ryethenovel Chapter 198: The Eagle Union Headquarters
Chapter 198: The Eagle Union Headquarters
The headquarters itself was still in surprisingly good condition. There were no overgrown plants creeping through the corridors or cracks spreading across the walls, at least for now.
The only thing that felt wrong was the silence, as if the entire building had been abandoned only moments ago.
However, the moment they reached the kitchen area, a terrible rotten smell drifted into their noses.
"Be careful. It might be an enemy," Jace said, naturally taking the lead while Arthur and Otis followed a few steps behind.
He slowly pushed the kitchen door open and scanned every corner with his knife raised. After confirming there was nothing inside, he gave a short whistle.
Only then did Arthur and Otis enter.
The source of the smell wasn’t a corpse. It was the food.
Plates were still neatly arranged on the dining tables, some of them half-finished, while several pots remained on the kitchen counter with their lids still closed. Every supply was left untouched, slowly spoiling until the entire room reeked of decay.
Arthur instinctively stepped closer, but Jace grabbed his shoulder.
"Don’t. Whatever happened here, everyone left in the middle of lunch... or dinner. At the exact same time. There wasn’t even a struggle."
Otis and Arthur immediately understood what he meant. Maybe the food itself carried parasites that activated once they were eaten.
Otis slowly looked at Arthur. "Earlier, you shouted that everything in this forest had become a spy. What exactly did you mean? Did you figure out something about the parasite?"
Arthur nodded. "I’m not completely sure. The parasite I suspect shouldn’t be capable of something this massive, but when I saw those serpent lianas, their bodies reminded me of the same phenomenon caused by the green-banded broodsac inside Sigmure Gluttons."
He paused before continuing. "Their eyes had already changed into colorful, pulsating sacs that moved like wriggling caterpillars. That’s the unique symptom of a slug infected by that parasite."
"But that thing usually infects gastropods," Jace muttered.
"Exactly. Snails and slugs."
Otis scratched his head. "But isn’t there another parasite that hijacks ants? The one that forces them to leave the colony and die?"
"The zombie-ant fungus," Arthur answered with a nod. "It exists."
He slowly turned toward the dusty window. "But have either of you noticed something strange? There aren’t any flying aberrants. Not a single bird or even insects above the canopy."
Otis frowned. "So?"
"They’re avoiding this place. If the Queen ant is deliberately creating that rotten smell to drive every flying creature away, then reproducing isn’t her objective anymore. She’s keeping everything inside the Groove instead of letting it spread outside, which means she’s gathering nutrients."
Arthur slowly looked deeper into the silent headquarters. "And if an aberrant is capable of abandoning reproduction just to accumulate power... like the King."
***
As they ventured deeper into the headquarters and entered the living quarters, the surroundings slowly changed. Vines had already forced their way inside through shattered windows, crawling across the walls and ceilings like veins.
The rooms were in complete disarray. Beds had been overturned, chairs broken apart, clothes scattered across the floor, and dried blood stained the walls.
Someone had written something with it. The handwriting looked like that of a child. Every letter was uneven, and the sentence became harder to read toward the end, as if the writer had slowly lost control of their own hand.
"What the hell happened here? This place is creepy. We should leave." Otis unconsciously lowered his voice, his anxiety growing with every step.
His fear wasn’t unreasonable. They still had no idea whether food was the only way the parasite spread.
If it was airborne, they had already spent far too long breathing the same stale air as the people who had mysteriously disappeared and were probably nothing more than nutrients for the Groove by now.
Jace, however, paid little attention to the room itself. His flashlight remained fixed on the bloody sentence.
"Can anyone read it?"
"They called us."
Arthur didn’t even look at the wall. Instead, he picked up a diary lying beside the bed and flipped it open, revealing page after page covered with the exact same sentence.
"They’re definitely infected with something that attacks the brain," he muttered. "Hallucinations, obsessive behavior, auditory distortion... whatever this parasite is, it isn’t just controlling the body."
He closed the diary and tucked it into his backpack. "We need to find their General’s room as soon as possible."
The three of them quickened their pace. The deeper they went, the worse the headquarters became.
More walls had collapsed, allowing thick vines and strange white fibers to invade every hallway. They spread across windows, ceilings, and doors until sunlight could no longer penetrate inside. The air grew damp and cold, forcing them to rely entirely on their flashlights.
Strangely enough... Everything was spotless. Not a single speck of dust covered the floor.
Arthur suddenly stopped walking. His flashlight slowly swept across the corridor before moving upward.
"This place..." His voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Something is wrong with it, they must be using it for something important, like egg chambers."
Jace and Otis immediately aimed their lights around the room. At first, they found nothing. Then Otis felt something soft land on his shoulder.
His body froze. Slowly, he raised the flashlight toward the ceiling.
His face instantly turned pale. "It’s... up there."
Arthur and Jace followed the beam of light. Thousands of eggs, each as large as a goose egg, clung to the walls and ceiling, packed together until they formed a living carpet. The thin membranes became almost transparent under the flashlight, revealing pale larvae wriggling inside.
Some shells were already empty. But one of them cracked, a tiny mandible pierced through the membrane right above Otis.
Otis nearly screamed. Instead, Arthur shoved him sideways without hesitation. He crashed onto the floor just as dozens of larvae dropped from the ceiling and landed where he had been standing seconds earlier, squirming across the damp ground.
"Fuck..." Otis whispered, staring at the creatures. "Do we really keep going?"
"It’s dangerous," Arthur answered quietly, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. "Worker ants usually stay near the egg chambers to maintain the environment." He turned toward Jace.
"We’re close. I remember the map. Around the next corner there’s an equipment room. If we’re lucky, they still have night vision goggles inside."
"Fuck," Otis muttered again, rubbing his face.
Even so, he tightened his grip on his knife and moved to the rear of the formation, guarding their blind spot while Arthur and Jace led the way.
The three of them slipped through the corridor in complete silence, carefully weaving past several worker ants tending the eggs.
None of the creatures noticed them. Step by careful step, they finally reached the equipment room.