Chapter 182: Monarch Descends
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Smoke drifted through like funeral incense, curling around shattered pillars of bark and stone. The crater punched by Kai’s arrival still glowed at its edges, molten droplets of earth hissing where they met cold subterranean air. All sound had paused, suspended in the stunned wake of a living meteor crashing through the roof of the Crimson Nest.
Kai stood motionless for a few seconds in the middle of the crater he had created, faint steam rising from his armored limbs. All around him, half a dozen bloated frogkin froze mid-step, stunned by his sudden appearance.
Frogs, once jeering, crouched in silence. Assassin-ants, bruised and blood-slick, froze mid-lunge. Only two figures dared move.
The first was the Frog-Man—lumbering, swollen with half-regenerated muscle, patches of blistered skin clinging to him like leprous rags. His new eyes, milky green and bulbous, swam in their sockets as he studied the intruder. He wiped a string of viscous drool from his slit mouth, flicking it aside where it sizzled on the floor.
The second was Kai, standing upon the cracked lip of his own impact crater. Dust settled on the shoulders of his obsidian cuirass, each mote flashing crimson when it touched the living runes pulsing across his armor. His silver hair lifted in unseen currents; ember-red eyes burned through the haze. He looked carved from the very fault lines of the world, an obsidian sovereign crowned by falling ash.
One heartbeat. Two heartbeat.... Later
From his perch atop the battlefield, Kai looked around slowly.
His gaze swept across the broken tunnels, the collapsed burrow walls soaked in acid and blood. He saw twitching limbs. Crushed thoraxes. Five female assassin ants are barely standing. Their bodies were cracked and smoking, their pheromones weak, yet they stood between their queen and death.
Then he saw her.
Akayoroi.