That Time I reincarnated as an insect-Chapter 82 - 81: A NEW TYPE OF MONSTER

Buzz hit the floor first, skidding across the slick surface, air knocked from his chest in a broken choke. Zza slammed down a second later, her shell ringing, vision swimming, the afterburn of the forge still flickering through her limbs like sparks that refused to die.

She pushed herself up slow, jaw tight, breath shaky. The chamber around them stretched wider than it first looked, curving into the dark in ways that felt wrong for something built inside a city. Columns rose from the ground like ribs, half-grown, half-broken. Gold veins crawled across them like cracks.

Buzz groaned beside her, rolling onto his side. "Zza... please tell me the forge broke."

She wiped blood from her mandible with the back of her hand. "I don’t think it broke. I think it spat us out."

"Why?"

A pulse rolled through the floor.

Zza didn’t answer.

Buzz didn’t ask again.

Both of them turned as the pit behind them glowed bright — too bright, far brighter than when the forge tried to reshape them. The gold hummed with this low, shaking rumble, the kind that rattled Zza’s bones and made Buzz clutch his head like the sound drilled straight through him.

Zza whispered, "It’s coming."

Buzz’s voice came out thin. "If it’s another version of the Queen, I’m ending myself now."

Zza didn’t get a chance to respond.

The gold tore open.

The chamber filled with this thick wave of hot air, like a furnace groaning awake. The pit stretched wider as something inside pushed up, pressing against the light like a shape forming under fabric.

Zza grabbed Buzz’s arm, dragging him backward on instinct. His legs stumbled through the motion, still unsteady after the upgrades forced into him. He winced with every step, like the gold carved him from the inside.

A shape rose.

Slow.

Smooth.

Almost gentle.

Then the light peeled back like skin.

Zza froze.

Buzz froze.

The thing took its first breath.

It looked almost like them.

Almost.

A tall figure stepped out of the pit, its body built with smooth lines and a bright gold sheen, glowing from the inside like molten metal poured into a mold. Its limbs were long, clean, unsettlingly perfect. Its wings weren’t wings — they were transparent plates of energy shaped like wings. Silent. Floating.

No face rested on its head.

Just a flat gold surface.

Until it turned toward them.

Until the gold rippled.

Zza’s stomach lurched.

Her own face slid across the front of the creature, smooth and empty, like someone pressed her reflection into liquid metal.

Buzz choked on his breath as his own face appeared beside hers, overlapping, merging, then melting into a single expression that wasn’t either of them. It smiled with Buzz’s mouth and frowned with Zza’s eyes and blinked with a rhythm neither of them recognized.

Buzz stumbled back. "Zza... Zza what is that?"

The reflection spoke with both their voices layered over each other.

"Survivors. Escaped. Unfinished."

Zza shook her head hard, heart pounding. "It shouldn’t be alive."

"It shouldn’t sound like us," Buzz whispered.

But the gold inside the creature pulsed again, and their faces rippled across it — childhood memories, moments of fear, flashes of pain, laughter twisted into something sharp.

The Mirror-Shell stepped closer, drifting almost, feet barely touching the ground, its movement smooth like the forge sculpted away friction itself.

Zza braced her stance. "Buzz. It formed from what the forge took from us."

Buzz swallowed, voice cracking. "So it knows us."

"It knows everything."

The creature tilted its head, Buzz’s voice spilling from its mouth without expression.

"Upgrade incomplete."

Zza hissed. "Stay back."

The creature took another step, gold-light spilling from its limbs.

"Hosts imperfect. Mind-walls intact. Correction required."

Buzz pointed weakly at its face. "Stop wearing me. Pick someone else."

It smiled with his smile.

Then with hers.

Then with both.

Zza didn’t give it a chance to speak again. She lunged first, claws out, adrenaline drowning out her pain for one reckless second. She slammed toward the creature’s chest — but her claws slid through it like slicing smoke. Gold rippled under her hands, light bending, body shifting.

Buzz shouted, "Zza move Now!"

The creature’s arm phased around her wrist, not grabbing it — merging with it.

A cold shock ran up her limb, straight into her head.The chills sent shock waves to her bones

Zza froze.

Buzz grabbed her shoulders, trying to pull her away, but the creature’s touch held her like a magnet.

Buzz screamed her name. "ZZA—"

He swung his claw across the creature’s arm.

