Ascension of the Sylvan Cosmos

Chapter 13. Fire Ants and Experience Points Explanation.

In another part of the forest, in a deep cave not too far away from Liu Shu, a seductive woman lay on a bed made from leaves, branches, and a handcrafted sheet to insulate her from the cold, rocky floor.

In addition, about twenty bugs the size of a large dog crawled around and carried mushed food in oval shapes, stacking it probably for the woman to eat later. All these insects had six legs, a large thorax, and a pair of large and powerful mandibles.

They were ants.

The seductive woman was also not very human-like. While she was the shape of a human woman, she had compound eyes and a pair of long antennae sticking from her forehead. Inside her mouth, there were a set of powerful teeth and fangs.

Her body was the size of an average female, and the dress she wore had a reddish texture and also looked like many layered carapaces. This dress was also opened on the back, allowing for her own extra appendage to stick outside.

It was an extremely thick and large thorax attached to where her tailbone would be.

The color of the carapace matched her eyes and hair, a beautiful red color.

She was the <Fire Ant Queen>.

After resting for a few hours, the Ant Queen woke up. Her compound eyes didn't have eyelids, as they were attached to her face, so the first thing she did to wake up was soak her face in water, cleaning the accumulated dirt that impeded her vision.

Looking around at her little children moving, she sighed, looking a bit bored. 'Another uneventful day.'

When her children saw that she was awake, a few of the youngest approached and began crawling all over her. This made the bored Ant Queen smile, and she used her clawed hands to pet them. "Good morning, my children."

While she spoke with sound, her antennae similarly secreted pheromones to communicate with the least developed children.

After she crossed the Level 10 boundary, there were almost no challenges left in the forest. It was not easy protecting her ant colony until she went from a <Level Nine Fire Ant Queen> to a <Level Ten Fire Ant Queen>.

However, after finally crossing that boundary and gaining a humanoid body, there were almost no creatures in Golden Sap Forest who even dared attack her nest.

Therefore, the Ant Queen focused on increasing her proficiency in her skills, especially her egg-laying capacities. It had been a few years since she started this routine. By now, she had a few skills at the max level and was ready to be upgraded to the next tier, but she lacked comprehension and experience points.

While breaking through the tier could be said to be as simple as using experience points, that was not entirely the case for non-World Tree creatures. First, one needed to understand the skill's essence, and then one needed to study how to improve it.

That's why many beasts who were born with F Rank skills were stuck in this rank generation after generation. Reaching an F+ Rank from an F- Rank was not difficult; it was a matter of time, but evolving it to an E- Rank was the complicated part.

The reason creatures became human-like as they increased levels and gained intelligence was exactly this.

A creature without intelligence would never be able to overcome the limits set by their birth. But, on the off-chance that one creature from that species was born intelligent enough and managed to increase enough levels, they would eventually develop their species toward a new place.

The current strongest beings were creatures of the past whose ancestors managed to consecutively break through these limits.

Meanwhile, as the little darlings of the Universe, World Trees just needed to spend experience since their birth was somewhat connected with the energy around them. This allowed all World Trees to understand what to do to increase tiers, levels, etc.