Becoming a Monster

He saw that Fenrir was still up on all fours silently watching the two leave before he laid down in the same spot when Noah's figure disappeared up the stairs.

....

A few hours before Noah fought against the Tier one zombie, the students from the cafeteria had just finished up the ants and were heading towards the campus gate, but they all had solemn moods.

Everyone was walking silently with most of them with their heads down, the group that numbered more than a hundred were now down by at least 30 just from the altercation with the ants. They didn't realize that ants could be so strong now when they were just a casual insect that you could just step on and be done with it.

However ants were always fascinating creatures even when compared to their smaller counterparts. They could lift up to 10-50x its body weight! But more importantly, they had a group like mentality and were very efficient.

When they noticed the group of trespassers, what they considered intruders. They all sounded the alarm to alert the rest of the colony and before Ishii and the gang realized what was happening. From the 30 or so ants they were on the surface. The number easily doubled within a few seconds.

Even though the students group outnumbered the ants, not everyone there was a fighter or even had the intentions to fight. And with the sizes of the ants, their exoskeletons were that much harder to break through.

With the ants hard shell, it gave the group no room to go on the offensive because they wouldn't be able to take out an individual ant fast enough. Only a few, like Mark, Ishii and Bailey, who had ways to penetrate their shells could move could perform such a feat.

However Mark would have to expend more mana just to take down one ant quickly compared to trying to whittle it down slowly and regulate his mana use. While Ishii would have to rely on his unique skill to either take half of the ants strength to add it to his own or take half of its constitution to weaken its shell.

Ishii seemed to have it easier based on his one skill alone, but every skill has its faults. To use his skill, all of his attention has to be on the monster or person he's targeting, even a brief lapse of concentration could undo the skill again and he has to perform his stance over to restart the skill.

And then there was Bailey who could extract her mana to cause her spear to emit intense vibrations that could drill through the hard shells. But once again, that revolved around her having to have a high mana capacity to fight for an extended period of time.

Luckily their group consisted of a few people who could act as a frontline. Paul stood tall and eager to show off his new skill.

"Come…" He neither yelled nor whispered, but he used his weapon in hand to strike at his shield that activated his new skill provoke. The first wave of eats became provoked, before their heads turned, their antennas seemed to point towards him first. And while they swarmed, Paul activated his unique skill to turn his body and his clothes to a stone like texture that covered his shield too. Otherwise his shield would've been destroyed doing the fight of the King Zombie.

With so many people in a group participating in earlier fights, they were able to increase their chances of getting loot. The people that benefited the most were the group that 'participated' in the fight against the King zombie. Most if not all of the main contenders were able to get a skill of some kind that was exchanged with someone else. Everyone had a role to fulfill if they were to get through the fight without casualties. However not everyone was willing to put themselves in their roles.

This resulted in complete chaos in the place that became a battlefield. The scene quickly became everyone for themselves and people began to form the groups they were familiar with. People like Bailey and the few people she was close to had grouped up together. Mark, Jas and even Ailetta had formed their group, while Neal and Regina formed theirs.

But there were still tens of people who were left out. While the groups were fighting off the creatures, ants flanked from the sides to secure their unresisting food.

There was no getting away from the ants when a person still only had the stats of a level one person. If the ant pincers didn't outright kill them, they were either picked up and being dragged whole, while screaming in pain and calling for help, or they died of excessive blood loss after the ant was killed carrying them away.

The battlefield was utter chaos, but hope wasn't lost. Throughout the scene, individuals began to shine to overturn the situation.

While Paul could distract up to 5 ants at a time, Bailey would use that chance to take out one ant at a time, but she wasn't alone. Blake tried to repeat Bailey's stabbing motions without any results, but his squirrel provided more support than he ever could. The ants seemed to not be able to feel the squirrel digging through the head of its exoskeleton. It took close to a full minute just for the squirrel to breach their shell and it could chew unhindered. A full minute where during life and death was a lot of time.

