Hearing that I ran down the hall, turning the corner to see a small ant. The smallest ant I’ve seen so far, lying on the ground covered in a blue goopy substance. Smoke omitted from the wooden table-like furniture in front of the small ant and the blue goop was overflowing out a large broken glass vial. 

“Wha… Whaaat?!” 

Other than there being familiar shapes of glass bottles and tubes similar to the ones in an actual science lab, the whole set up looked eerily similar to a typical mad scientist’s lair. The room was even messier than the hallway. This time there were a few tables lined with vials and glass bottles each containing different colored liquids. The bubbling and crackling came from the connected tubes and bottles each releasing liquid. Small colored mists spurted out different bottles periodically while the liquid flowed into another container changing color before flowing into a different glass and repeating the cycle. 

“Oh… oh noo… I didn’t mean for this to happen… Now I’m all wet and covered in sticky goop… waahh!… hmph but I need to keep trying or her plant is gonna die!” 

Barely speaking over the loud sounds happening around her, the small ant perked herself up and got up wiping off the goop best she could. Tsuwo approached her cautiously then lightly tapped her butt. 

“Eeekp!” 

Surprised from Tsuwo’s touch the small ant jumped quickly retreating behind her table scattering around the mess from the initial experiment explosion. 

“Ahem… the queen finally hatched and she requests to meet with you” 

“O-oh it’s just you… I’m v.. very sorry I haven’t noticed when you came in, y- you sc… scared me.” 

Peeping her head out from behind the table she looked at Tsuwo before meeting my gaze. She quickly scuttled out and stopped in front of me bowing her head. 

“My… my queen! I am terribly sorry for this mess and I’m terribly sorry for not noticing you entering, I… I am glad to finally meet you! I a… am at your service for anything you need! I am good at healing and I can help with creating useful things. I can even suggest plenty of ideas that can help this colony, i... is there anything you require of me?” 

Despite loudly chirping out to me, it was barely louder than a mouse’s squeaking. The whole situation caught me in a trance, because of how cute she was behaving. All I could do was stand there captured by her adorableness. She reminded me of my super cute younger friend from high school, she was short, shy and barely talked louder than anyone. Other than that, everything she did was too damn cute making my heart skip a few beats occasionally. Composing myself and gathering my train of thought back I look around the room examining her before speaking to the small ant. Aside from being very small, her coat colored pale red and her jaws thin like surgical tweezers, which seems like it's to help her carefully pick things up or do things with extreme precision. Looking at her I felt like a strong wind would break her fragile body. I have this sudden strong urge to protect her at all costs.

Name:

Race: Fire Ant

Class: Magic Scientist

LV  10

HP: 500/500 (green)

MP: 2,000/2,000 (blue)

SP: 200/200 (orange)

Offense: 100 Defense: 500 Magic: 2,000       

Skills (17): 

[Hard Skin LV 3] [Strength LV 2] [Life LV 2] [Accuracy LV 7] [Touch Sensory LV 5] [Smell Sensory LV 5] [Vision LV 5] [Movement LV 5] [Intelligence LV 7] [Fire-Breath LV 2] [Resistance: Fire LV 6] [Bite LV 3] [Research LV 6] [Mana Recovery LV 4] [Magic: Elemental LV 5] [Heal LV 6] [Reasoning LV 5] [Science LV 3 (Intelligence+Research+Reasoning)]

My goodness she’s fragile. I cannot let a single harm befall her, ever! But this is new, she has 3 skills combined to make a bonus skill.. So there’s certain skill-sets that’ll create new skills? Well her skills and class do correlate with one another, plus her [Heal LV 6] is pretty good too.

“Ahem… Yes, I do require one thing of you and... apology accepted, please raise your head so I can speak to you in earnest.” 

Raising her head slowly our eyes finally met and in that instant my heart skipped a few beats. 

She’s looking at me with the most adorable puppy eyes I can’t even bear looking away, I wanna pet her, I wanna hug her, I just wanna... aaaahhhhh! 

“M… my queen…?” 

Pink flower petals appeared fluttering about around her face with the whole atmosphere around her suddenly colored in a cutesy pastel pink as the small ant called out to me. 

OH MY GOODNESS, I can feel all of my sensors to protect this precious thing no matter what. I swear to goodness gracious that if anything bad were to happen to her I’m gon- 

“Ahem.. ahem sorry I was lost in my thoughts. As the new queen I am giving you a name, it’ll be a lot easier on me if you had a name.” 

“Oh.. a name, I am truly grateful, my queen… please by all means.” 

She bows her head awaiting her name. 

“Hmm… Azuwei shall be your name.” 

Unable to hold back my desire I reach out to her and gently pet her head. 

“Az.. Azu.. Azuwei, Azuwei, Azuwei… thank you so much my queen!” 

She happily squeaks back at me as she raises her head. 

“Gweh!” 

Letting out a cute squeak of my own; in that moment, I could have sworn I felt my soul leave my body and come back instantaneously. Tsuwo fidgets in the corner as she watches the entire scene unfold. She was unable to hold back due to Azuwei’s vicious cuteness attacks so she also pets her. 

Truly her cuteness is a weapon forged by the Gods. 

Azuwei softly squeaks in joy while me and Tsuwo pet her, a puppy receiving the love from her two parents. After a minute went by, Tsuwo and I introduced our names to her and she adorably repeated them several times to imprint them into her mind. Curiosity finally breaking my stupor from Azuwei’s cuteness. 

“So what did you mean by ‘her plant is gonna die’?” 

“Oh.. My queen, Ariki, the ant taking care of our garden told me that our important plant is dying and asked me if I could help. So I was figuring out a way to create a potion to help the plant back to a healthy condition. Unfortunately, I... I put a little too much sturoge juice in my sticky goop.” 

