A fighter had been outside the cave for a whole day, waiting. The pack was nowhere to be seen. Nor the bigger creature.

Despite the apparent setup, the bird wanted to go; to fight this enemy and kill it, make it pay for the injuries he suffered the last fight.

The bird waited, for he likes the thrill of the hunt. But as the hours passed, he began to feel anxious and frustrated. Why doesn't the bug get out?

It finally lost its patience and climbed to the rocky wall over the cave. He could see the bug at the cave's door and decides to kill it quickly to make the alpha bug angry.

As he prepared, he suddenly felt that it was too easy, too obvious.

With a shake of its feathered head, it focused its great eyes into the fighter, pointed its sharp beak, and made its jump, correcting the trajectory mid-air with its winged arms.

The fighter had no time to react, the bird just sliced it in half, its beak far too strong for its opponent to resist. Then just as he was going to jump back, he noticed a sudden movement under the soil!

A pair of grey and sharp pincers traped one of his limbs. If that wasn't bad enough, he also felt a powerful sting injecting venom into its body.

It hit the dangerous limb and jumped back, but one of its arms was bleeding, and its own blood was now poisoned. Its breathing was all messed up after the sudden attack.

A shadow emerged from under the caverns soil, followed by 3 smaller creatures, all of them looking menacing.

As the 2 sides stood before the other, tense silence followed for one, two, three seconds. And the hell unleashed!

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We made a battle cry, shouting to the top with our chitinous lungs to demoralize the enemy.

* SCREEEEEESSCHHHEEEEEE!!!!!!

It sounded like a thousand knives scratching a blackboard.

Even my psychic energy was imbued in it, making it far worse for the monkey-bird to bear without repercussions.

I saw it getting both angry and scared. It doubted for a few seconds what to do.

It was scared, we can smell its fear.

I jumped and run to surround it as soon as I could as he was hesitating. We cannot allow it to jump to the walls again. I used my tail to make it wary of both advancing and attacking me.

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The 3 smaller fighters went full out, and it had to divert some attention to fight back while keeping an eye on me.

The bird was agile enough to fight back both the 3 mites and me at the same time with just one arm and its legs. But time was taking its toll.

Yet it was no pushover, and it managed to kill a mite and injure another one in the first few seconds of the fight. I just kept summoning them back again, turning it into an attrition fight.

As it started to lose its confidence, the bird tried to bypass the fighters and reach the wall to escape, as we expected.

In its rush, it got bitten, and one of the mites managed to cause a deep wound into its leg; it was now bleeding profusely.

Yet using an opening, the damaged bird jumped into the wall and even turned back to mock me somehow, but it just sees me looking back at it, waiting.

From the ceiling, a mucus projectile fell onto the bird's back. It started burning through the feathers and skin, easily breaking it apart. The bird was taken by surprise and shouted in agony, nearly falling to the ground, where we are waiting for it.

After evading a couple more shots, the bird found the spot where my hidden mite was hidden and sniping at him.

It was a reasonably plump mite with deep green colors, entirely full of toxins and poisonous spores that I previously generated and made it store into its own body. But the shooting was not its main feature, not the worse it had to offer.

The bird-monkey creature kept evading and climbing, with its exhausted body, full of wounds, scratches, and a few deep corrosion burns were showing its muscles and some bare-bones.

It was so obsessed about taking down that plump mite that hurt both its pride and body that it just forgot about escaping.

The bird kept evading and jumping up, getting closer by the second.

"C'mon! Keep going." I saw it getting closer. 6 meters, 4, 3, 1 meter.

The mite was now within the bird's reach, and with a cruel look, it extends its arm to catch it and crush it slowly. But just as it was about to grab it, the mite jumped towards the bird directly.

That was unexpected, the mite’s behavior was a cowardly one. It remained hid on top of the wall and only attacked when the bird was distracted. So this direct assault took the already enraged bird by surprise. With pleasure, it tried to pierce it with its powerful beak.

And then, just at the last second, the mite exploded.

* Ploooofff!

Corrosive liquid, together with venom, toxins, and spores, fell onto its arm, face, and body. The pain surpassed all the limits the bird's brain could manage, and it just fell from the wall while screaming in pain.

A couple of seconds later, a bloody figure dropped onto the ground.

It was still alive and shaking its few working muscles, not giving up; it tried to stand up, to put together it's broken arms and legs. To no avail.

We got closer to the suffering bird but stayed out of reach. A wounded animal was dangerous, even one mortally wounded. It was no exception.

I summoned a few more mites to start dismantling the body; the newly born mites started its job with utmost efficiency; they began piercing, ripping apart muscle and tearing limb after limb.

As the bird was dying, it kept looking me directly at my eyes. All I saw there was resentment, and an intense desire for revenge. That was precisely why it died. I saw that malice and used it against it.

Less than a minute later, we start eating its flesh.

I could see the traces of corruption all over its flesh and even bones.

The changes are different from the first bird. That one suffered an explosive mutation in a few hours. This one had been morphing for a long while from what I could see.

But the changes were greater than just the body. Its mind had also changed and twisted in unnatural ways.