Chapter Eight

Jack climbed up the slanted, uneven wall of the crater with the ease I'd expected from an ant. He didn’t seem especially sad to leave the slaughter behind. Then again, he was an ant — he probably thought we were going to do some other kind of work for his colony. Then again, he was an ant, and he probably didn’t think at all.

Work.

That was all I got from him, and it was stupid of me to even speculate on what he meant this time, if anything at all.

‘Just consider this a trip to explore some new locations for your colony to… colonize,’ I told him.

Work.

‘Yeah. Work.’

Jack wasn’t a great conversationalist, but he made up for it by being an excellent mount.

We reached the edge of the crater and we didn’t look back. I didn’t because I didn’t want to, and Jack didn’t because I didn’t let him. Instead, we, I gawked at the sight in front of us.

The dreary, dusty, deadly battlefield was no more. Here a green jungle awaited us, a thick, dense forest of tall grass, weeds and flowers of all colors, swaying and rustling in the breeze. The sky was bright and blue, the clouds small and white, sunshine bombarding us from above. It was spring or summer out here, and life was abundant. Bugs coming and going, some flying above the field. I even saw some black ants navigating between blades of grass, ignorant of the battle raging in the crater. I felt like I’d been dropped onto the set of that old movie where the guy shrunk his kids with his home-made shrink-ray. All thoughts of soul-eating, of levels, of war, just vanished from my mind for a moment — I simply marveled at the sight all around me. This was a field, no doubt about that, and as such it wasn’t anything remarkable. But from where I stood, it was something grand, something beautiful, something epic.

I wasn’t keen to disrupt the relative peace of the field, but I knew that if I wanted my new life to amount to more than hanging around bugs, or just being immobile while Wensah was enjoying the Essence she was siphoning from me, I had to take leveling seriously. I had to grow. I had to grow and I had to explore both myself and this new world I’d been thrust into. I didn’t have a clue what was out here — there might be creatures that could harm or kill me. The only solution I could think of was growing. Leveling.

‘So, buddy, this is the plan,’ I said to Jack. ‘I make it to Level 10, then you can go back to work. Alright?’

Work.

‘Good. Let’s get started!’

***

There was no shortage of prey. With Mana-Armor on, I didn’t have to worry about Jack, so I went for the large ones.

The first one was a centipede looking creature with horns of course, as bugs seemed to have horns here. It was even bigger than the grasshopper. Jack attacked it on my command, relishing the opportunity to work. The centipede pushed him back, but couldn’t hurt him. I didn’t wait for Jack to conclude his duel with the beast at least twenty times his size. I stuck my tentacles into the centipede and sucked the soul out of the still living bug in less than ten seconds. I was impressed: it gave me roughly seventy EXP, which left about forty to be collected.

The next was a large critter that looked like a ladybug, but green with purple spots, and to nobody’s surprise, horns. It gave me ten EXP. Those green and purple ladybugs were in abundance, lounging on grass, leaves and flowers. Jack was adept at climbing up on those, and the bugs didn’t offer much resistance. It took two more of them to reach the required hundred-and-ten EXP, and I was ready to grow to Level 6.

***

We ventured further and further away from the crater, and the increase in the EXP I needed to reach each new level made me focus on the largest insects I could find. I ate at least five centipedes, a dozen ladybugs and two spiders that could compete with Earth’s tarantulas in size and scariness. They brought me up to Level 9 by the time the sun disappeared behind the horizon.

Level 10 came after the stars appeared in the darkening sky ... and after eating three more centipedes and a worm. I wasn’t keen on the worm. I’d got used to insects, and the hairy, slimy critter wasn’t the least bit appealing as a meal. But compared to the bugs, it was huge. It took me almost a minute to eat its soul. It tasted weird, something like carrot soup, but it gave me at least seven-hundred EXP, pushing me over the threshold to reach Level 10.

And with that, I reached my goal for the day and I took a good look at myself.

Of the five growth spurts I’d gone through since Level 5, I had grown my tentacles twice and my body three times. The spherical center of my spiritual body was now almost two centimeters in diameter, eighteen, maybe nineteen millimeters. My five tentacles were an impressive ten centimeters long by my best estimate, giving me considerable reach. My Essence Pool had a maximum capacity of 20, and my Mana Pool stood at a maximum of 12.

