The ground was covered with the remnants of around twenty defeated fire ants. Their crimson segmented bodies lay in tatters, splayed out and baking under the light of the morning sun. It was a sight that filled me with a sense of triumph, but that triumph was eclipsed by another feeling: hunger. Having started my day with a desperate fight for survival, and having won the privilege of living another day, I had certainly earned this meal. I began gobbling up the ants' remains, starting with the nearest ones.

I had eaten armored ants before, and I had defeated fire ants the previous day, but this morning had been my first actual face-to-face confrontation with fire ants, and thus my first chance to taste them. Well, the "taste" wasn't much to remark on: they tasted mildly acidic — while I wouldn't exactly describe the flavor as "citrusy," the closest thing I could think to compare them to was a milder lemon: sharp, tangy, and a little bit sour. Their insides were soft and chewy, and it occurred to me that whatever venom it was that made their bites sting (and inflict the "impaired" and "enfeebled" status conditions) might still be present in their body, but I didn't see any notification about negative status conditions as I continued to indulge my appetite. Whatever it was that made their bites sting, my digestive tract was apparently equipped to handle it. That came as little surprise: my digestive tract was probably filled with acidic digestive enzymes of its own built for breaking down just about anything— I was a "carrion feeder," after all, to the point where raw and rotting meat was always on the menu. Clearly, having an ants venom or acid in my stomach was a different experience than having it injected into my softer and more sensitive tissue.

The fire ants, being smaller than their armored counterparts, weren't nearly as filling, and as I lapped up the last of the ants, I could see that my [satiety] meter had risen to 40%. It somehow made the ants seem even smaller and more insignificant: an ant army of this size wasn't even enough to provide a full day's worth of calories.

That said, defeating an ant army did come with other benefits: I was now sitting at [90% progress toward next level]. If anything, this morning's events had taught me the importance of a good defense. I wasn't sure how many skill points I would need to deposit into [scales] before I gained imperviousness to ant bites, but it seemed the only reasonable thing for me to do at this point. I had won this morning's battle by an uncomfortably narrow margin. Hopefully, the fire ants had learned their lesson, or at the very least, hopefully I had thinned their ranks enough that I would have time to train before the next assault. If they could climb up onto the plateau and attack me in my sleep once, they could do it again.

Now, more than ever, I was struck by an urgent desire to become stronger. When the biggest threats to my existence had been hyenas, I at least had the plateau as a 'safe zone' where I could escape to sleep and give myself time to plan. It seemed there was no escaping from the ants. Building some kind of defensive structure to protect myself didn't seem to be an option; sadly I had not been blessed with the ability to build defensive walls or traps or anything else that might serve as protection against invaders. I had only my own scales.

Perhaps this was the curse of "power." It wasn't without its upsides: my innate defensive abilities seemed like the kind of thing no one could ever take away from me, whereas if I invested resources in building up castles or fortresses or armor or weapons, those were the kind of thing that might conceivably be stolen away if I was ever overpowered. But being limited by my own biology seemed like a pretty big handicap compared to what I was used to. Humans might not possess much in the way of innate strength, but they nonetheless managed to construct tools that could literally move mountains.

But maybe that was a little fatalistic. I scanned the area around me. True, I didn't have the ability to construct a grand castle, but this plateau was a decent bulwark of sorts: it did well enough at protecting me from most of the predators I had encountered; it was only today that I had encountered a foe that was able to (and willing to) scale the sheer sides of it to attack me where I rested. It wasn't as if the entire concept of constructing shelter was a thing that humans had a monopoly on: plenty of birds built nests, bees built hives, beavers build dams and lodges, and within this valley, there was a spider who possessed a fortress of sorts, which consisted of nothing more than a hole in the ground and their own sticky webs. Thinking of that just made me envious: a web was exactly the sort of thing that might have come in handy this morning. But while I didn't have the ability to spin webs, and I didn't have a human's dexterous hands, it would be wrong to say that I had no capacity for tool use: mere days ago I had speculated about how the rocks on this plateau might be put to practical use. The rocks were too small in size and number for me to construct a fortress out of them, but they were at least something.

Still, it seemed that at this particular moment, the best investment I could make was in myself. I was in the market for harder scales, which meant I was in the market for more skill points, and that would require more exp. But I had only [2/14] SP to get me through the rest of the day, and from the shape and direction of the shadows the sun was casting, it wasn't even noon yet. I had a desperate desire to hunt, yet at the same time, yet I also felt the importance of being frugal with the resources that were currently available to me. Given that, what was I to do? If I wanted to find out, I was probably better off exploring, rather than looking for an answer to the question inside my own head.

