Chapter 7: Resurrection of the Swarm King
"Open wide—say ahhh!"
March 7th lifted the brightly colored lunch box, waving a spoon like she was coaxing a stubborn toddler.
Rekka hesitated. He shifted his massive, chitinous bulk, slowly parting his intimidating mouthparts. There were no human teeth or soft tongue inside. Instead, rows of jagged mandibles and complex, interlocking grinding structures clicked together. March 7th stared at the horrifying biological machinery, her spoon hovering in mid-air. She blinked, clearly trying to calculate how this nightmare anatomy was supposed to consume liquid food.
"Just pour it in... bzzzt..." Rekka reminded her, the words forming through the rapid, rhythmic vibration of his translucent wings.
"Oh! Right, right! I'm pouring then!" March 7th mumbled, leaning in and tilting the thermos dangerously close to his snapping jaws. "Can you... uh, can you catch it?"
A thick, orange sludge cascaded into his maw.
The taste... how to even describe it?
Rekka's complex compound eyes flickered with a kaleidoscope of shifting colors. If he still possessed human taste buds, they would be screaming in agony right now. But to his current insectoid senses, the strange slurry tasted surprisingly rich and sweet. His complex chewing mouthparts, however, were entirely unsuited for slurping liquids, resulting in a messy, awkward gulping process.
"How is it? Is it good?" March 7th leaned closer, her large, bright eyes sparkling with expectation. "I didn't try it myself, mostly because the color looks a bit... well, suspicious."
"It's not bad... bzzzt..."
"I really didn't expect your appetite to be this good after turning into a giant bug!" She giggled, packing up the empty thermos. "If Pom-Pom knew, they would definitely be thrilled that their newly bought carrot juice didn't go to waste."
She lingered for a few more minutes, chatting about trivial things, before finally tiptoeing out of the containment room, making sure not to wake the other sleeping creatures.
'Little March brought me food,'Rekka thought, a warm feeling settling in his thorax.'Little March is good.'
A short while later, the heavy metal hatch hissed open once again.
This time, the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. Ruan Mei glided into the chamber. She maintained her signature cold, aloof demeanor, holding a sleek, palm-sized terminal. In the dim lighting of the containment zone, her emerald eyes glowed with a faint, analytical light. Stopping near the entrance, her gaze swept over the pile of sleeping True Stings huddled in the corner, before finally locking onto Rekka, who was resting heavily in the center of the room.
"You fed them," she stated. It wasn't a question.
"Bzzzt..." Rekka responded weakly, his wings giving a lazy flutter.
Ruan Mei closed the distance with measured, silent steps. She knelt gracefully, her silk dress pooling around her ankles, and lightly brushed her slender finger against the residue of the nutrition spheres scattered across the floor.
"Fascinating. You can convert ambient Imaginary Energy into tangible biological nutrients."
Rekka's long, segmented antennae twitched erratically. He had no idea how to respond to that level of scientific scrutiny.
"I require you to perform a harmless test right now," Ruan Mei continued, standing back up and tapping her terminal. "Can you command Skaracabaz?"
"Are you talking about... bzzzt... the Starcrusher Swarm King... bzzzt...?"
"Correct," she replied smoothly. "A synthetic creation of my own design. It can only maintain its existence for approximately thirty seconds after birth. Can you command it?"
Rekka shifted his weight. Even with a thirty-second lifespan, Skaracabaz was a colossal, terrifying entity that inherited the devastating mandibles of the true Swarm King.
"Do not worry," Ruan Mei added, her voice devoid of any actual comfort. "If it goes out of control, I will handle it myself. Besides, Herta would be quite pleased to test the absolute limits of the Space Station's internal defense systems."
"That doesn't... bzzzt... sound comforting at all... bzzzt..."
They relocated to Ruan Mei's private cultivation laboratory. In the center of the massive room, suspended within a reinforced vat, a gigantic insect egg pulsated rhythmically in the air. Deep within the translucent shell, a dark blue monstrosity let out a low, bone-rattling drone.
"Are you ready?" Ruan Mei's fingers danced across her holographic terminal. "I am about to disable the Suppression Field."
"Okay... bzzzt..."
CRACK!
A sickeningly crisp sound echoed through the lab. A massive, dark blue foreleg violently pierced through the thick eggshell. Viscous cultivation fluid splashed everywhere, sizzling slightly as it hit the sterile floor tiles.
"SKREEE-BZZZT!"
The blue giant, fully breaking free from its artificial womb, unleashed a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the room.
Before Rekka's human consciousness could even process the threat, his new biological instincts took over.
The heavy elytra on his back snapped open, flaring to their absolute maximum width. The blue-purple fluorescent veins coursing across his wings instantly erupted with a blinding, majestic light. His scythe-like forelimbs rose high into the air and slammed down onto the metallic floor with the force of a meteor, creating a sharp, thunderous shockwave.
The synthetic Starcrusher Swarm King froze. Its pair of dark blue, crushing mandibles slowly clicked shut. Just as Ruan Mei had calculated, even as a synthetic clone of an Emanator, its hierarchical rank within the Swarm could not surpass Rekka's current form.
More, it was entirely brainless, driven only by the primal instincts of its species.
