It was shocking enough that they had already reproduced—but even more astonishing was the size of the offspring that had been discovered.
“They’ve already mated and grown this big!?”
At my incredulous outburst, Tang Hwa-eun and Sister Seol, who had come outside to see Cho and Heukjeom off, asked with alarm in their voices.
“Are you saying they already gave birth and the babies grew this much?”
“What? They already gave birth?”
“Seems like it. But the growth rate is way too fast.”
“Too fast? Didn’t So-ryong say that if we were unlucky, the eggs might hatch around now? He did call it a worst-case scenario.”
“No, Hwa-eun. What I said was, if we were really unlucky, the eggs might be laid around this time. But these... these look like they’ve already hatched and grown quite a bit.
Considering the mother’s size, the eggs would’ve been about the size of a pinky nail to a thumbnail. Even if they were born on the same day the mother was sliced in half by Lady Gun Hye-rin, it doesn’t make sense for them to be this big.”
I couldn’t believe it.
Research on stickyworms is scarce, so even I don’t know everything. But I do know the basic timeline and development stages from egg to maturity.
When a female stickyworm lays eggs, they hatch into animal plankton almost immediately.
Plankton, in marine ecosystems, is the smallest basic food unit—plant-based plankton like algae are called phytoplankton, while the offspring of animals are considered zooplankton. Stickyworm larvae, not yet resembling their adult form, remain in a larval state and float adrift in seawater.
They usually grow while floating among other plankton, and eventually settle in muddy seabeds or similar environments where they develop further. Just getting past the plankton stage takes over a month.
But these creatures? It’s only been a little over fifteen days since their mother was split in two, and they’re already as thick as a forearm.
At this size, there’s no way this is natural growth.
Even if they had split into two on the day Gun Hye-rin cut them, locked eyes, mated immediately, laid eggs, and had them hatch all on the same day, this size still wouldn’t be feasible.
No matter how fast they are, they should still be going through the plankton phase right now.
“Didn’t Cheong-yu Sojeo say those things were mutated by the Five Venoms Sect’s dark arts? So nothing’s surprising?”
“She did. Still, this is too fast.”
Could it be because of those dark arts from the Five Venoms Sect?
Already grown to the thickness of an adult’s forearm.
As I stared at them with a grave expression, someone asked again.
“So what do we do now? Isn’t this the worst-case scenario So-ryong talked about?”
“What now, So-ryong?”
Contrary to my expectations, the mothers weren’t showing up—it looked like the babies were already born.
Something had to be done, and quickly. I made a decision.
‘We have to act based on the assumption that this is the worst-case scenario.’
To be honest, about ten days ago, I had considered the possibility of this happening.
Even today, when I sent the kids out for reconnaissance, I just told them to look for the mother stickyworm—but secretly, I’d been hoping they’d stumble on some eggs if they existed.
So I’d already planned for this possibility, and it was time to say it out loud.
“For now, I think we need to investigate. Find out how many of them were born, and how far they’ve spread. We need to assess the area.”
At this point, I believed we absolutely needed to determine the scale and exact location of their emergence.
We had to know where the offspring were staying and what they were doing.
If these were ordinary stickyworms, the mothers would have scattered their eggs, and the drifting current would’ve brought some to the river guards, who were monitoring the water flow.
They even kept torches lit at night to check for anything unusual in the current—just in case.
But until now, not a single hatchling had been seen—only one dead one had floated down. Something wasn’t adding up, and we had to get to the bottom of it.
Without a clear understanding of their current state, we couldn’t formulate an effective response.
“Then... are you going to send the kids out right away?”
Cho and Heukjeom, who had been waiting in the water after halting their departure due to the dead stickyworm’s body, looked over at me.
I glanced back at the two of them and replied.
“Yes. But—”
“No.”
I had barely opened my mouth to explain, when Hwa-eun immediately shut me down.
I blinked and asked again.
I hadn’t even said anything specific yet.
She was rejecting me before I even made a proper request—completely unprompted.
‘Feels like getting rejected before you even confess your feelings.’
