Adon danced backward and tried to pull out of reach of the wasps as they hurled themselves at him.

He didn’t get far. His back slammed into the back end of the tunnel, and he found himself pressed on all sides by wasps trying to stab him with their stingers.

Adon knew he was nowhere near having fully charged his Mana ball, and he suspected if he tried to unleash the attack now, it would do next to nothing to the insects crowding all around him. He made a snap decision, pulled the Mana back into his body, and began snapping at the wasps with his mandibles instead of using them to hold Mana.

He ripped one of the red slayers in two as multiple stingers pinged off of his back harmlessly.

At least my exoskeleton is holding up, he thought as he tore into another wasp. The tunnel was too tight around him and the enemy creatures for him to shoot out his venomous spines anymore. They were pressed tight against his body by the back of the burrow where he’d found himself. But it also meant there were few angles he could be attacked from.

Even as he successfully—albeit slowly—tore his way through the wasps that attacked him from just in front of him and to his sides, most of the creatures were busy moving the vole corpses away, not engaging with Adon. They knew that in the cramped space he had pulled back into, they could only fight him in small groups.

It became a battle of attrition.

Adon’s advantages were his ability to enhance his body with Mana, his incredible physical power, and his position with his back against the wall.

The red slayers’ advantages were their venomous stingers, which had been potent enough to kill off the voles, their ability to move through the air quickly and fill in gaps whenever Adon killed one of their number, and their coordination. While Adon would eventually grow weary of fighting, a whole colony of insects could not tire in anywhere near the same amount of time.

With stingers sticking Adon over and over again, although they did him no physical harm, his exoskeleton required a constant flow of Mana to keep him safe. The defense ran through his Mana resources faster than anything he had ever attempted before except the Mana ball.

How can I get out of here? he wondered. Even as the bodies of wasps fell in pieces around him over and over, the number of them did not seem to be dropping. Reinforcements kept appearing where the previous enemies had hovered, fresh and eager to try stabbing Adon.

As his Mana reserves began to dip dangerously low, he contemplated trying to break out of the tunnel—or perhaps just collapsing it on himself and the wasps. With his superb physical strength, he thought he could do it.

It was obvious that these things were too persistent to just let him go.

Adon decided that it was better to attempt a cave-in and deal with digging himself out in the aftermath than it would be to try to escape in the open air.

And he threw himself up, as hard as he could, against the ceiling of the part of the tunnel he was in.

Nothing happened.

I didn’t have the proper leverage, he thought. His legs were slippery with the guts of dead wasps that he’d surrounded himself with.

He pushed a little Mana into the ends of all his limbs now, even at the expense of slightly weakening his exoskeletal defense. This was his last chance, he could tell. Soon he would run out of Mana and collapse.

He thrust himself up and struck the ceiling of the tunnel harder than he’d ever hit anything in his short insect life.

The ground all around him shook—and dirt began falling from the ceiling.

A wasp stinger found Adon’s back and penetrated.

He ignored it and thrust himself upward once more.

Ahhhhhh! Fuck! Argh! Goddess… why?!?

Suddenly, he found himself suffering the worst pain he’d experienced since his rebirth. The red slayers’ sting packed an unexpectedly vicious punch.

Then the lights went out.

Adon knew nothing for a time.

When he came to, it took him a moment to remember who he was and what had happened. He was in horrible pain, and everything was black around him.

I bet I got those wasps, though, he thought weakly. That brought it all back.

I actually managed to bring the tunnel down. Take that, you freakin’ monsters! Goddess, why did you make something like those wasps? Seriously…

He started pulling his limbs through the soil. Even though he felt like his back was ready to explode from sheer pain, he needed to move forward. He wasn’t certain how long he could survive buried underground, but he knew he needed air to live, and there wasn’t much of that down here.

Fortunately, the voles’ tunnel hadn’t been that deep—or so he thought.

Adon dug as best he could with his limbs that weren’t particularly adapted to the task, but after a minute of doing this, he recognized that he wasn’t digging against gravity. He was digging sideways. That realization helped him orient himself, and he started moving in the right direction, pushing slowly upward against the weight of the earth above him.

He found himself wishing that he had acquired the digging-specialized limbs that he had briefly considered, but then he dismissed the idea.

I’m making progress. I’ve never been buried underground before, and I don’t intend to be ever again. An Adaptation isn’t for one-time use. What a waste of Evolution Points!

Gradually, he felt the soil above him growing thinner.

Thank the Goddess, he thought. I’m almost there.

Adon pushed his way higher and higher with each passing moment, until he could see daylight. His head pushed its way free—and a stinger stabbed into the space just behind it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ahhhh! No! You’re supposed to be dead!

Two more stingers joined the first one, stabbing Adon in the back before he could infuse Mana into his exoskeleton and boost his defense.

The agony tore through him and made his movements more difficult.

He tried to strike them, but the movements became mere violent flails, and the red slayers responded with more stingers stabbing him in the side as more of his body revealed itself above the surface with his attempted counter attack. Even as some of them impaled themselves on his venomous spines, they made sure to inject their payloads into Adon’s body before they tried to pull themselves free.

