I was relaxing in the canopy of a tree while restoring my HP and MP. My suicidal plan was working out pretty well, although it was taking a toll on my mental health. Getting beaten up, sliced, and set on fire or other terrible things on the regular did things to your brain. So I relished the breaks between my “training sessions” all the more.

While I was doubting my sanity, my method was producing results, with Mucus Armor and Compress being at level seven and six respectively.

I had been going up against all manners of monsters, some I already knew, and some I encountered for the first time. And while I only challenged monsters I could take, I had a few close shaves with monsters that turned out to be a lot stronger than I pegged them for. For some of them, I prayed that I’d never encounter a tier-three version before I evolved.

I was racking up quite a bit of Data Points by now and I had almost gotten to a thousand saved-up points. The only cheap thing left in the P2W shop were the attribute points, of which I could buy only five for twenty DP a pop. They were relatively cheap, but I held off from buying them for now.

My plan was to have a feast before going down to the third layer so I could really beef up my attribute points via Gluttony. After that, I’d purchase the attribute points from the shop and fill up any holes in the attributes that needed a little more love. Gluttony assigned the attribute points I got at random, and with my luck, a lot of them would probably go into agility, which was useless to me.

Then, after leveling up my skills and magic, as well as racking up an impressive amount of attribute points, I felt like I’d at least have a fighting chance in the third layer.

As I was doing ever so often, I was looking through my status while waiting. By now, I had pretty much memorized the entire thing, but it was close to the only thing I could do in my downtime. Although, the rumination about my own capabilities was cut short when I spotted some movement from the corner of my eye.

I closed the menu and swiveled both of my eye stalks so I could better see who was crossing down below. My HP still hadn’t recovered to the point where I’d be comfortable with having another go at skill XP farming, but it always paid out to be aware of your own surrounding.

Especially if your life quite literally depended on it.

What I saw was an ant. Although its carapace was blue, and it was a lot bigger than the ants I was familiar with, this was most definitely a regular ant. One that was barely any bigger than me, at that. If it wasn’t for the spindly legs it sported, its whole torso would probably even be smaller in comparison.

The little critter marched through the underbrush, uncaring of who or what might be watching it before disappearing into a small hole at the base of a nearby tree that I hadn’t noticed until now.

I had a strong suspicion that I’d just seen my very first feeder monster on the second layer. Since it was on the second layer, would it be a tier-one monster, then? It looked a bit small for a tier-one monster, so it might be tier-zero after all, which made me feel a kind of kinship to it.

Well, it did just disappear into a hole, so there most likely were a lot more ants down that way. If a whole swarm of tier-one ants banded together they might be able to deal with a monster from the second layer, but if they were tier-zero feeder monsters, it wouldn’t matter how many of them got together. Which meant they probably couldn’t deal with me either.

Honestly speaking, I was becoming more and more curious about what was going on down there. Seeing an ant nest from the inside might be pretty interesting, and if I was right I would be able to check it out with almost no risk to myself. Worst case scenario, I could just fill their tunnels with poison mist and slowly high tail it out of there. I might even be able to train my skills if they decided to gang up on me.

Almost on a whim, I decided to delve into the anthill. Making sure the coast was clear, I descended from my hiding spot among the leaves and approached the hole. The opening was made for the (marginally) bigger ants, so I didn’t have any trouble fitting in there, but another problem became apparent pretty quickly.

The ants neglected to put any lights into their tunnel system, making it impossible to see for me or most other invading monsters. Unfortunately for the ants, I was a former human and therefore, big smart. Since not only the big mushrooms on this layer were emitting a soft, blue light, but the smaller mushrooms as well, I had a portable light source at the ready. It didn’t take me long to grab one of the smaller mushrooms around the base of the tree to be my makeshift lantern.

Obviously, I had no hands or appendages with which to hold the mushroom, but I just put the stem into my mouth, with the glowing cap pointing away from me and I was ready to go. Just for good measure, I also put some of them into my inventory, just in case this one lost its glowing capabilities or was otherwise stolen or destroyed by the ants. One could never be too safe in these situations. After all, if I got stranded down there without a light source, I’d be in for a very bad time.

Properly equipped, I started making my way down the tunnel. As expected, this was a relatively boring endeavor since for the most part, I was just following a featureless hole. After a while, I arrived at a junction where my tunnel joined another one that was slightly wider. This was also where I encountered the first ants.

