Chapter 1
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
Franz Kafka, 1915
I didn't get the dignity of a truck. All I got was waking up. Something was surrounding me, some kind of substance I didn't recognize. I couldn't see yet. I just pushed at the substance, the material stretching like bubblegum until it finally snapped apart. I felt the air on my skin and wiggled… wiggled?
I reached my hand out, only to be unable to reach for anything. I tried to stretch, and my whole body flexed. I fell… not asleep. But it was like my awareness slowly sank away, allowing my body to work on autopilot.
When I came back to awareness, it was while eating. Someone was speaking in a language I didn't recognize, it sounded somewhat like Chinese? I chewed idly on a piece of some kind of sweet food and looked around. Everything felt so vibrant… like my eyes were somehow seeing more and less than they should? I tried to focus.
Something was above me… OH. Oh god. I froze, food falling from my mouth. I could feel it, moving above me, its vibrations brushing across my body. I couldn't see it, like my eyes couldn't focus on it. It was huge. So huge. Incomprehensibly massive. I wiggled my body, trying to look up-
I was in it's hand. My eyes blearily (God, did I need glasses?) stared down at the palm below me, the size of a warehouse floor, with five fingers poking up into the sky in the horizon. I couldn't see the fingers clearly, but I could feel them. For a moment, the story of Sun Wukong leaping into the heavens, only to see the five fingers of Buddha holding the universe filled my memory.
The creature holding me… I don't think I can describe how incomprehensible the size difference was. I felt a sense of vertigo as I tried to comprehend-
A voice spoke again in a language I couldn't understand. It sounded kind, at least. A sensation like the passing of a train was followed by a finger landing on the palm landscape, a finger as massive as a redwood tree. It pushed the food I'd dropped forward.
I hesitantly chewed on the sweet… not fruit. Wood. I was chewing into a log nearly the size of my body. I tried to focus, tried to understand what was happening. After a bit of chewing, my awareness faded again.
When I regained awareness, I was crawling past. I looked at my reflection and recoiled. A giant fucking bug! A freaky looking worm, with mandibles, creepy legs, and-
It recoiled as well. I twitched to the right, ready to dodge. The insect did the same.
'Oh. Oh god…' I chittered, my mandibles wiggling with each word. I leaned closer, my reflection joining me. I stared at myself, my mind roiling in horror.
I was a larvae. A bug. I WAS A BUG.
I swallowed, the sensation feeling more unfamiliar than I could have ever believed. This time, my awareness didn't fade away. I stayed in that body, staring at my reflection as I tried to understand what was happening.
Then I tried to scream.
After a big chunk of time panicking and gibbering, I finally got myself together enough to think beyond the sheer terror and shock.
I'd hatched out of an egg. That must have been what my first memory was. And the giant… well, might have been giant, but more likely was just a normal human. I looked around. While my new eyes were good for field of view, they were still bleary. It was enough, with my weird sensitivity to the air, to sense that I was in some kind of enclosure.
Oh, and I was a bug. A worm. I looked myself over, feeling my body. It felt both natural and unnatural. I'd forget that I was in the body, then all of sudden a flood of human memories would clash with that feeling.
I wasn't someone who disliked insects. Bugs are cool. But I didn't want to be one.
I felt hungry. I let my instincts guide me, and found myself in front of a log of wood. I chewed my way through the wood, surprised with how good it tasted. It seemed to fill my body with energy with each bite.
That was another thing I didn't expect. I felt so much more aware. It was like my body was feeling things at a level I wasn't used to. Maybe because I was smaller, the info had less distance to travel from my senses to my brain?
But then, how was I thinking? My brain had to be tiny. Way too tiny to be able to comprehend things the way a human could. But maybe that's why I had spent so much time without being aware of things? My human memories were too big to be held in an insectoid mind for long?
Why was I able to hold onto my awareness now? Things were fuzzy, but I wasn't drifting off again. Looking back, while I had two clear memories of awareness, there had been little hiccups of awareness over the last… however long it had been.
