A Hive of Bone and Chitin [A Biomancy and Hivemind Litrpg Adventure]

The woman with the orange-blonde hair rolled her eyes when she was accosted at the third checkpoint she had been held up at since the morning. I knew it was the third checkpoint because I had been a fly following her since she left her home. No, I was not stalking all my friends like a creep. Today was just a special occasion.

I did occasionally visit the woman. Only her and Nerry, once. With the woman, I could just have the flies act unnatural and she understood that I was bored and needed a conversation partner. I had to give it to Kalist, using ash so that a fly could write words in the powder was brilliant. It only took some effort before I was able to communicate that I needed a way to write. It was also kind of hilarious that the first time I actually saw my friend's residence was as a fly.

I knew Fahria was rich but not how much until I actually visited the place she had apparently been renting. Not every attempt was as successful. Nerry didn't get the weird fly was me and swatted it. I was too embarrassed to ever bring that up again. Or try to visit her in the same way.

Fahria had been visiting me every day. And even Agitjin and Novas did it twice so far. Fahria just brought me food and took Selene with her to kill slimes so that the new Swarm General could get the experience. She even offered to help pay the Biomancer's fee but that was too far. Agitjin just came in with Novas, proclaimed that I looked hideous and then groaned when Novas hit him on the head. But I didn't mind it, really. His heart wasn't into it. He seemed actually worried and was just babbling to hide it. I told him nicely to go scuba diving in the Nyrum river disposal area. Still, that was another two flies that watched over my friends.

I just followed them all as swarm-integrated flies when they had come to visit and looked away once they reached home, the guild, the hotel or wherever. It was not my business where they went and what they did but I was terrified of Kalist's kobolds going after people I knew. Now that the high had worn off, I was legitimately regretting just attacking him. And honestly, I had to admit that he was right. It was true that I was on edge, had been fighting for a while, and wanted to let out steam and was using Vinny as an excuse. Oh well, extenuating circumstances. Excuses aside, that meant that being near me could make others a target. And so I did what any possibly insane girl would do and had flies follow them around. I just ensured that I let them know that I was doing it. Of course, it was just a matter of efficiency to keep swarm units around them at all times. It was only logical after all. I could alert someone who actually mattered far faster than they could when in danger and fighting for their life. That didn't mean I had to make it weird.

I didn't even have the flies directly piloted all the time. Most of the time, I was possessing flies around the biomancer's clinic and patrolling the area. Did I really think I was going to be a target over Ayn, Valdima or someone else who was actually a threat to Kalist? Honestly, yes. Even leaving aside what I had done in our last meeting, he seemed certain that we were bound in some way. Arshanara's jilted lover, the Godtouched of Arshanara's father, in the city built by the son of said jilted lover and Arshanara, the city whose patron deity was Arshanara herself. It all came back to the goddess Arshanara.

I let go of the fly watching the Shakirn heir and switched over to another who seemed to have found something interesting. It was just some rotting fleshbank. Fleshbanks were cool. They were technically living organisms that absorbed light, heat, moisture and mana to act as meat factories. They were how the city's poorest were fed. Making fleshbanks of one's own was one of the first things an expert biomancer was expected to do. Hell, I could probably use Blood Absorption on them to have auxiliary mana generators. So many possibilities but first I had to leave this place.

I switched back over when the checkpoint people seemed satisfied that she wasn't possessed by Kalist. Two parallel strings of thought only for controlling my swarm other than the one that was going on in my physical brain and even then I was barely keeping up. Even with my latest Swarm General, I was watching over three people at the same time, not even including me.

She had been coming here for almost a week. A week. That's how long I had been stuck in here, trying to unfuck my body. In the meantime, the city seemed to be even more tense than usual with cordons and checkpoints everywhere. Enforcers and the security guild practically merging into a single entity. Even the slime missions were gone and the contractors pressed into staffing checkpoints. Now one classer went down every week to kill every slime they could. Renewal Day? Indefinitely postponed. Gerankir? Well, back in my world, there had been a point when simply gunning down refugee camps to free up real estate was painfully common. It wasn't that bad here but body bags seemed to flow out of Gerankir way too often now. That was just the upper levels. Even the Council couldn't penetrate Lower Gerankir and whatever the hell happened down there.

In short, New Delport was under martial law. The sleazier types of stores weren't closed but people seemed a lot more furtive about going to them. Even the nicer parts of the city had the ambience terseness and unease of the seedier parts of the surface city creeping into them. The towers pumped up choking smog dutifully though. Every so often, I would get bored and buzz around. Once I even saw Fim, drunk out of mind and unshaven. He looked so terrible that I actually felt bad for him. I mean I didn't even know what Vinny meant to him. A friend? Lover? Sibling? Just family? A close colleague? I didn't know. There were a lot of things I didn't know.