I liked Level 10. I felt like I had a chance out in the world. If nothing else, I’d certainly outgrown riding on Jack, who was only about a centimeter long. Jack wasn’t complaining, and I didn’t think my presence hindered him in any way, but it was time to let him go just as I’d promised him. But before that, there was one more walk I needed him to take with me.

***

During my leveling spree it wasn’t only insects I’d seen. I’d found small rodents, like mice — furry little critters, with a greenish-brown coat and a face that resembled a bat rather than a mouse. And of course tiny horns. I’d seen one or two here and there during the day, but the moment the sun had set, they came out in force from hidden holes in the ground. They foraged the field for whatever it was they ate; seeds from flowering weeds, small bugs like ants and the such. I’d avoided them until now, because I wasn’t sure if Mana-Armor would be enough to protect Jack against the teeth of these mice-like creatures. But now it was time to catch and tame one of them. I’d outgrown bugs and this was the next step. The large spiders had been tempting, but they were just too creepy, so I decided to move on to mammals. Well, I assumed they were mammals.

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I didn’t have a problem seeing in the dark, and by the look of it, neither did Jack. Plenty of the weird, furry critters were out and about, and it didn’t take long to find one. Occasionally I heard shrieks and the flapping of wings from above — some birds hunting the mice. The field was a dangerous place if you didn’t have a friendly Tentacle Horror to watch your back and to shield you from predators, wasn’t it?

Jack approached one of the critters from behind. The mouse stood still, probably waiting for a chance to move without being spotted by the aerial menace the birds were. I stopped Jack about a centimeter from the animal. I checked my Essence pool: it was almost full at 17, and I had 8 MP as well. I was ready. I willed 3 EP to gather at the tip of one of my tentacles — I felt like it should be enough — and I reached for the mouse.

‘This is it Jack!’

Work.

I was sure Jack was eager to get back to his colony and live out his life, working for the greater good. I didn’t know what the lifespan of an ant was. A month? Two months? Half a year? I didn’t even know how old Jack was. Well, I wished him the best of luck nonetheless and I touched the soul of the mouse.

My tentacle pierced the soul as if going through air, and I expelled the Essence, injecting it into the spiritual mass of the critter. The Essence instantly began forming the microscopic wiring, spreading to every part of the critter’s soul. The mouse shuddered, then stayed still. At the same time, I willed the wires to withdraw from Jack as I slowly pulled my tentacle out of his soul. It was time for Jack to regain his freedom, to rejoin his colony and be the worker he was always meant to be.

That didn’t happen.

My Critter Control skill began to assert itself through the forming connection with the mouse, and I began to feel the ongoings in its soul. But my other tentacle did not leave Jack. Despite my will, despite my clear desire to set him free from my own clutches, the Essence-wires stayed, keeping my tentacle lodged into his tiny ant-soul, and as I pulled it, it brought his soul with it, yanking it out of his body. Jack flailed his antennas wildly, and I stopped the movement of the tentacle as soon as this registered in my mind. It was too late.

‘No! Jack! What have I done?’ I cried out in a panic.

Jack stilled, then slumped to the ground, and on the tip of my tentacle hung his soul.

‘No no no no no!’ I screamed.

Jack’s soul was losing its form already, my tentacle liquifying it, starting to suck it up. I flailed the tentacle around, willing it to let go of the soul, but there was no stopping the process. The mouse shuddered as the connection was complete, and my pain and rage spilled over to it.

Jack’s soul disappeared from the world, entering the horrible, mysterious dimension the inside of my body was, becoming nothing more then cursed EXP, fuel for the growth of the monster I was. But no! I wasn’t going to let this happen. Jack’s soul would not become food!

I wasn’t thinking straight and I had no idea what I was doing. Even my Tentacle Horror instinct was telling me it was just guesswork. I didn’t care. I willed my Essence pool to pour half of its contents out and I willed whatever spiritual muscles I had in that tentacle to gather the Essence and use it to isolate Jack’s spirit-stuff.

I knew he was gone. I … I killed him. And I didn’t want to accept that. That stuff was Jack, and I wasn’t going to eat it.

