"Wait, does that mean we've been fighting worker ants all this while?" Anne exclaimed, anxious at the thought of her words being true.
"From the looks of it, you are right," Mark added, adding salt to her wounds by confirming her thoughts. She unconsciously stepped back, her feet pushing against a dead ant's corpse. Glancing behind her, she saw hundreds of ant corpses lying motionless, their ebony exoskeletons shimmering in the dim light of the room.
During their battles, after continuous leveling up of their stats, they had the upper hand, cutting down the ants as they attacked. Hundreds had been brought down, but now, in front of them, stood hundreds of these ebony ants, with the occasional silver ant crawling out of the hole in the roof. The presence of this new wave of ants threw a wrench into Anne and Mark's efforts.
"Mark... Mark..." Anne shouted, her voice reaching Mark, who was engaged in a losing battle with the silver ant.
Mark, noticing the ant's hard exoskeleton, punched at it, attempting to engage it in a contest of strength.
Despite Marks's stats which read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
24yrs 10mnths 1wks 1days 1hrs 3mins
NAME: Mark Evans
RACE: Human
Evolution: Feotus
AGE: 17/80
Soul energy: 500/50
Vitality: 40/150
Strength: 70
Agility: 54
Endurance: 95
Intelligence:33
Mana: 0
Skills:
Steel body 25%
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He was still pushed back by the silver soldier ant, its mandibles grabbing Mark's torso and attempting to rip his skin apart.
Blood oozed from the point of contact between the mandibles and Mark's skin. If not for his iron body skill evolving, he would have been cleaved in half. His strong, reinforced body protected him from such a fate.
Amidst the battle, Mark heard Anne's voice, filled with panic and sorrow.
"Why does she sound like that?" Mark thought to himself, turning his head in the direction of Anne's voice.
His gaze met Anne's, who had a horrified expression on her face, holding in her hands a shattered spider's leg—the improvised weapon she had been using.
A soldier ant had attacked her, and in defense, she thrust her improvised weapon at its head, only for it to break on contact.
The soldier ants were nothing like the worker ants; specially and naturally bred for combat, their strength and endurance towered over that of the worker ants.
She knew from biology class and wildlife channels how fierce soldier ants were, and from the look of it, these were the minor soldier ants, as their size was not much different from the worker ants.
If they remained here, the major soldier ants might come, and that would be the end of their lives. They couldn't even kill these soldier ants, and the worker ants were also present, swarming them with their numbers.
"Ma..." Anne couldn't finish the words as she jumped out of the way of the soldier, avoiding an attempt to cleave her body in half. Unlike Mark, she did not have a steel body and would die if the soldier ants got their mandibles on her.
She jumped almost immediately after landing, as a worker ant clacked its mandibles, trying to rip her leg off. She had lost her weapon and could no longer kill the worker ants. While strong, she wasn't strong enough to penetrate their tough exoskeleton, at best sending them hurtling back. If she tried, she could crush their bodies.
Anne was at a loss as she couldn't find her footing. With all her strength, she delivered an axe kick to a worker ant that unfortunately happened to be in her landing spot. The monster's hard exoskeleton caved in, killing it on the spot.
Anne stood on its body, the leg she had used for the kick now red, almost bleeding.
"Mark, let's run; we cannot handle them," she exclaimed, noticing that Mark was still in a heated battle with only one of the soldier ants, the rest surrounding them, unable to join in on the battle.
He had struck it many times, barely pushing it back, and the ant, in turn, continued clacking its mandibles, annoyed that it could not cleave the prey in front of it.
Mark, as stubborn as he was, knew that his actions were futile. If the other ants were to join in, he would die. Jumping back, he distanced himself from the ant.
"Anne, brace yourself; I will be getting to you!" Mark shouted. With that provocation, he dashed towards Anne, who was but a few meters from him—meters covered with monster ants.
Without any care for his body, he dashed towards Anne, crushing ants that stood in his way, while the wind from his dash pushed the rest back.
He grabbed Anne and crashed through the wall, escaping their entrapment.