My main body was also busy. I was undergoing what I supposed could be called physiotherapy but was basically just the slow reversal of what I had done to it. I wouldn't even pretend to know what was going on but something about being in a form like that so much, a high mana density and being so close to Kalist's ascension had frozen my mana into a bad configuration. It was not permanent but basically I was constantly subconsciously reverting back to the tiger form I had been in. I had gone home, all fixed up and feeling a bit strange and gross. Ate something for a bit before feeling queasy, then I went to bed. An inexplicable flash of sudden disgust at how my body must look and a nightmare where nothing bad seemed to happen but I still felt all wrong, I woke up with my limbs warped, ridges forming in my spine, and my mana zeroed out.

And so it was just me and that biomancer who had fixed my injuries when I had arrived at the city slowly exploring the limits of my new skill and coaching it to 'recognize' my human form. That was also the cause of the unease I was feeling. Simply speaking, I was just not able to reconcile my inner visualization of what I felt like with what I physically was.

Apparently this shouldn't have happened to me so quickly. I blamed Hivemother's Superego. It probably saw the new form as an improvement and expedited the process. Mitria (that was the biomancer) agreed but assured me that it was not unheard of among shapeshifter types and was very fixable. I was just especially vulnerable to it. That certainly explained why I was enjoying using the tiger-form so much. My condition even had a medical term but it was not in Dellish and thus gibberish to me.

If I was lucky, I might be able to eventually shift between both forms and make it a real skill but that was in the distant future. Right now, the only thing I was supposed to be doing was slowly reconstructing my body in a way that was acceptable to me while not being so cumbersome for day-to-day use. Mitria somberly assured me that if the result was not entirely human, that wasn't a problem.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Unfortunately, my real body was not doing that at the moment. Nor was I pretending to be sleeping so that I could explore the city. No, I was arguing with a really annoying guy.

"—iterally in a biomancer's clinic. You can fucking pay to have it checked that I didn't fucking kill your 'young mistress' to steal her bloodline. I just used corpses so that I wouldn't join them! Which again, you would know if you were there!"

"There is no need for such language, young lady. Or whatever it is that you are now. I think it is a supremely reasonable request that the clan's own biomancers verify it."

"Your clan lives halfway across the continent!"

"Yes. That's why the clan will be paying for the trip."

Yep. Not fun. I mean it was a reasonable demand on paper. Fahria was a tremendous example of lineage mattering for power. The problem is just that this guy refused to confirm if I would be let go afterwards. Always something like "Even if you didn't intend to, a fraction of the bloodline passing on to you makes you something that threatens the clan's existence if you were to be captured.". So basically, no. I was going to either have to become the vassal biomancer of this guy's clan or convince him to back off.

"I told you already, my skill doesn't work like that and Mitria can confirm it."

"Mitria is a private unaffiliated biomancer in a foreign city. I'm sure you are smart enough to understand why their word is not good enough. I assure you, if we were the kind of people to snatch people on flimsy excuses, we would not have the reputation we do."

Gah. The problem was that he was being reasonable. Even Mitria was sure that I might get attacked by wild monsters and die, on the record, that is if I went with him. Biomancers were expensive and what I had done with my low tier classes was impressive. I had no idea how this guy, one Girt Siaouschin had me on his radar though. It could be as simple as a guest blabbing and then Girt looking into the Rootretch extermination expedition all the way up to Kalist messing with me. Point is, I was not going with this guy if I could help it.

I couldn't even ask Valdima for help. She would be more than happy to have me shipped off. She had told me so in our very first meeting. Mitria, on the other hand could and would use some excuse about therapy sessions to tell him to come back later but they were busy. Turns out that there were far too many kobolds for how many people were supposed to have gone missing. That meant something else. A rogue biomancer had cloned people. Once the guild figured that out, Mitria was called for. They were busy studying whatever was left for a hint or a signature or anything identifiable. A hint that could possibly lead the guild to Kalist's whereabouts. That was two days ago. Mitria had left me with some simple visualization exercises and a few low tier attendants were there to take care of me. My current form was not really that capable of moving on its own, even though it looked mostly human. The attendants were also not qualified to rescue me from my current predicament. The best they could do was prevent him from snatching me away. Thankfully, I had a plan. The reason I was watching Fahria so intently.