I was glad things were fuzzy though. They kept me from really panicking again like I had after the initial discovery.
I crawled through a log the size of a three-story building, chewing my way through the wood, sometimes coming upon tunnels I had already dug through. The feeling of energy flowing from the wood to fill my body kept happening. It was interesting, actually feeling my body fill with fuel in a way my former human form had never come close to.
After what had to be a few minutes, I… expelled that fuel, then left the log.
The moment I did, a voice spoke with excitement. A pair of fingers moving with insane speed picked me up. That sensation of two giant pieces of flesh wrapped in bone grabbing onto me and lifting me up, the wind whistling around me, was horrifying. It was a relief when I landed in a palm.
Once again, the voice spoke as the whole world shifted around us. The giant was walking to another part of the room. I was placed into a small clear glass cup. I still couldn't see things clearly, but I could perceive the sounds of someone writing, feel the air shift, hear a voice speaking quietly to me.
So I was… what, a pet? A science experiment? For a Chinese guy? Or was I being racist by assuming that? The language he was speaking didn't sound Japanese or Korean, more similar to what I'd heard from old Kung Fu movies than anime or K-dramas.
Then again, I was an American. Red, white, blue, and barely able to speak English according to some countries, let alone other languages. What did I know?
Still, not like I could do much other than listen and 'feel' the air around me. I settled down to try and translate the language as much as I could. It helped when the giant dropped in some strange wood for me to chew on. I devoured them as I listened to him talk to me, trying to understand what I could. Probably wouldn't get anywhere just from listening, but it was worth a shot.
A couple months of eating and listening hadn't gotten me anything but bigger. Way bigger. Way too fast too. I wasn't great at tracking days, the small room I was kept in didn't have a lot of sunlight, but it had to have been less than two months, and I was already as big as the giant's hand. I didn't know a lot about insects, despite having some friends that were enthusiasts, but I knew beetles could take anywhere from several months to years to get to adulthood.
I was growing a lot faster than that. Soon I'd have to change. From a larvae to a transitionary form, then to a full on… whatever I was. I had no clue of my species.
I molted my skin three times, the whole process kind of fascinating, gross, and itchy. Had to be done though, with how fast I expanded.
My… god, I didn't want to say owner. Caretaker. He (My eyesight had been getting better the more I ate and the bigger I got, which was how I knew he was a 'he') spent a lot of time talking to me, but I didn't know enough to figure out if he ever said what species I was. I got 'hello', 'goodbye' and a word that must have been my name. Pinchy, or something that sounded similar to it.
I hoped it was Pinchy, and not Pi Chi. Pinchy was funny for a beetle, which would mean the guy had a sense of humour. He said the word a lot at least. 'Pinchy' this, and 'Pinchy' that. Better than nothing.
So I continued to eat and grow, fattening myself up to the point I was getting to be a real unit. Over and over I ate, pooped, and listened, until one day I kind of… had a moment. It was like my awareness of myself sank away and away, until I was just barely cognizant of myself. Whatever was happening, my humanity couldn't interfere. I found myself digging deep into the wooden log within my enclosure, digging deeper and deeper until I'd created a small burrow.
Then I surrounded myself in a simple shell. And it was like… It was impossible to describe. How do you describe it? My muscles, organs, all parts of me, melting, changing, flowing, slowly turning me into something… else. Thank god my awareness sank away. It didn't hurt. But there are things man isn't meant to understand, and feeling, in exact detail, every part of my body change and flow, was just so wrong.
I was barely aware enough to understand what was happening, and that was enough to freak me out. And I was worried about… everything. I'd thought a lot about my situation. A human in the body of an insect. I'd reincarnated into a freaking bug. Was I really that bad in my old life?
There was plenty of time to think about my situation. I was a beetle. An animal that didn't have long to live after it became an adult. A few months, at most. I was… going to die. The thought of it filled me like ice in my veins.
