It stabbed at me with its stinger and I hurriedly rolled on the ground to get out of its way.

{Reflex has risen to lv 14}

I wanted to stand back up, but it didn’t let me to do so and continued stabbing and made me roll around like a barrel on the ground.

{Dodge has risen to lv 9}

Seeing that it was not going to stop any moment soon, I quickly used a [Mend wave] to push it away and stood up.

But the mend wave didn’t have any effect on it. Yes, it got knocked back and cried out from the sudden surprise, but by the time I stood up, it was once again upon my head, ready to cut me apart.

I saw his sharp mandible coming for my neck and rolled my head around it.

With My front legs turned to spike and fire body igniting them on fire, I viciously made stab after stab at its chest like a machine gun, and that definitely hurt him.

{Spike has risen to lv 13} {Haste has risen to lv 16} {Fury has risen to lv 18}

*Gwack!*

*Bam*Bam*Bam*Bam*Bam* x10

It cried out from the stabs, but it didn’t stop, it didn’t leak blood like a normal living ant either, so I didn’t stop. Its lower half was still connected to its upper body, so I didn’t stop stabbing until half of its chest got blasted away by my stabs.

{Spike has risen to lv 14}

{Intermediate hand to hand combat mastery has risen to lv 7}

{Inter. Martial arts mastery has risen to lv 2}

Having gotten bored from doing the stabbing motion I kicked it away, and it rolled on the ground.

{Kick has risen to lv 8}

“Do you even die!” I yelled out, and it replied back by standing up once again.

Really, if I hadn’t seen its status, then I wouldn’t have known about its infinite health and surely would have succumbed to fear by now seeing his undying spirit and willpower.

Not that my legs weren’t shaking; It was a scary monster to deal with. But I had full confidence that I would be able to kill it one way or another.

But it suddenly sprung back into motion once again. Though this time it didn’t attack like a maniac that it was and instead showed me its back.

While I titled my head in confusion thinking about what it was going to do, the spikes on its back opened up like a flower.

A sudden tinge shook my whole body and I understood that something big was coming. I hurriedly moved back, but before I could do anything, it released a pure evil looking jet black miasma, which charged toward me like a crazy bull.

My mana vision told me that the miasma was made of that powder that I had been messing around with, but seeing the ground sizzling and bubbling as it touched, moved and came toward me, I knew there was more to it than what my eyes were telling me.

{Mana vision has risen to lv 2}

I didn’t wait around to see what that special this about this fog was, and streaked away from it.

But because it wasn’t bound to the ground like me, it was fast, too fast. So I had to use drastic measure when it almost reached my back and touched it.

I did a Mend wave in desperation which luckily pushed back the miasma slightly. Moreover some of that powder turned grey and fell on the ground.

{Mend wave has risen to lv 7}

But before I could become happy at my accomplishment, more miasmas took over the empty space and made a death dive toward me.

I used mend wave three times and seeing that it wasn’t being of much use, I decided to try the other attack I had gained just the other day.

That skill also had knock back effect and knowing that the fog was also made up of tiny living beings, I hoped that it would work on it too.

“Let’s see if you can live through this.” I stopped and yelled.

Seeing the fog getting nearer and near me with every passing second, I gulped and started slamming my legs on the ground with all of my strength which activated Rhythmic slam. The skill activated almost instantly and in a meter radius of me everything started shaking like crazy.

{Rhythmic Quake has risen to lv 2}

The ground shook, I shook and even the air shook, and soon the whole area around me was moving up and down like a raging sea.

Waves of earth and pulses of air being pushed away blasted the entire fog into smithereens and slammed the zombie to the outer zone of the tunnel. But that was not all; the stun effect had activated and stunned the zombie for five second.

Seeing that a chance had arrived, I got ready for my strongest attack and started charging mana in my mouth. I was aiming to complete a wind cannonball.

The moment I started collecting wind, it twitched slightly. I knew the stun wouldn’t hold him for eternity and would wear off before completing the five seconds, but the wind cannon was already a level lv 11 skill and although it was still a difficult skill to use mid fight, I had plenty of time.

{Wind cannonball has risen to lv 12}

It took me two seconds to create the wind cannonball. I fired it and it took the highly compressed ball of menacing and waiting to rage wind another second to reach the zombie ant, and on the fourth second, just as the stun effect wore off, the cannonball dropped the hammer on its body and torn the zombie into pieces.

