IMPERIUM INSECTUM

“Apollinaris, get your stuff together. We are leaving.”

She looked at me, still confused from our previous encounter.

“W... W.....what? ” She said, slowly climbing up the floor. Her legs wobbled like jelly as she tried to stand up.

“You heard me. I'll meet you in the storage room. There is Something I need to collect from my room.”

“Bu.. wha..”

“GO, young lady.”

I turned on my heels and returned to my room. 3 nurses surrounded her as they all helped to get her back on the bed. The other two were tidying up the room as best they could. I walked over to one of the nurses who was picking up shards of glass from the now-broken display box.

<Could you please pass me that >

I pointed to the white mask. The nurse happily gave it to me.

<Thank you>

The nurse bowed before returning to work; meanwhile, I inspected the mask. This mask has been bugging me for a while. Why would such a simple mask be kept in a display box? There has to be Something special about it, but what? I looked over the mask, trying to find a clue, but nothing. It was just a simple boring white mask. No special engravings or any material…..

<Well, there is one way to find out.>

I lifted the mask and inspected it once more before finally placing it on my face.

<ARGHHHH>

<MOTHER!!>

I collapsed to my knees. My face felt like it was being melted and engraved with a butcher's knife. Pain radiated across my head and all through my body.

<QUICK! MOTHER NEEDS HELP. GET THE>

<NO!> I yelled. The pain was increasing to unbearable levels, but something told me I needed to bear it. And bear through it, I did. The pain was unimaginable, but I gritted through. I won't be beaten by something like this. I stood to my feet and fought through the pain until, finally, it stopped. The system dinged as a notification popped up in front of my face.

 

I slowly stood to my feet. My body ached all over, and my face felt like it had been stuck in a wood chipper. Around me, I was surrounded by several concerned nurses.

<I’m……Ah… fine> I was not fine. But they couldn’t know that.

<Someone, get me some water.> They all darted out of the room. I took a seat on the side of the bed and pulled up the system.

 

 

So all my titles are [SUPPRESED] now. I don’t know how to feel about this. This is a blessing and a curse. Whilst people won’t be fearful towards me because of my [herald of the End] title. I lose all the benefits of all my other titles wearing it, so no bonus xp and no hatred for other races, not that I needed a title to feel that. I peeled the mask off, and suddenly My body felt recharged and reinvigorated, like something I had lost had been returned to me. I held the mask tightly in my hand as the nurses burst into the room, holding a keg of water and charged towards me.

<Wait! SLOW DOWN! I don’t need that much wat->

A few minutes…..

After drying myself off and giving my nurses a stern talking to, I left my room and headed towards the store room. Inside, Apollinaris was choosing clothes from the wide selection we had.

“So where are we going?”

“To the local human town, doonvatel. I want to explore and learn more about this world.”

“and how do you plan to do that?” she said, inspecting a sundress before putting it down. “May I remind you that you and I dont look very human.”

I raised my hand and shook the mask.

“It’s a special mask. “ I said “It will allow me to blend in easier with the humans.”

“Well, that’s great for you, but what about me?” she said, pointing towards her huge mushroom cap.

She's right. That massive mushroom cap makes her stand out like a saw thumb, but is that necessarily a bad thing?  The cogs in my brain turned as I hatched an idea.

“You dont need to.”

“What?”

I quickly rushed over to the crates and started looking for clothes. My old cloak was ruined, but there has to be Something I can use here.

“Eureka! That’s it.”

I pulled out a long, black silk, full-body cloak with a hood.

“Now, what if I tell you a rich travelling merchant and the assistant she bought were to arrive one day at the gates of Doonvatel.”

Appolinaris nodded.

“The merchant is so rich that she is able to have a moon spirit as her servant. The city barely ever let us leave, so I imagine my kind is very rare in this world,” She chimed in. “This might work. What would be the merchant's name by chance?”

“Let's just go With Lady D for now. I'm already wearing a mask, so the name will add to the idea I don’t want to be known.”

Apollinaris thought for a bit before nodding.

“It's A bit on the nose, but I like it. I'll select clothes fitting for “Lady D’s” assistant.”

“Great!” I started rummaging for more and better clothes until it hit me.

“Apollinaris?”

“Yeah”

 “dont you have any issue with me being naked all of the time?”

“Oh, that. It's surprisingly common back in the city. Some spirits claimed it made them feel closer to the Forrest. I’ve never bought it, though. Don’t worry; I've seen weirder.”

“Thank- WHAT DO YOU MEAN WEIRD!”