My tentacle pushed and shaped the Essence, making it surround the spirit-stuff Jack had become. I could feel it as it was happening. I could feel Jack’s soul being isolated from the rest of me by Essence, and that he didn’t count towards the EXP, didn’t count as food yet. But this wasn’t going to be enough. My Tentacle Horror instinct was whispering, telling me my body wouldn’t be able to keep neither the Essence nor the spirit stuff for long. I’d need to either expel or absorb. I didn’t want to do either. This was Jack, this was what was left of his soul.

What could I do? What else was there to do?

The only thing I had, the only thing I hadn’t used yet, was Mana. I didn’t know what would happen, but I called on my Mana pool. It was worth a try — I wasn’t going to lose Jack like this, not without trying everything I could. I emptied my Mana pool. All 8 MP flowed out and into the tentacle. I willed the Mana to flow around Jack’s soul and the swirling Essence isolating it. I hoped that Mana and Essence together would keep my body from absorbing the small mass of spirit-stuff, and at the same time I wouldn’t be forced to just eject it and let it disappear into the air.

I had no idea if it was possible. And I had no idea what I should do next. I had no idea if I was doing this for Jack or for myself. Maybe both. I knew this was nothing but grasping at straws and I couldn’t bring Jack back. I also realised there was no justification for me to be so angry and so worked up because of an ant. Jack was an ant, for God’s sake. Then maybe it wasn’t because of Jack. Maybe I was so angry and frustrated because of what he represented, of what he was proof of: my new reality, the nature of my new existence, the loss of my old life and my old world. Whatever it was, I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t want to.

I willed all my Mana to join the Essence to form a barrier together around Jack’s spirit-stuff. Essence resisted. Mana obeyed. Then the two came together, mixing and becoming something else. This something else then enveloped the former ant-soul. I gawked at the swirling mess, feeling it and sensing it as it changed. Then the Essence-Mana mixture bled into the spirit-stuff and the spirit-stuff merged with Essence and Mana. The three substances came together and became a different spiritual matter, something that was new but familiar. Its unseen, formless mass roiled. It was still in my tentacle, but at the same time it wasn’t — it was in that horrible dimension my body contained.

I focused on the mass and I recognized what it was. It felt frighteningly similar to the sensation I got from both the Essence and the Mana pools themselves. This new … mass, this new substance … it was like a pool. Similar but different from the other two.

Instinct took over. It guided me as I shaped the new pool. It became a container, a small room, its walls made of the fusion of Essence, Mana, and Spirit-Stuff. It vanished from my tentacle, but it was still there, a part of my body, residing in that same place where my other pools did.

The entire event took less then half a minute, and was starting to hear the thoughts of the mouse through the new connection.

Food! Eat!

The mouse moved and I moved with it. Oh no. I didn’t want to leave Jack’s body behind.

I reached out with an immaterial tentacle — it reached Jack, going right through his dead body. I had no Mana left — I’d used it all to create that strange, new room. The mouse moved, and I didn’t have time to convert EP to MP, so I willed my body to get some Essence to the tentacle, hoping that once, just this once, it would do the job Mana was supposed to do, and let me grab the ant's body.

I didn’t know why I wanted to drag Jack’s body with me, or what I wanted to do with it. Perhaps I was more sentimental than I’d thought. Perhaps I wanted to bury it and mark a grave for him. Perhaps I just didn’t want to give up. I wasn’t sure, but I was hoping against hope it would work.

Essence burst out into the physical world. I could sense it dousing Jack’s body like water from a hosepipe. And just as the mouse dragged me away, and my tentacle was about to leave Jack behind … it vanished. Jack’s body disappeared into thin air.

What! Happened?

Then I felt it. A jolt running through my body, as if I’d just licked a battery. Actually, it felt more like a weird hiccup. And the next thing I felt was the new room: it wasn’t empty any more. Jack’s body, Jack’s physical body was inside it, enveloped in a thin coat of Essence, resting in a corner.

I couldn’t believe it. I had taken Jack’s tangible, material body into my spiritual body, into a room I’d unwittingly built from his soul.

The mouse began to run. I didn’t care. I just peered at this new room, Jack’s Room, and at the tiny ant body resting inside.