The Slayer of Nomadic Civilization (2)
It had no name of its own.
And yet it was—no, she was—the queen of the beetles that Ahor had been hunting. She was the one who had gathered together beetles that committed cannibalism without a second thought.
From the instant she became an adult, she had become aware of a pheromone that could put every other beetle beneath her feet. Whether she was a mutant born by chance, or some miracle woven from the prayers of countless sandworms that had starved to death in the desert—even she did not know.
But that she was something apart was certain. Unlike the other insects, her goal was not reproduction or mere survival.
She wanted not to breed, but to flourish. The two looked similar. They were nothing alike.
That she could even perceive the difference meant her intelligence had already left the realm of insects behind.
For her kind to prosper, they first needed to escape this barren desert. Even for a mutant like her, devising a method was no simple matter. They could not receive supplies the way humans did, so choosing a direction mattered more than anything. The entire swarm freezing to death or withering away had to be avoided.
She pondered for a long time. For her, it was not a difficult thing. Unlike the other adults, the queen still possessed the patience she had carried as a larva. It was a magnificent habit, one that allowed a single individual to survive for hundreds of years. For reasons she did not understand, the rest of her kind had forgotten it entirely.
Without raising a swarm, she endured, and she searched for a way.
The hint came from the birds.
When she watched them migrate in flocks, they were surely heading somewhere abundant with food. She thought as a human would, and soon she was certain.
After that, there was only execution.
She spread her pheromones and raised a swarm—a swarm made of strong seed. Strong seeds to be cast upon the world. They would not hide their savagery. They would gnaw the world apart, piece by piece.
When the caravan finished off the giant beetle, the queen, on the other side, had completed all her preparations. She believed it was time to spread her wings and fly.
And so the queen was born.
Vesta swung his sword without hesitation. He stomped down on a beetle that, even with its waist severed, was still spreading its mandibles.
A shuddering unpleasantness washed over him. It was closer to revulsion than fear.
This doesn't feel like fighting bugs.
They had no commander shouting in a great voice the way Ahor did. They seemed able to exchange thoughts without speaking at all, and Vesta's guess was not entirely wrong. They did not fear death. They did not even seem alive.
It feels like facing an army more rational than humans.
Vesta swung his blade relentlessly, trying to shake off the loathing. Cutting beetles down was growing more and more familiar.
The problem was that the insects, for their part, had recognized how dangerous he was.
Two mid-sized beetles came charging straight at him. The sound that rang out was a bad one. The edge had gone dull. He had been cutting through the gaps in their carapaces with some skill, but those shells were closer to iron plate. Of course the sword was failing.
A mid-sized beetle came crashing in with all its massive bulk. Vesta launched himself up and shoved a kick into the insect's brow with one leg. Pain flared through his knee, and his face twisted; he went bouncing away through the air.
He had slipped the attack once, but the creature did not let its momentum die.
"Persistent things."
Then, all at once, he felt it.
Dozens of beetles with their legs severed, their waists cut through, even their heads struck off, were still not dead. They clicked their mandibles and writhed. It was the very image of an army that would not die even when you killed it.
Was this not a landscape as if he had been hurled into the heart of a nightmare?
Vesta narrowed his eyes.
Nightmares? As if those were anything new.
How many opponents had made Vesta dream nightmares?
"What's this, some brat? Ha, fighting a thing like you is a free win."
"......"
"Pray you never run into me. I'll tear you to shreds and scatter you for the crowd."
The man who had said those words to Vesta was a giant who had outweighed the boy by more than three times. Do you know what it means to fight someone three times your weight? It was the difference between a grown man and a male lion.
If Vesta had not been born in the arena, had not grown familiar with violence from early on, he might well have fainted the night before the match. He might have had nightmares. But his heart, at least, had not broken.
Vesta had survived the match the next day, and now he stood in this desert. Not as a gladiator-slave, but as a warrior of the Khan.
He cut down one beetle. Another came at him in the same instant—and Ahor's blade took it. Vesta and Ahor stood back to back.
Her back was even smaller than he had expected. It was not a frail one.
"Vesta."
"Go on."
"If we do not slaughter them here—if we leave even a seed behind—that seed may cross over to the steppe."
A thoroughly horrific thought. The landscape she feared painted itself with terrible clarity: a living hell in which insects that devour people and livestock blackened the skies of the prairie.
"We'll stop them here."
"Yes. We must."
Back to back, Vesta and Ahor swung their blades. It looked like a precarious sword dance, enough to steal the gazes of several of the elves even in the thick of the fighting.
"It's about time you drew that sword. We need the flame."
"......"
"In combat, I am your commanding officer. Do you intend to refuse an order?"
Ahor, who knew Vesta's circumstances perfectly well.
"...It won't come out. What am I supposed to do?!"
Steel rang against carapace.
"Talking back to your superior. That will not do!"
Her blade swept through the air.
"And I am older than you, besides."
"You don't look it. Hup—!"
A whirl of steel.
"What? Ha."
The informal speech that slipped out of Ahor for an instant. Vesta grinned.
"That's better. Honestly, the stiff way of talking doesn't suit you."
"...Kh. Is that so?"
Then I'll speak comfortably, just for a moment.
Ahor seized Vesta's cheek. She yanked his head around and looked him straight in the eye—at the courage flickering there beneath his gaze, like flame.
"...And?"
"The Khan sending you. And the beetle queen happening to come after us. I can only call it fate. And you are a child who carries flame."
Her expression looked rather bitter, too.
"I'll give everything I can to what I can do. You do what I cannot. You can do that, can't you, Vesta?"
"The Khan has breathed upon a small ember."
"I can see you. Wreathed in bright flame."
She let go of him, then ran out to face another enemy.
"....Ha."
Vesta let out a hollow laugh and turned his gaze. The interminable swarm of beetles filled his sight.
He set his stance. His hand settled on the sword's hilt.
He did not know the principles of Spirit Arts. It was not something a human could learn just by wanting to. But once, when he had drawn this sword, he had felt as though someone on the other side had clasped his hand.
The blade whispered from its sheath.
"Ah."
The queen, who had been watching the battlefield, saw that flame as well.
Thousands of images formed in her compound eyes. A light so intense it was almost intoxicating. Flying insects cannot refuse that temptation.
The queen felt it instinctively too—a sensation of being about to be sucked in. It terrified her to the point of shuddering.
She was a special being. She had considered herself free of the instincts of reproduction and breeding.
Until she saw the flame.
That flame makes me an ordinary insect.
She had almost charged at it, no different from the other bugs.
She had to lead her kind to paradise. To do that, she had to be different from the other insects in every way. Superior. Great.
"Today I shall overcome my natural enemy."
"I must kill that human here."
Only then will I live. Only then will we live.
The queen drew her pheromones even higher.
A heavy impact shook the ground. The two beetles that boasted the greatest bulk in the swarm began to move.
And then—
"You think I'll just let that happen?"
A woman stepped forward to protect Vesta. The woman who had beaten to death with her own hands the mid-sized beetles that treated people like sheets of paper, who had seized their heads and wrenched them around.
The woman in iron armor, drenched in the ichor of mid-sized beetles.
Tamugai Ushun.
She planted a hand squarely on Vesta's shoulder.
"Kid."
"So you've just decided to call me that now?"
"Heh. Want me to call you something else?"
Ushun clapped him on the back. Vesta saw her face, lit by the flame.
"Let's smash 'em quick and go rest. Friend."