My first kill with my traps. I’d finally gotten around to upgrading the skill specializing in damage, there had been options for capture or debilitation, but I was just here to kill. I’d spent the rest of the day and night turning the grass jungle into death trap using my Infiltrator Pheromones to disguise my presence and lure the ants into my traps.

  The group of ants I was following went into a panic as one of their workers was impaled as it tripped the trap I had made driving a sharpened wooden spear through its thorax. Not sure if that trap would have killed a Soldier ant or higher but the ant all grouped up together as they huddled around their fallen member tapping her with their antenna.

  I moved forwards through the grass and began blasting them with my venom shot into their guardians.

  I sprung forwards in the ant’s midst as I dropped my camouflage. The two remaining guardians spun to face me their heavy carapace locking together like a shield wall as they shielded their weaker sisters. I blasted my venom into their eyes and their health dropped to zero. I dismissed their death notifications and the corresponding level up, I jumped over their corpses and met the charge of the soldier ants.

  Dodging to the side I slashed out at a soldier ant cutting deep into its neck. It didn’t die right away but staggered and I had to abandon attacking it as the other soldiers charged. They tried clamping down on me with their mandibles. I’d seen how ants fought gripping limbs and pulling in multiple directions to rip insects apart, well that wasn’t happening to me. I somersaulted over one attack driving my sword into the soldier’s back. I jumped into the air using my spring legs then dropped down driving my sword through the thorax of another ant injecting with a charge of venom. I knocked aside the snapping mandibles of another ant with my blade and reposted stashing across the ants eyes.

  The ants’ numbers didn’t help them as I used my wings and ability to jump to avoid them. The scouts were able to keep up, but I side stepped and cut into them with my sword. Then they did manage to chomp down on me my armor was able to withstand most of their damage and my hit points were nowhere near as low as they had been when we first fought. Their deaths were dismissed as I racked up XP. Whenever I spotted one of the ants trying to flee, I ran them down ensuring no call for reinforcements could get out.

  My stamina was almost bottomed out at the end of the fight and I’d lost thirty percent of my health but every ant in the group was dead. I began chowing down, no time to drag them away and eat later. I looked over my notifications as I feasted on my kills.

  I consumed the ants as fast as I could stocking up my biomass. I couldn’t eat everything, their hard carapace, claws and mandibles being tossed to the side. Notifications from my traps continued to go off but I seldom got kills but the skill did slowly rise reaching level ten. I spent my four stat points all on Toughness again bringing it up to thirty.

  There were two skill points to spend for my combat abilities. I looked up the options for Stinger-Knight, they revolved around momentum thanks to the path I had chosen. I picked one not dependent on flying but would always be useful increasing my general attack speed. If I’d just had a regular stinger, it wouldn’t have been that useful but with my stinger-blade I could hack and slash now making it infinitely more useful.

  With my current skill rank that was a seven point five percent attack speed increase per second. Of course that would depend on me standing and fighting in long drawn out fights to really ramp up. Next I pulled up the options for Venom-Slinger I’d focused on attack speed and more options in that vein appeared. There were ones for supercharging my venom recharge speed at the cost of lots of stamina and focus, others for increasing the velocity of my shots or supercharging a shot to come out as one major shot all at once. I selected one that let me aim faster while moving.

  I managed to consume half my kills gaining two-hundred-and-thirty biomass. I fled the scene of my crime and into the deeper parts of the grass jungle obscuring my trail with my Infiltrator Pheromones. I took many sharpened claws and mandibles with me from the ant corpses, I couldn’t eat them, but they would help to make better traps. I used my stinger-blade with my secondary limbs to quickly cut some plant fiber into makeshift string and rope as I made new traps.

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  I got new ides for traps, I wasn’t sure if I was getting more creative or knowledge from my trapmaking skill was slowly filling me as I leveled up the skill. The grasslands were turning into a deathtrap, small creatures like aphids were constantly dying in them and I slowly modified the traps to only trigger when larger insects like the worker ants hit them.

  Moving into the tunnels below the grassland I started trapping them as well creating a mental map of the area. A hissing and chittering sounded in front of me and I activated camouflage as I moved through the darkness. I could barely see in the pitch darkness and my antenna waved at the air smelling the air in front of me.