It would seem like I had arrived at a tunnel that was used regularly, and when I looked up and down the tunnel I could see other holes, where different tunnels from other entrances joined the main tunnel. More of the blue ants were scurrying about, both on the floor and the ceiling, as well as the walls. They didn’t seem to pay me any mind, but that might change once I entered the tunnel proper.

I quickly assessed my odds of winning a fight here. The tunnel wasn’t totally packed with ants, in fact, there weren’t all that many. They occasionally disappeared into the side tunnels, but new ones came into the tunnels from there as well. All in all, I’d probably have to contest with around twenty ants. A number that would most likely increase as the fight went on.

I was mentally preparing myself to just nuke the entire tunnel in order to avoid a fight when an ant suddenly showed up behind me. I could see it just fine by swiveling my eye-stalks around and it didn’t appear too happy that I was blocking its path since it was angrily snapping its pincers at me in what I assumed to be a threat display.

The small tunnel we were in was just a tad too small for it to squeeze past me. And since I was not only invading its home but also keeping it from doing its work, it seemed mighty pissed at me. Thinking of this as a good opportunity to check the ant's strength without much hassle, I chose to ignore the aggressive behavior in order to bait out an attack.

It didn’t take long for the miffed ant to go into attack mode and it closed its pincers around my backside, violently shaking its head in order to rip off a piece of me. If I still had eyebrows, I’d raise one right about now, since that attack barely registered to me.

I hadn’t even activated my defensive skills yet, and the furious ant couldn’t even cause me pain. Of course, I felt slight discomfort at the pinching and shaking, but all in all, getting bitten by this ant was harmless. In fact, I’d say it hurt more getting bitten by the tiny ants on earth when I was still a human.

I mentally chuckled as it slowly dawned on me that these guys really were tier-zero feeder monsters. Since I was a tier-one monster, with a lot higher attributes than a monster at my tier should have, they couldn’t even start to put the hurt on me. I wasn’t one for senseless slaughter, so I moved out into the bigger tunnel and let the ant pass.

The other ants in the tunnel didn’t pay me any mind, in fact, they made it a point to avoid me. Maybe they instinctively felt that I wasn’t a being they could hurt, or maybe they just truly didn’t care about a slug hanging out in their nest, as long as it wasn’t in their way. As for the ant that was firmly attached to my backside, it quickly detached and went about its business as soon as it realized it was free to move past me.

I made a mental note that these anthills probably were an even better hiding spot than the treetops, provided I could find an access point.

I let down my guard considerably but still remained alert to the possibility of stronger ants showing up. My knowledge of ants was only fleeting and I wasn’t sure if they even applied to the monstrous kind, but I did know that there were soldier ants and worker ants, as well as a queen. My best guess was that these guys were worker ants, and the soldier ants might be able to hurt me after all, especially if I somehow stumbled upon their queen in my exploration.

Well, if I somehow got into hot water, I still had the option to Poison Mist nuke the entire nest.

So it was with an inquisitive mind that I continued making my way downwards. More and more offshoot tunnels joined the big one, and the deeper I got, the wider the tunnel got. With a wider tunnel came an ever-increasing ant presence. I got a bit worried seeing just how many of the creepy crawlies were down here, but I calmed myself by remembering they couldn’t actually do anything to me.

I was fairly certain that I saw some soldier ants as well. They were about fifty percent bigger than their worker friends, a lot bulkier, and their pincers looked like bad news. Be that as it may, aside from paying a lot more attention to the slug in their midst, they didn’t try anything funky.

Just judging from how they looked, they might be able to break my skin with their superior biting strength, but unless they literally piled up on me I wouldn’t be in any sort of danger. And even then, I could just activate my Poison Mucus Armor and continue on my merry way.

Eventually, I arrived in a larger room. The floor was filled with food the ants had foraged from the forest above, more food being brought in by a constant stream of ants passing by me. Soldier ants were interspersed throughout the entire room, and most of them were eyeing me suspiciously. Even more of the worker ants came from another tunnel further into the room, grabbing some food before leaving back through the hole they came from.

I assumed that I was now in the colony proper. If I followed the worker ants, I would probably be able to go even deeper into their home, but for now, I slithered my way to the ceiling where I just hung out for a while.

Watching the ants at work was equal parts creepy and fascinating. Creepy because it was a mess of legs and ants, crawling over each other like waves on an ocean. Fascinating because they were perfectly coordinated. Their working process was like a well-oiled machine where every ant executed its job to perfection.