Well… ice inside the gelatinous mass that my body had become.
Heh… that helped. Joking around about my weird ass body, my weird ass situation. I didn't know why I'd become what I was, but at least I had some perks. Free food, I could sleep and laze about however I wanted, no need to go to work. I didn't have much in terms of entertainment, and if I had been human, being alone for so long without mental stimulation would have driven me insane, but thankfully I could sink into my insect instincts to stave off mental damage.
Over time, my liquidy insides began to flow back together. I slowly formed legs, horns, eyes, and something approaching a nose and ears.
I couldn't explain the feeling of my body changing while I could 'feel' it. It's like explaining how your liver feels rubbing against the rest of the flesh around it. A human couldn't. But I was now intimately familiar with the experience.
Thank god I had a digestive system. I was worried I'd be one of those bugs who became an adult, had sex, then died of starvation later.
Also, I was apparently still a guy. Thank god, no gender dysmorphia to go with my body dysmorphia. There was… something else.
The energy from the logs I'd been eating had stayed with me. In fact, it was growing, filling every part of me, strengthening me. I'd thought it was simply me eating and getting filled with nutrients, but the energy felt like… more.
My awareness was still faded when I finally cracked out my pupa shell and began wiggling around. Still not fully grown. I had all the parts, but the armor I had was soft, almost useless. I still needed time to 'cook'. I spent time resting in my burrow again, what felt like weeks, slowly toughening my skin and body. Inside me, the energy I had been gaining flowed through strangely, like it was deciding how to settle.
My exoskeleton hardened around my horns, torso, and powerful limbs. My body grew, my muscles solidified beneath that exoskeleton. And then, one day, I snapped into full awareness.
I exploded out of the thin covering around me. I climbed out of my burrow, quickly moving upwards until the exoskeleton around me shone in the light. I stood on legs, real powerful legs, and stretched as best as I could. What I had lost from the flexibility of my larvae form, I'd gained in feeling sturdy and powerful. My horns shone before me, feeling as much like swords as they were a body part.
My eyesight was also… better? No, not quite. I still had the weird sensitivity of my larvae form, sensing the air across my body, and I still had the wide field of vision, but it was a bit better. Even more, I could smell things a lot more clearly to the point that I could almost seem to smell the colors.
I stared around. Previously, I could barely make out my enclosure. Now I could see the whole room.
The room seemed to be some sort of office or library, with books and old scrolls lining the shelves all around me. I experimentally opened up my back. A pair of wings fluttered out, the weird feeling of powerful muscles pushing to lift me up into the air took over, sending me up and away. I floated around with an imaginary grin on my imaginary face. I was flying. Sure, only at human height, but it was still cool!
I moved around the room, trying to understand what I was seeing. There were maps on the walls, small pieces of art, and a desk with writing materials. I could see the cup that I'd once been placed in while the giant fed me and talked.
Hm… lots of books. Back in my old life, I'd had a few children's books on my shelf, either so I could have something to read to nephews and nieces or just out of nostalgia's sake. Did my caretaker have some as well?
I flitted around the room, looking over the books. Finally, I found one. A slim little manual with some flowers on it, a dusty thing at the bottom of a shelf in the far corner of the room. I dropped down and awkwardly pulled it out with my horns, the book falling open. Like I'd hoped, a children's book. But not the kind you'd give a kid to teach them.
It was more the kind you'd read to them to get them to fall asleep. I sighed to myself. Well, not really sigh, but as close as a beetle is capable of.
The sound of the door opening drew my attention. I looked over and got my first clear look at my caretaker. I couldn't 'see' him anymore than you can perceive the entirety of a mountain at first glance. I was bigger, but he was still incomprehensibly larger than me. Still, the combination of my senses helped me get a better idea of what he looked like.
He was pretty average in height at my best guess, with a lithe set of muscles, strong jawline, and a classic kung fu beard, like an inky black waterfall. His clothes were fancy green and white robes layered across his body. He glanced at the enclosure, then his eyes bee-lined directly to me. Just like that, no confusion, no searching the room. He glanced at the enclosure on instinct, then his eyes snapped to me, his attention almost physical on me.
