This confrontation was Noah’s first true trial—the first direct battle in which he tore victory free with nothing but his own raw strength.

  He had never truly understood how much his body and senses had evolved. His mind had always been programmed for one option: escape. He had never tested the limits of his endurance in a fight to the death… until this moment, when fate left him no choice but to stand and face it.

  Now silence settled over the place.

  And with it, collapse.

  His vision blurred, smeared at the edges. The world swayed around him as though he stood upon the deck of a ship caught in a storm. The steady loss of blood and the wounds that had ravaged his body left his consciousness teetering on the brink of blackness.

  With bitter instinct, Noah understood: if he surrendered to this weakness now, he would never wake again. Death was crawling toward him, slow and patient, with every drop of blood that escaped his veins.

  He had to do the one thing he despised most—a choice that made the skin crawl, yet left no alternative.

  Dragging his bruised and battered body across the ground, he moved toward the ant’s corpse. It still bled heavily from its severed neck.

  He paused.

  An instinctive, human revulsion pulled him back from what he was about to do.

  The corpse did not move.

  Cautiously, he drove his spear into it. The dead limbs twitched in one final reflex before falling completely still.

  With the last remnants of his resolve—and a hand trembling from pain and disgust—he tore a strip of flesh from the exposed neck.

  He lifted it before his weary eyes, then cast a quick glance around the desolate corridor. By his estimation, he had perhaps half an hour before the next ant patrol passed through this route.

  A narrow window.

  Far too narrow to waste.

  He leaned his back against the cold stone wall and released a deep, painful breath that tore through his injured chest. His face was drained, coated in shock and revulsion.

  Then he placed the piece of flesh into his mouth.

  Noah had to force certainty from doubt.

  He did not possess the luxury of time—or of options.

  Either he would bleed out from his wounds…

  —or gamble on consuming the flesh of this monster, hoping it would grant him the same healing it had once given before.

  He remained still for several seconds… watching… waiting… trembling.

  Then, without warning, the fuse ignited.

  The familiar burning sensation bloomed inside him once more, as though a small ember had been kindled in his gut and was now swelling outward. Noah bared his teeth and clenched his jaw so hard it nearly cracked. Between fractured breaths, he whispered, “Here we go again…”

  His right hand dug violently into the dirt.

  And then the pain exploded.

  It felt as though molten lava were flooding his veins and nerves—liquid fire poured into the hollow wounds of his body, filling them from within. Sweat streamed down his forehead in heavy rivulets. The muscles in his back and legs seized without warning, locking his limbs into a rigid, agonized spasm.

  Yet within the cyclone of torment, Noah sensed something that stunned him.

  The pain… was not the same.

  It was not the savage, mind-ripping agony that had once stripped him of reason and driven him to the brink of wishing for death. It was fierce—fierce enough to paralyze him completely, fierce enough to trap his scream in his throat—but it was not enough to rob him of his will. Not enough to tear away his awareness of the world around him.

  He remained frozen in place, unable to move a single muscle, breathing with extreme difficulty while the fire devoured the remnants of exhaustion beneath his skin.

  Then the physical changes began accelerating before his eyes.

  He watched in astonishment as his open wounds slowly contracted, their torn edges drawing together and sealing themselves, leaving behind dark scars that testified to what had happened. The crushing pain in his ribcage began to recede. Bones that had shifted out of place straightened and fused again with a faint internal grinding he could hear clearly in the corridor’s silence.

  The deep gash in his thigh shrank; the bleeding ceased, leaving a long scar stretching across it like an old war mark.

  And finally…

  His paralyzed arm.

  Slowly—very slowly—he felt a strange numbness crawl from shoulder to fingertips. Then sharp pricks, like needles piercing dead flesh.

  Then—

  One finger moved.

  His heartbeat quickened. His breathing followed.

  Another finger twitched.

  It was returning.

  Life was flowing back into the deadened nerve once more.

  While Noah remained absorbed in watching his body reconstruct itself piece by piece, he turned his head slowly to the side—whether by pure instinct, or by fate’s cruel desire to test him once more.

  He wished he hadn’t.

  At the far end of the dark corridor, where the weak light surrendered to shadow, there were eyes.

  Fixed. Burning. Carrying a madness beyond reason.

  They were not watching him as prey.

  They were locked onto the spear in his other hand.

  The ant’s leg.

  Her son’s leg.

  It was her.

  The adult ant that had pursued him.

  The “mother” whose offspring he had killed—whose limb he had torn free and forged into a blade, now stained with the blood of another ant.

  She stood there for seconds that stretched into eternity, her massive body drawn tight like a bowstring ready to snap. Her antennae trembled with a slow, lethal vibration—the stillness before a storm.

  Then the silence shattered.

  “Skreeeeeeeeeeek!!!”

  A piercing shriek tore through the narrow corridor, rattling its stone walls and sending small fragments of gravel raining from the ceiling.

  And she charged.

  Not a measured advance—

  but a blind, deranged eruption of fury.

  Her legs hammered against the ground with such force that the entire passage trembled beneath her vengeance. The distance collapsed in the blink of an eye. Dust spiraled behind her like a miniature cyclone.