While this was very fascinating, there was more of the colony to go explore, so I slowly made my way to the tunnel going further in. Following the mass of ants, I eventually arrived at a tunnel that went almost straight down. There were even more ants in this tunnel, busily going from place to place. There seemed to be invisible lanes for going up and down which the ants seemed to follow religiously and I joined the stream of ants that were going down.

Luckily for me, I was just as good at going vertical as the ants were, so I didn’t have any problems doing so. What turned out to be a slight problem, was that the ants started to just crawl over me instead of going around. I was significantly slower than them, so instead of having to maybe slow down by going around me, they chose the more direct option.

It was an unpleasant feeling to have a ton of ants use you as a stepping stone, and it apparently wasn’t a pleasant experience for them either. Some of them couldn’t quite grip my mucus-covered body and fell into the hole. Others stepped right on my eyes, which didn’t so much hurt as it was completely annoying. I had to retract my eye stalks until they barely poked out from my body to protect them.

The most annoying moment came in the form of an ant actually knocking the mushroom out of my mouth. The mushroom fell deep into the hole, falling for quite some time until hitting some kind of slope and falling out of sight. Or maybe it was just covered by the mass of ants down there, who knows? I took another mushroom out of my inventory, glad that I had the foresight to plan for this eventuality.

As I went further down, I went to look at some of the rooms that were connected to what I assumed to be the main tunnel. Some of them were used for food storage. Some of them were filled with sleeping ants, and others were filled to the brim with eggs. The ants really didn’t like me getting close to these rooms, openly blocking me from going in there.

It would seem I was being tolerated, as long as I didn’t go disturb their young. Of course, I could have just strong-armed my way in there anyway, but I wasn’t intent on starting beef with the ants if I didn’t have to.

Undeterred, I continued making my way down, now only glancing into the offshoots as I passed them. I had seen most of what the colony had to offer now, and it was just more of the same in every room. I did see a room where they were apparently cultivating their own mushrooms for food, which was pretty neat.

I eventually arrived at an offshoot that was larger than the others, and as I approached I could feel the mood change around me. All of a sudden all of the ants were keeping a close eye on me. Wondering what brought on this sudden interest in what I was doing, I continued until I could see down the tunnel, but was greeted with a literal wall of soldier ants.

Very aggressive soldier ants.

They were actively trying to keep me away from what was in there, so of course, I got curious. I tried positioning myself along the wall so I could catch a glimpse of what lay beyond the bristling ants and finally caught sight of the biggest ant I’d seen so far.

Loads of ants were swarming around the room, some of them carrying away eggs. This must be their queen then. No wonder they were being so protective all of a sudden. Back when I tried looking at their eggs, they unceremoniously shoved me away, but I had a feeling that if I tried to go in there, the whole colony would come down on me.

Still, I wasn’t all that interested in what was essentially a slightly bigger ant, so I turned away from the room. I was starting to feel like I had seen everything that there was to see in this anthill and my HP was getting close to being full again, so it was time to head back up and get back to training. But, before I went upwards, there was still a little bit of distance to go before I arrived at the very bottom of the structure.

Might as well go check it out.

As I covered the last bit of the vertical wall, I noticed just how few ants came down here. Apparently, the main tunnel just ended and split into three paths.

I slowly got off the wall, finally in a horizontal orientation again which still just felt more natural to me. While I descended, I kept a close eye on the ants and noticed that they seemed to be completely avoiding one of the tunnels down here, which naturally piqued my curiosity.

Assuming that the other two rooms were just more of the same, I started going down the abandoned shaft, the ants giving me a few odd looks as I went. The tunnel went on for a lot longer than I thought it would, and after a few minutes of silently crawling into the dark, I started to miss the constant vibrations from tons of ants scurrying about around me.

There was something about this tunnel that just felt… melancholic. I wasn’t entirely sure what brought on this feeling, as for all intents and purposes this was just a dark tunnel, just like all the others.

Eventually, the tunnel started to widen towards the top, a sign of finally entering whatever room was down here. Something about how abandoned this part of the colony felt sent a shiver down my spine when I entered this partition of the hill. I could tell at a glance that this room felt more… natural than the others. Was this maybe a cavern that just connected to the anthill?

The weak light of my mushroom didn’t reach very far in here, reinforcing just how big this “room” was. Just to make sure I wouldn’t get lost, I dropped my mushroom to the ground and took out another one to stick in my mouth. I decided to occasionally drop one as a waymarker.

