Enough… Yes… Now!
A surge of pleasure rose from her spine like an electric current, racing upward along her vertebrae, passing through every nerve ending, and finally exploding at the back of her head.
The sensation was too intense.
Her eyelids twitched uncontrollably.
Her fingers curled on their own.
She almost couldn’t stop herself from sticking out her tongue.
This ecstasy…
Its name was life.
From nothing to something.
From an egg to a fully formed newborn, then rapidly growing to completion.
Starting from zero, from a single drop of bacterial fluid, from a clump of cells—creating an entirely new, independent, complete lifeform.
Its heartbeat echoed through the swarm consciousness network, overlapping with her own in alternating rhythms, like a duet still finding its harmony.
“Boss?! Your chest?!”
The werewolves’ voices rang out in the corridor, sharp and terrified.
“Aaaahhh!”
The werewolf leader’s agonized scream reverberated through the narrow corridor, shaking dust from the walls.
His body arched violently, back and heels planted on the ground while his abdomen and chest bulged upward like a balloon being inflated from the inside.
His fingers clawed at the floor, nails snapping off to reveal the bloody flesh beneath.
Then…
Something burst out of his chest.
It forced its way between his ribs, slicing cleanly through the gaps in his sternum like a knife cutting fabric from within.
Blood and shredded meat sprayed to both sides, leaving a fan-shaped dark red stain on the wall.
His body rapidly deflated like a balloon losing air.
His skin sagged loosely over his skeleton.
The once-full muscles vanished.
His thick limbs shriveled.
In just a few seconds, the massive body had shrunk into a withered corpse.
A pitch-black, sharp spike emerged from his chest.
No—it wasn’t a spike.
It looked like a tail.
A long, slender tail covered in chitin, ending in a needle-sharp tip.
It probed out from the corpse’s chest cavity, cautiously testing its surroundings.
Then it began to move.
The tail swung from side to side, unfolding like a switchblade, splitting the front of the werewolf leader’s body open like a book.
The corpse collapsed to the ground with a dull, hollow thud.
And then…
It appeared.
Its entire body was covered in smooth, glossy black carapace, with only sections of dark red, soft-looking, moist flesh visible at the joints.
Its size nearly filled the entire corridor.
The carapace on both shoulders almost brushed against the walls, producing faint scraping sounds.
It raised its head.
Six pupils lit up on either side of its head—three on each side arranged in a gentle arc.
These six eyes were more like those of vertebrates, complete with irises and pupils.
Right now, all of them glowed with a crimson light.
Its massive mandibles slowly opened, revealing rows of inward-curving, serrated teeth.
Corrosive drool dripped from between them, hitting the floor and immediately releasing wisps of white smoke as it ate a small, bubbling black pit into the wood.
Ella watched it, the light in her eyes growing brighter and brighter.
Four arms extended from its torso.
They were slender yet powerful, mostly covered in carapace with only the dark red joints at the elbows and wrists exposed.
The front pair of arms ended in blades.
The carapace-covered arms themselves functioned as knives—curved, razor-sharp bone blades extending from the elbows, so keen they looked almost translucent in the firelight.
The rear pair: one equipped with a retractable bone whip coiled around the arm, the other fitted with a biological launcher capable of firing bone spikes—a tubular, forward-facing organ covered in ring-like patterns, hanging quietly beneath the arm.
As a weapon, it was nearly perfect.
Its only drawback was probably that it could not feed.
It had no digestive system, no desire to eat, and no ability to extract nutrients from food.
It could only replenish its energy at specially built charging stations.
This was a function she had deliberately removed during its design—no need for eating, no need for excretion, no organs unrelated to combat.
A pure combat machine, undiluted by any superfluous functions.
But it was more than enough.
In Ella’s eyes, the moment the massive Nest Tyrant filled the corridor, all the werewolves had already become lambs waiting for slaughter.
Even though this was still an underdeveloped emergency version—two sizes smaller than the complete form, with carapace only half as thick and bone blades noticeably shorter than the fully matured ones she had carefully cultivated in her Insect Nest over several weeks—it was more than sufficient to deal with these inferior creatures.
“Kill them.”
Ella’s sweet girlish voice became an absolute, irresistible command in the Nest Tyrant’s six eyes.
