Chapter 65: My Rifle Rejected the Worker… The Queen Is 97% Compatible

Now came the important part.

Raven extracted the organ far more carefully than he had the first time.

The mature worker had a different internal anatomy. The electro-magical gland occupied nearly twice as much space and was connected to three crystalline structures around the abdomen.

Raven used forceps to separate the membranes without touching the crystals.

FORGE displayed subtle lines over the creature, highlighting areas of interest.

That helped.

It did not do the work for him.

A bad incision was still a bad incision.

Raven took almost ten minutes.

Valeria remained nearby, watching him.

"You’re enjoying this too much."

"I’m concentrating."

"I didn’t say you were smiling."

"Then?"

"You stopped complaining about the smell."

Raven separated the final filament.

The gland came free.

It was oval, almost the size of his palm, with blue veins pulsing at regular intervals.

"Maybe I’m getting used to it."

"That’s worse."

FORGE appeared immediately.

Impulse Spark Organ

Source: Mature Arc Needle Worker

Integrity: 94%

Mana Retention: 91%

Output Stability: EXCELLENT

Repeatability: HIGH

Energy Output: INSUFFICIENT

Prototype Rifle requirement not satisfied.

Raven stared at the final line.

Of course.

Valeria read his expression even though she couldn’t see the interface.

"Problems?"

Raven carefully placed the organ on a clean cloth.

"My rifle has standards."

"At least one of you does."

Raven looked up.

"That sounded prepared."

"I’ve had plenty of time during your dissections."

Roland approached.

"It won’t work?"

"It works. Just not for what I need."

Raven opened the details.

Potential Applications:

— Low-output magical trigger

— Runic activation pulse

— Alchemical discharge initiator

— Small artificial mechanism

Maximum stable output below Project requirement by 38%.

Thirty-eight percent.

That was not a small difference.

He could try compensating by using two organs, incorporating some form of amplification, or increasing the energy reservoir.

But every solution added complexity.

More parts.

More connections.

More places where something could fail.

The project already had too many.

"What about a Soldier?" Valeria asked.

Raven had been thinking exactly the same thing.

FORGE had previously classified the Soldiers’ High-Output Impulse Spark as VERY HIGH compatibility.

One would probably be enough.

The problem was that Soldiers patrolled much closer to the nest and rarely left alone.

Still, it was an alternative.

Raven stored the mature gland inside one of the containers.

It wasn’t garbage.

He could sell it, use it in a smaller mechanism, or save it for a future project.

FORGE had not called it useless.

Only insufficient.

"We look for a Soldier," he said.

Roland grimaced.

"That means getting closer."

"Not necessarily going inside."

Valeria pointed east.

"We saw them around the nest. None out here."

"Then we find a patrol route."

"And if that still isn’t enough?"

Raven looked at her.

"Then we reassess."

Valeria smiled.

"That means you want to see the queen."

"No."

"Lie."

"I don’t need to see her."

"That doesn’t mean you don’t want to."

Raven gathered the tools.

He didn’t answer.

Because she was right.

And that was irritating.

They found the first Soldier shortly before noon.

It wasn’t alone.

Two of them escorted eight workers carrying something enormous between them.

It looked like the abdomen of a much larger creature, partially torn open and still dripping green fluid.

Raven didn’t try to intercept them.

An hour later, they found another patrol.

Three Soldiers.

Too many.

A pattern began to emerge.

Workers could travel alone.

Soldiers did not.

They protected groups, patrolled entrances, and responded to disturbances.

The colony wasn’t simply a collection of insects living near one another.

It had structure.

That made the problem far more familiar to Raven.

Organization.

Defense.

Routes.

Posts.

Response.

He did not need to overpower every individual.

He needed to understand how the whole system reacted.

They returned to the slope from which they had observed the nest.

This time, Raven did not look at the creatures first.

He looked at infrastructure.

The external tunnels.

Entrances.

Flight routes.

Secondary trees.

Air currents.

Resin.

Where waste accumulated.

Where activity was absent.

Valeria waited several minutes before speaking.

"You’re doing that thing."

"What thing?"

"That expression you get when you stop looking at monsters and start looking at a problem."

Raven pointed toward a side conduit.

"That one gets less traffic."

Roland followed his line of sight.

"Yes."

"And the lower entrance."

"Mostly workers."

"The Soldiers stay here, here, and here."

Raven marked three points.

Valeria began to understand.

"You want to provoke a response in one area and hunt in another."

"Maybe."

"How?"

Raven studied the nest.

Fire was the obvious answer.

It was also the worst one.