"Ahem, I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Fahria's voice rang out with an impressive amount of casual disdain in it. I swiveled one of my eyes to see that her gloves were off, displaying her true status proudly. "Lord Girt." She turned to me, her expression unreadable. "Anya."

The man turned and I imagined his eyes immediately fell on the claws. He gave her a stiff short bow.

"No, of course not, lady Shakirn. It is just that this young lady might have accidentally absorbed the body of the hundred-and-thirteenth heiress. I'm sure a clanner of your status knows the potential ramifications of a Great Ancestor's lineage manifesting outside the bloodline."

Wait. Wait. Hundred-and-thirteenth heiress? This guy was on my case over the hundred-and-thirteenth heiress. I was about to open my mouth but a quick glance from Fahria told me that I should shut up. We had planned this so that she could walk in on Girt and I arguing. I was not going to ruin it. I was sure she wouldn't help again if I did.

"Hmm. Yes, indeed. That is quite worrisome. Anya, did you receive the bloodline of the Apefather?" If I didn't already know that she was acting, I would have wilted under her expression and tone. Also Apefather? That seemed so boring compared to a phoenix.

"No." Her expression didn't change.

"Are you absolutely certain that you didn't get any of it?" Wow. Way to overdo it. For the first time ever, I was happy that I was screwed up enough that my facial expressions didn't work right.

"Yes. I'm certain that I didn't get anything from anyone's biology other than raw mass." Shit. That sounded a lot more of the bored kind of annoyed than sincere. Thankfully Girt didn't seem to notice, or at least was distracted when Fahria turned to him.

"See? She is sure that she didn't get anything she wasn't supposed to. And furthermore, I've known her for months and I can personally vouch for her honesty as a fellow clanner. I hope that is enough to assuage the clan's no doubt valid concerns?" She delicately tilted her head slightly and I could swear the temperature rose in the room.

"I… I suppose it is good enough for the clan. I apologize for making you involve yourself in such a minor matter. Have a great day ladies." He hurried out. Then he turned back and popped in head in to get one last word in. "Please be aware that if Miss Anya is found to be in possession of the Apefather's descendancy, it will be your head alongside her's." This time he did leave.

I let out a wheezing moist breath that made me cringe internally once he was gone. Fahria didn't seem to mind so yay for that. We had saved each other far too many times in that shitty party to count and even before that and seen each other bleed but that didn't mean I was in a good headspace at the moment.

"Thanks." I muttered, voice hoarse. Fahria didn't reply, instead she nodded and began to cut up the steak thing that she insisted on bringing me every day. Apparently it was made from some monster meat with strengthening properties. I suppose it was a mercy that she didn't insist on feeding it to me herself after the first time. That was far too embarrassing. I started to eat slowly, fork occasionally trembling while Fahria brought me something I was missing. News from the outside world. Mitria was not the type to insist that I only focus on the treatment but well, let's just say that she was not always the most informed person about the political minutia of the city.

Selene on the other hand seemed content to just flutter around me. Still too bestial to have a mind like Medea, the moth-bird-thing seemed to have anxiety for some reason and visibly trembled whenever the Third Calamity or First Mother as Medea called her was mentioned. The moth was always able to overhear our mental conversations unless I explicitly excluded her but I didn't unless the topic was the Third Calamity or the limiter. No point otherwise.

I frowned when the two other flies met. They weren't going to the guild or anything. Agitjin and Novas were coming here. And soon enough, they did.

"Is the clanner moron gone?" Agitjin asked loudly when he entered. "I hate clanners. Err, present company excluded, of course."

"Right. I'm sure." Fahria dripped acid. "Make yourself slightly less comfortable than you are right now but by all means, grab a chair."

Now, here is the thing. All three of these people knew that I was keeping tabs on them but there was no way they met up and coordinated this meeting without my flies knowing. Nah, Fahria and Agitjin were smart, they probably could find a way. If Kalist could intercept my telepathy then just fooling flies wasn't impossible. I had a suspicion about the reason for it but I had no idea how anyone figured that out. That too was answered when Mitria came in. Of course the biomancer had to have gleaned that information from my body. Telomere length, DNA methylation and system bullshit probably meant that Mitria could determine my age to the nanosecond. Still, I was happy to pretend to be surprised. The grin on my face was certainly not an act.

"Happy birthday, Anya!" Mitria shouted while holding whatever Dellish people used instead of cake. For a moment, at least, Girt, Kalist, even Aster and the Unaugured God were just concerns for later. For now, I was not entirely alright but I was safe and among friends.