"Mitch… I know you might feel a bit bad about killing them, but I just want to say that I am happy you did it. It might sound cold of me to say, but I would rather you kill them than have Madeline become a brood mother."
"Don't worry, Katherine. I know what you mean; I am the same way. But that is not why I am annoyed. It's just... didn't these legios seem a bit weak?"
He was not so mentally insecure that he needed consolation. Even if he were, he could just pretend that he was in a game.
With how advanced VR games were back on Tellus, killing NPC children was as lifelike as in reality. And for a variety of reasons, Mitch too had killed them.
No, the reason he was frowning had nothing to do with him. He was frowning because the legios were too weak.
After all, one of them had even reached 5% in Devouring, the same level where Mitch annihilated eight ants.
"Are you sure it's not because you have mutated your strength or that you have a bigger body than them?" Katherine questioned.
She found it hard to believe that the legios were actually weak and that it wasn't because he was strong. But Mitch still disagreed with her.
"Even after taking all of those things into account, it was still too easy. Sure, they lacked experience too, but that is not reason enough for them to be this weak."
He kept pondering while bringing the corpses back to his preliminary settlement.
"Could it be because they had cosmetic mutations? Maybe I, too, grew weaker. But because I increased my strength many times over, it was unnoticeable?" That was the only theory he could think of.
The tooltip had warned him of genetic integrity. Maybe that was what it meant?
Reaching the rat nest with no way to actually experiment on the topic, Mitch decided to forget about it for now.
He took the corpses with him and climbed onto the same tree that he placed Madeline on.
Although he was feeling refreshed mentally, his body was aching, begging for sleep. All things considered, it was a miracle he held out this long.
He had fought numerous battles with his life on the line, gone through a soul-shattering amount of pain, and emptied his body of energy—all in one day.
Sitting on a branch with his back leaned against the trunk, he felt his eyelids flicker.
The peaceful breeze wafting through the treetops was like a lullaby, rocking him to sleep. Everything started going dark.
He only heard one last thing before falling asleep.
"Good night, little baby."
"I swear, I'll… make you… pay…"
—
Waking up, Mitch made a quick search to make sure nothing had been lost.
Fortunately, everything was in its right place.
Madeline's egg was still on the tree, the total of seven corpses were untouched, and the rats were sleeping in their hole. The only thing missing was his fruit platter, which he assumed the rest of the ants had taken.
Climbing to the top of the tree, Mitch looked around in search of the sun. He quickly found it hovering above the horizon.
"That's weird. The sun was still up when I went to sleep. No way I have only slept for a few hours! I feel so energetic."
If the two days or so that Mitch had been sleeping in his personal dimension were enough to refresh his mind, this time he felt his strength had been replenished.
"That's because it hasn't. You really sleep like a baby, huh? If you look closely, you will notice that the sun isn't moving down beyond the horizon."
Mitch laid down on the branch and took a few leaves. He then stacked them on top of each other.
Afterwards, he positioned the stack of leaves in front of his face, just above where he saw the top of the sun. After waiting for a few seconds, he saw the sun peeking up above the leaves.
"Ah… is it really morning?"
This meant Mitch had almost spent an entire day on this world. One out of, now, one hundred fifty days he could exist with his current Mynt.
"You were right. Time really will seem to fly by." The countless times he had risked his life seemed to have confused his internal clock. That, or the excitement he got from all of this made him ignorant of time passing.
He took the water bowls from the rats' pit and went towards the river. On his way, he experimented a little bit with moving his arm, finding his shoulder had healed a little.
"The combination of cockroach-like endurance and the ants' muscle structure really is convenient at times like these."
Although not fully restored yet, any minute amount of healing is better than no healing.
He reached the river and once more dunked his head inside. He then cleaned the bowls and filled them up with water. He also restarted his quest of gathering fruits and berries to train the rats.
Returning to the camp, he found the rats to be quite rowdy all of a sudden. Maybe it was the lack of stimulus, or maybe the lack of food and water. Regardless, they were quite active inside the pit.
Well, most of them were. Hailey was, for some reason, backed up in a corner, refusing to partake in the festivities.
He picked Hailey up and placed her in a separate hole with one of the water bowls. He then placed the other bowl into the big pit.
Even when he reached in with his hand and lightly pushed some of the rats out of the way, there was not much of a reaction. They were completely engrossed in their time of fun.
Mitch kept observing for a while to make sure nothing bad happened, but it was unnecessary.
The rats just kept going at it.
"Huh! They seem… quite active. Jealous?"
Mitch really felt like punching Katherine at this moment in time.