The psychic shriek of the Bone-Picker's pilot hit the Sovereign Shadows like a physical wall. Two of the elite guards fell to their knees, blood trickling from their ears as their mental shields buckled under the weight of a thousand harvested screams.
"Hold your ground!" Lin Feng roared, her wind-attribute aura flaring to create a localized sonic dampener. She swung her blade, sending a crescent of pressurized air toward the spindly pilot, but the creature simply drifted through the attack like a ghost.
"Flesh is so... fragile," the Seeder hissed, its elongated fingers dancing in the air.
Suddenly, the green gas in the room began to congeal, forming jagged needles of solidified plague. They launched toward Lin Xuan at terminal velocity.
"Xiao Yue, Purity Aegis!"
The Moon-Glow Larva pulsed. A soft, silver light washed over the bridge, and the plague-needles didn't just stop—they dissolved into harmless white flakes before they could touch Lin Xuan's robes.
"My turn," Lin Xuan said.
He snapped his fingers, and the Scarlet Weaver leaped from his shoulder. In the low gravity of the ship, the spider didn't just crawl; it flew, propelled by jets of siphoned energy. As it landed on the necrotic floor, it drove its legs deep into the bone-structure of the ship.
[Skill Activated: Parasitic Network — Sovereign Overdrive.]
"You like to harvest life?" Lin Xuan asked, walking calmly through the chaos. "Meet the creature that harvests the harvesters."
Crimson veins began to spread across the bridge floor, pulsing with a rhythmic, hungry light. The Scarlet Weaver wasn't attacking the pilot; it was attacking the ship. The necrotic, bio-mechanical walls of the Bone-Picker began to shrivel. The green gas was sucked into the floor, and the thousands of mummified pods on the ceiling began to turn to ash as their remaining essence was forcibly drained.
"No! The Master's vessel!" the pilot shrieked, its ghostly form flickering as its power source was devoured.
The Shadow's Judgment
The creature tried to phase out of the ship, but a dark, serrated mandible materialized from its own shadow. The Abyssal Shadow-Slayer had been waiting in the void of the creature's own essence.
[Skill Activated: Void-Anchor.]
The pilot was jerked back into physical reality, pinned to the wall by a spear of solidified shadow.
"Feng'er, finish it," Lin Xuan commanded.
Lin Feng didn't hesitate. She blurred across the bridge, her blade glowing with a fierce, emerald light. With a single, clean strike, she decapitated the insectoid pilot. But instead of blood, a swarm of tiny, black nanites poured from the neck.
"Nanotech?" Lin Feng asked, stepping back and wiping a smudge of black oil from her cheek.
"Not just nanotech," Lin Xuan said, kneeling to examine the liquid. "Bio-synthetic parasites. They aren't just here to kill us; they're here to rewrite our DNA into something 'consumable' for their fleet."
He looked at the Dragon-Slaying Hornet, which was currently hovering over the pilot's console, its stinger interface downloading the ship's navigation logs.
[Data Extraction Complete.]
[Harvester Main Fleet Location: 1.2 Light Years.]
[Estimated Arrival: 5 Months, 12 Days.]
[Current Objective: Seeders 1-5 successfully deployed... Error: Seeder 3 (This Vessel) Offline.]
The First Trophy
"They've sent four more of these things?" Lin Feng asked, her face turning grim. "If they land on Earth, the 'Steel Chrysalis' won't be enough to stop a planetary plague."
"Then we don't let them land," Lin Xuan said.
He turned to the Queen of the Swarm, who was hovering near the center of the bridge, her eyes glowing as she absorbed the ship's "Consciousness."
"Queen, can you take control of this wreck?"
"The bone-structure is dead," the Queen replied, her voice echoing with a regal coldness. "But the Weaver has fed well. I can reanimate this vessel using the Swarm's energy. It will no longer be a 'Bone-Picker'. It will be a 'Hive-Carrier'."
As she spoke, the crimson veins of the Scarlet Weaver merged with the black shadows of the Ant. The ship groaned, its jagged, ribcage-like exterior smoothing out into a sleek, chitinous black hull. The green gas was replaced by a soft, breathable violet mist.
"We have our first interstellar ship," Lin Xuan said, walking toward the new, organic command throne.
He sat down, and the ship's interface—now a series of pulsing, neural nodes—connected directly to his mind. He could feel the entire solar system, the four remaining Seeders hidden in the shadows of the gas giants, and the distant, cold hunger of the main fleet.
"Sovereign Shadows, return to Earth," Lin Xuan ordered. "Tell Lin Chen to prepare the 'Stinger-Cannons' for orbital deployment."
"And what about us?" Lin Feng asked, standing at his right hand.
Lin Xuan looked out the viewport at the distant, pale blue dot of Earth.
"We're going hunting," he said. "The Harvesters think they are the top of the food chain. I'm going to spend the next five months proving them wrong, one ship at a time."
[System Notice: First Galactic Territory Acquired.]
[New Path Integration: The Necro-Chitin Evolution — Loading...]