The ape kept trying, but nothing changed, making the baron co and tap it a few tis with his leg.
"Hmph, these bastards are eating their own," the baron spoke.
Clara wanted to tell him to mind his language, but there was only so much she could say to a baron. And that too, to the one she respected a lot.
He tapped the ape’s shoulder for it to get to the side now, and it listened instantly. Elias felt perplexed.
The ape was listening to him a lot more than him.
The baron gripped the worm’s body from both sides and pulled. It took so while, but Theo started seeing it stretching out as if it was finally going to be pulled.
Only for him to see a set of sothing coming out.
At first, he thought it was the crawler’s mouth and the worm had finally ended in length, but he was very wrong.
"Oh no," the baron too, spoke very late and frowned.
Soon, the worm’s body tore at the end. The big worm’s body was pulled out, only for all the blood inside it to co out as if a jet had thrown it out.
Theo and everyone nearby were nearly drowned by the sheer amount of blood, and it was so sudden that Theo inhaled it through his nose and mouth in surprise.
It was only for a mont, but when the baron finally threw it to the side, the damage was already done.
Everyone was covered in gooey blood, and Theo could feel the bad taste of it in his mouth.
Clara was shivering and biting her lips with closed eyes. She wanted to scream with all she had, but she couldn’t. Not now, when she was an attendant.
She instead tried pulling Theo to the side by his hand, only to slip.
Theo got the gist and stepped back after looking at the big open mouth of the worm from the hole.
"THIS FUC—!" The baron controlled himself at the right ti. He was going to curse in front of his young son.
When Theo felt like it couldn’t get worse, he saw a crimson red silhouetted shape hop inside the worm’s mouth.
At first, Theo just looked at the mantis hop in like it was nothing. But with each passing second, when he realized what had just happened, his eyes widened.
"NO! CO BACK!" Theo shouted in a frantic voice and looked down into the hole where the worm was already leaving.
But the mantis was already nowhere to be seen.
Theo saw a light flash inside the hole one ti, but it was dark once again after that.
"Did it... just jump into its mouth?" Clara asked with a confused and horrified expression.
Elias instead went and used the dry cloth from one of the pockets in his belt to start cleaning Theo first, making Clara do the sa.
"I am going to take a dip in that river. When I return, you all shall go later," the baron spoke while flicking his fingers to get the blood away with annoyance.
"B-But father! Mantis just—" Theo was speaking, but the baron kept a finger on his own lips, as if telling Theo to shut up.
"Don’t you know your beast already? It will be back soon after the hunt. Don’t worry about it," the baron spoke and started moving away.
Theo just kept looking at the big hole with worry. Even if anyone could say the mantis was tough enough to handle this, the panic of soone who had taken care of it from the very beginning was overwhelming.
Theo was like a father to the mantis, and his heart felt like this too. It wasn’t just a tad beast.
The mantis sent a few emotions through the bond after sensing what Theo was thinking, and all it tried to convey was that it would be back soon.
"Sigh..." Theo could only sigh and move away from the ground.
"Let’s all have a bath, and then I will go and think about what I should do for these requirents," Theo spoke, making Clara and Elias nod.
They had already cleaned his arms, legs, feet, and hands. All that was left was the rest of his body.
Theo waited for the baron to co back, and it was after a whole twenty minutes that he finally ran toward the river to clean himself.
In so ti, all of them went individually to bathe, and then Clara and Elias washed everyone’s armor and kept it on branches near the campfire to dry.
Fortunately, they all had their normal clothes tucked properly inside the hut for the night.
The baron also increased the aura seeping from his body to help drive away any big crawler that might co their way.
A lot more were going to co, as it wasn’t only the ants they could eat now, but also the many bodies of gigantic crawlers above the ground.
While the baron started smoking the at that was cut cleanly, Elias and Clara went to skin everything and butcher the rest.
Theo stayed inside the hut, trying to understand so things.
It felt like he was at a dead end for the requirent that stated he needed to guide a non-tad beast to growth.
"Guide through growth... what does that an instead of just evolution?" Theo asked himself and wrote so things down in his journal.
"The artifact can’t be asking to evolve a non-tad beast. I don’t have that ability yet... And it wouldn’t give sothing impossible either... so what should growth an except for evolution?"
There was silence as he brainstord for a while, until he ca across so points.
"I could help them level up... without taming them. But how would that be possible? Getting a beast to trust naturally is next to impossible if I don’t keep it from birth..."
"What other than leveling could guiding through growth an?"
Suddenly, the bond between the ant queen and him opened again, and it started showing him things that made his eyes widen.
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