Chapter 6: Third Day

The ant workers—black-shelled insectoids, each about the size of a human child. True to their caste, they clustered together, mining the tree crystals.They mined bare-handed. If you faced them unarmored, a human would be killed in no time. With a centipede exoskeleton, you might manage a fair fight. But my equipment was just a mass-produced Arakane. Its affordability was one of its selling points; I didn’t expect much from its specs, and frankly, I didn’t care to find out.So instead, I waited. And…