Behind an especially big rock, there was a crevice. Just in the middle, there was a depression in the ground and a deepening in the cave's wall.

Alice was sitting there, sampling stones' roughness with her soft parts. Having watched blankly her hands trembling in the post adrenalin rush for a while, the girl wondered was her decision right or not. Was even her little assumption right or wrong?

Given, the struggle against tigers had been purely handmade and the whole double reward was pretty questionable.

First, Alice had the situation under control. The battle was definitely risky, but her blood essence boost went unused. Second, the girl was more than capable of shooting the monsters down from her bow the second they showed up in order of receipt, nice and easy. She would have gotten half the BP, yes, yet spend minuscule effort in comparison.

The bow and arrows are working now, but...

Alice couldn't not stick out her neck here and not test herself in melee ever. Leaving the giant snake alone, any super-robust monster would simply ignore arrows. Or an excessively fast one. Watching over her own agility and perception had made the girl view the otherwise extremely well-working archery skill as potentially obsolete. This was also the reason preventing her from evolving it.

Though might be the system gave me it not just to fuck around, yep. Still, really need a glaive mastery, the girl touched the sword's handle and thought. Her own skill with it was inadequate, fully basing on her fantastical body control, while spear mastery covered like only half possible techniques. Not enough points yet.

That was one decision she came up with.

Now then...

Frowningly Alice inspected the staff and especially the metal knob. The blast had crumpled it somewhat. It would destroy the blade. Or at least the edge.

Just one field test had made blood blast into her potentially strongest weapon against monsters. One drop was like one explosive round. Even the snake would feel it... if I can get it inside. Head, inside its head.

Alice really wanted to practice this ability, learn to focus it, direct the energy if it was even possible. Only, she clearly had no nearly enough blood energy to spare.

Cultivation, all came down to cultivation.

A magic stone flashed through the air and soon was caught. Fingers covered in bright blood touched it, extracted contained magic slowly, but surely. Alice breathed in mana in the air too, comparing them. Soon, all four magic stones were consumed and the girl could draw a conclusion.

One low-tier magic stone contained four hours of cultivation worth of mana.

Meanwhile, her heart reached 84% blood integration from 80%. It also put the so desirable fruit of all the girl's labors at the countdown of 64 hours of meditation, likely more since her heart's appetite grew constantly. Alice's intentions moved onto a more violent path naturally...

Twenty evolved monsters, give or take. It would cover a level, too. Two birds with one stone. Three birds, I need to find that damn 'closest nest'.

Yep, it's decided.

The cultivation session invigorated Alice sufficiently, even blunted down her awakening hunger and the girl jumped on her feet.

Wait, what if it won't be the closest monster nest?

No matter how the girl racked her brain, she wouldn't figure answer.

 

Through the stone jungles, Alice silently strode into the ant territory with the glaive in hand. Passages grew more narrow and complicated, and from time to time the girl had to climb up and measure the distance to the cave's wall.

Clap, clap, a familiar clatter sounded. Alice struck the ground two times and hid nearby. Soon, a small worker ant appeared.

Lucky!

Alice ambushed it from behind. At the last moment, she saw its antennas probing the air and the ant twitched before the blade chopped it down.

Air vibrations. Must be. Should remember that.

After looting a magic stone, Alice congratulated herself with a bittersweet candy and drugged the corpse to the base of a particularly large stalagmite group she had noticed before. Every of five columns was massive as a tree trunk with intersections high above the ground.

Five minutes later the girl was inhaling vapours of mana and waiting.

Ten minutes then passed... Fifteen minutes in and the girl felt very stupid staring from above at the last ant bit vanishing in silent flames. The only good thing she could comfort herself with, she consumed a quarter of its mana share. Ant corpse and its magic stone contain fifty-fifty mana?

Well.

Again, Alice entered the labyrinth. In a few minutes, she returned with a headless worker ant on the end of her glaive, tossed its little body before the stalagmites and knitted her brows. Hearing new clatter at that time, the girl ran for it without concealing herself and found yet another worker ant.

"Something is going on," she murmured. Three evolved ants at the same time, and levels 4, 4, even 3? Alice closed her eyes and sniffed the air. Lifted her hands high, feeling the currents.

What she sensed... was magic.

It was flowing from a certain place in the cave, stronger and stronger like a tide.

I have a bad feeling.

Hurriedly Alice butchered the poor ants and trekked into the depths. Twice she had to avoid ant tramps, and traversing through the stone jungles with a goal in mind wasn't that easy, but the magic source appeared surprisingly close, just a hundred meters from her fancied ambush spot.

The jungles ended with a big free space, big as three or four tennis courts, and there was it, the source. It could boast wide mouth, big fangs, and size of a car.

No, a little tank!

It was a tiger corpse. Giant tiger corpse. Absolutely the True Big Brother Tiger of four cute little kitties Alice had had the audacity to touch!

The girl's stomach flipped the moment she saw the lord bastard and she felt dizzy to the point of almost hugging a rock she was hiding behind. To her immense fortune, the giant tiger was very dead with mutilated fur, crushed bones and a miniature pond of blood under. Its Alice's arm long claws were plunged deep into a no less dead ant, and a second was lying by, ripped into shreds. Both Monsters were car-sized giants, too.

Alice gaped at the slaughterhouse, completely freaked out.

Blood was everywhere. Yellow spatters mostly, rare red stains. Dozens of ants split open with rushed heads and bodies, their inner organs decorating the rocks. The tiger's warm guts were spilled out.

In the wretched, vile mess, ants were swarming busily, painted in colours of damning enmity all the same as everything there. With her own eyes, Alice saw a little ant cannibalizing its kin and evolving on spot, shrouded by an ominous glow.

I... heard... nothing.

A fucking war had happened next door to the girl, and she had no idea!

There were almost no flames yet, but she felt a frightening mana pressure. The dungeon itself seemed to strain to carve through this field of death.

Alice gulped down and breathed deeply. Licked her dried lips.

I want to steal it.

Did she mean mana, experience and battle points, or magic stones of level 10+ monsters? Needless to say.

All of it.

There were 'only' two dozens of ants left, most of them already evolved, but no one yet level 10 or above. As Alice gazed at the tunnel the rodents were coursing in-out and which she had missed initially, the obvious anthill had no more of them.

The passage was too small to contain tank-sized monsters and the evolved tiger blocking it must have been too much of a threat.

Or maybe it was looking for its brother Alice had killed, the girl didn't know.

What she did know though, was that many ants were level 8 or 9 and the place would produce a ton of mana for their grow minute by minute.

A new invasion was not guaranteed at all, between the anthill and the local boss tiger there shouldn't have been more apex predators nearby.

Add little ant patrols, a dozen or so... Worker ants, soldier ants, hunter ants, armored ants, the enemies unknown.

I need a distraction.

Alice was hardly a decent mouthful for the anthill with all her tricks.

Something.

Thousands of thoughts flickered in the girl's mind.

Distraction...

The blood on the rocks started to blaze, turning the scene into a flame field. And, when the girl saw ants gathering in a circle as by beckoning of a higher force, it almost audibly clicked.

Oh.

 

Pretty soon,

"Ha-ha-ha," a laugh resonated through the corner of the dungeon, joyful and slightly crazed. Without a timely idea, Alice really would have stomached the steal and walked off. Now, she didn't have to.

"Do it. Yes."