"Damn it! Damn it!"
"Why are they all just bugs!?"
"I already released the ones I caught—why are they still chasing us?!"
Gone was the proud, confident air from their departure. Now, Dubois—the self-styled merchant wanderer—was pale-faced, gripping the servo control console, panting heavily as veins bulged across his forehead.
"...If this isn't a coincidence, then it means these creatures have intelligence—possibly advanced intelligence…"
"Sir, these insects have already developed their own method of interstellar navigation and travel. It's clear they've evolved not only high intelligence, but a hive mind—an advanced, highly organized, interstellar hive consciousness."
The next instant—BOOM!
The portholes, holo-displays, and servo-monitoring screens all flared simultaneously with blinding light. Explosions erupted, illuminating Dubois's terrified face.
The deck beneath his feet, the surrounding bulkheads, every structure groaned in pain and trembled violently.
In the boundless void, the six remaining ships of the civilian merchant wanderer fleet roared silently, their hums blending into an unending dirge.
Massive naval shells screamed into the dark, guided munitions tracing curved trails, while energy weapons unleashed alternating waves of blinding heat. The kaleidoscope of light cut across the silent curtain of the cosmos, crashing into a desolate silhouette so dark it seemed as though even starlight had been devoured.
The radiance of explosions was dazzling, yet the outlines they revealed—formed by countless blazing fireballs—only deepened the horror.
The burning cosmic clouds rolled upward, tracing the jagged contours of violet-black chitinous carapaces—monstrous shells capable of piercing steel, limbs sharp as razors, and exoskeletons denser than starship armor.
They swarmed, unfazed by the vacuum, charging forward bare-bodied through the endless void.
They filled the sensors—completely. Every inch of the display was alive with them. From a few kilometers to several dozen kilometers long, the bio-ships screamed in eerie silence as they pushed through the storm of fire.
The fleet's two Lunar-class cruisers—armed with old-model heavy light-lance arrays, ancient heavy plasma convergers, and turbine laser cannons—struck back fiercely. These ten-kilometer-long relics of the Empire's glory unleashed barrages that sliced through the massive swarm like butter, lighting the void in white fire and leaving behind molten, charred husks.
But in the cosmic scale, even a sweeping light-lance beam was minuscule—tens of meters, perhaps hundreds.
And the swarm did not pause. The moment a gap appeared, it was filled anew, sealing itself instantly.
They were doomed.
Completely, utterly doomed.
Those damned insects actually tricked me?!
Dubois's face twisted with impotent rage.
How humiliating.
He had been deceived by bugs.
After yet another brutal beating, Dubois—now questioning every decision that had led him here—finally began to regret his earlier recklessness.
He wasn't stupid. Educated, yes—arrogant, short-tempered, but not a fool.
Impulsiveness kills.
If the great Sacred Selene herself granted him one more chance, he swore he'd treasure it.
Just a short while ago, he had been cautious. He'd dispatched his purchased mechanized legion to scout ahead before attempting any deep-space warp.
He had carefully surveyed the area near the warp entry point, searching for traces of intelligent life.
Nothing. Not a single sign.
The stars were desolate—lifeless and silent.
Until he found them—the culprits behind his downfall.
Space insects.
On a barren planet overgrown with strange, aggressive, bio-organic flora, the vanguard of his mechanized scouting forces had made landfall.
The good news: they had finally jumped out of a dead, lifeless region and found a world teeming with life.
The bad news: it wasn't much better.
Instead of a world where birds wouldn't defecate—this was one where bugs did.
The vegetation here—covered in tendrils and oozing mucus—was anything but friendly. From observation alone, it was obvious that every ounce of this planet's resources had been devoured by the insects. Even a goblin's granary would seem prosperous compared to the barren wasteland left behind.
Even the nutrients and microorganisms in the soil had been completely drained, leaving the surface as dry and lifeless as a desert about to turn to sand.
The very first landing site had already delivered a heavy blow.
