I waited until Princess disappeared down the slope then traced my steps back to the surface. I took the fastest route up to where the traffic waved and smashed into me with the curling, swirling paths. There I gained a few more notifications.

You are still injured, buddy. Take it easy for some time. Don’t get hurt. Have some respect and care, all right?

You have acquired skill: Stress resistance.

[Stress][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]

[Don’t play the game of tug and war against opponents you can’t handle. It might increase our strength, but will definitely cause an injury.]

[Reward: Your Endurance increases by .1 points every time the skill levels up.]

I shuddered when the colorful graphics blocked my sight. My brethren pushed me from behind, left-right, and front. They took me for a ride along the waves while my mind tried to solve the mystery behind the phenomenon. All was for naught. I realized I was missing something important, a key to the lock. Still, I tried, until a hard nudge brought me back to reality. The workers weren’t happy with my conduct. I apologized and moved on with nothing to show for the disturbance I had caused them, deciding to wait for some other, more peaceful time.

I made a stop at the fifteenth floor and tasted a few mouthfuls of soft and white mushroom cakes to fill my stomach. Honeydew was good to jump-start the day, but it was a high-energy, low-potential fuel that gave you the zing, but didn’t last long. Mushrooms were slow to digest and a very good source of long-lasting energy.

The workers at the farm worked tirelessly to keep the quantity and quality of their product stable. The site was regularly disinfected and checked for pathogens. The workers took great care of the farm, as was required of them.

The mushrooms were farmed in a set square shape five heads long and five heads wide. The excess was regularly cut and stashed in the excess chambers that fed the city population. Leaves were daily brought into the farm. They were first smashed into tiny pieces and then mixed with water and ant excretion collected from the various corners of the city, and turned into fertilizer. The fertilizer was one of the greatest finds of the previous generation. It had single-handedly allowed the city to become self-sufficient.

There was talk of paying the beetles in protein for balls of dung to free the workers forced into collecting leaves, but it was difficult to make them listen, and not every beetle was friendly.

The workers all gave me the stiff antennas of rejection when I asked about the explorers. I ran away as soon as I was done feeding. I asked the few soldiers around if they knew where I might find the explorers and they were all too happy to tell me to go up… to the tower. For some reason, the explorers had decided to spend their day outside in danger. I hoped nothing bad would happen to them before Princess was done with them.

Workers wormed their way up and down the tower tunnels carrying a water and dirt mixture of cement in their abdomens.

The project might sound small scale, but for every worker focused at work, there were ten in waiting. The tenth level of the tower alone was occupied by over three hundred workers! The rain had destroyed more than five floors worth of exterior wall and inner construction. Add to that a soldier to supervise every five workers and there were a well over a few thousand bodies at work at the same time!

I found my curbed excitement rising when I reached the tower. From the fifth floor up I encountered more and more workers and soldiers. They were strict, disciplined, and patient. But everything was not good. There was a fair bit of nervous energy floating around. Everyone knew about the dangers and the endless nightmarish possibilities. However, the constraints also brought the workers and soldiers together, mending their relation.

I was casually making my way through, looking for someone sane enough to answer a few questions, when I bumped into a soldier.

She had long legs that one, making me wonder how I had managed to bump into her. Her antennae were waving all over the place, abdomen swaying. I couldn’t believe it. She was drunk out of her senses.

Who are youse? The mutated long-legged soldier poked me in the head. Her scent speech was all over the place. And why youse smell of a female royal. Youse pretending to be ovulating? Youse a pretender?

At first, I was appalled by her behavior then remembered my task and changed my opinion. She was contacting me of her own accord —why waste the opportunity? I tried to get the information out of her but things didn’t go as planned. No. I’m Princess Tiny’s royal guard and I’m here to—

Youse a what? She was flabbergasted. A Royal? Hear that, captain? The soldier turned her head, antennae lagging behind. Her captain was standing right next to her but she couldn’t find him. The brew must have been messing with her senses —which was not unexpected. The royal winged male, however, made her vent some of the intoxications before, finally, pulling her face close to his. He could see her after all; infrared eyes were a boon only the fertile cast was gifted. To my surprise, the same oblongs spheres were also upon his companions head, situated on the forehead right between her other larger set of eyes.

Captain! She said. This wok here has the same title as youse. He says he’s a Royal something-something. Says he’s a big wok!

Is that right? Another soldier, a slender marksman joined the conversation before I could claim otherwise. He reeked, but of poison, not mead.

I heard him, Scented a fourth soldier, the largest among the lot with mandibles the size of-of my whole shading body! I heard him true, alright. He said it. I’m not worse than a soldier, he said. I speak the truth. You all know me!

Youse said that? Youse asking for a BEATING, small wok?

