The brighter the flames became, the more twisted his expression grew. A wave of emotion crashed into him—pain, anger, sadness, fear—as the bodies around him turned to ash.
It was an indescribable ecstasy.
Mother… Mother… Mother…
The churning spirits rang in his ears. Their insectile chittering grew louder, calling for their mother.
"Don't worry," he grinned. "Your mother will be joining you all soon~"
Hahahaha.
Qiren went maniacal. Give me everything, he laughed as the spiraling flames were absorbed into his mask.
His eyes paled, the irises fading into white.
He looked up and spread his arms, breaking his mudra as tears poured from his blank eye sockets.
The flames churned. Exoskeletons crackled.
Violet fire spun tighter, poison shifting through the formation.
His skin turned purple in places, blistering as cells died slowly on contact—yet he laughed.
His veins blackened, standing out against his pale flesh.
Though he was protected from his own flames, the relentless Dao of the wyrm still found ways to damage him.
Krr… Kraaa.
A low whisper drifted past.
His lower mouth opened. Energy rushed in as the flames funneled into his body. The talismans flared, aiding the process—his body steaming, blood boiling, poison coursing through his meridians.
The talismans outside the formation dimmed.
Flames stopped pouring outward.
The ground hissed, molten in places, as the inferno slowly dissipated.
The blazing sphere shrank until nothing but Qiren remained within it.
"Haa… haa…" he panted, though his grin never faded.
Yīnluò watched as the talismans lost power, breaking into ash before falling to the ground.
Her lips parted as Qiren's body writhed.
The mask on his face shattered as well—the talismans reaching their limits. His eyes shone beneath, glossy and sharp.
"I can feel it…"
He spoke as his head buzzed, his senses spreading outward—passing through the tunnel and into a cavern beyond.
Its walls were lit by ten souls floating above piles of bones.
Their glow partially illuminated the underground chamber, revealing a giant, blurry figure shrouded in poison mist—twenty-two feet long, coiled atop a demonic formation.
Its body turned translucent as it hissed in pain.
Down its throat, flaming tendrils swarmed, all originating from a melon-sized berry covered in hellish orange-red light. Roots and vines snapped erratically, burrowing through the creature as blazing flame devoured it from the inside out.
The creature's body shifted, trying to cloak itself within the environment—!!
Its face turned. Its attempt to hide while overpowering the berry failed. Its body reverted to its natural brown as purple flames flared.
Its senses screamed.
Y-you—how!?
Panic surged.
Its voice—something close to one—sent shock and distress through the hive network.
Zzzzzhzzz.
The words traveled as mental waves, clashing with Qiren's consciousness from afar.
How could you have invaded my mental connection!? No—that's impossible! How did you steal it from my soldiers!? How dare you—I'll have you skinned for this!
It hissed the decree.
Qiren laughed.
"Bold words," he said calmly, "coming from a thief caught red-handed."
He watched as the Hive Mistress struggled to digest his cursed object. Her stomach couldn't handle the backlash of the Twisted Fruit of Rage she had tried so desperately to devour.
The wyrm queen bared her teeth within the poisonous clouds.
In the shadows, twelve royal guards stood around her, while common soldiers of varying sizes filled the cavern.
The walls were burrowed into and shaped into nesting pods for her future servants.
My children—attack. All of you, attack!
Her command echoed through the cavern.
The walls behind her shook as dozens more wyrms hidden within them—burrowed in twisting tunnels—surged forward.
Qiren's head rang. His neck veins bulged grotesquely as foam gathered at his mouth. His skin thinned, stretching over his expanding skull, cracking as elongated spikes pushed outward—those in front reaching five inches, those in back barely one.
The spikes twisted in different directions, ripping and shredding the top of his skull as it tore open.
His brain pulsed with red veins and black folds.
A gaping hole formed, lined with jagged rows of teeth.
Poisonous fog poured from the split skull, shaping itself into a crown-like maw—mimicking a wyrm's jaws.
WUMBSHH—!
The fog ignited, flames spilling down his back where the mist pooled, painting his hair in a blazing purple mantle.
Yīnluò gasped.
She watched his transformation as his tailbone extended, erupting with the same-colored fire—forming into a full wyrm's tail. His jagged skull-crown clattered, attempting to close unevenly around his exposed brain.
His mind throbbed, forcing the tooth-filled maw wider as his brain pressed against the skull walls.
Blood streamed down his face. His eyes blinked—then closed completely.
Krree… Skree…
The sounds came from the top of his head.
"Is this as far as I can go for now?" he muttered.
"No… I can still go one step further."
Violet mist poured from his mouth.
He lazily flexed his tail, launching a small fireball.
I can work with this.
Even with closed eyes, he felt the wyrms converging from all sides. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled—not with words, but with thought.
KILL YOUR QUEEN.
The command erupted from his mind, an electromagnetic pulse rippling outward.
The wyrms within the walls paused—lesser minds stunned by the intrusion, frozen as they struggled to process conflicting orders.
Kill her! Qiren roared into their minds.
Some faltered—but the weaker-willed turned, drilling back through the stone toward their mistress.
Don't listen to him, my children! He's deceiving you—attack him! Attack!
Qiren smiled as he sensed the split—more than a dozen obeying him, while the stronger, more developed wyrms followed their queen instead.
"…This is going to be fun."
Qiren's smile widened.
Hold the line.
The command was calm, absolute—carved directly into the lesser minds that had answered him.
The wyrms under his control hesitated only a heartbeat before obeying.
They turned as one.
Stone shattered as they reversed course, burrowing back through the tunnel walls—not fleeing, but fortifying.
Bodies coiled within rock and earth, anchoring themselves like living barricades. Jaws split open inside the stone, rows of teeth grinding as they tore new passages, widening kill channels and choke points.
Defend me. Tear apart anything that comes through.
The walls came alive.
From within the rock, violet fire spat through fresh fractures.
Poison bled into the stone itself as controlled wyrms exhaled in short, brutal bursts—measured, deliberate. Their bodies moved like veins beneath flesh, shifting through the earth to intercept the charging horde.
The queen's loyalists slammed into them moments later.
Impact echoed through the cavern as wyrms collided inside the walls—
stone buckling, formations cracking as bodies crashed together in cramped tunnels where size and numbers meant nothing.
Skrr—! KRRREE—!
Screams were cut short as jaws found throats in the dark.
Coils tightened, crushing bone and shell alike.
One of Qiren's controlled wyrms ruptured under a direct bite, its body exploding in a wash of bile and flame—but even as it died, it detonated its poison sacs, flooding the tunnel with corrosive miasma.
Two attackers dissolved with it.
Elsewhere, a loyalist wyrm tore free of the wall, half its body exposed, dragging an enemy with it.
They thrashed together in open air—fangs ripping, tails snapping—before both were swallowed again by shifting stone as another tunnel collapsed over them.
Qiren felt it all.
Every impact.
Every death.
Every pulse of fear and pain.
Fragments of sensation bled back through the tenuous mental link—blurred, chaotic—but enough.
Good, he thought.
The Hive Mistress screeched as the resistance stalled her charge. Her network screamed with confusion as commands collided—some obeying her, others answering him instead.
Inside the walls, the battle became brutal and intimate.
No room to maneuver.
No space to retreat.
Only crushing pressure, teeth, and poison.
Wyrms shredded one another in the dark, carving the tunnels wider with their deaths. Blood soaked into the stone. Acid hissed. Fire burned without flame, consuming oxygen and flesh alike.
Several of Qiren's thralls died—but each death bought seconds.
Seconds were all he needed.