Chapter 235: The Hornet Queen

Though, it was probably an impossible wish. Gideon would rather spend the night sleeping beside Summer or Freya than wandering through the White Death beneath a sky that had finally surrendered to darkness, while turbulent winds buzzed through the canyon like a swarm of giant hornets.

Unfortunately, aberrant cores were worth far more than comfort.

For enough of them, he would gladly stay.

Suddenly, the furious screeches echoing from the buried tunnels suddenly stopped.

However, not a single hornet emerged. Instead, every surviving worker abandoned Gideon and rushed back toward the shattered canyon.

Even the scouts circling overhead descended without hesitation, disappearing into the deepest tunnels as though answering an instinct far stronger than survival.

Gideon lowered his shotgun slightly. "That’s odd... it’s probably the queen."

He had considered entering the canyon himself. Fighting something that large inside a confined space would have been far easier.

But it was already too late as the ground trembled beneath his boots.

Loose stones rolled down the cliffs as deep cracks spread across the canyon walls. A heavy rumble rose from underground, followed by the grating sound of something impossibly massive forcing its way through solid rock.

The cliff bulged outward before exploding apart. Massive boulders crashed into the valley as a pair of gigantic mandibles tore through the collapsing canyon. Six enormous legs emerged next, each thicker than trees, effortlessly crushing stone beneath hooked claws.

The queen dragged herself into the open, so enormous that every movement brought another section of the mountain crashing down.

Gideon looked up and let out a dry laugh.

"No wonder everyone hates hornets."

The creature was easily thirty meters long. Its white exoskeleton resembled layered glacier ice rather than chitin, each overlapping plate covered with pale green lichen that pulsed with faint light.

Thick mistletoe vines had fused directly into its body, weaving beneath its armor before emerging again around its abdomen, where clusters of crystalline berries glowed with a cold blue radiance.

Six pale blue eyes opened one after another. Each of them settled on Gideon.

The temperature plummeted. Frost spread across Gideon’s gloves while snowflakes crystallized in midair. The queen inhaled, drawing every gust of wind toward her before a blizzard erupted across the canyon.

Gideon crossed his arms as the freezing gale slammed into him, forcing him several meters backward. Ice spread over the ground wherever the wind passed, burying rocks beneath thick frozen layers within seconds.

"Weather manipulation... or ice?"

Scarlet flames burst from his body. Pyro instantly melted the frost clinging to his clothes, but the warmth barely reached beyond his skin before the freezing wind swallowed it whole. His fire wasn’t hot enough to destroy her.

Another deafening screech shook the canyon. Hundreds of workers poured from the remaining tunnels, but this time they stayed behind their queen instead of charging recklessly.

The surviving workers spread throughout the battlefield while the scouts returned to the sky, no longer flying in a chaotic swarm. They maintained their distance, circling high above Gideon as though waiting for a command.

"So you really are directing all of them. This will be harder than I thought."

The queen slowly raised one of her enormous forelegs. It moved so quickly that Gideon completely lost sight of it.

His instincts screamed. He threw himself sideways just as the foreleg crashed into the ground where he had been standing.

The impact split the frozen earth apart before continuing into the canyon wall, carving a trench nearly twenty meters long and sending another avalanche roaring down the mountainside. Shards of rock hammered against Gideon’s armor as he rolled across the snow.

"Missed." He laughed, brushing snow from his shoulder. "You’ll have to be faster than that.

Gideon pushed himself upright, only for dozens of thick mistletoe vines to burst from beneath the snow around him. They hadn’t come from the workers. They grew directly from the queen’s body, each one as thick as a man’s arm, whipping toward him like striking serpents.

Crimson flames burst from Gideon’s palm. The first wave withered into ash before it could reach him, but fresh vines immediately replaced them, surging from beneath the snow as though they had no end.

"They can regenerate? Damn, Daphne would love to see this as an inspiration for her attack."

The queen answered with another piercing screech. Every crystalline berry embedded within the vines lit up, and the blizzard intensified.

Ice erupted from the frozen ground in jagged spears, forcing Gideon into a sprint as he weaved through the barrage. Each burst of Pyro shattered another cluster before it could skewer him, filling the canyon with clouds of hissing steam.

Finding a brief opening, he thrust both hands forward.

Twin torrents of crimson fire roared toward the queen, swallowing her head in a sea of flames. Heat surged through the canyon, instantly vaporizing the surrounding snow until dense white steam concealed the battlefield.

Gideon didn’t stop. He poured even more Pyro into the attack, feeding the inferno until the firestorm should have melted everything in its path.

Then a freezing gust swept through the canyon. The steam dispersed and the queen remained standing.

Only a few patches of lichen covering her armor had burned away before frost spread across the exposed shell, restoring it beneath a fresh layer of ice.

Gideon clicked his tongue. "You’ve got to be kidding me and I thought I finally have a big enough target to do experimental attacks with my power."

It wasn’t that his flames lacked power. The cold surrounding the queen was consuming their heat almost as quickly as they were produced. Fighting her inside the White Death was like trying to burn a furnace beneath an endless glacier.

Another wave of freezing wind crashed toward him. Gideon answered with another torrent of fire, but as the two forces collided, something felt different.

The flames refused to spread. Instead of blooming outward as they always had, they compressed into themselves. The crimson blaze folded inward again and again, shrinking despite the increasing amount of Pyro flowing through his body.

"...What?"

He tried forcing the fire to expand. It ignored him.

The flames continued collapsing into a smaller and smaller sphere until they were no larger than an apple, yet the air around them shimmered violently. Snow touching the ground several meters away began evaporating before it could even settle.

A strange sensation washed over him, it was like an instinct to properly use his power.

Gideon’s breathing slowed and concentrated. His hands moved on their own, subtly changing the way Pyro flowed through his body. It was as though his muscles remembered a technique his mind had long forgotten.

The crimson sphere darkened until it resembled molten metal.

Across the battlefield, the queen stopped moving. For the first time since emerging from the canyon, one of her six eyes blinked.

A slow smile spread across Gideon’s face. "Looks like I’ve been using my power wrong this whole time."