Deep within the heart of the mountain, the air was a physical thing—thick, warm, and cloyingly sweet, carrying the heavy, musky perfume of the Scorpid-Queen's gestational pheromones. It was a scent that spoke of rampant fertility and primal dominion, a chemical command that had driven the entire drone swarm into a state of berserk devotion. The elite team, the ones Yao instinctively feared, had labored for days to orchestrate this moment. Using complex sonic lures and sacrificed decoys, they had drawn the vast majority of the swarm away, leaving the queen's core domain vulnerable. They had watched, patient as stones, as the harvester parties came and went, ferrying glistening nutrient orbs into the sanctum.
They did not intercept these shipments. In the cold calculus of their leader, a sharp-eyed youth they called Qing, these shipments were not a target, but a timer. A trigger.
Wait.
Wait for the food to be delivered.
Wait for the engorged queen to begin her digestive torpor, her massive body focused inward on the alchemy of creating life.
Qing checked a slender, rune-inscribed chronometer on his wrist. "At her tier, the primary digestion window is closing. Now."
A flick of his hand. The team, a well-oiled machine of ten, moved. They did not skulk. They erupted. The remaining interior guardians—elite warriors the size of dogs—were met with a symphony of meticulously coordinated violence. Spells of frost flash-fixed them to the stone, only to be shattered by concussive force. Arcane missiles stitched precise patterns through compound eyes. It was over in less than a minute, a path of chitinous ruin leading to the inner chamber.
The Queen dominated the cavern. She was a horror of bloated, iridescent abdomen and cruelly hooked limbs, her head a blind, sensing cluster of antennae beneath a crown of serrated horns. Her scorpion tail, as thick as a man's thigh, rested in a pool of her own acidic secretions. She sensed their intrusion, a disturbance in the pheromone-saturated air. A low, subsonic growl vibrated through the rock.
"Positions!" Qing's voice was calm, a conductor's before the crescendo.
His first move was not an attack. He flung a crystalline vial. It shattered at the queen's clawed feet. The liquid within did not pool; it sublimated, boiling into a swirling, rose-quartz mist that filled the chamber in a heartbeat. The queen inhaled instinctively—and convulsed.
It was not poison. It was a Catalyst of Parturition, a vile alchemical treasure that hijacked endocrine pathways. The queen's body, falsely signaled that birth was imminent, went into violent, catastrophic labor. Her abdomen visibly rippled, a wave of agonized contraction. A thin, keening shriek, more psychic assault than sound, tore from her. In all of nature, few states are as vulnerable as forced, premature birth. The instinct to protect the unborn overrides all else. Combat effectiveness plummets.
"Engage." Qing's order was flat.
The team unleashed a prepared arsenal that would have made the defenders at the farm weep with avarice. Siege-grade Frostfire Runes etched the floor, slowing and burning. Gravitic Anomaly Generators warped space around her, making every movement a struggle. They fought with the profligate confidence of those who had budgeted for this, who knew the expected return on investment.
The queen bucked and screamed, hemolymph and other, darker fluids seeping from her. Her health, a colossal bar visible only to the attackers, chunked downward. Then, as her abdomen gave one final, horrific heave, her body ignitedwith a corona of violent crimson light.
"Brace! Enrage sequence!" Qing shouted, his team already layering shimmering barrier spells.
But his analytical mind, a fraction of a second ahead, screamed a warning. Too early. The enrage threshold isn't reached. The energy signature is wrong—
Before the word "status" could leave his lips, the queen's form blurred. Not with speed, but with a fundamental rejection of reality. The crimson light winked out, replaced by a void-black, anti-light that swallowed the chamber's glow. In that impossible darkness, her form seemed to twistitself out of the spatial locks, the gravitational binds, the very concept of "here."
Severance and Transposition.
When the light returned, she was gone from the center of their death trap. She stood, trembling and leaking, at the cavern's entrance behind them. Her tattered wings gave one mighty, pained snap. A hurricane of dust, stone shards, and her own shed bristles exploded outward, a perfect screen. By the time the team's vision cleared, a flicker of her venomous green life-signature was vanishing into the labyrinthine upper tunnels.
Qing's face, usually a mask of placid control, darkened. His team stood in the suddenly silent, ravaged chamber, surrounded by the evidence of a perfect ambush that had just… walked away.
"What… what was that?" one breathed, lowering his crackling stave.
"A legendary skill," Qing murmured, his eyes gleaming not with frustration, but with a cold, acquisitive fire. "'Unshackle and Translate.' It seems the tales are true." He straightened, brushing dust from his immaculate jacket. "This complicates the predation model. Significantly."
"The whole dungeon is off-script," another woman muttered, checking a scanner. "Scorpid-Tail strain, a queen with a getaway spell… Qing, the extrapolation?"
