Insect Tamer's Ascension-Chapter 322: Non Tamed beast guided Successful! (3)

The crawler was covered in burrowing ants, and its body was almost completely covered in bite marks.

From the way it trembled and its behaviour, Theo could tell that the crawler was under immense stress.

’Ant queen, what happened?’ Theo asked.

In response, the Ant Queen only showed him the images of the ants engaging the crawler in their usual fights, all before the Ant Queen could think of using it for the future.

Theo could swear he could feel a headache coming.

He quickly told the Ant Queen to order the crawler to surface, but then he paused, as if stuck with a thought.

He wasn’t sure if the Ant Queen could give it a command from such a distance.

But the Ant Queen just nodded its head, implying it was okay and that it could relay the command through whichever ant was closest to it.

So the ant queen also commanded a reinforced Shardjaw to accompany the crawler.

He waited for a few minutes...

And still, the crawler had not surfaced.

As it turned out, the creature was scared of the aura above ground.

The next ten minutes were spent with Theo and the Ant Queen trying to coax the crawler to get past the Baron’s aura.

It felt like they were trying to guide a dog through an open glass door while it still believed that the door before it remained closed.

But soon enough, Theo saw the ground near him starting to shift.

In no time, cracks started forming, and sharp fangs slowly pushed through them.

Theo felt the scene was a bit too creepy, but when the whole body emerged, Theo couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor crawler. Its body seemed like it was leaking blood, not from just one spot, but from countless pores across its body.

Theo hurried to his stash and grabbed a middle-grade healing potion before returning next to the crawler.

The crawler shrieked when Theo came closer to it.

It still felt afraid of him. Somehow, unintentionally, Theo had engraved fear deep in its heart.

Still, Theo reached above it with his hand and slowly poured the healing liquid over its pores.

The crawler seemed to shriek again, as if trying to run away, but then, it stopped as if it had started feeling something.

It lifted its head, forcing Theo to raise his hand higher, thinking that it was coming a bit too close. But as it turned out, the crawler was rather going for the stream of healing liquid before it opened its mouth and began greedily gulping the potion down.

*

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[Evoluti-]

*

*

A notification flashed before Theo’s eyes, but it vanished just as quickly.

Startled by the sudden notification, he hastily poured every single drop of the potion.

’... I swear I just saw an evolution potential message...’ Theo thought, somewhat dumbfounded.

Whose evolution potential was it?

And why was it cut off in an instant?

He moved his attention to the logs and checked his previous notifications, only to find out that there were no system notifications.

’But I definitely saw it...’ Theo muttered before returning his gaze to the crawler, which had moved its body as high as it could, desperately trying to reach for the healing potion vial in Theo’s hands.

Without realizing it, Theo was also instinctively raising his hand, just enough to not let it reach the vial.

Suddenly, Theo felt something crawling along his arm.

Right now, he wasn’t wearing his armor since it was still drying near the campfire.

"Oh, you’re already here?" Theo said with a smile as he saw a relatively large ant crawling up his arm and settling on his shoulder, the very shoulder where the mantis and the spider used to perch.

He let it remain there before turning his attention to check the crawler’s situation and sighed in relief.

The pores that had been leaking blood were mostly closed now. At the very least, the bleeding had stopped.

With that taken care of, Theo began considering what to do next. Since this beast hadn’t been tamed, or even partially tamed, to begin with, he needed to uphold some of the promises he had made to it before.

He conveyed his thought to the ant queen to make the crawler follow him. Almost immediately, the ant’s antennae, resting on his shoulder, started glowing faintly.

A few seconds later, the crawler surged forward and started moving fast. Seeing it moving that fast, Theo felt like he should move fast as well since he didn’t want to stay too close to it.

As if the Ant Queen had sensed his thought, it quickly issued another command to the crawler, making it keep some distance from Theo, but Theo had no idea about it.

When they had reached the corpse of the gigantic crawler, Theo spotted Clara and Elias and came to a halt. He glanced back and noticed that the crawler had come to a stop as well. Satisfied, he nodded to himself.

"Clara, Elias," Theo called out and waited.

However, even after a while, neither of his attendants responded to his call. They were so focused on skinning the corpse that they didn’t even seem to have heard him.

Theo smiled. "Oh no, I need help!" He shouted.

This time, his call made Clara stand up instinctively and rush toward the direction of the voice with horror and panic filling her eyes.

After a few steps, she saw Theo standing calmly and then noticed a creature right behind him.

In a flash, she pulled out a small knife from the side pocket, already intent on shooting another precise headshot like she always did, when Theo stopped her.

He could see the cold sharpness in her eyes, but the moment their gazes met, it vanished back to normal.

"Danger behind you, young master!" Clara exclaimed.

Theo had to step as close to the crawler as he could. It seemed he hadn’t completely thought this through before this conversation.

He had even forgotten about Elias’s new skill.

Right now, Elias was standing behind them, the bow in his hand fully drawn, and the arrow locked onto the crawler’s head, intent on finishing the creature before it could move.

"Don’t kill it," Theo said in a firm, commanding voice, making both Clara and Elias freeze.

"T-There’s a crawler right behind you, young master!" Clara whispered in panic.

"What do you mean, ’Don’t kill it’???"

The knife in her grip trembled slightly; she was ready to shoot the instant the crawler moved even an inch.

"I have somewhat tamed this guy through the Ant Queen. I need it to complete my breakthrough requirement, alright? So don’t kill it." Theo explained.

His words made both Clara and Elias glance at the crawler that remained silently, completely still in one spot as if frozen, before they turned to look at each other.

Theo had done something ridiculous again, and this time, it felt like he had gone far beyond what they had expected.

"I was watching everything from the start."

Soon, the Baron’s voice emerged from the smoke.

Theo froze and finally realized that his father had been observing him all this time too.

’I really need to work on my awareness...’