What I had forgotten when making my way back to the outer core was that last time, I was with Veraxia, and that it was her who carried me on top of her back. Now being here on my own two feet, I realized that the way down was much longer and steeper than I had remembered.

I looked down and gulped. Since coming down here, I had concluded that I was very good with heights, and while this was nothing compared to the way I had come down here, it was still a fall that would kill me if I took a wrong step.

In daring to climb down there, I was taking a great risk for absolutely no valid reason, but after coming all this way, I could hardly just turn around and leave. I mean, I could, but I didn’t want to.

Luckily, the roots that grew from the walls offered both handholds and footholds, creating something akin to a ladder. And so I started my descent.

It was my first climbing experience, and I doubted I would have been able to do this a few days ago, but with how my stats now looked, I had at least a tiny little bit of physical strength. It also helped a lot that the roots occasionally branched off, offering small platforms where I could pause to catch my breath, survey my surroundings, and plan my next step.

As I neared the bottom, I stood on the last platform to recover some stamina. I had to do the remaining distance in one go and without rest, considering my lack of stamina, a challenging task.

When I was about halfway down the chamber, I already started regretting doing this, but now, I had no choice but to turn back. Climbing up was much harder than climbing down and burned a lot more stamina. Once I was at the bottom, my only way of getting out of there was to wait for Veraxia. Should have thought about this before coming all the way down here, dumbass. Good job, me.

Taking a deep breath, I lowered my right foot to start my climb. I put it on the foothold. When I tried to follow with my other foot, I slipped. In a panic, I tried to correct myself, but that only made things worse and I lost my grip entirely.

Tumbling down the final stretch, I crashed into the chamber ground, the moss doing little to soften the landing. At least it somewhat silenced the noise of the impact. Pain shot through my limbs, a chorus of groans escaping my lips as I rolled onto my back.

I instantly send waves of mana through my body mending the bones in my arms, my left leg, and my torso. I spent a thousand mana on my injuries.

“What a wonderful start,” I grunted, pushing myself off the ground. When I checked my clothes, I noticed that the strap which I used to carry my bag was torn. Clicking my tongue, I tried to get it back together, but it was no use.

Without the strap, carrying the bag all the time would become a hassle, so instead I emptied it, stored the metal thingy in my empty pouch which stored the purple liquid before, and secured Johanna’s diary behind my belt. It was not a particularly useful item, but I learned a lot about humans from it and wanted to hold on to it for now.

Apart from the bag, the rest of my clothes remained relatively unscathed. They were, however, quite dirty and covered in green and brown stains, courtesy of the moss and roots. There were also a few more tears in my cloak, so I decided to just get rid of it. With all the battles that were still ahead of me, it probably wouldn’t survive anyway, and it's not like it added anything valuable to my equipment.

Turning around, I looked up the wall. From down here, the exit looked so far away that it was terrifying. I felt trapped and was quite convinced that I actually was. Escaping if need be was nigh impossible. I would just need to hope that Veraxia was going to finish her meal soon and come here before anything bad happened.

Until then, all I could do was start my search for mandibles. Those were, after all, part of the reason why I came here.

I combed through every nook expecting to find at least one leftover mandible but with my luck? Well, it appeared like the Exapoda not only swiped all the bodies but even took anything remotely useful with them

But, even after checking every single spot where a corpse should have lain, there was not a single mandible left behind. As my abysmal luck would have it, the Exapoda took not only the corpses but everything else that would even have the slightest use to me.

After my search officially failed, I sat down at the edge of the crater Veraxia had made last time. Since I wanted to be done quickly, I ran around and spent some of my stamina, I doubted I could make the climb out of there without all of it, so I had to recover.

Leaning back, my eyes wandered over the seemingly endlessly extending ceiling. It was but a vast sea of black, pierced by enormous roots that tore through it and spread through the entire outer core. While tracing the paths of roots as they intertwined and mingled with each other I recalled what Veraxia had told me.

It was so peaceful at the moment that I almost forgot that it was enemy territory.

Theoretically, I am in the same chamber as the Exapoda Queen. The big boss, the goal of my promise with Veraxia.

I let out a long sigh, feeling the weight of what was to come shortly settle on my shoulders.

“I should go back,” I whispered to myself.

As if answering me, a piercing screech echoed around me, forcing me to promptly cover my ears, but even with that the noise sent rattles through my brain. Due to the suddenness and the intensity of the noise, I could not pinpoint the location from where it was coming, but it had to be close.

When it ended, I sprung to my feet and aimed for the exit. I tried to walk since I needed my stamina, but both the paranoia and concern kept gnawing at my mind, so with every step, I slightly accelerated while always keeping tabs on the two passages through which bugs could swarm in.

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My breath caught in my throat as I saw a shadow moving at one of the passages, which only a moment later revealed itself.

[Exapoda Soldier | Lvl. 44]

Shit.

My fast walking turned into running in an instant as I dashed for the exit while activating Shadow Cloak, but the soldier still crawled towards me, its pace gradually increasing.

Acknowledging that hiding was useless, I dismissed my skill and focused solely on escape. If I fought the soldier alone, I would be at a significant disadvantage, since I had to get very close to actually attack it. By myself, the best choice I could make was to avoid the fight, at least for now.

However, it did not seem like my stamina would allow me to make my escape.

Stamina: 3/5

When I realized that running was not going to save me, I racked my brain on what to do. Running or fighting? If one was not going to work, then I would at least need to try the other, because I was definitely not going out without doing anything.

