I slung the massive frame of the ant over my shoulder and began stealthing through the jungle of grass stalks. My antenna tapped the stalks around me dropping pheromones to obscure my trail. I dropped down a hole in the ground and moved to my nest dropping my prey down. I had a sizeable stockpile of biomass now and I’d explored the tunnels all around this section of the lawn.

  The tunnels must have been dug by some old colony of ants, but they’d left or been killed off. The fire ants were still combing through the lawn above searching for my trail. I sat down to eat I’d managed to completely avoid their patrols and gathered two more ant corpses and now I had a choice. I could leave this area and search out new territory farther away from the ant’s colony or continue farming them. They were a deadly threat, there colony would have thousands more just like them. So far I’d been lucky and gotten lots of new mutation paths from them but I was close to a seventy percent chance failure rate on my absorption trait for getting new mutation paths from this species.

  On the other hand there was the matter of just grinding experience for my current skills and stockpiling more biomass. That colony represented a fortune in food if I could avoid getting killed by them. I was alone but that had its own advantage, I could slip in and out without having to worry about anyone else. To do that however I would need to increase my stealth level. Luckily there were a lot of enemies searching for me right now. If I snuck around them without being seen I could follow them around and find out where their colony was while leveling my skills.

  Standing up I decided to do it, I needed to become like a living shadow. I had one skill point to spend on my Stealth and now was the time to do so.

  The descriptions weren’t descriptive in an actionable way, but they told me what the path would be about. There was only one real option, the second. The first was totally against everything I’d set out to become and the third was useless and more appropriate to some sort of spy build.

  My attentat tasted the air before I went above ground as I checked for any nearby ants. I crept through the thick jungle of grass and weeds coming across dismantled traps. Some of them I quickly reset as I kept moving hearing the heavy rapid tap, tap of multiple limbs I slipped into the shadows of a fern. A patrol of soldier ants with several of the scout and arbalist variants with them moved by. They carried a massive caterpillar at the center of their column. I might have considered attacking to steal their kill but that wasn’t what I was here for this time.

  Slowly I moved behind cover behind the ants. Several times they stopped their antenna waving in the air. Every time they did that I drenched my body with Infiltrator Pheromones.

  The patrol of ants joined up with another one, the number of ants increasing to around two dozen. I fell back a little more to keep my distance in case I needed to run but still close enough where I was in danger enough for my Stealth skill to gain xp.

  As I moved, I scooped up some more mud and smeared it over my carapace with some pits of plant matter to camouflage myself. The ants followed an established trail my antenna reading the pheromones all around me. They conveyed simples messages like, “this way” “home” “food” “enemy over here”. There was little information to be gathered based on what I could understand.

  My rogue skills were going up steadily. I needed more XP for each level but I had more and more enemies and higher leveled ones to sneak around to grind my skills on. The patrol turned into a column of ants all carrying food as we left the grass of the yard into a rocky and sandy field. I crouched in the shadows and picked the greenery off my carapace. Spitting into the dirt I used my Adhesive Saliva to mix the sand and dirt to replace my coating of camouflage to match the new environment.

  More and more ants moved past my position but my infiltrator pheromones made me a ghost among them. I finished my application of new camouflage and followed the column of ants.

  The ants grew more and more numerous and a second column of ants joined up with the first. I moved slowly going from rock to rock and slipping into cracks in the ground where the dry earth had cracked open. There were the base worker ants, soldier ants, arbalists, scouts, and heavier versions of the base worker ants that hauled the massive corpses of other bugs like oxen.

  I moved across the rocky plains until the terrain began to rise. I looked up at the mountain in front of me realizing I was climbing a massive anthill. The column of ants grew thicker and thicker and there were less and less spots to hide.

  Crawling across the mound I kept a low profile. I wasn’t even sure what my goal was now. I found a large rock and slipped into the shadow under it. The column of ants was a mere fifteen feet away as I watched them move passed.