"...Hmm?" I understood that in any language. He walked over. I flew up and away, landing on the bookshelf. He picked up the book and looked it over, then glanced at me. A wide smile grew on his face. He said something, stiding over to his desk.
He came back with a mirror, which he held so I could see my own reflection. I looked myself over.
Huh… I looked cool. Weird, still, and I'd give a fifties housewife the scare of her life. But I was healthy looking, with an ink black carapace, long sword-like horns tinged with fur, and beady eyes under my armored head.
I turned to look at my wings, flaring the beautiful looking things, then back around to look at myself again.
"Ahhh!" The caretaker raised his hands and shouted in shock. Then he laughed, grabbing me up in a single hand and twirling the room happily. That's when I realized what happened.
He'd been testing my ability to recognize myself in a mirror. And I succeeded.
This guy had been trying to make a sapient beetle? Why?
As the guy screamed and shouted for joy, swinging me around like a baby, I wondered what was next for me.
"Cultivation," my caretaker said two months later, a small book in front of us. I stared down at the word. While my grasp over his language wasn't the best, I had learned a bit thanks to his patience. And now we were on a word he had thought was critically important for me to learn… and it was.
Cultivation. Cultivator. I was in a cultivator story. I had read two cultivator stories. And one puppet show about them.
Aw, balls.
I looked up at my caretaker then back at the word. Finally I sighed, as much as a beetle can sigh, and dipped my right front leg into ink to begin copying the word. I was in trouble, huh?
My caretaker's name was Sī Chóu Jiǔ. Best I could tell was that it meant something like 'silk wine.'
"So, Pi Chi, you are the culmination of my many experiments," He said softly, feeding me bits and pieces of fruit while I read from the book before me. "I have been breeding beetles for the last fifty years, some becoming spirit beasts, others abject failures. So far, you are the first to show such intelligence so quickly. Most die of aging after less than a year."
That… was a fucking lot to unpack. Over fifty? The guy looked like, twenty-five, tops. Cultivators really were built different, huh?
And of course I was the first to show intelligence. I was the first human unlucky enough to get reincarnated into a beetle. Far as I knew. I felt a bit of guilt. Technically, I wasn't a sign of his success. I was a lucky drop.
Finally, and most importantly, I had a timeline for my death. I had less than a year left. Unless I could cultivate. Cultivators lived for centuries sometimes, maybe more. I didn't need that much, but I'd love to at least learn enough to survive a few decades. And beyond that, I didn't want to be a beetle. I mean, it was awesome that I could fly, but I missed thumbs. And legs. And other… parts.
I think, if I didn't have my beetle instincts to lean on, I would have been a lot less comfortable in my chitin.
While I was thinking that over, my caretaker continued to speak. "What do you think, Pi Chi? Would you like to learn? I've never taught anyone before, let alone an insect like you, but it could be fun."
He wasn't talking to me like a pet, but it was pretty clear he was mostly humoring himself. I wasn't a real person in his eyes.
That was fine. I quickly nodded my body, my horn waving up and down. I could sense his surprise, but he still chuckled.
"Very well! Tomorrow, we begin your training! Then, your first real fight!"
Chapter 2Training was weird. First thing he did wasn't to get me to do push ups or something like that. The first thing he did was show me diagrams of my own biology on a wall, acting like a school teacher with me as the student on his desk, watching him work.
"You see, unlike me, you have no muscles in your limbs," he explained. Once again, he seemed to be talking simply out of enthusiasm rather than thinking I really understood, but he was a good speaker. "You have only one muscle. Your heart. With your heart, you pump blood and Qi throughout your body, moving your limbs about."
That sounded familiar. I wasn't an expert on insects, but everyone learned at least a bit of that stuff in school. Si Chou continued. "This means that the best way to strengthen you physically is to strengthen your heart. Easy enough, my tiny friend! Exercise is the key, flying, running, moving and fighting! The same as any other cultivator."
