Battle with Mutant Ants

The large gecko had just finished rubbing its head against Tom's hand when it snatched the BB biscuit from his hand. It had barely swallowed it when it sensed Tom's intention, immediately blinking its large eyes and waiting for his next move.

"Since you love biscuits so much, I'll call you Biscuit," Tom said. Naming things wasn't his forte, but to him, the name was more like a code, which now served as a bond between him and the gecko.

The gecko let out three excited chirps, expressing its joy, which Tom understood as acceptance.

After finishing the armor, Tom had a meal and drank some water, contemplating adding more weapons. He found a heavy file that he couldn't carry before, now hanging it on Biscuit's back.

He had three melee weapons but lacked ranged weapons. Tom detached the jetpacks from the back of the Gundam, two cylindrical structures with thin outer layers and hollow insides, each the size of two hands clasped together. Then, he had Biscuit drag out a large bottle from a drawer, filled with kerosene.

The kerosene was leftover from when he used it to ignite plastic parts, and he stored it in the drawer after using only a bit. Carefully pouring the kerosene into a circular container, he sealed it with transparent plastic wrap and hung it on Biscuit's back. However, he had run out of matches in his room, and without a lighter, the kerosene was temporarily useless. He would keep an eye out for matches or similar fire-starting tools when collecting resources elsewhere.

With no food left in his rented room, Tom had to go out to search. Fortunately, with Biscuit, he could reach high places he couldn't before, which might lead to finding more food. Since there were so many ants below the second floor, he decided to explore the fourth floor, also checking for other survivors, as each additional person meant more strength.

Before leaving, he glanced back at the picture frame with his sister, sighing and letting Biscuit knock it down. The frame shattered on the floor, and Tom cut out the parts with their faces, folding them and putting them in his backpack.

His sister was his only family in this world. Although they hadn't seen each other since they were twelve, this longing had always been in his heart. With all the chaos and deaths during this shrinking event, it seemed unlikely they could return to this building, so he decided to take the photo with him.

Leaving the room, Tom decided to explore other rooms again. With Biscuit, he could explore beyond just beds and tables, now able to search the floor and kitchen areas.

In his sister's room, which he couldn't return to, Tom found four needles of different lengths, which could be used as makeshift spears, so he attached them to Biscuit's back.

The manager's room yielded no significant finds; all he found was alcohol, but there were only empty bottles on the floor.

There was a refrigerator in the glasses guy's room, but with his current size, there was no way he could open it. However, he found a box of Watson's milk nearby. If it had been canned, it would have been useless, but since it was in a paper box, Tom used a large knife to puncture the tin foil sealing the straw hole, had Biscuit knock it over, and inserted the straw to drink.

Previously, he could suck through a straw just by opening his mouth, but now, it was as big as his mouth. He struggled to insert the straw and sucked twice with no success. His current body was too small, and the suction from his lungs wasn't enough to draw out the milk. Tom, frustrated, pulled out the big knife and vigorously shaved the opening where the straw was inserted until it was wide enough to let the milk flow out. Finally, he successfully drank the sweet and fragrant milk.

It was a bit too sweet for him now, but after a long day of strenuous activity and significant energy and nutrient consumption, he couldn't rely on biscuits (not the gecko) and pure water to satisfy his hunger; his body couldn't handle it.

As Tom drank milk, Biscuit, the food lover, naturally wouldn't just watch. It drank much faster than Tom, its tongue darting out, licking at a rate that seemed almost like a pile driver, faster than the milk flowed out.

After drinking most of the milk, both Tom and Biscuit were satisfied, and they resumed their journey.

Exiting through the window, they arrived at the ventilation window of the stairs. Tom cautiously looked inside, wanting to see if the ants were still there, only to be shocked.

The stairs were full of ant corpses, large and small, numbering in the hundreds. Unable to understand the situation, he let Biscuit carefully climb in, confirming that there were no live ants around before dropping down to inspect the scene.

All the ants, regardless of size, had their heads cut off or torn open by sharp objects. Even the smallest ones, as well as the medium and large ones, had their heads hollowed out.

Tom checked several bodies, but none had any gems.

Were they killed by someone? Could shrunken people have such ability?

Tom thought of the green gem. Since he could communicate with Biscuit using the green gem, could others use gems to enhance their combat abilities?

But upon further inspection, he dismissed this speculation.

Perhaps gems like rubies could indeed enhance combat abilities, but the deaths of these ants were not caused by humans. Several small ants were tightly holding each other, perishing together.

They all had the same color, and if one didn't look closely, they would appear to be the same group of ants. With so many of them dead together, Tom felt this was a battle between ants!