Sturoge juice? Seriously these names...

Looking down sadly she softly slapped her face, perking herself up again. 

Aahhhhh! If you keep this up I’m probably gonna need to heal from your cuteness attacks. 

“I’m sorry to hear, I’m sure you can find a way. You seem very intelligent, Azuwei. I wish I could be of use, but I just don’t know enough of this world yet. Don’t give up, I believe you can do it” 

I pet her head hoping my words give her a boost of confidence. 

“M… my queen” 

Azuwei looked up at me with teary eyes.

“Understood, if you believe in me then I know I can do this, I’ll try again right away! And… and… don’t… don’t give up too… you can help me another time when you know more… I… I believe you can do it” 

Near the end of her reply, she happily fidgeted averting her eyes a little. Azuwei’s last act not only affected my soul but it seemed like Tsuwo’s soul was also instantaneously thrown and shoved back into our bodies. 

Ahh… this, this is heaven isn’t it? Must be nice to be so youthful.... Wait! Why am I talking like an old lady?! 

“Mhm, tha… thank you Azuwei you’re very kind which reminds me I should go visit the ant taking care of the garden and name her too. I’ll leave you to your experiments and tell her that you’ll be finished in no time.” 

Trying my best to keep a composed queen-like figure I nod and turn to exit her laboratory. Azuwei simply smiles and waves goodbye, resuming her experiments as we leave. Tsuwo then leads me up a few more levels.

Tsuwo’s mood has improved, somehow I can feel it pretty well… seems like she does have an adorable soft side too hehe

The level we were on is a couple levels below the exit of the ant hill, looking up I see light shining through hitting the wall at an angle below. On the wall appeared to be a giant crude drawing of an ant queen. 

Probably some sort of memorabilia of the previous queen, this colony seems to really care about their last queen. So they Do have emotions. I wonder what kind of queen she was. Huh.. so her butt was really that b-

Bumping into Tsuwo’s butt, I apologize and look in front of me to see a door. Flowers and vines prominently growing out the sides of the doors and encasing a bit of the walls around the doors. 

Looks like I’m gonna enter some rabbit hole and end up in wonderland. 

Now leading the way in we immediately enter an enormous garden. Sunlight shone through the ceilings. Vines and grass grew all over the walls coloring the room many shades of green. To the left end of the room trees were scattered about, bearing fruits of all different kinds.  To the right end of the room, had waves of flowers standing tall reflecting the sunlight off it’s petals, emphasizing their beautiful colors. Cutting the whole room in half was a small river flowing from up top a hill on the right side of the room to the left, down a hole in the wall. At the base of the hill, a huge plant resembling an almond was leaning over almost falling, beside it was a worker ant about half the size of the almond-like plant. She tended to the soil around the plant using her jaws and front legs to clump the dirt around it, keeping the bud from falling over from its own weight. We approached the ant, Tsuwo then gently tapped the butt of the ant to get it’s attention.

“Ya’ll better have the cure you were promisin’ cuz this plant ain’t gunna last longer than a twig in a windstorm.”

“The queen has finally been born and she is here on important business”

“Oh crud, what timin’ I didn’t even get to prepare my queen’s special salad to celebrate her birth! Not to mention I’m covered in muk, wanted to freshen up to give a good ol’ impression.”

The large worker ant gave the soil a few more good pats before turning around, inspecting me. She nodded and with her front legs gave me a thumbs up, or something that looked to be that expression.

“Woo wee! My oh, my! Our new queen is quite the looker! I’d say we’re in good jaws, you must be stunnin’ my fellow workers as you waltz on by, you sure as’ got me stunned.”

“Wha.. why thank you, I don’t usually show off, but... I am quite proud of my appearance... hee hee...”

 With the shower of compliments from her I stand a little taller to show off my beauty, my ego grows a little more. I let out a soft giggle with my front leg lifting up as if to cover my smirk.

Ho ho ho ho! So I am beautiful by Ant Queen standards, this is my first being called “beautiful” as an insect hee hee I’m really glad some things haven't changed for me.

“So, what sort of ‘Official Queen Business’ are you on, ya majesty?”

“Oh I wanted to name my top subjects first, seeing how all 4 of you are LV 10 and that it’ll make it easier for me to communicate with you.”

“Oooh.. I see. We ain’t exactly got names, but we get by just fine. If this is what our new stunnin’ queen wants I’ll be happy to oblige. Say what did she name you?”

The worker ant shook herself like how a dog would dry itself and rubbed off some of the dirt from her face before pointing at Tsuwo.

“My queen gave me the honor of being named Tsuwo. And I am quite proud to have it.”

She stood tall too, showing off her name to the worker ant. I couldn’t help but smile, behind my jaws, at how cute she is. After she shook off most of the muk I got a better look at her. Her coat was brownish red, pincers were wide and shovel-like, and seeing her stand next to Tsuwo made it clear that she’s bigger in height and body mass. As threatening as my hardened soldier ant is, this worker ant can probably go toe to toe with her.

Wow.. she’s huge.. She’s like my other friend, which makes it 3 for 3… Did they all get reincarnated too and don’t remember who they were?? Funny enough they both share their way of speaking too. She is a bit of a country hick, the only one to be attending high school and living far out of the city. Everytime someone new meets her I can always hear them say “She’s huge” under their breath. Aside from Isa being really tall she wasn’t packing the same mass as her. She told us many times before that the work around the family farm is why she’s like that, but… What Kind of Amazonian Farm Work Does That???

“You’re huge...”

“Aw shucks... Thank you, ya majesty, I get that a lot. It’s just me working my garden, it’s how I was able to be how I am now.”

“You’re welcome… hmmm… Saku, from now on, that will be your name. I hope it is to your likings”

“Hmmm…”