“My offspring.”
The Tyrant’s six eyes turned toward the werewolves.
Crimson light spilled from those pupils like six lamps suddenly lit in the darkness.
Its body lowered slightly.
All four arms spread out to the sides.
The bone whip uncoiled from its arm and dragged across the floor with a faint metallic scraping sound.
The temperature in the corridor seemed to drop a few degrees.
The werewolves had completely lost their earlier casual arrogance.
Their bodies trembled—this was the physiological reaction caused by muscle and bone restructuring during full beast transformation.
Fur sprouted from beneath their skin.
Nails turned into claws.
Muzzles protruded forward.
Spines curved.
They dropped onto all fours.
Every one of them was going into complete werewolf form.
They had seen many monsters in this endless sea—in the god-tainted waters, in the abyss-devoured sunken ships—but they had never seen anything like this: a creature that had crawled out of their boss’s chest cavity, covered in black carapace with six eyes and four arms.
“It actually killed the boss!”
A voice exploded from the werewolf pack.
Young and shrill, clearly overwhelmed by rage.
“You monster! Die!”
A werewolf noticeably smaller than the others charged out first.
His fur was light gray, and his claws had not fully hardened yet.
“Xiao Ze! Don’t!”
Someone shouted behind him, but it was too late.
The young werewolf lunged forward.
His hind legs kicked hard against the ground, shattering the planks beneath his feet.
His body drew an arc through the air as his claws reached toward the six eyes on the Tyrant’s head.
What was he thinking?
Maybe nothing at all.
Maybe he was simply blinded by anger.
Maybe he wanted revenge for his boss.
Maybe he just wanted to prove himself in front of the older, stronger werewolves.
What is there to be afraid of!
He clenched his teeth.
Wind howled past his ears.
There are so many of us!
Closer and closer to the Tyrant—five meters, three meters, one meter.
How dare this thing kill the boss!
I’m going to tear her face off!
He leaped high into the air.
His claws gleamed coldly in the firelight.
His eyes were locked onto the six crimson pupils on the Tyrant’s head.
His lips pulled back, revealing sharp fangs.
Then—
Hiss—
A faint sound of something slicing through the air shattered the silence.
It was so soft that in any other situation it would have been nearly inaudible.
The werewolf’s body froze mid-air for a split second.
His corpse split into two halves and fell to the ground.
Cut cleanly across the waist.
The upper body landed on the left side of the corridor, the lower body on the right, roughly a meter apart.
The cut was impossibly smooth, as if made by an extremely sharp blade in a single instant.
One could even see the clean cross-section of the spine—white, circular, and as neat as a sawn tree trunk.
Blood only sprayed out the moment the two halves hit the ground, splattering the walls and floor in dark red, fan-shaped patterns.
“What?!”
The werewolves’ voices erupted.
“Xiao Ze!”
Someone screamed the name, the sound sharp with disbelief and near-hysteria.
But no one moved.
No one charged forward.
No one tried to do anything for their young, impulsive comrade who had been alive and energetic just seconds ago.
They hadn’t seen it clearly.
Even Ella herself hadn’t seen it clearly.
Her pupils contracted sharply in that instant.
Her eyes desperately tried to track the motion, but her brain couldn’t keep up.
It was too fast.
The movement was so quick that her visual system couldn’t process it.
She only saw the Nest Tyrant retract its bone whip.
The arm equipped with the bone whip made an extremely subtle flicking motion as it pulled back—almost impossible to catch with the naked eye.
The whip shot out, drew an arc through the air, then recoiled and wrapped back around the arm.
The entire process took less than a fraction of a second.
A faint deep red glow on the surface of the bone whip slowly faded, like a red-hot wire being pulled from flames and cooling in the air.
Steam still rose from the clean cut on the werewolf’s corpse.
It looked like butter sliced by a hot knife.
“Well~”
Ella’s voice rang out in the now deathly quiet corridor, carrying a husky, excited tremor that felt foreign even to herself.
“Although it was a little surprising,”
Her crimson pupils glowed in the darkness, reflecting the image of the Nest Tyrant—entirely black, six eyes burning crimson, blood droplets still clinging to its bone whip.
“this is how it should be.”
Her smile deepened.
In her crimson pupils, six crimson pupils stared back at her.