Chapter 43: Pain
It had been almost a month since Mitch incarnated into his world. During this time, he had become very familiar with how Devouring felt.
And the weird feeling in his stomach right now was not normal.
Usually the sensation would feel like a full-body massage, starting from his torso and radiating outward. What he was feeling right now was better described as swallowing a sun.
He opened his mouth and tried screaming, but nothing came out. His throat felt like it had caught fire, burning to a crisp.
Clawing at his neck for some reprieve, Mitch brought the ant corpse to his mouth and sank his teeth into its neck. He felt viscous blood trickling down his throat, immediately regretting doing so.
Like adding fuel to a fire, the searing got even worse. He kept spasming on the ground, rolling around in the green liquid while bumping into various objects.
The worst had yet to come. From burning in his stomach and throat to cramps all over his body. Every muscle suddenly started tensing. Mitch ceased spasming, but it did not make him feel relieved.
Mitch’s thoughts had long since halted. It was like his brain was doing everything in its power to dissociate him from the pain.
"Mitch! Put something in your mouth! Don’t bite your own tongue," Katherine shouted. She kept screaming at him, telling him to hold on. But Mitch was in too much pain to give any form of affirmation.
Scanning his immediate surroundings, Mitch saw the ant’s severed head and forced his body into moving. Even the slightest twitch brought him immense pain, yet he knew Katherine was right.
With the mandibles still attached to the head, Mitch put them in his mouth and bit down.
Tasting the ant’s blood mixed with the blood coming from his own gums calmed him down a little bit. He had started getting used to his whole body being in pain. He thought that he might actually be able to endure it without any more difficulties.
Oh, how naive he was...
His cramps started receding. In its place, all of his organs started itching. From his stomach to his intestines to even his brain and his eyes.
He unconsciously brought his hands towards his eyes, intending on scratching them, when he was woken up by Katherine yelling, "STOP!"
Coming back to his senses, Mitch disregarded the itching for a moment and started crawling towards the closest boulder. He then jabbed it with his fingers, embedding them deep into the rock.
Having broken fingers was infinitely better than digging his eyes out of their sockets.
Unfortunately for Mitch, the situation was just getting worse and worse.
Some worker ants had started making their way towards the ruckus, looking to help their queen. When they arrived, what they saw was not their queen but a large pile of rocks and a creature right in front of it.
They started swarming Mitch, biting him in a variety of places. His exoskeleton defended against most of the damage, yet some bites still made their way through his sturdy defenses.
Although none of them were lethal, they still hurt a lot.
’Endure!’
After a torturous amount of time, the itching stopped, and Mitch could do something other than focus on keeping a sound mind.
He disregarded the ants biting him and stood up, stumbling a bit as a result of his shattered leg. Rather, he stumbled in anticipation of his shattered leg not letting him stand upright.
In reality, he could stand normally, though he still felt some pangs of pain. Additionally, his arms were working fine, as if they had never been broken.
Mitch attributed this to the burning he had felt earlier and put the matter aside. For now, he needed to clear out the ants that had congregated around him.
Casually kicking one ant that was trying to nibble on his leg, he smashed its head like a watermelon, surprising even himself.
He knew his own strength the best. At most, that kick should crack the ant’s head, not bust it open.
Realizing that he had grown even stronger, Mitch blitzed through the rest of the ants. After killing roughly half of the ants, the rest started scampering, fearful of the bloody beast that had slain their queen.
Mitch decided to not give chase. He might be presenting a confident bravado while slaying the ants, but he was very tired. Whatever had caused his body to heal seemed to have used up any reserve of energy available.
"Congratulations on breaking through your bottleneck, Mitch," Katherine chimed in. A mixture of relief and excitement was clear in her way of speaking.
He quickly opened his stats and saw that, indeed, he had reached 21% completion in his power system.
Choosing to understand what exactly that meant at a later date, Mitch refocused on his current circumstances.
The breakthrough had repaired his body, so he could continue on his quest now. However, he was too tired to confidently kill any minor queens. He still had about a week left before Madeline would hatch from her egg. Therefore, he decided to slow down a little.
Looking around, Mitch saw the bed of ant eggs that was on the ground. The collapsed ceiling had crushed some of them, but there were still many left.
He could try taming the ants when they hatched, but he wasn’t sure if he could truly control them.
Figuring that there would be another opportunity in the future, Mitch started stomping on the eggs. Some had developed fetuses inside, but he didn’t care. Any one ant that lived could spell disaster for the rats in the future.
He followed the trail of eggs into another chamber, this one smaller than the previous room.
Everywhere Mitch looked, he saw eggs. Some fit the size of workers; others were a little bigger for queens. He even saw some empty shells that were about as big as the royal guards.
Nevertheless, he kept trampling all the eggs. That was, until he came across a unique egg in the middle of the room.
His face fell, and he suddenly felt very lucky to have come here now.