I stopped in my tracks and turned around. Gathering mana in my hand, I made a spear about the length of my body with the conviction in mind that it was sharp, strong, and capable of piercing through the soldier in front of me.

With my weapon ready, I waited for the soldier to reach me, tension building up within me. The closer it came, the bigger it appeared, but I held onto my belief.

The soldier came in close and lashed out at me, but I jumped to the side, avoiding its charge, and struck it with my spear. My spear clashed against the exoskeleton but did not yet pierce it. I kept believing, kept convincing myself that I just needed to push harder, and the spear responded to my will as it tore through the soldier’s exoskeleton, lodging deep into its body.

Despite obviously being in pain, the soldier kept moving, breaking my spear in the process. I clicked my tongue, but already made a new one and prepared to avoid its next attack. It came at me again, and I planned to dodge yet again, but mid-movement, I lost my balance, slipping and falling to the ground.

The soldier hit me, one of its mandibles tearing into my side and throwing me a short distance back. I tried to catch myself, but my body did not respond, and sharp pain ran through my torso. I had been cut by its mandible and the paralysis had taken effect. I immediately tried to heal it, but my regeneration did not cure it in one go, but rather accelerated the pace at which it wore off. Still, like this, it would not wear off in time.

Dammit! I cursed inwardly as my body rolled on the ground. When I came to a halt, I lay on my side, forced to watch the soldier slowly advancing towards me as if flaunting its victory.

I screamed at my body to move, but no matter how hard I tried, nothing would work.

The soldier approached me, its mandibles clacking, ready to finish me off and devour me. The thought alone made us want to scream and thrash around, but it was no use. All I could do was watch and wait for my end to come.

That was until a streak of green flashed past my vision and tore right through the soldier. They survived the initial attack, but Veraxia kept going, tearing it apart piece by piece until only small chunks of flesh remained, strewn all around me. An indescribable wave of relief washed over me as I felt the certainty that these were my last moments slowly crumbled and the realization dawned upon me that I was going to live.

Veraxia turned to me and lowered her head to look me straight in the eye. “So much about avoiding danger,” she grumbled, but there was a clear worry behind those words.

***

After my rescue, Veraxia carried me out of the outer core. Due to the paralysis, I could neither move nor talk, so I just had to accept being handled like that, but at least I could heal the wound at my side.

Being left to only my thoughts, I had no idea how much time passed, before I could finally feel the moss touching the back of my neck or my clothes wrapping around my body. I blew some strands of hair out of my face and slowly lifted myself.

Veraxia was sitting in front of me, her head rested on her arms and she silently observed me. Had she watched me all this time? I guess she couldn’t risk me dying.

“You saved me.” Being saved felt strange. Like with Seth, it was not something I was used to.

“Barely. Had I been a second later, you would have died.” Her voice was calm, but I could make out some anger in her demeanor. “I told you to stay out of danger and what do you do? Almost get yourself killed,” she slightly raised her voice before sighing and calming down again. “Girl, you might want to remember that you carry not only your own life on your shoulders.”

Right. Veraxia’s life depended on me, but if she was so afraid of me dying…

“Why did you let me go alone?”

She raised her head and did not reply immediately. And even though she did not particularly show it, she was thinking about something. “I was careless.” That was all she had to say about it. “Did you get what you were looking for?” She asked.

Eyeing her for a while, I concluded that we were through with the topic and answered. “The corpses were gone when I reached there, and they left nothing behind, not even a single mandible.”

Even though she did not have eyebrows, I could see a clear frown on her face. I mean, I knew that this was bad news for me, but she was the one telling me to not rely on mandibles, so there would be no reason for her to react like that.

“What is it?” I inquired.

“I think they are adapting. Since you have fought them primarily with their weapons, it seems like they started to cut off your supply,” she explained.

Now I understood the frown on her face, although I had a hard time believing that these simple-minded bugs had the cognitive ability to learn and adapt. It was not even something obvious like getting used to my fighting style. They started minimizing my access to new weapons, which was proof of a certain degree of intelligence.

“Are you sure? From what I’ve seen those bugs are not the most intelligent, can they come up with something like that?”

It was not only that. There was also the fact that I killed almost every bug I ever encountered with only one exception. That one exception couldn’t possibly be the reason behind this… or could it?

“The Exapoda are a hive mind. Each individual consistently shares information with the collective or receives from it. It does not matter if they are unintelligent, there only needs to be a single bug with a higher level of intelligence.”

“Then I assume they have something like that?”

“They do. It seems like the Exapoda Queen no longer considers you only prey. You have become a threat,” she said with a daunting undertone.

I felt like this should have been something to fret over, but for some reason, I liked the ring it had to it. ‘A threat.’ I didn’t think I ever was a threat to anything other than the slimes I killed outside this lair. Sure, I killed a few bugs here and there, but they were still far more dangerous to me than I was to them. In some twisted way, this was another proof of my growth.

Still, it probably was not something to be excited about. “I guess that is a bad thing?”

“Difficult to say. We will have to see how the hive behaves from now on, but expect our battles from here on out to become more difficult.”

I grinned and shrugged my shoulders. “No worries there. I never expected them to become easier in the first place.”

That was a lie. My fight with the soldier might have almost ended in me dying a miserable, painful death, but there was something very important I learned from this experience. My mana was able to break through a soldier’s natural defenses. So even if the Exapoda would not allow me to get a new pair of mandibles, they were no longer necessary.