"You're seriously doing math homework on a Friday night?"
Ryan Okabe looked up from his desk, pencil in hand, and gave a tired shrug. "It's due Monday."
His best friend, Amir, let out a sigh over the voice call. "Man, you're seventeen. You should be at a party. Or gaming. Or literally anything but derivatives."
Ryan gave a weak chuckle. "I guess I'm just an ordinary guy living an ordinary life."
If only he knew.
Three hours later, Ryan blinked at his laptop screen, the soft glow reflecting off his glasses. His head swayed. His eyelids felt like sandbags.
Maybe just a five-minute nap.
He closed his eyes.
He never opened them again.
He woke to darkness.
Not just any darkness, it was a wet, tight, earthy darkness. His body felt... wrong. Compact. Alien. He tried to move and felt his limbs twitch, six of them.
Six.
Panic exploded in his chest. He couldn't scream. He had no mouth. well, not the kind he used to have. Just twitching mandibles.
What the hell is happening!?
He tried to stand and immediately tumbled onto his side. His tiny, chitinous body scraped against dirt. Instinct took over. He clicked his mandibles in irritation and scuttled upright, six legs scrambling for balance.
And that's when it hit him: he could see. Not with eyes like before, but multiple segmented visions, overlapping, twitching with movement. His senses were sharper, clearer but more chaotic. He could feel vibrations in the earth. Taste chemicals in the air.
And all around him there was hundreds of creatures just like him. Crawling, digging, building. A massive tunnel pulsed with life. A hive. A colony.
Species: Worker Ant (Lesser) — Level 1
Title Unlocked: Reincarnated Insect
Quest Activated: Survive the First Day
Oh, no. No no no.
He wasn't dreaming.
He'd been reincarnated.
As a damn ant.
Ryan's mind screamed in disbelief, but some primal part of his insect brain began adapting rapidly. He noticed that his body moved more efficiently now. The dirt no longer felt oppressive it felt navigable.
Another notification popped up in his mind like a UI in a game:
Adaptation Bonus: Former Human Perception + Intelligence retained
Unique Skill Gained: Cognitive Overclock (Lv. 1)
"You think like a human, act like an ant."
He didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like a cheat skill. And if anime rules applied, cheat skills were his ticket to survival.
Just then, a vibration rippled through the tunnel. Ants all around him froze for a split second, then scattered with eerie coordination.
A shadow moved down the tunnel. A monstrous centipede slithered into view ten times his size, glowing green venom dripping from its fangs.
Predator Detected: Venomspike Centipede — Level 5 (Aggressive Carnivore)
Ryan's instincts screamed. The colony wasn't reacting fast enough. This thing was going to kill him. No, not just him, everyone.
He had no idea what to do.
But that's when something inside him clicked. A choice.
Skill Activated: Cognitive Overclock
Neural pathways accelerating…
Battle Instincts: Assimilated
He grabbed a sharp twig lying in the dirt like a lance, scuttled up the wall at an angle, leapt and jammed it into the centipede's eye with all six legs gripping tight.
Critical hit!
+20 XP
Worker Ant (Lesser) — Level Up! [Lv. 2]
Ryan gasped in his mind. It worked. He could fight. He could level up.
He was still just an ant but maybe… he didn't have to stay just an ant forever.
The corpse of the Venomspike Centipede twitched one final time before going still, black ichor leaking from its gouged eye. Around Ryan, dozens of ants swarmed the carcass, using their mandibles to tear it apart and drag the meat deeper into the colony.
Shared Kill Bonus: +10 XP
Worker Ant (Lesser) — Level 3
Ryan felt something change in his body, like a spark behind his exoskeleton. He didn't grow larger, but his movements felt faster, more precise. His mind was sharper, and his thoughts came faster than ever. He wasn't just surviving now.
He was evolving.
New Skill Unlocked: Primitive Weapon Proficiency (Lv. 1)
"Improvised tools are 20% more effective in combat."
He looked down at the twig still clutched in one claw. I'm officially a sword-wielding ant now. Great. That's normal.
As the worker ants resumed their routines, Ryan felt an odd sense of disconnection. Unlike them, he wasn't driven by pheromones or programming. He still had a human's awareness. Free will.
He needed answers. And not the kind you got by licking rocks.
That night or what passed for night underground, Ryan wandered away from the main tunnels. Most worker ants slept or curled in resting chambers. He followed a strange smell… not food, not danger. It was old. Ancient.
His antennae twitched as he moved deeper into a forgotten tunnel. The walls changed they were no longer smooth and uniform, but cracked and dust-covered. Eventually, he arrived at a small chamber, completely abandoned.
At the center was a massive husk. A corpse.
A queen ant. Dead.
But that wasn't the weird part.
The weird part was the egg next to it. Unhatched. Glowing faintly red. And next to the egg, embedded in the wall like a jewel, a pulsating crystal the size of his entire body.
You have discovered a Rare Evolution Node.
Queen's Lineage Detected — Ancient Mutation Active
Quest Unlocked: Rise of the Rogue Ant
Objective: Hatch the Egg. Unlock Your Evolutionary Path.
Ryan froze. Wait, hatch it? How the hell am I supposed to hatch a queen egg?
Prerequisites:
– Reach Level 5
– Defeat 3 Predators
– Survive a Brood War
He gulped or at least simulated the insect version of it.
"Okay. No big deal," he muttered mentally. "All I have to do is survive monster-infested tunnels, kill a bunch of predators, and stop a war."
Cognitive Overclock Activated
Internal Map Created
The skill laid out a mental map of the colony and its unexplored surroundings. Dangerous zones, thermal vents, predator lairs all marked. A blinking red zone labeled "Brood Sector – Rival Colony Activity Detected" stood out to the east.
Ryan tapped the ground with his claws. "If this queen egg is real... and if I can control evolution... then I might not just be an ant anymore. I might be a king."
He turned back toward the colony.
Time to train. Time to hunt. Time to level up.
The nest had no idea what was coming.