Setting a massive structure on fire inside a forest filled with poisonous plants, unknown resins, and fungi capable of releasing spores could turn a hunt into a regional disaster.

But he did not need fire.

He needed smoke.

"How do they react to smoke?" he asked.

Roland took a moment.

"Badly."

"Define badly."

"They abandon saturated areas. Workers try to move larvae. Soldiers search for the source. If the smoke gets too deep, the entire colony can become aggressive."

Raven nodded.

"Perfect."

Valeria looked at him.

"That did not sound perfect."

"I don’t need to burn the nest. I need to control where they can be."

Raven pointed toward damp leaves, rotting wood, and a fallen section of tree.

"Ember Spark couldn’t burn that entire structure even if I wanted it to. But it can start several smoke points."

Valeria checked the wind.

Southwest.

Directly toward several of the lower tunnels.

Raven marked three points.

"If we produce smoke here, here, and here, it’ll enter through the lower conduits. Not enough to destroy anything. Just enough to make those sections uncomfortable."

Roland slowly shook his head.

"They’ll come out."

"That’s the idea."

"Hundreds."

"Not all through the same place if we leave clean routes."

Valeria pointed toward the northern side.

"You funnel them."

"Exactly."

"And then?"

"We observe what they do."

She looked at him.

"That doesn’t get us a Soldier."

"Not yet."

Raven pointed toward another route.

"When the Soldiers concentrate around the smoke zones, other sections will have less protection."

Roland frowned.

"You want to go inside?"

"No."

Raven marked an outer area.

"I want to force a defensive unit far enough away from the center that we can isolate it."

Valeria studied the improvised diagram.

"And if too many come, I close the route."

"Without wasting mana trying to kill a hundred. Barriers, threads, obstacles. Delay them."

"I can do that for much longer."

"Roland handles anything that gets through."

The guard pointed at Raven.

"And you kill the Soldier."

"Yes."

Valeria studied the plan for several seconds.

"Surprisingly, this isn’t the worst plan you’ve had."

"Thank you."

"That wasn’t a compliment."

"I’ll take it as one."

Raven started to rise.

Then FORGE reacted.

Not toward any visible wasp.

Toward the nest.

The same higher-caste signature it had detected the day before appeared again, but now they were closer and the system had far more data.

High-value compatible biological source detected.

Distance: Approximate

Species analysis incomplete.

Caste: REPRODUCTIVE / COMMAND

Trait resonance detected:

"High-Density Impulse Spark"

Raven went still.

The interface continued.

Potential compatibility with Project: PROTOTYPE RIFLE

Preliminary estimate: EXTREME

Additional data required.

Valeria immediately noticed the change in his expression.

"What did it find?"

Raven did not answer yet.

FORGE was trying to resolve the target through the enormous biological concentration inside the nest.

Finally, another display appeared.

Arc Needle Queen

Estimated Level: 18

Rank: Awakened

Primary Relevant Trait:

"High-Density Impulse Spark"

Potential Applications:

— High-load precision activation

— Repeated discharge synchronization

— Multi-component mana triggering

Prototype Rifle Compatibility: 97%

Functional Source:

Royal Abdominal Spark Organ

HARVEST INTEGRITY REQUIREMENT: 85%+

Raven read the number again.

Ninety-seven.

Valeria was still waiting.

"Raven."

"The queen."

Roland closed his eyes.

"No."

"I didn’t say we were going to kill her."

"You thought it."

"I’m reading."

"I can’t see what you’re reading, and I still know exactly what’s happening."

Valeria looked far more interested.

"Level?"

"Eighteen."

She blinked.

"That’s it?"

Raven looked at her.

"You expected higher?"

"For the queen of a colony this size? Yes."

Roland gestured toward the entire nest.

"The queen was never the problem."

Exactly.

Level Eighteen.

Awakened.

Raven had fought things far stronger.

The Blackmaw had been a Level Thirty-Four Elite.

But the Blackmaw had only had one body.

The queen had a city.

Hundreds of workers.

Soldiers.

Tunnels.

Alarms.

An entire environment built around keeping her alive.

Killing the queen was not a fight against a Level Eighteen.

It was an operation against the entire colony.

Valeria watched Raven.

"Is it better than the worker’s organ?"

"Much."

"How much?"

"Ninety-seven percent preliminary compatibility."

She gave a low whistle.

Roland looked at her.

"Don’t encourage him."

"I’m not encouraging him. I’m understanding why he’s about to do something stupid."

Raven closed FORGE.

"I haven’t decided anything yet."

Valeria smiled.

"Of course."

*Author’s note: I apologize for not realizing I uploaded the Chapter twice and for making you spend your coins on it.*