I glanced at the large ant, then back at Felris. Compared to the horrors described earlier, pictures of gigantic beetles and spiders and mantises in my head, a large ant just didn’t seem that scary. I had killed goblins, and they had swords. I could handle a monster ant.

  Felris, on the other hand, looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head. Her face was pale in the white light of my spell, and her hair was matted with blood to her head. I moved closer to her.

  “Calm down,” I said. “It’s obviously dead.”

  “No, Tovar, you don’t understand. That’s a Nightmare Ant.”

  “Let’s... get you cleaned up,” I said, frowning. She was panicking. My internal mana felt low after casting [Create Light], but it was already recovering from the mana in the air just by breathing. If I focused, I could draw more down, then try casting [Create Water] to wash the blood off her head. At least we won’t dehydrate.

  Felris grabbed my arm, pulling me from my thoughts. “Listen to me. We’re in huge trouble,” she said, beginning to hyperventilate again. She began muttering to herself. “This must be why sightings of the other apex monsters are down. How far have they spread?”

  I looked around and spotted my sword. Carefully disengaging from the panicked girl, I picked it up, making sure it was still functional. “Look, I’ve got my sword. We’ll be fine. We just have to wait for your dad to—“

  “You aren’t listening to me,” Felris hissed. She took a few big breaths, trying to calm down, and shook her head. “Look, you remember how my dad said we cull the Corpse Bees?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “We have to destroy the honey to cull the bees, because of how they propagate. A small swarm will strip you of your flesh. A giant swarm would strip the whole village. And it doesn’t take that long for a small swarm to grow to a giant swarm. The apex monsters breed slow, and don’t work together. They’re individually powerful, but we can manage them.”

  I was starting to realize what she was getting at, and glanced over nervously at the large ant.

  “That,” she said while pointing at it. “That’s just a single worker ant. But where there’s one, there’s—“

  “More,” I finished, frowning. “A lot more.”

  Felris nodded. “There shouldn’t even be any Nightmare Ants in this dungeon. They should have been wiped out entirely. They can’t be farmed for anything, they don’t produce anything useful, but the bigger problem is that they’re the farmers. The queen will be hidden away, and as long as she’s alive, her workers and soldiers strip-mine the entire dungeon to feed the colony. And then… the dungeon breaks. They flood out, devastating the land.”

  “Well, shit,” I muttered. “How is it here?”

  “I… don’t know,” Felris said, frowning. “They should have been cleared out before I was even born. I had to learn about them growing up in case I inherited the barony, but mostly they were just a horror story, living so close to an insect dungeon. If a single one survived down in the dungeon, and has been feeding on the mana all this time, maybe it mutated into a new queen?”

  I thought back to all the activity in and around the dungeon. “If someone had seen a worker, they would have reported it.”

  “They must have been growing in secret this whole time,” Felris muttered. “But they’re running out of food. They’ve been tunneling, trying to bypass the existing tunnels. To… escape?” Her face became a picture of dread. “We need to tell my dad.”

  I glanced around us, taking stock of our situation. Looking up, I tried to see the tunnel we fell down from, the one I had heard Felton’s voice through, but it was just a huge pile of rubble from floor to ceiling. The tunnel had collapsed, and I doubted we’d be able to get back the way we came, even once Rikton came to save us. A powerful mage could maybe clear it, but not a swordsman.

  Opposite the rubble blocking us in was the rest of tunnel we had collapsed into.

  “Our only way out is through,” I said, motioning down the tunnel with my sword.

  Felris grimaced, twisting her hands nervously as she looked back and forth.

  I was nervous as well, but significantly more calm than the teenage girl. Partially, that was my actual age at work, and that I had lived through some hard times towards the end of my first life. But it was mostly the fact that I wasn’t as concerned about my own life since I knew I would reincarnate. I wasn’t in a rush to die, as I was beginning to really enjoy my life and had a lot to learn here still, but I knew it wasn’t the end for me if I did.

  For Felris, though, this was her whole life. It wouldn’t help her to know that her soul would be reincarnated if she died, as she wouldn’t remember it when she did since she didn’t have [Metasurvival].

  It might not matter if I die, but I don’t want Felris to die. Her family would miss her, and she would miss out on so much to come in this life, even if she is stuck marrying Gustar in a few years.

  I looked at Felris, deciding to be her shield until we could get out of this mess. “I’ll protect you,” I told her, lifting my sword. “We’ll get out of this, report back to your dad, and he’ll deal with the ants.”

  Glancing at my hand on the hilt, I saw I was covered in blood from the fall, as well.

  “But first… let’s wash off the blood.”

  * * *

  Picking up my second spell was easy, after the first. I looked over them in my System.

  I had originally learned it to mask my revelation, but it was coming in handy now. Once Felris had calmed down, she was able to use her spells again, but for washing up, two spells were faster than one.

  The descriptions were more or less the same, as were the effects. I was putting my whole eight Will into the spell each time, but it only amounted to a small orb of light and then water. Both lasted, though, which was my intention. The light gave us sight and the water was for washing up. If I survived this, I was looking forward to experimenting with intention to see how far I could stretch the effects.

  Using [Create Water] a few times, and putting my whole Will into it while absorbing the dense local mana, helped push my Will up to nine, as well.

  I wondered how expensive creation was as opposed to manipulating existing matter. I didn’t know how much more I could create as I scaled up my skill with more Will, but perhaps I could control a larger amount of existing water if I learned more advanced spells. After all, Somnial had flipped my family’s entire field. I wonder if he’d tell me what his Will is…

  Shaking off my thoughts, I looked over Felris. We were as clean as we could get, and while she was still terrified, she was ready. I saw her muttering to herself, and I presumed she was going over the invocation for [Create Fire].

  I didn’t know if the creation spells could be used offensively, but it was her best bet. If we got attacked, fire might give her a chance to fight back.

  “All right,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “Let’s head out.”

  Despite my bravado, we crept incredibly slowly down the tunnel, one step at a time. Each step grew darker and darker. Frowning, I turned back, seeing my orb of light back where we started. Damn it.

  “I have to recast [Create Light],” I said, frowning. Can I make it follow? I still don’t really know how intentions work with magic.

  “I’m shocked you can cast it at all,” Felris grumbled. “It took me an entire term before I successfully infused my first invocation. You did it in a dark tunnel under threat of death in a matter of minutes.”

  Hmm. “I wonder if stress amplifies skill acquisition,” I muttered.

  Obviously, my background with [Mana Manipulation] helped, but I still didn’t understand when or why skills were gained. I only picked up [Swordsmanship] when I fought the goblin, and my life was on the line. I gained [Mana Manipulation] under threat of having my entire future decided for me as a soldier.

  When it came to [Metasurvival], that was a whole different level of stress.

  “Well, whatever,” I said with a shrug. “Let me try something.”

  I recast [Create Light], this time with the intention of making a smaller light that was positionally locked overhead. The small orb came into existence where I wanted it, and after taking a few steps, seemed to follow me as I moved.

  “That’ll do,” I said. I wondered if I could cast another, connected to Felris, but didn’t want to push my luck. “Let’s try this again.”

  Together, we inched down the tunnel, my sword held in front of me like a ward against evil.

  We didn’t get very far before Felris grabbed the back of my shirt. “Listen,” she hissed.

  I could just barely make out a small tapping sound, and squinted into the shadows beyond my orb of light.

  A Nightmare Ant emerged from the dark, the same size as the one that was crushed under the rocks. A worker, then. I could handle that.

  “I’ve got this,” I said to Felris, stepping forward.

  I just have to use my training. There’s no way this small ant is better than Byron. I’ve got the skill, and I know how to use my sword, I thought as I psyched myself up. Wait. Ants don’t use swords.

