Chapter 21

"Smack!"

A blob of golden slime shot straight toward Wen Jing's face.

The blob was enormous compared to her body. If it hit, it could wrap around her entire insect body.

Slow. Far too slow.

In Wen Jing's compound eyes, the slime's trajectory broke down frame by frame, showing not only the path it had already traveled, but even a predicted trajectory supplied by a layer of faceted vision.

Before her last evolution, Wen Jing, whose running speed could not keep up with her visual processing, would have had to unleash her springtail to dodge. This time, that clearly wasn't necessary.

"Whoosh!"

The next moment, Wen Jing contracted her abdomen and, pulled by Gravity Silk, slipped effortlessly past the slime. She even quivered her sensory hairs to get a sense of its composition.

Judging by its color as well, it seemed to be... resin?

"Smack!" The resin missed Wen Jing and stuck to the tree trunk. Moving with her Gravity Silk, she spotted the source of the attack.

It was a large ant with a jet-black body and dark red legs.

The ant seemed to have an enemy radar of its own. Just as Wen Jing discovered it, it had somehow already noticed her and even hurled a blob of resin at her.

Now, despite missing its attack, the ant did not retreat. Instead, it ran quickly toward Wen Jing, straightening its body as the antennae and mouthparts on its head quivered rapidly at her.

Wen Jing, who also had a pair of sensory hairs capable of detecting pheromones, understood at once, almost as though subtitles had appeared in her vision: It's taunting me!

This pheromone-level provocation was ten times more direct and intense than any verbal taunt.

To Wen Jing's insect senses, the ant was constantly screaming "Trash!" at her!

Its taunting was countless times more effective than even the former ■■■.

Wen Jing found it utterly intolerable. She immediately fired a strand of Gravity Silk back onto the original tree trunk, bent her body through the air in defiance of physics, and dropped toward the ant from above.

Such a tiny ant, yet so cocky. You'll be my first battle in the Ancient Wilderness, then!

Chapter 21

The little silver-gray insect descended from above using Gravity Silk and rammed into the large red ant, sending it staggering.

But the large red ant was almost twice Wen Jing's size. After a brief stumble, it quickly steadied itself with its hind legs and lunged back at her.

"Clack, clack, clack, clack..."

The large ant bared its ferocity. Its pincer-like mandibles snapped open and shut, the sharp serrations along their inner edges reflecting a metallic sheen. Moving fast enough to leave afterimages, they clamped straight toward Wen Jing.

Both had six legs, but Wen Jing lacked the ant's hind legs that could prop up its body.

Her three left legs pushed off together, and the Gravity Silk attached to the trunk immediately pulled her aside, swiftly avoiding the blow.

The large ant missed, but did not pause at all. As soon as it steadied itself, it attacked Wen Jing again.

Wen Jing had already circled to its side and opened her mouthparts, biting down on its first foreleg.

"Crack!"

The bite actually felt like she had bitten into a steel reinforcing bar.

Sometimes, when you were speechless, you really did want to laugh.

For a moment, Wen Jing did not know whether her mouthparts were too weak or the large ants of the Ancient Wilderness really were that tough to deal with.

Still, she understood that her insect form was very primitive. Compared to an ant that already used its mouthparts as its primary means of attack, the strength of her own mouthparts was quite ordinary.

The next moment, her wide-angle vision caught a sharp, cone-shaped stinger extending from the large ant's abdomen, its menacing tip closing in on her own abdomen.

Instinctively, Wen Jing sensed a greater threat from this stinger than from its mandibles. If it struck, she would definitely be injured.

Gravity Silk pulled again, letting her evade the strike in a way that defied an insect's normal movements.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting dappled light and shadow over the branch.

The insect battle on the branch reached a fever pitch. In a short span of time, the two had already exchanged dozens of moves, trading blows back and forth.

On one side, the large ant was strong and sturdy, its mouthparts like automatic guillotine blades and its abdominal stinger like a concealed weapon. Every strike posed a lethal threat to its opponent, which was half its size.

On the other, the little silver-gray insect relied on her elusive movement, darting and dodging as she occasionally lunged in to bite the large ant, leaving tiny wounds across its body and wearing down its stamina.

If insect pheromones had played some part in Wen Jing's initial decision to fight, now she was genuinely growing excited by the battle itself.

As an opponent, Wen Jing gave the large ant five stars in her mind, rating it above everyone she had fought at Red Earth Academy.

That was not just a comparison of their current strength, but of their technique as well.

The combat techniques of Tan Wenshan and the others in the autumn class were too rigidly conventional. They actually fell short of the large ant's purely instinctive attacks. Every attack was straightforward, without any feints, yet every move used its body to maximize damage.