Did these guys not know what weight training was? …Would doing that help me, with the whole 'not having muscles' thing?
Si Chou then put up another diagram. "Now. You understand the realms?"
Yep. Each with nine levels in them. The one I was interested in was immortality. I didn't actually care about immortality, but I wanted at least a few decades. At my nod, Si Chou continued.
"A cultivator must train heavily, not just their body, but their Qi," Si Chou hesitated. "I must confess, my own clan is a more relaxed one. We haven't ever been the kind to become true powers. I myself am only a Foundation Realm cultivator, and only a rank two one. To some from the city I might as well be an Initiate, considering my age."
He seemed down for a moment. Then he sighed, clapping his hands. "Well, no need to spit blood over it. Just know that with time and training, anyone can be as great as I."
Well… shit. He sounded kind of like my own self-deprecation voice.
"So, our training plan is simple. You will eat the same Qi-rich foods as before, you will run courses I design for you, and you will fight on my behalf against others of your ilk! Does that sound good?"
I nodded seriously. Si Chou stared at me, then I could sense him pout.
"I wish you could talk."
Dude, I tried, it just sounds like chittering.
"Regardless, let us begin!"
Cue the Rocky montage I guess.
Like he said. Training consisted of simple stuff. I ran courses of varying complexity every day that he could spare. That was the first time he took me outside of his little office, where his brother and sister sect members watched bemused as I ran the courses. They were simple affairs, just little obstacle courses meant to make me jump, run, fly, and avoid getting hurt.
Simple little things… unless you had to run them. For Si Chou, they were adorable little things that he could set up relatively fast.
For me, they might as well have been death traps.
A knee height wall was a massive mountain. A small path of burning coals might as well have been a river of magma. Ropes going up six feet were sequias. I don't think he understood what the scale of things were for me. Hell, sometimes the only reason I could understand what I was up against was because of my extrasensory abilities.
Which helped. I didn't know if it was because I was a beetle, because I had Qi, or a combination of the two, but while my eyesight wasn't great, I was learning to use it in combination with my other senses to understand my environment and plan out my travel across the courses.
I had a sort of sense for Qi as well. It seemed to mix in with my powerful sense of smell, so different people seemed to give off different smells, colors, and feelings.
Si Chou felt relatively weak compared to a lot of the people around him, but also… content? Calm? Like he was fine where he was.
Then, one day, someone walked by a window in the distance while I was doing another course, running on a log that spanned some water, and I fell into the water. That powerful person had an almost physical effect on me. His Qi burned, like shoving my hand into flames and smelling that horrible pork burning smell.
I got used to it, running the courses every day, eating, and sensing those around me. About a month in, Si Chou changed things up and took me to a small inn, carrying me in a simple basket.
"Now, my lad, it is time for your first real battle," Si Chou whispered to me through my basket. The wooden basket had enough room for me to look out as he strode towards the inn ahead of us. It was a single lonely building within the woods along a makeshift road winding its way through the mountains. I watched with interest as we approached the three story building, taking everything in with my senses.
The smell of humans was familiar, as were the horses. While I'd never encountered horses in my beetle form, I had in my previous life. If there is any sense that really attaches to memories, it's smell.
The front door swung open into a loud clack of wood scratching on wood, expelling a man who stumbled out smelling of alcohol and shame. Well, not so much shame as the things I associated with the feeling. He barely avoided bumping into us, staggering away. I noticed one more thing about him. He felt… weak. His presence was barely noticeable.
If that powerful random guy who I'd noticed back at the sect was a forest fire and Si Chou was a bonfire, that guy was a candle about to sputter out.
We walked into the inn and the same thing came from the people within. Not a lot of folks, maybe five or so, but all of them were more akin to candles of Qi in terms of size. Initiate Level then.
