Chapter 48

Chapter 48

Seraphiel was completely different from Leonius.

On the very first day Zane followed him, he was spotted. A complete change from his usual weary demeanor, the domain bug, who usually looked sickly and listless, curved his eyes into a smile at Zane.

The tall, thin domain bug with golden hair had eyes like brilliant little stars, making others instinctively lower their guard.

Although Zane followed him, he still kept his distance.

But that night, Seraphiel took the initiative to ask, "Do you want to sleep with me? I know you often wake up startled at night. You can't sleep well alone, can you?"

Zane had followed Leonius for so many days, just hoping for some company at night, yet Seraphiel asked him directly. Little Zane pursed his lips, remembering the chill of the deep night and the whistling wind. Though he was somewhat resistant to being so close to another bug, he couldn't help nodding slightly.

But he forgot to ask one thing: how did Seraphiel know he often woke up startled at night?

Seraphiel was in poor health, and his body temperature ran low, but perhaps because he had another bug pressed up against him, Zane felt a warm glow inside and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night, Zane suddenly felt someone staring at him.

He opened his eyes to find Seraphiel staring back.

Zane was about to ask if he couldn't sleep because he wasn't used to sharing a nest, when he suddenly noticed a creepy smile on Seraphiel's face. On his pallid features, his mouth twisted into an unnatural angle, and his light golden eyes went almost milky white in the darkness. "Today... I finally get to taste a pure bug..."

It was the speech pattern of the guard clan from the inherited memories!

Zane was so terrified his voice caught in his throat. He couldn't move a muscle, and his breathing stopped for what felt like an eternity.

Having successfully frightened Zane, Seraphiel burst out laughing. He laughed so hard his body curled up, his spine, already jutting out from how thin he was, stood out even more sharply.

Zane finally snapped out of it. This bug... how could he be like this!

He let out a small sob despite himself, but he didn't want this jerk to notice, so he didn't even grab his blanket, just wanting to run back to his own nest.

But the young Pure Insect Lord was grabbed and yanked back by Seraphiel, who was still gasping from laughter yet managed to say in a drawl, "Who told you to go to Leonius first? He ignored you, so you came to me. You looked down on me, and now you expect me to comfort you?"

Zane's hand paused. He looked back at him for a long moment, then suddenly reached up and wiped his hand across Seraphiel's face. "Stop laughing. You're crying."

Seraphiel's smile vanished instantly, replaced by a dark expression Zane had never seen before. He released Zane, lay back down, enduring the agony churning in his mental sea, and fell silent.

Zane didn't dare return to his own nest, but he also didn't dare run off. He could only huddle at the edge of the nest. "You're scared too, aren't you?"

But Seraphiel sneered. "I'm not as cowardly as you. I just hurt too much to sleep."

So he was still the only one who was scared...

Zane curled up into a ball at the edge of the nest and eventually shivered himself to sleep.

When Seraphiel woke up the next day, he expected Zane to have already run off. But even in the full light of day, Zane was still crouching in the nest, even pulling out two nutrient packs and offering them. "You want some?"

Seraphiel took them without a word, chugged them down, and didn't say a single thank you.

And from that day on, Zane moved into Seraphiel's nest.

Seraphiel was still the same wicked bug. The pain in his mental sea never seemed to pause for even a moment. The instructors of the previous generation had only ever demanded that he smile—to wait with the most devout devotion, the most beautiful bearing, and the gentlest spirit for the Broodmother to appear.

Perhaps it was the unending pain that made him a mean-spirited bug, or maybe he had always been that way. He was always playing tricks on Zane, sometimes outright bullying him.

The first day Zane moved in, Seraphiel produced two razors.

He extended his smooth, hairless calf. "See, only skin this smooth can earn Mother's love."

Zane was skeptical, but he didn't dare admit he was actually terrified of the Broodmother and never even dreamed of earning her favor. But Seraphiel was arguably the most beautiful bug in the entire clan. Maybe being this clean and smooth was better?

Zane let Seraphiel take the razor to him, shaving his leg hair completely clean.

—Then, during evening physical training, when he transformed into his bug form, he lost the gripping hairs on his legs and had zero friction. He slipped three steps for every one he took and got completely wrecked by the domain bug known for being frail.

Zane couldn't believe it. "But you shaved yours too!"

Seraphiel doubled over laughing. "I'm a domain bug. Half of me is grass. It grows back in no time!"

This kind of thing happened all the time. He brought back a pile of stinkweed that reeked terribly once mature, claiming it was a domain bug larva, and tricked Zane into planting it in his empty nest. Zane watered it diligently every day, and days later, he harvested a nest so foul that the smell lingered for months;

He took Zane to gather glowgrass seeds, wove them into a garland, and put it on. It was beautiful that day, but by the next day it had turned dull and sticky, leaving his whole head gummy for days;

After enough of these incidents, even the perpetually busy Leonius took notice. He frowned and asked Zane, "Why don't you stay away from Seraphiel? He's so weak, he can't even catch you."