I couldn’t understand their reason, but they surely had me intimidated. My legs shook like a leaf under the onslaught of wind. I was most probably leaking fear, for the soldiers were growing confident by the second. No, I’m here to find the explorers. I almost blasted into the tunnel.

Maybe the sudden overload of pheromones broke their confusion? Whatever the case, they stopped harassing me. And the winged royal male finally intervened. What for? He scented; it was a crystal clear injection of pheromones, precise, and authoritative.

On the order of Princess Tiny, I—

The tower shook. Is it an earthquake? A scent asked. It wasn’t that.

The quake came again.

The soldiers released me from their attention. Surprisingly, the chatter had also died down.

All the soldiers and workers stood motionless, antennae raised, and vibrating — sensing the change. The workers had also stopped working and were passing down scent signals.

The tunnel shook again and the city inhaled.

It was too intimate an exchange to neglect. An extremely pungent scent of alarm washed down the tunnel pores and engulfed everyone present.

The soldiers stirred, their released pheromones adding to the whirling storm passing through. My body started moving on its own, drumming the ground with the abdomen to signal the lower floors: an action I learned the day I graduated from the nursery.

Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack!

The chant undulated through the tower and down the city, as the large organism started waking up. It did something to me, the chant, the chemicals, the energy and anger in the air. The change wasn’t instant, but it piled with every passing second. I wasn’t alone in this change. The soldiers behaved in much the same way; excluding the group, I had confronted.

I soon found myself heaving, and moving, rushing behind —no, with the soldiers. I felt purposeful: rash, but also dignified. This was different from the time we had fought with the termites under the mountains. There I had been alone, surrounded —sure— but alone still. Here I was a drop of blood, a part of something whole.

We rushed up through the broken tunnels, toward the hole in the western wall. The soldiers rushed out first. I went right behind them. Sun rays blasted my sight full of light, but the scent was clear, the path laid, enemies identified. It was them again. The termites! They were attacking. Why? Why and how?

Attack! My surrounding pulled me out of thoughts and into actions. My sight returned only a second later.

I saw.

There were hundreds of them, blurs of motion suspended in a white haze. Familiarly large and armored, the termites were winged! Some even carried passengers under their bulky bodies: hulking soldiers, easily three times the size of our largest hunter.

But those monstrosities were far and between, barely numbered enough to hold all my legs. Most of their carried numbers were made of those armored, black monsters we had encountered on the mission, the ones resistant to poison.

Something grew hot inside me. The pain and the anger came back at their sight. The soldier and her painful cries grew strong in my mind. My panic rose with my breaths and anger from the scents in the air. They were falling from the sky like drops of rain, wetting the tower surface with worker's blood. Soldiers lay on the ground in pieces, limb and headless; some unmoving, and others convulsing and flailing.

The sight made my anger surge. It made me storm ahead of the others. I left the long-legged maniac and her companions behind in a cloud of dust. The strength surging inside me pushed at my joints, wanting a release. I gave in. The chemicals made me fearless. I crashed into something large and dark, something that smelled foul and foreign. I was mostly blind following the fumes tails rising behind the termites.

Instantly, I felt my surroundings light up and the energy coursing through me decrease. My high didn’t break, but my thoughts did return. I questioned my action as something hot covered my face. It stung, but not in a painful way. That sting stimulated another course of heat inside me, but not at a level that it could control me again.

When I finally found control over my body I was hanging from a termite’s abdomen, threatened to be flung over the tower. The termites had its middle legs caught and stretched by a pair of soldiers, and face dripping with the burning poison of our specialty. My mandible was stuck deep inside its abdomen. Needless to say, another set of notifications covered a part of my sight.

Hold on, little fellow! Don’t listen to the wonderment of the battle high! Focus on my voice. Focus!

You have acquired Mental Corruption Resistance.

***

First, you stressed your body and now you are straining yourself by outputting more power than your body can handle. You are hopeless.

You have acquired Strain resistance.

[Mental Corruption][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]

[It protects your mind against foreign influence.]

[Effect: a small chance to completely negate the effect of someone’s mental fiddling.]

[Reward: Your intelligence increases by .1 points every skill level.]

***

[Strain][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]

[Your body becomes better at handling the strain produced with time. The skill enhances the result just a little bit.]

[Effect: You feel 2% lesser after-effects from physical skills.]

[Reward: Your Constitution increases by .1 points every skill level.]

I stroked my legs to find some purchase on the tower wall, kicking air but getting no results. Out of chance, another soldier saw our struggle, and she slew the termite. The others let go when the termites stopped moving. Horrified, I watched the termite’s legs lost their strength and reason click back into the soldier’s eyes. It fell back from the tower, taking me along for a ride.