Chapter Seven

As soon a my growth was done, I gobbled up the other ant-soul before it could disappear.

This war of the ants was kind of horrifying, but it was my opportunity to keep leveling, and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

Level 3 brought the maximum of my Essence Pool to 12, and my Mana Pool to 8. Unfortunately, I only had about 2 EP and 2 MP in them. It wasn’t much, but put together I could keep Mana-Armor going for another two, two and a half minutes. It didn’t seem like a long time, but on a battlefield as dense and crowded as this, I could go around scavenging and eat a soul every ten seconds or so, and even Jack could find some adversaries to satisfy his own blood-lust-slash-dedication-to-work.

So I steeled myself, and I ordered Jack to move.

***

I just consumed my fifth ant-soul since my level-up, when I noticed something. In the distance, maybe thirty centimeters from me, there was something else fighting its own battle against both Reds and Blacks.

It looked something like a chunky, horned grasshopper, a giant by ant standards — its body could have been as long as five centimeters. A couple of its legs were missing already, one of its wings was half-gone. No matter how much it flapped the damaged wings, no matter how much it tried to crawl away, it couldn’t escape from the dozens of Reds and Blacks holding it under constant assault. It seemed the poor thing had been caught in the crossfire as the two colonies clashed, and neither sides were willing to let it go.

One and a half MP left.

I used the 2 EP I had, topping my Mana pool up to two and a half. It was enough for just under two minutes of Mana-Armor, and I decided to gamble.

‘Alright, Jack, you think we could get to that grasshopper? I’m feeling peckish,’ I said to him.

Work!

I knew Jack would agree.

***

It took Jack a whole twenty seconds to make his way through the numerous, warring ants standing between us and the grasshopper. I felt a little bit of resistance from Jack every time we came close to a Red; he really wanted to work — which meant attacking and dismembering the enemy, but I was firm in my commands, and he followed my direction.

2 MP left.

We arrived. Reds fought the grasshopper. Blacks fought the grasshopper. Reds and Blacks fought each other. This small battle-royale within the larger clash of the colonies was the kind that could have only one winner. Only one man standing in the end. And that was going to be me.

I let Jack loose, and he threw himself at a Red with the justifiable abandon of someone wearing impenetrable armor. I didn’t need to do much — the grasshopper was on its last leg, both metaphorically and literally, and I was sure the minute and a half we had left would be more than enough to watch the bug die and eat its soul. As it turned out, I had been right to gamble on this.

The grasshopper finally succumbed to the vicious, combined attacks of Reds and Blacks: it fell on its side and left its giant soul standing above it. I ordered Jack to go as close to it as he could. Most of the Reds and Blacks were still busy, hacking away at the dead bug, or at each other, and we got into tentacle range without issue. The soul was too large to wrap my tentacles around it, so I just thrust all four of them into it, willing them to consume it.

The taste! It flooded my entire being as my tentacles began their work. The ants were good. This was better. It was the difference between a fast food burger joint and a five star steakhouse. And I savored it.

It went slowly: twenty seconds later, half of that soul was still out there, broken and formless thanks to my tentacles, but still there. And I was getting full already. I had a minute’s worth of MP left to keep Jack armored. Ten seconds passed. I was really, really getting full. Another ten seconds: I was full.

I hated to leave a third of that grasshopper-soul to waste away into the air, but I was full, and my stock of MP could only keep Jack safe for another half a minute. I converted what little EP I’d collected to MP, buying ourselves another thirty or forty seconds. It was time to retreat. I ordered Jack to hightail it out of here, pushing a mental image of him running at speed.

Jack bolted. Or … would have bolted. New Reds came. From the sky. Flying. Flying bloody red ants, and they landed right on top of us and the other Blacks around us. The battle took on a brand new turn. The winged ants, even larger than the dedicated soldiers, were everywhere. Dozens of them, arriving one after another. Granted, some of them were more interested in tasting the dead grasshopper than fighting, but some fell upon the Blacks, and when that happened, it was a massacre. In a matter of seconds Jack was the only black ant standing. We were surrounded, being stabbed and bitten from all sides. I was out of EP. I had just about half an MP in my pool. We weren’t going to make it. Jack, my faithful champion who wore the armor I'd granted him, was going to fall in this battle because of my gamble. The Reds won. We lost.

‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Die Reds, die!’

I wasn't sure if it was my idea or it came solely from my Tentacle Horror instinct: I ejected the remaining half an MP all at once, adding it to the Mana in Jack’s armor, willing it to expand out in all directions at as high a speed as it could.

Mana exploded outward from Jack’s body. It was like a hand-grenade going off. I even heard a tiny squeak of a boom, and a shockwave swept everything away. Reds flew everywhere, many of them shredded to bits. The fliers were struck from the air and fell. Earth and dust, even bits of the grasshopper drizzled in the air.

Wow! That was something. Even Jack stood there, absolutely gobsmacked.

Work?

Then I laughed as I saw an area around me, at least ten centimeters in radius, cleared of life, cleared of Reds, cleared of everything. I laughed.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

‘Hahaha! See this? See this? Tremble before me, for I am the Ant-God! I bring judgment upon you, vile Reds! Tremble before Jack, my champion!’

Hearing my own, hollow voice, I stopped yelling and I shuddered. What was I saying? I was losing it, wasn’t I? Going insane? Already? No, no, no. This was not good. I had to get out of here.

At my command, Jack shot forward, heading to the rear lines.

***

In this ant war there were no clear lines, front or rear. But there were areas the Reds had not reached yet. One such area was near the tunnel from which Jack an I had emerged earlier. It felt like it had been ages ago, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. Regardless, we reached this rear-line area, and I could finally let the mental breath I’d been holding out.

I told Jack to stop and wait.

I was full, and I had some growing to do. This time, it was tentacles. All five of them started growing at the same time, and while that was happening, I observed this place: the rear lines. Countless Blacks scurried in all directions, everyone doing something, carrying something. Body-parts of fallen ants, both red and black, leaves and grass, anything, really, black workers hauling everything off into the tunnels. Trophies, or food for their queen, or for their young? Something like that, probably. And at the same time, more and more Blacks were arriving from the tunnels, heading into battle without a moment's hesitation.

My tentacles stopped growing, reaching their new length, and with that, I reached the next level.

Spiritual Tentacle Horror Level 3 to Level 4.

My tentacles had doubled in length; by my estimate, they’d grown from one and a half centimeters to at least three, or more. They were still as thin as noodles, but my reach had increased drastically.

I looked at my Essence Pool: it was filling somewhat faster than before, but it’s maximum capacity remained the same, though. My Mana Pool hadn't grown either. It was a bit disappointing, but it seemed their growth was tied to my main body's growth.

On the other hand, I had acquired a new skill.

It was a deadly one — that blast was no joke. It had blown away everything in a ten centimeter radius around me, shredding everything to bits. It really was like a bomb, or a grenade made of Mana. It was a weapon of last resort if I ever found myself surrounded again by nothing but tangible enemies. And I had a feeling the more MP I put into it, the larger and more powerful the blast would be. So, I named it: Mana-Blast.

Jack wanted to go to work, but I ordered him to stay and to wait.

So, we waited. It took somewhere between nine and ten minutes for my Essence pool to fill up; this meant the rate of Essence collection had increased by about twenty percent. As soon as the pool filled up, 2 EP disappeared; Wensah wasn’t forgetting to collect her due, was she? I poured 10 EP over to the Mana pool, gaining 5 MP. That was good. I waited for my Essence pool to fill up again, and I got the 3 MP I needed to max my Mana.

Then I had a decision to make.

A shiver ran down my imaginary spine as I recalled my own words. Ant-God? What was I thinking?

