My first meeting with a hopper had been so terrifying that it had left a scar on my mind. I had to run away from it in order to save my life. I was an insignificant little ant then. Freshly out of the colony with no real burdens; no real knowledge of the big world; and no experience with the dangers: which hid, roamed, hunted, and charmed pests like me.

That interaction with death had taught me the most basic thing needed to survive in this wild wilderness under the dark shadows of which roamed barbaric entities which killed without mercy -a place where the echoes of past still rang loud and clear- and that is, strength.

One needs absolute strength to roam the grounds of the shadowed world. A clueless wanderer simply has no place there.

In the end, even physical strength is not enough. One also requires a high mental capability to face such creatures of monstrous capacity. Only those with both strength and courage made fond memories in the abysmal world of insects, while those that shuffled insignificantly from day to day only had haunting dreams: which they feared to see even when awake, much less when asleep.

The perfect example of my analogy can be taken by analyzing that hoppers death. It could have easily killed me and the other members of my scavenger team without a hitch, but in its recklessness, it had decided to play with us instead of killing and then eating us because we were weak and harmless in its eyes.

In the end, even the hopper couldn’t survive from the jaws of fate and died to an even deadlier hunter. The Pit hunter -which was simply waiting for some unsuspecting adventurer to fall into its trap- tasted the price of its foolishness and filled its stamina. The horror of watching the overwhelming hopper being swallowed by the earth made the hunter hiding beneath an insurmountable wall for me.

But now, in my second mission outside of the colony, I had already killed the pit hunter. I had surmounted that wall and was already looking at another wall. The hopper was also a shadow of my past: An even higher wall; an even bigger challenge.

“Am I strong enough to face it?’ The question was so loud in my mind that it was distinguishable from the rest of the noises which had taken over a considerable part of my thoughts. I knew my stats and my status. I knew the value of my skills and their power. What I didn’t know was the real strength of the dreadful hoppers who were considered a plague by us ants.

They killed us without reason. Stole from us and kidnapped our carriers. They were the real calamity surrounding our colony and not some deadly crisis which only came about once a month. Thousands of my brothers had died crossing their territories. Even bees and ambushers hadn’t stabbed us so deep as the hoppers had. Yet, for some reason, my seniors considered them dumb and easy to fool.

I, on the other hand, considered them the real monsters. Yet, I decided to face one alone- all alone.

‘It’s a terrible idea!’ my inner voice yelled, but I had to try and stop it; even if it meant losing an arm and a leg over it. I only need to hold it off until the others enter the tunnel. I told myself and rolled away from its attack path. I wanted to appraise it before deciding what to do next –whether to fight it or keep dodging- but it attacked me again the moment its feet touched the ground, giving me no chance to identify its strength. I had to dodge its full frontal body slam by rolling on the ground with dirt dragging at my skeleton.

“He dodged! He dodged once again!” flauntingly, it jumped toward me a third time, taking me by surprise. Unfortunately, it came at me too fast. I had no chance of dodging him. So I braced for impact, while the system chimed with the activation of [Reckless courage] in my mind.

{You are facing a creature a tier higher than you. All stats increase by 1% until the fight ends.}

I had braced for impact, yet the strong push damaging my body, hefting me off the ground, and flinging me through the air, floundering and out of focus with reality, never came.

Instead, the hopper simply passed through me: sipping another gulp of mana out of my body as [Auto defense] used [Slipping steps] and turned my physical body astral at the exact moment the hopper collided with me.

“What the…?” Surprised as I was, the hopper didn’t return with an attack again. Rather, it jumped back to create some distance and gazed wildly at me from afar.

“What did you do?” it asked. Its arrogance of before was now slowly changing colors to impassive coldness with a tinge of fear to its edges. I liked its new outlook much better. It became vigilant. Slightly apprehensive for a second, but upon noticing my similarly impassive and not so impressive stature, the arrogance enriched in its body returned once again but with a slight temper and a wild superficial understanding to its mix.

“So it’s like that, huh. I actually missed.” While it spent valuable seconds trying to bluff me, I appraised it.

In my first meeting with a hopper, I hadn’t been able to do anything about it speed. I was slow, stiff, and only a paperweight in my team. At that time, I didn’t even have the ability to properly follow its movements, much less the endurance to endure its body slam.

But things were different now. I could see its attacks and effectively dodge them.

I can bind for time. I thought, but quickly changed my mind the moment the appraisal’s result came, along with a rise in its level. It was a surprisingly morbid situation.

{Appraisal has risen to lv 18}

Appraised: Camafrog Grass Hopper (Rare)

Camafrog Grass Hopper(Rare)

Lv – 13/15

Rank – 1

Type

Fighter

Health – 125

Stamina – 104

Mana – 24

Defense - 18

Stat Tier: E

Strength

8

Intelligence

3

Agility

18

Wisdom

3

Dexterity

6

Endurance

13

Charisma

1

Vitality

9

Luck

0

Constitution

5

It was a morbid situation for the hopper. I, on the other hand, had no reason to be afraid of it. We were not even in the same spectrum anymore. The difference between us was so far and wide that I couldn’t even begin to explain how I was feeling.

It was like waiting a long cold night under the rain with no shelter in sight, just for that one chance to meet the desert fairy which only comes out in such conditions, but being unlucky; and then encountering one sleeping on a thorny throne in the middle of the day without a care of the world. My current situation was similar to the above mentioned in quality. I felt betrayed.

I was afraid of this? This cancerous thought almost made my fury rise by another level, but my passively meditated mind calmed down before that tragedy could occur. I noticed that the other members of my new team were already inside the tunnel. Meaning, I could now leave the hopper and rush behind them if I wanted too. But I had a different idea I wanted to try first.

