Insomniac Player

The first pesticide line worked. Agricultural drones rose from Greenfall’s command station in groups of twenty. They flew low over the corn, releasing pale mist in measured bands. Ordinary sprayers followed along the irrigation roads while farm workers sealed greenhouse vents and covered water channels.

Doctor Smoke stood in the middle of it all with a respirator over her face and three control screens around her.

She did not activate a skill.

She checked wind direction, corrected dosage, and threatened to personally bury a lieutenant who suggested doubling the concentration to make it work faster.

The first wave of Golden-Jaw Locusts entered the mist.

They fell.

Thousands struck the ground like dry rain. More followed, piling between rows without damaging the plants beneath them. The surviving insects turned aside, but Daria raised her elemental staff and redirected the wind. She did not create a destructive gale. She shaped the existing air into a slow curve, keeping the pesticide over the field and away from the workers.

For several minutes, a clean space opened above the corn.

Hamari watched from the roof of a harvesting machine. "We’re winning a global event with farming equipment."

"Humanity invented useful things before Classes," Doctor Smoke replied.

"I thought that was a rumor."

Naked Nun walked beside a sprayer with two pesticide tanks balanced on her shoulders. Locusts covered her armor and ignored every exposed part of her skin.

"I have never been disrespected by so many enemies at once."

"They aren’t enemies," Damien said.

One landed in his hair, discovered that it was not edible, and departed.

"That one judged you," Hamari said.

Damien looked toward the northern field.

The cleared sky was turning black again.

Locusts that had scattered minutes earlier were reforming. They came from several directions in narrow streams, joined above the irrigation channel, and descended upon the same protected field. The movement was too coordinated to be instinct.

Instinct doesn’t double back.

Doctor Smoke checked her monitors. "Wind hasn’t changed."

"Neither has the pesticide," Daria said.

"Then something is directing them."

Damien climbed onto the harvesting machine beside Hamari. Night had settled fully over Greenfall, but darkness did not reduce his vision. Nocturnal Eyes stripped the shadows from the landscape and left every moving wing clear.

He stopped watching individual insects.

The swarm appeared chaotic only from nearby. At a distance, its turns had rhythm. One section dipped, another widened, and a third closed the gap. Each change began around the same larger shape before spreading outward.

"There," Damien said.

Hamari followed his finger. "That is extremely specific darkness."

She raised her rifle and adjusted the sight.

The larger creature emerged for half a second. It was nearly two meters long, with a narrow gold body and four wings that moved independently. Ordinary locusts surrounded it without touching it.

Damien focused.

➤[Swarm Conductor]

➤[Level: 30]

➤[Disposition: Non-hostile.]

➤[Primary Function: Coordinate and redirect lesser swarm organisms.]

➤[Dietary Target: Living crops and vegetation.]

"Level 30," Damien said. "It controls the others."

And it’s still marked non-hostile. The System doesn’t lie about that label. It just doesn’t think command counts as violence.

Hamari fired.

The bullet crossed the field and struck empty air. The Conductor folded its wings an instant before impact, dropped through the swarm, and emerged thirty meters lower.

It did not attack her.

It fled into distance, out of the range.

Every locust around it changed direction at once.

"Rude insects," Hamari said. "Also fast."

Daria lifted her staff. Wind tightened around the Conductor, but the creature turned with the current instead of fighting it. Its command spread through the swarm. Millions of bodies entered Daria’s airstream, weighing it down until her control faltered.

"It is using the swarm as ballast," she said.

Damien jumped from the harvester.

He ran along the top of an irrigation wall while the Conductor moved ahead of him. The creature could fly, but it was not trying to escape the district. Its entire purpose was to bring the swarm back to the crop.

That made its route predictable.

Damien changed direction before it did.

The Conductor banked toward an unsprayed section. Damien leapt from the wall, caught one of its rear legs, and was pulled into the air.

The creature thrashed but never tried to bite him. Its command broke for a moment. The surrounding swarm loosened into confusion.

Damien drove the First Blood Dagger between two plates of golden shell.

The Conductor dropped.

