Chapter 423: A Ranting From A Certain Zerg
"Is it?" Keres pulled down a bandolier of plasma charges and slung it over Helena’s shoulder. "Then where are the others?"
When he asked for the others, he meant the lower-tier soldier zergs, the ones this batch of substance was supposed to awaken.
Each injection was meant to open a little door inside a human body, a tidy hatching chamber for the shrunken version of a half-conscious soldier zerg.
Their master managed to seed them into human bodies, finding a loophole in the secondary gland to prevent being caught.
Years, months, Keres couldn’t even begin to remember when they were injected in their bodies.
They only knew that they were the chosen ones by their master to fight and end this war.
Once injected with the substance, they could begin slowly taking over the human body, just like an inconspicuous virus spreading into the computer, slowly but surely.
At the end, Zergs could completely take over the human body without damaging their real body.
However, if something happened without fully taking over the human body, with or without the substance to wake them up, they would die together with it.
Only the mermaid’s pearl or a mermaid’s song could separate the human and the zerg safely.
They didn’t even know what this pearl looked like or what color it was. Nor did they know what kind of song it was, if they needed to hear a specific piece, or if it would work as long as it was sung, regardless of who sang it.
They only know it was a pearl and a song.
Thanks to their master’s grace, they became educated on the unknowns of their mortal enemy, the mermaids.
One of the seeds was Helena’s body, who inhabited him, Keres. Despite being a female zerg with a powerful male humanoid body structure, he was assigned to a female body.
Thankfully, it was a powerful human female alpha body with a high ranking in the Imperial Military, which made his life slightly easier.
Ethan shrugged, unfazed, "As long as the job was done, then it’s all well."
Keres’s head snapped up. Helena’s human eyes were gone, replaced by the animalistic eyes that were dyed bloody red. His mouth opened, hissing at Ethan with a mixture of zerg and human voices.
"Just because they were lower zergs doesn’t mean you get to discard them as you please, human—"
As soon as he threw the words out, Keres realized how loud he was. His eyes flicked to the door, to the ceiling, listening.
Seeing that there was no one coming in, Ethan let out a small, amused huff.
"You stupid—"
Keres lowered her voice to a venomous whisper. Her bloody red eyes turned back to Helena’s human eyes.
"Do you even have any idea how many were still left hidden? If you don’t, then don’t discard them so carelessly next time. Because we need as many of them as possible to survive this infiltration."
"It wasn’t my fault," Ethan said indifferently. "A reinforcement came in. I was still in the middle of injecting and observing the target’s reaction. I didn’t expect them to die that easily, even though I made as many disposable Lowborns as possible around us."
"Huh, that’s your excuse." Keres mocked, frowning.
"It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth. Whether you believe it or not, it’s up to you. But they’re dead, and I couldn’t just kill—"
Ethan stopped and corrected himself.
"I couldn’t just leave the target unsupervised a few seconds after injection, can I? If I did and something went wrong, you weren’t the one getting a punishment from the master."
Keres watched him for a moment and then begrudgingly stepped back.
"Fine. You’ve finished the job."
He said, turned back, and reached to the nearest rack, clipping an armored vambrace around Helena’s forearm.
"I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t leave the injection behind in your abrupt retreat."
Ethan inclined his head in mock gratitude.
Keres tightened the vambrace strap with her teeth. He snorted so hard after accidentally seeing his own reflection in the nearby mirror that she nearly dropped the next vambrace.
"I can’t help but wonder, " Ethan said, leaning a shoulder against the weapons rack pretentiously as he watched ’Helena’ armed herself. "Do you even need all that?"
Keres paused, dropped his shoulders in exhaustion, and pursed his lips.
"If you hadn’t made a sweet deal for this job, would I even bother doing any of this?"
He gestured at the bandolier, the vambraces, the pulse rifle now leaning against her thigh.
"Acting all day long is tiring, you know. Do you have any idea how hard I had to act just to sneak away to the basement?"
Ethan had a dreadful feeling that he had just opened the floodgates to a long sermon, and he wasn’t wrong.
"Man, that guy Julius probably had his brain melted by the BlackJack that he didn’t think much when I said I’ll go to the basement."
Keres laughed, having a good time recalling.
"I mean, do you have any idea how many times per hour that man, what was his name again?"
He tapped the side of his armor as he was thinking.
"Ah, Zero. He literally couldn’t take his eyes off of me because I kept siding with Salia." He grumbled, "But if I didn’t support Salia, who would I support? Humans?"
Now, Keres wasn’t just arming herself but also piling all sorts of things in one place.
"Salia’s human body, I think the name was Lilianna, that girl is really stupid. I mean, really stupid. It was hard enough not to slap her then and there."
He began waving his hands like he was slapping the air with whoosh whoosh sound effects that he voiced.
"I wonder how your little boy, Neville, managed to keep his hands to himself. Man, that’s some patience."
Keres said with awe and respect, earning a glare from Ethan.
"You don’t need to glare at me like that," he quickly said to defend himself, "I know he is your prey, I wouldn’t snatch him away from you. I don’t have a hobby of keeping a human for a husband."
