The night was a living thing. It pressed against the skin, cool and damp, carrying the faint, metallic scent of distant ozone and the richer, more primal odor of turned earth and crushed grass. Before she moved, Yao's gaze—now capable of perceiving the world in layers of shadow and subtle heat—swept the patch of ground before her. Recognition flickered. This was the place. The gully where the hunter had died, where the golden-furred marmot had fought with such furious, chaotic grace. The memory was a ghost in the air, a silent witness to earlier violence.
Then…
Her hand, pale and almost luminous in the gloom, reached into the thicket of sawgrass. Her fingers, sensitive enough to feel the individual ridges on a blade of grass, closed around a small, cool object. She drew it out. A spent cartridge casing, the brass dull and scratched. She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, her mind a still, deep lake. Thoughts, swift and silent as arctic terns, skimmed the surface of her consciousness. One dipped, its beak piercing the calm. A single, perfect ripple spread outwards, a blossom of understanding whose color and fragrance were for her alone.
Action followed contemplation. She shifted the parameters of her Cloak, a subtle realignment of the light-bending magic. From her satchel, she produced a small pad of waterproof paper and a charcoal pencil. The scritch-scratch of writing was absurdly loud in the sleeping night. A brief message, encoded in a simple cipher only a fellow strategist might grasp. She attached it to a strand of Gossamer and sent it whispering into the darkness, a phantom messenger on a silent errand. As the Cloak's cooldown reset, she became one with the shadows again, a liquid patch of deeper darkness flowing towards the source of the conflict.
The trap had already been sprung. The skirmish was a brutal, efficient ballet of light and death. The Scorpid-Tail contingent, victims of their own biological programming, had returned to their temporary roost, a seething, torpid mass of chitin and weary wings. And humanity, in its endless, cunning cruelty, had followed, textbooks and survival instinct overriding any concept of fair play.
The five-person team worked with the seamless, wordless harmony of veterans. Their attacks, unleashed now, carried a weight and precision absent in the daytime's desperate scrabbling. Expensive-looking spell-foci glowed, and consumables were used without a second thought. "Liu, watch our flanks. Keep the perimeter clear," the leader, a woman with a voice like gravel, muttered.
The one called Liu nodded. He knelt, placing his palms flat on the cold soil. His chant was a soft, sibilant whisper, a language of growth and connection. Spirit and the green essence of life pulsed from his hands into the earth. Around them, in a twenty-meter radius, the ordinary grass stirred. It grew minutely taller, developed a faint, bioluminescent sheen, and began releasing invisible pollen motes attuned to foreign movement. A Verdant Sentry network. A beautiful, demanding art. It cost him dearly in Spirit, rendering him a vigilant but fragile node. The classic formation: guardian, striker, sentinel, artillery. A well-oiled machine.
The trap was perfect. The sentries reported no intruders. The other four launched their assault. Fire and lightning and shredding wind tore into the dozing swarm. Thousands of the weakened creatures died before they could fully rouse. The team fell into a defensive half-circle, backs to a rocky outcrop, and began the methodical slaughter. It was easy. Too easy.
Liu, monitoring his grass, felt no alarm. The network was silent. Yet, nearby, another group advanced. Ten of them, moving as a single, cohesive shadow. At their center, a young woman held aloft a palm-sized, semi-transparent object—a turtle carapace of ancient, polished crystal. Etched runes swam within it like captive minnows. Her face was taut with strain as she fed it a torrent of Spirit. From the artifact bloomed a large, elliptical bubble of distortion, a Crystalline Shroud that bent light and sound, rendering the group ghostly, invisible to mundane senses and Liu's life-sensing grass.
"The spores," the crystal-bearer hissed, her voice a thread of sound. "Avoid them." They stepped with exaggerated care, a deadly procession tiptoeing through a field of invisible bells.
In another thicket, Gronk wriggled with impatience. He tugged urgently on Aqi's sleeve, his wide eyes asking the obvious question: Do we jump them? Now?
Aqi's mind was a chessboard. Jumping now would unite the two teams against them. They were strong, but not thatstrong. If the Captain were here… the odds would be better. As she weighed the risk, Gronk tugged her sleeve again. Irritated, she glanced back. He had one paw on his rifle, the other scratching his posterior.
Then she saw it. A single strand of Gossamer, near-invisible, was lightly looped around the fabric of her sleeve. A small, rolled paper was tied to it.
