming back here.”

The old man was Felix’s grandfather, he held immense power in the Western continent, and many figures tried to create connections with him. But he usually never accepted their invitation, only a select few could talk with him.

Hearing the heavy tone, the other three quickly agreed. They knew of this man’s status, so this was an opportunity for them to rise. Of course, they wouldn’t give up on it!

“Don’t worry we’ll bring them back.”

“Good.”

Hearing their agreement, the three of them excused themselves out of the room. While Felix’s grandfather stared through the window. The city’s streetlights were basked in the moon’s luminescence, a beautiful sight that he couldn’t enjoy.

As he stared in a peculiar direction with a look of worry on his face.