  And Noah—

  He was still caught in the middle of healing.

  His body had not yet fully returned to his command. Fire still coursed through his nerves. His muscles remained locked in the aftermath of transformation.

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  He tried to stand.

  His knee buckled, and he fell onto his side.

  He tried to raise the spear—

  —but his hand shook violently, beyond control.

  She was closing in.

  Ten meters.

  Seven.

  Five.

  He could see her massive mandibles opening and closing, ready to crush him. He could hear the thunder of her legs smashing against the stone beneath her. Death was sprinting toward him in a frenzy—while he was still drowning in pain, unable to fight, unable to flee.

  The adult ant lunged forward with such force that the ground shuddered beneath her, turning the narrow corridor into a tunnel of dust and shattered debris.

  No… no… no—no!!

  Noah screamed inwardly, the sound trapped in his burning throat. He watched her advance, smashing stone and wall alike with her armored body without slowing even slightly. Nothing stood in her way—no obstacle, no barrier, not a trace of mercy in her eyes that gleamed with primitive hatred.

  Move… move… move!

  He battled the invisible chains the ant’s flesh had wrapped around him. His body shook violently. He cursed his weakness—cursed this lethal timing. He saw death charging toward him in the form of a many-legged beast, yet he remained literally paralyzed, imprisoned within the violent throes of his own healing.

  The distance vanished in a blink.

  One second—

  —and she was above him, her heavy shadow swallowing him whole.

  Without hesitation, she raised her enormous leg. Brutal force gathered in its joints as she drove the killing strike straight toward his head.

  And in that instant—

  The pain cleared.

  It vanished suddenly, as if a cascade of cold water had been poured over his burning body. The flesh’s effect ended. His neural pathways snapped back to life all at once.

  Noah’s eyes widened.

  With a speed he had never known in himself, the hand that had been paralyzed moments ago clamped around the spear with crushing force. He drove the blade into the ground with every ounce of will remaining, and in one fluid motion yanked his body toward the shaft, dragging himself a hair’s breadth out of the strike’s path—

  At precisely the right fraction of a second.

  The blow fell.

  (BOOOOM)

  The corridor convulsed as if struck by an earthquake. Stone fragments exploded into the air like shrapnel. The shockwave and violent air pressure hurled Noah several feet away. He rolled across the rough ground before stopping in a painful crash.

  “Hah… hah… hah…”

  He lay on his side, gasping, each breath a rasp torn from his chest. His ribs still burned from the strain. His limbs trembled from the abrupt transformation. Only seconds ago he had been boiling in agony; now he faced a storm that would not relent.

  There was no luxury of catching his breath.

  Not even a single second of rest.

  The beast had not stopped.

  Suddenly—from within the thick cloud of dust left by the impact—the darkness split apart.

  Her leg shot forward again, like a steel spear hurled from the heavens, aimed directly at Noah’s chest while he still lay sprawled on the ground.

  She didn’t even give him a chance to rise; death came down upon him again, and this time, the rocky spear was too close to dodge by crawling.

  Instinctively, Noah raised his spear in a pure act of survival, holding it horizontally in front of his chest to block the lethal strike.

  (BOOOOOM)

  His entire body shook violently, his core rattled to its foundation. The pressure was so immense that the solid ground beneath him sank nearly an inch, and the upper half of his body plunged into the soil under the brute force. Noah pushed with every ounce left in his exhausted muscles; the veins in his neck stood out like taut ropes, his teeth clenched with a force that threatened to shatter his jaw, and his eyes bulged from the sheer strain.

  But the spear… began to fail him.

  A faint, dreadful cracking sound pierced his ears; tiny fractures, like spiderwebs, began racing along the bony shaft he had wielded as a weapon.

  No… he whispered desperately in his mind.

  The pressure intensified to insane levels. It seemed as though death itself would crush him beneath the weight of that limb. Then, in the last possible moment, before his body collapsed entirely, Noah twisted his torso explosively to the side.

  The lethal strike veered by mere millimeters. The ant’s leg scraped along his chest and slammed into the hard ground beside him instead of piercing his heart.

  But the price was steep.

  The spear could not withstand the torque under that weight.

  (CRACK)

  It shattered into two pieces. Bone shards scattered in every direction. Noah stumbled back, staring in shock at his empty hand. Without thinking, he flung the remaining fragments aside—because the monster’s other leg was already rising for a second strike.

  He gave himself no time to regret.

  Planting his feet against the rocky wall behind him, he pressed every ounce of strength his renewed muscles could muster and launched his body away, using the recoil like a compressed spring.

  His body shot through the air, then tumbled across the floor like a shattered ball. He collided, rolled, and finally rose to his feet with immense difficulty.

  There he stood—terrified, alert, chest heaving violently, blood spray mingling with each ragged breath, eyes locked on the next strike that could end his life.

  But it did not come.

  For a strange, terrifying moment, the ant stopped completely. She did not attack, did not move. She was still, like an unyielding rock.

  Her massive head lowered slowly. Her antennae twitched lightly.