Her blood chilled. Her.She was here. Not only here, but she had pinpointed their hiding spot without a whisper of detection. Aqi's earlier assessment, that they were relative equals, crumbled like old parchment. If she could do this, what else was she capable of? The gap between them, in the dark art of unseen warfare, felt suddenly vast and deadly.
She unrolled the note, her eyes scanning the elegant, cryptic script in the faint starlight. Her pupils constricted slightly. She tucked the paper away, placed a firm hand on Gronk's head to still him, and settled back to wait. Gronk, misunderstanding, huffed. She won't even let me scratch? I'm being quiet!
The ambush erupted. The shroud dropped. Ten became visible and attacked as one. The veteran team, caught in a crossfire, reeled. "Fall back!" "Who are they?!" "Masks—they're disguised!" "We're pinned! Funnel the swarm into them!"
Their desperate gambit to use the remaining Scorpid-Tails as a chaotic barrier was swiftly countered. Two of the ambushers, moving with chilling synchronicity, layered the ground with a Rime-Shear field, freezing the legs of the would-be bait-setters.
It was over. The five were encircled, beaten, their formation shattered. Despair was a taste in the air.
Then, the ambushers felt it. A faint tickling at their ankles. Before a single thought could form, the ground itself seemed to erupt. Dozens of Gossamer strands, laid in a vast, shallow net beneath the leaf litter, snapped upward. They weren't thrown; they were yanked, a fisherman hauling in a brimming net. The two teams—fifteen bodies in total—were scooped up together in a tangled, struggling bundle.
"AMBUSH!"
"Burn it! Burn the web!"
They reacted with trained violence, spells sparking at fingertips, eyes searching for the new foe. They saw a silhouette detach from the deeper night, one hand gripping the master strand. The figure pulled, and the net constricted with terrifying force, squeezing the air from lungs, pinning arms.
They never got their spells off. The figure's other hand was already moving, a fluid, complex gesture. Not an attack, but a curse. Locust's Daze. But it wasn't aimed at a person. The shimmering wave of disorientation washed over the Gossamer net itself. A masterstroke. The net was a sustained construct, a persistent environmental effect touching them all. By enchanting the conduit, the Daze bled into everyone connected to it. It was diluted, spread thin, a fleeting confusion—but it lasted just over a second.
The first second, limbs went slack, minds fogged. The shadowy figure was already chanting again. Forest Thorns. Not from the ground, but from the net. Wooden spikes, vicious and sharp, sprouted from the Gossamer strands, weaving through the mesh, binding arms, curling over mouths to gag incantations. By the time the second second ended, the Daze faded, only to reveal the two teams completely immobilized, entangled in a barbed, wooden cocoon woven through silken steel.
Yao, breathing steadily but feeling the deep ache in her Spirit reserves, assessed the cost. Area control, layered enchantments. It had consumed over three-quarters of her substantial pool. This was the price of taking on fifteen capable fighters at once. A head-on fight would have been suicide. This had been a surgical strike.
"Your satchels," her voice came, cool and devoid of inflection. "Eject them. Or die."
The captives were confused. Why not just kill them and loot the corpses? A flicker of hope, of perceived mercy, sparked in a few eyes. One man, his mouth partially free, worked his jaw. "S-sir… you'll have to… free my hands…"
Yao's eyes narrowed. A twitch of her finger, and the Gossamer and thorns around his upper body loosened a fraction.
It was the opening he needed. His face transformed from supplication to savage triumph, his mouth opening to begin a blistering, close-range destruction spell.
The incantation died in a wet gurgle. A fine, crimson line appeared around his throat. Then, with a soft, terrible snick, his head toppled backwards, severed cleanly. It hit the ground with a dull thud. A single strand of Gossamer, now gleaming like a scarlet wire in the moonlight, hung in the air where his neck had been.
She had left a garrote on each of them. A silent, final argument.
Hope evaporated, replaced by pure, animal terror. Satchels of holding, the priceless extradimensional containers, were mentally ejected, clattering to the ground in a pile. Yao didn't approach. She used fresh Gossamer strands to lasso them, a macabre fishing line, hauling the prize to her feet and stuffing the whole collection into her own primary satchel. Then she raised her hand, fingers poised to snap. The killing intent was a physical chill.
No!Their screams were muffled by wood and silk, but their eyes screamed it for them. This wasn't part of the script! Robbery, then murder?