.
"Ah, where am I?" Leo's voice echoed in a seemingly dark and endless abyss.
He was still unconscious as the metamorphosis was ongoing. In the comfort of his sea of consciousness, his soul drifted into the nothingness that was his mind's world.
His conscious mind had escaped the torment his body was going through, and he continued to drift, confused about his current situation.
He shook his ethereal head, trying to shake his memories in place, but unfortunately, he still came out blank. There was nothing to trigger his memories; the only thing he could see was the dark nothingness he found himself in.
"Let's try to understand our current situation," he heard a voice, one he was most used to as it was his own.
Leo turned his ethereal body, which added an almost insignificant illumination to the darkness around him.
He looked towards the voice, shock ashen on his face as he saw a figure. One might have mistaken it for a mirror image if not for its hand on its chin, holding a pondering posture—a posture different from Leo, who had his hands by his sides and his pupils dilated as he looked at the figure in shock.
"Hey, snap out of it, and let's think about our current situation," the figure said in an annoyed tone, noticing Leo standing there with shock and unwillingness on his face.
Leo's ethereal mind raced as it tried to process what was going on.
"I guess I am either dead or unconscious," Leo thought to himself as he finally noticed the state of his body, which mirrored that of the figure before him.
"Unconscious, obviously. How could you be dead..." the figure spoke, seemingly responding to his thoughts, as in the mind's world, his thoughts were as loud as his words.
Leo did not panic or show any sign, as he now understood his situation—that he was unconscious. The person before him could only be one thing, and that was his alter ego.
"How and when did I lose consciousness?" Leo thought to himself.
"That's what we have been trying to find out, genius," the figure spoke in a condescending tone.
"Who the f*ck..." Leo's thoughts were interrupted. "Leo, Leo, he's not..." A faint voice reached him, seemingly coming from outside the abyss he found himself in.
"That's Mark's voice... If we can hear him, then we are gaining consciousness... Find out why we fell unconscious in the first place."
The dark, seemingly endless abyss broke like shattered glass, collapsing in on itself as Leo's consciousness slowly returned.
"It's time... I will see you so..." The figure's form faded as the cracks reached his vicinity, obliterating him in the process.
Leo was frozen, unable to move, as the dark abyss he found himself in continued to shatter, his consciousness returning.
His eyes fluttered open, his now blood-red iris darting around.
"Leo, you're awake?!" Mark exclaimed, feeling relieved.
He had found Leo lying motionless in the collapsed hallway, his whole body drenched in blood. Fearing that something might have happened to Leo, he carried him to safety, simultaneously escaping his pursuers.
Leo's gaze met that of Mark, who was covered in cuts and bruises. His body, peeking through his torn white T-shirt, glowed with a subtle silvery hue.
"What happened to..." Leo's voice caught in his throat as he noticed Anne, convulsing in pain, blood oozing out of her body, and her form bending unnaturally. Her eyes were open but devoid of vigor, having lost consciousness to the unbearable, tormenting pain.
"You seem fine; I leave the rest in your hands..." Mark said, his voice becoming fainter with every word. He had been holding in the pain, forcefully delaying the metamorphosis process, as he had already undergone an evolution.
"Mark, Anne... what's going on?" Leo cried out as Mark also started to twitch, lines of blood dripping down his orifices.
********
"What's going on? Hasn't he already evolved? Why is he transforming again?" A golden humanoid figure spoke, his solemn voice thundering in the luxurious hall he sat in.
Cross-legged, he sat on an emerald jade throne, his gaze peering through the universe and settling on Mark, who was unconscious and undergoing another metamorphosis, or so he believed.
[ It's subtle, but his body has already been exposed to mana and miasma, initiating his metamorphosis. The mana was not enough for him to fully evolve into a good candidate ]
A female monotone voice echoed in the humanoid being's head, answering his earlier question.
"When was that? Did I miss something?" He pondered, searching through his memory, trying to find Mark's first transformation. He found it, and like a movie the scene played in his mind, vividly displaying the events of Mark's first evolution.