“Huh? I didn’t say anything yet.”
Then, almost simultaneously, Seol and Hwa-eun replied.
“Don’t need to hear it to know. You’re going to say you’ll take Cho and Heukjeom and go check it out yourself, right?”
“Don’t need to hear it to know. You’re planning to take Cho and Heukjeom and go yourself, right?”
“Gasp! How did you know!?”
I, So-ryong, am not such a simple man—how could they read my thoughts so easily?
I looked at the two of them with a face that screamed betrayal, like someone whose heart had been exposed before he could even confess.
Then came their smug voices.
“Knew it without even looking.”
“Exactly, sister.”
“But still...”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
They were right, of course. I had been planning to enter Daewol Nation’s territory—right into the heart of the Five Venoms Sect’s domain.
The situation was just too serious to send only Cho and Heukjeom.
The results of this investigation could determine how this unprecedented biological disaster would unfold.
It had to be someone with experience.
As clever as Cho and Heukjeom were, finding stickyworms and observing stickyworms were completely different tasks.
My internal reasoning aside, the official mission for those two was simply to locate the stickyworms.
Their orders were to find the two invisible mothers in the river just past the Daewol border, then return ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) immediately if spotted by the Five Venoms bastards.
It was a straightforward recon mission anyone could carry out.
But what we needed now was far more detailed—how many offspring there were, where they were spreading, what they were eating, how they moved.
That meant I had to go myself. But what I got in response was a flat refusal.
“Didn’t I say no?”
“At least let me explain!”
They were probably worried—understandably so.
The place we were talking about was Five Venoms territory.
Until just recently, both sides had been sending scouts across the border, with small skirmishes and assassinations still ongoing.
And now, the place was teeming with stickyworms breeding like mad, some using tetrodotoxin and saxitoxin.
No wonder they were concerned about me going with only the kids.
Especially Hwa-eun—she had a tendency to be overly protective of me.
‘It’s nice, but sometimes it’s a bit much.’
To ease her worries, I tried asking her for something else first.
“Then, Hwa-eun.”
“Doesn’t matter how many times you ask, the answer’s still no.”
“No, that’s not it. I mean, please take a look at that first.”
I pointed to the corpse of the baby stickyworm.
Hwa-eun tilted her head at the request to inspect it.
“That one?”
“Yes. Could you check whether it has any venom?”
“Venom? I mean, baby snakes are venomous even when they’re young—wouldn’t it be the same with this thing?”
“These might be different.”
Most venomous creatures do indeed carry venom from birth, so it was a fair assumption. But this case could be different.
It’s rare for creatures to synthesize tetrodotoxin or saxitoxin inside their own bodies.
Especially aquatic species—those living in the sea or freshwater—when they exhibit those toxins, it’s usually not because they made them internally.
It’s more common for those poisons to accumulate naturally through the food chain.
That is, they store up toxins made by marine or freshwater bacteria inside their bodies, and that’s how they become venomous.
“Got it.”
Tang Hwa-eun stepped closer to the creature, pricked several spots of the body with a silver needle, and then dripped one of her chemical agents onto the tip of the needle.
A reaction would’ve been normal—any sign of venom would cause a visible effect.
But there was none.
She blinked in surprise as she examined the unresponsive needle.
“There’s... there’s really no venom at all.”
“Just as I thought.”
Exactly as I’d suspected. Either the venom-producing bacteria or toxins hadn’t been absorbed yet, or the creature simply hadn’t developed the ability to synthesize toxins.
Either way, it meant this one wasn’t yet venomous—and that might put Hwa-eun slightly more at ease.
But knowing her, this alone wouldn’t convince her to let me go.
I quickly returned to my foster father and requested that he resume reconnaissance beyond the border.
“Would you be able to dispatch a recon unit?”
“Recon?”
“I believe the stickyworms have already reproduced. A baby was found dead in the river.”
“What!? Then what are we supposed to do now?”
“For now, I’ll infiltrate deeper to assess the situation. But I’d like to request surveillance along the river on the Five Venoms side of the border to track their movements.”