From the tall grass, two figures exploded into motion. A withering hail of explosive rounds and a precisely aimed Frost Spear. Yao's shadowy form twisted, dodging the spear's core but letting the frost wash over her cloak. Gossamer lashed out towards the attackers. Gronk, with a gleeful "Yipe!", vanished into the earth, his attacks coming from below, untouchable by un-hardened strands. Yao was forced to give ground, deflecting Gronk's subterranean assault with a shimmering kinetic shield. Aqi was already weaving her hands, the first syllables of an Atmospheric Combustion matrix forming on her lips.
The prisoners watched, hearts hammering. Salvation?
Seeing the trap about to be sprung, the shadowy figure snarled in frustration—a convincingly human sound—and fled, melting into the night with a speed that defied belief.
Gronk popped up, aiming his rifle. "After him!"
"Don't!" Aqi commanded, her voice sharp. "His agility is monstrous. He'll pick us off in the dark. That silk is a nightmare." Gronk subsided, grumbling.
They turned to the bound captives. The prisoners flinched, awaiting the next betrayal. This was the way of the world, the unspoken law of the Calamity Fields. The wolf eats the rabbit. The bigger wolf eats the smaller wolf.
Aqi stepped forward and, with a few precise gestures, dissolved the Forest Thorns. The Gossamer, lacking its master's will, went slack.
Silence, thick with disbelief.
The young woman who had borne the crystal shroud stared. "Why? Why not just kill us?"
Aqi looked at them, her expression its usual mask of blank practicality. "Those are Scorpid-Tails. Their threat multiplier is exponential. We are holding, but our resources deplete. Their numbers swell. If you all die tonight, who kills the swarm tomorrow? Or the Mother-Queen after? If the dungeon is not cleared, the riches you hoard in your satchels will be buried with your bones." She paused, letting the brutal logic settle. "Dying rich inside a tomb is still dead."
It was a perspective so jarringly macro, so dismissive of their petty, immediate greed, that it left them speechless. Shame, hot and uncomfortable, warred with relief. The crystal-bearer's cheeks flushed. "Take us with you," she blurted out. "Our group. The Xie and Teng factions will cannibalize the independents. We need mass. We need strength. Our goal is the same: survive, grow stronger."
Aqi glanced at Gronk, who gave a tiny, furry shrug that meant your call, boss-lady.
And so the web is woven,Gronk thought, impressed despite himself. One move, and she's built a faction. Ruthless, but she left them their fighting gear. Gave them a reason to live. She's… complicated.
Aqi's thoughts were elsewhere. She's grown so much stronger. But her Spirit pool is the weakness. She drained it with those two area effects and immediately needed a tonic. She took the satchels for the potions inside.The puzzle of this woman deepened. With such staggering physical stats, how is her Spirit so comparatively frail? A late bloomer? A freakish genetic aberration?
Yao, now far away, didn't sort through the stolen satchels. Her fingers flew, extracting vial after vial of blue Spirit Tonic, stuffing them into her belt pouches. The backpacks themselves were discarded, empty of anything immediately vital.
Her true target was not the scavengers. It was the harvesters. The swarm had a logistics chain. A contingent would be escorting the nutrient-rich, pre-digested "paste balls" back to the nesting queens. Sever that line, and you strangled the next generation. She was certain the major factions knew this. They hadn't bothered with the sleeping swarm or the petty ambushers because they were after the bigger prize.
"The Teng and Xie elders are professionals," she mused, a ghost flitting through the grass. "They'll be waiting for the harvest convoy. The dungeon rewards for disrupting that would be significant. They'll be there."
Her Cloak refreshed, she moved, a silent arrow shot towards the last known gathering point of the swarm. Her Gossamer, sent ahead like a network of seismic nerves, felt the ground, tracing the faint, acrid trails of insectile waste—a map written in stink. She found the convoy first.
Thousands of Scorpid-Tails milled in a shallow basin, regurgitating and shaping the stolen biomass into glistening, foul-smelling orbs. Yao settled into a vantage point, becoming a watching stone.
And she waited. Patience was a weapon.
Ten minutes passed. The number of insects swelled. The paste balls accumulated in disgusting, pulsating mounds. The process was horrifyingly efficient. Yao observed their rhythm. When a mound reached a certain size, they would ignore it and begin a new one nearby.
