“Thanks to everyone’s effort we were able to turn the verdict of the war. Because everyone fought the hardest they could and gave more than their one hundred percent I think you all deserve a vacation. So from today starts your one week long holiday. And don’t worry about food, thanks to our generous rivals and their timely death, we were able to procure enough food to last us at least a month.”

Commander’s announcement made a wave of joy and excitement to burst midst the camp. “Hah!”

“A vacation!”

“Thank god, I really wanted to take some rest too.”

“Yeah, it’s a well deserved holiday.”

Everyone around me congratulated each other and commander thanked everyone once again, before flying out.

“Now, now… once again I thank everyone. Now… enjoy.”

“Yeah…!”

“Hurray…!”

“East or west commander is the best!”

*Whistles!*

And with the clapping and shouts of my colonies brave soldiers started our official week long vacation.

I nodded my head toward my vice lead- Genma who was furiously smiling at me. Though his devilish smile made me shudder slightly, but I buried my cowering self under the sheets of willpower and smiled back.

Seeing my brothers around me jumping and hugging each other made me excited too, and I joined the little festival.

The war ended with roaring sound of thousands of ant’s whistling and clapping at the same time.

The festive mood continued as we starting entering the mound, but as my turn arrived I saw Genma talking with My “Brute’ captain. Captains nodded two three times to him before his eyes opened wide and he stared directly at me. Not in my direction, but at me.

I felt an excited pressure tickle my back and I shivered.

Understanding that something big was going to happen I stopped and didn’t go inside the mound. I decided that it was better for me to go to a side and wait instead of going inside the mound and acted upon my thoughts.

Soon captain waved Genma away and I saw him walking toward me.

He approached me and appreciated my… wisdom.

“Quite sensible you are.”

“Thank you.” I bowed and asked him, “What can this lowly ant do for you sir?”

“Oh! You are Intelligent too. He really is right. Chichi really did found quite a fine specimen. She had the eyes alright. Okay, let’s go.”

I wanted to ask him where we were going, but knowing that he couldn’t reply and there was no need to ask either I simply followed behind him.

“No need to fear. I am not taking you anywhere dangerous. We are just going to meet someone.” He politely said.

The politeness in his voice wasn’t fake; it was as genuine as it could have been. Though I hadn’t talked much to him, but it’s those little things which made me understood that my reputation had preceded my strength.

Or I was going to become a lab rat for who ever had called for me.

We didn’t enter the mound and instead starting walking toward the grass forest.

My vigilance shot up and I opened all my skills that could help me out if I was being taken to be butchered, for reason unknown to me.

Though he had said we were only going to meet someone, but in this ant eat ant world… I didn’t want to take any chance with anyone whom I didn’t know personally.

The thought to run away did pester my daring heart, but my mind gave me a reasonable explanation that captain was taking me to meet someone, someone who didn’t want to talk inside the mound.

We didn’t walk too far and soon reached a small pond of grey smelly water.

My senses perked up and my perception became weak, as the atmosphere or rather the dirty disgusting odor didn’t allow my sense to work properly.

Mist appeared around the corners of my eyes and a shadow figure magically appeared out of nowhere or one could say that it dropped from the sky, jumped from above the tall grass blades or simply landed after getting tired of flying.

I didn’t wanted to be taken lightly and a magical jumble of dizziness resistance, clarity, Inspection and perception later, I was once again able to stand without stumbling, and clearly see the confused and astonished faces of my captains ‘Brute’ and ‘Fire breather’ and our host or the real person behind the shadow persona.

“How are you sir, commander?” I asked as politely as my current vigilant soul allowed me to, and he laughed like a boss in reply.

“Impressive, impressive indeed. So that girl really had eye for ants. Though she didn’t have much strength to back up that demeanor of hers, but she was quite a valuable…”

He was going to say something which I wouldn’t have liked and changed his wording to, “She was quite a valuable member of ours little club.”

I would say he did a fine job by changing his words, otherwise I wouldn’t have been anywhere near him or have done anything he wanted me to do.

“So, could you tell us how you were able to gain levels, while you are still a rookie?”

I had no answer to that question of his, and I replied by shaking my head too. I told him, I have no idea and he believed me.

Actually he believed me too easily.

“Well, that would have been great information for us to know, but looks like you don’t know. Anyways, what about your… Resistances? Do you really have Mind control at lv 7 and Mind corruption in the intermediates?”

‘So, it was about that.’

I asked him whether he was the person vice leader said he would need to ask permission from and he smiled gently.

There was something about him which I didn’t like, but it was just his behavior and nothing else. I really didn’t like his haughty behavior at all.

“How about I test you a little?”

I wanted to ask him in which category, but if the pressure building up in my mind was telling me anything, then he was actually testing my various resistances.

“I thought you were a pure warrior drone.” I spoke without a bit of discomfort and his face crumbled.

My words washed the smile from his face, but it soon returned and with even more boldness.

He stopped his effort, as it wasn’t doing anything to me.

Sighing he shook his head and our eyes met.

