Noah remained frozen in his place, staring at the pale notification floating in his consciousness with utter disbelief. The phrase was as clear and cold as a blade:

  [Kill 50 Earth Ant Hatchlings].

  "That cursed Void... it wants me to kill fifty? This is impossible!!" His hoarse voice erupted through the pit, the echo of his words striking the cold rocky walls only to return to him laden with fear. With a trembling mind, Noah replayed the events of the past few minutes; he had literally risked his life in a desperate attempt to kill that savage ant, succeeding only by the narrowest of margins. Had it not been for its prior injury, or had he fallen elsewhere away from its back, he would have perished instantly from the impact—or that ant would have torn him to shreds before he even realized where he was.

  Noah looked at the towering opening far above—that distant vent that had spat him into this depths—then turned his wide eyes toward the severed half of the ant’s back, a sincere mutter escaping him: "I take back what I said before... I think I am actually lucky!"

  He ran a trembling hand over his body, stained with purple blood, and whispered in a faint voice as if confirming the miracle of his survival: "I am... alive..."

  A strange feeling washed over him. Since his arrival here until this very moment, he hadn't had a single genuine chance of survival. Every monster he encountered could have killed him with a single squeeze; yet, here he was, still breathing—barely, and with an agony that wrung his soul—but he was still here.

  "Was it really luck?" he asked himself, pondering deeply. He began to analyze the situation with a mind weighed down by pain. "The Void’s mission now is to kill fifty ants—a nearly impossible task... but based on my experience, the Void does not give missions in vain!" Noah remembered that every line that appeared to him from this "Void" pushed him either to fight or to escape with his life.

  There was one question asserting itself forcefully, a question Noah knew the answer to well—or rather, one he had been evading: "If I want to live, I must fight... I must resist. I must transform myself from prey into predator." And to do that, the answer lay beneath his feet, embodied in 'Monster Flesh.' Noah realized the equation now: every time he ate the flesh of these freaks, he felt a radical change, as if that black Etching in his body were a living entity feeding on this meat, and in return, granting him strength.

  He felt that change clearly after devouring the ant’s heart and enduring that wave of pain and healing; a strange power coursed through his veins, as if he had taken potent, long-acting stimulants. Even the desolate darkness of the pit no longer terrified him as before; the world remained dark to his eyes, but his vision began to adapt to the gloom more keenly, as if his human senses were molting to be replaced by feral ones.

  However, despite all of this, it was not enough. One of his hands was paralyzed, his broken ribs made every breath feel like a dagger thrust, and he could barely breathe. Above all, the latent poison in the ant’s flesh was a surprise he hadn't anticipated, and he still didn't realize how he had survived its lethal effects.

  "I suspect it’s not an instantly fatal poison..." Noah thought bitterly. Even if his body were perfectly intact, it would be impossible for him to take down a single ant in full health, let alone fifty.

  Noah gritted his teeth, a new look igniting in his eyes—the gaze of a desperate predator—and he whispered to himself with firm conviction: "Power... I need to become stronger!"

  Noah turned slowly toward the massive ant carcass lying before him like a mountain of shattered ivory. He stepped toward it with heavy, hesitant strides, staring at the place where the white flesh protruded, oozing with fluids. The moment he saw the tissues, his mind instantly recalled that hellish pain that had gnawed at his body after eating its heart; his limbs trembled, and a cold shiver shook his entire being.

  But he clenched his intact fist; survival in this rocky grave is not earned through fear, but by transforming into something stronger. If pain was the price this world charged for power, then he had no choice but to endure.

  Noah knelt on his exhausted knees atop the mud stained with purple blood, drew his knife with a trembling hand, and tore away a piece of the viscous white flesh. In a swift motion, like someone swallowing a burning coal, he ate the piece and gulped it down without a second thought. Immediately, with a practiced mechanism, he placed the cold metallic edge of the knife in his mouth, biting down to resist the impending scream. He lay on his back upon the filthy ground and squeezed his eyes shut, panting, waiting for that fiery wave that would sear his nerves and then reconstruct them.

  The first minute passed... then the second... and Noah waited in silent terror, his heartbeat thudding in his ears like drums on the verge of bursting from the sheer tension. He waited for his veins to bulge, for his blood to boil, for his body to scream from the agony of regeneration... but after five full minutes of lethal anticipation, nothing happened.

  "Hah..?" Noah pushed himself up and sat, looking around in utter bewilderment. "What is happening?" he muttered in a lost voice. "Nothing... happened?! Why?" He fell into a state of deep confusion; he had been convinced that consuming monster flesh was invariably followed by inhuman pain and then instant recovery, as had occurred twice before.

  "Maybe I didn't eat enough meat?" he wondered with desperate earnestness. He returned to the carcass once more, carved out a massive piece—larger than any portion he had consumed previously—and swallowed it with a reluctance and nausea that nearly choked him. He lay back down, squeezed his eyelids shut, and held his breath, waiting for the "volcano" to erupt in his veins.

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  Another five minutes passed... then ten... and there was nothing but the desolate silence of the pit.

  Noah broke into a heavy sweat as his mind spiraled into utter chaos. His heart began to sink into a well of despair; if the meat no longer worked, how would he grow stronger? How would he heal his hand, which remained like a dead branch, or his ribs, which prevented him from standing straight? Had his last hope of recovery vanished? Was he destined to die here slowly?

