But getting to the commander wasn’t an easy thing at all.

Having already seen and known how those worm like things really worked, my head was a mess. I felt like hammers were striking my brain trying to turn it into mush.

Feeling Derailed and an experience full of anxiety was what I was going through.

Every time, I saw an ant with the third antennae… the worm thing on their head, the urge to run and kill would pester me until I’d either look away, or grit my jaw and struggle through the crowd looking at the ground and not making eye contact with any of them.

Moreover the commercial sector appeared to be the center of their operations. It was as if there were three infected to every ten common ants. It was that bad.

There even came a point when I noticed that everyone around me in the crowd was infected. I felt like I had come too deep into the ocean and everywhere around me were sharks, waiting for that signal to jump at that odd one swimming with them.

The horror I felt was nothing in comparison to what my senior was going through. He visibly trembled in fear all the way and didn’t move more than a few centimeters away from me.

But thankfully nothing happened on the way other than some passerby looking at us suspiciously. And in the end, we were able to reach the commanders office in one piece.

The guard outside stopped us at the gate and asked us what we wanted.

It was a different guard from before and didn’t recognize me. If the old monster was still there then we would have been able to pass with any restrictions.

But even when we told him that we had important information for the commander, he simply denied us entry.

“Look, you both don’t have any authority to directly talk with the commander face to face. You can either tell me, and I will go inform the commander or you could tell you superior officer and ask him to come. Otherwise, I’m sorry I can’t bring you in.”

He said, while the both of us kept close eyes on him. Senior officer was already trembling with fear because the guard was also one of the infected. It astonished me seeing that one of the infected could talk so normally like he didn’t know…

‘Or maybe he doesn’t know anything at all.’

I didn’t wanted to test my theory before informing the commander, so I acted natural and asked him to at least try and say that the hero had come, and it turns out that the title held more than enough weight to let us meet the commander.

“Wha- you should have told me sooner. If I knew it was hero-nim then I wouldn’t have stopped you at all. Please follow me...”

He changed his colors so quickly that it took the both of us by surprise and didn’t even act embarrassed. It was like our previous conversation hadn’t happened at all.

Sighing, we followed behind him and I saw senior lifting his leg to strike the guard. I hurriedly stopped him from attracting unwanted attention and delaying us even more and shook my head.

We already had a plethora of problems on our hands. I didn’t want him to attack the guard and then later fail to prove that the guard really was one of the infected. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and I didn’t want him to explode on me.

The guard stopped us outside, looked at us, but then tilted his head.

“What happened, are you alright?” he asked my senior and I hurriedly replied instead of him.

Who knew what kind of otherworldly nonsense my not so okay senior would spew out at the monster in ant skin?

I told him that senior was just having a bad day and nothing else.

“Oh, I see. Anyways, please wait outside while I’ll go inform the commander.”

And he went inside the room. While the guard told the commander that we had come, I explained to my senior officer how dangerous a situation our colony was in and asked him to cooperate.

It wasn’t like he didn’t understand the situation. I was sure he more than understood the situation, but seeing was believing. He had seen and been through an experience countless time worse than anything I had been through, so it was not like I could simply shush him or something. The guy was shocked and he need some rest to get through it.

The guard soon came outside smiling which actually gave me the shivers and then he politely told us that the commander was waiting for us inside.

I nodded my head to him and dragged my senior who was staring daggers at the guard inside the room, while the guard waived his hand at us.

I had meet the commander once and seen him in action too, but my senior who had never been in the same room with him couldn’t keep his eyes away from the commanders charming royal self.

The commander looked the same as always. Though the aura he emitted seemed more powerful than before. He had probably leveled up some more in the war and after that or maybe I had gotten more perceptive.

“So… what is this about?” The commander asked me, and I told him everything I had found.

I didn’t tell him the various methods I had used, but I laid out everything important in front of him; starting from the murder of the shopkeeper.

I started with how dreadful and terror inducing the murder of the shop keeper was and how I had found traces of some powder in the shop.

Then we moved forward to me following the traces and reaching the pit where we found our killer.

I told him how powerful he was and how the team leader had evolved someway after dying and become a 2nd ranker, but according to the senior officer he had stats equal to a 3rd ranker.

The commander didn’t interrupt me and silently listened to all that I had to say.

And once I told him everything, he thoroughly thought everything for a minute, before coming to a decision.

My eyes met with his dark violet eyes and he asked me, “So you think that everyone who has the third antennae is infected and the antennae itself is some kind of worm that can enter the body they are hosting, and then gain control over it.”