An idea, cold and precise, formed. Her newly transformed hand lifted. A faint, greenish phosphorescence gathered at her fingertips. Not pain, but a strange, cellular ache. From the beds of her nails, minute, wicked-sharp points of condensed chitin and venom extruded—her awakened genetic gift: Swarm's Sting. Endless, self-replenishing, costing only Spirit. A tool for assassination.
Her resource-broker's mind immediately bypassed the obvious. Not for killing. For contamination.
Like a sinister, unseen gardener, she began her work. One by one, with meticulous, painstaking care, she extended a Gossamer thread, tipped with a venomous stinger, towards the unattended paste mounds. A delicate prick, injecting a minuscule amount of paralytic and necrotic venom into each nutrient ball. The process was agonizingly slow, a tremendous drain on her concentration and Spirit. Potions were gulped down, their cool flood barely keeping pace with the expenditure.
If I'd had time… proper meditation to stabilize the third sequence, to expand my Spirit sea…The frustration was a quiet ember. I wouldn't be here, scavenging potions from amateurs.
Just as her focus began to waver, a wrongness pricked at her senses. The convoy should have mobilized by now. It hadn't. Her eyes narrowed. Then she saw it: a group of workers were not preparing to leave. They were rolling paste balls towards a deep, dry river gully—the old scar of a watercourse that had died decades ago.
They rolled them to the edge and let them tumble down into the blackness. Then, a new group arrived, dragging heavier burdens. Yao's breath caught. Human corpses. Fresh ones. They were dumped unceremoniously into the same pit.
Offering,she realized, the pieces locking into place with a cold, final click. This isn't just for the gestating queens. They're force-feeding something else. Something in that gully.A champion. A brood-prime, perhaps a Swarm Lieutenant, being pushed through a forced evolution with high-quality protein. A 10级 (Level 10) leader in the making. With a swarm that size at its command, and the buffeting effect it would have on the rest of the colony…
The calculus of the dungeon shifted violently. This changed everything.
Before she could formulate a new plan, her peripheral Gossamer net vibrated. Someone had crossed her distant trip-line. They're here.
She withdrew, a shadow receding. Moments later, a familiar, ceramic gecko scurried past, its head swiveling. Yao didn't move. Soon, the grass to her left shivered. She saw Teng Yunli first, his face tense with anticipation. The gecko was his? Or was he the one being watched?
The Teng group, over twenty strong, began their operation. Using sonic lures and decoys, they expertly peeled off layers of the convoy swarm, drawing them away so a strike team could assault the main paste-ball deposit.
Yao watched, her mind racing. They're all here. The farm's defenses are weakened. Typical.She felt no superiority, only a renewed focus on the altered equation. The gecko's patrol pattern confirmed it: the Xie were the true panthers in the grass, waiting to pounce on a tired Teng clan.
Her original plan—observe, maybe hijack—was obsolete. The brewing human conflict was a luxury they couldn't afford. Not with a proto-boss feeding in the dark.
The gecko watches Teng. Therefore, Xie is the hunter. The pattern repeats.
A new plan, audacious and simple, bloomed in her mind. It wasn't about choosing sides. It was about redirecting the conflict.
She recalled her Gossamer, splitting the strands. With immense care and another gulp of precious Spirit, she guided them not to attack, but to steal. Two strands, moving with insectile delicacy, hooked under a pair of freshly made paste balls from the very edge of the Xie's line of sight.
The balls… rolled. On their own. Towards the Teng position.
The Scorpid-Tails guarding them froze. Their simple minds short-circuited. Food… moving?With a collective shriek of outrage, they gave chase, a boiling wedge of anger following the rogue nutrients.
The paste balls came to a stop at Teng Yunli's feet.
He stared. "What in the—"
The leading edge of the furious insect escort crested the rise and saw him. THIEF!
The ambush was blown. The Teng group erupted into defensive spells.
From the Xie hiding place, Xie Guangyu's voice, sharper than she'd ever heard it, cut through the night. "Fall back! Now!"
It was too late. The diverted swarm, now a boiling, confused river of violence, poured into the wooded area where the Xie lay in wait. The two human groups, along with the enraged insect escort, were suddenly slammed together in a chaotic, three-way melee. Accusations of betrayal were already flying.
Yao didn't stay to watch. Her work was done. The internal strife was, for the moment, redirected towards a common, buzzing foe. It would keep them busy, drain their resources, and hopefully thin the convoy.
It left the path to the gully clear.
The feeding pit. The evolving horror within.
She turned, her new, deadly fingers curling into fists. The real hunt, the necessary one, was just beginning.