Chapter 14: New planet

“Yeah, about that, it is a seal mark. Dost said it is better not to touch too much because we do not know how exactly it works. He also mentioned that by the time it either will fade away or you have to meet some conditions to unlock it. Step by step you will regain all of your resource back again, don’t worry. We will assist you with that.” Kutch said in one breath as if he prepared this line in advance. In fact, it was obvious that he did his best not to make a big deal out of it.

Safo Nur in fear that he can make things worse than they already were, stopped himself and avoided scratching his arm. For now, he had to give up and take the whole misfortune that dropped on him all of a sudden.

The new planet was weird. Their location seemed to be a lifeless desert. But the ground wasn’t sandy. It was hard, drained from any liquid soil. Even trying his hardest, Safo Nur couldn’t leave any traces on its surface. The good thing that tablet had the function of recording coordinates and helping them return to the ship where O’rmon was.

They walked for about two hours and didn’t encounter any flora and fauna, only plain brown ground. After another hour they came to the edge of some big crater, with tall, almost 50 meters, rock pillars inside of it. It was an odd sight, a crater at least 3-4 kilometers in diameter with 300 meters deep in the center of it. Rock pillars were not thick, approximately a meter in girth. The vicinity was quiet, with no wind, only rare sounds of small pieces of rocks falling from the pillars. Kutch and Safo Nur pondered about taking a detour or going through the crater.

Kutch took out the tablet and pointed it back towards the pillars. After a minute of waiting Kutch said. “As I thought, it is the colony of ants, and their queen is on top of those pillars. There are at least thousands of queens here. They taste fine if we can get them.”

Kutch handed the tablet to Safo Nur. It was not bigger than two human palms and was the main tool of a hunter. It could identify almost any creature. Scientists of the Empire and Psiora jointly created it to make hunting easier. It had lots of other usages too though. Another significant use of the tablet was that it could measure a creature's intelligence level. From level 0, unicellular organisms, up to level 4, animals started using sticks and rocks as tools and had basic communication methods. It was allowed for hunters to capture, sell and breed any creature between level 0 and level 4. Level 5 were the beings with primitive language and established living places, rudiments of a future civilization. Anything above level 5 was prohibited for hunting, not just for Psiora but for everyone. Because they were considered as conscious persons.

The ants, according to the tablet, were level 1 insects. Also, it gave basic information about nutritional benefits that they had and how to cook them properly. The queen of the colony supposedly was a delicious delicacy.

Just when they went down they could see things clearly. The crater was artificial, made by the ants. Instead of going downwards, for some reason, they went upwards. Billions of billions of ants were working hard, they carried the small piece of rock to the top of the pillar, and there other ants using a liquid out of their mouth glued rocks together. The ants came out of their eggs in three different types, strong ones to gather rocks, those that could spit glue, and tiny jumping poisonous ants. Tiny ants and ants with glue were as big as a grape, while strong ants were three times bigger. They all worked in unison for the sake of the colony. It wasn’t all about the queen's safety, though. Birds flying by got attracted to the sight of the queens and ants ready to be picked up from the tops of the pillars, wishing to get an easy lunch they usually flew down. And it was then when ants would jump on them and bite their attackers with poison, paralyzing and killing them in a matter of minutes.

On the other side of the crater, some boulders could be detected. Some of them were car-sized, others as big as a house. Kutch, looking like he had a plan in mind, led the way towards the boulders bypassing the crater.

After an hour they almost reached the opposite side of the crater where the boulders stood upright. It was then, everything started to vibrate. The ground started shaking, at first, it was barely noticeable, but by each second the magnitude of the earthquake became stronger and stronger. More and more rock pieces fell from the pillar, the ants were in panic.

“Oh Teng, run, climb the tallest boulder you can.” Kutch pushed Safo Nur to hurry him up. What Kutch saw from their left shocked him.

Safo Nur still couldn’t see anything on the horizon. Kutch’s eyesight was far better than his. But he didn’t want to ignore the warning and so ran. By the time he reached the nearest rock, he stopped for a second to look at the sight that made Kutch run. “What are those rhinos?” He didn’t spend his time and began to climb farther from the pit behind. Boulders in front of him were at the foot of the rocky reddish mountain area. By the time he struggled to climb on top of the tallest boulder with the little help from Kutch, the horde of rhino-looking creatures was at the entrance to the crater.

“Now this is interesting!” Kutch's eyes sparkled in excitement, his hunter’s blood boiled in anticipation for the rhino meat hunt. “Can you identify them or are they still too far away from the tablet?”

Safo Nur pulled out the tablet from its bag, which he was carrying this whole time, and directed it towards the frenzy running animals. There were at least a couple hundred of them.

/Cerosnouts - or horn-faced mammals.

“Wow, it says that they can reach 60-65 km per hour. And they weigh up to 2 thousand kilograms. But according to this info, cerosnouts are herbivorous mammals, then why they are attacking the colony ants?” Safo Nur read the data that the tablet showed as fast as he could, but was confused afterward. It said that one crash of cerosnouts could contain up to 20 members. “I didn’t know that group of rhino-type animals would be called “crash”, and why are there so many of them?”

“They are not attacking, they are just passing by. It happened that this ant pit is on its way. I bet they didn’t even notice any ants. Are they level 2?” Kutch’s professional vision was sharpened by his experience.

Hundreds of “rhinos'' were raging through the rock pillars crushing them in nothing but dust. Their appearances were very close to Earth’s rhinos that Safo Nur saw at the zoo or on TV. Usually colored as the area mud color was, these particular cerosnouts were brown. The only difference that Safo Nur could see was that cerosnouts had 3 horns, one extra on their foreheads. As they continued their marathon destroying billions of ants' houses, a tablet that still was pointed at them showed an image of a grey dog for a brief second and went back to /cerosnout again.

“What was it, a glitch?” Safo Nur thought that he accidentally pressed something and before he could break such a valuable device he shoved it down to its bag. By that time cerosnouts reached the other end of the crater and went on leaving a ruined line across the pit. Both sides of that line still had some standing pillars with lucky queens and her surviving servant ants. For them life goes on, they will continue their hard work and maybe someday the pit will look the same as before.

While Safo Nur pondered about existential matters Kutch was attracted by something more useful at that time and place. Other people.

“There is a cave upfront. An automated Gun is protecting its entrance. We have to check it out.” By that, they went on climbing the many more boulders and rocks before reaching the cave.

“Stay here I’m going to verify if that thing is still active. We don’t want to get any hostile folk going after us.” With that Kutch went to check the cave. Safo Nur was left behind because there was nothing he could do if the situation turned out to be dangerous. He hid behind the rock and waited for Kutch’s return, which didn’t happen for the next hour or so. But he could still hear how Kutch called for the cave owners and how he gave up starting a fight with an automated gun-butler.

After some time the noise was over. “Safo, come on it’s clear. There is some food left here.” Hungry Safo ran towards the voice.