“Hah! This is embarrassing. You know the first time this brute…” he pointed at my ‘Brute’ captain and spoke, “I had performed the same test on him and by the end of the test he was behaving like a freak. Moreover he was a ranker at that time.”

My captain buried his head in the ground and didn’t look up after that for a long time.

“Anyways, you must have questions, you can ask them now. I allow it.”

“Commander...!”

My captain hurriedly shouted to show his opposition to his decision, but a single look from commander made him back down and burry his head even deeper in the ground because of shame.

I felt pity for him, but I had too many questions to ask and only they had the answers to them, so I couldn’t have just let go of the opportunity.

“Actually I don’t have that many questions to ask, just two.”

“Why are we here? Is that your question?” He asked with his arms crossed in front of his chest and I shook my head. Which made him perplexed and he tilted his head in confusion.

“That is my second question. The first question I want to ask is about the enemy queen.”

“Oh.” He replied, without much strength in his tone.

But I didn’t stop there even though he wasn’t showing much reaction to me and still asked him.

“Why are we letting their queen live? Won’t the whole situation just repeat itself after some time if we don’t do anything?”

He stared directly into my eyes and waited for something. Unfortunately my mind reading skill didn’t work on him, and I had to wait for him to finish collecting his thoughts.

And he finally spoke. “If you are talking about our rival mound, then unfortunately, although I really do want to find out where their new mound is, but we have no clue. So instead of wasti…”

“I know where they are.” I shouted and that firmly got their attention. Did I really know where they were? Actually I didn’t.

“What? How do you know where they are, when even we don’t…”

Commander shouted, but then suddenly stopped in the middle of his sentence and then sighed once again. Even captain looked at me like a predator and got ready to attack me at any time.

‘Don’t they trust anybody?’ I thought seeing them behaving like I was a criminal on the run, but I understood their reason too, afterall… I was still only a novice ant.

I explained to them that I had a tracking skill and in the war I had placed a tracker on one of the enemy mage’s I was fighting.

“I didn’t kill him and fortunately he didn’t die in our attack either. And although he is not yet at their new colony, but I think he possibly will reach it in some days.”

The two captains stared at him, I stared at the commander and the commander stared at me. He didn’t promise me anything, but asked me to inform him when our target would reach the trap or his new colony.

“So should we talk about the reason that we are here.” He asked me with undoubting seriousness on his face.

I nodded my head and he replied back with a sigh, “Actually it’s related to the queen.”

I returned back to the mound after having my mind brutally fucked with. I couldn’t believe myself at first but the reason commander gave and my own experiences like being controlled at the reward ceremony and Bill saying stuff like he was being told to hurt me and stuff, didn’t really made me not believe him either.

I had always known that something was wrong with the colony, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

‘Who would have thought that our queen was…;

‘No, no need to think about it for now and risk being found out. Let’s focus on getting to the tenth level first; we’ll see the rest after that.’

With my unfocused mind, I walked through the familiar, yet eerily silent streets. The walk felt long and tedious. I felt unusually tired by the time I reached the nursery and felt like a thousand teeth were biting me on my head.

The feeling stayed with me just for a second, but I felt Goosebumps all the way even after its effect went away.

For some reason there were a lot of soldiers patrolling the streets, which I felt odd about.

I smiled and waved at a pair of patrolling officers, but they simply passed me by. I looked at the third fake antennae attached to their heads and shook my head.

‘Don’t tell me it has already become a cult?’

There was quite some distance between my nursery room and the entrance. And because I was walking it took quite some time to reach my destination. On the way is saw many ants roaming around, walking stiffly and without any expressions on their faces and all of them had that third antenna attached to their heads.

The situation was such that there was at least one ant out of every ten ants had that fake antennae.

Shaking my head I walked for five minutes and reached the nursery.

I felt giddy thinking about Bill and Tiny. It had already been a whole week since the last I had seen them.

A smile naturally blossomed on my face as I saw the door and then I finally entered the nursery.

“Surprise~!” I yelled, but I didn’t receive the warm reception I was waiting for and instead a scene quite like the silence before the storm received me.

The whole group, I mean all of the residents of our nursery room were standing encircling Tiny, Bills four goons and two patrolling officers.

I got closer and heard them fighting. NO, actually the patrolling officers were trying to calm my too idiot friends, but all of them especially Tiny was too heated up and wasn’t listening to anyone.

“What’s happening here.” I spoke slowly, but my voice was heard by everyone loud and clear, thanks to the roars effect.

Tiny hurriedly moved his head toward me and upon seeing me mumbled, “Big brother.”

Hearing him, the others of our group also turned their faces toward me. Everyone looked worried and some girls at the side started crying for some reason.

There were tear marks on Tiny’ face and I could see his eyes still being misty. But before I could ask him what was happening, he ran toward me pushing the residents of our nursery away and yelled out upon reaching me, “Big brother help us. Bill has gone missing.”

And it was then I noticed that one of Billie’s goons was missing, and so was he.