Insomniac Player

The first locust struck the balcony glass and stayed there.

Its gold-veined wings trembled against the surface, a faint dry rattle that Damien felt more than heard. Its sideways jaws opened and closed while hundreds of identical bodies crowded around it, turning the evening beyond Damien’s penthouse into a moving black wall. The glass itself had gone slightly dark, as if the whole sky had pressed its face against the window to get a better look at him.

That’s new.

John raised his mace. The weapon caught the last orange light of the dying sun along its edge, and for a moment his shadow alone covered half the room.

"If you break my balcony," Damien said, "the insects will come inside."

John lowered the mace by an inch, his jaw working like he was chewing on the sentence before answering it. "Then I will break the insects carefully."

Before he could demonstrate careful destruction with a weapon heavier than Damien, the first locust crawled away from the glass. It crossed the frame, ignored John entirely, and landed in the rooftop garden.

The creature bit through a decorative vine.

Another landed beside it. Then fifty more.

Within seconds, a green wall that had taken the building staff years to grow became a collection of bare stems, stripped so cleanly it looked almost surgical.

Damien focused on one of the creatures, sharpening his gaze the way he’d learned to when a status line mattered more than the thing wearing it.

➤[Golden-Jaw Locust]

➤[Level: 1]

➤[Disposition: Non-hostile.]

➤[Dietary Target: Living crops and vegetation.]

He read the final line twice.

Level one. Non-hostile. And it’s already eating faster than an army could.

John opened the balcony door before Damien could stop him. Several locusts bounced off his chest and shoulders like hail off a roof. None bit him. One landed on his mustache, remained there for a moment as though weighing its options, and then abandoned it for a small potted tree.

John plucked the insect from the leaves and held it between two fingers, turning it slightly, studying it the way he might study a coin to check if it was counterfeit.

It struggled to escape, wings buzzing uselessly against his grip, but never once turned its jaws toward his skin.

"It doesn’t fight," he said.

"It doesn’t need to."

That’s the part that should scare people. An enemy that never has to be brave.

Damien looked out across Viremont.

The first swarm had swallowed the western skyline. It flowed between towers and across elevated roads without striking people or machinery, a tide that simply didn’t care what stood in its way because nothing standing in its way was food. Wherever it passed, however, color disappeared. Trees became skeletons in the space of a breath. Public gardens collapsed into bare soil. Green roofs changed from living carpets to naked concrete in less than a minute, block by block, like someone erasing the city one color at a time.

The city was not being attacked.

Its food was.

The sky shall learn hunger. It just taught the ground the same lesson first.

A blue window unfolded above Viremont, large enough that half the district could probably see it.

➤[Global Event Status.]

➤[Event: The Devouring Summer.]

➤[Active Agricultural Production Remaining: 99.82%.]

➤[Minimum Survival Requirement: 30.00%.]

➤[Failure Penalty: Global food production reduced for one year.]

The number changed while Damien watched, ticking down like something with a pulse.

➤[Active Agricultural Production Remaining: 99.79%.]

His hand tightened on the balcony rail without his permission.

Jeremy Choo’s projection still stood inside the lounge. The Stock Agent had forgotten to end the call entirely, his usual composure cracked open by something closer to disbelief. He stared at the stripped garden through the open door, then opened market screens so quickly that they overlapped, edges bleeding into each other.

"They are ignoring the building," Jeremy said.

"And us."

"They are also ignoring dry stock." Jeremy enlarged feeds from two of their newly acquired storage sites. Locusts covered the outer walls in a shifting carpet, but the sealed corn inside remained untouched, undisturbed, as though the building simply didn’t register as edible. "Stored grain may protect the population after the harvest is lost. It will not satisfy the event condition. The System specifically measures active production."

John released the locust. It flew directly back to the ruined tree and searched, with what looked like genuine disappointment, for a surviving leaf.

"So one hundred million gold bought us food," he said, dragging a hand down his face, "but not victory."

"Correct."

"I dislike investments that require additional work."

So do I. Unfortunately the universe doesn’t check whether I’ve had enough sleep before handing me the bill.

Damien’s military channel opened.

Sir Martin appeared in a command hall crowded with officers and floating agricultural maps, the light behind him a hard, clinical white that made the red marks spreading across the projected farmland look like open wounds. The Field Marshal’s usual calm had sharpened into something with edges.

"Nova Corps, confirm availability."

Daria answered first, her expression already carved into the same ice she wore into every fight. Doctor Smoke followed from what looked like a hospital loading bay, crates stacked behind her taller than she was. Naked Nun appeared while fastening the last strap of her armor, grinning like the apocalypse had personally invited her. Hamari connected wearing a helmet painted with smiling pink clouds.

John leaned toward Damien, voice dropping to a stage whisper. "Why does she own that?"

"No one successfully stopped her."

Martin’s eyes briefly settled on the helmet before military discipline rescued him and dragged his gaze back to the map.

"The event is global," he said. "Ordinary firearms and area attacks can kill the creatures, but our first responses have already caused more damage than the swarms in three districts. Fire destroys the crop with the pest. Wide magical attacks do the same."

Naked Nun frowned, genuinely offended on behalf of her own combat style. "They don’t attack people?"

"No."

"Not even if provoked?"

"They flee."

She looked personally betrayed, as though the war itself had insulted her by refusing to show up properly armed.

Doctor Smoke lifted a transparent specimen container. Three locusts crawled over fresh leaves inside it, oblivious.

"I have a better weapon," she said.