It sliced through —

—nothing.

The creature didn’t bleed.

It didn’t grunt.

It didn’t flinch.

Instead, it whispered:

"Remember."

Zza’s vision cracked open.

She saw herself in the cocoon where she was born, trembling. She saw Buzz biting a soldier to protect her. She saw herself failing in a fight. She saw herself dragging Buzz’s broken wing through mud. She saw her own fear the day she realized she cared about him.

Every moment of weakness replayed inside her skull.

Her knees buckled.

Buzz ripped her back with a snarl so loud his throat tore. The creature’s hold snapped with a sound that felt more psychic than real, and Zza crashed into Buzz’s chest, shaking violently.

He held her tight.

She gasped against him, voice shredded. "It shows your worst parts. It shows everything you hide. It uses your memories to break you."

Buzz stared at the Mirror-Shell as it drifted closer.

His breath hitched.

Because now the creature wore someone else’s face.

His mother.

Then flipped to the Queen’s face.

Then back to Zza’s face.

Then his face.

Then a version of him that looked... proud.

Buzz whispered, "It’s picking through my head."

The creature spoke in a soft overlapping echo: 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"Buzz Windbreaker. Zza of the Silk. Carry fear. Carry shame. Carry failure."

Buzz’s shoulders tensed.

Zza pushed forward. "Say one more thing about him and I’ll rip your throat out."

The creature tilted its head.

"Throat unnecessary. Emotion unnecessary. Hosts serve better without."

Buzz lunged.

He didn’t think.

Didn’t plan.

Didn’t even aim.

He just hurled himself at it with something raw and furious, a sound ripped from a place he didn’t even know still worked after the forge carved him.

He hit the creature full force.

And passed right through it.

But this time, instead of drifting harmlessly...

The Mirror-Shell reached into his mind as he fell through its body.

Buzz screamed.

Not physically.

Not from pain in his limbs.

Something dragged through his thoughts like claws scraping across memories that belonged to him.

Zza grabbed him as he collapsed, his body twitching, his eyes rolling.

"Buzz! Buzz, look at me!"

His voice trembled out in broken pieces. "It’s showing me... everything I hate... everything I failed... I can’t— Zza I can’t shut it out—"

The creature drifted above them, its face a patchwork of both their expressions. All wrong. All cold.

"Hosts weakened. Hosts ready for shaping."

Zza pulled Buzz’s head into her lap, shaking with fury.

"Get away from him."

The creature hovered still.

Gold light pulsed across its limbs.

Their memories rippled across its face, melting into each other.

Both voices layered inside it like a choral threat.

"Return. Submit. Serve."

Zza rose slowly, her claws trembling, her arms shaking, her breaths ragged.

"Come get us," she whispered.

The creature didn’t wait for her invitation.

It descended.

And the gold flared brighter.

Zza grabbed Buzz by the arms and dragged him backward, her legs buckling, her strength barely there. But fear did something wild to her muscles — gave her just enough to move him.

The Mirror-Shell lunged.

Buzz gasped as its presence brushed his mind again.

Zza snarled. "Get out of his head!"

She turned her body, shielding him from the creature.

It didn’t aim for him this time.

It aimed for her.

A wave of gold hit her skull like a shock —

—a surge of memory, vision, intrusive thought.

Zza screamed.

Buzz grabbed her hand weakly. "Zza... fight it... fight—"

The creature whispered through both their voices:

"Perfect hosts do not fight."

The chamber shook.

The forge above screamed.

And something else stirred deep under the floor, reacting to the Mirror-Form’s power.

Something old.

Something angry.

Something that did NOT want the forge claiming new hosts.

The ground cracked.

Zza staggered, Buzz in her arms.

The Mirror-Shell turned its faceless head toward the floor — almost confused.

A second crack split the chamber.

Buzz whispered, shaking, "Zza... something’s coming up."

She held him tight, her breath hot against his shell.

"I know."

The ground split open.

A roar ripped through the chamber so heavy it sucked the air right out of her lungs.

And from the dark beneath them...

...something older than the forge began to rise.

Zza clutched Buzz’s hand.

His voice trembled. "Zza... what is that?"

Her answer came out thin.

"Something the forge was scared of."

The Mirror-Shell turned toward the new threat, light rippling along its body.

And for the first time...

it hesitated suddenly.