Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Dexter, as the lord's personal guard, had been assigned the most important defense duty this time, and he stood front and center.

The moment the glass container appeared, the air around him went dead silent—for that instant, it seemed every bug around him had stopped breathing.

But it wasn't because they were blown away by her looks—it was because their "Broodmother" was not beautiful at all... in fact, she was so ugly it was almost painful to look at.

Dexter's stomach did a flip. He had seen severed limbs on the battlefield, seen comrades eaten down to the bone. But those at least were fresh, at least they stirred feelings of anger or grief. This thing before him just made him feel... sick.

The kind of sick that made you want to back away.

He even caught a young war bug up front flinching—a barely held-back gag reflex.

Even Lord Leonius was stuck for a second, his planned small talk dying in his throat.

Awkward silence.

A tall, sharp-looking bug stepped out from behind the tank. Leonius gave a curt nod: "Zane."

The Pure Division Lord—a name that sounded like some holy devotee's—didn't bother with small talk. His sharp gaze swept over the war bugs' darting eyes, and he let out a scoff. Then he raised his hand, slender fingers twitching as blades glinted between them. He pried a gap in the tank holding the Broodmother.

A wall of stench hit them instantly, and the high-ranking males, with their sharp noses, stumbled back a step.

But the next moment, beneath the stench, a thick wave of pheromones rolled out like a tide—seeping straight into their mental seas, skipping the nose entirely.

...Broodmother!

Leonius's eyes went wide. Behind him, rows of his personal guards had already hit their knees. The ones up front, still standing, were flushed and sweating.

Dexter felt it hit him too.

The moment those pheromones flooded into his mental sea, his brain hit pause. His vision blurred, and his body pitched forward half an inch on its own.

But the next second, a sharp rejection exploded from deep in his mental sea—like something filthy had touched him. His mind snapped back.

No.

This wasn't right.

For a split second, it really did feel like Yor's pheromones. But then—night and day.

Yor's pheromones made you want to lean in, drop to your knees, bury your face in his chest... It was a bone-deep joy, a bone-deep pull, like a desert that hadn't seen rain in ten thousand years.

But this. This one was a command.

"Be infatuated with me... offer yourself..."

"Have faith in me... I will grant you offspring..."

"Submit... Mother... I beg you..."

None of these thoughts were his—they were being shoved in.

The pheromones were like a hand, prying his mental sea open and pouring in these sticky, rotten commands.

He wanted to throw up.

Bile rose in his throat.

Dexter's stomach twisted, his throat working as he swallowed hard.

He gritted his teeth and forced it down, his eyes sweeping the bugs around him. They all looked like they were in a trance, completely gone.

Some were crying, some were muttering under their breath, some had shaking legs but stood frozen, refusing to back up.

In the back ranks, some war bugs were already whispering: "Mother... I beg you... look at me..."

Their voices cracked with sobs.

His own comrades, looking so... pathetic. A cold chill ran down his spine.

He didn't have time to think it through, but it was enough to tell him how special Yor was. And the first thought that surfaced in his mind was—don't expose him. Don't let anyone know how special Yor is.

Hide his own weirdness, and he hides Yor.

Dexter lowered his eyes, deliberately going blank. He took a deep breath, forcing heat into his face. He didn't even have to try—just the thought of Yor being found out was enough to get his heart pounding.

His face flushed fast, sweat beading on his forehead and nose.

Surrounded by flushed, panting war bugs, he looked perfect.

No one noticed the fist at his side.

Zane seemed to have had his fill of the show. He lazily pulled the blade from the glass. As the seal closed, the pheromones cut off like a flipped switch.

The war bugs went quiet.

But this time, the way they looked at the "Broodmother" held no disgust anymore—only burning fervor.

A blue film flickered over Zane's pupils as his built-in neural interface logged the war bugs' reactions as data.

When he turned back, that smug look Leonius knew all too well was already on his face: "You know me—I only care about brains and machines."

The comment came out of left field, but Leonius and Zane had hatched from the same clutch. Same rank, grew up together—so Leonius could follow his logic easily. Of course he was proud of himself. Just look at how the bugs reacted to those pheromones—his Broodmother project was clearly a success.

Unheard of. He'd cracked the problem of synthesizing pheromones and mass-producing Broodmothers.

As for why he didn't fix the Broodmother's god-awful, rotting-flesh look—he just didn't care.

After all, this was the lunatic who'd said since he was a kid, "Only mental power and machines are the future of our race."

So him making a Broodmother that looked like this? Totally on brand. Anyway... good enough for the bug race, probably.

But... something nagged at Leonius. This experiment's pheromones really did feel like a real Broodmother's. Even his Sub-Lord kids behind him had lost their minds over it.

But even if it passed for the real thing, it was still fake.

Thinking back, that hint of aura from this afternoon felt like a hallucination.

Had he really been hoping that much from that lunatic Zane, to the point of seeing things?

But just as he thought that, a faint wrongness stirred in his chest—that wisp of aura felt completely different from what this rotting lump was putting out.

But he didn't dwell on it. Bigger things to deal with.