As I continued my way straight forward, both of my eye stalks were on a swivel, trying to make out anything, but eventually, I couldn’t even see the walls or the ceiling anymore.

It was a strange feeling being surrounded by nothing but darkness on all sides, my existence but a tiny speck of light inside the void. But I pressed on, fascinated by the novelty of it all.

Ever since I was reincarnated on this planet, I had seen many a fantastical thing, but I was also constantly wrapped in a struggle for survival. With the threat of annihilation looming over my head at all times, I didn’t really have the time to appreciate all the cool, interesting, and beautiful things I’d seen so far.

But down here? I was safe.

I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt this way. For all I knew this was the home of the Massive Mega Murder Ant McQueen, but the mood down here just felt so calm. Silent. Still. Somber… Safe.

Eventually, I saw a shape forming in the distance. I seemed like some big, jagged boulder from afar, but when I got closer, the truth became apparent.

It was a pile of ants. A huge pile of dead ants.

The blue bodies were stacked atop each other, forming a macabre, yet somewhat fascinating sculpture of death. I had trouble seeing the top of it, and as I made my way around the base, I realized there were more such hills behind this one. It was a cemetery akin to rolling hills in the countryside, made entirely out of bodies.

As I was stunned by the sheer amount of dead ants that must be gathered down here, I could feel the small vibrations of an ant approaching from behind. In this area, devoid of movement, the tiny pitter patter of its six legs felt like somebody screaming into the void and I turned around to take a look.

The ant approached carrying another ant, unmoving, in its pincers. Its head was awkwardly angled up so that its dead companion would scrape along the ground as it was transported. I wasn’t paid much mind as the ant passed by me, uncaringly ascended the mound of ants, and unceremoniously dropped its brethren at the top. It didn’t even take a second to think of the fallen before it was already on its way back down. Into the void it went, the vibrations of its steps disappearing in the distance, no doubt returning back to work for the colony.

I turned back to the literal mountains of ants and continued pushing deeper. More and more piles came into view, an unreal amount of dead bodies decorating my surroundings.

Just how could this be possible?

The ants were bottom-feeders. Not only that, they were tier-zero. Quite literally the food for everything else that lived on this planet, nothing more. So how come they weren’t being eaten? Since they could pile up their dead like this they had obviously found some kind of way to survive until they died of old age.

Then that’d beg the question: Why would they bring their dead down here instead of leaving them where they dropped? Sure, they’d probably be in the way of work if they’d just piled up at the bottom or in one of the rooms. But they might as well just leave them topside for some monster to eat, that way they’d at least be disposed of.

This looked a lot like some sort of cultured behavior to me, but were ants even capable of this? Then again, I was dealing with monsters here. There might be some other reason for this that I couldn’t see yet. Be that as it may, I kept trucking along, passing more and more dead ants. There must have been hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions down here.

After what felt like forever, a change appeared in the form of a dim light in the distance. Maybe an exit? It was a lot more interesting than endless piles of dead ants which, even if impressive and intriguing, got boring pretty quickly if it was the only thing around.

With a new goal in sight, I adjusted my course so I passed in between two particularly impressive ant piles and straight towards whatever lay ahead. As I inched closer I noticed that the light seemed to be shifting ever so slightly in color. I was also approaching the wall of this huge cavern, and the light was coming from a smaller tunnel leading away.

I made sure to keep one eye trained behind me, just in case anything unsavory was following me as I made my way through the rather narrow tunnel. The further in I got the less sure I became that this tunnel was made by the ants. There was barely any room to fit two of me, much less a whole bunch of ants running over each other. So whatever was at the end of this tunnel might have made its own tunnel and just happened to dig into the ant cemetery. Provided whatever awaited me at the end of this tunnel was some kind of creature instead of just some shiny thing.

I was getting close to whatever it was, though, since the light was becoming quite prominent now. Not blinding, mind you, but I for sure didn’t need the mushroom anymore, so I stored it in my inventory.

Finally, I entered a straight part of the tunnel that clearly opened up into another cavern, so I carefully made my way forward. Once I got to the edge, I let my eye wander over the rather small cave I arrived at.

If I had to describe it in one word, I’d choose Idyllic.

A small stream came from a hole in the wall to my right and made its way through the small, surprisingly igloo-shaped cave, before disappearing into another opening further down. A pinkish moss covered most of the floor, occasionally dotted by the blue mushrooms that could be seen on the surface as well and some vines were hanging from the ceiling, creating natural partitions to the cave.

