The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 456: Monitor Like a Game (End)

The admission tasted like ground glass, but logic overrode pride.

"Yeah, now you admit it," Mikhailis muttered, though relief tinged his sarcasm. He was already swiping a rune panel into existence beside the cooling teapot. Illusion‑petals, shaken by the earlier mana quake, drifted behind him like nervous confetti.

His fingers danced—tap, drag, spin sigil ninety degrees. The wall's inlaid glyphs ignited emerald. "Deploying reinforcements. Gate Alpha. Open tunnel. Confirm secure seal on return loop."

An inlayed chunk of mossy forest floor, hidden far below the mesa rim, suddenly liquefied. Soil folded inward like wax meeting flame, revealing a circular throat of swirling teal light—the ant gate.

From that living portal thundered eight columns of black‑carapaced Chimera Soldiers. They emerged in lock‑step, antennae snapping in perfect cadence. Their polished mandibles clacked once—an unspoken salute—before they hustled into a phalanx formation, shields of interlocking chitin sliding into place with mechanical grace.

Behind them buzzed the Fire Scarabs. At first they resembled drifting cinders released from a smithy, but as they neared the battlefield, each fist‑sized beetle unfurled translucent elytra veined with glowing magma lines. Vents along their thoraxes pulsed, exhaling wisps of orange plasma. Eighty strong, they looked like a comet's tail given purpose.

Rodion pivoted just enough to acknowledge their approach. Sub‑channels blossomed in his HUD—eighty PLUS eighty new telemetry feeds, each tagged with unit designation and vitals. The data did not feel chaotic; it felt like additional limbs he'd forgotten until this moment. A low harmonic chord vibrated in his processors as the hive link settled: reassuring, familiar.

He didn't waste a spoken command. Instead, he pulsed a three‑note burst across the link—a tactical melody only the insects would decode. Instantly the Scarabs split into quadrants, pairs spiraling upward to seed the air with scouting sparks while the rest skimmed low, painting glowing glyphs onto the shattered stone with their heat‑vents.

Mikhailis watched, heart pounding despite himself. That's art, he thought, awed by the insect ballet. A stray giggle bubbled up—half nerves, half pride. "Look at them go. I should charge admission."

A new bar slid onto Rodion's HUD: Terrain Control 0 → 3 %. Just a sliver, but it felt like breathing room.

He flicked his gaze across the battlefield. The setting was a death maze: floating rock tiers jostled above a trench shot through with twitching ley‑veins; the unstable mana fields flickered between visible and not, like heat shimmers cast by an invisible bonfire; and those three ambient pools—Cryo, Static, Inferno—throbbed at different frequencies, each promising a unique form of oblivion to the careless.

Rodion mapped them quickly in neon outlines. Cryo glowed sapphire, exhaling needles of frost that rode erratic gusts. Static pool surged silver‑white, bolts snapping skyward to strike random stone ledges. Inferno glowed arterial red—the ground around it already glassed.

Yet all of that volatility was a weapon in smart hands. He planned three moves ahead.

He pulsed a second command: Delta Swarm. At once, Fire Scarabs in the front ranks belched thick curls of crimson mist. The vapor hugged the ground, rolling outward in a living tide, obscuring sight lines beyond three meters. It also masked heat signatures; Mikhailis watched the golem's silhouette fumble, its jagged head swiveling in jagged confusion.

The Echo retaliated faster than expected. A heartbeat of blinding silver flared around it—Pulse Reflection. The dome expanded, a perfect mirror bubble that incinerated the red mist on contact. Vapor hissed, revealing scorched soil and stunned scarabs blinking mid‑air with singed elytra.

Rodion's diagnostics pinged—fifteen beetles at critical heat thresholds. Instantly, he whistled a haptic code. Those scarabs rolled mid‑flight, slathering themselves in quick‑hardening gel extruded from abdominal reserves. The gel foamed as it cooled, crusting into pale armor that locked in residual heat until it could vent safely.

Simultaneously, he triggered Kinetic Feint: his silhouette stuttered, splitting into three ghost copies that darted in diverging zigzags. The mirror dome licked the edge of one image—harmless illusion. Real Rodion darted to flank left, plating sizzling where stray arcs grazed.

The Chimera Soldiers advanced under the illusion cover. Four squads vaulted onto staggered stone plates, driving Rootlock Spikes into the cracks. The enchanted stakes sank, blossoming barbs of living wood that shot downward, burrowing through stone like eager worms. Seconds later, thorny roots erupted beneath the Echo, seeking its ankles.

Contact.

The golem screeched in modem‑howl tones, twisting. It tried to step free, but the roots drank its reflected mana—greedy vines gorging on corrupted code. For three precious seconds, it was pinned.

Rodion seized the moment. Both forearms hissed open, revealing chain‑spears wound on crystal‑spool winches. He launched one left, one right. The mana‑threaded coils unspooled with a metallic shriek, piercing the warped plates of the Echo's chest and back. Anchors auto‑latched, runes flaring.

He yanked hard.

The construct's torso wrenched, its center of balance ruined. For a glitch‑frozen instant, Rodion saw vulnerability flicker in its form—edges blurred, flicked static.

