Mother of Wasps (3)
Ugh…?
Wh-why… is my mind… back…?
The sanity that should have melted away completely and vanished forever had returned. My brain, thoroughly pickled in poison, had clearly suffered severe damage; I could feel how badly my cognitive functions were impaired. Yet at least I could form proper thoughts again.
How much… time has passed…?
I tried blinking to survey my surroundings, but realized at once that it was pointless. I remained trapped inside the cocoon. My eyes and mouth were still sealed tight by sticky threads that refused to part.
Still, I could move my fingertips and toes a little within the cocoon. Just enough to wriggle them. It seemed the paralytic toxin had worn off before it could completely destroy my mind.
I could tell easily enough that no dark tentacles had sprouted from my body. If they had, I would have torn the cocoon to shreds already. That was… fortunate, I supposed.
As that thought crossed my mind, something wriggled inside me.
“Ugh…!!”
There was no mistaking what it was. I didn’t want to understand, but understanding was inevitable. It could only be one thing.
Th-they’ve… hatched…
The eggs that had swollen my uterus and intestines until they were ready to burst had become parasitic wasp larvae, now crawling through my belly. There was no other possibility.
They would devour their own eggshells the moment they were born, then gnaw away at the place of their birth—my womb, the inside of my vagina, my intestines. They would begin with the less vital areas, and once I was no longer useful, they would consume my heart or… perhaps my brain last, before finally bursting through my skin.
Just like that deer I had watched crumble before my eyes, they would shatter my body into pieces. Then they would begin the next cycle of their lives. Hunting for new victims like me.
Imagining such a gruesome end made my body tremble. It trembled, yet—
That… might be good… too…
The instant I became certain that true ruin had arrived, a thick flood of arousal gushed from deep inside my vagina, the passage still blocked by hardened mucus.
I had long since become a fallen bitch who grew wet at thoughts like these, who grew excited contemplating her own death, who felt only regret that her fingers refused to move so she could pleasure herself in moments like this. There was nowhere left for me to fall.
But the frustration of being unable to touch myself did not last long.
“Mmph!?!”
A wave of pleasure so horrific it could only be described as pure terror surged outward from within my body, threatening to snuff out my newly regained sanity like a candle flame. It spread like watercolor bleeding across thin white paper.
Wh-what is thiiiiis… this… thing…? Wh-what… is it…? Ah♡ It’s… suddenly… whyyy…?
“Mmmph… Ugh… Mmmph♡ Hah… Mmph…♡”
In the wintry air of the damp cave, I writhed inside the cocoon that held me fast, exhaling hot, feverish breaths through my nose. Pure ecstasy, not pain.
While thrashing under the onslaught of climax, my broken, sluggish mind barely managed to piece together why the paralytic toxin’s pleasure had reared its head again without warning.
Th-this… is coming from… my belly…
Yes. My belly.
Then.
The paralytic toxin…
Ahahaha… So that’s… it… hehe♡ Th-that’s… what it was… Ahaha, ehehehe…
Why had I never realized? Even after watching the larvae spin threads to wrap me into a living cocoon, why had I assumed they were nothing more than helpless infants that could only gnaw on flesh?
The saliva and mucus they secreted must have been saturated with the same paralytic toxin that had been injected into me. The poison that twisted the agony of being devoured into pleasure, that made the host docile—so the mother wasp would not need to keep drenching her host in venom.
The gap between the mother’s departure and the eggs hatching, the only period of freedom from the toxin, had been that brief window. My body, briefly released from torment, had desperately purged the poison and partially restored my sanity. There had been no need for it.
Even if consciousness returned, it would only mean experiencing the terror of annihilation once more.
“Mmmph… Ump♡ Mmph… Hah… Mmph…!♡”
Once again my limbs began to tingle. For now I could still writhe, unable to endure the pleasure that scourged my entire body like torture, but soon even that would be impossible.
I would simply surrender everything to the insects devouring me, suffocating in endless bliss, waiting only for the moment my existence ended.
I already knew, because I had experienced it once before.
“Hah…♡ Mmph… Ump… Mmmph… Hah♡”
That disappearing like this was truly… happiness.
If I could… if I could experience it again and again, I wanted to endlessly savor the moment my sanity shattered into pieces.
I could not see, but I could tell. Right now the wall of my uterus was beginning to be eaten. The larva’s mouth was probably chewing through the soft tissue below the fallopian tube leading to my right ovary. It would break through in a few days—perhaps only a few hours—then emerge to feast on my organs and abdominal wall.
