Allies. The word tasted strange in my mouth, much like the bitter roots I'd once chewed to stave off hunger. Useful, perhaps, but not pleasant. Trust? Now that was something I'd need to chew on longer.
The Fire Ant Queen and I had struck a deal—a cautious truce cemented in necessity, not camaraderie. We agreed to use the hill as our meeting ground, a neutral zone where her oversized army of death machines wouldn't immediately mistake me for lunch, and my companions wouldn't torch the place out of fear. Of course, this "alliance" wasn't without its complications. Life rarely makes things simple, and neither do ants, apparently.
***
The Fire Ant Queen didn't deign to speak to me directly—oh no, that would've been far too simple. Instead, she preferred to communicate through one of her Elite Soldiers, a towering monstrosity of chitin and venom with an attitude problem to match. It stood E+ in rank, a step below its queen, but still capable of gutting most creatures without breaking a sweat.
Every conversation was a delicate dance. The queen sat back, using her Elite Soldier like a puppet, while I played translator for my group. The soldier's mandibles clicked and hissed, and I translated its snarls into words my companions could understand. It was like trying to negotiate a trade deal while your business partner insisted on speaking through a particularly grumpy attack dog.
Why couldn't the others just learn their language? Oh, right—because it was incomprehensible to anyone without a cheat like mine. Turns out, when the Karmic Records first unlocked in my head, they dumped an encyclopedia of languages into my brain. At the time, I thought it was a useless upgrade—who needs a Babel library when you're busy not dying? But now? Now it was my golden ticket. Without it, I'd have been dead five times over.
Even with the ants "cooperating," my companions weren't thrilled about me playing go-between. Zainab, our four-headed serpent, had her own way of glaring—four, in fact—and I swear all those heads agreed I was wasting time. Meanwhile, the Earth Dragon simply snorted at everything, its indifference as vast as its size.
The ants weren't exactly warming up to us, either. I caught them staring at us when they thought we weren't looking—hundreds of beady eyes watching from the shadows. It wasn't hostility, exactly, but confusion. Apparently, the Fire Ant Queen had never had allies before, and her hive didn't know how to process us. Were we threats? Prey? Competitors?
I could feel their unease humming in the Hive Mind like static, but the queen didn't let it last long. She issued some sort of directive to her brood—what exactly, I didn't know. All I cared about was that it worked. The ants stopped their awkward skittering and got back to work, their feelings shoved into whatever dark corner ants use to store their doubts.
***
Weeks passed. Slowly, the ants grew accustomed to us, and we to them. The initial frost of mistrust thawed—not completely, but enough that we weren't on the verge of stabbing each other every time we met.
It wasn't blind luck that bridged the gap. No, it was information. Information I sold them, piece by piece, carefully measured out like a miser counting coins.
The queen was cautious, but she wasn't stupid. When I told her about the Gate Disaster—about the chaos ripping through this world and the flood of master-ranked creatures that would only grow worse—she listened. I painted her a grim picture: a hive overrun, her precious brood slaughtered by creatures far worse than cursed werewolves. Her mandibles twitched nervously when I mentioned it, and I knew I'd hit a nerve.
But nothing comes for free.
I didn't tell her about the Gate Disaster out of the goodness of my heart—if I even had one left. No, I had my sights set on something far more valuable: Planet Shards.
Or, as I pitched them, "Evolution Shards." I didn't want her getting too curious about why I wanted them, so I sold the idea like a traveling merchant with a miracle cure. I described their power in vague but enticing terms—how they could strengthen individuals, push limits, and open doors to potential locked away by the very fabric of existence.
The queen didn't fall for it entirely, of course. She admitted to possessing these shards but downplayed their significance. According to her, she'd already used several to evolve from a mere worker ant into the queen she was today. She claimed her hive's "race limit" meant they were better used to strengthen her soldiers.
I could see through her like glass.
She had more shards than she was letting on—at least ten, I guessed. But asking for all of them would've been stupid, so I do so anyway. Queens don't just give away the keys to their kingdom, especially not to furless monkeys who barely escaped being a snack.
Instead, I started low, requesting ten shards. She laughed—or, well, whatever the ant equivalent of laughter is. The answer was a hard no. She claimed she didn't have that many, which was a blatant lie. I started haggling the price with her, like a street vendor. Finally, I adjusted my offer to three shards, sweetening the deal with promises to heal her soldiers and handle any future master-ranked threats that wandered too close to her territory.
The Negotiation
It wasn't easy. She argued through her Elite Soldier, trying to pry more out of me while revealing as little as possible herself. Every word felt like a game of chess, each syllable a potential trap. But I wasn't about to back down.
"I'll hold them off," I said, keeping my tone even. "I'll try my best to kill them if I can. If I can't, I'll make sure they don't touch your brood. That's worth more than three shards, and you know it."
The Elite Soldier clicked its mandibles, translating her thoughts with unsettling precision. "Your best may not be enough, human. Why should I trust you with something so precious?"
"Because I'm standing here alive," I shot back, gesturing toward the hill. "Those cursed werewolves? Gone. Your hive is intact because of me and my companions. That's proof enough."
She hesitated. Through the Hive Mind, I felt the flicker of doubt—the weight of a queen who knew her choices were limited. Finally, she relented. Three shards. No more, no less.
The next day, she delivered them. The shards were small but pulsed with energy, each one shimmering like a piece of the night sky caught in crystal. I stored them in my spatial ring without a second thought, masking my triumph with indifference.
***
Three shards weren't enough—not for what I had planned. But they were a start, and a start was all I needed. The queen thought she'd gotten the better end of the deal, and maybe she had—for now.
But the beauty of alliances is that they're as fragile as spider silk. If the queen thought I'd risk everything for her brood, she was mistaken. My goals came first, always. The shards, the power they held—they were tools for survival, not charity.
For now, though, the alliance would hold. The queen needed me, and I needed her. But in the back of my mind, I was already planning for the day it wouldn't.
The ants were… strange. I'd expected them to be mindless drones, but they weren't. They had feelings, quirks, even a sense of humor, in their own alien way. One worker ant spent an hour trying to wrestle my squirrel companion, Nibbles, for a chunk of meat. Nibbles won, of course—he always does—but the sheer absurdity of it caught me off guard.
They were intelligent, in their own way. And that intelligence made them unpredictable.
I kept my distance when I could, observing them with a mix of fascination and wariness. The queen's brood was vast, efficient, and deadly, but they were also something more: a reminder that even the smallest creatures can harbor mysteries.