Zane finished his smug little show, but the bug in front of him gave him nothing—no excitement, no doubt, just a face like a brick wall.

He'd been like this his whole life, and Zane didn't mind.

He was still smug about the effect the Broodmother's pheromones had. The knife in his hand tapped lightly against the glass container with a sharp clink. Once he had every bug in the room's attention, he drawled, like he was doing them a favor: "If the War Department wants a Broodmother, then for the next hundred years, three-quarters of all revenue goes to the Purification Department."

The Broodmother in the glass container didn't so much as twitch, and the so-called banquet they'd prepared was a total waste.

So cutting straight to the haggling was pretty on-brand for bugs.

Leonius held out his arm, bare of any bug markings: "Ineffective against lords."

Just a slightly fancier defective product.

Zane tilted his chin up: "Currently, the best."

Leonius shook his head: "Not worth it."

A sneer crossed Zane's face: "Turn around and look at those war bug whelps' eyes."

He didn't need to turn around—Leonius could already feel the heat of their stares. "In this shape, it won't last ten years."

Once they started talking specific numbers, that meant they were ready to buy. Zane perked up. "Body repair is the easiest fix in the world—I just didn't bother, not that I couldn't."

He jabbed a finger at the whelps behind Leonius. "Just keep it fed."

A Broodmother was still a bug. Their vicious self-healing genes worked on it just the same—as long as it soaked up enough nutrients, it could patch itself up and keep cranking out eggs.

"Next fifty years, a quarter of the revenue." Before Zane could argue, Leonius pressed on: "Every five years, you can come take its body measurements."

"!" Experimental data—he really wanted that.

But this was a Broodmother! That price was way too low. Zane narrowed his eyes, probing: "I take a tenth of the eggs it lays."

What he'd do with them went without saying—once they hit the Purification Clan's lab, they were test subjects, bug or alien, didn't matter.

Leonius, who'd just acted like he couldn't care less about the Broodmother, suddenly went ice-cold.

"You picking a fight?" His voice was quiet, even calm.

But the next moment, lord-level pheromones blasted outward like a physical force, a raw, brutal pressure slamming forward like an invisible wall.

The higher-ranked bugs on the Purification side got hit first.

They didn't even have time to fall back before their bodies started seizing up. The high-level pheromone pressure sent them into instant panic, forcing them to shift into their bug forms, struggling to hold against the pressure bearing down on them.

"Crack—"

A crisp sound—one Purification bug's foreleg snapped backward at the joint, and he couldn't even stay on his knees. His whole body was flattened against the floor, only muffled groans leaking out.

Zane's face went dark, and he had no choice but to step up.

His spine gave a slight shudder as his gorgeous, almost dreamlike butterfly wings snapped open from behind his shoulder blades with a "whoosh." The wings were coated in flowing gold dust and deep blue patterns, every vein pulsing slowly in the light. Phosphorescent dust trailed from the wingtips, dragging two dazzling streaks through the air. Under the harsh lights, he looked like a god descending to earth.

Now that god wore a thin veil of anger. He thrust his wings forward, spreading them wide to shield every Purification bug behind him from the pheromone blast.

Zane knew he'd crossed a line. He understood Leonius's obsession—the War Department's history made him care more about his clan's whelps than any other lord.

The phosphorescence on his wings trembled slightly. Zane wasn't holding up easily, but he gritted his teeth, forcing the words out from between them: "They're just eggs!"

Leonius quickly calmed down. Zane simply looked down on all bugs equally—he hadn't deliberately meant to insult the war bugs. But Zane's line-crossing still left Leonius inwardly displeased.

Leonius considered directly refusing this madman who coveted his clan, but the bug whelps behind him clearly didn't think the same way.

In their eyes, this was a Broodmother—not to mention the possibility of breeding offspring of higher rank than themselves, but just the honey alone, diluted and distributed, could greatly ease the chaotic mental seas of the war bugs.

Leonius also knew that even if it was fake, the War Clan needed a Broodmother to soothe the bugs' hearts and continue their lineage.

He was silent for a moment before speaking: "Payment starts once the first batch of eggs hatch."

Zane was still somewhat dissatisfied with the price, but he knew his earlier words had already angered Leonius. If he kept arguing, the deal might fall through.

After weighing it for a long moment, he finally let out a cold snort and waved his hand for the Purification bugs to step back.

That was agreement.

The war bugs cheered and swarmed forward to take over the duty of guarding the glass container.

Dexter stood in place, not pushing forward. While all the war bugs surged ahead with fervor, he quietly stepped half a step back.

In the mid-level monitoring cabin of the starship, the sleeping Yor's nose twitched slightly, as if catching a repulsive scent, even his brow furrowing.

The next moment, his eyes snapped open—but they were not the round pupils of a Blue Star human. Instead, countless fine compound eyes formed an inorganic orb, and a trace of icy killing intent flashed across it.

Yor blinked.

The compound eyes receded, and his round pupils reappeared.

He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, his breathing slowly steadying. The strangeness from that instant was like a nightmare without content—no memory, only a faint unease lingering.

He didn't know what had just happened.

Nor did he know that on the bridge, a war bug had just learned, because of him, how to act.