  A hulking figure moved forwards filling the tunnel in front of me. I recognized the scent of the creature, not its individual scent but that of its species, centipede. I focused on it and its health bar and description appeared above its head.

  The centipede didn’t seem able to pinpoint me but it was aware of my presence. My stealth was high enough to not be seen but not high enough to go by unnoticed. I crawled up the wall my arms and the toes of me feet taking slow careful purchase as I moved up. The centipede began to move beneath me tapping the floor and walls with its antenna. I dropped down driving my stinger-blade down with my body weight.

  The centipede writhed as I pumped venom into it through my stinger. It seemed somewhat resistant to poison but my stinger was pumping massive doses of poison into it and combined with the sneak attack damage from my stinger saber. That didn’t mean it went down without a fight it reared up slamming my body against the tunnel’s ceiling. It thrashed around blunt force trauma taking huge hits out of my health my light carapace helping to reduce the damage a bit, but it wasn’t hard enough and my skill in my defenses not high enough to negate all the damage.

  Its legs went still and I felt a rush of XP as it died.

  It wasn’t enough to level up but I did get some level ups for skills.

  I’d gained the most level’s in Armored Skirmisher from how much damage I’d taken. Looking down at the centipede I considered absorbing it but put that to the side for now, I needed to level up to fifteen so I could progress the evolution of my different mutation paths. I wasn’t going to eat it either I would come back and absorb this later or eat it if scavengers found their way to it.

  The options for Armored Skirmisher revolved around movement but I needed to make it a bit tankier.

  This was a big prize of biomass so I didn’t leave it undefended heavily trapping the tunnel around it to keep out scavengers and kill any scouting ants. I emerged out into the grass jungle and found it a war zone. The ants had brought out more variants as they scouted for me, variants of the scouts and arbalists with wings flew above the grassland dropping acid that burned wherever it fell.

  If they thought the addition of aerial troops would dissuade me they were wrong. Territorial instincts awoke in me to defend my airspace. I popped out of the grass cutting a flying scout in half before falling back into the grass taking my prize with me. I would drag the scout underground before emerging in a different spot as the previous section of grassland was flattened as the ants marched through it. The ants were an army but I was just one wasp, that meant I couldn’t face them in any direct conflict but they couldn’t pin me down either. Minor skirmishes between me and small groups of ants leveled up my various combat skills, twenty-five wasn’t the rank I got a new skill level but I was hopeful about level thirty and pushing to try and get all my skills there.

  Trap-making, the only construction skill I really worked on was steadily rising reaching level fifteen quickly and I put another point into it. I’d focused on direct damage and now found a new option in the skill tree unlocked due to another skill I had.

  As I began making more traps they began to get more kills, not just on the young worker ants and soldiers who were still in the hatchling and young adult tiers but the higher-level ants as well further boosting my XP. I didn’t get as much XP as if I had killed them my selves in melee since I had chosen the Warrior trait instead of the crafter trait, but it was an almost passive form of XP. I hit level fifteen and looked at the notification I got

  I selected no, I was not in safe place. I continued to fight against the ants getting more XP leveling up a few more times and advancing my skills. I started to get less XP per ant, it was very slight only a few points here and there, but it was almost as if I were being punished for exclusively fighting the same species. Night began to fall, the ants began to retreat back towards their colony.

  “That’s what you get,” I said with satisfaction I said from atop my perch on a thistle as I watched the swaying stalks of grass retreat as the legion of ants fell back.

  Only my stealth had gotten to level thirty, no surprise there since it was used almost constantly against the searching ants. The long list of skills was a good return on results as I’d balanced on the razor edge of death any moment I could have been cornered and ripped apart by the fire ants. I began clearing my traps, the ants had recovered most of their dead and trashed the traps they came across but I reset many and fixed others my higher trap making them even better and harder to spot. I hauled the prey still in the traps back to the tunnel with the centipede corpse. Piling all the biomass in the tunnel I bunkered down to eat and rank up.

  Sitting down I put eight stat points into Dexterity, and four into Perception. I would upgrade my skills after my race upgrade.

  I selected yes and passed out.