The deeper Lio pushed, the thicker the swarm grew. The Bugs poured from every fissure, their armored bodies scraping against each other in a frenzy of clicks and shrieks. Each time he crushed a wave, another came from the dark.
They weren't hunting anymore.
They were defending.
Lio realized it the moment the vibrations shifted, the air trembling as though the stone itself had a heartbeat. These weren't random attacks—he was nearing their nest.
"Lynx…" he muttered through clenched teeth, hurling another Bug aside with a fist wreathed in heat so intense it left molten trails in the rock. "Don't you dare—don't you dare give up on me."
Closing his eyes, he inhaled sharply, focusing. When they snapped open again with a different color hue, the world shifted. Lines and structures peeled into clarity, the darkness pierced by his multi-spectrum sight, scanning the earth itself.
His vision flickered, pupils dilating unnaturally as his eyes tuned through spectra invisible to human senses.
Infrared. Ultraviolet. Electromagnetic traces.
Finally, X-ray.
The world peeled back like layers of parchment, where the walls dissolved to ghostly transparency, revealing a vast network of tunnels carved like veins through the earth. They twisted and spiraled, alive with motion—thousands of Bugs crawling along their arteries, rushing to converge where he stood. He haven't used this ability for a while, not only giving him an irritation on his eyes like he was stating into a bright light for a first time, but it also reveals wide array of details that was not noticed before in the form of abandoned machineries, makeshift facilites, scaffolds, and tons of skeletons that mostly the unfortunate Marauders before them as well high likely are the skeletons of miners from a bygone millennia.
But beyond them, deeper still…
He saw it.
And there it was—an underground labyrinth of artery-like tunnels, winding deeper, converging into a vast hollow chamber far below.
Colossal in scale, hidden behind walls of stone and silence.
Its outlines shimmered in his vision.
Faint collapsed machine signatures glimmered like dying stars.
Twisted skeletal shapes littered the floor and walls—human, animal, Bugs themselves, and something else.
And coating it all was a grotesque film, a hardened slime, glistening like amber in the darkness.
At its center, a strange stage-like structure. The floor there gleamed wetly, coated in a solidified film of translucent matter, as though the cavern itself had secreted it for building a hive but with some sense of ritual purpose.
At the edge of the chamber, something caught his eye.
Not bone. Not Bug.
Metal.
He focused, the sight sharpening until doubt was gone.
A prosthetic. Left arm. Labor-class made.
Lynx's.
The breath ripped out of his chest. For a moment, the swarm around him didn't matter—the cavern fell silent in his mind. All that existed was that single outline, small and helpless, lost in a sea of alien filth.
"No…"
His fists clenched, the heat radiating from them distorting the air. His body coiled, every sinew brimming with restrained violence.
Then he moved.
The cavern howled as he tore forward, every strike a miniature explosion, every step cratering the stone beneath him. He became a storm, a one-man cataclysm, driving himself closer to that chamber.
Closer to her.
No matter what waited inside.
<<<[ @ @ @ ]>>>
Lio broke through the last wall with a thunderous punch, stone collapsing outward as he staggered into open space.
And froze.
The chamber before him stretched wider than any he had seen in the mining zone, a subterranean cathedral carved not by machines but by the ceaseless labor of the swarm. Every surface dripped with a resinous slime, thick and translucent, glowing faintly with bioluminescent veins that pulsed like arteries. The stench hit him next—sweet, acrid, suffocating—rot and acid fused into one.
His boots sank slightly as he stepped forward. The floor was coated with a viscous film, strands stretching and snapping like cobwebs with each movement. Cocooned shapes hung from the walls and ceiling—miners, by their torn uniforms, bound in hardened secretion. Some twitched faintly. Most did not.
Egg clusters dotted the resin like tumors, each one translucent enough to show the curled forms inside. Dog-sized Cave Bugs, some stillborn, some twitching, some already split open where their young had crawled free. The shells littered the ground, brittle husks crunching under Lio's weight.
