After eating, we stepped out of the safe zone together. The small girl, whose na was Juli, walked quietly beside . Her steps were now light and steady. It looked like she had regained so of her energy.
You are probably wondering sothing right now. Why did I leave those three won behind, yet choose to take this single little girl? That does sound like the kind of decision only a hypocrite would make.
And you would be right.
I am a hypocrite.
But there is a reason for it. This girl... Juli... was the entire reason I went into that safe zone in the first place. It was to find her and save her.
I activated [Character List], and a translucent blue screen appeared before my eyes.
[Character Information]
Na: Juli Smith
Age: 13 years old
Constellation Sponsor: None
Private Attribute: Insect Queen (Legendary)
Exclusive Skills: Insect Taming Lv. 1, Insect Communication Lv. 3
Stigma: None
Overall Stats: Stamina Lv. 2, Strength Lv. 3, Agility Lv. 1, Magic Power Lv. 1
I stared at the words for a mont, then slowly exhaled.
In the world of [WOMD], this girl was not just special. She was a monster in the making.
Most people would look at her and see nothing more than a skinny thirteen-year-old girl who could barely hold a weapon. They would underestimate her, thinking she was just another person barely scraping by and move on.
But, my friends! That was their mistake.
Because "Insect Queen" was not just a fancy title. It was a nightmare disguised as potential.
In the early stages, it did not give her any major power. Heck, it even looked useless!
Controlling a few bugs, whispering to crawling things that most people crushed under their boots without a second thought. Compared to flashy abilities like fire manipulation or super strength, it felt laughable.
But that was only the beginning. Given ti, this ability grew into sothing terrifying.
Insects were everywhere.
Under the ground, inside walls, hidden in trees, crawling through corpses, nesting in places no one bothered to check. They multiplied endlessly, moved silently, and obeyed without hesitation. And when all of them answered to a single person...
That person beca a walking disaster.
At higher levels, an Insect Queen could turn an entire battlefield into her domain. Swarms would rise like a living tide, devouring everything in their path. Enemies would suffocate, their bodies buried under layers of chitin and wings.
Even information itself beca impossible to hide, because every tiny pair of compound eyes beca a spy. And the scariest part?
It scaled infinitely. As long as insects existed, her power had no real ceiling.
I glanced sideways at Juli.
She was humming softly to herself, her eyes wandering curiously as if this broken world was still sothing new and interesting. There was no fear in her expression right now, only a quiet kind of innocence that had sohow survived all this chaos.
It was almost absurd. A future calamity... walking beside like a lost kid.
"Big bro," she said suddenly, looking up at , "are we going sowhere far?"
Her voice was small, but there was trust in it. Pure and unquestioning. I simply nodded as mories from countless runs surfaced in my mind, each one telling the sa story with only slight differences in detail.
In most of those runs, Juli did not et soone like .
She wandered alone for days, sotis weeks, clinging to life with sheer stubbornness. Hunger hollowed her out from the inside, turning her into sothing fragile and desperate.
By the ti she was found by [The Ninth Order], she was barely alive. They did not save her out of kindness. They saw value in her, just like I did, because of their ’Seer’.
The difference was what they turned her into.
The Ninth Order was not an organization. It was a machine that broke people down and rebuilt them into tools. And Juli... she beca one of their finest creations.
At first, they nurtured her ability.
They fed her just enough to survive and taught her how to control insects properly. Small things in the beginning. Ants that could scout ahead. Beetles that could carry tiny objects. Flies that could track movent. It seed harmless on the surface.
Then they pushed further.
I rember one run where she was sent into a shelter filled with survivors who refused to join The Ninth Order. There were around thirty people inside, most of them weak, so injured, all of them desperate.
Juli walked in alone.
She did not scream. She did not threaten them. She simply stood there quietly, like she always did.
And then the insects ca.
They poured in from every crack and corner. From the vents, from beneath the doors, from inside the walls. Thousands of them. Maybe more. At first, people panicked and tried to crush them, but it did not matter. For every insect that died, ten more took its place.
The screams started soon after.
It was not a quick death. The Ninth Order never allowed that. The swarm covered them, crawled into their mouths, their ears, their noses. So suffocated. So went mad before dying. By the ti it ended, the shelter was silent.
Juli walked out without a single expression on her face.
In another run, she was used for interrogation.
A man had information that The Ninth Order wanted, but he refused to speak. They brought Juli in and left her alone with him in a locked room.
No one heard anything for the first few minutes.
Then the screaming began.
It went on for hours.
When the door finally opened, the man was still alive, but barely. His body was intact, but his eyes... they were gone. Not removed, not damaged, just... empty. Like sothing had eaten away everything behind them.
He told them everything after that.
Juli walked out quietly, her hands clean, her expression the sa as always.
There was also a run where she controlled an entire battlefield.
Two factions were fighting over resources, both sides ard and prepared. It should have been a long and bloody fight.
But it ended in less than an hour.
A black cloud rose from the ground, so dense it blocked out the light. It moved like a living thing, sweeping across the battlefield. Soldiers fired into it, swung their weapons wildly, tried to run, but there was nowhere to go.
When the swarm passed, there was nothing left standing.
Not even bodies.
And in the middle of it all, Juli stood calmly, as if she was just another observer.
I exhaled slowly, dragging myself back to the present. Right now, the girl walking beside was none of those things.
She was just a child who called "big bro" with a soft voice and trusting eyes.
But I had seen what she would beco.
Not a hero. Not even a villain. Sothing far worse.
A weapon that did not question, did not hesitate, and did not stop.
And that was exactly why I could not afford to let her fall into the wrong hands again.
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