After spending time debating internally, he decided that his choice would be between Muddy Ground and Wind Rush, and he chose … none of them. The reason was the warning under the notification of the new skill.

  Warning: You can delay choosing a new skill only until the next batch of skill offering; otherwise, you lose that option permanently.

  The first skill choice he had was when he picked the first mastery at level 5. Then he got another one at level 15. It would be logical that this option was granted per ten levels, so the next one would come at level 25, only two levels away from where he was now.

  This warning clearly stated that he would lose a skill point when he got to level 25 if he chose not to pick a new skill at level 15. In the best case, he would go back there and find out that Kael and Shinnya had handled the queen without breaking a sweat. Then, he could continue his leveling until 25. If that were to become true, he would lose this skill point, so he had to pick one now.

  But it didn’t say that he had to pick from the 5 newest offers. He wanted to test if he could go back to the previous skills. There was the Energy Barrier skill that would suck if he picked it as his very first skill, but would be great as the second one to shore up his defense.

  [Energy Barrier] — Common: Conjures a pure energy barrier (small scaling with Spirit) to block enemy attacks. After expiring or being destroyed, the barrier releases an energy wave (small scaling with Intelligence) in a small radius based on the power of the blocked attacks.

  Essence: 8

  Mana cost: Low

  Similar to the first skill, knowledge flew into his mind, teaching him the basics of the skill. So he could come back and pick a skill from the previous batches. Gotcha!

  This could help him in the long run when choosing which skill to pick when being offered at least two appealing options. Passing a common skill now sucked less when it let him pick a rarer skill later.

  There was also the choice of affinity that somewhat influenced his choice. He had an inkling that as he made more bolts of a certain affinity, he would get related skills in the offering. That would for sure apply to earth affinity if he chose Muddy Ground and used it frequently. Without knowing the pros and cons of each affinity, he would love to keep his options open for now.

  He would need to ask someone about this, or found a library to educate himself on this matter. A mental note to himself: knowledge was power. Depending on the situation, it might take precedence over getting rich.

  Now what to do with the nine free points …

  Survivability had to take the priority here. He was about to come back to the mound. The scary queen could still be there, along with the whole colony. After a debate, he put five points into Constitution, and divided the next four into Intelligence, Mystique, Spirit (because the new Energy Barrier scaled with it), and Endurance. His resources were pretty skewed towards health and mana, but it wasn’t like a mage needed lots of stamina to do anything, was it?

  Health Points (HP): 617/685

  Mana Points (MP): 241/820

  Stamina: 98/205

  He would like to meditate for a little bit to replenish his resources, but doing so in the middle of nowhere like this would be dumb. The fact that he wasn’t in danger now didn’t mean he wouldn’t be so when a wolf or a lion or whatever dangerous beasts showed up. Time was also of the essence, as he worried about the situation at the mound. Whether things had gone haywire or he was overreacting, he had to go back to confirm with his own eyes.

  The two ants had gone, but he caught up with them soon after choosing the same path to go back. They were still moving in circles for some reason, so their speeds were pretty slow. It was as if they had just lost the direction or their own will, and now being two headless chickens wandering around randomly.

  Weird! Zalanir chose to ignore them and trod on ahead. Surprisingly, the path was clear of any ants, so he reached the mound — or, to be exact, a big tree that he could hide behind while still having a clean view — in no time.

  The fire was snuffed out completely, but soot, red and black dirt, and dead ant bodies were even more compared to what he remembered. Had Shinnya gone berserk or something? Just how much damage could the woman pump out?

  A big area at the mouth of the anthill was even crushed, giving Zalanir a glimpse of the reddish brown color, not completely black like the outside.

  “Where are they?” Zalanir asked himself.

  There was no sign of any ants or anyone in his party. The place was eerily silent. Zalanir could feel the pressure and nervousness in the air when circling around the place to look for any hint. Soon, he found what he dreaded: a dry blood pool not far away from where the ant queen landed.