She raised an ordinary agricultural spray bottle, the kind sold in any hardware store on Earth-69 or Earth-1, and pressed the trigger once.

A fine mist crossed the container.

The locusts stopped moving within seconds, mid-stride, legs curling.

Hamari stared, her mouth slightly open. "You defeated System monsters with bug spray."

"They are Level 1 insects." Doctor Smoke set the bottle down with the same calm she probably used to set down a scalpel. "The System gave them numbers. It did not make them immune to chemistry."

"Does the spray have a Class?" John asked, entirely serious.

"Yes. Its Class is pesticide."

Even Daria’s mouth moved slightly, the closest thing to a laugh anyone had gotten out of her all week.

Twelve floors of doppelgangers taught me to read my own weaknesses. It took Doctor Smoke thirty seconds and a spray bottle to solve a global catastrophe.

Doctor Smoke continued before the conversation could deteriorate further. "We need agricultural quantities, correct concentrations, and crop-safe compounds. Pouring random poison over fields would preserve the plants long enough for us to poison everyone who eats them. I have contacted civilian suppliers and military logistics."

Martin expanded the map, a green wedge of farmland unfolding between them. "Greenfall Agricultural Belt supplies Viremont and seven surrounding cities. Its summer crop represents almost two percent of Region 21’s active production. The first swarm reaches it in eleven minutes."

An alert appeared on Damien’s interface.

➤[Emergency Assignment Available.]

➤[Deployment Zone: Greenfall Agricultural Belt.]

➤[Primary Objective: Preserve active agricultural production.]

➤[Secondary Objective: Identify and eliminate abnormal swarm elements.]

➤[Accept / Decline]

Damien accepted without letting himself think about his ribs.

The other four members of Nova Corps did the same.

John reached for the notification, but Martin spoke first.

"Sir John, the western production belt has lost contact with its defense command. You are required there."

John’s expression hardened, the good humor draining out of it all at once. "Damien is still recovering."

"So are several continents."

For a moment, neither man moved. The silence had weight to it, the kind Damien recognized from every argument John had ever lost on purpose.

Damien understood John’s concern better than John probably realized. The wounds from the Doppelganger Tower had closed, but healing did not mean his body had forgotten them. His back remained stiff, and his ribs complained whenever he turned too quickly, a dull ache that lived just under the surface of every breath.

He also understood the map, and the map didn’t care about anyone’s ribs.

"Go," Damien said.

John looked at him, searching his face for something.

"The locusts cannot hurt me."

"People can."

"Then I’ll avoid the people."

"You have never successfully done that."

"I learned from you."

John stared for another second, something between a laugh and a warning caught behind his teeth, then pointed one thick finger at Damien. "Call me if anything becomes dangerous."

"That definition is too broad for him," Doctor Smoke said.

"Call me if anything looks at you with ambition."

"Better," Damien said.

He’s going to worry the entire flight regardless. At least this way he’ll worry about the right things.

They left the penthouse together and separated at the military transport platform. John boarded a heavy assault carrier headed west, his silhouette framed for one moment in the open hatch before it sealed. Damien entered a smaller aerial vehicle marked for Nova Corps.

The streets beneath them were crowded but not bloody. Civilians ran from swarms that made no attempt to follow them. A woman tripped in a public garden and covered her head, only to discover the insects landing around her to consume the grass instead, ignoring her entirely. A child stood beneath an awning with a locust cupped between his palms until his father snatched it away, more out of instinct than actual danger.

Nobody was being eaten.

Everything that fed them was.

This is what a war without violence looks like. Nobody bleeds. Everybody starves on a schedule.

At the edge of Viremont, buildings gave way to open land. The agricultural belt spread beneath the transport in enormous geometric fields, green squares stitched together like a quilt from this height. Corn stood higher than a person across kilometer after kilometer. Summer vegetables filled greenhouse districts, their glass roofs catching the last of the light. Fruit orchards formed dark rows between irrigation channels, heavy with a harvest that had no idea it was already being counted as lost.

The western sky descended upon them.

The first edge of the swarm touched an orchard.

Trees vanished beneath black bodies in seconds. Leaves disappeared. Fruit dropped half-eaten before more insects covered it, stripping what was left down to the pit. The swarm advanced with no roar, no battle cry, and no anger, only the dry, endless noise of millions of wings and jaws working in perfect, patient rhythm.

The global number changed again.

➤[Active Agricultural Production Remaining: 98.94%.]

Their transport landed beside a farm command station in a controlled crash of dust and noise. Workers loaded pesticide tanks onto agricultural drones while soldiers argued over firing lines they no longer needed, old instincts refusing to update fast enough for the new problem.

Doctor Smoke stepped out carrying no gauntlet and no medical weapon. She wore a respirator around her neck and held a tablet filled with chemical concentrations, scrolling through them with the same focus she probably gave a patient’s chart.

Naked Nun looked at the industrial sprayers lined up along the fence, her grin faltering slightly for the first time all day.

"Our first mission as Nova Corps is pest control."

Doctor Smoke handed her a pesticide tank large enough to bend an ordinary person’s spine.

"Carry this."

Naked Nun lifted it with one hand, testing the weight, and her grin came right back. "I withdraw my complaint."

Damien watched the swarm consume another row of trees, the black wave rolling forward without hurry, without doubt, without anything a sword could argue with.

The locusts were harmless.

That made them no less dangerous.

Xuan Wuye told me power speaks loudest when doubt knows its true name. Nobody warned me the real fight would be a spreadsheet with wings.

"Start with the corn," he said.

Above the fields, the sky continued to eat.

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