  "There are... three possibilities for this," Noah said to himself, analyzing the situation with a deep, blackened logic. "Either my body has reached its absolute limit and can no longer accept monster flesh or there is a specific type of monsters that have this ability of healing and i was sooo lucky to eat them... or the same type of monster meat doesn't work twice!"

  He searched his exhausted memory for the previous instances; he recalled that the monsters whose flesh he had eaten were different each time. Thus, this possibility seemed the most logical. "Do the limits apply to the same species? Meaning, if I eat another ant, the pain won't trigger and I won't grow stronger? Or is every individual monster distinct—meaning the type doesn't matter, as long as it's a different creature from what I ate before?"

  Noah had no certain idea, but he realized the bitter, inescapable truth: to be sure, he had to fight again. He had to consume another predator—new blood and a different species to test his theory. It felt suicidal with his current shattered body, but there was no other choice.

  Noah looked at the ant’s carcass, gripped his knife firmly, and whispered to himself with bitterness: "I must fight... I either devour a new predator, or I decompose here like a forgotten carrion."

  While Noah was lost in thought, a familiar pain ambushed him. He felt sudden cramps in his stomach and a searing, stinging bite in his mouth, like the taste of burning copper. Yes... it was the traces of the poison again. His body trembled violently, and he braced his muscles for the storm he had experienced before; but to his surprise, it wasn't as brutal. The pain was sharp, but it remained within the limits of "endurable."

  "Hah.. hah.. damn it.." Noah exhaled in relief as he felt his muscles gradually relax. "At least not like before... this was bearable."

  Feeling an unsettling sense of relief, Noah lay for several moments to gather his shattered resolve. Then he rose slowly and began to wander around the pit with scrutinizing eyes. Amidst the jagged rocky protrusions, something strange caught his eye; white, speckled plates scattered like ancient ceramic debris. Noah bent down and picked up a piece: "Eggshells?".

  The pieces were numerous and large, indicating they belonged to a giant egg. "Did this ant just emerge from here?.. So it’s just a newborn..." Noah remembered that terrifying piece of information; if this massive size belonged to a newborn, and if "smaller is stronger," then this giant ant that nearly killed him was nothing more than a weak, fragile insect by this world's standards.

  He continued his exploration and soon collided with a reality he wanted to escape. He saw massive tunnels and caverns shrouded in a terrifying darkness that swallowed every glimmer of light. Noah sighed deeply; he truly wanted to crawl into a dark corner and hide forever, but his cold logic screamed at him: He had killed one of their "young," and sooner or later, the adult ants would come to inspect the nest or feed the offspring. Staying here meant death inside the stomach of a larger beast.

  "I must get out of here at any cost."

  Noah grabbed his old knife—that piece of metal that had eroded and was on the verge of collapsing. He went to the ant’s carcass and stopped at its pointed, bristled leg. The leg was hard, sharp, and long enough to be a perfect spear. He placed the knife’s blade at the edge of the joint and began to saw frantically, attempting to sever the natural weapon from the corpse.

  (Snap!)

  Suddenly, the knife snapped. The blade shattered into three pieces that fell among the debris, leaving nothing in Noah’s hand but the damaged sheath and the wooden hilt. Noah felt a sting of sorrow; this knife was the last thread connecting him to his past. Unable to abandon it, he tucked the remains into his pocket with a heavy heart.

  He returned to the leg and began striking it with his foot using all his might, trying to wrench it from its socket. To his surprise, after several violent attempts, the sound of tearing tissue rang out, and the leg detached completely. Noah was stunned by his own strength; with his old, healthy body, he wouldn't have even been able to budge this limb, but now—despite his injuries—he had done it with ease. The strange power was beginning to manifest.

  Noah lifted the pointed leg, gripping it like a spear. He ran his hand along its lethal edge and smiled bitterly: "Good..."

  But the smile didn't last for more than a second.

  Suddenly, Noah felt an overwhelming sense of unease—a primal instinct of danger that made his skin crawl. He turned toward one of the dark caverns behind him, and there, amidst the absolute silence, his ears caught a very faint sound that was enough to stop his pulse. It was the sound of sharp objects being driven into the soil at a terrifyingly rapid pace... .

  These weren't just passing noises; they were the footsteps of something massive approaching from the depths of that cave at frantic speed. Panic surged through Noah's veins; his exhausted body could not endure another confrontation. Without thinking, he lunged toward another cavern that seemed quiet and vanished into its darkness, fleeing. He wasn't prepared to wait even a single second to discover what was coming.

  As he plunged into the bowels of the mountain, driven by adrenaline to run despite his agony, a deafening shriek erupted from behind him, shaking his very core:

  (SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!)

  It was a terrifying, high-pitched sound, so sharp it rattled the rocks and caused clumps of soil to fall from the cave ceiling onto Noah’s head. It was a cry of bereavement, or perhaps a sweeping rage, coming from the spot where he had been moments ago... from the corpse of the "Hatchling."

  Noah stopped abruptly, freezing in place as if stabbed in the back. He turned around slowly, his eyes wide with sheer terror, the darkness swallowing everything behind him except for that haunting echo still ringing out. Drenched in sweat, his heart drumming wildly against his chest, he realized then that the "Adults" had arrived. The quest to kill 50 ants was no longer a choice—it had become a brutal war for survival.He did not linger; he turned and continued his flight into the deeper reaches of the cave.

  "? If you’re enjoying the descent into the Void, a rating or follow helps more than you think."