Woken up by rays of light snaking their way through the barrier of leaves, Mitch performed the same checks as yesterday.
Ensuring that nothing had gone missing during his slumber, he made his way towards Hailey's pit.
Lifting the rock revealed a wiggling, cracked egg. By the looks of it, Hailey could come out of hibernation at any moment.
Not wanting her to wake up alone and confused, Mitch carried the egg with him towards the river.
Second verse, same as the first.
Mitch tried rotating his shoulder, finding that mobility had practically been fully restored.
Then he examined his thigh, which also seemed to have healed to an unbelievable degree.
His fingers, however, remained dismembered. They would probably not grow back for the remainder of his stay in this world.
If he were on Tellus, he could have gotten prosthetics or cybernetics, or maybe he could take some drug that would heal him. But this world had yet to develop past a nomadic age.
He would have a higher chance of healing his fingers with Mynt than using the resources available on this world.
"Well, it's fine even if it doesn't heal. It doesn't affect me that much anyway."
Disregarding the fact that he had three practically intact hands, he was still able to make a fist even if he was missing a few fingers.
He got pulled out of his thoughts by the time he reached the river.
Leaning down to take a few sips, Mitch saw something in the corner of his eye that made him do a double take.
"Ants!"
Indeed, what Mitch saw was ants. Although he hadn't run that far away from their nest, it wasn't close enough for them to just wander here for no reason.
That left two options. Either they were following him, but Mitch doubted that. Even with pheromones leading the way, tracking him this far was unrealistic. The other option…
"Have they already expanded this far out?"
Mitch got reminded of the bed of eggs he had seen next to the main queen. Was it possible that those eggs had already hatched?
In what way had he offended the will that helped him create this world for it to make these monstrous ants?
Not only were they incomprehensibly large, but their rate of expansion was even more terrifying.
Unfortunately, Mitch didn't have his sword with him. Otherwise, this would be prime food for the rats.
He started making his way back towards the rat nest, thinking of what his next step would be.
"I can't delay it any longer. I need to start dealing with the ants. This is also an opportunity to consolidate the nobles' position in the new society."
"How could you leave a young woman like Madeline alone in the middle of the woods? How heartless," Katherine teased. But she still brought up an important thing to consider.
Mitch thought about it for a while before shaking his head. Bringing Madeline would put her in more danger than it would prevent. At least, during her hibernation, her being in a hard-to-reach position was better.
Furthermore, the rats seemed to have marked the entrance by his camp as dangerous. After Mitch caught six of them, none had exited from there.
While contemplating, he felt the egg in his hand stir. Even though it had been cracking and wiggling before, it had been calm for the most part. That was no longer the case.
The sudden case got Mitch curious about this phenomenon. "Has the keratin in Hailey's hair solidified to make a hard shell around her? Fascinating. What is it that causes this to happen?"
Unfortunately, the shell exploded into pieces before he had any time to examine it.
Left in his hand was Hailey. But she acted differently from before.
Her eyes were more observant, constantly scanning her surroundings. Her ears and nose kept twitching, as if trying to get used to the environment and her new senses. She even moved around a bit, adapting to her new muscular control.
All sensations that got amplified as a result of her brain developing.
"Hailey."
She looked up at his face and tilted her head. Clearly, she remembered this creature saying this every time he gave her food. But right now she wasn't very hungry.
Squeak, squeak
This time Mitch really got surprised. Although he had trained intelligent rats before, it was unusual for them to repeat what he said back to him. Even less with the same tone and melody.
Deciding to test her limits further in the future, he continued on his way.
Reaching camp, Mitch started preparing. He would prefer to not hold the rats while fighting an encirclement of ants, so he had to make somewhere to put them.
Using his sword as a carving knife, Mitch made a box-like structure out of wood. He also carved small holes for breathing and made an incision for a sliding roof.
Despite taking a few hours, the pride he had in his handicraft made him forget about the time.
Meanwhile, Hailey had kept wandering around, observing what he was doing.
Mitch noticed that even if he let her free, she didn't try fleeing. Nevertheless, he would feel much safer if she were in a cage when he was fighting.
Putting Hailey and the other rats into the box, he closed the lid and placed it under his arm.
"I know you're hungry, but wait just a little longer. You're in for a treat."
"So that's what you meant by 'consolidate the nobles' position.' You want to strengthen them into leaders of the flock?"
Mitch did not answer. He didn't need to, either.
Katherine had hit the nail on the head with her conclusion. She would have all her questions answered in due time.
Reaching the river once again, Mitch found more ants congregating around the area. Luckily, there were no queens, only workers of different degrees of development.
Mitch carefully placed the box with the rats down on the ground and rushed towards the ants with his sword raised high.
He could defeat eight ants while in ungodly amounts of pain and in a state of profound exhaustion.
Now?
As long as it wasn't a queen, Mitch did not doubt his ability to thin out the ants' numbers.
If he wanted any chance of eventually uprooting the ant colony, he needed to first target the workers.
The fewer the number of workers, the less food will be provided to the queens to birth new ants.
Like that, the Sisyphean endeavor that would occupy Mitch for over half a month began.