Level One God

Musky pheromones dripped from my chin, fingers, and clothing. I stood in complete silence, eyes wide beneath my helmet as I watched the largest carapax of the group approach me. It was holding a two-handed axe with blades almost as big as my torso.

I held my breath, watching and waiting as I leaned on the huge halberd, trying not to slice my hands open on the sharp edges. I didn’t have many tools left, but I was at least going to go down swinging. I had the giant chitin halberd. My ring was probably still on cooldown, and I also had my puny little common mace dangling from my belt. I doubted I could muster much of a swing when I was barely on one leg, but this asshole was at least going to get thumped with my mace once if he planned to kill me. The halberd was just for show, because I was going to fall over if I let it go.

The carapax held out its ax parallel to the ground, froze, and then rose up on its tiny legs. Then it lowered itself. Then it rose again.

I tilted my head in confusion.

The carapax twirled on dozens of tip-toeing legs, spinning in a surprisingly graceful circle. It proceeded to perform some kind of dance, circling me as it performed little moves. A pirouette here, a bow there, and then its arms were out wide as it waved them up and down, getting in my face.

The other carapax were watching silently.

Oh, God. He’s doing a mating dance, isn’t he? Or is it a she?

I didn’t know why the gender of the giant beetle trying to seduce me really mattered. I was decidedly uninterested in either circumstance.

All I could do was stand and watch as it continued to dance.

After what felt like a small eternity, it moved back in front of me and held its ax out parallel to the ground again. It dipped down, like it was bowing toward me.

“Uh,” I said, looking around. I carefully tucked the halberd’s shaft under my armpit and clapped. “That was great. Thank you.”

The carapax moved so quickly I couldn’t react. One moment, it was bowing. The next, it had dropped its ax and lifted me overhead. It was pumping its arms up and down, painfully shaking me like a wet rag as if it was hoisting a trophy.

There was a burst of clicks. I realized the sound came from their little pincer hands. They were all holding them up high, clicking them together rapidly. Taptaptap. Taptaptap.

Are they celebrating?

The other carapax scooped up the dropped ax and the halberd I’d been using. The one who danced for me lowered me and cradled me like a small child. Then it started walking at the head of the group.

All I could do was stare up at the underside of its shiny red head in pure horror as it moved through the woods, jostling me with its jerky movements.

On the bright side, I figured there was at least a fifty percent chance I was going to be taken to the queen, now. The other fifty percent chance? I had a bad feeling it involved dressing pretty for this thing for the rest of my life.

We reached what I assumed was our destination in less than a minute.

I’d been so close.

The carapax lived in an actual village full of houses made of black chitin. Maybe it was more accurate to call them huts, because most were probably only big enough for a carapax to go inside and lie down. I saw carapax moving about the little village busily as I was carried in with the guards.

I inspected a handful of them and learned the group sent to capture me were all classified as “carapax guards.” They ranged in levels from 20 up to 50, but were all Wood rank. The majority of what I saw around town were classified as “carapax peasants.” I didn’t see any over level 10.

We passed an open-walled building where one of the peasants was ripping red carapace off a beetle, who dripped ichor and fell to the ground, apparently dead.

Two tiny ones I took for babies lifted their claws and did the taptaptap celebration as the thing died noisily.

God. What the hell?

The carapace turned black like the chitin weapons once it was removed from the recently dead beetle, and the peasant started stripping it apart and then folding it into complex shapes.

Wonderful.

So their weapons and houses are made of pieces ripped from living carapax. Certainly, the queen of such creatures will understand this was all just a big mix-up, laugh about it, and send me happily on my way. Maybe she’ll even give me some nectar for the road.

I was possibly delirious from blood loss and pain, though.

We were heading toward the largest building, which still didn’t seem quite big enough for our whole group to enter. Sure enough, the level 50 carapax carrying me was the only one who headed inside. The rest waited outside.

The interior of the building made me feel like I’d been shrunken down—Magic School Bus-style—and shoved up somebody’s nose.

The walls glistened and dripped with a thick, clear fluid. The smell was so offensive I had to bite back an immediate gag. It was like wet fish and garbage had a lovechild and then left it out in the sun to fester for a few years.

I blinked back tears. It smelled so bad my eyes were watering, even under the relative protection of my helmet.

The carapax set me down in the center of the room. I didn’t realize I was looking at the queen at first. She was so large I’d thought she was just a huge collection of mucus sticking to one of the walls.

I slowly lifted my eyes, stomach dropping as I understood the sheer size of her.

[Carapax Queen, Level 50 (Wood)] “The carapax queen has one job. She ingests the mates of hopeful carapax, digesting them into pure essence, which she may then choose to violently eject from one of her four anuses. In rare instances, she will choose to vomit the digested mate up as a substance known as nectar. If left to marinate in a male carapax’s mucus gland, the nectar will eventually emerge as a baby carapax.”

