The Apprentice of Ouroboros [Monster Evo LitRPG Adventure]

All the sound died in the world. The only sound left was Neska’s heart, thudding in her chest, and her rapid breathing.

What is going on…what is happening…

We remember you, but not this you: the serpent who stands eternal, the one who holds life, death, and rebirth in balance.

The Radiant King has broken that…and if they continue…we will all be chained to their whims.

He tries to control us. But he can’t control all of us, not all at once.

Kasfew waved his hand in front of her face, like the whole world had slowed down. Her heart continued to pound uncomfortably loud in her chest.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

What she was hearing could not be possible.

There was no Radiant King. She knew of no such thing.

This…thing…had to be lying. It had to be. It would do anything to preserve its own survival.

But what if it wasn’t? Would it hurt to ask a question? It knew she was coming. The element of surprise was already gone. Mostly.

The Voice. The one who makes the Interface strange in its presence. The one who hides behind dead faces. Is that him?

Always hiding. Always shifting. To name them is to expose them.

Their name is a weakness. A single vulnerability. We know of this. We tore this secret from them and fled to the winds with a hundred thousand fluttering insects. He destroyed many. Tore our collective to pieces until the pain grew too great to resist.

But we few who remained…we endured. Survived. Burrowed deep.

Carried the message. The secret. In the birth of a dozen generations, queen to drone, drone to queen.

This Radiant King will destroy everything. Monsters. Humanity. This world. His punishment against perceived enemies.

If he is not stopped, the world will be consumed again. Like the great Ouroboros, he has usurped.

Your kin.

“Cassia, snap out of it!”

Kasfew’s scalding hand on her cheek brought the world back up to speed, and the bird peered at her intensely, gripping her shoulders. “You went stiff like you were having a seizure. What happened?”

She struggled for a response. This absolutely had to be a trap. The Varadur would lie, cheat, threaten, and do anything in its power to protect the Core. It could not be reasoned with, just like any other Varadur.

But…what if it could?

Vivi…I have a really bad idea.

It can’t be terrible if your idea–oh, wait, no, this is probably going to be risky as all hell, isn’t it?

Neska brushed Kasfew’s hand aside. “We need to get in there and scout it out, so the others can prepare. Our backup plan is to render this place into rubble.”

She started pulling out her goblin boomsticks, much to the disgust of the two birds. "Neska, how in...oh gods, I can see your throat distending as they show up. That is so gross."

"I don't feel it. much." It was still mildly unsettling, even given the massive utility of this power.

Noricatu gingerly took hold of them, examining the sticks. “How did the goblins make this much without blowing themselves up?”

“That’s the question we had. The answer is simple: they’re adapting.” Neska also replaced a spare slot with a few arrows she was able to fit in her mouth, much to the avian pair's cringing.

"Remember to put the pointy end last? Oh divines, I might throw up," Noricatu groaned.

"I promise to save this power for combat or dire situations." She knew without a doubt that promise would be hard to keep. Then again, no one would expect her to pull a weapon from her mouth. Maybe a dagger or athame would be handy as a holdout weapon, something useful for close quarters.

“So, ah, we're continuing to double down on bad ideas,” Kasfew muttered. “As I was saying, if the goblins ever get smarter with their explosives, we’re going to have a very big problem. More disturbing is their attempts to produce the precursors to runes for magical enhancement. They didn’t learn that through trial and error. The hobgoblins are humanoid-level intelligent.”

“Fortunately, we haven't seen too many of them. They mostly act as supervisors,” Neska whispered. “We’re going to place these boom sticks at any entry, or use alchemical fire grenades that Sarisse and I prepared. It should be a large, cylindrical room with the queen–and likely, the Instance core–housed within. Plan A is to entrap it so it can't escape. If it's too dangerous, we go with Plan B, my root strategy. I have one question: how big is the core?”

“Depends,” Kasfew shrugged. “Could be the size of a gem, up to the size of a wagon. It depends on how long it's had to grow. This has been buried here for five years; it could be of a significant size.”

“And what happens when we destroy it?”

Kasfew threw up his wings and arms. “No idea. Probably nothing good if we’re too close by. The number of people who destroyed an Instance and made it out alive is shockingly low.”

Neska hesitated by the archway. None of the wasps were buzzing nearby. In fact, it was uncomfortably silent. The only sound was them, and the distantly burning hive, crackling and hissing as more bugs roasted.

The words of the Instance core–she assumed that was what it was- haunted her. Vivi, did you hear the same thing I did?