.....

Zane glanced at Leonius but said nothing.

Though he was played for a fool by Seraphiel, at least... he saw him. That kind of feeling—a bug as tough as Leonius wouldn't understand even if he explained.

Time passed quickly. Seraphiel's condition grew worse and worse. The time he could sleep each day grew shorter, and his mental sea became so unstable that he would occasionally turn into a grass cage, crying out mournfully for Mother, begging for her salvation.

============

While Zane was lost and unsure what to do, Leonius had already embarked on his first expedition.

It wasn't a complete victory, but he didn't lose his life.

Leonius returned to the nest with one wing broken, slept for days, and when he woke up, he said somewhat sheepishly to his two fellow lord bugs, "I brought you all something."

Even Seraphiel was stunned, let alone Zane. He went out to fight for his life and still brought back souvenirs?

Leonius hauled out a pile of medicine and stacked it in front of Seraphiel. "You're always in pain. Try these and see if they help." Before Seraphiel could say anything, he added seriously, "You need to find a solution. If you keep being this ill-tempered, Mother won't like you when she returns."

Without waiting for Seraphiel's twisted expression to change, he carried out several baskets of vegetables from the ship and handed them to Zane. "I don't know what you like, so these are for you."

Zane: "???"

They rarely ate together—the only times were when Zane had been following him, and back then he'd imitated Leonius by eating only meat. How did he know Zane liked vegetables?

Leonius found it strange too. What was so hard to figure out? Bugs of the Purification Clan always consumed vegetables the fastest. He had to monitor supply consumption every day to care for the war bug larvae. Noticing this wasn't exactly difficult.

Yor, immersed in his mental sea, let out a snort of laughter from the side. Leonius's habit of checking supplies had been there since childhood...

Leonius truly was an exceptional war bug. He grew at an astonishing pace, leading his war bug larvae to gradually build a reputation, gaining more territory and resources.

He also asked Zane, "Do you want to come with me? Pure bugs aren't particularly strong in combat, but you still need to find something to do, to carve out a path for the Purification Clan."

Zane, no longer so afraid of being alone, looked back at Seraphiel, who couldn't even think up a prank anymore. "I want to go to other star systems, to look for medicine that might cure Seraphiel. I also want to learn about these things."

Leonius wasn't upset at all by the rejection. Instead, he was glad Zane had found something to do. He thumped his chest and said, "I'll take you to the star system with the best medical research."

He even encouraged Zane, "You can take apart those complex warships and fix them after a few tries. Learning this will be easy for you."

Zane nodded softly. Neither he nor the other bugs of the Purification Clan had grand ambitions. Even the entire clan's expectations for their lord were quite abstract... to lead the Purification Clan to inner peace.

They hoped the clan could find peace, but Zane had no idea where to begin.

Studying abroad wasn't easy. Zane went out on his own for a few years, got himself settled, and only then brought over a bunch of his own bug kids.

Fortunately, the Purification Clan indeed had talent, picking things up at an incredible pace. Zane in particular, thanks to the bugs' insane regenerative abilities, quickly came to understand the structure of bug bodies thoroughly, taking bug mechanical limb R&D to a whole new level.

Although he had come out to study for Seraphiel's sake, it was the war bugs that got the benefit first. Limbs damaged in battle and unable to regenerate now had a replacement option, cutting down on war bug losses big time.

Once the mechanical limb project matured, Zane quickly stepped away from it and shifted to the mental sea field, which he needed more.

Though research on mental power had been almost a blank slate before, he somehow managed, with his wild, out-of-the-box ideas, to develop two types of potions that could briefly alleviate Seraphiel's suffering.

But that was it. In a field with zero reference points, Zane could make no further progress.

He spent countless late nights staring at that messy data, filling one data disk after another with experiment logs, but every step forward was a grind.

Worse still, Seraphiel's condition had already become very dire.

He spent long periods each day in a daze, his body screaming in agony at the slightest move, his limbs too weak to stand, and once he fell, he could barely get up on his own strength. But what really broke him was that during one extreme mental meltdown, he... lost control of his bodily functions...

When Seraphiel was somewhat lucid, he begged Zane repeatedly, "Please, kill me. I can't go on like this..."

Zane deeply missed his former vanity and mischievousness—far more agreeable than this pitiful state.

Just when things seemed hopeless, a turning point appeared—Leonius captured a guard clan bug.

That deranged guard clan bug, barely conscious of itself, brought a piece of Broodmother's remains.

When Zane reached out and touched the consciousness within, the world shattered before his eyes into a golden light...

Countless chaotic thoughts flooded into his mental sea—cold, burning, chaotic, viscous—like countless hands grabbing at his mental sea simultaneously, tearing it in every direction, until they coalesced into a single phrase: "Find... the Broodmother..."