Chapter 85: I Killed the Broodmother… Then Thousands of Parasites Escaped

The closer they got to the ruins, the more hosts appeared.

Raven started classifying them before each fight. Those with low or moderate integration were restrained. Those already functionally absorbed into the colony received the same treatment when possible, but Raven made one thing clear: they would not risk healthy people trying to preserve someone who was already effectively lost.

Garran didn’t argue.

That was another thing Raven appreciated about the captain. He didn’t confuse wanting to save someone with always being able to.

By the time they reached the first sunken columns, they had neutralized eleven hosts.

Then the Broodmother stopped sending them in small groups.

Membranes opened across the ruins, and bodies began rising from the mud, water, and roots around them.

Fifteen.

Twenty.

Maybe more.

Valeria exhaled.

"Now it’s angry."

Raven looked toward the center.

"Good."

"I knew you were going to say that."

"The peripheral network is emptying."

That was exactly what he needed.

The Broodmother was concentrating its defenses around itself, exactly where Raven wanted them when the channels closed.

Behind them, one of the soldiers raised a green crystal.

Three flashes.

The routes were blocked.

Raven pulled out another vial of oil.

"Second phase."

The fire wasn’t meant to kill the Broodmother.

It was meant to cut it off.

Roland and the soldiers ignited four lines of membrane while Maelor emptied purification salts into the inner channels. Valeria stretched a barrier of blood threads between two columns, turning the open space into a bottleneck.

The response was immediate.

Dozens of Hollow Threads surged from the water.

They reached the salts.

They died.

The hosts tried to push through instead, and Valeria let them enter three at a time.

Raven understood why she could have destroyed far more if she simply used all her strength. The problem wasn’t power.

It was efficiency.

A blood spear could punch through five bodies, but it also consumed mana. A single thread placed correctly between two columns could drop fifteen targets before needing replacement.

She was learning the same lesson Black Hound taught with ammunition.

Don’t waste a bullet where a closed door can do the job.

Raven moved inside the space Valeria created, Stonehide covering his hands and forearms. He didn’t need to kill. He struck joints, throats, and clavicles, using the hosts’ momentum against them and throwing one body into another. When one tried to grab him, Raven changed the angle and shoved it into Valeria’s threads.

One managed to rake his shoulder.

Predation reacted immediately.

[External Tissue Damage Detected.]

[Foreign Organism Penetration: NONE.]

Raven allowed limited superficial repair.

He wasn’t repeating the same mistake.

Another host came from the right.

Kinetic Acceleration.

Raven flicked a small stone.

CRACK.

It struck the hip joint.

The body collapsed.

"That counts as killing," Valeria said while holding four targets against a column.

"It’s alive."

"You destroyed its hip."

"Then it counts as enthusiastic restraint."

Valeria laughed.

The Broodmother responded before she could say anything else.

A membrane beneath Raven’s feet opened.

Predator’s Instinct screamed.

Burst Step.

Raven vanished from the spot just as three thick filaments punched through the ground. One struck a column hard enough to crack the stone.

"Those can kill us," Roland said.

"Good observation."

"I didn’t need confirmation."

The filaments attacked again.

Valeria cut one.

Raven dodged the second.

The third caught one of the hosts they had already restrained.

It didn’t stop.

The filament pierced straight through the body, and the host convulsed as the Broodmother pulled something through the connection.

Mana.

Raven watched the man’s skin lose color within seconds.

"It’s recovering energy from the hosts."

Maelor backed away.

"Then all those bodies are reserves."

Raven looked across the dozens scattered around the ruins.

That explained how the creature had maintained a colony this large.

They weren’t only incubators.

They were batteries.

"Valeria. Cut connections, not bodies."

She understood immediately.

Her blood blades changed targets.

Filaments.

Membranes.

Conduits.

Every cut disconnected another section of the colony.

The Broodmother began reacting more violently. The ground shifted beneath their feet, black water splashed against the broken stone, and one of the ancient columns toppled into the swamp.

Then the central ruins began to move.

Not tremble.

Rise.

Stone blocks shifted against one another with deep grinding sounds as something beneath them pushed upward. Roots stretched until they snapped. Mud rolled away from structures that Raven had assumed were buried walls, only to reveal pale biological tissue underneath.

