Chapter 2: It has become a true insect “mother”.

Ella was awakened by an unfamiliar sensation.

It was a kind of powerlessness that seeped out from the gaps between her bones, making her entire body go limp.

It felt like the heavy sensation of having lead poured into her limbs when running a high fever of forty degrees. Her consciousness drifted between half-dream and half-awake. Every attempt to break free felt like being pressed back to the bottom of the water by an invisible hand.

It took her several seconds to realize one thing.

She was currently kneeling on the ground.

The floor was made of some cold and smooth material. It was not the warm and moist texture of the insect shell flooring in her laboratory. It felt more like metal or finely polished stone.

There was no longer the scent of beeswax and sea salt in the air. The absence of any smell had itself become a kind of smell.

Ella did not open her eyes.

Ten years of living on the isolated island and ten years of survival instincts as the Insect Mother all turned into one clear command at this moment.

Do not move. Do not make a sound. First figure out the situation.

She maintained her prone position with steady and long breaths, as if she were still deeply unconscious.

At the same time, her consciousness shot toward the most familiar connection like a spring compressed to its limit.

The insect swarm consciousness network.

It was still there.

This discovery brought a surge of joy to her heart, but that joy had not yet spread when the next perception poured a bucket of cold water over it.

The network was still present, but its condition was wrong. It felt as if every node had been wrapped by an extremely fine, transparent silk thread. Information could still be transmitted, but every frame was like being soaked in viscous liquid, slow, distorted, and blurred.

She gritted her teeth and issued a command from the depths of her consciousness.

Return.

All combat units that can still move, immediately assemble at my current location.

This was her most fundamental authority as the Insect Mother, overriding all other commands.

She poured all her mental power into that command, making it explode like a bomb within the consciousness network.

Then, she received a response.

It was the Nest Tyrant.

One of her proudest creations.

These beings had been carefully selected, tuned, and finalized by her from countless failed products specifically for combat. Each one stood over five meters tall, their entire bodies covered in chitinous armor that could remain intact even under the extreme pressure of the deep sea.

None of their six limbs were wasted. The forelimbs were sickle blades capable of tearing apart small ships. The middle limbs were glandular tubes that could spray corrosive acid. The hind limbs were bundles of muscles that provided explosive mobility.

They did not even have a digestive system.

When designing them, Ella had completely abandoned the function of “eating”. The Nest Tyrants did not need to consume food. They only needed to replenish nutrients at the specially designated energy nodes in the nest. They were pure combat machines undiluted by any unnecessary functions.

A single Nest Tyrant could dismantle a standard exploration ship into pieces within one minute. And on this island, she had cultivated dozens of them.

A fuzzy feedback came from the consciousness network. They had moved.

Heavy footsteps that made the ground tremble slightly came from afar. Not just one. Four. Five… They were converging toward her position.

Ella sneered coldly in her heart.

These intruders might have some method to temporarily interfere with her swarm. Perhaps that pink-haired leader indeed possessed some strange ability.

But they had made one fatal mistake.

They had not killed her.

As long as she was still alive, the swarm was her limbs and extensions. And on this island, within this insect nest that she had built bit by bit over ten years, nothing could resist her will.

Even if she suffered a fatal injury, as long as she was not completely dead, she could have the swarm replace her damaged organs with healthy ones.

This was the biggest trump card when fighting inside the nest. She was not fighting alone. Behind her stood an entire swarm that would献出 every drop of bodily fluid for her.

The footsteps were getting closer.

She could hear that those girls were still in the room, seemingly whispering about something.

But Ella did not bother to discern the content of those voices. All her attention was focused on the increasingly clear terrain map within the consciousness network.

The Nest Tyrants had already entered the outer area of this room.

Just three more seconds…

“You’re awake, so open your eyes.”

Huh?!

That voice exploded directly inside her skull without any warning or buffer.

It was clean, cold, and carried a terrifying certainty.

It was exactly like how your mother could tell you were pretending to sleep with just one glance from the doorway.

But what really made Ella’s heart feel as if it had been violently gripped by an invisible hand was not the voice itself.

It was fear.

A primitive, bone-deep fear born from instinct surged up from the base of her spine. Like prey being stared down by a natural predator, she could hardly believe she was feeling afraid.

