He didn't get much sleep that night. Not only because the sky refused to turn dark—those floating fleshy moon kept glowing like fluorescent nightlights—but also because the giant undead ant beside him snored loud enough to rattle the nearby rocks.
The creature's snores were gravelly and uneven, like an ancient train huffing its last steam.
Every twitch of its colossal legs made Abraham jump. He'd flinched so often that he was starting to suspect his nervous system had turned into some kind of hyperactive alarm bell.
The glowing ant, still nameless and apparently with no concept of personal space, had curled around Abraham like a living fortress. Its enormous mandibles rested atop a jagged boulder, and its fiery eyes seemed to glow with a gentle, otherworldly warmth.
Abraham wasn't sure if the ant was protecting him or just trying to keep warm, but either way, it was strangely comforting.
He stared up at the alien sky, the stars twinkling like distant sparks of magic, and wondered how his life had ended up like this. Most paths had involved avoiding danger. Now here he was, stuck with an undead ant the size of a house, and somehow responsible for it.
Morning came—or at least the closest approximation, since one section of the moon finally dipped behind the mountain, letting the faintest light creep over the horizon.
Abraham stretched and promptly tripped over a rock, landing face-first in the dirt.
The ant's mandibles snapped open with a soft click, its eye flames brightening as if flashing a neon sign: "Warning: Clumsy human detected."
He waved weakly from the ground. "I'm fine! Just testing gravity again."
The ant wasn't impressed.
Abraham sat up, rubbing his aching ribs. His stomach growled with a sound so desperate it might have been mistaken for a dying beast.
"Oh right," he muttered. "Food. Something people usually eat to keep not dying all the time."
There was no sign of civilization nearby. No taverns, no forest berry bushes, not even a suspicious mushroom stall run by a shady old mage. Just "Barren" dirt, scattered bones, and rocks that probably would complain if you stepped on them wrong.
The ant tapped the ground impatiently with one leg.
"What? You got a hidden pantry in there?" Abraham joked, wobbling closer.
Without a word, the ant began digging furiously, faster than any mole he'd ever seen, which was none, actually. Within moments, it uncovered a writhing pile of thick, spiky grubs. The grubs pulsed faintly with a ghostly blue glow.
"You've got to be kidding me," Abraham said, eyeing the grotesque worms.
The ant nudged one of the grubby things toward him.
Abraham stared. The grub wiggled threateningly, like it was plotting revenge on his taste buds.
"I miss toast."
He gulped, and bit into the grub.
It screamed.
He screamed.
The taste was a horrible mix of battery acid, mint, and dirt.
He gagged but swallowed anyway.
"Okay," he gasped, "I'm fine. Totally fine. Who needs taste buds anyway?"
The ant clicked happily, clearly enjoying his suffering.
"Great. You suffer, I click. What a perfect ambiguous symbiosis."
Suddenly, a new ping appeared in Abraham's vision:
[Skill Acquired: Iron Gut — Your digestive system now actively pretends it's okay.]
[Mana Threshold reached. New Necromancy Skill unlocked: Corpse Sense.]
[You can now passively detect corpses within a 30-meter radius. Because that's perfectly normal.]
"Corpse radar," Abraham said, dryly. "What could possibly go wrong?" He continue munching the grub like his life depends on it. Which is actually true to some degree.
Just then, a faint hum filled the air. The ant's mandibles snapped open in alert.
Abraham turned toward the ridge. Three strange shapes scurried into view—small, fast-moving, and decidedly not undead.
Beastlings.
Monsters. Like any other blabla—lings he found in some novel he read most of the time.
They looked like a cross between a coyote and a centipede, wrapped in barbed wire and bad attitudes. Their mouths were vertical slits filled with needle-sharp teeth, and their eyes glowed red like molten embers.
One snarled aggressively.
"Uh... hey?" Abraham said weakly.
The ant snapped to full attention.
The beastlings charged.
Abraham raised a trembling hand. Instinct, or terror, lit up his palm. Ghostly glyphs spiraled outward.
Some foreign words suddenly thrown in his skull like a boulder of alien language thesaurus.
[Spell Cast: Bone Spike]
A jagged spear of bone shot up from the ground, impaling the lead beastling through the chest.
It screeched and collapsed.
The other two paused, unsure.
The undead ant charged forward, mandibles clamping down on one and cracking it like a brittle twig.
The last beastling turned to flee—only to be skewered by another bone spike from Abraham's rapidly twitching fingers.
The dust settled. Three corpses littered the ground.
Abraham looked down at his hands, shaking.
"I think I'm more scared of myself than them."
The ant returned, one beastling leg dangling from its jaws.
"Don't chew with your mouth full," Abraham muttered. "I'm getting a weird craving for calcium."
A new something ringing in his head:
[Corpses detected. Raise Minions? Y/N]
He hesitated, heart pounding.
Then, with a shaky breath:
"Yes."
The corpses twitched and rose, their broken bodies stitched with glowing bone spikes.
The first beastling dragged its broken neck, the second shuffled on three legs, and the third, now a hideous patchwork of bones, gave a crooked little wave.
Abraham waved back, slowly.
"This is officially the weirdest day of my life."
[Necromancer Level Up]
[New Title Earned: Beast Tamer of the Dead]
The undead ant clicked proudly.
Abraham sighed. "Looks like I'm a monster shepherd now. Maybe I should write a mission statement."
Far above, something similar to the sun blinked slowly.
Adventure, along with some digestive trauma along the way, awaited.
***