  Her compound eyes were fixed on the ground… on the remains of the shattered spear.

  She was staring at her child’s broken leg—the very leg that this small creature had used to kill another ant of her kind—which now lay shattered beneath her feet.

  A heavy, oppressive silence settled over the corridor—so thick that the only sound was the faint trickle of dust falling. This stillness was far more dangerous than the attack itself.

  Noah froze, a cold shock gripping him. He had never imagined that these creatures could feel, or immerse themselves in a moment of grief. Yet that gaze wasn’t random, nor merely an instinctive response of a biological machine.

  It was pure rage. Twisted sorrow turned into hatred.

  But it didn’t matter now. Whether she felt it or not—whether she mourned her offspring—she was determined to crush him, and he had no intention of becoming her next meal.

  He drew a slow, steady breath, gathering the fragments of his composure. He could feel power coursing through his veins like live electricity. Each time he devoured the flesh of these monsters, the same thing happened: his body healed, then reborn—stronger, tougher, more resilient than before.

  And now?

  He felt a force unlike anything he had ever known. Perhaps… enough to face her directly.

  In a fraction of a second, his eyes analyzed her massive frame: the head, the joints—especially the neck—and the armored back beneath her shell. Yet the clearest opening glimmered before him: the head. She was distracted, her gaze broken downward, at her weakest mental moment.

  Without hesitation… he surged forward.

  The ground beneath his feet buckled under the force of his launch, cracking and sending thick dust clouds billowing behind him. His burst of speed far exceeded anything he had previously managed, his body moving as light and sharp as a blade. He closed the distance with terrifying velocity—too close… far too close.

  “Damn—”

  But perhaps this closeness was the key to victory.

  He dropped low in a lightning-fast motion, snatched a sharp-edged stone from the debris without slowing, and, in one fluid motion, used the momentum of his entire body… and leapt.

  The jump wasn’t high, but it was calculated with astonishing precision. He reached the level of her head, and at that critical moment, he poured every ounce of his strength, every bit of fury, every shred of will into the hand clutching the stone.

  (BOOOOOOM)

  He struck with all his might, so hard that the air around his fist erupted with a muffled roar. He expected the sound of her armor cracking—or at least an impact that would shake his hand—but suddenly…

  Noah felt nothing.

  He had struck air.

  No resistance. No sound of solid impact. No sensation of armor breaking. Only cold air.

  “Where—?”

  His eyes widened in terror. The ant was gone. It was nowhere within his field of vision—the space that only a moment ago had been filled by its massive body. It had vanished as if the ground swallowed it, or as if it had evaporated in an instant.

  His heart dropped, and a chilling sense of death crept up his spine.

  He felt that familiar heaviness in the air—the ominous pressure that always preceded disaster by a fraction of a second. Pure survival instinct kicked in, urging him to turn— but he was too late. Far too late.

  (KRRAAAK!!)

  One strike. Just one. It was enough to overturn everything. It wasn’t a simple blow from an insect—it felt as though an entire stone wall had slammed into him with full momentum.

  (WHOOOOSH—)

  Noah’s body was hurled through the air like a broken, empty doll. He spun twice in the narrow corridor before slamming into the opposite wall with terrifying force. The impact cracked the stone behind him, carving long fissures into the rock as it fractured under the shock.

  Then he fell.

  His lungs emptied completely, as if lightning had stolen his breath.

  “Gh—!”

  He coughed up a thick spray of blood—hot, crimson droplets splattering the cold floor, painting a silent image of his approaching death. His ears rang with a sharp, suffocating buzz. His head swam in disorientation. Yet one sound pierced through the chaos in his mind:

  “SKREEEEEEEK!!!”

  It was not the cry of pursuit. It was not a warning. It was the scream of execution—an oath of destruction.

  Noah’s eyes widened as reality crashed over him. Terror engulfed him like a freezing tide.

  “Sh…hah… strong…! It… wasn’t… serious… before?!”

  He understood the bitter truth now. In their previous encounter, the “mother” had merely been testing him—measuring his strength and reactions with restrained fury. But now, after seeing the remains of her child shattered, she had stopped holding back.

  She had revealed her true speed. Her unrelenting, brutal power.

  He tried to rise, but his arms trembled and his knees buckled. The pain in his ribs was sharp, like blades slicing through him. He felt something within his chest fracture again, emitting a faint, sickening crack beneath his skin.

  Then, the worst happened.

  Behind the massive body of the “mother,” deep in the dark corridor he had hoped was an exit, shadows began to stir.

  It wasn’t a single shadow. There were countless shadows, countless legs striking the ground in a slow, measured rhythm—like the beating of funeral drums. Tiny, glimmering eyes began to appear one by one from the folds of darkness, reflecting the faint light with a chilling coldness.

  Ants. More and more ants.

  Noah’s heart froze in his chest. He whispered in despair: “No…”

  If the furious “mother” was in front of him, and this swarm closed in from all sides, there would be no fight. There would only be dismemberment—a living feast that would end in seconds.

  He clenched his teeth with feral intensity until he could taste blood on his gums. His mind screamed the only command he had left:

  “I… must… escape…!”

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