That fear was not even controlled by her consciousness. It acted directly on her body. Her muscles contracted, her pupils dilated, and her breathing suddenly became rapid.

She opened her eyes.

Her scarlet pupils contracted violently the moment light flooded in, then frantically and uncontrollably scanned everywhere.

This was the body’s instinctive reaction under extreme terror, a stress response as the brain tried to quickly build environmental awareness.

The first thing she saw was a mirror.

It was a carefully polished black panel capable of perfectly reflecting images, roughly the height of a person, fixed on the wall directly facing her.

And in the reflection of that panel, she saw a person.

It was a young girl.

Shoulder-length silver hair hung softly on both sides of her cheeks, emitting a cold glimmer under the dim light.

Her skin was so fair it was almost transparent, with faint delicate blood vessels visible beneath her cheekbones.

Her features were delicate yet sharp, and the curve of her brows and eyes carried a cold indifference that felt inhuman.

The most striking feature was her eyes.

Scarlet pupils.

Red as blood.

They were staring back at her with a look of terror.

No.

Impossible.

Ella’s brain went completely blank at this moment.

She stared at the face in the mirror, at those scarlet eyes, at every detail of that face, feeling every emotion being expressed on it. That was not someone else. That was herself.

That was her face.

In the reflection, that face was filled with terror. The brows were slightly raised, the lips parted slightly from shock, and the pupils had dilated so much they nearly occupied the entire iris.

The terror was so real and vivid that Ella momentarily had a ridiculous illusion. The person in the mirror was not her, but another existence trapped behind the mirror surface, sharing the same face with her.

But it was her.

That was her face.

It was the face of a young girl.

She raised her hand. It was a slender hand with distinct knuckles. The nails were neatly trimmed, and the wrist was so thin it looked like it would snap with a gentle twist.

That hand trembled as it touched her own cheek. The sensation from her fingertips was soft, carrying the warmth of a living being and the characteristic 37-degree body temperature of humans.

The person in the mirror performed the exact same action.

“Ah~ How is it? Miss Ella~”

That voice came from behind her, deliberately dragging out the end in a tone that treated her like some kind of dessert being slowly savored.

Ella’s mouth twitched.

It was an extreme disbelief that almost tore her sanity apart.

She had become female.

She… a man… had become a woman.

When she had crossed over, she had already become the “Insect Mother”. The professional label had been attached to her, but her body had never changed. She had always been male. Every single day for the past ten years.

Until now.

The face in the mirror, that delicate, cold, and terrified girl’s face, no matter how unwilling she was to believe or accept it, was right there.

“You—!”

Her voice had changed. It was no longer that low and steady male voice. It had become a clear, cold female voice with an icy quality.

This voice coming from her own throat made her feel as if she were speaking with a stranger’s vocal cords.

Crack—

The next moment, the mirror surface shattered from the center. Cracks spread outward like a spider web, cutting the reflected face into countless fragments.

The silver-haired girl, the scarlet pupils, the terrified expression, all shattered into pieces and fell from the wall with a rustling sound.

And behind those fragments, behind the broken mirror surface, stood a person.

Long pink hair.

A butterfly-wing-like coat covered in scale powder.

On that face that was beautiful to the point of seeming unreal, there hung a brilliant, almost radiant smile. Her pupils…

Ella saw it.

They were the exact same scarlet as hers.

“What did you do to me?!”

Ella’s voice squeezed out from her throat, hoarse and sharp. Her chest heaved violently, and her silver hair scattered across the sides of her face from the intense movement.

But what truly froze her heart was not the change in her voice, nor the change in her body…

It was that sentence.

“Why can you speak inside my insect nest network?!”

The moment those words left her mouth, she already knew the answer.

Because that voice, the sentence “You’re awake, so open your eyes”, had not come through her ears. It had sounded directly within the consciousness network, piercing straight into her mental link and penetrating the absolute control she held over the insect nest network as the Insect Mother.

The only one who could do this was…

“Of course I can, Miss Ella.”

The pink-haired girl tilted her head. The action was exactly the same as when she first appeared in the laboratory, cute yet dangerous.

“Because I am also your creation.”

Her tone was perfectly natural.

“My… creation?”

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