The tunnel shook with an unprecedented intensity as Adam sprinted as fast as his legs would carry him. His wish to find new ants to test his magic on had proven to be a very bad idea as he boosted his body with magic. Due to his experiment in enhancing his soul, he missed out on the chance to evolve his core and therefore also missed out on having his body strengthened like it would after every other advancement.
These missed opportunities were really coming back to bite him now, in the form of a small army of red-cored ants chasing him relentlessly down the wide tunnel. The stronger creatures were gaining on him since they were all much faster and had more legs. He had fought red-cored ants before but always only while surrounded by weaker ones. This ant squad was entirely filled with red cores and not the weak ones either.
Adam probably should have guessed that the queen or whoever runs this colony would have noticed entire squads of insects disappearing and sent out elites to investigate. But he was too engulfed in his own victories over the more numerous foes that he arrogantly assumed he would be able to handle anything.
This stupid mentality was what caused him to arrive face to face with over a hundred middle and late red cored creatures. Adam had spent a long time searching the tunnels but hadn’t encountered anything. It was as if the ants had abandoned these tunnels completely, so he had made his way further down, and that was where he came upon a terrifying number of mana ants. He didn’t even have time to react before they spotted him and began their chase.
His body was flooded with white energy that gave him boosted speed yet he still wasn’t going to be able to outrun them. The terrain wasn’t very level and therefore he needed to jump and zigzag across the wide tunnel to not fall over.
The ants on the other hand were clearly a lot better suited for fast travel on this terrain as their many long legs gave them a bigger stride and removed their need to carefully avoid small obstacles on the uneven terrain.
His mind was screaming at him to run faster and soon the feeling in the back of his mind made itself known. He first thought it was one of the faster ants that had closed the distance but then realized that it wasn’t a warning of an imminent attack, but rather a signal of a different kind.
- Enhancement - refined - common
Adam smiled as his legs began to move a little faster and his body became significantly lighter. He had been pumping mana into his body to boost his muscles but now that energy was being used more carefully by his body as the spell optimized the energy consumption while still squeezing a lot more power from that energy than before.
He didn’t dare look back but could hear the screeching noises and felt the ground vibrate from their stampede. The issue was that despite the welcome news of his body enhancement spell’s level-up, he still wasn’t able to outrun the insect army.
He considered conjuring mana blades or even a blast of soul magic but dismissed them for now as concentrating on the body enhancement spell was already taking all his focus. Diverting magic from that spell would definitely slow him down.
It was then that his new senses picked up something different approaching from above. His soul sense felt a feeling of urgency and determination hurtling towards him as a silver cloud passed through the roof of the tunnel and slammed into Adam.
The shock alone almost made him fall but the feeling of something colliding with his soul was the true reason that he lost balance and tripped.
His mind was in immense pain as if his head was being smashed together with someone else's, as the ethereal cloud fighting to cling to his soul. Adam was sent flying head-first across the tunnel's uneven ground at tremendous speed with the ant army rapidly catching up to his ragdolling form. But internally, he was fighting off this piece of soul that was attempting to push him out of his own body.
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He was confused and angry since this stupid thing had caused him to fall at a critical moment but also that it was trying to take over his own body. He was about to fight back and push out the smaller soul when he once again felt a connection with the silver energy.
It didn’t want to harm him but to merge with him. Adam ignored his body enhancement spell now that he was careening across the ground and used his soul mana to flood his soul and the smaller fragment together in hopes of having it act like glue to remerge the two.
He had used its ‘healing’ effect before when he held his soul together during the evolution process and it worked the same now. The smaller soul began to sink into the larger one as the two joined together like a droplet in water. Ripples could be seen across his soul, and with that, memories joined together.
His brain had been in overdrive as this all happened while his body was still skidding across the tunnel, so when his body finally lost its momentum, the merging had completed but the ripples were still going strong.