Si Chou had gone over a bit of what each 'level' of cultivation was. Apparently practically any human in this world easily reached the lowest level, Initiate, where a person could live up to 150 years as long as they were in good health.
Still, as weak as they were, I had no room to talk. I was barely a match for most of them, and nowhere near Si Chou.
He carried me to the back of the place, where more people were gathered past a door. Opening it up revealed a group of people talking and yelling at each other as they drank around a round table, some carrying slips of what had to be some kind of currency. Si Chou went over to the edges of the round table in the center of the room, letting me see what everyone else was looking at.
Beetles. Two of them, male like me, wrestling with each other. They clashed horns, each trying to throw the other. I watched with all of my senses as they battled. There was a sort of lack of intent from them. It was less like watching a UFC match and more akin to those old robot battling shows. They went at each other, but it was all on instinct.
Still, it was interesting. The fighters were an ink-black stag beetle and a yellow Hercules beetle. Well, a Lu Bu beetle here, since Hercules wasn't a thing obviously. The stag had a pair of horns that stuck out like mandibles, slicing sideways, while the Lu Bu had a long ass top horn and a shorter bottom one.
As I watched, the Lu Bu beetle clamped down on the stag beetle's head, and began to squeeze down. A small sound of scratching filled the air around them, though I doubted the humans cheering them on heard it. The stag beetle struggled, trying to push the Lu Bu back, but barely made him budge.
"Rather simple battles," Si Chou whispered to me. "But they will work as a challenge for you. You simply need to toss them out of the ring or make them run from you."
"Talking to a basket, Si Chou?" A male voice said.
Si Chou chuckled, turning to look at the man. Through the gaps in the basket I could sense a tall portly man stand next to us with an amused demeanor. "Talking to my new beetle."
"Ah, another of your weirdos," The portly man chuckled. "Thank god, I've been losing all night."
"You still might, depending on your bets, Jinhai," Si Chou teased. "This one is a powerhouse."
"Is that so? Can I see him?" the now named Jinhai asked eagerly.
Si Chou opened the basket just enough for me to look at the guy. He was a bit overweight, but in a hardworking farmer kind of way, with a bareface and long hair. He eyed me with a chuckle.
"Awww, he's barely out of his pupa, huh? Still, you haven't led me wrong before. You still not betting?"
"It is a vice that would destroy me," Si Chou said, lowering the basket lid.
"Don't worry, I'll destroy myself for you," Jinhai chuckled.
The two went up to the organizer of things, the inn owner presumably. After some talk, they went back to the table, where the Lu Bu beetle sent the stag beetle running, leaving it victorious and making a few people groan, though the majority didn't seem to care either way.
I mean, the Lu Bu was huge compared to his opponent.
Then, without much preamble, Si Chou lowered me down onto the table.
"Next fight, next fight!" the organizer shouted. "One of Si Chou's weirdos, newborn rhino!"
"Newborn? Easy money!" One guy shouted, laughing.
The bets went fast and furious. I had to admit to some curiosity as to why me being new meant I was somehow less able to win. Beetles didn't exactly gain martial arts experience… well, maybe in this world they did.
After it was all done, Si Chou opened up the cage. And for the first time in my new life, I was face-to-face with someone my own size.
I walked over to him, looking him over. Big. Had at least a few pounds and feet on me. Uh, ounces and inches, I mean. We met eyes. And his eyes were… dull. Whatever sort of energy filled me with intelligence and life just wasn't in him.
That didn't mean he wasn't a fighter though. While I was looking him over, he dashed forward with surprising speed, our horns meeting before I could do anything. He pushed against me, and I staggered.
Back in my old life, I had been a wrestler in high school. Only for two years, but it lead to me learning other combat sports. I remembered a moment, early in my training, when I ended up against a guy built like a brick shithouse. I had a moment to think 'oh holy shit' before he smashed into me.