Dubois' heart had sunk halfway into despair, yet, clinging to faint optimism—since we're already here, surely they didn't eat the minerals too—he ordered an initial mineral survey.
Moments later, the malformed, hideous insectoids—bristling with blades, mandibles, and predatory limbs—emerged en masse and launched a ferocious assault on his mechanized scouting units.
Soon, communication links began dropping one after another.
The hazy, fragmented live feed from several deep-field mining automatons flickered across the bridge.
The last transmitted image showed a creature with the head of a leech and the body of an insect—thick-shelled, six-legged, and dripping foul yellow-green slime from its jaws before it bit the camera clean off.
That was his money!
Sure, the mechanized legion he'd bought was made up of outdated, decommissioned Imperial units—but they were still clad in solid alloy plating, with all critical circuits shielded beneath armor. They weren't supposed to short out so easily!
Cheap, reliable, durable—
The gospel of every civilian merchant wanderer. Hiring Imperial citizens cost money, and casualties meant compensation. Using alien species? Slightly cheaper, but still required food, lodging, and discipline. Too much trouble.
All things considered, mass-purchasing mechanized troops was simply more economical.
Then, an idea struck Dubois: these bugs might actually be valuable.
If their teeth and claws could tear through alloy plating, they must have significant research potential.
Immediately, he issued an order to his AI-controlled landing force:
"Forget mining. Shoot down these ugly things—and capture a few hundred specimens for study. Maybe I can sell them off or use them as collateral."
And so, the Machine vs. Bug War began.
Dubois' mechanized legion, vastly outnumbered, was soon overwhelmed and annihilated by the rising tide of chittering beasts.
Infuriated, Dubois dispatched a five-kilometer-long escort ship from his fleet.
The result? Stunning.
The bombardment from orbit reduced the insect swarms to pulp.
As the escort ship continued its work—bombing, mining, and capturing—Dubois, to his credit, kept a level head. He didn't risk his entire fleet; he was waiting for confirmation.
On this front, the Sacred Selene Empire had always been responsible.
Official documents on spaceborne insect species—such as the Flood, Zerg, and Arachnids—were not classified secrets but publicly available data.
Any Imperial citizen could access them freely.
For the thrill-seeking merchant wanderers who gambled their lives on the unknown, such knowledge was essential—and Dubois was no exception.
Judging from his scans, this universe appeared primitive. Confident, he ordered the rest of his fleet to enter the unknown sector.
That was when the swarm struck back.
A roving hive fleet launched a sudden counterattack on the escort ship he'd deployed.
Well… that was expected.
He authorized the escort ship to use its full arsenal. The skirmish was fierce and messy, but manageable. Blow for blow, they held their ground. For a while.
More hive fleets began arriving.
Still, armed with the Empire's strategic data, Dubois waited arrogantly, believing himself in control.
When the void finally fell silent, with no new enemy reinforcements, and the shipboard AI calculated that the local single-star system could not possibly sustain more swarms, Dubois made his decision:
Exterminate them all.
Driven by slogans of camaraderie and profit—"Support our comrades! Don't abandon a single ally! Glory and nobility await!"—the merchant wanderer fleet plunged into the chaotic warp-tide of this unknown cosmos.
Now, looking back, Dubois wanted nothing more than to slap himself.
Arrogance and misplaced confidence had doomed him—the same arrogance that had made him underestimate the swarm, and the envy that had driven him to outshine his half-brother at any cost.
The accumulation of all these factors had driven Dubois to act on impulse.
Had he waited a little longer—long enough to observe the true hive fleets speeding toward him from beyond the system at faster-than-light velocity—perhaps he would have abandoned the fight and fled.
Yes, the true hive fleets.
They had been waiting too.
Only now did Dubois realize that those barren worlds he'd passed earlier were nothing more than the leftovers—the dinner plates of the swarm—where every trace of organic life and nutrient had been devoured, leaving behind only scraps.
