Mink my guide, the skull crusher, was the first one to reach the entrance.

Slowly lifting his hands he tried to perform the act of thanking God for giving him such a shrewd mind and cunning soul, but I placed my front leg on his back and made him stop from acting stupid in front of everyone. There were many ants going in and out of the mound and all of them were staring at him with smiles on their faces.

Turning around he saw me looking at him with a face saying, ‘Not good man’ and his eyes opened wide in astonishment.

He looked around, but got surprised seeing that no one was there yet and he could only utter “You how…” in astonishment when I stopped him.

And I consoled him saying, “The others are just around the corner.” And right then we saw Dark ‘The blasphemous’ coming out of the tunnel and into the open area.

His eyes were already wide open before coming out of the tunnel and when he saw that I was already standing there with Mink; he shook his head in defeat too.

Stopping in front of me with his breath just slightly out of order, he nodded his head and then started giggling like he had seen something funny.

I scratched my cheek as he patted my shoulder saying, “You are good, fuck that was fast! I don’t know what others felt seeing you passing them by so easily and effortlessly, but I felt fucking embarrassed man!”

I didn’t think he would admit that he felt embarrassed because I was faster than him even though he was my senior, but maybe that’s just how he and this team was.

“Jolly and open minded.” He read my mind and commented.

“Haa…” And I weakly laughed.

Looking away to save myself from his jealousy, I turned my head and saw Tiny and the others looking at me and my new team members with completely round and big moon like eyes.

I was sure they were probably trying to figure out who these two stupid ants I was standing with were, and I would have liked to explain to them that they weren’t stupid, just carefree, which actually made them look worse, but little did I know that Tiny knew one of my new friends.

“Let’s go. My brothers are already here.”

“Oo, brothers. Looks like you are quite intimate with them. Then what are we to you seniors, colleagues… or”

Keeping my eyes on Tiny who was still staring at me or rather Mink, I replied back with not honest, but wisdom. “I am going to introduce you all as my work friends.”

And both of them snorted before Mink asked me where my brothers were.

I pointed to his left and just as Mink turned around, Tiny stood straight up when he saw Mink looking toward them.

I didn’t know what that was about. I thought he was feeling nervous seeing me with strangers, but it confused me seeing a smile appearing on Minks face when he saw Tiny acting stiff.

“Oh isn’t he that kid?” he mumbled, but I heard him and asked him what he meant by that?

It was just me acting like a big brother who was worried about strangers like this Mink smiling upon seeing my Tiny.

But according to Mink he knew that little brother of mine. “One day after coming back from a mission I was roaming around the nursery, trying to reminisce my childhood days, when I saw this one ant getting beat up by everyone else in the room.”

I flinched hearing that. That story for some reason felt awkwardly personal to me.

“I thought hard about whether I should go help him or not, but before I could even come to a decision, that little ant stood up and ran out of the room. Seeing him running away me snort…” and him telling me that made me blush.

“But I made up my mind to help him, but then I saw another ant coming out of the same room. Not one of the bullies, no, just your regular novice who had nothing special about him. I saw worry and pity in his eyes and stopped him to ask him where he was going and you know what he said?”

I shook my head feeling conflicted. The emotions, sadness and happiness were together partying inside my mind and I didn’t understand what to do with them.

“Fu…” Mink snorted lightly and finished his story telling me what Tiny had said to him then. “He said, I am going to become someone’s’ friend.”

“He saved someone else too?” I mumbled. I knew Mink was talking about me, but hearing about that incident from a third person wasn’t an amusing thing at all. For one, that incident had almost scarred my mentality for life, and if it wasn’t for Tiny, I would have probably killed Bill and life wouldn’t have been the same after that. I would have had to run away from the mound then and probably gotten raped by those three sick chopper brothers.

‘I am going to kill them too one day!’ My body shivered in disgust just thinking about them.

“He is a good kid. Not a scheming evil kid like some of the others I have seen, but a pure hearted one. I am sure he could be a great diplomat one day…”

And while I was happy hearing someone else praising Tiny, he dropped the bomb on me.

“But he won’t be a great soldier.”

“What? What do you mean?” I blurted out. My response to his statement was so fast that even he got surprised by it.

“Easy now. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with him, just that from what I saw that day, I don’t think he can kill anyone. You must know what I am talking about. Just tell me…” and I knew what he was going to say, “Have you ever seen him hurting anyone?”

“That…” it wasn’t like I didn’t know. I know Tiny was a good kid but not a great ant. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t become one.”

I declared that I would make, no, help him become a great ant. “I will help him however he will want me to. So what if he is not a warrior right now. I’ll make him one. He wants to become the king and I’ll stop him with my everything.”

And right then the other members of the team arrived.

Somehow it ended up being a close competition between Crimson and Our team leader. David who had been yelling that he was heavy and whatnot actually won by a single step.

And he dropped on the ground just as he reached us.

“Finally… *ha*… I am *Ha* not *ha* last…”

It was like he was squeezing his life out to say those words. And that actually made us laugh. Though being a rare species with earth affinity he should have had an ocean full of stamina, but seeing his rocking chest and disorderly condition, it was easy to say that he had put all of his effort into not becoming the baby sitter for Tiny and the others.

Shaking my head, I looked at Bill and the others and motioned my head for them to come.

And they happily did.

“Everyone.” I called to my new team members and pointing toward my brothers telling them, “They are here.”

And they gave quite some amusing reactions too.

“Oh, so they are the one crimson needs to baby sit. They look quite young.” Said David, who miraculously became healthy once again, when I mentioned the arrival of our passengers.

“Damn it! Just when did this fatso get so much quicker.” Crimson complained before plastering a caring smile across his face and toning down the heat radiating from his body. Which I didn’t think was possible and from the expression on everyone else’s faces, it looked like neither did they. “Oh look how cute they look!”

“Just keep quiet and don’t scare them way. Fuck! That big one looks like a villain.” I was hoping that Dark would have a change of some sorts too, but maybe I was hopping too much from the cursed one.

“Says the one with a scary face and don’t you dare talk to them with your vulgar language. You’ll curse them too.” Mink whispered to Dark before acting like a gentleant that he wasn’t.

“I’ll truly crush you, you fucking punk!”

And I on the side rebuked myself for not denying captains offer to bring them with me, with my face twitching continuously.

“Big brother… what’s wrong.” Tiny asked me when he saw me frowning, but before I could say anything the switch of my new team flipped so fast that I couldn’t believe seeing it happening.

The pair, who was trying to crush each other just some seconds ago, now stood together looking at the Bill and his goons with a warm face.

While the David and crimson who had been arguing about babysitting them, were now happily introducing themselves to them.

And while I was getting awed by their octopus like ever changing nature, Dark came and patted my back whispering, “That’s just how we are.” And I knew what he meant by that.

“You will see the real us the moment an enemy appeared. We might look to be goofing around sometimes and trying to kill each other every time, but I promise you it’s just a coping mechanism we or rather our seniors developed. Our late seniors actually.” He really was a dark ant. He even laughed evilly when he told me about his late seniors like he was happy that they were gone.

“You see, us explorers job is not an easy. You must have thought the job of a scavenger or a soldier was filled with deaths and blood, but that’s nothing. Even if their jobs are difficult they still have numbers with them, but we… we five are all we have to depend upon. We’ll have to fight, kill, survive and then come back with results, with just the five of us. And if some day we ended up stranded deep in an unknown enemy zone then losing hope and dying quickly is all that our fate will have in store for us.”

I felt goose bumps listening to him talk about death as if it was an inevitable thing.

“But such is the life of us explorer. We only have each other to depend upon and that is why we act without any care, because who knows the next mission just might be our last. Anyways welcome to our little club and also try to enjoy your last days of relief and fulfillment with your brothers, because you just might not get to see them again.”

After saying that he went back and started acting like a gentleant once again and I was left staring at Tiny’s cute little face, who was in turn looking at me with a question mark hovering over his head.

I took a deep breath collecting my thoughts and arranging Darks words at the top of my things not to forget list before introduced Tiny, Bill and the other two of my friends to my new friends from work.

After which we finally stepped out of the mound and started walking toward our farm.

The guards at the entrance looked at us strangely when they saw five quite strong looking ants walking out with four novices in tow.

“Stop!”

One of them yelled, but right before we had to stop for him an informant or messenger came running out of the mound and whispered something in their ears.

It was probably a message from the captain to let us go. And seeing how mouths had open wide enough to fit a coffee bean in, I knew I was right.

And like I thought, instead of stopping us, the guards went and stood at the side in a line, as if honoring us for giving them the chance to meet us.

Three of them even had tears coming out of their eyes for some reason which I couldn’t understand at that time. It was only later that I found out that the messenger hadn’t brought a word from the captain, but instead a threat telling them to let us pass or we would kill them and no one would cry at their loss.

And they weren’t standing in line to honor us, but rather giving us space to quickly go away.

I was a rather amusing thing to know.

Tiny looked to me as we walked on our way and his eyes were asking me where we were going, but I rubbed his head with my antennae instead of answering and we continued walking.

“So how far is this farm?”

But my question didn’t have any meaning, because by the time I had asked it, we were already there.

It was to the east of our mound, just fifteen meters away. The reason why I had never noticed its existence before was because of the presence of ants around it.

I could see about fifty ants around the small dark hole going into the ground and could feel an equal number of ants hidden everywhere with my perception.

“This is it.”

David said and I could give him a silly smile.

“What are we here for brother?” Bill asked me and I told them that we; I and my team would be helping them for the next three days in getting stronger and possibly reaching rank one.

“Really?”

“That’s…”

“Is that possible brother? We can be rankers?”

“You don’t have to do this… actually thank you for your care.”

They looked happy; really happy. Considering, they must have really wanted to get stronger after that skirmish with the zombies. Even I get this tingling sensation telling me I need to get strong every day, even though I have already accomplished a lot.

“Don’t mention it.” I said and checked how many people I could bond with.

The [Party system] in the end was a function of [Bonding] which now allowed me to talk with anyone I had bonded with. No matter how far away they were.

‘I suppose it has an absolute range, but it’s good enough if I can talk to my friends with it at short distances.’

I checked and saw that [Bonding] was already level 11 and I had nine bondable slots free.

The other two were taken by ‘the queen bee’ Clair and ‘the Hornet’ Barry and I once again remembered that I had gifts pending to take from Clair.

“Need to take care of that too.”

“Brother”

“Right.” I counted and seeing that I only needed eight slots happily sent the request to all of them.

And all of them gave me a surprised reaction at the exact same time.

“What is this…”

I told them to accept the request and Mink asked me if it was my doing.

“Yes, it is. Now please accept the request so that we can get started.”

“Big brother what should I do.”

“Say yes Bill, and others too, say yes and accept the request.”

My brothers quickly accepted the request, but everyone else other than Mink took a few seconds before giving in.

You have bonded with four nameless novices.

You have bonded with Mink ’The Crusher’

You have bonded with David ‘The Hammer’

You have bonded with Dark ‘The Blasphemous’

You have bonded with Crimson ‘The Maniac’

Crimsons title gave me a surprise, but it wasn’t that bad.

'He is just a maniac and so is everyone else.'

Checking that everyone was aboard, we finally entered the termite farm and, saved it.