The exact thing happened with the Lu Bu beetle. His upper and lower horns pushed against mine, forcing me back. I got my feet under me and clawed at the table, bringing myself to a stop before I could get pushed out of the ring. The Lu Bu continued to push me with an almost mechanical sort of determination, his horns squeezing against mine.
'Fuck… you,' I growled at the larger beetle, pushing back as best as I could.
I wasn't going to win in strength against him. But I didn't have to.
I twisted my horns just outside of his, so that they encapsulated his head, then twisted in the other direction. Still focused on moving forward, he didn't have time to counter, getting flipped over to his side. I then pushed with all my might, clamped down on his head. His own horns did the same, squeezing down on me hard. I didn't feel pain, but I certainly didn't like it.
I twisted again, then stepped back and out of his grip. His elytra, the hard shell that protected a beetles wings, snapped open to help him stand up.
'Not happening!' I chittered as I rushed the beetle again, smashing into his side with all my speed and strength. I placed my horn under his body and lifted. His claws gripped the table as best as he could, but I pushed harder, forcing him into the air, then running forward. At the edge of the ring I let out a roar (that ended up sounding more like a squeak) then tossed the guy forward.
The Lu Bu flew out of the ring, landing on the edge of the table on his back. He wiggled there for a while before forcing himself onto his feet again. After a bit, it started crawling around again.
Damn. All my determined yells were wasted on him.
The humans around us let out loud yells, some cheering, more disappointed. Jinhai cackled loudly, clapping Si Chou on his back. My caretaker gave me a clap, grinning down.
"All right, next fight!" The organizer shouted, completely unbothered as the Lu Bu was taken away.
I would have grinned if I could have. Yeah. Next fight.
Another beetle dropped onto the mat, a stag beetle. I rushed for him immediately. He slashed his mandibles at me, but I ran to the left of him and got behind him then atop him. I clapped my top and bottom horn around his middle, then lifted him over my head. My legs flexed, my whole body moving to toss him like a baseball towards the edge of the ring.
More groans, but a couple of laughs.
"Damn, aggressive little guy, huh?" Jinhai laughed.
"Yes," Si Chou frowned at me for some reason as I looked around the ring. "Very much so."
I kept at it for the next three fights. The beetles I fought weren't too varied in strength or speed, but they were all dependent on their instincts alone to fight me. Whereas I, with my human mind, could use my natural abilities with my intelligence to maneuver and send them flying.
Although, I did have those instincts. Anytime one of the beetles were thrown in to fight me, I would face them without meaning to, my senses focusing on them. I could smell them, hear them, feel their Qi, and every part of me wanted the fight. I could channel that need to fight into intelligent decisions, but the wish to brawl was always there.
After my fifth fight, Si Chou waved at the organizer, who nodded and let him place me back into the basket. Jinhai grumbled, but still looked pleased.
Si Chou carried me out. For some reason though, he seemed more worried than happy.
Chapter 3The next day, Si Chou entered his office with something new. He rolled it between his fingers thoughtfully as he sat down at his desk. I flew over from my little enclosure to see what he was looking at.
A round ball? No, it smelled different. It was red in color, and had the smell of nature to it. Herbs, minerals, that kind of thing.
Si Chou glanced at me, then smiled. "Ah… Do you know what this is?"
I shook my head. He stared at me, then sighed. "It is a cultivation pill. Not an advanced one, but still expensive for my sect. I was thinking of giving it to you."
I glanced at the thing. After a moment of thought I shrugged and lifted up into the air, flying back to my enclosure.
"...Is that it?"
I looked over at him. He seemed curious and surprised all at once.
"With this, you can advance your strength. Not by much, but enough to be noticed." He stood up and walked over to the enclosure, staring down at me. "I don't… You are intelligent. More than I thought you were. And the way you fought wasn't natural."
He leaned down to look closer at me. "What have I created? …What do you want?"
I thought about that for a moment. Well… I wanted lots of things. A human body, or at least human hands. The ability to control my own life rather than being owned by Si Chou. But the main thing was-
I scratched into the dirt of my enclosure, the motion drawing Si Chou's attention. He watched as I finished and looked down at the symbol I'd scratched. Then I sighed and erased a portion, scratching it more clearly this time.