He remembered being chased up by the ants from the first and second floors. When he arrived, there was also a group of ants on the third floor. If they were ants from another nest, then there must have been a war between the two sides, a war over territory and survival rights.

Only the small ones that hadn't been separated were visible among the dead. The medium and large ones seemed to have had their bodies handled by the victors, who dug out the gems.

This also explained why the ant colony mobilized soldier ants. Tom had initially thought that the commotion caused by Biscuit had prompted the queen to mobilize the soldiers to kill. Now, it seemed that the main purpose was likely the conflict with the ant colony on the third floor, with dealing with Biscuit being just an additional task.

This was just his speculation, but based on the scene, he felt it was close to the truth.

This situation also had its advantages. With the ants from the first and second floors in a standoff with those from the third floor, and seemingly fewer ants on the third floor, Tom, caught in the middle, had some room to maneuver. Regardless of which side won, after such heavy casualties, they probably wouldn't intensify their search for survivors immediately.

Tom immediately mounted Biscuit and directed it to climb the stairs to the fourth floor. Perhaps the fourth floor belonged to the ants from the third floor, but perhaps not. Either way, with the ant forces depleted, he decided to take the risk and explore.

Sitting on Biscuit's back, Tom arrived on the fourth floor effortlessly.

However, as soon as they arrived, they saw several ant corpses ahead, large and small. Tom checked them; besides the small ones, the heads of the medium and large ants had also been hollowed out, but no gems were found inside.

"It seems like the war between the two groups of ants spread to the second floor, so the ants from the first and second floors are stronger, or maybe there are more of them?"

As he reached the corridor, Tom saw a familiar scene: three large ants and one medium-sized one were surrounding a human corpse, feasting on it.

Tom, burning with anger, waved his large knife and shouted, "Biscuit, attack!"

Biscuit quickly climbed over, and the four ants noticed the situation and turned to face them.

With Tom armored and wielding a longer handle on his Guan Gong's blade, his combat prowess had increased several levels. Biscuit wore a helmet; with one headbutt, it could knock a large ant flying. With another bite, it swallowed the medium-sized one whole.

With its tough skin and plastic protection on its abdomen, the large ants couldn't harm it immediately. Tom, riding on its back, swung his Guan Gong's blade like a Three Kingdoms warrior, beheading the ants one after another.

All four ants, of varying sizes, yielded gems when their heads were opened—two red ones, one yellow one, and one small green one.

Biscuit ate the yellow one, and after some thought, Tom dismantled the Guan Gong's blade, turning it into a single-edged sword, and opened the abdomen of one large ant, where he found a small red gem. He repeated the process with the other two, all of them yielding gems, albeit small ones.

Most of the corpses at the stairwell were large ants, and if those large ants had their gems swallowed by these three, how could they become small?

"Did they digest them?" Tom, covered in slime and holding his big knife, turned his head in confusion, looking at Biscuit, who had just eaten the yellow gem.

Startled by his bloody appearance and expression, Biscuit quickly retreated to the corner.

Tom smiled and waved, "Come back, I won't cut you open to find the gems, no matter how much I want to find out the truth." Maybe Biscuit would slowly digest the gems after swallowing them.

There were seven large ant corpses at the stairwell, but only three gems were found. Tom looked around, then called Biscuit to mount quickly. There were probably other large ants nearby, and he needed to leave quickly.

The doors along the corridor were all tightly closed, and the large ants could crawl in through the gaps, but Tom couldn't. Since he couldn't enter that way, he decided to use the old method and climb out through the ventilation window on the fourth floor staircase.

As expected, there were ants outside the window too. Tom went directly to the nearest Room 401.

He remembered that a pair of sisters lived in this room, their appearance was average, but they looked stunning after putting on makeup. He had encountered them a few times while going up and down the stairs, but Tom, who was not used to interacting with people, didn't say much to them.

The girls usually dressed up nicely, but the room was surprisingly messy. Although it was clear that it was a girl's room, the scattered clothes and the messy contrasted sharply with their usual glamorous image.

On the messy bed, he even found a man's socks, and there was a large patch of foul-smelling white stains on the sheet, which had already solidified. As a man, he naturally knew what it was.

Tom rode Biscuit around the bed but found nothing. Still not giving up, he went down to the floor and found a body with its flesh gnawed off under the bed.

It was a female body. Tom also saw a pool of bloodstains at the foot of the bed from afar. He followed it and found another smaller bloodstain not far away. Following the intermittent bloodstains, he found another body, also female.

It should be the two sisters.

The semen stains on the bed and the man's socks indicated that there was a man in the room last night, but why were there only two female bodies?

Tom continued searching and found a third body near the door, a male one.