  “Don’t tell me that they have brought the bodies or whatever into the mound already.” Zalanir murmured to himself.

  But a clean cut on a nearby tree caught his attention. It lay perpendicular to the direction he ran off to and returned from. Taking that as a reference, Zalanir looked around, hoping that he could find more marks and thus perhaps get a clearer picture of what had happened. Entered Zalanir the detective.

  In no time, he spotted similar hints in the form of broken branches, shattered ground here and there, as well as a piece of red cloth that could be from Shinnya’s. Unless there was another one wearing red clothes, 99% this belonged to her.

  All the signs led him away from the anthill, instilling a bit of hope. Maybe it wasn’t all doom and gloom. It would be ideal if all three of them escaped unscathed, but he would take any.

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  It appeared that his judgement was correct. While running after the signs, he picked up the sound of a female voice in front, which was clearly Shinnya’s. He slowed down and crouched forward.

  Hiding behind a small mound, Zalanir tried to be as soft as possible to not give his arrival away. Shinnya was facing three ants, two black variants and one orange with bigger front limbs that wasn’t present earlier. Kael was lying on an elevated rock to the left, overseeing the small gully that Shinnya was in. Though the plump man didn’t seem to be conscious. Bad news.

  He decided not to interfere with the battle just yet. The orange variant looked like it was bad news. Jumping in right now might not help much, and could potentially distract Shinnya. The fact that all three ants were still focusing on the red hair meant that his arrival wasn’t known yet. Picking the right moment to jump in could be crucial to the result of this battle. He couldn’t afford to waste it.

  Another reason for his inactivity was that the situation down there still looked manageable. The two black ants took a flank position from both sides, interrupting the battle flow when the big boy took on Shinnya. There were two occasions when a black ant tried to slip through to move up to where Kael was, but Shinnya stopped it with her fire beam.

  The orange ant’s main strength was pretty much in its two big front limbs, which it wielded to attack and block at the same time. Looked like fire wasn’t that much of a weakness to this variant. It confronted the fire beam head-on instead of dodging like its two subordinates three times already.

  Zalanir tried to grab the fire affinity from Shinnya’s attack but was unable to. Though he still had light and earth to work with for the time being. He could use the light attack to drive away the two black ants to turn the battle into 2 versus 1, but he needed an opening.

  Said opening came when the big ant took the place of one of its underlings, while the other two sped up to corner Shinnya. This combination had nearly allowed them to get on top of her before, but unfortunately, right when they did it, a light bolt penetrated through the air, capturing the attention of both parties, and lured the two blank ants into chasing after.

  Zalanir broke onto the scene, throwing an earth bolt at the only ant left. Its position had turned from flanking Shinnya to now being pincered by two in just the blink of an eye. Though the turn of events seemed to hit his party member as well, because Shinnya didn’t follow up with his attack. Why didn’t she shoot out her fire beam?

  That resulted in his interception — still effective — wasn’t as good as he had hoped for. The orange ant just brushed his bolt off like it was nothing.

  “Why don’t you attack?” Zalanir shouted.

  “K-Kae-Kael w-was—”

  “Focus on the battle first.”

  Hearing Shinnya stuttering projected a conclusion that he dreaded, but now wasn’t the time. He needed to keep her — and also himself — together, focusing on what was present so that they could kill the orange ant.

  Zalanir preemptively activated Energy Barrier around his left arm and charged forward. It acted as a pseudo-shield to block the ant attack, or so he hoped. The ant seemed to dislike his intervention, shifting its focus onto him and rushing in as well. Even though its front limbs were one-third the size of his hand, they still hit like a truck.

  Another earth bolt hit the ant, but didn’t seem to affect it one bit. It still blitzed through, shattering his translucent barrier before digging into his left arm. In the same window, a wave emanated from the barrier, as well as a fiery beam struck the ant. Together, they pushed it off to the ground.