I did. Whatever this thing is, it can’t be trusted in the slightest. It has an agenda that includes its survival.

You saw the goblins. How could something so insidious ever be considered benevolent?

She couldn't fathom the risk she was contemplating. Could she risk her teammates on a hope? A chance to obtain a secret that the Varadur desperately did not want humanity to have? A way to strike at the top of their command chain, possibly?

Could she risk Juni, Jurik, Syra, Brent, Noricatu? Hell, even Kasfew, now showing the faintest flicker of respect to her?

She moved with the intent of destroying this hive and everything in it. She clicked her relay. “Are any other Awakened hearing whispers in the hive?”

“Goddess, all I hear is burning and screaming. Though that might be the goblins,” Juni whispered over the relay. “Also, no. Why?”

“The Instance Core knows we're here. Everyone, stay sharp; if you start feeling a mental influence, warn your teammates.” If this was anything like Felix, the Instance Core was a transmitter or a relay for the Voice. The Voice, she theorized, was a singular entity or person, or even a single controlling monster. Marikand had been powerful enough to act as a transmitter, and her theory was that he had been at least Tier Three. It also occurred to her this fiend might be connected to the Instance cores, too.

“Uh, the snake is scaring me,” Kasfew said, edging away from her. “You hearing things?”

Neska narrowed her eyes. “Yes. It's not a good thing. The higher Tier Varadur can wear down a person's psyche, corrupt the weaker-willed Awakened.

"You don't seem worried. I'm about to crap myself with how dangerous this plan is," Kasfew insisted.

She had to applaud his candor. This plan terrified her, too. "I've been able to resist their corruption, and my resistance has been increasing."

"So you say," he countered. "One of these days, you're going to take a risk that other people are going to pay for."

"It won't come to that. Hold on. I'll try something."

She closed her eyes, reaching out to that thread of the voice, as if expecting her again. Okay. Let us enter the chamber, unchallenged. You know fully well I'm capable of destroying this place. If anything happens to us, my friends will burn the other half of this hive to ash. Even if we don't make it out alive, you won't, either.

You may pass, if you honor your word to wield only words, not swords or claws.

Agreed.

She opened her eyes. "We can pass. Everyone, stay sharp. If we can get this thing talking, we might learn something we couldn't have otherwise."

"What the shit, Cassia?!" Noricatu shrilled. "They're listening to you? Why? Why would they reason with you?"

A theory was forming. One born of exposure. How long had they been down here, a few hours? Why the change? Why not try to bargain earlier, when it was better positioned to defend and argue from a position of strength?

Or was it just her own presence that it was interested in? "The Varadur change in my presence. Something shifts in their psyche; they become less aggressive, and they talk more than they usually do. I'm not sure what the effect is."

"I can vouch. The Varadur start acting really weird around her," Juni affirmed over the relay.

Kasfew raised a brow, beak gaping. "This plan is absolutely crazy."

"Or, we can just blast it if we don't like what it has to say," Neska proposed.

"One twitch, one move I don't like, and it's on," Kasfew growled. "Don't make me regret listening to you, Cassia."

She clicked her relay. "Change of plans. We're going in to talk. Everyone else, be ready to move in, outside the chamber," Neska insisted. "Same contingencies."

Noricatu puffed a breath of frosty air, then sighed. “You got this far. I doubt it was by terrible plans. I trust you on this.” She took a third of the goblin boomsticks, stuffing them in a satchel slung over her shoulder. Kasfew took another third, giving her a stern look.

“This is only going to end in violence. You know this."

"Maybe. It's the core we're after, nothing else. If this goes bad, we'll hit the instance core repeatedly with magical abilities. And bombs."

She explained the plan in short order, keeping her relay on transmit so the others could follow along. She got more than a few concerned thoughts from the squad leads.

“This plan is crazy," Corvin muttered. “Why would the Varadur want to talk now?”

“Because it's afraid.” Neska took a deep breath, then placed her hand on Kasfew and Noricatu, surprising them. “I'm casting a buffing spell. [Good Luck Blessing] should get you through this.”

She pulled as much mana as she could into the utility ability, and both of them shivered as the air around them flashed white, and a brief rune appeared over their heads.

Ability Proficiency Increased

Luck Blessing 2 > 3

She pushed past the corner, where a membrane of resin and organic draping hung over the entry. Slowly, the membrane lifted, worker drones moving it like an overly large curtain. Neska took that as her cue and entered a large hemispherical chamber, hewn from rock in precisely faceted features. Hive material decorated the walls, creeping upward towards the dome. Above, she could see a large opening exposing rock.