I didn’t even know at what point I started to think of the Blacks as ‘us’ and the Reds as ‘them’. Sure, Jack was a black ant, and I was riding him like a knight rode its horse into battle, but … that didn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t have meant anything. These were ants. It occurred to me that my connection with Jack might have been affecting me more than I realized, but I saw no evidence of this.

Now that I’d calmed down, I was alright. I no longer thought I was going insane. I had certainly got carried away in the heat of the moment, but that was all: heat of the moment in a highly unusual situation for a former human to be in.

I had to make a decision here: I could stay here and eat more ant-souls, level perhaps, or I could just take Jack with me and get out of this crater of death to see what the world looked like.

I didn’t know how many more levels I could gain from staying here.

I felt I needed a lot of EXP to get to Level 5. That grasshopper was pretty damn good, both in terms of taste and EXP, but there wasn’t another one of those in sight. My best guess was at least fifty or more ant-souls to Level 5. That was a lot of work, but it made sense: ants were small. Their souls were small. Less EXP. Grasshoppers were bigger. Their souls were bigger. More EXP. That’s how it worked, but … did it?

If a soul was the same size as the body it belonged to, then how had Wensah even managed to cram my human sized soul into this tiny critter? That soul-surgery she mentioned? That must have been illegal. Obviously there was more to how spiritual size worked, but I had no clue, and I needed to focus on the present anyway.

I made my decision: I’d get to Level 5 here, then I’d bail.

***

With 8 MP in the pool, I could keep Mana-Armor going for at least five and a half minutes. That was plenty of time to skirt the edges of the battle and scavenge for souls. And if I was careful enough not to get bogged down in unnecessary fights, it would be easy to retreat to the rear to refill my Mana pool in peace. That was the plan. And it worked.

Jack followed my instructions well, carrying me around the unending fighting. In the first five minutes I ate five souls and I wasn’t picky: Red or Black, I ate any. Every once in a while Reds attacked us, and I let Jack take care of it. Then we retreated to the rear, I refilled my Mana pool, and we headed back to stalk the fighters and collect their souls as they fell.

Seven trips and a total of fifty-five souls later, I was ready to level up. But before that, I wanted to quantify the EXP. Having consumed numerous ants and two thirds of a grasshopper, I had a better basis for it now.

I decided to keep it simple: one ant-soul was worth one EXP. Based on this, the grasshopper in its entirety was worth around thirty-five EXP.

To get to Level 2 had taken seven EXP. Level 3 had taken sixteen. My estimate for Level 4 was around twenty-seven or maybe twenty-eight, consisting of the five ants and two-thirds of the grasshopper. The fifty-five ant-souls I’d eaten to reach Level 5 made a lot of sense: it seemed with each new level the amount of EXP needed for the next was double of the previous. So if it took fifty-five EXP to reach Level 5, it would take a hundred-and-ten to make it to Level 6.

I knew that all this was just in my head, but I had a good head for numbers, and I was happy to have something in there that made sense. Because in the outside world, everything that had happened, everything that was going on ... well, I didn’t think I could make sense of it even if I tried.

So here I was: Spiritual Tentacle Horror Level 4 to Level 5.

I wiggled my tentacles — three centimeters didn’t sound like a lot, but it was enough for now, and I wanted to increase the size of my Essence and Mana pools this time. So I grew my main body.

As expected, my Essence Pool grew from 12 to 14, and my Mana pool from 8 to 9. I couldn’t complain: it was consistent. And as my body used up all the spirit-stuff, I got a feel for the amount I needed for my next level. My guess had been right: a hundred-and-ten EXP, give or take a few. I liked this kind of consistency.

I had 14 EP, 9 MP, and four skills at my disposal: Mana-Glove, Mana-Armor, Critter Control and Mana-Blast.

I felt I was ready.

I took a last look at the crater. The ants showed no signs of stopping; it seemed that to them war was constant, unending and for some reason, necessary. Well, they were ants, doing what nature intended for them to do. And I had enough of it already.

‘Alright, Jack, let’s get out of here!’