Shawa's Oath

System moved along the passage of the temporary nest. As he drew closer to its exit, he caught the scent of many worker ants and heard the sounds of many more moving around.

It seemed that a great number of worker ants were patrolling near his nest.

"Could Shawa be directing them?"

As System crawled out of the hole, the hundred-odd ants nearby swarmed toward him as if a pot had exploded.

Soldier ant Shawa's ability to command ants had clearly not improved much. These ordinary ants still regarded him as an enemy and attacked him without hesitation upon seeing him.

System did not leap. The shell covering his back, etched with intricate patterns, gently spread open.

Like a feather lifted by a light breeze, System took flight.

After his third molt, System's body and wings had undergone obvious changes. His body had become lighter, while his wings had become far more nimble.

He could not explain exactly what had changed in the structure of his wings, but they were clearly much easier to use. He could effortlessly control his body and hover in midair.

Moreover, the sound he produced while flying had become exceedingly faint. It was no longer like when he had first become an adult insect, where every flap of his wings came with a thunderous papapapa roar.

System gently flapped his wings and flew above the worker ants.

As System rose into the air, the worker ants stopped pursuing him and continued waving their antennae as they patrolled around his nest.

Once airborne, System stopped watching the worker ants. He had suddenly caught a trace of Shawa's scent.

Following that distinctive scent through the air, he soon found soldier ant Shawa beside a small sapling several meters away.

After two days, Shawa's wounds had formed pale gray blood scabs.

System discovered that aside from the broken antenna atop Shawa's head, which had begun to sprout flesh, her other severed limbs showed no sign of regrowing.

It appeared that Shawa did not possess [Limb Regeneration] like he did.

System did not immediately disturb soldier ant Shawa. He merely watched her from afar.

Even from several meters away, his current vision allowed him to clearly see Shawa's every movement.

System felt that his eyes were now sharper than an eagle's. He could even vaguely make out a fragment of dead leaf mixed among the clouds in the sky.

Shaking his insect head once, System focused on observing the soldier ant Shawa in the distance.

With only one limb remaining, Shawa was clearly far more agile than she had been two days ago when she was gravely injured.

Her abdomen seemed to have become her second limb. Using her remaining left forelimb and her abdomen, Shawa moved across the ground in something like a hopping motion.

Shawa opened her massive mandibles and fiercely bit into the little sapling!

After biting the plant, Shawa used her sole remaining limb to inspect the wound on its stem. She slowly, slowly moved back to her original position, then charged at the stem again and bit down...

System saw at least dozens of wounds on the plant's stem. Shawa must have practiced on this plant for a long time.

"Could it be because of the image I gave her?"

System recalled the mental message he had passed to Shawa before completing his molt, along with the imagined image of a knight.

In that imagined image, there had been a knight who always practiced slashing at a wooden post with an iron sword.

Perhaps Shawa had followed that example and begun training herself. She did not have a great sword, but she had been born with a pair of enormous mandibles, so she had begun practicing biting nearby.

System did not think the methods of human knights could be applied to insects. Besides, that image had not even been real—it was merely a fantasy from his own mind.

System felt that instead of practicing like this, she would be better off spending the same amount of time eating more food and increasing her body size. That was the proper way for an insect to grow.

What was more, Shawa's body was currently crippled beyond recognition. This sort of training could not possibly yield any results.

System decided to stop Shawa's training.

However, after watching Shawa practice biting twice more, System stopped...

A fleeting blue glimmer seemed to flash through System's dark green compound eyes.

Opening the database in the [Tool Menu], System carefully compared Shawa's three successive attempts and found that his earlier feeling had indeed been correct.

Shawa was improving. After every bite, she would think, then make minute adjustments during her next attempt to bite the plant.

System could not clearly observe the force of her bites, but during these two charges at the plant, Shawa's speed had become ever so slightly faster each time.

"A coincidence? An insect's potential? Or is Shawa herself exceptionally gifted?"

System stopped and quietly watched Shawa train, using the [Tool Menu] to record and calculate the results.

Over the course of one hour, Shawa bit the plant 131 times. In 117 of those attempts, her charging speed was faster than it had been in the previous attempt.

By comparison, Shawa's charging speed after an hour had increased by nearly a quarter over her very first attempt.

After Shawa bit down another dozen or so times, the scar-covered woody sapling, two centimeters thick, was finally bitten clean through.

Though he was reluctant to admit it, training like a human truly was effective for Shawa—and judging by the results, it worked extremely well.

After biting through the plant completely, Shawa seemed to have exhausted herself and began eating the food piled nearby.

Seeing this, System flew down from a high tree branch and used [Mental Link] on Shawa.

Shawa visibly froze. She sent out an emotion of confusion, but it immediately turned into delight. With her crippled body, she excitedly crawled over to System.

System saw the stinger on Shawa's abdomen suddenly extend, and he was deeply puzzled.

Could it be that Shawa intended to attack him with her tail stinger?

That was impossible!

Shawa suddenly flipped her body over, then drove her stinger into the soil. She actually used the stinger on her tail to stand upright.

Like a human, Shawa placed her remaining legs against her chest, striking an utterly ridiculous pose.

System's mandibles twitched faintly on their own. Feeling somewhat awkward, he truly could not understand what Shawa was trying to do with such a bizarre movement.

System asked Shawa, "What are you doing?"

"Taking an oath!"

The mental message Shawa sent was brimming with pride and self-satisfaction.

"Taking an oath? Uh... what you're doing, could it be a knight's oath?"

"Yes!" Shawa answered with great excitement.

System's mandibles twitched uncontrollably once more. Looking at Shawa's embarrassing pose, he felt that giving her the images of knights from his imagination had been a mistake.

A perfectly good ant—why was she messing around with all this random nonsense?