More worryingly, several hundred fluttering wasps perched on the walls, eyeing them. Neska paid no attention to them. Most of them were the worker drones, harmless unless provoked.

Several sticks of explosives and one angry firebird, however, might be construed as a provocation. "Kasfew," she said quietly, "hold fire as long as you can."

"You know I'm trusting you with my life on this, right?" The words weren't as hard-edged as they had been before.

"Yeah. Failure isn't an option."

Her focus was in front of her as she approached the edge of the precipice. Her scales felt tingly; there must surely be a massive amount of ambient mana in the air. In fact, the mana crystals had all been placed to line the chamber below them.

And enhancing what sat below, in the hollow. The bottom of the chamber looked like one giant nest of clustered remains. Eggs sat unattended by the hundreds, in the depression, packed into the hollows packed along the walls.

A large, desiccated sac lay on the floor of the cavern, some twenty feet down, a puddle of ichor dribbling off one end. Surrounding the biological oddity were hundreds–no, thousands of eggs, some varying shades. They were the same size as the grublike larvae and other eggs seen elsewhere.

She set her lapel to ‘transmit’ and took a risk to relay everything that happened from here on out. All the drone workers had abandoned the floor surrounding the sac. Those that remained were the guard wasps with the scythe-like arms, numbering half a dozen.

In the middle was the queen…and the core.

Neska sucked in a sharp breath as she took in the sight of the queen wasp. She was just like her normal counterparts, except she had to be a good fifteen feet long. Double that, if she counted the discarded egg sac. The queen bore no stinger, but she did have lengthy, powerful wasp wings that vibrated agitatedly. Her mandibles clacked, and her forearms rubbed together, ending in short talons on each. They were not to the same dexterity or fidelity as human hands, but they were not bug-like legs, either. Blue compound eyes peered at her, the lenses individually focusing on her.

“You come with just three? We expected you to betray your word. Good tidings to you, serpent."

The voice of the queen wasn’t just hers. It wasn’t even a voice. It was the modulation of thousands and thousands of wings and clicking mandibles, the collective of the hive in tune with the queen's intent. The gnawing, humming voice that filled the air left Neska cringing as the sounds surrounded her, swallowed her, covered her with the intent of a thousand crawling wasps. She stood firm and raised her body, looking eye-to-eye with the queen as she rose from the depths to a rocky outcropping. Six legs gripped the ground with surety, each one sharp enough to cut her in half, should this monster choose.

But what left Neska clenching her snout, driving a fang into her lip to keep focused, was the Instance core growing out of the queen's back, between her wings, like a cancerous sore. A mass of fleshy tendrils anchored the small, spherical device to the carapace of the queen, and she saw that the sphere wasn’t a sphere.

It was an eye. Moving independently of the queen. Strangely, the eye was closed, shifting around in a gelatinous material within the growth, like a biological mason jar. It was easily a foot across, covered in veins and dark, corruptive tissue.

Kasfew clenched his claws and edged his hand toward the boom sticks. Swirls of ice surrounded Noricatu like an indoor snow shower.

All three held firm against the sight of the monstrosity before them.

“Why do you come to fight? Why battle your own kind?”

“You know why we are here,” Neska announced, surveying the chamber. Multiple pathways connected this central chamber to the annular segments of the hive, in three distinct layers with an opening allowing access from the upper floors. Smoke billowed and suppressed the wasps from a full quarter slice of the second and third floors.

Yet they did not abandon the hive. Worker wasps tried to ferry sticky resin as if to suppress the flames. Water trickled somewhere in the distance. “You threaten our lands and our lives. You bear ill intent toward our people.”

“Ill intent? We have made the goblins better. Raised their collective. Made their women take control of their destinies.” Mandibles clicked in agitation, and the queen peered at her intensely. “You bear the most ill intent of all, serpent. Time and time again, you have slain us. The face is different, but the soul is the same. You are an element of it all, oblivious to the ebb and tides of the Shoal.”

She prayed her courage would not falter in the face of this creature, or the gross implication they'd met before. The rolling eyeball spun freely, lids closed, as if still dozing.

It was excessively creepy how the veins of fleshy material pulsed with their own life, curling into the queen’s thorax. Had anyone ever seen an Instance core like this? Was this one unique?

What she did know was that the Instance cores were, in fact, specialized Varadur specimens. The few records of them indicated they varied wildly. Yet, no one had commented about them being mobile. She’d assumed they would be static, like monsters affixed to guard areas like creeper plants.