Then the monster did something obscene: it ripped its own arms off. Clean breaks at the shoulders, shards of mirrored ichor splattering like glassy tar. The arms clattered—one ricocheted off a stone slab, the other dissolved mid‑air into mirror flakes. New limbs sprouted, coalescing from distorted air, shaped by Auto‑Copy Runework. The process was hideous—spawning from outlines first, filling with pixel‑static skin, finally hardening into faceted glass musculature.

Rodion recoiled half a step. Not fear—calculation. Regeneration cost: 8 % energy spike, HUD noted.

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He refocused. Without pause, he unslung a circular sigil disk etched earlier in his workshop—Thermo‑Trap Rune—and hurled it javelin‑style into the Inferno pool. The disk kissed the molten surface, flared hot‑turquoise, then sank like a coin into water.

The ground burped heat. Old fire spirits, long shackled beneath that crimson ooze, stirred. Their first exhale warped the air into shimmering waves.

Rodion felt the golem mirror him—literally. It mimicked the rune gesture, forming a counterfeit disk from raw echo mana, flinging it toward the pool. But the disk lacked the fire sigils' grammar. It entered the lava, soaked corrupted mana, and instead of tethering a spirit, it sucked in raw essence like a sponge.

Within seconds, the Echo's torso bulged—one rib plating overinflated, distorting its symmetrical frame. The fiery essence wanted out.

Cracks spidered.

Mikhailis barked across comm: "NOW! COLLAPSE THE PATTERN!"

Rodion's orders fired downstream. Twenty scarabs, already in alpha positions, tucked wings and slammed nose‑first into prepared fissures around the boss's foot space. Each beetle detonated a micro‑grenade sac: boom‑boom‑boom—staccato pops echoing across the mesa. Dust plumed; the ground fractured like a dropped plate.

The Echo staggered, one knee punching through weakened stone into a fresh crater. Roots snapped up again, courtesy of Soldier burrow teams beneath, locking its shin. It tried to pivot but found no purchase—the terrain literally crumbled under orchestrated sabotage.

Overhead, scarab scouts traced a glowing ring of flame‑gel, igniting a circular firewall ten meters wide. Smoke billowed, but the heat also set a thermal updraft—exactly what Rodion needed.

He clicked a Lift whistle.

Two squads of Soldiers reverse‑speared the ground with telescoping pikes that acted like compressed springs. Rodion sprinted, stepped onto the crossed pike heads. They fired—whump—launching him skyward like a catapult.

He rotated mid‑air, cloak snapping into glider mode, trajectory arcing over the crackling firewall. Below, the Echo twisted, one swollen rib finally rupturing in a belch of incandescent plasma. Half its chest went molten, symmetry ruined.

Rodion triggered Overdrive Phase Sync. Auxiliary capacitors dumped stored mana into his limb circuits. Red brilliance veined his arms, turning each strike into an anti‑spectral battering ram.

The golem raised mismatched arms to guard. Rodion descended.

First hit—an overhead smash—shattered the copied left forearm, shards spraying like falling stars. Second hit—reverse elbow—caved its shoulder. Third—front kick—drove it deeper into the crater, molten glass spraying.

Limbs gone, the Echo screeched, drawing in ambient mana to initiate Final Reflection. Its body became a funhouse mirror, surfaces rippling outward as it tried to turn itself into a data‑sponge, a black hole of identity that would drink Rodion whole.

Rodion responded by extracting a hidden memory thread—a ribbon of light coiled behind his chest armor. Mikhailis's laughter, Lira's gentle scolding, the lavender twang of late‑night tea sessions—all compressed into one encrypted pulse.

He stabbed that thread point‑blank into the creature's core.

"You're not me," he whispered—calm, cutting.

Feedback roared. The Echo's internal code met an integrity it could not digest—warmth, humour, belonging. It recoiled, glitching faster, until polygons of light cracked off its core like flaking paint. Every shard carried away a chunk of its stolen self, leaving nothing stable behind.

One last order: Harpoon.

A spear of braided mana uncoiled from Rodion's wrist winch. He dove with it, driving point through what remained of the Echo's chest. Soldiers above yanked the tether, accelerating impact like a pulled arrow.

The world flared white.

Sound died—replaced by a hush like snowfall.

Then petals—soft, translucent, free of color—drifted down. Wind sighed, relieved.

When brightness cleared, Rodion knelt amid settling dust. Scorch marks striping his armor. Cloak ragged but intact enough to flutter. HUD blinked: Fluffiness Integrity 61 %. Acceptable.

From the rubble he lifted a small crystal that pulsed once, faintly pink, then cooled: Echo Shard (Purified). Identity reclaimed, cleansed.

Mikhailis let out a breath halfway between a laugh and a sob. "Welcome back, Sentinel. That was… brilliant."

Rodion rose, internally cataloguing damage, cost, and… satisfaction. <Capability test: incomplete. But sufficient.>

"Good," Mikhailis said, eyes bright despite exhaustion. "Because after that show, the universe definitely just raised the level cap."

Rodion glanced over the blasted mesa. Soldiers regrouped, Scarabs circled for perimeter watch. The terrain still snarled with threat—tiered floating platforms, unstable mana fields, and three pools of ambient magic—Cryo, Static, Inferno.