“Yes.” I replied and he nodded his head two-three times.

“And you also think that the parent worm or what that… what was it… zombie?”

“Yes…” I replied faithfully listening to whatever he was getting at.

“Hum…or what that zombie called mother, has been roaming around in the colony for more than two weeks. Moreover you also think that it is daily releasing potent living spore that are what infects the ants, and then grow into those bloody worms?”

I nodded my head and he sighed holding his head.

The information was not an easy one to take. I knew no one else would believe me without actually witnessing or going through what I had seen or what senior had been through, but I knew that commander would believe me.

No matter how scheming or shrewd he was, in the end, he cared about the mound, and also probably didn’t want to see two timing invaders butt fucking his home.

But even after thinking for a minute, in the end he still asked me my opinion on the matter.

“So what do you think we should do now?” he asked me and looked at the officer standing beside me.

He asked him to wait outside as whatever we were going to discuss, he wasn’t qualified enough to listen.

“Huh? Why do you…?”

I told him that it was okay. “I’ll come outside in a minute or two.” I said, but he didn’t listen to me.

“But that is outside. I don’t want to be in the same room with that.” He cried out and commander’s antennas stood straight up hearing him plead.

“What’s that?” the commander asked and I told him that the guard standing outside was also an infected.

“What? It has already spread so far? No… now that I think, I remember seeing at least three captains with those antennas in the last war. And the number of soldiers… they consisted of almost one third of our total army...!”

He looked at me with wide open eyes and yelled out, “Fuck…!”

It was the first time that I heard any of my superior officer cursing other than my vice lea- Genma, who used to curse like a machine on fire.

“Call him in. let’s see what it can or can’t do.”

Knowing that even if the commander believed me he still needed proof to the infections existence; I went outside the room to fetch the guard, but what I saw horrified me.

The guard was standing straight with his mouth wide open and the antenna trying to enter his mouth.

“Fuck…” I yelled and called the commander out who also didn’t waste any time and followed me out of the room with an excited face.

“Heeee!!” senior officer once again started shrieking while trembling from head to toe while the commander stared with his mouth open as the worm entered the guards body.

Nothing happened after that.

“That’s… It?” The commander asked, but I had no words to say to him, because I had only seen the process of a worm leaving its hosts body, not the process of it entering and transforming one into a zombie.

But as if the worm had heard him complain, it didn’t waste time and quickly started its work. A minute later, the guard’s body visibly started rotting and transforming.

His color soon changed from black to pale yellow.

His eyes turned white and his chest expanded.

Sickles appeared on his legs and three spike appeared o his back.

The body convulsed nonstop on the floor. Obnoxiously eerie sounds came out every time he grunted and opened his mouth. A foul stench permeated in the surrounding and a ghastly wind started blowing from nowhere as soon as he finished transforming.

It was not that I didn’t want to kill him before he truly transformed into a zombie, but the commander didn’t let me, and told me to let him watch it till the end.

Our surrounding turned silent as if there was no one present at the point, but the silence didn’t prevail for too long before the ant suddenly sprung back into action and stood up.

I looked at its white squirming eyes and it roared.

[Kerayoo!]

It jumped at us, but before it could reach us the commander reacted, “Humph!”

He snorted and lifted his hand to make a crunching motion.

Here he made his move and there the zombie stopped In the middle of his action. He started howling and wriggling on the ground holding his chest as if he was in pain.

Vile black blood leaked out of his mouth and his body turned limp. Following that his mouth opened slowly and the worm came wriggling out too, shivering violently and moving haphazardly on the ground, as if it was on its last breaths.

“Looks like what you said were true after all.” Commander mumbled and closed his fist following which the worm exploded, blasting transparent fluids everywhere.

I stared slew jacked at the commanders as he put his hand down, nodded his head and asked me to come back into the room.

I looked at my senior as he started walking out on his own. I didn’t try to stop him. He seemed too tired of all the mess. And I thought that it would be better for him if he stayed with his friends from the circle and tried to help the civilians rather than taking care of this infection bullshit.

Alone I entered back into the room and saw the commander calling the shots.

I asked him what we would be doing now and he said, “Now, I call everyone and we will act as a diversion, while you will go and attack the queen.”

“I will go alone?”

“What? Are you scared?”

And I snorted in reply,

“Who’s scared of whom? It’s just the queen.”

And I raised the flag toward a difficult future.