I knew the fight was imminent and prepared some arsenal to help me in moments of need.

Eating a mana regeneration seed, I created a Wind cannonball, and slotted it inside the skill slot. But then I noticed that my skill Memorize had already grown to level 3, which in turn had grown my skill slots from 1 to 3.

Happily I prepared two more air cannonballs and slotted them too.

I ate one mana regenerating see and noticed that I only had five more seeds left.

{Dissolve has risen to lv 10}

{Dissolve’s Special skill: Efficient Herbal absorption acquitted.}

Efficient Herbal absorption: Allows you to efficiently absorb all the nutrients from the herbs you intake and makes sure that your body don’t attain resistances to certain herbs.

I stowed away rest of the seeds for future use, and started walking.

My slow walk soon turned into a full-fledged run, and by the time I reached the group of twenty ants that was slowly creeping toward me, speed demon had already increased my speed over 50% and with haste added upon it, I had actually become the reincarnation of lightening itself.

{Haste has risen to lv 13}

[Current speed is 360% + 130% of your agility.]

Those ants probably only saw a flash coming from far away, but like I anticipated, they already had ideas about someone attacking them one by one, and seeing me just confirmed their idea.

“Ah! He’s here. Earth mages, create a one way barrier and Fire mages prepare fireballs and fire on my mark!”

“Hii!”

They followed the orders of the second ranker. No, on closer appraisal, I came to know that he wasn’t actually a second ranker, but the acting leader of the group.

But the ants still followed his orders and got into a formation, with the tankier earth mages with their barrier at the front, and the frail but deadly red mages hiding behind them.

{Basic military formations has risen to lv 10}

[Basic Military formations (10) has evolved into Intermediate Military formations lv(1)]

{Please check the skills for further information.}

The earth mages in their ranks created light yellow colored barrier, seeing which I smirked, thinking, ‘More turtles for me to blast.’

But I shat seeds when I saw ten fireballs passing through the barrier one by one, as if it wasn’t even there and zoomed toward me.

“Fuck me~!”

I hurriedly slid down and dodged past the first three fireballs, as they flew away flying over my back and stuck the wall behind me, creating three simultaneous explosions.

Sighing I tried to stop my slide seeing another fireball coming from my left, but I slipped and got cleanly hit by it.

*Boom*

I thought it was the end, but somehow an unknown barrier magically appeared and blocked some of the fire damage from the blast, before it broke and a huge shockwave and boiling heat devastated my shell.

A small explosion occurred and sent me flying backwards.

{Deter has risen to lv 10}

[Deter’s Special skill: Perfect barrier unlocked]

Perfect Barrier: Gives absolute immunity against all magic damage for three seconds.

Fire resistance rose, and another three fireballs came flying toward me roaring like devils to intercept me in the air. I had no time to check up on the damage I had sustained from the last attack, as I brainstormed on ideas to dodge those fireballs.

Seeing them coming toward me while I was still air borne and flying out of control gave me the scare of my life, and made me haphazardly create a mandible wave to stop them.

*Boom*Boom*Boom*

All three of them detonated as they touched the shock wave from my skill, but my perception caught three more balls coming or rather right in front of me.

“Got ya!” I heard and panicked. Seemed to me like some of the better and experienced mages from the bunch had anticipated or rather actually knew that I would be able to block or dodge attacks, so they had hid their fireballs in the shadow of the other attacks, and acting with proper timing delivered a cheap shot.

“Damn!” I yelled out, but I had no time to act. The fireballs came flying toward me creating screeching sound, and struck me in the head.

*BOOM*

The shockwave from the explosion changed the direction I was flying in and pushed me onto the ground.

*Bam*

I fell on the rock hard floor.

{Shock resistance has risen to lv 20}, {Blunt force resistance has risen to lv 16},

The drop hurt like hell and made me squeal in pain, but I forget about the pain and looked amazed at the phenomenon that had occurred.

I was alive. Even after taking, no, I didn’t really hit or even touch me, but I had come out alive after facing three fireballs. A single one of which could have easily burned any other regular novice ant in seconds.