She chuckled to herself as she started rummaging through the boxes. A few minutes later.  I pulled out a black shirt and a couple of black underwear. I put the shirt on and tried to put the underwear on for a few minutes before giving up and asking Apollinaris to help me with that part.

“How did you snap 3 pairs of these?”

“Shut up.”

I decided I wouldn’t wear any pants. They felt too restrictive to wear and wouldn't allow me to move as freely as much. So we only packed one change of clothes. If we needed more, we could always spend some money and buy more. Speaking of money. We decided we would take as much as we could fit inside the pouch Cindi gave me at the start. That amounted to gold coins, 500 or so silver pieces and 400 copper pieces.

It took us a few hours to get ready. But we spent the rest of the time packing everything else from food, tools and some animal fur we could use as bedding. We even found some spare unused tents.  All in all, we had 2 large bags full of stuff.

“Why am I carrying everything?!”

“Well, because I am a queen, doing such things are……. Beneath me.”     

“Queen of the tiny cave.”

“Hmmm, can you speak up, freeloader? I didn’t quite hear that last bit.”

She grumbled a bit more but didn’t say anything. Soon we headed out of the cave where there was-  

“- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!” Appolinaris yelled as she left the cave entrance.

 In the centre of the camp, there was a huge pile of corpses made up of deer, some mana beasts and rabbits. Nice to see my children have been busy. Suddenly a loud buzzing sound came from above as a worker suddenly flew down holding the corpse of a mana beast. Good job, children.

<Why are you putting them here?>

<Because mother asked me to. You said to bring food back to the camp.>

Oh, so this is my fault.

<Sorry, I should have been more specific. Can you move them into the room with the mushrooms.>

<Okay, mother.>

The worker buzzed off, carrying the mana beast deeper into the cave. I quickly opened the menu to look for notifications I was ignoring.

 

Hmmm. The xp gains are nice, but at this rate, it's going to take me ages to level up. And the point requirements are so damn high. There has to be some way of levelling up or at least earning points faster than this.

“that should clear itself. Anyway, what were you saying.”

She glared at me briefly before letting out a defeated sigh.

I looked over the hive once more. In such short few days, this camp truly became a place I would call home. Another buzzing sound came from above me. I looked up as another worker came holding a deer.

Appolinaris walked up to the side of me and placed her hand on my shoulder.  “Will they be okay… with you not here.”

I looked over to the worker drone who.

“Yes. They have to be. My hive has to become self-sufficient at some point. So the sooner we start, the better.”

I started walking to the edge of the camp. “Come on; we leave now.”

“Wait! Like now. Isn't the sun about to set?”

“Yep. No time like the present. You got your stuff.”

She nodded.

“Good. I hope you're not afraid of heights!”

Before she could respond two of the workers flew up behind us and carried us into the air.

“WHAAAAAA DIVAAAAAAAA.”

 “HAHAHA. WHAT?! DID YOU THINK WE WERE GONNA WALK?!”

We took off above the skyline and at speed towards the road. Apollinaris was screaming and begging to be let down as we were carried towards the road. Thankfully even with all the excess weight, the workers could still keep decent speed. Meaning in no time, we made it to the road.

 <she said to follow the road east.> The two workers nodded and turned east, and stayed parallel to the road.

“We’ll keep going till sunset; then we will call it a night.”

“How can you be so….. woahahhh!..... So c-c-calm!” she yelled. She was settling down now. The screaming only came out occasionally now.

“What? It's like being in a helicopter.”

“And What the HELL is a helicopter.”

“Imagine this, but you are trapped in a metal cage with blades spinning above you.”

“That sounds SO MUCH worse! Why don’t you use magic like normal people!”

“Magic?” I chuckled. “Magic is nothing but a fairy tale in my world!”

“WHAT!?..WuuuhaAHHHH…” She yelped as a small amount of turbulence blew past us.

“Then how did you do anything?!.”

“What we lacked in magic, we made up with science and engineering. We could fly around our entire world in less than a day. Move faster than the speed of sound and put people on our moon. We could communicate instantly around the world.”

In the middle of her panic, I saw Her eyes light up. Thinking about it, humanity on Earth was pretty impressive.

“Wow. I would love to visit that place. It sounds amazing!”

“It's not all sunshine and rainbows, Apollinaris. May I remind you that I was murdered by a human.”

“well yeah, I know. It's just it all sounds WUAHHHHHHHHH…. I HATE FLYING….”

I laughed as Apollinaris screamed and cursed until the sun finally set.