And scattered among them—bones.
Human bones. Ribs, spines, and skulls gnawed hollow, stripped of marrow. Mining tools fused into the resin like forgotten offerings. The remnants of lives that had come here and never left.
Lio's jaw clenched. His fists burned again, not with fear but with fury.
This was the heart of the swarm.
But at the center, something impossible loomed.
A distortion in the air, a shimmering wound carved into reality itself. The anomaly bled colors that didn't belong—violet streaks that bent into green, black light that shimmered like oil over water. Around it rose a grotesque archway, not of stone or steel, but of resin and bodies. Layers of hardened slime formed the spine, while hundreds of chitinous carapaces and limbs were fused into the structure, their mandibles and claws outstretched as if eternally holding the portal open. It pulsed with a rhythm, like breath… or hunger.
Lio's breath caught when his eyes fell on the ground before it.
A broken arm.
Not of flesh, but cold metal and worn plating—the familiar labor-class prosthetic, the one Lynx had joked about replacing "once they scored a big haul." The fingers were twisted, scraped raw, as if she had clawed at the floor before being dragged inside.
"...Lynx," Lio whispered, voice trembling. He dropped to his knees, picking up the shattered prosthetic with hands that shook. Heat radiated from his chest, his fury boiling, but his heart felt like it was sinking into the slime beneath his feet.
She was gone.
Taken.
Through that thing.
The portal shimmered, almost as if answering his realization, a low hum reverberating through the hive chamber.
Lio tightened his grip on Lynx's broken prosthetic. His chest rose and fell, fury burning in his heart like fire.
"...If you're in there, Lynx… hold on."
He stepped toward the portal—
He felt something- a faint sense of dread- no... DANGER!
—only for the world to explode.
A shriek tore through the chamber—and then it came.
A thunderous shriek ripped from the breach as if the portal itself screamed—like a thousand glass shards scraping steel.
In the next instant, the portal exploded outward, vomiting a torrent of Cave Bugs. They came not in scuttling waves, but in a flood,
They didn't crawl out—they were launched. Carapaced bodies slammed against walls and ceilings before skittering to their feet, mandibles snapping in frenzy. It was like standing before a ruptured dam, their bodies packed so tightly it was like a living avalanche with teeth and claws.
The first impact struck Lio with the force of a battering ram, hurling him across the resin-coated floor with great force. His back slammed against the hive wall, dust and slime scattering around him.
He coughed, dazed—but his eyes widened.
For a heartbeat, he couldn't move. His chest burned, his ears rang, and his vision doubled.
But then he saw it.
The swarm was endless. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, poured out of the anomaly like a pressure hose. Their bodies piled into the chamber, wings clattering, mandibles gnashing, screeches blending into a single cacophony of madness. The thousands of eyes glinting by the unnatural light from the portal, swarming in perfect unison. They didn't scatter as the previous swarms had. Instead, they circled the interdimensional breach, forming a protective storm of claws and chitin around it, like zealots guarding a god.
No.
Like a swarm of insects, protecting their hive.
And their message was clear:
YOU. ARE. NOT. WELCOME.
Lio staggered back to his feet, covered with slime and chitinous fragments. His fists trembled, his eyes glowed faintly with heat.
"These… aren't like the others…" Lio said to himself.
"Outnumbered?" he muttered through gritted teeth. "Maybe… but not outgunned."
The bugs hissed, the chamber rumbling with their numbers. Lio planted his feet, drawing in breath that filled his chest with fire. His muscles coiled, his fists glowing faintly under his skin as power surged to the surface.
He thought of Lynx—her laughter, her stubbornness, her hand on his shoulder when he doubted himself. He thought of the Shellwalker too, even if the bastard had held her hostage. If they were still alive beyond that portal, he had no right to fall here.
"If Lynx is still alive in there… if that bastard Shellwalker is too… then I don't get to quit here."