The attack fell on target and its head got blasted off. A wind storm raged around it like a blade dance and tore his body apart. The zombie could only see death in the form of a highly compressed wind ball took it back to where it belonged.

Unfortunately Vacuum ball didn’t appear, but it was okay, the work had already been done.

<>59Exp gained<>

Though the thought that it would stand back up once again did come, but the moment I saw the notification, I knew this I had won.

“It’s dead?” Senior officer asked me and I took a breath of relief before replying to him.

“Yes, it’s dead for real.”

It had finally died. It took almost all of my mana to kill that goddamn thing, but unfortunately I didn’t get to interrogate it. Well, what was done was done. I stood back up and started walking, but then I suddenly remembered something.

“No, wait a minute. Won’t that…”

“What happened?”

But I had no time to answer senior’s question. The matter was of top priority. I hurriedly moved toward the body and placed my hand on its chest. Well whatever was left of it at least and activated my skill, “Soul search.”

And at the same moment, I lost conscious.

“Uwah! Whe- Where am I?”

I looked around and saw that I was walking through the grass forest.

“Huh, when did I…!”

 I stopped to get a look of where I actually was, but even when I had stopped the grass continued to move.

It shocked me to see my body moving on its own, but then I remembered that I was just fighting the zombie ant.

“And then I used soul search… Don’t tell me…!”

Suddenly my view point shifted, and I saw myself fighting with some ticks.

I knew I had fought the ticks, but the ants around me looked too unfamiliar to me, and even the fighting style wasn’t mine.

And when I fired a spike at the tick I took a breath of relief.

“That scared me. I thought that something… so I am going through Zombies life experience huh. Hope I will get to see what turned him.” I mumbled, meanwhile the ant whose body I was in, kept on getting beaten down by the tick.

His whole party took ten whole minutes to deal with the tick, which made me frown.

After all, in my party we didn’t even take a single minute to kill those powerless ticks.

Seeing him desperately trying to break the ticks back armor and failing made me think that he was an idiot.

“Cut its leg, yo… legs!”

I yelled and shouted at him making rookie mistakes, which even I had made, but he was a team leader. It was as if he had come out on the hunt without learning the various weakness and strengths of his enemies.

“This dumb fuck…!” I couldn’t help but get angry at his decisions. Because it was not just his life that he was playing with, he had the responsibility of nine other ants that were in his team.

I wanted to get out and thrash him, but that wasn’t possible and the fact hurt me a lot.

But I also realized one thing from seeing them fight so desperately; ‘my team was strong as fuck.’

There was no comparison between the two of us at all. It was like comparing the commander to a novice. It was such a big difference.

On one side, our scout could find an enemy from tens of meters away; and here was this party’s scout who couldn’t even see the ticks hiding behind the iron trees.

I was disappointed in my so called killer. I thought it would show me scenes of carnage and valor, but instead I saw a two bit hot shot ant that couldn’t even wash his own butt.

But this thing also astonished me. After all, this was the same ant that had almost killed me just some moments ago.

 “Is this the result of him turning from a living being into a zombie?” That was the question of the century, but an even bigger question was, “But how did he turn into a zombie?”

And as if the soul was reacting to my questions, the view once again shifted, and now we my ride was running away from a blood worm.

I wanted to yell out loud and ask him, who gave him the qualifications to even become a scavenger, but unfortunately I couldn’t do so.

I simply watched helplessly as the blood worm jumped out of the ground, opened its mouth wide, and entered back into the ground; taking two members of the group with it.

I didn’t felt sorry. I felt ashamed thinking that this party couldn’t even hunt a single blood worm.

“Tch! They are bad.”

They were making me feel like I was a super ant amidst a group of pussies.

The angriest I was at this leader wannabe of the group, who was doing his best in running away from the worm. He made sure that he would stay at the front of the group to gain himself enough time to reach the exit.

But it wasn’t just him. Everyone in the team was trying to surpass the one in front of them instead of fighting. It was a shameful sight.

“Just die already.” I yelled, but unfortunately three of them were able to exit the iron forest and return back to the surface.

Seeing him laughing with the remainder of his team disgusted me, and soon the view shifted once again.

Now they were returning back to the mound from the grass forest and I was getting anxious.

“Something will happen now. Something will happen now, I’m sure of it.” But no matter how much I waited, nothing happened.

