The air tasted metallic.
Arik felt it before he heard it—the distant click-click-click of chitinous legs scraping against tunnel walls. The nurse ants around him froze, antennae twitching in unison. Pheromones flooded the chamber, sharp and urgent.
Danger. Mobilize. Defend.
Workers scrambled to drag larvae deeper into the earth. Soldiers surged forward, their massive heads and serrated mandibles blocking the tunnel entrances. Arik hesitated. Unlike the others, he couldn't shut off the questions pounding in his mind.
What's out there? Why attack now?
No answers came. Only instinct.
The Scourge
The centipedes broke through the Upper Tunnel, their segmented bodies thrashing like armored snakes. Three of them, each twice the length of a soldier ant, jaws dripping with paralytic venom. They moved with grotesque grace, coiling around defenders, crushing thoraxes, ripping antennae.
Arik watched a soldier ant—its exoskeleton gleaming under the fungal glow—lunge at the largest centipede. For a moment, its mandibles clamped around the predator's neck. Then the centipede twisted, its rear legs clawing upward, and gutted the soldier from belly to head.
The chamber flooded with the sour stench of ant blood.
We're losing.
Workers fell by the dozens, torn apart mid-retreat. The queen's pheromones crescendoed, a suffocating cloud of fight-fight-fight, but the colony's responses were robotic, unadaptive. Soldiers attacked the same centipede legs already been severed. Workers tripped over dead larvae.
Arik's mind screamed.
They're not thinking. They're just… reacting.
The Spark
A centipede lunged at a cluster of workers fleeing with brood. Arik moved before he understood why.
He slammed into the worker at the rear, shoving her aside as the centipede's jaws snapped shut on empty air. The rescued ant didn't pause to acknowledge him—she simply adjusted course, larvae still clutched in her mandibles.
But Arik felt it.
A flicker in his mind. A whisper.
[Karma Sutra System: Activated.]
Golden Sanskrit script flared behind his eyes, searing and serene.
[User: Arik]
[Caste: Worker Ant (Tier 0)]
[Karma: 5/100]
[Trials Remaining: ??]
The words pulsed with alien warmth.
[Trial Initiated: "First Blood."]
[Repel the centipede incursion. Protect 10 colony members.]
[Reward: Karma +25 | Unlock "Scent of Unity" (Pheromone Manipulation I).]
Arik's antennae trembled. Pheromone manipulation? The queen's chemical commands were law—workers couldn't emit so much as a waft of dissent.
But the centipede was already recoiling for another strike.
The Calculus of Survival
Arik dodged, his smaller body slipping between the centipede's legs. He saw it now—the predator's rhythm. It always struck left, then right, then coiled to constrict.
Predictable. If you're watching.
He scuttled up the tunnel wall, ignoring the acidic burn in his legs. Below, the centipede targeted another worker.
No.
Arik dropped onto its back, mandibles sinking into the joint between its third and fourth segments. The centipede writhed, slamming him into the dirt. His exoskeleton cracked, pain flaring, but he held on.
[Karma +2.]
Another worker—this one carrying a half-chewed aphid—joined the fray, biting blindly. The centipede thrashed harder, but now a soldier ant noticed the disturbance and clamped onto its tail.
[Karma +3.]
Arik's vision blurred. His grip faltered.
Let go. Retreat.
But the system's golden text pulsed again.
[Colony members saved: 7/10.]
The Tipping Point
He lunged for the centipede's head.
It was suicide. Workers weren't built for combat—their jaws were too weak, their reflexes too slow. But Arik aimed. Not for the armored skull, but for the milky eye cluster beneath it.
His mandibles pierced gelatinous flesh.
The centipede shrieked, recoiling so violently it dislodged Arik. He hit the wall, his antennae snapping, but the damage was done. The creature flailed blindly, striking its own kin in its panic.
Soldiers swarmed the wounded predator.
[Colony members saved: 10/10.]
[Trial Complete.]
The Price
When the last centipede fled, dragging its mangled body through the tunnels, the colony began repairs. Workers sealed breaches with silk and soil. Soldiers stood guard, their movements stiff, programmed.
None noticed Arik.
He crouched in the shadows, his left foreleg bent at a sickening angle, oozing hemolymph. The system's warmth spread through him, dulling the pain.
[Reward: "Scent of Unity" unlocked.]
[Emit pheromones to coordinate 3 nearby ants.]
Arik exhaled, and the air around him shifted. Notes of citrus and iron—a scent that didn't exist in nature. Two workers paused, their antennae swiveling toward him.
For the first time, something in the colony listened.