Yes, I did get flung away because of the explosion, but the fireballs had failed to even graze my skin. Instead, another Mandible wave had automatically erupted from my body, and destroyed the last ones of those fireballs which had arrived late, but on time and had caught me off guard.

{Echo has risen to lv 2}

{Echo now deals 8% damage of the parent skill.}

I felt happy, truly happy for having gained the Echo, and finally understood what the skill description truly meant.

It had truly created a perfect echo of my skill, though it was a lot underpowered then the actual [Mend wave], but why would I nitpick on such small details, when I knew the level ups would take care of its few cons in the future on itself.

And while I smiled willfully on my accomplishment, my enemies despaired. Maybe they didn’t.

“He survived?”

“Looks like he did.”

“Damn, he even survived ten simultaneous fireballs and he isn’t even a ranker yet! Fuck my balls.”

I heard everything clearly with my sensitive hearing and felt giddy in my chest from their compliments.

Their leader cleared his throat and yelled at them, while I recharged my stamina.

“Shut the hell up and concentrate you imbeciles! Earth mages…!”

They visibly shivered and when they saw their leader fuming with anger.

“Half of you create obstructions in his way and prepare that. And don’t ask me hwta that is.” his comment stopped some from questioning what that was.

“Others attack him with earth spears and stop him from reaching us at all costs.”

He then turned towards the fire mages and spoke pointing at the bunch.

“Fire mages….”

“Yes sir?” The proud sons and daughters of heaven perked their ears to hear whatever their acting leader orders would be.

“Prepare Forest fire.”

But his order made them gasp for air. I at the time didn’t understand the reason for their behavior, but it didn’t take long for me to know the reason.

“Sir, but we have a target to kill with…”

“I know. I know, but I don’t think you lot need to know what will happen once he got near us. And has anyone called the headquarters yet?”

“Yes, sir, but the other side said no reinforcement will be coming. They are too busy handling the rest of the enemy forces on the surface.”

“Fuck those incompetent fellows. Why the fuck weren’t we told these barbarians would be arriving in such number?! We could have called for help from som… No, let’s take care of him first. Everyone ready?”

“Yes, sir!”

He turned to face me, sighed and order, “Commence the attack.”

And following his words the yellow earth mages formed two groups.

One groups started creating obstacles as their leader had asked them, and the other group attacked me.

They didn’t attack me from the front like the red mages had, and instead attacked me like cowards. Hiding behind their walls and making spears appear out of the ground. It was a very cowardly move. From that day onwards I started despising earth mages and those assassins alike.

Anyway, the floor started trembling and brought me out of my stupor. Looking around I saw the floor crumbling and high walls raising and covering all of my escape paths.

But that wasn’t the end.

Walls made of hard rock rose from behind me, from the front, from my left and from my right, following which appeared the spears.

My perception caught disturbances in the ground I was standing at and…

*Shu*Shu*Shu*

Like a shark jumping out of the waters to catch and destroy its prey, spears upon spears appeared out from the ground I was standing at.

I jumped, dodged, ran up the walls, jumped over the mountains, climbed on the roof, but no matter where I went the spears followed my trail.

Dodging those perfectly timed spears which appeared right at the place I was placing my feet at, were the hardest ones to dodge.

{Reflex has risen to lv 11}, {Dodge has risen to lv 6}, {Chance has risen to lv 6}, {Perception has risen to lv 21}

By my movement skills weren’t for naught. I was able to skillfully extend or retract my feet at the last second and move past those cunning piranhas without getting hurt.

No, I did get hurt falling from the walls, rolling on the ground, tumbling over the spears, those things hurts too.

Even the actions I took to dodge like sprinting at my top speed without stopping, overextending my legs, grazing and dodging the spears by the minimal of skin contact made me wail out in pain.

*Ting*

[Skill: Flexibility acquired.]

Flexibility: You can stretch your limbs further and twist your body unlike what should otherwise be possible.

But with pain came new skills and with increasing skill levels, my efficiency in dodging increased too.