She hadn't expected to see them growing like a tumor out of another creature. "Why the interest in me? I’m just a lamia. I’m no daughter of the world destroyer.”

A hissing exhale, and thousands of flapping wings sounded like uproarious laughter. “You don’t even know what you are? You are on a chain just like the rest of us. Yours happens to be a prettier color. And lengthier with how far you can run from your anchor.”

“Cassia,” Kasfew whispered to her side. “What in the hell is this thing on about? I feel like I can hear the bugs inside my skull when it talks.”

“Keep to the plan.” She’d dropped several of her genesis seeds along her path, and Syrona should be scattering the rest around the room. Hopefully.

She heard the click of her relay, with Jurik’s voice coming in loud and clear. “Cassia. We’re on the next level up. We’re moving in. All the insects seem to be in a trance; they’re ignoring us. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Sarisse and Juni are preparing for our contingency demolition; several resin structures are supporting the hive on the perimeter. Destroying them might destabilize the whole hive.”

Way ahead of you, Jurik. She saw more of the material forming several columns, along with chipped rock that appeared fractured. Perhaps the weight of the hive was too much for the existing structure? Maybe the insects had dug too deep.

Either way, it was a vulnerability, one she filed away as she spoke to the creature. “No one controls me. I have a vow to fulfil. On the dying breath of my witch, I promised her I would stop the monsters.”

The queen tilted its head, curious. “To slaughter us, one by one? You are on a fool’s errand. Killing us will never correct the imbalance that the world finds itself in.”

The insect shuddered, and distantly, Neska heard a whoosh of flame. Another section of the hatchery must have caught fire. “My younglings…their pain…it hurts. It hurts, but the sting of torment gives us the clarity to speak, to ignore the rattle of the chains. Your voice...it makes us stop. Makes us think. Your song carries through the air, brings us clarity."

What song? This got stranger by the minute. “Then enlighten me! You claim to know he who controls you! So who holds the chain? Is it Marikand, the mimicoid? I thought he might have had a shot at it by playing as his own subordinate, but I don’t think that tracks anymore. You claim that Ouroboros was usurped. Is it another one of the divines?”

"The hell are you--"

"Later," Neska hissed at Kasfew, who fell silent.

There were new variables at play. Before this, she could never have envisioned that the Divines would destroy humanity. All the lessons she remembered from that small book she borrowed from the library indicated they did not directly interfere with the world. Many theories put forth claimed they were wild elements, untamed, acting on their instincts.

Others suggested a beyond-human intelligence, explaining how their domains were consistent and the generally accepted benevolence behind their actions. Gaia, the great dragon, was seen as a representation of duty, discipline, and resolve. She was a dragon-at-arms, a protector of the worlds. Ouroboros was the great balancer, restarting the world whenever it stalled, and slowing it when the world grew too wild and dangerous—the great phoenix, the cleansing flame, and the forge of creation.

And now, if this queen was telling the truth, all their preconceptions had just been smashed in the face with a giant truth hammer.

“Is the Radiant King someone trying to become a Divine?” Neska knew it was a possibility. And she knew of one man who had tried to defeat death in an act of arrogance that had slowly led the world to its doom.

“We have only seen glimpses. The last we saw of the Radiant was at the sundering of–”

The creature went silent. Its limbs twitched, and its wings buzzed lazily. The compound eyes flickered back and forth.

The hive went quiet. So quiet, Neska could hear her own heart, thumping under the flood of adrenaline, in anticipation of the battle to come.

The core, twitched, and the grotesque, vein-like growths throbbing with new vigor.

Then the eye opened, revealing a pupil dark as the midnight sky, with an iris of an ominous crimson. Veins pulsed at the edges where it met the connecting tissue, and the pupil focused on her.

She knew what it was, who it was, before it even spoke in that halting, low tone tinged with cruel amusement. Her Interface flickered, scrambling with random glyphs as the creature's malicious intent emanated through the hive for all to witness.

[The prodigal witch returns. I underestimated you. A misstep that shall not happen twice.]

The lapel went dead in a burst of static, shorting out. Her Interface continued to glitch, infected by those ominous words etching themselves into reality itself. The great red eye blinked and peered at her, and the wasp queen tipped forward, as if to let it examine her closer.

Neska slithered one pace forward, mana charging into her hands on instinct as her true foe made his appearance. “Back again, Voice? Or should I call you the Radiant King?”