Insect Tamer's Ascension-Chapter 352. Spatial distortions

Theo slowly approached the gate. He asked all the ants to stay back.

Hearing his command, as he walked, all the ants scuttled down his armour, climbing toward his boots.

Once they reached the boot, they hopped off and formed a unified formation behind him.

Clara, Elias and the baron were more interested in watching the ants than Theo himself.

’I will keep you two with me for this one,’ Theo said through both the bonds.

While the ant queen rested inside one of his large waist pockets, the mantis was perched on his shoulder.

When Theo felt like he was getting too close, he tried recalling the time when he was actually transferred by the gate the first time.

’It didn’t activate until I was all the way inside... but it’s better to not take any chances for now.’ He thought.

Where the strands of the gate’s energy began brushing against his body, Theo sat down cross-legged.

He noticed the energy connecting to his body like a magnet and then fading away.

He closed his eyes, but they kept twitching. Being this close to the gate made him feel uneasy. And provoking such power for a prolonged period felt dangerous.

Still, he kept his eyes closed and forced himself to calm down. He knew that a calm mind was the most important thing when it came to meditating.

Nonetheless, it took him ten minutes to actually start feeling calm.

By then, the sound of cracking fire reached his ears.

Theo’s concentration snapped. Opening his eyes, he saw the baron lighting a fire a bit far but still close to him. Soon, he started taking out the skinned fillets and laid them over the familiar rock slab they had been using for months now.

Theo’s eyes twitched seeing how they hadn’t even realized that they were disturbing him.

But for some reason, Theo took this as a challenge.

He closed his eyes and concentrated harder.

Soon, he lost track of time in search of something he could feel.

Time passed, and Theo’s concentration broke several times, but each time he returned to it faster, and the amount of time he stayed calm also increased.

He didn’t feel anything since he had been there.

So when he opened his eyes again, Theo leaned forward slightly.

This time, seated closer beneath the towering gate, the energy strands emerging from it latched onto him and stayed there for a while.

But Theo didn’t move.

The baron sensed a change and immediately looked at Theo, only to notice that he had moved slightly forward. He kept his eyes on him to see if his son was in any kind of danger, but he found nothing of the sort.

The mantis was surprisingly calm. Its eyes couldn’t fully close, so it had just stayed in its spot since then.

Occasionally, it cleaned its body and forelegs, but otherwise it didn’t react. The ant queen, too, remained completely silent.

Yet what Theo hadn’t realized at the moment was that thousands of ants had quietly marched forward, forming a massive circle around the gate.

They stood at the same distance from the gate as Theo. Since he wasn’t being teleported away, the ant queen assumed they would be safe too.

Theo found it increasingly difficult to close his eyes now. Still, he had to do it when one strand of energy suddenly attached itself to his eyeball. He jerked his head back immediately, detaching it right away.

After that, he decided to cover his eyes with his arms and continued meditating. Only when he felt calm again did he lower it.

Time passed just like that.

At one point, Theo scooped forward once again.

Now, even as the strands of energy clung to his body, he felt nothing.

That was how the first hour passed.

But during the next hour, Theo felt as if a strange sensation had begun spreading through his body.

He tried focusing on the weird feeling, but his attention went toward the aura instead. Pulling his mind away from the aura surrounding his heart, he began searching for the source of this strange sensation.

Only to realize that he was returning to his heart again.

’What does that mean?’ Theo wondered and tried to examine his aura carefully.

But to his dismay, it was as normal as before.

There was even a gentle warmth around it, which was completely normal.

But there was more to that.

Something Theo couldn’t wrap his head around.

"Should we tell him to stop? It’s already been more than an hour..." Clara said, watching Theo and all the lines of ants surrounding the gate. Even the crawler had moved closer to Theo now, and the spider sat calmly on his head.

"No," the baron replied. "I can feel the aura in his heart. It’s the calmest it has ever been."

He paused.

"It almost makes me want to sit down and try feeling what is making his aura this calm..." The baron spoke only to realize in his heart that it might not be this simple, or else there would have been far more Foundation humans walking the planet of Zhypheria.

Theo’s eyebrows twitched a few times as he felt the intensity in his heart spike a few times.

On his physical body, thick strands of energy were now directly attached to him, almost as if they had permanently fused with him or something.

The intensity only continued rising with time.

Then... that very moment.

Theo felt something different from within his heart.

’Is that... energy?’ Theo thought.

But just then, he began feeling a wave of discomfort spread across his body.

His eyes snapped open, and horror filled them as Theo saw that lines of energy covered him completely, even his face and lips.

And they were attached firmly.

’W-Wait...’

Even with his eyes open, the weird feeling in his body from before had only persisted and even increased.

Until, acting on instinct, Theo opened his stats and looked at his evolution potential.

What now stated

’Not detected’

"!!!"

Theo felt like he was going to fall unconscious again.

But just then, a small realization sparked in his mind.

’What if...’

There was no time to hesitate.

He immediately activated a certain skill, and his eyes began to glow gold.