“Hm? What’s the matter with you?”
“N-no, it’s nothing.”
“Either way—understood!”
I hadn’t even consulted Hwa-eun before declaring my plan to cross the border, which earned me a sharp jab in the ribs from her that made me let out a very undignified yelp. But at least the recon team was dispatched quickly.
And while they were out gathering intel—
I pleaded with Hwa-eun.
“All right, fine... but only on the condition that I come with you.”
I had been trying to apologize and ask for permission at the same time—and even though I hadn’t said a word, she gave me the green light.
On the condition she joined me, of course.
‘So this is what it means when people say being married gets you a free pass.’
The next morning, at dawn—
The martial scouts returned from reconnaissance. As expected, they brought grim news.
The Five Venoms and Blood Cult patrols along the upstream waters had completely vanished. They’d even witnessed a giant deer being dragged away by a mother stickyworm at the riverbank.
The absence of Five Venoms troops suggested the upstream territory had reached a critical point.
As soon as the sun set, I made the decision.
“We move tonight.”
And so, that evening, we returned to the riverbank and began preparations for departure.
Just as we were about to set off, Hwa-eun spoke up in a worried voice.
“So-ryong, please be careful.”
“What are you talking about? I’m a Huagyeong now...”
I was about to say that both Cho, Heukjeom, and I were Huagyeong level martial artists—so there was nothing to worry about—when another voice chimed in from the side.
“You’re a Huagyeong... but also not really.”
It was Gun Hye-rin.
She’d been added to the mission by Hwa-eun, likely because if a fight broke out, Hwa-eun wouldn’t be able to focus on combat and protecting me at the same time.
“Wait, what does that mean—‘a Huagyeong, but not really’?”
I mean, sure, I only reached Huagyeong by winning in a pretty underhanded way, but still.
Wasn’t this a bit much to say to someone’s face?
Gun Hye-rin stepped out from the shade of a tree and said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You haven’t even stabilized your cultivation level properly yet, have you?”
“Well, I mean... that’s true, but...”
I pouted slightly at her accurate, albeit hurtful, assessment.
Then she gestured to her own body and barked, “Don’t look.”
“I wasn’t looking!”
We were all wearing leather diving suits—something assassins wore when operating in water.
They clung to the body and outlined every curve, which explained Gun Hye-rin’s sudden flare-up.
We wore these because the flowy, layered outfits of the Central Plains were utterly useless underwater.
At my sharp retort, Gun Hye-rin let out a long sigh.
“Seriously... ever since meeting you, I’ve had to do all kinds of ridiculous things.”
A little later—
With only our heads above the surface, Hwa-eun and Gun Hye-rin floated silently in the water while Cho and I rode on Heukjeom’s back, gliding along with the current.
Our destination was the location where the scouts had reported spotting a mother stickyworm.
Once we arrived, we spent a long time scanning the area.
But neither Cho’s nor Heukjeom’s senses picked up any sign of the creature.
『“Should we head further upstream?”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Let’s go, then.”』
As we continued moving farther upriver—
We nearly passed by it without noticing. But then, tucked beneath a shadowy slope of the mountain where the river curved sharply, I caught sight of it: a cave entrance, half-obscured.
The current flowed directly into it—it was connected to the water.
A dark, ominous mouth.
All caves are dark, of course, but the moment I locked eyes on that entrance, something about it felt... wrong.
『“Doesn’t something feel off?”
“Yeah. Let’s check it out.”』
We approached quietly, moving with stealth as we investigated the cave interior.
Inside, we spotted a small, clear pool.
The water inside was crystal clear—so much so that even Muam’s eyes could see the bottom easily. At first, nothing unusual stood out.
Then, a single droplet of water fell from the ceiling and hit the surface.
Plop.
The entire cave floor... rippled and moved.
『“W-what is that!?”』
As I focused my inner sight on the cave floor, I realized the fine, hairlike structures lining it—like microvilli in an intestine—were all moving in unison.
It didn’t take long to realize:
The entire cave floor was covered in baby stickyworms.
