CHAPTER 442: WHO LIKES ANTS?

Dante leaned back in his chair, his disguise as the frail old man still clinging to him. He hummed a tune as he sat there.

I stayed standing near the front viewport, watching as the stars elongated into streaks of light, the vast emptiness wrapping us whole.

"You’re unusually quiet," Dante muttered, flicking a few holographic runes across the control panel. "Most people I’ve ferried aboard this ship can’t stop gaping at the sight."

"I’m not most people," I said simply, though my eyes never left the river of stars outside. "Still... I’ll admit, it feels strange. I did not expect myself to make a space journey so soon."

That got a faint grunt of amusement from him. "Miracle. I called it madness the first time. Didn’t think I’d ever get used to traveling like this." He tapped the console and the ship gave a gentle pulse of acceleration. "But... survival makes you adapt to anything."

I glanced sideways at him. "You mean when you were running?"

Dante chuckled softly.

"Running, hiding, fighting. Name it. I’ve done all of it more times than I care to count." His voice dropped lower, steady but tinged with memory. "There was one world I stumbled into by pure accident, mind you. Should’ve been a barren planet. Instead, I found myself in a place where ants were the dominant species."

That made me raise a brow. "Ants?"

"Yes, ants," Dante said dryly, leaning back with his arms folded.

"Not the little pests you crush underfoot. These were as tall as men, with a hive-mind intelligence. They had cities, hierarchies, wars with other insectoid races. I couldn’t even step outside without being noticed. The damned things thought I was some strange malformed worker drone."

I blinked, then let out a laugh. "And what did you do?"

"What could I do? I played along, kept my head down, and waited for a spatial current to open. Nearly got dragged into their breeding chambers once." He gave me a pointed look. "You have no idea how close I came to being turned into a brood slave."

That had me laughing harder than I meant to, the sound echoing in the cabin. "You, the great Dante, almost enslaved by giant ants. Now that’s a story worth remembering."

He smiled faintly, the lines of weariness on his face softening just a little.

"Mock me all you want, boy. I survived. And that’s what matters." His gaze drifted out past the viewport, distant. "Then there was another world. No ants this time, just elementals. Pure beings of fire, water, wind, earth. Nothing with flesh or bone lasted long there. They saw it as... an infection."

My amusement faded at the weight of his tone. "You fought them?"

"Fought. Hid. Ran. Repeated. For half a year." His eyes hardened, remembering.

"Every day was survival. A flicker of heat in the wrong place and a fire elemental would tear the ground apart beneath me. Step into the wrong breeze, and a wind elemental would shred me to ribbons. They didn’t sleep, didn’t rest, didn’t forgive. I had to make myself invisible, learn to mask every trace of life force. If not..."

He trailed off, and I could almost see it, his body pressed against jagged rock, waiting for endless days, Essence suppressed so deep that even his heartbeat seemed silent.

"That’s when your space mastery grew, wasn’t it?" I asked quietly.

Dante nodded. "Part of it. The real turning point came later. After the elementals, I found myself adrift on an asteroid. Couldn’t leave for months. And that belt..." He gave a humorless smile. "It was crawling with space monsters. Giants that swam through the void, creatures with bodies made of fractured stars, others that lived in the folds between space itself. Terrifying... but also teachers."

I tilted my head. "Teachers?"

"Every time they attacked, they twisted space around them. Warped it, folded it, devoured it. I was prey, but prey that learned." He held up his hand, curling his fingers slowly.

Space itself rippled faintly around his palm. "I studied their instincts. Their movements. I stole their patterns and made them mine. Every scar I earned there became a lesson. Every fight another page in a book I could never have read anywhere else."

Silence fell in the cabin. I didn’t laugh this time. I just looked at him, at the faint glow of space runes dancing along his knuckles, and thought about how much weight was carried in the simple act of telling me this.

"You’ve lived a hundred lives in one," I finally said.

He gave me a long look, then a weary smile. "And yet here I am, ferrying another fool into danger."

The ship’s console chimed then, cutting off whatever reply I might’ve had. Dante flicked his wrist, and the star-river outside began to contract. Light bent, twisted, then snapped back in a rush. A tunnel of space unfolded ahead, swirling like a liquid vortex.

"Hold on," Dante muttered. "Shape jump’s about to kick in."

The ship jolted once, Essence thrumming through its hull. The stars warped, reality itself stretched and then, with a crack of silence, we were somewhere else entirely.

The viewport filled with jagged stone and drifting debris. Asteroids spun in the dark, colliding softly with each other, some glowing faintly from mineral veins. In the distance, space itself shimmered with faint storms of light.

We flew between the titanic rocks until one loomed larger than the rest, a mountain of black stone riddled with caverns.

Dante guided the ship toward a massive hollow carved into its surface, a cave large enough to swallow ten warships.

The ship settled onto a smooth landing platform cut directly into the asteroid’s heart.

The hum of the machine faded, leaving only silence. I stared out at the hidden base and whispered, almost to myself, "So this... is where it begins."

Dante rose from his seat, his aura faint but steady. "Welcome to our temporary home, Billion. From here, the real work starts."