At the far side of the cave, a tiny version of the big trees above settled down its roots, only two, big leaves hanging off the seemingly far too small, purple trunk. And on one of those leaves, I found the source of the glow I’d been following.

Something akin to a fuzzy caterpillar was lounging on the leaf. Its fur ranged the full spectrum of the rainbow, the colors slowly shifting along its body from front to end. Or maybe the other way around. I wasn’t entirely sure since I couldn’t really tell at what end its face was.

All in all, this whole scene looked very peaceful, which naturally put me on edge. This entire planet was supposed to be a battle royale of epic proportions with literally everything being out to murder everything else, so why would this fuzzy caterpillar be any different?

I was just considering what to do when the system took the decision out of my proverbial hands.

Congratulations on discovering one of the hidden pieces of this planet!

Hidden Quest

You have discovered the larva of a Rainbow Moth! Once these larvae evolve into their final form, they embark on a journey across space, looking for a new planet among the stars where they might die, become reborn as a larva, and repeat this process all over again. It is said that anybody who witnesses the Rainbow Moth during the take-off from a planet will experience luck for the rest of their lives. Contrary, those who witness its descent will become cursed.

Either kill or spare the larva.

Rewards:

Hidden.

After reading the message I breathed a sigh of relief, as apparently, I wasn’t in any immediate danger. It would seem like I’d stumbled upon something amazing and I wasn’t about to squander a chance at getting stronger before going to the third layer.

I asked the system what a hidden piece was, and apparently, they were a sort of help strewn about on each planet, specifically to help the travelers grow. They came in many shapes and forms, such as strong weapons, useful items, stat boosts, strong skills, and a ridiculous amount of experience.

The thing they had in common was that they were hard to find and only a chosen few ever encountered them.

I briefly considered what to do, but the choice seemed rather obvious. If I’d kill this thing, I’d most likely get a whole bunch of XP, maybe even a new skill if I was lucky. But I currently didn’t need any more XP, and I was kind of worried about its description. If that thing could curse people that witnessed its descent upon a planet, I shuddered to think what it would do to its killer.

Sparing this creature was definitely the way to go. The system provided me with two small buttons listing both of my choices, and I selected the “spare” option without a second thought. No sooner had I done so, did the larvae finally show some sign of life.

One of its ends lifted itself up, revealing seven rainbow-colored eyes that had blended into the fur before. It looked at me with curiosity, before the soft glow around it started to intensify. The colors of the rainbow filled the small cave, waving around the room like an aurora borealis and bewitching me distracting me from the larvae.

The next thing I knew, the larvae exploded into a flash of light, and once my eyes recovered from the literal flashbang that just went off, seven balls of rainbow-colored light were floating in the room. I could barely wonder what happened to the larvae before the seven balls raced towards me, each slamming into my small frame.

I curiously didn’t feel any force from them, which made sense since they were made of light, as I watched them slowly be absorbed into my body.

The whole process only took a few seconds, and when it was over, the blue mushrooms were the only source of light remaining, aside from the new system message that popped up shortly after.

You have chosen to spare the larvae of the Rainbow Moth!

Rewards:

The hidden Luck attribute will be made available to you!

10 Luck attribute points.

A new chain quest has been unlocked:

The Flight Of The Rainbow Moth! (Part 1)

Achieve a Luck attribute score of 100.

Rewards:

???

Part 2 of the chain quest.

I wasn’t entirely sure how good it was to have a hidden attribute like luck, but judging by how the system played up these hidden pieces, it was probably a good thing, right? And this way I’d finally have some actual luck, something I severely lacked in my past life. I cringed a bit when I saw that my luck was set at thirteen, even with the stat boost I got from the piece, but that paled when I looked at the new quest I received.

I needed to raise my luck to one hundred! That was quite an insane number, and I wasn’t even sure how heavily I should invest into this attribute… Maybe I’d just ignore it and slowly raise it up with gluttony. Not like there was a time limit on this quest.

The system wasn’t exactly helpful, only telling me that luck influenced quite literally everything one did. Maybe I’d get lucky and find a casino run by monsters somewhere…

All jokes aside, my exploration of the anthill was complete, and I even got some unexpected goodies from my trip! My health had been fully restored, and I needed to get back to my training regiment. So, with a last look back toward where the larvae had been, I started to make my way back to the surface.