  I had been hoping to get another skill point but it seemed it would follow the same route as my mutation paths and I wouldn’t get one until probably I hit level fifteen. I wasn’t safe but the ant’s hadn’t noticed me yet so I decided to use this time to rank up my Camouflage and Deception skills.

  Mimicry would be very useful right now but it was more suited to some sort of sniper, while I had a ranged attack now most of my fights ended in a melee brawl and I then had to flee. While a rare skill sounded good I had yet to see another humanoid and it would only let me match similar humanoids. While it might be useful to infiltrate other hives it was too limited and wouldn’t help me survive right now.

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  I picked Cloak and their was a warmth in my chest as the skill ranked up.

  Now I just needed to rank up my Deception.

  While I had the Deception skill, I didn’t actually want to be the kind of person who others couldn’t trust. The first option seemed like the type of skill a con man or pick up artist would take, and it just wasn’t me. Misdirection was more in line with what I’d been using the skill for, but Frightening had some promise if I could convince other creatures I was more of a threat than I really was I could avoid even stronger creatures that I couldn’t take down. Making up my mind I selected the third option.

  Both skill points spent I went back to grinding my skills. I slowly scooted closer and closer moving about an inch per minute. While my movement was slow the XP was a steady stream. I sat and waited as notification after notification came and went.

  Even my slight movements next to so many hostile enemies were enough to give me tons of necessary XP for my stealth. Whenever it started to slow down on how much XP I was getting I moved closer using my pheromones to mask my presence and just blend into the rock with the help of my camouflage.

  My pulse raced as I watched giant lumbering ants move passed me. Only the workers were same size as me with every other one ranging from the size of ponies to small elephants.

  I inched closer and felt something crunch under me. I froze as one of the ants nearest me halted and moved out of the column. It walked over its antenna tapping at the air. I dumped pheromones over me masking my scent and froze not even my antenna twitching.

  The ant stepped and one of its legs landed on my chest. I had to bite down on a scream as I felt my carapace crack and ribs break.

  I didn’t move as my health dropped.

  The ant shifted on me its antenna tapping at the air.

  Biting back another scream all I could do was wait if I was spotted I was dead even if this ant’s weight didn’t do the job first.

  Whatever force gave XP awarded risk and with the ant literally on top of me I was getting a variable flood of experience points. Another rib broke as the ant stepped off me and I had to resist sucking in a loud breath as the ant moved back into the column of moving ants.

  I slowly breathed in and began to crawl away. I needed to find something to eat to start regaining hit points. I had to move slowly and my slow movement were agony on my chest but any verbal release of pain would mean death by hungry pincers.

  Inching away bit by bit I pulled myself towards cover.

  Moving farther away I pulled myself behind a large rock out of sight.

  I found a stick and bit down on it as I pushed on my chest carapace popping it back into place. I needed to get back into the grass jungle and my biomass stockpile. I was at less than half health again and it wasn’t good. I slowly got to my feet moving in a crouch as headed back the way I came. It was a lot less fun now with half my ribs broken.

  There were still thousands of ants in sight of me at all times as I moved from cover to cover. The sun was starting to set luckily, and the shadows were growing in length and strength. I moved into a crack in the dry ground and hunkered down for a minute. I needed to upgrade my Stealth Skill if I was going to make it through this.

  I needed not to be seen so I picked the third option. The heat in my chest expanded as the skill ranked up.

  Pushing myself up and moved towards the jungle it was slow going with my injuries but I made progress towards the line of grass stalks in the distance.

  The experience points were slowing down as I moved away from the hostiles, but they were still enough to push me higher and higher in my levels. I kept moving, my injuries weren’t getting any better but I was dealing with the pain better.

  I pushed forwards and froze as a patrol of ants crossed my path. I didn’t have any cover to hide behind, that was it, I was done.

  The ants walked right on past me carrying large grass seeds in their pincers not even twitching their antenna towards me.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and pushed forwards entering the grass jungle. I moved faster and faster coughing out some blood as I moved. My antenna covered my tracks with Infiltrator Pheromones, nothing else spotted me as I dropped down into my hidey hole. I sagged down and began eating feeling my health begin to tick up.