  I realized, in that moment, that all my training had been against armed enemies. I had trained to use my sword against other sword users, or at least bipedal monsters who attacked similar to humans. My eyes widened. How do I even fight an ant?

  The Nightmare Ant was rushing towards me, mandibles clacking, so I was about to find out.

  I tried to thrust toward the monster which was significantly shorter than me, but that ruined my center of balance, pulling me forward. The monster leapt to the side, using my poor strike as a way to get around me.

  “No you don’t,” I growled, kicking out with my leg, catching the ant in the side.

  The monster turned its head towards my feet, trying to bite at my ankle, and I pulled it back, using the motion to twist my body so that I was facing it again and immediately hacked down with my sword. It was not a skillful strike, but it did cut into the ant’s armor, causing it to flail.

  I yanked my sword back, pulling the ant slightly towards me before my blade was released from its back, then slammed it down again, this time reaching something critical inside the monster. It sagged, and I kicked it off my blade, watching it to make sure it didn’t get back up.

  “That could have gone better,” I muttered as I relaxed my shoulders. Shaking my head, I thought back over my training. I needed to figure out how to better attack enemies low to the ground. At least they’re not that strong individually. As long as they come one by one… which they definitely won’t keep doing.

  It didn’t matter how many we came across, though. The whole reason we were down here was because I had wanted to see the dungeon. I had even wanted to fight monsters, though I hadn’t intended to risk my friends. No matter what, I had to cut through them, for Felris.

  “Let’s keep going,” I said to Felris, who nodded nervously in response.

  We didn’t get very far before we encountered more.

  “There’s two of them,” Felris hissed. “We can’t let one escape, they’ll alert the nest!”

  “Right,” I said, squeezing the grip of my sword.

  I burst into motion, rushing the pair. I wanted to skip over the first one to make sure the one behind couldn’t escape, but that would leave Felris open, so I dropped my sword into a low arc as I dodged its mandibles, slicing through one half of its legs. With that one crippled, I raced towards the second, which was already turning back to escape.

  Leaping forward, I stabbed down as I fell on top of it, slamming the tip of my sword through the giant worker ant.

  “Tovar!” Felris cried.

  I turned and saw the damaged ant dragging itself towards Felris, slowed from the crippling but still alive. I gave my sword a twist, yanking it out and chopping off the monster’s head for good measure, then ran back to the first and finished that one off as well.

  Breathing a bit hard, I looked up at Felris and gave her a weak grin. “Piece of cake.”

  As I played back the battle in my head, I thought of the move I had made to sever the first ants legs. It was a bit like something Byron had showed me, one of his more sweeping sword forms that I was still working on integrating into my existing practice. I had only been training with him for a single school term, which was nothing compared to the years I spent learning Mishel’s swordplay. I still had a lot to learn.

  When I swung my sword through the form that I had thought was designed to train my speed, I began to see it in a different light.

  Monsters came in different shapes and sizes, with different forms of movement and battle. A sword might not actually be the best weapon for fighting them, compared to a spear or something ranged, but as I spun my sword, I realized that Byron’s teachings could be used more easily against enemies that had a lower or higher center of gravity than a human did. Was that what he was trying to teach me all along?

  We continued down the tunnel, encountering more worker ants, and I slowly dialed in my swordplay. Leaning more into what Byron taught me instead of my basic [Swordsmanship] skill, the battles started to feel a bit more under control, right up to the point where I found myself surrounded by three workers.

  The clacking of mandible surrounded me, and as they closed in, I swung my sword, leading it in our deadly dance. As I cut my way through the three of them, using all the strength of Body I had gained and the bit of knowledge Byron had taught me, I felt something click into place.

  When I was done, with three monster corpses cut into pieces around me, I checked my System.

  A minor upgrade, but an upgrade no less, I thought with a smile. Now, time to get out of this mess.