Ordinary ants in nature could lift objects weighing over a hundred times their own body weight. If the large ant were scaled up proportionally to human size, its strength could easily overwhelm a human of the same weight.

The kind of 1,000 kg punching force Kevin had displayed against Wen Jing at the welcome event would not even measure up.

Extremely efficient force generation, overwhelming stats, and utter fearlessness in the face of death.

Anyone who had not fought the large ant as she had could not understand just how strong its fundamentals were. On a battlefield, it could be called a perfect soldier.

In contrast, Wen Jing, with her human combat techniques, had initially found herself completely unable to put her strength to use against the ant.

As a human, she could use her fists and legs, employing all kinds of force-generation techniques through her limbs and core. But as an insect, the only part of her body that currently even qualified as a weapon was her mouthparts.

After all, there were no martial arts designed for insects. Compared to the large ant, Wen Jing even had to adapt and adjust her body's force-generation techniques from scratch.

At first, her movements had actually resembled those of a marionette. She controlled her own insect body to fight the ant, compensating for her shortcomings with Gravity Silk and her combat awareness.

But as the battle continued, Wen Jing grew increasingly focused under the pressure of the ant's attacks, until she entered a state of flow.

She discovered that insects had combat techniques of their own!

Every bite her mouthparts landed on its antennae could affect its perception of its surroundings. Every well-placed impact from the exoskeleton on her back could upset the balance of its joints. Every deceptive movement of her six legs could make its mandibles miss...

If the battle between these two insects were recorded now, it would surely be an astonishing showdown that would set any cricket-fighting enthusiast's blood boiling!

Gradually, as Wen Jing deliberately honed herself, inspiration kept coming. She used Gravity Silk less and less, drawing on it only to supplement her strength at critical moments.

Because her insect body was beginning to develop its own martial art...

It was a unique set of combat techniques born from human martial arts, yet perfectly suited to an insect's body.

Turning every part of the body into a means of attack-the two seemed worlds apart, yet could strangely achieve seamless unity on a higher level.

Finally, as the large ant lunged, Wen Jing advanced instead of retreating. She lowered her insect body, bringing her mouthparts right around the slender waist between its upper and lower limbs.

At the same time, the exoskeleton on her back contracted rhythmically in one direction, bracing against the ant's upper limbs and hoisting it up so it could not bend its mandibles down to bite.

"Crack!"

Wen Jing opened her mouthparts and bit down. The blow broke through the weakest part of the ant's exoskeleton, and she tasted its green blood-bitter.

At the same instant, two notifications sounded in succession in her mind.

[Mastered 'Combat - Advanced Combat Lv1'. Skill points +5]

[Mastered 'Movement - Advanced Movement Lv1'. Skill points +5]

Both combat and movement had improved!

As surprise and delight filled Wen Jing's heart, her body, which had already developed combat instincts, calmly withdrew, letting the ant's furious stinger miss.

Among the various martial subjects she had studied in textbooks since childhood, besides move-based skills such as fist techniques, leg techniques, sword techniques... which were divided into "mastery, proficiency, perfection," there were also two comprehensive, understanding-based skills: "Combat - Basic Combat Lv1-Lv10" and "Movement - Basic Movement Lv1-Lv10."

In the past, as her mastery of various martial moves improved, these two skills had steadily grown. Each level gained earned her one skill point, but they stopped progressing after reaching Lv10.

Wen Jing had assumed she would improve them by learning and applying various combat techniques and secret techniques after becoming an Awakened. She had never expected to break through by comprehending martial arts for an insect body.

So improving these two skills required a qualitative change, not a quantitative one.

Then let this battle with the large ant end here.

Delighted by her abundant gains, Wen Jing generously addressed the panel. "Evolve my mouthparts with one skill point. Focus on increasing attack power. You decide how far to take it!"

Wen Jing already had plenty of experience with small-scale evolutions like this and knew they could be performed directly in battle.

[Evolution direction confirmed...]

[Spending points to evolve...]

[11 → 10]

The next moment, Wen Jing felt her mouthparts thicken and lengthen. Their joints gained a wider range of motion, and a row of sharp serrations appeared along the inner edges, reflecting sunlight with the sort of gleam that would go "ting" in a comic.

[Evolution complete]

[Mouthparts I]

[Trait acquired: Sharp Pincers]

Clearly, they paid "homage" to the large ant in every respect, but with greater power!

During the fight, Wen Jing found another opening to part her mouthparts and bit down on the ant's forelimb.

This time, the bite no longer felt like biting steel rebar. It was more like sugarcane.