Qing looked toward the tunnel she'd fled into, his mind racing. "Her expenditure was colossal. She is critically injured and in forced labor. Her resource demand will be astronomical." He paused. "Not the farm. Not yet. She will go to ground. Heal. If she emerged at the farm now, she'd be just as vulnerable."
A slow, cruel smile touched his lips. "If the farm has held this long, their composite strength is higher than projected. There are… interesting variables there. Let them wear each other down a little more. Let the wounded queen and the cornered rats have their final confrontation."
The team exchanged glances, their expressions settling into familiar, predatory anticipation. This was their oldest, most profitable playbook. The patient wait. The perfect, late-game strike. They had built their power on the gullibility and the corpses of less cunning parties, harvesting the resources others had fought and died for. This dungeon, with its hidden depths and unexpected bosses, was simply a larger stage for the same brutal drama.
Back at the farm, Chen Xiaoling and her crew, now integrated into Aqi's fledgling faction, had just returned from a carefully managed foray. Under Aqi's dispassionate direction, their "hunt" had been a masterclass in low-risk farming. They used terrain, controlled pulls, and focused fire to eliminate small, isolated groups of Scorpid-Tails with machinelike efficiency. The gains weren't explosive, but they were steady, safe, and distributed by clear, pre-agreed rules.
The two groups, formerly at each other's throats, now moved with a wary, functional cohesion. The shared profit was a more potent unifier than any oath. "We in for tomorrow night?" one of the original five asked, trying to sound casual as he counted his share of copper notes.
Chen Xiaoling rolled her eyes. "I'm not scared. If Aqi leads, I'm in." The challenge was implicit, aimed at the other team.
The five exchanged glances, pride warring with pragmatism. The steady copper won. "We're in."
Gronk, meticulously cleaning his rifle's barrel with an oily rag, thought, Profit. The universal language. More reliable than loyalty, cheaper than love.
"The decision isn't mine alone," Aqi said, her voice pulling them from their calculations. The others assumed she meant the swarm's movements, the farm's needs. Only Gronk knew she was thinking of a different leader, one currently absent.
They returned to a farm under relentless siege, but one that had found a grim rhythm. Their arrival, fresh and bearing supplies, allowed a rotation of the exhausted defenders. "You look… suspiciously upbeat," a haggard defender noted, eyeing their relatively clean gear and alert posture. "The wilds treat you to a spa day?"
They couldn't very well explain their efficient, conflict-free harvest. "It's brutal out there," one of Aqi's new followers said, gesturing to the bloodstains on his leathers—mostly from the initial ambushes. "But we stick together! Watch each other's backs!"
"Yeah! Unity! Cooperation!" another added, with forced cheer.
"We lost people," a third said soberly.
"Damn the swarm!" a fourth finished, completing the improvised, gritty narrative.
It was convincing enough. And as the story spread, so did Aqi's and Gronk's reputations. The neutral Arcanists, caught between the icy politicking of Xie and the arrogant bluster of Teng, saw a third option: a competent, apparently fair-minded leader who focused on survival, not supremacy. The faction grew, solidifying not through grand speeches, but through the quiet, compelling logic of shared safety and steady gains.
In their room, Gronk happily sorted bolts and bullets. "Not bad! People-power is real. Still, the split's thinner. Nothing like a run with the Captain."
Aqi was at the window, watching the ebb and flow of the battle below. "More people, smaller share, lower-risk targets. With her, we aim higher. The risk-reward curve is different." She turned, her gray eyes serious. "By consolidating these neutrals, she's preventing internal bleed-out within the farm. She's building a check against Xie and Teng. We need to move faster."
"Faster how?"
"Before the main hunting parties of Xie and Teng return. A three-power balance is stable. Each fears the other two uniting against them. If Xie and Teng divide the remaining neutrals first, it becomes a binary conflict. Unstable. Explosive." She began strapping on her freshly cleaned vambraces. "We go out. We recruit. Now."
When Xie Guangyu led his weary, frustrated men back through the farm gates, the change in atmosphere was immediate and palpable. The chaotic fear had been refined into a tense, organized readiness. His gaze swept the yard, landing unerringly on Aqi, who was directing the placement of a new water barrel barricade. Too slow,he thought, a spike of cold irritation cutting through his fatigue. She moved while we were chasing phantoms.
Minutes later, the Teng group returned, in a similarly battered and sour mood. The mutual hostility between the two noble cliques was a live wire, crackling in the air. It stood in stark, unattractive contrast to the purposeful, if weary, camaraderie of Aqi's growing band.
Xie Guangyu seized the initiative. "Since we are all present," his voice, though young, carried a chilling authority, "a council. We have intelligence. If we do not unite, this entire fortification will be harvested by an outside party."