The next time it attacked, I decided to take it head on- Just to see how much damage I would suffer from its attack.

“Come on now, what are you waiting for?” While I said it with confidence, inside, I was nervous. It is not to be forgotten that however, our stats might look, it was still a monstrosity of massive size and great weight, while I was just an ant.

“What did you say?!” A red glow covered its body as it charged toward me like a bloody spear- leaving behind scattering motes of scintillating red.

“I’m going to kill you and then I’ll eat you!” It crossed a monolithic distance for me –an ant- in under a second and I braced for impact. I forcefully resisted the attack with my body.

{High blunt resistances has risen to lv 3}; {Paralysis resistance has risen to lv 10}; {High Shock resistance has risen to lv 7}; {High Pain resistance has risen to lv 8}

{Toughness has risen to lv 3}

Unexpectedly -completely opposite to my calculations- a very shocking result came up when our bodies collided. While I stayed put -with my claws slightly buried into the ground, an itch growing stronger at the roots of my mandibles, and a wave of piercing pain traveling through my head to the tip of my abdomen- the hopper’s body couldn’t handle the force which resulted from our collision.

Its jaw broke as it collided with my mandibles, its face sunk inwards, cracks appeared over its thin exoskeleton –leaking viscous semi-white fluid from the seams- one of its eyes outright exploded and the other lost its color.

*Critical hit*

[-36Hp]

This was the amount of damage which I suffered.

[-75HP]

This was the damage which the hopper suffered.

It screamed in pain and yelled in horror. “Fuck! What the hell are you! FUCK! HELP!” It first cursed then started screaming for help while rubbing its drooling jaw with its forelegs. It was clearly in pain and stepping back: wetting the dark dirt underneath its body in its own fluids.

It had used a skill, possibly [Charge], with another skill that had given its body the red glow. If we add its weight behind the attack then his base attack power which was raised to the range of 120~150% had at least doubled once more. Meaning, it should have actually done damage in the range of 40~54, but considering I had almost 27 defense, it had actually dealt me 35+27=62 damage with its 8 strength.

“How is that possible? How can it use its stats to such effectiveness?” I came to one conclusion after contemplating with [Fast processing] and [Data gathering] active, “The damage done to me was the because of the difference in our weight and possibly constitution.”

I had no proofs to back up my theory, but I let it go at this point. I had done enough calculations for one day. I had bid enough time for the rest of my team to reach the other side and stop the company they were meeting from leaving.

Now that I was done with my experiment, it was time to finish this fight. I peered at the hopper and saw that it was already a good few steps away from me.

“Are you scared of me?” I mocked it and it stopped receding.

“Do you still think you are lucky?” Its body flinched and it looked back at me.

“So hoppers are just so –so, I guess.” Finally, it gritted its jaw so hard, one of its pincers broke. As the new boiling pain coursed through its body, it started screaming once again, while its immature wings tried to flutter and lift its body from the ground.

I made a hopper fear me. I guess the difference between our tiers had saved him from the fear which should have enveloped it because of our difference in stats. But with its defeat, the barrier created by the tier difference also broke, putting him under an undying fear toward me.

This was my first fight with a hopper.

“Who are you!?” It screamed, trying to get away from me.

I did not let it get away. By now, I could already hear the clamor of the other hoppers returning. They were obnoxiously loud and seemed feverishly angry from the noises. Hearing them approaching I decided to hurry.

I had already found out about the difference in our strengths. Although I might have been able to take the rest of the horde head one (Probably not), I decided to simply kill the imbecile frothing with fear in front of me and make a run for the tunnel.

I attacked it with a single air bullet which sipped another 10 mana from my body. Thank god I now had the ability to borrow mana form the surrounding atmosphere. Otherwise who knew how long it would have taken me to regenerate the mana I had used to fight a single hopper.

Air bullet was above my physical skills like mandible cut or cross slash in terms of attack power, and it didn’t need any preparation time either. On the other hand, to use cross slash I had to complete a specific set of motions with my arms or my antennae’s; moreover, the damage it dealt was only half of my magical base damage. Which might have been enough for most, but I didn’t know then whether it would be enough against a being of a higher tier.

“NO…NO…AHHH” It shrieked as the air bullet manifested above my head, sailed toward it, and shot through it. Yes, he was so scared that he didn’t even try to dodge or stop it in any way. The bullet simply went through him displaying damage of [-93 Hp] above its health. My Air bullet could do 120 damage but its defense had shaved 27 damage from the bullet- giving me more details about the status and its limits.

“I shouldn’t take the stats to their face values.” My discretion was the result of its defense-related skills. I might have died thanks to my little experiment if my opponent was someone specialized toward killing its opponents in one hit. That’s what I realized from my little experiment. That death comes in various forms and shapes; the hoppers death had come in the form of its own food- a little ant.

Confidence is earned by being courageous; no one is born with it. But confidence I think is more like a disease than a feeling because those festered by it always end up dead before their time.

When everything was said and done, only happiness remind inside me. That was another wall climbed and another scar erased from my mind. But that wasn’t all. This little experiment of mine also brought forth in light a hidden trap of the system. A trap I had been slowly sipping into for some time. I was drunk on the value of my stats. If I wasn’t, then I would n't have foolishly decided to bare the hoppers attack with my body. I was foolish and could have died. But I survived and learned the real value of skills. All in all, this fight rewarded me for my recklessness and I learned to stay vigilant in the future- no matter who I might be facing.

Another thing, Knowledge & Willpower increased by one, and reckless courage leveled up,

{You have defeated another being of a tier higher than you.}

{Reckless courage has risen to lv 2.}

And so did I.

{Congratulations! You have reached level 3.}