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After licking up the last of the fire ant remains atop the plateau, I peered out over the edge, looking for any hint of moment that might indicate a creature that could serve as possible prey. My gaze started at the horizon, then I shifted my view downward, looking at the ground closer to my vantage point. I saw the movement first as the shifting of colors against rock, not even sure what I was seeing until I continued the movement across the desert floor as it approached my perch. It was a line — a thin line, but a solid line, of red. I felt my breath catch. Another wave of red ants was approaching. I couldn't even make out their individual shapes; all I had to go by was the shape and volume of their formation, but it was clearly bigger than the last group of fire ants. Scores, at the least. Maybe more than a hundred. The ants that had escaped the first time had apparently called for backup, come to finish the job, and the nearest of them were already at the base of the plateau.

I spun around, my head swiveling, spotting the rocks that I had set aside days earlier for experimentation. I dashed over to the nearest one — it was nearly the size of a bowling ball — and pushed it frantically toward the edge, sending it over. It bounced against the wall of the plateau several times on the way down, landing harmlessly between two ants. I wheeled around, looking for another rock. This one was heavier, and it took me more time — more precious seconds — to push it into place. I sent it over the edge, and it too bounced off the side of the plateau, completely missing the ants that were on their way up, and hitting the ground below, shattering into tiny fragments, which the ants seemed to ignore. In one desperate third attempt, I found a smaller rock, sent it over the edge, and it too hit the ground without hitting any of its targets. Somehow, my projectiles couldn't hit even when I was firing them in the direction of a crowd with dozens of targets. But they were small targets, and what I was doing was akin to bowling on a bumpy lane where all of the pins were half a meter apart.

My tools had failed me. Fighting wasn't an option; I could barely win a fair fight against thirty ants, and not only was this group of ants at least three times larger, I was already running low on both HP and SP from the earlier encounter. I did the only thing I could think of: flee.

I climbed down the plateau on the side opposite where the ants were climbing up. Actually, to say "climbed" down was giving me too much credit: I slid down, tail first, sliding down so fast that I was surprised not to take damage from friction burns as I slid. I needed a place to hide, somewhere safe from ants. Could they see me? Would they be able to follow me? I had no idea what the sensory capability of these ants was, but given that they had managed to find me in my sleep last night, it seemed unlikely that they were solely dependent on sight to locate me. Was it smell? Was there some place I could go that would mask my scent? My mind was awash in questions as I hurried away, moving my legs with a deliberate urgency, willing myself not to trip even as I rushed. Did they even use smell to track their prey?

My mind stopped on the word "prey." How ironic that I, a dragon — albeit a baby dragon — was now being relentlessly pursued by an army of ants, the smallest creatures that I had encountered during my time here. If living a "life of power" meant being a dragon, I could have probably picked a better life for myself. Why couldn't I have been born a hyena, with a pack to raise me and cooperate with me? Even ants had the powers of cooperation on their side, to the point where they could collectively win a fight to the death against larger creatures. Any individual ant might risk being cannon fodder, but whatever the survival rate was for ants, it seemed better than 0%, which was what my own chance of survival seemed to be rapidly approaching. Even if I had to live a life of solitude, why couldn't I have been been born a tortoise? Perhaps I could have lived that life, or something akin to it, if only I'd invested more points into [scales]. Maybe I had only myself to blame. Maybe the four days I had spent living here had all been a test that I had managed to fail.

The fire ants hadn't launched their all-out assault on me until today, the morning after I'd fumigated several of their dens — maybe I'd unknowingly committed some grave misstep by putting myself on their radar as posing an unacceptable level of danger. I was the monster from their nightmares, a predator that had invaded their home with poisonous gas, and in so doing, perhaps I had established myself as an existential threat that had to be wiped out at all costs, even if it meant sacrificing dozens of ant lives to stop me. And now it was too late for me to negotiate and try a way out.

As I continued skedaddling, I took a moment to glance behind me, and I saw that the ants were continuing their pursuit, now marching down the plateau. And they were outpacing me. Even if they weren't, even if my sprinting ability were enough to keep ahead of them, eventually I would get tired and they would catch up to me. They had inevitability on their side.

There was a thought lingering on the edge of my brain. Something about escape, or hiding, something that had passed through my mind around the time that I had started feeling sorry for myself and lamenting the fate of being born a dragon, as opposed to any of the other species I might have been born as. I'd had a thought about smell — a place where my scent might be covered up. I remembered the smell of rotting meat from before, the first time that I had found a rabbit corpse in an underground cave filled with putrid fumes. It had been a spider's den. That's what I needed right now: the ability to spin webs. Create traps. Put some kind of ensnaring barrier between the ants.

But of course. I didn't need to spin that web. It already existed. I knew where that spider's underground lair was, and if I could get past the entrance, the webs that were a mere hinderance to me might prove to be effective at completely halting the advance of any ants. Previously, I had fled the cave, fearing what lay within. But right now, it seemed like my only option, and it just might be the thing to save me.