Adon counted at least a dozen injections of venom into his body, and at that point, he stopped moving. Not because he gave up, but because he simply could no longer control his limbs. At first, he thought it was the sheer pain that had weakened his control. But then his body slumped to the ground in disobedience to his commands. As he lay there, several more wasps jabbing him with their stingers, he realized he was paralyzed.

Okay, I’m done already, guys, he thought sullenly. You did your job. I can’t believe this is how I die…

He thought of Goldie and Red. He would never see his friends again. He thought of the Princess. He would never be exposed to the wider world that she had seemed capable of introducing him to.

I’m a loser, he told himself. Why did I ever think it could be different this time? I don’t know what the Goddess even saw in me. Why she gave me this last chance at a life. It was a waste. I’m sure there was someone much more deserving…

As he lay in a depressed near-stupor, the red slayers reached out with their twig-like limbs and latched onto him, grasping him by his legs or even gripping bundles of his venomous spines.

What are they doing? Adon thought. Trying to hold me still? I’m already fucking paralyzed, you dumb bastards! What more do you need to do? Just fucking eat me and put me out of my misery already!

He wished he could cry, not for the first time in this life. But it was something he had never expected to miss from his human life—until he became an invertebrate.

To Adon’s surprise, he heard the wasps’ wings begin to vibrate as the red slayers worked together to carry him through the air. The fact that he was moving distracted him from his despair.

Is this how wasps actually behave? he wondered. In all my previous lives, I remember them being annoying bugs that would sting you as soon as look at you. And that’s what they did to the voles too… Is this how they hunt creatures small enough to be their prey?

Something felt off to him. He did not think this was typical wasp behavior. It was atypical for every insect he’d encountered in this entire life—atypical even for non-insect creatures he’d tangled with.

Mantises, bush crickets, ladybugs, snakes, spiders, bats—none of these animals had ever tried to simply carry him away without severely injuring or even killing him. The only animal that he’d ever seen try to do that was the bluebird.

But that was because the bluebird knew it was at a massive advantage compared with any insect, he thought. Do these wasps think I’m that defenseless compared to them? Even after I killed so many? They can’t be that dumb, right?

He thought for a moment, and a revelation hit him. Wait, that wasn’t the only reason the bluebird acted that way. She wanted to feed the bugs she found to her young. Crap. If the wasps are doing something similar…

His mind began racing through possibilities, the despair clouds parting as he considered how he might survive this situation.

They were stronger than the Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spiders had been, he could feel from their ability to maneuver him with just a handful of wasps, but just like those creatures, the wasps were no physical threat to him except for by their venom.

He could hear the loud droning noise of dozens more insects buzzing. It was clearer how many there had to be now that he was in the open air with them. He couldn’t see the exact number. Being surrounded by wasp bodies limited his range of vision and motion.

But he knew he was heading into the heart of the swarm. He knew there were a lot of these things. Perhaps these workers would pass him onto some other worker wasps, and those would carry him back home to the hive.

That would give me some time to make some kinds of preparations and recover from the venom… How many Evolution Points do I have now? At least I can still use the System as long as I’m conscious. I don’t have to move to make selections.

He opened up his Status to check his options.

User: Adon, Mystic Toxic Butterfly Larva

Age: 13 days

Sex: Male

Status

Health: 95/250

Mana: 45/655

Strength: 250

Agility: 249

Perception: 249

Dexterity: 249

Constitution: 251

Intelligence: 325

Will: 330

Charisma: 249

Skills: Identify, Impeccable Memory, Mana Manipulation II, Past Life Connection, Shed Skin, Spine Shot II, Spiritual Sight

Evolution Points: 3892

Biomass: 120/150

Yikes! That’s not a lot of Health left, or Mana. That venom must be extremely powerful. But that’s a lot of points, at least. Maybe I can do something after all. Okay. Should I buy some new Skills, Adaptations, or just pour points into Will and Intelligence? Obviously I need to upgrade Toxin Resistance first…

He knew that Will and Intelligence directly correlated with Mana. And if Adon had more Mana, any number of wasps should not be a threat to him, at least in theory. If he could keep his focus.

He could think of a lot that he could do with enough Mana. Hundreds of Mana balls, obliterating wasp after wasp until any few who survived fled with their stingers between their legs. And he should be able to balance that with pouring Mana into his exoskeleton for defense.

Yes. Increasing my Mana is the right call. Adon placed Toxin Resistance III and IV in his shopping cart. Then he allocated a thousand points each to Will and Intelligence. It would leave him without enough points to pay for his Evolution, but he would worry about that later. If he survived this, there would be plenty of other creatures for him to prey upon. And perhaps the wasps would be worth a fair number of points when he’d killed them. He wasn’t sure how many of the points he had gained recently were from the python versus the wasp he’d killed.

As his points in Will and Intelligence rose, Adon felt a surge in power. And he thought his mind was processing information more quickly.

A hundred and twenty wasps buzzing. He had the mental bandwidth to estimate the number of wasps by the sound of their droning now. It was more than he’d initially imagined, but fewer than he thought himself capable of dealing with now.

The wasps were lifting him higher now, and Adon felt that he was moving closer to the center of insect activity. The buzzing intensified further.

He felt inexplicably nervous, as if something bad was about to happen.

Then he heard a noise. He examined everything in his field of vision carefully, looking for what the source might be, before realizing the sound originated in his mind.

Hello Adon, said an eerie female voice, soft but sinister. It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you.