And then I saw the guards standing outside the mound.

“When the fuck are you going to turn into a zombie.” I yelled, and right at the time I was getting angry, something came from above and my ride blacked out.

It was only just for a second. There his vision blackened and then it returned. It was strange, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary happened.

That was until he attacked his own team mates and ate them.

I stared shell shocked at him ripping the head of the one he had called his best friend, and tearing the back of the other who was too busy crying and crawling on the ground rather than trying to ant up and defend himself.

I thought he had gone crazy and lost his mind, but when I saw him eating and savoring his food… I knew something was up.

It only took him a single moment to change form a clumsy team leader to a blood thirsty assassin.

He then started walking, but instead of entering the mound, he hunted more ants and only when he felt satisfied did he return back to the colony.

And once he returned to his personal room, he didn’t move after that.

One day passed, then two days passed and on the third day something horrifying happened.

He didn’t change into a zombie, rather I got to see the thing that had taken control of him.

He suddenly fell on the ground and started convulsing. Foam came out of his mouth following which a black worm like thing, almost a centimeter wide came out too.

My soul trembled looking at the thing coming out of his mouth without stopping. One centimeter, two centimeter… I kept on watching as an almost six centimeter worm like thing appeared from inside him and started wriggling on the ground.

I felt nauseated just looking at it. Thankfully, the ant that was going through this shocking event wasn’t awake. Otherwise he would have died from the shock alone.

I felt goose bumps just thinking, we had something like that which could abduct ants and control them roaming around in the mound. Moreover, no one knew about it.

But then an even more astonishing thing happened. The top or the head of the worm swell and spewed out spores into the atmosphere. Some of the powder fell on the body, and then it moved away.

Was it difficult to connect the powder spewing antennae’s with this thing after shown the similarities between them? Not at all. I wasn’t so dumb after all.

“Looks like the decision to choose the first option really was a right one. But Fuck me! And don’t say this zombie also has another one of these things hiding inside it, controlling it…”

And I knew at that moment that I needed to wake up and wake up soon. Before that worm drilled inside my unconscious body, and started throwing its weight around.

I wanted to wake up, but just as I was going to stop the skill, an utterly horrifying and menacing aura descended upon me.

My surroundings turned black and two humongous pair of ant eyes appeared from behind curtain of darkness and started at me with the intentions to devour me whole right then and there.

“Umm…” I tried to talk to it, but then a mouth bigger than a mountain magically appeared and it….

[SHRIEEEEKKKK!]

It emitted a sound so disturbingly thin that my concentration lagged, and [Soul search] got cancelled forcefully.

I thanked god that the skill stopped, otherwise my mind would have probably broken under the attack.

Yes, someone whom I knew intimately after that little soul searching had attacked my soul through the connection that it had with the zombie.

‘Maybe the commander was right. We really do need to deal with the queen before things get serious.’

{Soul search has risen to lv 7}

{Willpower has risen to lv 21}

The ringing notifications jolt me awake and the first thing I heard upon waking up was a deafening sound ringing in tunnel, and a long black snake like thing lying on the ground; dead.

My senior was looking at that thing utterly horrified and shaking from head to the toe.

“Hiiiii!”

 He shrieked when he saw me standing up and tears started falling down from his eyes and onto the ground.

“It’s me, senior it’s me!” I yelled, but he didn’t listen to me and kept on shrieking while moving backwards.

Fortunately there was a wall behind him, which stopped him, otherwise he wouldn’t have stopped at all and I would have had to run after him.

I held his shoulders tightly and shook his head. When that didn’t do anything, I activated fire body and burned his head a little.

“Don’t kill me…!”

And that finally brought him out of his stupor. He looked at my face like he had fallen for me, and after staring like that for a minute he finally spoke.

“Yo-… you are not dead? You are alive?”

I told him that I was alive and he started chanting my words like it was a mantra.

“He is alive. He is alive! HE IS ALIVE!”

I singed his head again and he finally returned back to the land of the sane.

“Why did you do that?”

He asked me, but I told him that we have no time for this and asked him whether he killed that thing or it died on its own.

He looked at the worm like thing lying on the ground and his body shook uncontrollably.

Understanding that it had probably tried to dig into his mouth, I didn’t pester him more about it and asked him to follow me.

“Whe- where are we… going?”

And I replied back looking at his terrified and tired face.

“We are going to kill some zombies.”