He released it before the body struck the ground, then rolled through a row of corn as he landed. His ribs objected loudly. He ignored them until he stopped moving.

Above him, the swarm lost its shape.

The locusts no longer moved like one creature. Some continued toward the crop. Others followed the wind or landed on the nearest greenery. The pesticide drones passed over them, and black clouds became falling specks.

Hamari leaned over the irrigation wall.

"You know I own a rifle?"

"It moved after you fired."

"That is victim blaming."

Daria arrived behind her. "There are five more."

The team adjusted.

Once they understood the pattern, the Conductors became manageable. Daria formed narrow walls of air that denied them easy turns. Hamari stopped aiming where they were and began firing where Damien predicted they would go. Naked Nun waited in the crops and caught one when it descended, laughing as it attempted to flee from someone who could lift a transport vehicle.

Doctor Smoke continued operating the sprayers.

She killed more locusts with properly diluted pesticide than the rest of Nova Corps killed with weapons. She mentioned this whenever Naked Nun became too pleased with herself.

Within forty minutes, six Conductors lay on the ground.

Greenfall’s northern fields remained green.

A local status window appeared.

➤[Emergency Assignment Update.]

➤[Greenfall Agricultural Belt preserved: 81.6%.]

➤[Abnormal swarm elements eliminated: 6.]

➤[Secondary Objective: Incomplete.]

Damien looked at the final line.

"There are more Conductors," Daria said.

"Or something else is abnormal."

Doctor Smoke crouched beside the first body. She removed her gloves, replaced them with a clean pair, and used an ordinary field knife to open a broken section of shell.

"This did not grow inside it," she said.

She pulled out a black metal spike no longer than Damien’s finger.

Fine symbols covered its surface. They were not System writing. A line of red resin ran along one edge and pulsed whenever a living locust came near.

Daria examined it without touching. "Mana conductor."

"Pheromone reservoir," Doctor Smoke added. "Crude, but effective. It produces a biological signal and strengthens it with mana."

Hamari lowered her rifle. "Someone put a remote control inside the bug."

Someone. Not something. That’s worse.

Damien checked the other bodies.

Four of the six Conductors carried identical spikes.

The two without them had approached the fields from different directions and behaved less aggressively. They had followed nearby greenery. The altered ones had ignored closer crops to reach Greenfall’s most valuable corn fields.

Martin’s communication window opened when Damien sent the evidence.

The Field Marshal listened without interruption. Imran appeared beside him from another command center, read the chemical report, and requested an image of the red resin.

His expression changed.

"Military investigators recovered a similar compound from Neva Order smuggling sites," Imran said. "They use it to conceal mana signatures inside organic cargo."

"Can you trace the signal?" Martin asked.

Daria closed her eyes briefly. "The spike receives a pulse every thirty seconds. The source is nearby."

Jeremy’s call forced its way onto Damien’s screen before she could say more.

The Stock Agent looked as if he had not blinked since the patch began.

"Three government grain depots have reported attempted breaches," Jeremy said. "Two private storage sites were attacked. One belongs to us."

John’s hundred million passed briefly through Damien’s mind.

"People or locusts?"

"People. Armed Players. They entered while security teams were deployed to the fields."

Martin looked toward an officer outside Damien’s view. "Send me the locations."

Jeremy transferred them.

Daria overlaid the attacks with the altered swarm routes. The lines formed a clear pattern. Conductors had been directed toward public farms and government reserves. Human teams struck warehouses just beyond the swarm.

The locusts had arrived because of the System.

The plan around them had not.

A natural disaster with a business plan attached.

Another dark shape crossed the eastern field. A Swarm Conductor flew over a nearer orchard without descending. Its altered swarm followed, heading directly toward Greenfall’s seed-storage district.

The black spike inside it pulsed.

Daria turned toward the signal source.

"Four kilometers southeast."

Damien cleaned his dagger.

"Keep the pesticide moving," he told Doctor Smoke.

She returned to her control screens. "I wasn’t planning to fight insects with philosophy."

Damien looked at the manufactured lure in her hand.

"These aren’t the only pests."

’There are pests with two legs in his world too.’

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