Look, it wasn't my first language and I wasn't used to writing with claws.
When done, I backed away to let him read the symbol. 壽.
"Shou," he said aloud. Longevity.
Si Chou looked down at me, then at the symbol. "You want immortality?"
I would have shaken my head, but that was close enough. Immortality might be interesting, but dammit I just wanted to live past the next year. I nodded.
Si Chou let out a laugh that sounded just a bit manic, then followed it with a more honest looking smile. "Ah. You don't do things by halves, huh?"
I chittered at him as best as I could. 'Dude, I would do things by halves if I wasn't going to die in less than a year.'
"Yes, I feel the same way," he said, clearly not understanding me. God. Then, Si Chou placed the cultivation pill in his hand before me. "Here. I will help you, my friend. Together we will make you something interesting, eh?"
I walked over to the pill laying in the dirt and smiled internally. Si Chou was a good dude. Maybe one day I'd get to have a real conversation with him.
For the moment, I simply began to slice into the cultivation pill with my mouthparts, swallowing it piece by piece as he watched me with what felt like amusement and confusion.
And with every bite, I felt the Qi within me stir. I was small, so I think it was more effective than it would have been for a human, but he'd been right that it wasn't super effective. I felt myself grow just a touch, like the fire inside me got a few logs rather than, I don't know, gasoline. Still, Si Chou had sacrificed something that could improve himself, to someone he couldn't even understand. I'd return the favor one day.
I woke a couple of weeks later to smoke filling the room. I didn't really sleep, but I did have moments where I just rested, my body replenishing its energy. Yes, that sounds like sleep, but it really wasn't.
Point is, I was resting, and then I began to wake when smoke poured under the door to begin filling the room. I flew up, still confused and a bit groggy, and landed on the floor, staring at the gap under the door. The smoke was light, but growing darker. Beyond that I could see flickering red. While my Qi sense wasn't powerful enough to reach too far, the area beyond the office had a couple of people. They were… fighting!?
Then, one Qi signature began to flutter, like a heartbeat. Moments later it just… disappeared.
Oh… Oh shit.
Before I could process that, the Qi that had won the fight rushed the door, kicking it open. The man who appeared looked around. He was wearing dark blue clothes, so dark they were almost black, with purple highlighting the edges of his robes. And his face was covered in blood, so thick that he smelled of nothing else.
And his Qi felt wrong. I used metaphors of fire before because it was hard to describe Qi. But I didn't need metaphors for the bloody faced man before me. His Qi felt like the smell of rotting meat. Soaked in it. The combination of the scent of blood and the feel of his Qi made me, a beetle, want to vomit.
He was also the strongest person I had ever met. Beyond Si Chou, beyond anyone in the sect. I looked at him with all my senses, and felt like I was staring at a vast impossible land of meat, rotting and disgusting, but so huge my eyes couldn't see the horizon of it.
I stared at him as the fires blazed behind him. When I looked between his legs, I sensed the chaos beyond. The hallway was on fire. A body lay behind him, someone I didn't recognize.
"Books… useless," the guy grumbled, turning and walking out. With one hand, he waved at the room, his Qi bursting, like pus from an open wound.
A burst of sickly yellow energy flew out of his palm, smashing across the room. I crouched low, feeling it pass over me before it destroyed everything. The books I'd learned from, the enclosure I lived in, the desk that Si Chou often talked to me at. The Bloody Faced Man left me on the floor, in the center of my destroyed home. And he never noticed me.
I waited for a moment before flying out. I just couldn't think of anything else I could do. It was obvious what was happening. Someone was attacking the sect. I had to find help!
Make sure to include a thing about the caretaker being proud and Pinchy feeling guilty.Stag beetle fightCaretaker killed by a factionPinchy escapes into the woods to train and fight.
Enemy Species
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