The Hollow Broodmother emerged.

Not completely.

Much of its body remained buried beneath stone and roots, but what surfaced was already large enough to make the ruins seem less like something it inhabited and more like something that had grown over it.

Its exposed front was thick and pale, segmented in places and distorted in others by layers of membrane fused directly into its flesh. Heavy biological conduits disappeared from its sides into the surrounding swamp, tightening whenever the creature moved.

It had no head in any conventional sense.

Instead, the front of its body ended in a dense central mass protected by soft plates, breathing openings, and multiple cavities from which fresh filaments slowly unfolded.

As it raised itself higher, every remaining membrane around the ruins pulled taut at once.

For a moment, Raven had the impression that the entire battlefield had just turned to face them.

Predator’s Instinct pressed against his senses.

The Broodmother itself was only Level Twenty-Seven.

Its territory was the dangerous part.

Predation opened the analysis.

[Hollow Broodmother — Level 27 — Elite]

[Colony Connection Integrity: 43%]

[Mana Reserves: 38%]

[Environmental Control Degraded.]

[Core Vulnerability Detected: Central Brood Ganglion.]

Raven found the point.

Deep.

Protected behind two layers of dense tissue and a calcified plate.

"I can see it."

Valeria was breathing harder now.

"What?"

"The neural core."

"Can you reach it?"

Raven watched the filaments shifting around the exposed body.

"Not yet."

He needed that plate opened.

Valeria could do it.

The problem was that she was holding half their defensive line together.

Raven looked at Garran.

"Thirty seconds."

The captain understood immediately.

"For what?"

"I need Valeria."

Garran raised his sword.

"Thirty."

The soldiers advanced.

Not to win.

To hold.

Raven looked at Valeria.

"Open it."

She smiled.

"Finally."

Her blood threads disappeared.

Three hosts nearly managed to rise before Garran and his men filled the gap.

Valeria gathered blood.

Not too much.

Enough.

A crimson lance formed above her shoulder, much thicker than the smaller blades she had used until now.

The Broodmother sensed the threat.

Every nearby filament changed direction.

Toward her.

Raven stepped between them.

Stonehide covered both arms.

The first strike launched him into a column.

Pain exploded through his shoulder.

Nothing broken.

The second passed overhead.

Raven caught the third.

Bad decision.

He knew it the instant he felt the force.

His boots slid through the mud.

"Now would be an excellent time," he said.

Valeria fired.

The blood lance punched through the first layer.

Then the second.

CRACK.

The calcified plate split open.

The Broodmother released a sound that made the water around the ruins vibrate.

Predation updated.

[Central Brood Ganglion Exposed.]

Raven released the filament.

Burst Step.

He entered before the opening could close.

The cavity smelled like old blood and something chemical.

It didn’t matter.

Raven drew the long blade Garran had loaned him.

Kinetic Acceleration.

Mana flowed through his arm.

He didn’t throw the weapon.

He used it as an extension of the movement.

The blade struck the ganglion.

The resistance was enormous.

Raven pushed.

Stonehide reinforced his hand.

The blade sank another four inches.

The Broodmother convulsed.

Every filament throughout the ruins pulled tight at once.

Raven twisted the weapon.

Then drove it in to the guard.

The ganglion ruptured.

The reaction was immediate.

The membranes stopped pulsing.

The hosts collapsed.

The filaments contracted like severed muscles.

The enormous exposed section of the Broodmother sagged against the ruins as the tension running through its network disappeared.

For several seconds, all of Deep Mire seemed to hold its breath.

Then the system appeared.

[Target Defeated.]

[Species: Hollow Broodmother]

[Level: 27]

[Rank: Elite]

[Rank Disparity Bonus Applied.]

[Experience Acquired.]

[Accumulated Experience Threshold Reached.]

[Level 9 → 10.]

[Current Existence Rank Limit Reached.]

[Additional Experience Will Be Retained Pending Qualitative Evolution.]

Raven barely had time to read it.

The colony started dying.

And that created another problem.

Thousands of Hollow Threads abandoned the membranes at once.