Unbelievable. These bio-ships could manipulate gravity itself to bend spacetime, achieving faster-than-light travel. They moved swiftly toward natural gravitational wells—stars, for instance—and, once close enough, decelerated into sublight speeds to approach their prey.
BOOM—!
Moments later, three destroyers were gone—snapped apart and vaporized in seconds by colossal leviathans of the void, each larger than an Imperial Navy capital ship.
The wreckage erupted outward in a storm of molten debris, scattering across deep space like a rain of iron and fire—before being sucked into the gaping, abyssal maws of the monsters.
Only two Lunar-class cruisers and a single escort ship remained.
More than half the fleet lost.
The crew's faces were grim. Under normal circumstances, they should have sent a distress signal to the Imperial Exploration Fleet—but—
"Damn it! Still no contact with any nearby Imperial Navy forces? Don't tell me we've ventured that far in?!"
Dubois' thin lips trembled.
"It's unclear why, sir. Ever since we entered this unknown universe, our link to the Empire's hyperspatial Honkai communication network has been unstable. At first, there was interference, but basic contact was still possible—similar to fluctuations during a warp transition…"
After a moment of silence, the navigator shook his head.
"No… this isn't caused by warp interference. Since those spaceborne killers lured us into their trap, a strange storm has engulfed this entire region's Imaginary Space. Our onboard Honkai Cube cores are too weak—they're powering both the engines and the weapon systems simultaneously. The strain is enormous!"
"If this continues, the Cube consumption rate will only keep increasing!"
He suddenly froze mid-sentence, realization dawning. "Wait—why are we letting these things lead us around like prey?! Employer, something's wrong! The stars—they look normal, yet every flicker of starlight feels filled with… malice."
"Warp jump! Anchor to the Honkai hyperspatial network and get us out of here!"
"Report—anchoring failed! We've lost the frequency lock on the Honkai network. Cube power is critically low! To realign the coordinates, we'd have to shut down both the weapons and the engines."
The operator's words cast a heavy silence over the bridge.
But no one panicked. For merchant wanderers, such risks were part of the deal. Their contracts made that very clear.
"Any other options?"
"None, sir. Not without coordinates—or at least a reference point. But this universe… it's nothing but bugs. The warp space is a storm of chaos. No stable route exists. The shipboard AI warns there's a 98% chance we'll be lost forever."
"Then we fight. You still have those dark-matter fission bombs you bought for emergencies, right?"
"Wait… there's still a chance."
The silent middle-aged helmsman suddenly pointed at a faint golden glimmer on the servo-map.
"This is the only light signal we've been able to detect. Like a torch in endless darkness—weak, but real. The indexing system locked onto it. If we use it as a reference point… shall we take the gamble?"
"Perhaps this universe holds more than just insects."
...
Elsewhere—
Astartes First Legion, the Dark Angels.
Conquered World Serial No. 1.
Sector 1 — Governor's District, Upper City.
After a full day of inspections and audiences, Selene retired to the luxury villa built by the local planetary governor for her use.
"Your Majesty, this is tonight's administrative briefing."
The super-AI attendant, Mendicant Bias, now served competently as Selene's governmental aide.
"Hmm… let's see. A report on the recent dissolution of several Imperial civilian merchant wanderer groups?"
In addition to essential political summaries, Mendicant Bias also adjusted the supplementary briefs it presented according to Selene's shifting interests.
Recently, updates on Imperial arts—dance, music, and theater—had been largely replaced by reports concerning merchant wanderers.
"Big data, is it?" Selene murmured with a faint smile, setting aside the local newspaper. Streams of cerulean data danced across her eyes as she frowned slightly. "...An anomaly—intermittent coordinate contact, then complete loss. Based on the last transmissions, presumed destroyed by a newly discovered spaceborne insectoid species."
A flicker of curiosity crossed her gaze. Pulling up the full dossier, she scanned quickly. "...This swarm… feels familiar. Hm? Another force's interference as well?"
As she delved deeper, the corners of her lips curled upward.
"Well now… this is quite an unexpected harvest indeed."
—
—
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven