Chapter 6: The queen insect that lost her nest.

“Urgh—!”

Ella’s throat was seized.

Butterfly Wing’s fingers clamped down precisely on her trachea.

One of the fingers extended a thin, long blade from its shell, piercing straight into her neck.

It was not deep, but it was just enough to break the skin and press directly against her carotid artery.

She could feel the tip of the blade trembling slightly with every heartbeat. Each pulse made the blade tap lightly against the vessel wall, reminding her that it could slice open at any moment.

Butterfly Wing’s right hand gripped her neck and lifted her upper body off the ground. Ella was forced to tilt her head back. Her silver hair hung behind her, and her bloodstained, dusty face was exposed under the dim light of the cabin.

Her lips were trembling because of Butterfly Wing’s gaze.

Those scarlet pupils, identical to her own, were staring at her intensely.

“Cancel the command.”

Her thumb pressed slightly harder, lifting Ella’s chin upward, forcing her throat to be even more exposed and pressing the blade tighter against it.

“Otherwise, I will kill you right now.”

Her lips were almost touching the tip of Ella’s nose. Every word carried warm breath that sprayed onto her face.

“Think carefully, Your Majesty the Insect Mother.”

Her gaze slowly slid down from Ella’s face, across her blood-soaked silver hair, across the wounds left by the chains on her wrists, across her waist that had become much thinner than before, and across her legs wrapped in black stockings as she knelt half on the ground.

That gaze was both a threat and an insult…

“You are no longer in your previous body.”

Her thumb gently stroked Ella’s carotid artery, feeling the vessel pulsing under her fingertip.

“Right now, you…”

The corners of her lips curved up.

“If you get killed, you will really die.”

This sentence made Ella suddenly realize something she had been subconsciously ignoring. Her body had changed. From the inside out, from top to bottom, every corner had changed.

She was no longer the Insect Mother who could run rampant in the nest. She was just a powerless girl bound by chains…

A girl who could not even stand up.

Ella’s lips twitched.

Her gaze lingered on Butterfly Wing’s face for a long time. Long enough to count every single scale on her eyelashes. Long enough to see her own reflection in those scarlet pupils — a disheveled, blood-covered, silver-haired girl twisted with fear.

In the end, she made a decision.

Her consciousness sank into the insect nest network.

Cancel the command.

All units, stop moving.

The moment the command was issued, she could feel the signal points racing through the network begin to slow down, stop, and hover in place, like a swarm of drones that had suddenly lost their signal source.

Then she raised her head and asked the question in a hoarse voice mixed with blood.

“What exactly do you want!”

Her voice broke on the last word, shattering into sobs and gasps.

“Tell me!”

Her eye sockets were so red they seemed about to bleed. Tears welled up in her eyes but stubbornly refused to fall.

“Spare the insect nest!”

Butterfly Wing looked at her.

For a long time.

Then she smiled.

“Revenge. Revenge, of course! I already told you!”

“Revenge against you, this damn creator!”

She released the hand gripping Ella’s neck and instead grabbed the back of her head, forcing her to turn around.

“Now!”

Her fingers dug into Ella’s blood-matted silver hair and forcefully twisted her head in one direction.

“Watch carefully!”

At the same time, she used her other hand to pull open the window in the room.

Salty sea wind rushed in fiercely, carrying an unsettling calm.

Only then did Ella realize she was inside the cabin of a ship.

Now, the moment the window was opened, everything became clear.

She could see the ship’s railing, the endless sea beyond the railing, the sunset reflected on the sea surface, and below the sunset, the insect nest she could recognize at a glance.

Her insect nest.

The island she had built over ten years using countless swarms’ condensed matter and every single day and night of her life now lay quietly on the sea, like a sleeping giant beast.

And around it…

In the air, on the ground, and even beneath the sea surface, more than hundreds, even thousands of combat swarms stood motionless after losing their commands.

The Nest Tyrants were pouring out from every corner of the nest. Their six thick limbs crushed everything in their path. Their five-meter-tall bodies cast huge shadows on the ground, and every step made the earth tremble.

Flying insects covered the sky. Their wings reflected countless glittering points of light under the sunset, like a moving nebula.

Those underwater combat swarms specially cultivated for sea battles left long white trails in the deep blue water.

Then, the world turned white.

A blindingly intense light erupted from the direction of the insect nest. The light burst out simultaneously from every corner, every passage, and every wall of the nest, as if a sun had suddenly been stuffed inside it.

The light pierced through the sea surface, through the sky, and through Ella’s pupils, burning a painful pure white onto her retina.

Immediately after came the shockwave.

A massive shockwave raised giant waves that exploded outward in all directions from the center of the explosion.

The ship began to shake violently. Miscellaneous items in the cabin clattered and fell to the floor. The chains were flung against each other, producing harsh metallic clashing sounds.

Then…

The sound of the explosion finally arrived.

But that sound no longer existed for Ella.

It was not that she could not hear it. Her consciousness simply had not allocated any attention to the “hearing” channel.

All her attention, every ounce of her soul, was immersed in the insect nest network.

If, in her perception, the insect nest network had originally been like a vast starry sky, with her as the brightest central star and every insect in her swarm a planet orbiting around her — some close, some far, some bright, some dim — but all of them present, all of them there, all of them flickering with their own light at the edge of her consciousness.

Then now…

The starry sky had been extinguished.

Those planets, those light points, those existences she had lit up one by one over ten years…

All of them disappeared.

Not a single one remained.

From the corner of Ella’s eye, tears seeped out for the first time in ten years.

That tear trace slid down from her scarlet eye corner, passing through the bloodstains on her face, crossing the bruise on her cheekbone left by the kick, lingering for a moment at the curve of her chin, and then fell.

Her hands, bound by chains, rose uncontrollably. The metal rings cut even deeper wounds into her wrists. Blood and tears mixed together and dripped down from her fingertips.

Her hand reached toward the window.

Toward the sea where the insect nest once stood.

Toward the mushroom cloud of flames and ashes slowly rising.

Her fingers trembled in the air, as if trying to grasp something that had already disappeared forever.

Her lips moved a few times, but no sound came out.

Butterfly Wing stood behind her, watching the hand she stretched out, watching the tear sliding down through the bloodstains, watching those scarlet pupils that had lost all their light.

“How is it?”

Her voice drifted down from above Ella’s head, soft as if asking an audience member who had just watched a grand fireworks show.

“Your Majesty?”