  Zalanir lost his foothold and fell on his head. Took him a couple of seconds to get up, with his head still spinning and aching from pain. Flinging his right arm up to form another barrier, he braced for another attack, but soon found out that it wasn’t necessary. Shinnya had charred the poor ant into a solid black bump on the ground already.

  You have slain [Ethrophia Crusher — Level 40]

  Well. It was quicker than he had thought. Not that he complained. Having someone as strong as Shinnya as a team member was certainly assuring.

  She soon ran to him, looking quite exhausted and tattered. “Is everything okay?”

  “Not really, but I can manage somehow.”

  Zalanir pressed his right hand onto the two holes on his left arm that were oozing out blood. His left arm was numb and couldn’t move. Why did this feel like a déjà vu? How many times had this happened already?

  All the fighting and injuries in the arena had taught him that wounds like this meant nothing in this world. Infection didn’t seem like a thing, so he just needed to let passive regeneration do its job, and he would be fine. Even better if he could meditate, since walking around with a disabled hand that was hurting like hell wasn’t a good sensation to have. Maybe pain was his best friend now. Zalanir sneered.

  He trailed after Shinnya. She had run up to where Kael was a moment ago already. Took a bit of jumping and climbing, but upon standing there and seeing the full picture, he was hit with a mixed feeling. Comfort and ease because Kael was still alive, so the worst scenario didn’t happen. However, he felt bad for the warrior, because his right arm was gone. A clean cut left only a stump soaked in red on his right shoulder, which Shinnya was currently burning by hovering a flame nearby. Blood soon dried and stopped leaking.

  Kael did twist his body once during the process, but never opened his eyes.

  “What happened?” Zalanir turned to Shinnya after she was done treating the wound.

  Took a couple of seconds before the woman next to him opened her mouth. After he left, Kael and Shinnya were fighting off the ant queen and the whole colony. They weren’t at the queen’s strength, but Kael still did well enough to hold her off while Shinnya was creating a retreat route. It only got worse when the queen’s guards and the crushers rushed in. The last two times they went there, there was no sight of the queen, only the two common Foodfinder and Foodprocessor variants ran in and out of the anthill, so they thought that it was just an entrance to the ant’s underground structure.

  She still had no idea why the queen and her personal armies showed up this time. But with the addition of these newcomers, Kael was overwhelmed, and had his arm cut off by the queen’s wings. They could have lost their lives there if not for Djaxinz breaking out of the mound and coming to their rescue.

  In the end, they got separated, with the queen and her armies chasing after Djaxinz. She and Kael pulled back here while handling multiple crushers and black ants.

  Kael did his best to fight, but couldn’t last until the end and collapsed, leaving her to deal with the pursuers. She was killing them until running out of mana and was forced into a stalemate that Zalanir helped to break.

  “We should get back to the settlement. Staying here is dangerous,” Zalanir suggested.

  “No, we need to find Djaxinz. I’m not leaving without him.”

  “But you’re spent?”

  Shinnya looked up at the sky. Her fingers fiddled. “We still have some time before sunset. Let’s rest for one hour. Maybe he will come back by then.”

  “I will stand guard. You focus on replenishing as much as you can.”

  Her eyes were upon him for a moment, then her head nodded. “Thank you!”

  Well, his resources were also in a bad state, so he would also like to rest himself. His left hand was blaming him for being an idiot, acting all tough like that. But even if full and healed, he doubted he could be of any help. The brief clash with that crusher signaled that he was still too early.

  At level 23, his attack was still weak compared to Shinnya’s. Real weak. His bolts didn’t do shit, while her fire beam grilled an ant in seconds.

  If Djaxinz was still in trouble, it would be her to handle the rescue, not him. Which sucked. He wanted to be of help, but the level discrepancy was still too large, even though he had already reduced it somewhat with all the levels.

  The hour passed with nothing happening, except for when he guided two black ants away. After marking the area by burning down a tree, as well as covering and hiding Kael in a bush, Zalanir and Shinnya made their ways back to the anthill.