Every morning, my parents greeted the day with the same rhythm, my father would chop wood, my mother would tend the hearth, but I had other priorities.
I was grinding levels.
It had taken days, but I did it.
1,000 ants.
All hand-killed, counted, and cataloged in my mind, i felt the level up to 4, but it was barely a whisper inside me, no surge, no tingle, just… a faint settling. Like a pot finally resting on a shelf.
"I see. Each level needs ten times more experience than the last."
So i reasoned it out:
Level 1 → 2: 10 XP
2 → 3: 100 XP
3 → 4: 1,000 XP
4 → 5: 10,000 XP
I would need to kill a 10,000 ants for the next level, ridiculous… unless.
"I find the source."
I had noticed the trail weeks ago, but never followed it. Until now.
That morning, I slipped away from our little house after breakfast. My mother was hanging linens to dry and humming softly; my father was in the forest, shaping lumber.
I took a hoe, crudely forged iron, thick-handled and heavy for a normal child, But I was not a normal child, I moved with ease, hiding my unnatural strength. My muscles no longer ached from lifting; my joints felt spring-loaded. I as strong as any grown man in the village and no one knew.
I followed the line of ants deep into the field, beyond the scarecrow, to the edge of the woods. There it was:
A great ant hill, nearly half a meter tall, mounded like a grave of writhing black.
"If this is their nest, then this is where I will rise."
I raised the hoe.
And struck.
Again. And again.
The earth tore, soil exploding as I dug deeper, faster. Ants poured out in waves—hundreds at a time. I crushed them underfoot, with the hoe, my fists. My eyes tracked each squirming insect.
They never stopped coming.
It was a black ocean of segmented bodies and twitching legs, and I waded through it like a grim reaper in overalls. I moved like a toddler possessed, laughing quietly to myself not from cruelty, but from victory.
"unlimmited POWER."
And then… I felt it.
A small jolt weaker than the ones before.
Level 5.
Moments later, another slightly fainter, like a dying echo.
Level 6.
And then… nothing.
I stopped.
Panting. Kneeling in a crater of churned dirt, crushed ant corpses, and the scent of disturbed earth.
It was done.
I hadn't reached Level 7, which meant… there weren't a million ants.
But I had leveled twice, so there had to be more than 100,000 ants.
I estimated:
Between 100,000 and 999,999 ants.
Incredible.
I had wiped out an entire civilization of ants. And I was still just a baby.
When I stumbled home filthy, covered in dirt and ant carcasses, dragging the hoe behind me like a battle-worn soldier my mother screamed.
"Ren! What in the name of the gods !?"
She dropped her basket and ran to me, brushing off my clothes, checking my hands for cuts.
"Were you trying to farm!? Did you fall in a burrow?! What's all over you!?"
I just blinked up at her and murmured, in my softest, cutest voice:
"Ants, Mama."
"ANT—!?"
"Tomas!" she called. "Your son is cursed! Or possessed! Or part mole!"
My father came back hours later. When he heard the story, he knelt beside me with a long look.
"Ren, lad… What's with you and ants, hmm?"
I shrug.
He looked into my eyes. I saw something flicker in his gaze not fear, but something close to it, maybe worry.
"Boy's got fire," he muttered. "he's just strange, Mira"
"he is alright?," she said softly.
"Aye," my father agreed. "But keep an eye on him. A child who can easily carry a hoe at his age, may grow to a great hero one day."
Or something worse, I thought, but I only smiled and let them carry me to the bath.