Chapter 48:

Now that she was finished with her crafting project, Alice looked up and checked her surroundings. Night had fallen, and her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten dinner. She got up and stretched, working the kink out of her neck and practicing motions she had developed after long hours of sitting and working uninterrupted. She stretched and flexed her fingers.

It was weird. Normally, both hands were aching from typing, or her eyes were tired from staring at a screen, but right now neither was the case. One hand was slightly cramped from holding a pen in such an awkward position for so long, but her eyes felt perfectly fine. She knew she had spent hours tightly gripping a pencil and moving with precision. Her hand should have been on fire, but her improved body was coming through significantly.

Picking up her project, she returned to where Titus was scooping out sections of his potion into little vials.

"Did it work?" Alice asked as she got closer.

Titus looked up. "Ah, I see you're out of the trance," he said, producing a paper plate with a slice of pizza on it and sliding it across the table to her.

She stopped it with one hand and plopped the axe down, its haft extended towards Titus as she sat down and tore into the pizza with the ferocity of a wildebeest.

"I'm not sure," Titus said, and Alice took a second to realize he was answering her question. "I haven't tested it yet, but well, it should do something to the ants, right?"

"Well, we have our test subject," Alice said through a mouthful of pizza. “I hope it’s still alive.”

"It should be,," Titus said. "I was waiting for you to wake up before I tested it."

"Thanks," Alice said before taking another bite. "I'm curious, but I'm not really sure what I can do to help."

"Not sure I need much help," Titus said, rolling his shoulders as he pulled the now-empty cauldron into his inventory before popping it right back out again.

Alice raised a questioning eyebrow, her mouth too full to talk.

"Easy way to clean it," he explained. "I'll have to find someplace to dump the empty slot of goop, but I can pull out just the cauldron from my inventory."

"That's incredibly broken," Alice said, her mind whirring through all the possibilities.

Titus just shrugged. "Yeah, could be, but... well, yeah." A thoughtful expression appeared on his face. "Anyways, you want to take that while we go test?"

Alice shook her head and swallowed. "No, I don't really want to see the ant while I'm still eating."

"Fair enough," Titus said, producing another slice of pizza and starting in on it himself. His much larger bites meant that despite her head start and ravenous hunger, he still finished significantly before her and was drumming his fingers on the table, waiting for her to finish. She slowed down just to spite him, actually enjoying the pizza.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"There's a place down the street that had a lot of stuff prepped. The sauce still smelled fine, and the cheese was frozen, but it didn't take long to make a quick dough."

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"Wait, you made this from scratch?" she asked.

Titus nodded. "Yeah."

"Damn, this is really good," she said. "I thought you maybe found a pizza place, but I guess that doesn't really make sense. Well, it could have been like a frozen pizza or—"

Titus gave her a withering look.

"Okay, not frozen pizza like from the store, but, like, you know, some good pizza that was frozen and then reheated and doesn't taste like it," she backpedaled.

"Well, thank you. I had lots of practice making good pizza during that time spent in Italy," Titus said.

"All right, fine," Alice said, finishing her slice. "Let's go test out that monster repellent you made."

"I'm not sure it's actually monster repellent. It's something like ant pheromones," Titus said, producing a bottle and handing it over to her.

She looked at it and shrugged. "Whatever you say. We'll see if it works." She half wanted another slice of pizza, but she was honestly too curious to wait.

Before they did their testing, they went outside and found the car. Titus pulled out a vial before they opened the trunk.

"Should I drink this?"

"Ew. How about you put it on your wrists like we would cologne or perfume?" Alice suggested.

Titus shrugged, popping open the bottle and doing just that, a small dab. When they opened the trunk, Alice was around the side of the car, and Titus had his spear ready. The ant only touched an antenna before climbing out and circling around, tapping its antenna on the ground and then against Titus' legs before standing there, not doing anything, not trying to attack, not trying to run away.

Titus jumped back and his whole body shivered briefly in disgust.

"Interesting," Alice said. "Try walking."

Titus walked away from the car, and the ant followed at his heel as if it were a well-trained puppy.

"Huh," Titus said, juking right and left. The ant stayed locked on his heel the entire time. He pointed over at another car, and the ant moved. "Um," Titus said, "What do we do?"

"Well, it seems like you have a pet," Alice said, smothering her laughter into her hand. "Guess you made something that attracts rather than repels."

"I think we should probably just say it's a failure. We can dispatch this and go capture another test subject for the next round."

"No!" Alice said. "You can't kill Antony."

"Antony?" Titus asked, confused, looking down at the ant. "Are you serious, Alice? You can't name the monsters."

"It's not a monster, it's your pet."

"No, it's an ant monster," Titus said. "Sure, it might be okay now, but when this pheromone wears off, or we get close to the other ants' pheromones, and it tries to kill us, I don't want you hesitating because you named it Anthony."

"Tony wouldn't do that," Alice said.

"Tony?" Titus exclaimed but cut off mid-protest, his eyes skipping back and forth in a motion that Alice had long recognized as someone reading a system window.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Alice said after Titus just stood there.

"Yeah," he said in a defeated tone. "I got a skill evolution."

"Oh," Alice asked, excitement bubbling. "What happened?"

"Well, apparently, it didn't like the fact that I hadn't used [Nature's Cloak] much, not that many chances to hide. And it evolved into [Nature's Blessing], which comes with a companion," he said. "Welcome to the team, Tony." The level of enthusiasm in Titus' voice couldn't have been lower. “Fuckin’ ants.”

"See, Anthony is a great name," Alice said.

"No. It's one the System has apparently picked. Calling it not Anthony, but just Tony. So now I have a pet ant named Tony. Thanks, Alice."

Alice just grinned. "I think he's cute."

"You were the one who just didn't want to eat near it."

"Yeah, well, I thought it wasn't going to work. I needed to kill it, and I didn't want bug guts on my pizza," she said. "Also, they're a lot cuter when they're not trying to kill us."

This time, when Titus pointed, the ant went where he wanted it to. When Alice scanned it, it no longer said [Level 10 Ant Monster], but identified it as Titus' companion.

"Do you have any more of that pizza?" Alice asked as they went back inside, the ant sitting patiently by the door.