〚Skill Aptitude Increase『Steel Skin: LV1』has become『Steel Skin: LV2』〛

I tasted blood on impact, so I chomped down harder on the locust's wings provoking another screech. It squirmed and struggled hard to shake me off, but its body frame was its biggest hindrance.

Its hind legs were shaped just for jumping and they were not flexible enough to reach me, while its other four legs were planted firmly on the ground to support its weight, with the addition of a vengeful snake on top.

Retracting my body closer, I used my tail end to deflect the blows from its hind legs then I curled myself around its thorax, in the space between its shorter legs to protect myself. Once I was sure I was safe, I proceeded to rip off its two remaining wings.

I felt satisfied at the crisp sound of its wing membrane tearing apart. It was its own fault for provoking me when all I wanted to do was leave. Let's see how you fight back now, without those annoying wings!

Without the sound attack that rendered me almost defenceless, there was nothing stopping me from going on the offence, and now, all that was left was for it to die.

Tightening my hold on its body through [Grip], I lunged at the spot underneath its wings where the flesh was softer to render a bite. But unexpectedly, my fangs rebounded off something hard and I stared in disbelief at the new 'armour' covering the area.

Had its exoskeleton just moved?

I felt a lurch as the locust's feet pounded the ground and the sudden tilt of its body broke my balance, forcing me to lay flat on its back again as it leaped into the air again.

Laying down, I noticed a small gap in its extended armour. If I could lodge my horns into it and succeed in ripping out a scale or two, it would be easy to inflict my venom from there.

But the locust did not remain still enough for me to attempt it. With each jump, there was a little pause before it attempted another leap, each one sending dizzying waves and spasms through my body. But with my body tightened around its thorax, I resisted most of the waves and did not suffer much from the impact.

However, once in the air I noticed something odd. With every jump the locust made it seemed to be getting closer to the walls of the cave. I wondered if it was on purpose. The locust's behaviour seemed to simply want to throw me off it back but could it actually be planning something?

If it were to hit the wall with the sheer force of its jump, my body would be crushed.

But so would the locust.

I didn't cover enough of its body to leave it completely exempt from harm. Its longer hind legs, especially those that extended past its abdomen would suffer the most damage. If that was its plan, it was a terrible one.

I wondered if it even cared about its own body or if it was so desperate to get me off its back, it would do anything. It made no sense for it to attempt such a thing...

Unless this was actually not its own strategy but someone else's. I decided on the latter.

From the state of the locust's already battered body I could tell it approached situations without a care for its own well being or the damage it inflicted on itself. Remembering the other life form [Heat Sense] revealed, I was doubly sure this was the puppeteer's doing.

No sane creature would deliberately put their own lives at risk just to put an end to a perceived threat or foe. The locust was indeed pitiful to be used in this way.

As we reached closer to the wall, I released my grip on the locust's thorax and latched on to the stubs of its wings again with [Bite]. My bite this time did not provoke a reaction from it as it just kept up its jumping momentum.

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Mindlessly moving even though each jump pulled my body further along to hang loosely on its sides. My entire weight pulling on its wing stubs should have been excruciating for it, and its lack of reaction only confirmed my suspicion.

The creature inside it was gaining more control and gradually the locust was losing all of its senses, including the sense of pain. It must've been extremely confident in its plan. That my ending was inevitable and my futile attempts were not worth a reaction. The scary creature intended to crush my body with enough force against the cavern wall, letting me take the brunt of the impact.

And it was half right, with each jump the locust made, its impact on the ground made me lose two points of HP but I persisted and hung on longer as it closed the gap. If I were to hit the wall it would indeed be the end for me, but the locust's puppeteer was naïve to think I wouldn't notice its plan.

Once it was near enough to the wall, I released my bite on its wings.

I winced as my fangs scraped along its hard shell, but I used the wind generated by the force of its jump to slip under it. Latching onto one of its longer hind legs at the joint with [Bite], I launched myself off its body towards the wall with [Leap] to avoid getting pulled along with the insect.

And as I got closer to the wall, I tried to attach myself to it with [Grip] but the angle of my jump and the force of my impact made it impossible. I tumbled down the wall as soon as I hit it, and immediately coiled myself into a roll.

It took less than a second for the locust to realise I was no longer on its back and it screeched incomprehensibly, however the trajectory of its jump was fixed – it could not avoid the impact now in midair.

Without its wings it was impossible for it to manoeuvre itself the other way however much it struggled, and it crashed into the cavern wall with tremendous force.

I barely managed to avoid getting crushed by the body of the falling locust but I ended up scraping my scales against the wall's hard curved surface as I fell, incurring more damage.

〚Skill Aptitude Increase『Rugged Scales: LV1』has become『Rugged Scales: LV2』〛

I landed on the ground with force with the battered, twitching body of the locust landing not too far from me.

But it was still alive!

Looking at its body, it suffered the most damage on its legs. The two used for jumping were twisted badly, but not broken. Its main body had a dent in its thorax while its abdomen only suffered scrapes and bruising.

My impact on the wall had been rough and I'd suffered slight razor burn, but at least I'd fallen from a height that was not so steep, unlike the locust whose jump had crashed it into the top of the wall, so I was surprised it had survived after all that. I'd hoped the impact would finish it off, but its exoskeleton was resilient beyond my calculations.

Pushing off the ground, I shook off the remnants of a few scales that had come off during my fall and I went after the locust again. Compared to its battered body mine fared better. What better time to finish it off than when it was injured.

The locust's weathered body struggled to get up, its limbs twitching uncontrollably. As I approached it, its body contorted, the long limbs spasming unusually as they extended as if it found the action of moving its limbs difficult and unfamiliar. But once it stood, its trembling stopped, and its limbs went rigid at its sides while its head hung limp from its thorax in a defeated stance.

I started to get confused. Did it give up?

And then, suddenly it's body contorted as something pushed up from inside the hard shell of its head. Scanning it with [Heat Sense] I noticed the smaller heat source inside it had started to grow bigger, and with it, the heat of the locust's body had begun to fade. The locust turned cold in hues of deep blue and faded yellow while the blazing white light of the smaller creature intensified.

Something strange was happening.

The locust's heat was almost completely wiped out when its head cracked. On its bug face, a seam opened right across the creature's cloudy eyes. As it did, the locust's body convulsed erratically, trembling so much its front legs collapsed under the weight of its head, bringing the creature down to the ground.

The slim crack on its eyes continued to widen as something pushed out from the inside of the locust's head in a horrendous crack.

I watch in horror as a long leg slipped out from the opening in its face, the locust's two antennae rose up over its head and then I noticed a second pair of eyes staring at me with malicious intent from inside the hole in the locust's head right between the long crack across its own eyes.

The new pair of eyes were sharper, their colour and lustre a pearlescent black, more alert than the cloudy muddy ones the locust had before.

I recognised that horrid limb. They were similar to the ones of the wasp whose sharpness had dug into me as I soared through the air, only, this one was a translucent pale shade rather than its usual dark green.

Its glistening wet limbs were slender, sporting fewer blades as they ripped apart the locust's skull.

I assumed this wasp's body hadn't fully matured, but the barbs on them were dangerous all the same.

It wasn't the locust I had to be wary of now, but the juvenile wasp residing inside it that was about to emerge.