But Perception helped me the most this time. I thanked god for giving me my perception and foresight, and jumped over the place like a monkey.

The reflex’s unlocked skill acrobatics helped me a lot with the flips, and the maneuvers which also left my enemies mesmerized and tongue tied.

“Is that something an ant can do?”

“I don’t know about others, but I don’t think there is any novice or even ranked ant that can move like that.”

And the concentration of the earth mages at the very center of the formation slipped. They didn’t slip because of the share amount of mana they were expending, but slipped in their concentration from seeing me jumping around like a gymnast.

I felt sorry for myself, but having given a small window to breathe, I did what have been waiting to do for a while.

I climbed over a wall and jumped. lifting my front legs toward the barrier, I aimed at the center of their formation and opened my slots.

“Take that you mother fuckers~!”

*Gooom!”

Three Wind Cannonballs appeared at the tip of my legs with sound akin to a machine starting and a second later flew forward cutting through the air like a dragon.

They flew in straight line for a moment, but then the ones at the sides started getting attracted toward the cannonball at the center and started moving toward it.

The scene scared me and made me think that I had wasted a perfect opportunity and my spells, but my fear didn’t come true and instead of the skills going haywire and exploding in the middle of their path, the ones at the side started revolving around the cannon ball at the center, all the while moving even closer to the barrier.

I hadn’t thought that something like it would happen, but the wind cannon balls sported each other, flew away in harmony and like a raging dragon, they struck the barrier at the same place, at the same time.

{Wind cannonballs has risen to lv 2}

{Wind cannonballs has risen to lv 3}

{Wind cannonballs has risen to lv 4}

{Wind cannonballs has risen to lv 5}, {Mana control has risen to lv 2}

The harmony they had didn’t simply add their power, but multiplied it by at least three times and gave me idea for a skill which I could use or even create for a long time after that day.

*BOOOM*

The explosion occurred, but instead of spewing out flames in every direction, winds at the speed of atleast 100Km/hour blew out from the place of explosion. The raging and roaring wind blew me away and made me roll on the ground. Thankfully the obstacles the enemy forces had created stopped me from flying away and falling into the cavern.

Next came the sound of the explosion and unlike a boom of a gon, the explosion released a dragon roar, which in fact crated a synergy effect with the destruction caused by the cannonballs themselves and broke apart the left over barrier.

Echoes of the cannon balls flew after them and exploded the lifeless bodies of the earth mages standing at the front.

“Whoa!”

By the time the wind stopped raging and I looked at them, I could only shudder at the destruction power the skills had. Although they were a bit difficult to use in the middle of a fight, but with the skill slots that con of it had already been resolved.

I looked at their formation and saw that the barrier that the ten earth mages had created had been almost destroyed. It had a giant hole in the center which was enough for a whole battalion to pass through, much less me, and the earth mages in the center were nowhere to be seen.

Their carapaces were lying at the front and their body part rained from above. All in all only a smudge was left on the place where they had been standing.

{Record has risen to lv 4}

{You attacks deal more 10% damage to Black versatile ants than ever before.}

Three of them had died, but even then, it was me who felt danger, instead of them. It was me who was panicking instead of them. It was me who had no where left to go instead of them.

My eyes met with their captain and he smirked.

“You are the badest and meanest novice ant I have ever met, but unfortunately… you choose the wrong colony to take birth in.”

“Sir, forest fire is ready.”

“Sir, Earth dome is ready.”

“Haha, it was nice knowing you kid. Although this skill was prepared to trap and obliterate the whole cavern, but I guess killing you will help us in the long run and secure our future. After all, for us, you are just a disaster waiting to happen. There is no idiot who would let a monster like you grow in their own backyard.”

He then turned toward his mages, and gave his final command.

“Mages… Activate the Dome of Agony.”

And following his voice the wall all around me closed. It was at this moment that I knew… I fucked up.

Inside the dome, I looked around with my night vision, but unfortunately there was no way out.

I thought of digging a tunnel, and was going to dig my way out, but then… every single nanometer of area in the Dome lit up, and raging fire engulfed me from everywhere.