He clenched his fists, heat radiating from beneath his skin. His vision flickered between normal sight and the sharp glow of his hidden spectrum.
"COME ON, THEN!!!" Lio roared, his voice shaking the resin walls, and launched himself into the tide.
---
The swarm surged at him like a living wave of fangs and claws.
His fists ignited with raw force, burning through shells like paper. His eyes flared with searing beams, carving through the swarm in sweeping arcs. Claws raked against his skin but broke like glass against steel.
Lio didn't retreat. He dove straight into it.
His body blurred, movements breaking the air itself. Each step cracked the resin floor, each punch set the chamber quaking. He ducked under a lunging bug, twisted, and his fist exploded upward into its thorax. Fire trailed his knuckles, burning through carapace and spraying molten ichor across the slime walls.
Another lunged. Lio spun, his heel whipping around at mach speed—impacting with such force that the insect's body detonated mid-air into chunks of chitin and fire.
The swarm howled, piling over itself to reach him.
Lio's breath steadied, heat building behind his eyes. The glow sharpened to a blinding white.
"Back off—!"
Twin beams erupted from his gaze, cutting the darkness with searing light. They swept across the resin walls in broad arcs, a storm of fire and molten stone. Cave Bugs shrieked and fell by the dozens, their bodies disintegrating in waves of golden-blue flame.
For every one that fell, more poured from the portal—unstoppable, endless.
But so was he.
Dodging in blurs, his fists ignited the air itself, each blow detonating like thunder. His kicks left shockwaves that split tunnels into fissures. He became a storm inside their hive, a man-shaped inferno.
Still, no matter how many he cut down, the swarm thickened, closing ranks around the anomaly. The portal pulsed brighter, as if feeding on the carnage, the air itself vibrating with its heartbeat.
And through it all, Lio could hear his own ragged voice repeating, Lynx… hold on.
The swarm surged from the portal in a torrent, a tidal flood of gnashing mandibles and stabbing limbs. They leapt, clawing, biting, piling over one another in a frenzy to tear him apart.
For a moment, it seemed they would succeed—until Lio clenched his jaw, bent his knees, and rose.
The resin floor cracked beneath the sudden thrust. His body rocketed upward, dust and ichor spiraling in his wake.
He was flying.
The Cave Bugs clawed at the air, shrieking, unable to reach him. From mid-air, Lio's eyes burned brighter, twin suns narrowing into predatory focus. His chest tightened, not with fear—but with release.
"Enough!"
He shot forward at mach speed, a streak of golden flame through the hive. His fist collided with one bug—then he ricocheted to another, then another. The chamber boomed like a drum as his body bounced from target to target, a living pinball of destruction. Each impact left behind a fireball, each bug he struck crumpling into ash and shattered chitin.
The swarm tried to adapt, climbing the walls, leaping at him from all angles. But Lio was faster.
His body blurred into a cyclone, fists blazing, feet cracking the air like whips. When they clustered too tightly, his eyes flared again, scouring entire sections of the hive with sweeping thermal beams. In moments, the walls themselves glowed red-hot, dripping molten resin.
To the Cave Bugs, he was no longer prey.
He was a storm—speed, strength, and fire given human form, ricocheting endlessly across their hive.
The Cave Bugs shrieked. Their endless tide broke apart under the storm he unleashed. Carapaces shattered, its disgusting green fluids burned, resin melted into molten rivers under his barrage.
And then—silence.
The last bug screeched, its body crushed under his blazing heel, hissing into smoke.
Lio hovered in the thick, acrid air, his chest heaving. His skin glistened with sweat, his lungs burning, his body trembling—not from weakness, but from the enormity of what he'd just done, as if it was quite long he never push the limits of his metahuman abilities.
For the first time since the swarm appeared… there was stillness.
A small, bitter victory.
But as his breath steadied, he turned his gaze back to the pulsating anomaly at the heart of the hive. The portal rippled like a wound in reality, alive and waiting.
