I Hate Systems

The swarm of ants immediately charged towards a Practitioner level lizard (they had probably already formed some kind of deadly feud with the other species) with glowing mandibles.

The lizard immediately began spewing fire which was blocked midway by a transparent barrier erected by the ant queen which was signified by her glowing antennae.

The lizard on seeing its fire being blocked swiped its claws on a nearby ant shattering its skull instantly and followed up with another powerful blast of fire incinerating a few dozens of ants into ashes.

Enraged, the ant queen charged head-on to the lizard's head and chomped hard trying to breakthrough its tough scales. The lizard retaliated with its powerful Claw and tail swipes.

Meanwhile, the centipedes charged towards a Practitioner stage spider which could shoot sticky webs and sharp poisonous spikes like bullets. The centipedes also released cold mist from their carapace that froze anything it came into contact with while also slowly corroding those contact areas.

The millipede tussled with a Practitioner stage alligator which had golden scales proving its unrivaled defense while the deadly corrosive cold mist released by the millipede didn't seem to affect the alligator much.

There was also a lazy a.s.s giant toad with yellow spots all over its body which was lazily hunting all the mosquitoes and butterflies with its 30 metre long tongue and treated the entire battlefield as a free for all buffet.

The last of the bunch was a mantis with four sharp and deadly scythes which like a god of death chopped up any unfortunate prey it came across on its quest to slaughter.

The trio just sat in the same spot unmoving, afraid to create even the slightest sound. Even Enbi Arin didn't have the confidence to survive in such a situation. The trio just decided to wait and observe for an opportunity to act.

After about 3 hours had passed, the size of the battlefield had reduced to a considerable level but the slaughter became even more gruesome with all the survivors being on the borderline of breaking through into Practitioner stage.

The lizard having lost its tail, a leg, bone deep wounds all over its body and charred scales was still tussling with the ant queen who was relatively not much injured but had her antennae ripped off which resulted in her unable to deploy her barriers. There were only 4 other ants left who were still trying to one up the lizard.

Meanwhile, the centipedes which had been fighting the spider were all annihilated but still managed to destroy 4 legs and 2 eyes off the spider and also further left it with corrosive injuries all over its body.

In the battle between the millipede and the alligator, they were still in a stalemate but the millipede had half of its body eaten by the alligator while the alligator only had a few scratches on its body, though the golden shine on its scales seemed to have dimmed considerably.

The mantis seemed to be covered in blood from head to toe but not a single drop seemed to be its own. With red eyes, the mantis charged at its next prey which turned out to be the alligator and plunged its scythe into the eyes of the unsuspecting prey.

The alligator instantly shone with a dazzling golden radiance which prevented the scythe from going further in but due to its delay in reacting to the threat, it had lost its right eye permanently. The alligator started wiggling sideways due to the pain and trying to throw aside the mantis which still had its scythe clamped inside the alligator's eye.

The mantis inserted two more of its scythe into the alligator's eye socket to balance itself and raised its last free scythe to deal a deadly blow onto the alligator's head when a wriggling mass of legs crawled over its body over to its three locked scythes and unleashed a thick cold corrosive mist.

"Screeee...."

"Wraaaaarrrrw"

The right eye of the alligator completely melted under the corrosive fluid of the millipede with the mantis having lost three of its four scythes at once.

Going berserk over the pain, the alligator swiped its tail high and brought it smashing down over the millipede's body while the mantis which seemed to have lost its mind pierced its final scythe directly into the millipede's mouth and slashed it sideways thereby cutting off the millipede's head when suddenly a giant gaping maw filled with brute power clamped over the mantis's body crushing it into a pulp after which the alligator followed up with a few more chomps to finish off the mantis.

Meanwhile, almost all the butterflies and mosquitoes were eaten by the toad which didn't even suffer from a single injury leaving behind only a single mosquito and a butterfly.

The butterfly seeing the dead carcass of the millipede instantly flew over after barely escaping from the toad's range and began feasting on the Practitioner stage flesh while the alligator was busy chomping on the mantis.

The mosquito took a different approach by hovering in the air above the lizard while waiting for an opportunity. The battle with the queen and the lizard was heating up more and more as time went on.

In their most recent collision, the queen was flung over a few metres away by the lizard's claw swipe while the 4 still surviving ants took the opportunity to firmly clamp onto the lizard's fresh and began biting into it.

