Chapter 73: 73: Prelude

"How long has it been watching?" I hissed at Sensei.

What was it planning? Was it waiting for me to relax before it attacked? To think it had been pretending to sleep!

«It has been for a while.» Sensei deadpanned.

«It didn't seem like it was going to attack. But you need to work on your awareness.»

Ugh!

My eyes fixated on it, watching it tensely, but the lizard made no moves.

Rather than continue our strange stand-off I bit through the membranous bindings on the wasps wings to free them and it immediately took off into the air.

I laughed when I saw the figure of the lizard shrink from up high. 

Want to sneak up and eat me? Not a chance! 

With its wings now free, the wasp attempted to free itself one last time but I constricted tighter as multiple stingers plunged into its shell and activated [Mind Chain]. 

〚Success - Synchronisation 72%〛

The wasp dipped from the air as soon as [Mind Chain] began to work, its flight askew like a bird with its wings clipped. I couldn't imagine what sort of pain it was in right now - it's silent mandibles gave no indication. But by now, I was working on taking over the control of its body.

I proceeded to suppress its memories with my own. It dipped lower and nearly fell towards the cell with the waiting lizard. But my consciousness successfully invaded its mind

〚Success - Synchronisation 100%. Assimilation Complete〛

I immediately took control and rose up in the air and out of the lizard's reach. Now buzzing in the air, I could see all thirty hexagonal chambers and the height made the lizard look small to my eyes. 

But more spectacularly, I saw something else that made me smile. 

The host creatures in the other cells had begun to wake up and move around!

Soon it was only a matter of time.

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The sensation of flight, although unsteady - was riveting.

With the aid of the wasp's memories, I flitted through the air, rising and falling like a drunken wasp with a hole in its wing. 

I was actually flying! 

It was a feeling I wasn't bound to forget in a while. 

I soared unsteadily through the air, trying to go even higher. 

But before I could relish in the moment, I took a sharp plunge, about to crash onto the ground but I quickly focused on my flight and rose up once again, with only seconds away from smacking the floor. 

I laughed, ecstatic and hysterical. That was close. 

It looked so easy when the wasps flew around but controlling two pairs of wings at once was actually very stressful. 

I casually looked down and saw the lizard-like creature climb had out of its hexagonal cell and had started trailing me from the ground.

Did it want to follow me?

What was its problem? Did it want payback that much?

Whatever. Lets see if you can keep up though.

I channelled all my strength to my wings and surged forward with a burst of speed, making a beeline for the exit.

I followed the descending slope down the length of the tunnel, towards the wide opening in the distance. When the tunnel came to an end, I noticed every other tunnel converged to this single opening and I realised I had come full circle. 

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Suddenly a deep chasm cracked open on the floor and the incessant buzzing from many wasps in flight assaulted my hearing.

Looking down the deep chasm I was presented with the full workings of the hive and the strange ecosystem that the various creatures shared. There were host creatures roaming the tunnels, builder wasps carrying the corpses of dead hosts and other wasps transporting eggs and other miscellaneous items. 

If I flew across the chasm and took the tunnel on the other side, it would take me back up to the host graveyard where I woke up. But right now, quiet and safety was not an option.

Only by following the opening below would I be able to enter the chaotic mess that was the hive, and find the antidote in the bloodstained chamber. 

However on reaching the chasm I froze. Rising up from below, I spotted a swarm of hunting wasps heading in my direction. They were exactly like the one that had captured me, unbelievably fast and unforgivably ugly, serrated limbs like knives and every vicious stingers designed to kill. 

They could rip my little snake body apart into numerous pieces before I could land one attack and I tensed at my own imagination, and turned around ready to run for my life, when I remembered. 

I was now a wasp. I'm one of them. 

As I cleared my mind, I was surprised to see the lizard still in pursuit, despite still a distance away. 

I decided to ignore it and pressed onwards without any fear. What was the use of a disguise if I couldn't blend in with them? On the contrary, they would surely notice something amiss with my wasp, if I swerved to avoid them.

But I still wasn't to mingle into such a large group of hunter wasps.

So, before they came around the curve of the chasm, I adjusted my flight path to rise above them so even when crossing paths I wouldn't need to confront them. And since I knew the lizard was still pursuing me, I also figured they would deal with it as soon as they passed me, saving me the effort. 

What was the saying, to kill two birds with one stone?

I'd rather kill the lizard with a bunch of wasps, than do it myself. 

Fortunately, the hunting wasps did not spare me a glance as we crossed paths and I watched them disappear into the tunnel towards the lizard. I considered its fate sealed and turned around as I did not wait to see its grisly end. 

But as I was flying away, I felt something was odd. There were no sounds of fighting even after the wasps entered the tunnel and I risked a look back, to witness an inconceivable sight. 

The wasps, who were supposed to tear the lizard to shreds, just flew on like they did not see it at all.

While the lizard itself panicked at the sight of so many of its tormentors heading towards it, the wasps, did not even spare it a glance.

"What the…" If I didn't see it happen I would not have believed it.

I was shocked - what unbelievable luck! 

I regretted not appraising it when we shared a cell. 

But I had to wonder if its luck was really that good, or if this was the result of something else.

That was the last I saw of the lizard before I descended into the hive below. And almost immediately, I was obstructed by other egg wasps carrying things and I had to swerve out of the way to avoid a collision. 

With the tunnel openings everywhere on the walls, it was a busy sight as many wasps were flying back and forth carrying out their tasks.

I had to be careful here as the continuous stream of flying bodies did not help much with my navigating. And any lapse of concentration could lead me towards an entrance I did not want to go. 

The hive walls curved downwards like a cylinder with many tunnels opening out of the walls leading to different places in the hive. I mapped these areas from my wasp's memory, trying to locate the blood stained chamber from the numerous tunnel entrances available. 

Luckily the wasps were busy and didn't pay much attention to my host wasp hovering there, looking around. I tried to find the memory of the right tunnel so I flew higher to hover closer to the wide chasm ceiling for a better view.

From above, I looked down at the rest of the hive and I felt something from the platform at the bottom. I felt it like a shift in the air, a steady draught that rose up from the darkness below and I could almost smell the wet leaves and forest damp.

I was immediately drawn towards the bottom where I believed the exit would appear. However, before I could move, I heard a weird noise coming from the ceiling above me, a faint scratching sound that kept on getting louder and louder like something was crawling behind it towards me. 

I was caught between this new sound and the cold rising air from below, and when I looked down, none of the other wasps seemed to have heard it. So with that, my attention returned to the ceiling where I hovered.

The sound did not stop and as it drew closer and louder, I felt a fleck of dust hit my wasp's face as a crack appeared in the ceiling. Loose debris and dust floated down like snowflakes as more of the ceiling was broken through, and I blinked in disbelief at what I saw - a scaly grey appendage peeking out from the gap. 

I moved away from it on instinct and the next moment, a sizable chunk of the ceiling broke apart, revealing the creature in its full glory.

It was a formless grey blob, with the numerous appendages attached to it all moving independently. In a way that was like a worm, but with tentacles propelling it forward to move much faster than any worm I'd ever seen.

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