And lying at its edge was Lynx's prosthetic arm, half-melted in the slime. Next thing Lio did is that he walked towards the metal arm, picked it up, and stored it into the backpack he accidentally dropped at the entrance of the hive.
Lio carefully set the heavy backpack of Aurulite at the chamber's edge, out of harm's reach. If he was going in, he wasn't dragging precious cargo into whatever nightmare awaited beyond.
He clenched his fists, eyes fixed on the anomaly.
I'm coming for you, Lynx. And you too, Shellwalker… damn it, I can't just leave you behind.
The portal pulsed. The resinous arch groaned like a living throat. Lio's steps slowed as he approached.
That was when he felt it.
Not dread. Not danger.
Something worse.
A sharp spike of pressure that coiled in his gut, freezing his breath.
Killing intent.
His body moved before his thoughts did. He leapt back, muscles screaming in alarm.
And then—
The ground shook, the hive resonating with an otherworldly hum. Something was building behind that gateway, something far worse than mere swarms.
The portal split wide with a shriek, and a massive arm shot out. Chitinous, jagged, dark as obsidian, its edges glimmering with a sickly violet sheen.
The fist drove straight into Lio's abdomen.
"GUH—!"
The blow cracked like thunder. His body launched like a ragdoll across the hive, smashing into the resin wall with an impact that collapsed stone and slime together. Dust and ichor clouded the air.
Half-buried under rubble, Lio hacked for air, a coughing fit rattling through his ribs.
"…oh, COME ON!" he roared at no one but himself, his voice echoing with irritation through the hive.
From the portal, the arm withdrew, and then another reached through. A vast silhouette loomed, claws curling as it began to pull itself into the chamber.
Something far worse than the swarm was coming.
The portal rippled like a wound, and from it emerged not a single beast—but five.
They weren't like the dog-sized Cave Bugs or the beetle-brutes he'd crushed before. They strode forth in unison, towering insectoid warriors, each standing nearly six feet tall. Their forms were humanoid but monstrous, their bodies plated in jagged chitin that gleamed in the sickly light of the hive. Mandibles clicking in unison clicked, claws flexed, and their compound eyes glowed faintly violence and predatory malice, radiating an intelligence that was far crueler than the mindless swarm.
These weren't mindless Cave Bugs. They were something worse. Commanders. High-ranking guardians of the hive.
Lio pushed himself free of rubble, chest heaving as he clenched his fists again. His body still ached from the chitinous fist that had struck him, but his resolve burned brighter.
No matter what comes, I'm not leaving without Lynx.
He staggered to his feet, ready to launch himself into the fray—
—but then a flash of steel split the gloom.
In an instant, one of the bug-men convulsed, its head caved in by a brutal strike. The sound of iron crunching chitin rang through the chamber. Another fell, its chest pierced cleanly by a bladed tonfa that moved faster than Lio's eyes could follow.
Two shadows danced into the chamber.
The masked Marauder in black and blue moved like a storm, his iron bo staff smashing with impossible force, each blow caving armor, splitting limbs, and leaving insectoid corpses in broken heaps. His movements were relentless, brutal, every strike crushing with an almost savage precision.
Beside him, the figure in black and yellow was pure speed—her twin bladed tonfa flashed like streaks of lightning, slicing through chitin before the bug-men even realized she was there. Every step she took was lethal, every movement a clean, silent execution.
In less than a heartbeat, all five bug-men lay scattered, their bodies torn and shattered, ichor steaming in the resin pools.
Lio stood frozen, eyes wide.
He had fought, bled, and nearly died holding back swarms. But these two…
They carved through the Hive's elite, stronger than the swarm, like it was nothing.
When the brutes were slained and left nothing but the sound of crushed exo-skeleton by the foot of these mysterious figures.
"…What… the hell are they?" Lio muttered under his breath, awe and shock knotting in his chest.
<<<[ Arc 01, Ch 06: END ]>>>