Isabelle began to be more proactive during the fight. Healing wouldn't play much of a factor until after the fight had ended so he used her other ability that came from being a priest, an ability called soothing mind. It wasn't necessarily a great spell, but most skills, if used as intended, could become more than useful.

And during a fight where young adults had to fight for their life, her spell was much needed to Bailey and others where their nervousness could cause them to make a mistake that couldn't be forgiven.

There was no use for her to attack the ants unless she wanted to be a distraction. The clanging sounds could be heard going on all around in the distance. Not many could penetrate or even make a dent through their hard shells.

But Mark and Ishii provide much relief to the ants' numbers. The ants were at least level four or higher and a much more dangerous threat than even the first stage of running zombies if the risk of infections were not in play. Just with a few kills, they were able to level up and since they were in large groups, it wasn't hard for them to retreat and immediately apply their stats.

This scene of leveling up in battle was happening sporadically in the midst of the chaos.

Mark was finally able to show his worth, the first thing he increased was his magic, only only increasing the amount of mana he had, but also subtly increasing the effects of his aura. The aura that cloaked his sword and was used as an extra layer grew sharper than what it once was, and with the priest that continued to follow him enchanting Mark's sword with his skill, the lethality of the sword rose. Using all of his strength, he hacked barbarically on the incoming ants. With a few heavy focus swings, he was able to take them down.

He didn't have to worry about the danger around him while Jasmine continued to support him. She was constantly consuming her mana to restrict the ants as much as possible, luckily the setting played in her favor since using the surrounding plant life consumed less mana. She considered trying to use the ability in the past, when she was able to crush the zombie under the pressure of the grass, but she doubted she could do the same to the ants that were far tougher than them. Not to mention the skill drained her of all her mana.

Yet surprisingly on the battlefield, someone else was contributing just as much as Mark and Ishii. Ailetta was giving her all in this fight, she made sure to not try to save anything. This fight meant more to her than the people just fighting to stay alive. She knew her faults and her main one was that she was weak. She had thought hard about what she could to help her grow and her answer was to do like Jas did before her, try to come up with her own spells.

Creating an entirely different spell was almost impossible, at least at this stage where people still weren't sure what mana was. However changing and adapting from an already created skill wasn't too far fetched. She had already learned when she interacted with Fenrir, that she could control the output of mana concerning her spell that could make the spell stronger.

What she put into action now was almost the same. She had seen the corpses in the area and her eyes tunneled on just one in particular. Summoning the dark glob that resembled a slime, the scene played out differently than before. There was a frown showing on Ailettas face as she concentrated hard before the slime began to separate into two. And after separating, Ailette furrowed her brow even more, to inject the slime with enough mana to make both the original size as before.

She used one of the slimes to reanimate the giant rat that took Ishii so much time and effort to bring down. Thankfully the rat only died from blood lost so it had all of its limbs still intact. Even though the rat was dead and any skills it may have had was gone, its strength was still there.

The rat's teeth were thicker and more deadly than the squirrels as it was able to repeatedly chomp into the ants head before killing it. And because it was dead, it didn't matter to it when the ants it attacked bit into it.

While the rat was rampaging, she used the chance to inject the other half of the slime into one of the bigger ants that had fallen and she was able to wreak havoc on the battlefield with those two along. There was really no way for the ant she controlled to kill another one without much difficulty so she used the ant to bite the legs of the surrounded ants so even if she didn't secure the kill, she would still get the experience from it. Noah was slowly wearing off on her.

The entire fight was a bitter battle, but the chest at the end and the notifications of them leveling up was a huge reminder that struggling to survive gets you rewarded. Ailetta herself was able to go up by 3 levels alone, causing her to catch up with Mark who grew to level 7 from the fight.

Night still hasn't arrived yet. Even though they were tired, they wanted to at least leave the campus before finding shelter. Their next destination was the main gate, where true terror awaited them.

.....

A/N: I was going to skip over this scene at first, but felt it necessary since this would lead up to them meeting the zombie at the gates. Plus you can see the development that people are going through besides Noah.