I stared at the tooltip and felt my world start to spin as I processed what it meant.

The carapax guard was presenting me to the queen as a mate. They didn’t want me for themselves, they were asking the queen to eat me and either fire me out her asses or throw me up. Either way, I’d be digested goo before I found out if I was lucky enough to become nectar.

Even in my pain-fogged brain, I could figure out that was bad.

“Hi,” I said. “Do you speak?”

The giant queen looked like an impossibly overstuffed maggot. Her skin was semi-transparent, revealing slithering organs floating in suspended, gooey flesh. Her head was a beetle’s head, but far too small for her huge body. There was actually a little white chitin crown on her head.

Her body shook and vibrated and sent tremors through the whole building. Glops of clear fluid on the ceiling splashed down to the floor.

I cringed back from a splash of goop near my foot, but the carapax gave me a firm shove from behind. I nearly fell without the halberd to lean on. My leg felt numb from the knee down.

“I don’t want to be anybody’s mate,” I said, speaking slowly and carefully. “No offense,” I added to the beetle looming behind me.

I didn’t think the queen understood me, but I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. It felt like my brain was in an old car in a scary movie. The bad guy was slow-walking my way and I kept turning the key, hoping for something, but the engine was only sputtering uselessly.

The queen curled her huge body toward me, beetle-like head on the end of its wormy torso lowering until it was just a few feet from me. Mandibles in front of its mouth opened, twitching as it let out clicks so deep and powerful I felt them vibrate in my chest.

My heart pounded as its face inched closer. I could see the multifaceted shape of its eyes. The strange little chitin crown on its head. I saw the dark red hairs jutting out from all over its face. A ribbon of mucus was connecting the mandibles and slowly lowering itself down in a disgusting way that was almost hypnotizing.

You’re about to get eaten, Brynn. Fucking do something.

I still felt like the horror movie hero turning the key again and again to no avail.

The queen’s mouth hitched on some unseen hinge, then fell open like a wet doorway. I could see straight down its huge throat, which was crisscrossed with lines of something thick and shiny. I had no doubt those fluids would burn like acid, dissolving me into nothing in seconds.

Its jaw kept opening wider and wider until I could’ve strolled inside without having to duck my head. It was drifting closer to me with mesmerizing slowness.

Finally, it felt like the engine in my brain started. There was really only one thing I could do, and it didn’t matter if I thought it was going to piss her off. She was going to eat me either way.

I lifted my palm toward the carapax queen’s open mouth, guided the mana flows, and sprayed a gush of pheromones directly into her mouth.

I saw it completely coat the inside of her throat just before she snapped her mouth shut, head lifting into the air. Her whole body shook and more gunk from the ceiling flopped down. She was making a deep, guttural clicking sound that somehow reminded me of a call for help.

The carapax behind me nearly knocked me over as it rushed toward her.

And then it dove face-first into her neck, burying itself as it tried to dig toward the pheromones inside her body.

Wow.

I had a moment to stand in awe as a carapax guard who was about one hundredth the size of the queen tore, bit, and tunneled its way into the queen. It was being dissolved before it could reach its goal. The digestive fluids inside the queen worked quickly, melting away the top half of the beetle embedded in her flesh. The guard stiffened and its intact lower half stuck out of the queen like a misshapen red quill on a porcupine the size of a bus.

I backed out of the room as slowly as I could. She was still making that sound and didn’t seem to be focused on me. But what was I going to do outside? Stroll off and hope none of the guards stopped me?

I didn’t have to wonder for long. Just as I was about to reach the doorway, I saw them coming. I barely had time to limp out of the way and press my back to the disgusting wall as a huge swarm of carapax—guards and peasants—all rushed in and tossed themselves head-first into the queen. They burrowed into her from every angle, feet and limbs kicking and weapons clattering to the floor as they were dropped in their rush to reach the pheromones.

Holy shit.

I slipped, skidded, and smeared my way across the wall, out the doorway. I was too relieved to not be getting digested to even care that I’d missed out on the nectar.

With my eyes wide, head swimming with confusion and a touch of fear that my leg was going to fall off, and heart pounding, I limped away from the chorus of terrible sounds behind me.

The village was deserted, and it sounded like things were not going well for the queen or the carapax back there. If any of them decided to come out, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

Even so, I spotted a pile of discarded chitin weapons on the ground that were left behind when the guards rushed in the room.

I inspected one.

[Common Chitin Sword (Wood)]

Apparently, it wasn’t anything too special. But it would be a shame to leave it all…

I glanced back toward the sounds coming from the queen again. She was almost certainly dying, just like all the carapax who were suiciding into her acid-laden body.

With a shrug, I scooped up as many weapons as I could and started limping back towards camp.

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