On seeing its opportunity, the mosquito dived down at rapid speeds and directly plunged its thin but sharp mouthpiece through the ant queen's eye, directly piercing its brain and began s.u.c.k.i.n.g all the brain juice, blood, etc. The ant queen died before it knew what had hit it.

At the same time, out of the four ants, two died to the lizard's thrashing, one was barely hanging while the last ant which had also consumed most of the lizard's flesh out of the four till now abruptly entered into the Practitioner stage.

But before it could process its new found strength and assess the situation, the other ant which had also clamped on the lizard was flung high into the sky with a piece of lizard meat still in its mouth by the lizard's thrashing.

The now Practitioner stage ant immediately let go of the lizard to save the last member of its brethren when a tongue came out of nowhere to coil around the airborne ant before ending up in the toad's belly.

The Practitioner stage ant felt intense grief and fury to see the last of its swarm die but before it could act further its vision was covered by a sea of flames after which it felt a huge impact from the lizard's claw that launched it flying towards the toad.

The Practitioner stage ant barely balanced itself and dodged sideways before a tongue lashed at the spot it had previously stood at. There was another blast of fire directed at the Practitioner stage ant from its rear which made it move further towards the toad.

The Practitioner stage ant's mandibles were twitching furiously due to the sly lizard and the irritating toad. On seeing that the lizard had retreated further away after its previous blast of fire and the toad that tried to attack it again and again, the Practitioner stage ant kept dodging the toad's tongue while waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.

When the toad's tongue came lashing at it again, the ant's antennae glowed after which a barrier formed in front of it. The toad's tongue which smashed head on into the barrier seemed to be stuck on it.

The difference between this Practitioner stage ant and its queen was that its barrier also had an additional adhesive property. So when the unsuspecting toad retracted its tongue, the barrier moved along with the toad's tongue and smashed right onto the toad's face with a loud bang.

The toad became disoriented due to the impact in the time span of which the Practitioner stage ant furiously charged towards the toad and bit off a huge chunk of the toad's flesh.

During the same time span of the Practitioner stage ant's battle with the toad, both the surviving mosquito and the butterfly successfully evolved into Practitioner stage creatures. The butterfly, in order to take revenge on the toad instantly flew high above the toad's head, out of the reach of its tongue waiting for an opportunity to strike.

When the butterfly saw the toad's momentary disorientation, it instantly flapped its wings furiously after which faint crimson coloured dust scattered from its wings and fell towards earth like rain influenced by gravity.

When the crimson dust touched the toad's skin they instantly started to melt the toad's skin like molten lava.

"Croooaaakkkk...."

The toad which felt such intense pain for the first time in its toad life croaked loudly producing intense shockwaves. The shockwaves had both brute power in it and also the ability to mess up a living being's senses.

"Flutter..."

The butterfly lost its balance and fell straight onto the toad's head. The Practitioner stage ant was blasted away to a distance of about 50 metres. The mosquito which was just about to strike the injured spider burst into a sea of blood while the spider only flew to a distance of about 15 metres due to its relatively heavier mass.

"Ugh... What happened" Li Qiu

"..." Prakash

"Get off of me uncle" Enbi Arin

The trio felt their minds spin making them lose their sense of balance and fell forward breaking through the taped barrier, out into the open and were coincidentally spotted by both the alligator and the spider.

It seemed that they could find the traces of an artefact on the human trio when they fell out into the open as both the alligator and the spider started to charge towards the trio once they gained sufficient clarity and orientation to give chase.

While the toad was still distracted due to the pain, the butterfly almost on the verge of fainting due to its fall and the ant still suffering from the after effects of the toad's shock wave ability, the lizard crept up from behind the toad and blasted out with the entirety of its flames which covered both the butterfly and the toad.

The flames seemed to cause a chain reaction with the crimson dust still present on and around the butterfly's wings which instantly exploded like dynamite. The lizard which failed to account for such an explosion was also engulfed by the flames and died along with both the toad and the butterfly.

The ant was just in time to create a barrier in front of it which saved its life but due to the force at which it was blasted off due to the powerful shockwave produced from the explosion, its entire exoskeleton was full of cracks and it had also suffered from intense internal bleeding and injuries.

The Practitioner stage ant was knocked out cold due to the severity of its injuries. When it came to its senses after a few minutes, it lay there weakly for awhile before slowly crawling to the nearest monster carcass and started to consume them.