Ugh… There must be… seven… or so… that hatched inside my womb… And my intestines… are wriggling too…
It felt as though the eggs inside my intestines had hatched as well. The space that should have permitted nothing but digested waste was squirming against my will.
I could feel the vibrations of something clearly gnawing, yet the pain—the pain converted into pleasure—did not register. Only the crunching, scraping sensation. If they were not eating the intestinal wall, then…
They’re eating… the other eggs…
Carnivorous, greedy creatures like these would never tolerate rivals sharing a limited supply of meat. They were siblings from the same clutch, but that was all. Larvae would have no intelligence with which to distinguish brother from stranger.
Disgust filled me. Nausea rose in my throat.
Beings born from the same father and the same mother, yet unable to recognize one another. Ugly creatures that, in lightless darkness, would devour anything their mouths could reach. And I was the bread those creatures would feed upon. An existence lower than such base lifeforms.
Unable to recognize even those born from the same father, and devouring them…
Ah…
Ahahaha…
“Ugh…”
That was me.
I see. I see… I see. These were beings worth carrying. The ones I had birthed in agony, the ones I had raised by offering my own body. My… babies…
“Ugh…”
This time I felt the trembling of the babies chewing through the intestinal wall. Naturally it did not hurt. And there was no need to shudder with vulgar pleasure. This was happiness. Yes, the profound fulfillment of nursing a child, of watching a healthy baby take its first steps.
Was this happiness also caused by the babies’ toxin? It didn’t matter. Even if it was false happiness manufactured by poison, it didn’t matter. Happiness was happiness. If I could greet the end in bliss, I would not care if it was an illusion.
Yes. This was it…
My baaabies… the reason I waaaaas born into thiiiiis woooorld…
“Mmmph♡ Ump, ugh… Hah… Ugh… Mmm…♡ Mmph…”
This, haaaa…
Hehehehet… The folds… of my intestines… are being eaten… so gooood… So, so goooood…
I aaaaaam…
To be eaten… by my lovely… babies…
In the small… little… belly… prepared for them… I waaaaas born…
Hehe…
“Ump♡ Hah… Mmph♡ U-ump… Hah♡”
Hehehehe… It feels… so good… So, so, so gooooood…
But… but…
Even with every nerve shriveled by toxin and my brain ruined by a flood of dopamine, I could still understand that this moment would not last forever.
Even with my shattered mind, I could sense that my belly had been emptied. I wasn’t hungry. My body, paralyzed by the mild toxin, could no longer register either fullness or starvation. The nutritional fluid the parasitic wasps had injected must have been enough to prevent death by starvation, at least.
Quite literally… everything that should have been inside my belly was gone. Uterus, ovaries, large intestine, small intestine. More than half my liver had been consumed, and there were holes chewed through various places in my abdominal wall.
I could feel it. Every single wound, every strand of loss, twisted together into swirling pleasure that continued to crush my mind.
How I was still alive with a body like this was beyond comprehension. Even if the toxin eliminated pain and pathogens, clotting blood to prevent death by shock, infection, or blood loss, far too many organs necessary for survival had been destroyed.
Perhaps the babies inside me were taking over the roles my organs could no longer fulfill. All so they could continue eating fresh meat until they became adults, ensuring their own survival.
Or perhaps magic was involved. Master Viran had written that as long as the mana circulation system remained intact, even a dead body could continue to live, and a crushed body could be restored. She herself lived that way.
But none of it mattered. My mind was no longer capable of following such complicated thoughts… and more than that—
“Mmmph… Ump…”
I had… no strength left.
Even now, steeped in ecstasy and with my sanity almost completely paralyzed, I could tell that I could no longer produce proper cries of pleasure. Thanks to the analgesic effect I felt no pain at all, yet my body was unmistakably dying.
Even if the larvae carefully consumed only organs and muscles that would not immediately kill me, a limit was still a limit.
There were roughly ten babies inside my belly now. There had originally been over a hundred eggs, but the first to hatch had eaten the rest, and later hatchlings had been eaten in turn. Only the earliest and strongest had survived.
As the babies grew, so did their appetites. At first they could gnaw all day without breaching the uterine wall, but—
Ah… Five of the babies… are eating… my spleen… Ah, if that disappears… blood… will no longer be made…
It didn’t matter. A mother exists to sacrifice herself for her children.