Adam's mind was split in two as two separate memories spread alongside each other, one of his search for more giant ants, wandering the empty tunnels. And another of an endless darkness dotted with a few silver lights. He remembered what happened when he touched the light and remembered the tiger, but all these memories weren’t clear to him but rather images flashing in his mind. The last flash he saw was of a small settlement inhabited by humans.
He wanted to chase that memory, to extract it from the wave of information entering his mind, and to examine it closely. But a loud noise and strong vibration woke him from his rush of excitement as he returned to the real world.
His mind was still confused as the new memories continued to flow into his brain, yet he reluctantly pushed them aside for the moment. The ants had caught up and his body was hurt from the intense fall.
He knew that running was no longer an option and that he would die if he tried to fight them as he did the other ant groups. These ants were bigger, faster, and stronger than any he had seen before, he wasn’t even sure he would be able to injure them enough to cause a fatal wound.
That meant that he only had one option left, his trump card. He pulled at his soul mana and threw a cloud of silver flames at the charging insects. He didn’t bother trying to shape it but simply focused on creating a cloud of ethereal flames between himself and his attackers.
The sparse cloud of silver fire was sent forward as he got to his feet and tried getting away from them but his body was injured from the nasty fall. A second later the first ants reached the cloud only a few meters away from him.
The creatures were running at such a fast pace that when the silver mana engulfed their souls, their bodies didn’t stop but rather continued their sprint straight for Adam. That wasn’t the only shocking thing however as for the first time ever, Adam could see both the ants and their souls simultaneously.
The darkness that always used to envelop him when using his soul mana externally had not appeared this time. As a result, he watched for the first time as the creature's large silver outline was ignited and set ablaze. It looked like a ghostly fire clinging onto the giant ant as it charged at him.
He reacted a little too late to move out of the way due to his bruised leg and was therefore slammed into by the first falling ant. He was pushed backward and to the side and only afterward did he notice that the fire was still burning the creature's soul.
When he used his soul magic offensively to destroy, it acted like a match to his opponent's soul and caused it to ignite and burn up into nothing. As a result, it was now obvious that some materials are harder to burn than others. The creature's soul was the densest he had ever seen until now and it was probably a late-stage red core.
He tried to pump out more soul mana to reinforce the now even sparser cloud of silver energy in front of the ants, but movement from the first ant caught his eye as he noticed it shift and groan. It was the first time that anything had lasted so long when exposed to his soul flames and it seemed like the fire had died down without having killed the giant ant.
His heart sank in his chest as he watched the large ant get back to its feet and turn to him.
The other insects were only a dozen meters away but had slowed down after the two other insects had screamed in pain and collapsed after passing through the invisible cloud. They eyed the injured Adam with caution as the giant insect that had caught up to him first, got to its feet.
His mind was still unfocused and he felt disconnected from reality as his soul slowed its ripples and his memories synced up. He remembered what his divine ability had been called after possessing the tiger and remembered the missing rings in the sky that indicated that he had once again left his alien world.
Two worlds existed simultaneously for Adam and two realizations came to him from each of them. He couldn’t fight these giant ants and not even his trump card would be effective on them, he had assumed himself invincible with his special magic but now only felt despair and fear.
At the same time, a portion of his mind that had linked up with his experience passing through the soul realm and discovering humans living somewhere out there in another world filled with magic gave him hope and excitement.
Two parallel feelings coexisted in his mind for a brief moment.
Then his chest exploded and the worst pain he had ever felt snapped him back to reality. The large red-cored ant had crushed his chest with its large mandibles and had partially bisected him. He tried to scream but his lungs had been destroyed. He felt his soul tense and tear along with his body as the creature bit harder until his body was completely severed and his upper body fell to the side.
His eyes were still shifting wildly as his torso lay motionless on the ground. For a few seconds, he saw the ant devouring his body as he realized what had happened.
Then oblivion took him, and this time, the were no silver lights.
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