The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 809: Shield, Drag, Slam (End)

Chapter 809: Shield, Drag, Slam (End)
"Not League," she went on. "Not Technomancer toys. Not just your usual bite-and-digest crowd."
She finished tying off the bandage and sat for a moment longer, fingers resting on the hilt of her sword.
"Something else is down here," she said softly. "And it plans."
She didn’t know about the ants. She had no name for the hive, or for the man watching through their eyes.
But she had been a knife for too long not to recognise another silent hand on the board.
The thought did not make her feel safer.
It made the hairs on her arms stand up again.
Third player,
she thought.
Wonderful.
She pushed herself to her feet once more.
Her body screamed.
Her pack felt like it had doubled its weight. It wasn’t just the Warden core and plates now. It was every vial and shard and coin she had taken from old corpses on the way.
She walked toward the shaft.
At the edge, she stopped and looked down.
Darkness waited there, cut by the faint glow of residual mana. Old stone steps spiralled down the side, some cracked, some half-covered in mineral growth.
Her fingers tightened on the strap of her pack.
She could turn back now.
She had a route, however ugly. She had a boss room. She had a guardian core and more data than most Dominion scouts saw in a lifetime.
If she started climbing now, retracing her marks, she might make it back to the shaft, might fight her way up to the surface.
She imagined walking into Kael’s war room, dropping her pack on the table, spreading her notes.
The look on his face.
The arguments about how to weaponise everything she had seen.
She also imagined what could be below.
If she went one level deeper. Just enough to see what the shaft led to. Just enough to confirm whether this path reached the heart or veered off.
If she came back with that knowledge, she wouldn’t just be useful.
She would be irreplaceable.
Her ribs hurt when she inhaled.
"One more layer," she whispered. "Enough to make the route undeniable. Then I find a way up or die on the attempt."
Behind her, the Warden’s corpse lay still.
Above her, unseen, tiny bodies clung to crystal and watched.
Far away, in Kharadorn, a set of seers flinched.
In a dim chamber lined with glass and steel, the air vibrated as instruments chimed.
"Second floor guardian down," one of the technicians said, voice tight. "Confirmed spike, then drop."
Kael stood at the head of the war table, hands flat on the map spread in front of him.
He did not wear armour here. Just a simple dark coat, sleeves rolled to his forearms, scars visible.
"Source?" he asked.
"Unknown," the seer replied. "Could be League. Could be local queen. Could be one of ours."
Kael’s jaw worked.
"Not the League," he said. "They would be broadcasting it already."
One of his aides shifted.
"Could be the forest queen’s consort," the man offered. "The one they say the dungeon spat out."
"Could be," Kael said. "But if anyone fights like that down there, my first bet is still her."
No one needed to ask who "her" meant.
The spymaster, a thin woman with ink-stained fingers, raised an eyebrow.
"If she lives," she said, "she’s going to be impossible to replace."
"She already was," Kael answered.
He looked down at the map, at the lines they had sketched for potential entry routes.
"If she makes it back," he went on, "I’ll give her a hero’s welcome. Then I’ll make her draw every tile she stepped on."
The spymaster’s mouth twitched.
"And if she doesn’t?" she asked.
"Then we still use the tremors," he said. "The mana spikes, the timing. We match them with the data we have. The dungeon doesn’t swallow its own footprints."
His voice was calm.
It did not make the room feel less cold.
On the Sea-Glass Concordat’s flagship, Silver Current, the captain felt the ship’s minor wards shiver.
He glanced up from the chart table.
"What was that?" he asked.
Miren, his navigator, looked at the rune-etched crystal set into the wall.
"Deep surge inland," she said. "Same frequency as the Ashen River readings we’ve been tracking. A big one. Then a drop."
The captain grinned.
"So somebody finally punched the dungeon in the teeth," he said.
"Or got eaten," Miren replied dryly. "Either way, the window is closing."
She tapped the map.
"If the guardian on the second floor is gone, others will move faster. We should send a smaller ghost unit down the western access. See if they can ride the disturbance."
"Do it," the captain said. "And tell them to watch for League toys and Dominion knives. No heroics."
In a quiet cellar lit by guttering candles, a man in plain robes stared at a cracked relic on the table.
The old bone had started to hum.
"The beast below is losing pieces of its guardians," Seran murmured.
His fellow inquisitors bowed their heads.
"Heresy and hunger cluster together," he went on. "We will be ready when they surface."
Back in the Silvarion camp, the projection showed Rhaen setting her foot on the first step down.
Mikhailis watched her silhouette start to descend.
"Mark this room," he said quietly.
Elowen looked at him.
"As what?" she asked.
"Anchor point," he said. "Future outpost."
Inside his head, the command flowed through the link.
The hive tagged the boss chamber: Future Anchor. Resource Hub. Strategic Node.
"And her?" Elowen asked.
Mikhailis didn’t answer immediately.
He looked at the projection.
Rhaen’s figure slipped lower, the light around her dimming as she moved away from the boss room’s glow.
"Do not kill her," he said at last. "Unless she becomes a direct threat to the core or to the queen."
Elowen’s eyes sharpened.
"Unless," she repeated.
He met her gaze.
"I plan for bad days," he said softly. "I hope we don’t have to use the plans."
She studied him for a long heartbeat.
For a moment her expression softened.
"You sound very wise when you say horrible things," she said.
"It’s a talent," he answered.
"One I did not ask for," she replied.
He smiled, small and tired.
"You married an eccentric insect man," he said. "The warranty on wisdom was always going to be strange."
Serelith snorted.
"I would like to complain to customer service," she said. "I ordered pain and chaos, but they sent me someone who does accounting in his head while making jokes."
Lira’s mouth twitched despite herself.
"You forgot the anime," she murmured.
"Never forget the anime," Mikhailis said.
Cerys rolled her eyes.
"You all joke like this while she bleeds," she said.
He sobered.
"I’m not laughing at her," he said.
His eyes went back to the projection.
Rhaen reached the edge of the visible shaft.
The last glimpse they had was her hand on the wall for balance, the line of her back straight despite the bandages.
Then she stepped fully into the deeper dark and was gone from the ants’ current line of sight.
The scouts shifted.
Some remained in the boss room, clinging to columns and cracked ceiling, guarding the corpse and the grooves. Others moved toward the shaft, beginning to trace new paths along the rough-cut stone.
Above them, in the tent, the projection rippled as the view changed to follow.
The dungeon’s light pulsed once, slow and deep.
Somewhere far below, a different awareness turned a little more toward the new intruders that were not quite human, not quite beast.
Ashen River watched.
The hive watched back.
And, between them, a single human knife walked down into the next layer, unaware that she was now a line drawn between dungeon, hive, and nations.
Her silhouette slipped into shadow.
The small dark shapes of ant scouts repositioned above her, like living map markers against the crystal.
The dungeon breathed.
The Chapter of this floor closed.
The next one waited below.