Ugh… This time… it’s my muscles… Yes, if those remain… they won’t be able to… get out… Please… eat well…
I had grown completely accustomed to the alien sensation of my organs being gnawed. I had come to crave that feeling, which stimulated my maternal instincts, with desperate longing.
At first it had felt like something the size of a pinky finger moving. Now it felt like thick snakes. They must be nearly fully grown. The babies were almost ready to leave my body.
Soon—any moment now—they would chew through my abdominal skin or the area near my sternum, dissolve the cocoon, and attempt their final metamorphosis outside.
Ah…
It was really… happening right now.
I could feel the skin directly beneath my belly wriggling. What should have been endlessly repulsive brought only happiness, thanks to the toxin from the children I had birthed in pain. No discomfort. No pain. Only happiness.
“Hah… Ump, mmm… Mmph… Ump♡”
I felt my abdominal wall being mercilessly chewed through. My plump, snake-like babies were trying to pierce my belly, dissolve the cocoon, and emerge. They would soon become pupae on the verge of adulthood.
Urgency rose. The babies’ movements changed. I could feel them touching my lungs, my heart—places that would kill me if destroyed. Their final instinct was to eliminate the host before their metamorphosis, removing any future threat.
Yes, the sensation of being eaten in those places would surely be unbearably ecstatic, but—
No… I don’t want… to die… here…
Desperation seized me. If I died, that would be the end. If I had a soul, it would go to the relay point. But if the relay point itself was an illusion created by that existence, I might simply scatter into nothing. Either way, I did not want to die.
Because if I died… this supreme pleasure that could not be tasted anywhere else, this endless climax that could crush my sanity in seconds, this happiness—it would all be cut short…
As I writhed in despair, a flash of realization shot through my mind like lightning.
I had been bound with my arms pressed tightly to my body. The bare skin of my thighs, uncovered by my skirt, was in direct contact with my palms. Which meant… my hands were definitely touching my body. The mother wasp who had laid me in egg form could not possibly have arranged it knowingly, but—
This is… enough. This is enough. If I rewind time… surely…
Something caught in my mind with a heavy clunk.
I could rewind time. So why had I remained trapped in this insect cocoon? If I changed the cocoon my hands touched back into its original mucus—or better, into the nutritional fluid before it had even become mucus, something the larvae could not digest—I could escape without issue.
There had been an important reason… there had been a reason… but I could not remember. Why had I not escaped?
Really…
Why… had I not used… that power…?
I don’t know. I don’t know…
Eh?!
“Hgh?! U-ugh… Hah♡”
Ah, ah… It’s… come out…
A large hole had been chewed through the skin beneath my ribs. The damp, cold air of the cave flowed into my hollowed-out belly, where most of my organs and muscle had been lost. A strange new ecstasy bloomed from within the cold void.
Aah… The babies… have come… out… They’re pouring… out…
But there was no time. The babies would repay the kindness of having raised them by ending my now-worthless life and turning me into rotting meat. A happy death… but…
I was sorry to leave.
This feeling of my belly being eaten, of my vital organs being chewed by my babies’ mouths before my life was taken—it was too… happy… The world held no other place where such happiness, such joy, such pleasure could be tasted…
I could not die here.
Yes. Let’s rewind.
Just as I gathered my fading consciousness and tried to use my power, something deep in my instincts stopped me.
But there was definitely a reason… There was definitely a reason I must not rewind time…
Did it matter…?
If I could remain submerged in this happiness, such a thing… was only a trivial reason…
Therefore—
Rewind.
Aah…
It rewound…
Leaving behind the babies wriggling on my belly, slowly but surely, my lost organs, the meat and food I would give to my children, bloomed anew as fresh flesh.
Perhaps because my strength had not fully returned, or because somewhere in my unconscious I still rejected this happiness, I did not return to the fresh body of my nineteen-years-and-four-months-old self. There was no need. If I did, the toxin would disappear, and so would this happiness that sought to drown and kill me.
Slowly, the gnawed muscles and organs were refilled, preparing me once more to become bread for the next generation of babies now poking their heads out of the cocoon and wriggling.
It was fine. This was enough. As long as I did not die, the preparations to feed the next generation of my babies were complete. I must not die. Not for this world, but for my children.
Eat plenty, my precious babies… Yes, that’s right… Mother’s flesh is abundant—no, infinite, and eternal. Grow strong… and next time, and the time after that, and the time after that, use Mother… as your meat.
I will always… be waiting… right here…
Ahaha.