It didn't even last the projected thirty seconds. Before the giant insect could even let out a wail of submission, its body violently convulsed. With a sickening pop, the massive creature exploded into countless jagged fragments, raining chitin and fluid across the laboratory.
Rekka stared at the mess, his antennae drooping. "...?"
"You gave it a self-destruct command," Ruan Mei observed, her voice perfectly level.
"I did... bzzzt...?"
"It realized its mere existence in your presence was an unforgivable offense," she explained, stepping around a puddle of blue ichor. "Therefore, it proactively ended its own life to appease you."
Rekka's compound eyes flickered wildly, the hundreds of microscopic facets reflecting the gruesome scattered remains of the egg and the ruined synthetic Emanator.
"I... bzzzt... I made it commit suicide just by existing?"
"This confirms that within the strict biological hierarchy of the Path of Propagation, your position is astronomically higher than Skaracabaz." Ruan Mei stood gracefully and pulled a pristine white handkerchief from her pocket, carefully wiping a stray drop of fluid from her fingers. "I can now be entirely certain. You are the 'peer' Tayzzyronth longed for, the equal they could never obtain after ascending to Aeonhood."
"Bzzzt... BZZZT?!"
A violent wave of nausea welled up in his thorax. This absolute, unquestionable control over life and death—the ability to force a creature to tear itself apart just by standing in the same room—was suffocatingly heavy. It made Rekka, a guy who was just a normal human being yesterday, want to vomit.
"You do not seem pleased." Ruan Mei tilted her head, a rare, fleeting hint of genuine confusion flashing in her emerald eyes. "Based on my extensive psychological observations, most sentient beings feel a deep level of satisfaction when they learn they have been classified as a higher-tier entity. Your current reaction drastically deviates from my expectations."
"This feeling... bzzzt... it's like... bzzzt... I've become... bzzzt... a tyrant... bzzzt..."
"In the Path of Propagation, the concept of a 'tyrant'does not exist," Ruan Mei corrected smoothly. "There is only the Mother—or, more accurately, the'One'and the'All'. You are the 'One', and they are the 'All'. You are the Swarm, and the Swarm is you. Tell me, would you feel sorrow over the death of a single microscopic cell on your finger? Would you consider it an act of tyranny to command your red blood cells to transport oxygen through your veins?"
She turned fully to face him, her gaze piercing through his chitinous armor.
"To you, they are nothing more than extensions of your own physical body. Ordering them to die is akin to letting necrotic tissue slough off. It is a perfectly normal, necessary physiological metabolism."
"But I... bzzzt... am not... bzzzt... I am human... bzzzt..."
Rekka instinctively shrank back from her cold logic. His giant, bladed forelimbs restlessly scraped against the metal floor, carving deep, jagged grooves into the reinforced steel.
"Human?" Ruan Mei countered, her tone purely academic. "But your current genetic makeup is entirely that of a coleopteran insect. There is not a single strand of human DNA left in your structure."
"...Me?"
Silence descended upon the laboratory. The frantic buzzing of his wings abruptly stopped.
Rekka slowly opened his hideous, interlocking mouthparts. He drew a deep breath into his massive chest cavity, forcing air through spiracles that were never meant for speech, and let out a sharp, distorted, airy rasp.
"I am... human... I have... a human heart..."
"But you no longer possess the biological structure of a human heart," Ruan Mei stated, completely missing the emotional weight of his words. "You only have a dorsal vessel to pump hemolymph through your segmented body."
Her clinical deconstruction hit him harder than a physical blow. Rekka froze.
'...'
A strange, suffocating sense of loneliness gripped his thoughts, isolating him in a cold, alien body.
"Your pheromones indicate you are experiencing sadness," Ruan Mei observed, stepping closer. "But... since you physically have no heart, what exactly is this 'human heart' you speak of? Is it some metaphysical, abstract concept? A philosophical anchor? Or..."
She pulled up a new data log on her terminal.
"I need you to clarify this concept so I can better understand your current psychological state."
Rekka's wings gave one sharp, violent twitch, then fell dead still. He desperately tried to form words, to argue back, but found his mind completely blank.
What was a human heart?
If someone had asked him this exact question yesterday, back when he was channeling the steadfast Path of Preservation, he probably could have gone on an endless tangent. He would have talked about passion, kindness, courage, the unwavering sense of justice that drove people to protect each other.
But today? Today, hiding behind an impenetrable shell of chitin and terrifying power, he just felt like a coward.
His mandibles clicked. He forced the air out again, the sound grating and desperate.
"I am... human."
"Even if... I am... a monster right now..."
"I am still... human inside..."
His massive, multi-jointed legs locked into place. He slowly, painstakingly pushed his colossal frame off the ground, standing at his full, terrifying height.
The raw, golden power of the Path of Propagation began to surge through his veins. His translucent wings blurred into motion, emitting a deafening, resonant hum. The energy cascaded outward, weaving through the air and gathering directly upon the shattered, lifeless remains of the synthetic Starcrusher Swarm King scattered across the floor.
"I am not... a tyrant..." The golden light flared, attempting to knit the broken chitin back together, a desperate act of creation rather than destruction. "I'm not..."
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