The declaration landed like a stone in a pond. Aqi showed no desire to contest his leadership of the meeting. A siege was a poor place for complex power grabs; survival simplified politics. She could see the genuine wariness in Xie Guangyu's eyes. This wasn't a bluff.
As the two noble groups traded accusations, each blaming the other for the ambush in the woods, Gronk nudged Aqi. "Our friends?" he whispered.
Aqi's mind made the connection. The Captain. She was out there. She could have been the ambusher, framing the elite team, forcing this unity.It was a chess move three steps ahead. She met Xie Guangyu's assessing look. "My only goal is to walk out of this field alive," she stated, her voice flat. "Who leads the council is irrelevant. But know this: our supplies deplete faster than projected. Every life lost to infighting is a mouth that no longer eats, but also a blade that no longer defends. If one faction seeks advantage by culling another, I will consider that an attack on our collective survival. And I will respond."
She gave Gronk's tail a subtle tug.
The marmot hopped forward. "Yeah! And we've seen 'em! The real nasty pieces of work. Before I met Aqi, they chased me in a flyer! A 'Goshawk-813', mid-class, outfitted with long-range spell-cannons. Registration was…" He rattled off a string of letters and numbers with a rodent's perfect recall.
Xie Guangyu's eyes narrowed to slits. The pieces snapped together. "Lin Qing's pack," he hissed. The name carried weight, spreading a murmur of dread through the crowd.
"The Backstabbers," Chen Xiaoling spat, a shadow of old fear crossing her face. Others nodded grimly; the team's reputation for ruthless, post-victory treachery was infamous.
"Lin Qing plans, Wang Heng and Xu Guangbiao execute," someone muttered. "A team of ten, all past Level 15. They've solo'd Green-tier bosses. Even Level 20 parties avoid them. Their tactics are… unclean."
The mood, which had briefly tilted towards hopeful unity, plunged back into dread. To be trapped in a dungeon with thatcrew playing the long game was a nightmare scenario.
"A fifth-tier dungeon, and we get them?" a man groaned.
"Or," another said, a feverish glint in his eye, "their presence proves the value of the prize. If we survive…"
Gronk, happily munching on a slice of honeydew melon provided by a grateful farmer, chose that moment to interject. "And if we all die? That'd be theirbig prize, right?"
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the distant thumpof a fireball against the outer wall. Even Xie and Teng's men glared at the furry tactician.
No sense of humor,Gronk thought, swallowing the sweet fruit. Not like the Captain. Wonder what she's up to? Probably plotting how to murder that bastard farm-owner in his sleep.
Upstairs, in the master bedroom, the floating scroll of the Sealed Epiphany finally dimmed. The silvery light leaking from its seams faded, and the parchment itself began to curl. A small vortex spun in the air before it, and a figure stepped out, her hand closing around the scroll as it fell. It crumbled to ash in her grip, its magic spent.
"Seventy-two hours," Yao murmured, flexing fingers that felt charged with static. "I expected to be pulled out early by an attack. The fact I wasn't… means the equation changed."
Her pre-meditation assumption was clear: if Lin Qing's team succeeded, they'd need a day to consolidate, then wait for the farm and the swarm to mutually weaken. A two-day window. Three days of undisturbed meditation meant failure. The queen had escaped. Her poison alone shouldn't have allowed that against a prepared, elite team. The queen had an ace—a powerful disengage skill. It was the only logical conclusion.
She willed her status forward.
[Level: 10]
[Spirit: 3390]
[Strength: 8030]
[Constitution: 7400]
[Agility: 12230]
[Skills: Arcane Missile Lv.9, Emberburst Lv.9, Forest Thorns Lv.9, Verdant Locust Wing Lv.5, Locust's Daze Lv.2, Interrupt Lv.1]
The Spiritual gain was significant, a direct infusion from the hyper-saturated environment. The rich got richer through tools she could scarcely afford. The Bloodline Core had done its work too; she willed a Swarm's Sting to form at her fingertip. The green-tinged needle coalesced in half the time, its point gleaming with a more sinister potency. It was now a genuine threat.
Money solves immediate problems,she thought, but true advantages—racial gifts, rare skills—are the real currency of power.Her limited funds would be targeted there.
A commotion from below. A rapid knock. "Young Master! They're holding a war council! You're required!"
Yao's eyebrow arched. Why her? Aqi should be their focal point. Something had shifted. "Understood," she called, her voice adopting the familiar, grating tenor of Oaks. She made quick, final adjustments to her disguise.
As she descended the stairs, she was unaware of the small, ceramic device dropped down the chimney flue into her cold fireplace. It landed with a soft tinkamong the old ashes. A seam split open, and a colorless, odorless vapor began to seep out, coiling up the dark brick chimney into the night air. A trigger. A marker. The first move in a new game.