The tree groaned under its weight.
The mosquito perched on a thick branch, its spiny, hooked legs gripping the bark with surgical precision.
It had changed.
Again.
Its head was now nearly the size of a balloon, compound eyes covering most of its surface—thousands of red facets.
Its proboscis rested against its thorax, unused for the moment. As long as a human forearm. Thick as a finger. Hard as tanned leather.
Its wings—immense, translucent, veined like stained glass—were folded against its body.
But the mosquito did not move.
It was thinking.
My predecessors were wrong.
This was not instinctive thought. Not biological reflex.
It was reasoning.
It had inherited the memories of its predecessors—fragments of recollections, sensations, lessons etched into its genes like scars. And in analyzing them, it saw the pattern.
Every time they went to the manor… she was there. Waiting.
She adapted.
The food source was exceptional. The blood of the madwoman in the manor was unlike anything its inherited taste memories had ever encountered.
But she was dangerous.
Far too dangerous for constant returns.
It tilted its massive head, considering.
Perhaps there is better elsewhere. Perhaps she is not unique.
The beasts of the surrounding forest had already been certified by its predecessors—blood too poor, too thin, too little nourishment.
But the forest is not everything.
Its legs detached from the bark one by one.
Its wings unfurled.
When they beat, it was not a buzz that resonated.
It was a thrum. Deep. Almost subsonic. The kind of sound that vibrated the air in your lungs before you truly heard it.
It took flight, vanishing into the sky.
I will explore.
---
The city appeared after an hour of flight.
The mosquito halted mid-air, wings beating in perfect suspension.
There are… so many people.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
Moving through narrow streets. Entering and exiting stone buildings.
It observed them carefully.
They resemble the madwoman of the manor.
Same general silhouette. Same approximate size.
As dangerous?
A shiver ran through its abdomen.
Thousands of opponents like her… if I’m spotted…
Its survival odds were slim. It knew this instinctively.
It already struggled to handle one. Thousands?
It descended cautiously, slipping between rooftops like a silent shadow.
The first victim was asleep in an alley.
A middle-aged man, wrapped in a filthy blanket against a stone wall.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The mosquito landed beside him with surprising delicacy for its size.
Test.
Its proboscis rose. Probed.
Blood flowed.
The mosquito drank.
And stopped almost immediately.
This is… disappointing.
Minimal resistance.
But the blood itself…
Poorly nourishing. Almost tasteless.
It drained a few more sleeping people to confirm.
The result was always the same.
Insufficient.
Then someone shouted.
The mosquito spun.
An adventurer—armed, alert, eyes fixed on the mosquito with terrifying recognition—raised something.
He saw me.
CRACK.
A projectile slammed into its abdomen.
Pain exploded.
Serious wound.
The mosquito retreated, rising rapidly. The adventurer pursued, launching attacks from below.
The fight was brief and brutal.
The mosquito won. It always drained.
But drinking the adventurer’s blood—someone trained, strong, competent—it had hoped for improvement.
Perhaps he…
No.
Still insufficient.
Slightly better than civilians. But incomparable to the madwoman of the manor.
Finally.
The mosquito took flight, leaving the city silently.
I need her blood.
There is no alternative.
---
Cassian was inside the dungeon.
Alone.
Which felt strange now.
The space was the same—the same stone corridors, same torches, same rooms. But without skeletons. Without active traps. Without that constant tension in her shoulders.
It feels weird to walk through an empty dungeon.
She crouched before a mana stone embedded in the wall.
She placed her hand on it.
Drew.
The stone shrank rapidly, like ice melting in the sun but inward—contracting, shriveling, losing its light.
Without tools to mine them… I have to do this here.
She had spent the afternoon methodically traversing every corridor on every floor.
First floor. Second. Third.
The stone vanished completely into her palm.
“There.”
She had never seen them outside the dungeon. Never in the forests, fields, roads she had crossed since arriving in this world.
They only exist inside dungeons?
Or maybe I’m completely wrong. I’ve barely explored this world.
She exited the dungeon, blinking in the outdoor light.
Her mana was… substantial now. She could feel it—heavy, dense, almost overflowing.
But my body…
She swayed slightly.
Her legs felt heavy. Her shoulders slumped.
Physical fatigue. Not magical.
Two possibilities: either the act of absorption was more physically taxing than she thought. Or…
“It’s definitely that mosquito’s fault,” she muttered.
She headed toward the manor.
---
Cassian sat on the manor’s front steps, head bowed.
Elbows on knees.
Eyes fixed on the wooden floorboards.
Ice spikes on the ceiling. Dropping when he passes.
She visualized the idea. The lances formed easily. Ice, she mastered.
But the trigger?
How to make something fall at precisely the right moment without being there to control it?
A timed trap?
But the ice would melt before he arrives.
A detection system?
I don’t know how to do that.
She sat another ten minutes.
Twenty.
Then she blew out a loud breath.
“I give up.”
She stood and walked toward the corridor leading to the library.
If I can’t trap him, I need another approach. And to find another approach, I need to clear my head.
---
The library smelled of dust and old wood.
The windows let in golden late-afternoon light that illuminated floating dust motes.
Shelves covered three walls from floor to ceiling—tall, imposing.
But barely filled.
Someone emptied this library. Or it was never full to begin with.
Only dozens of books. Maybe fewer. Scattered without apparent logic on shelves meant for hundreds.
Cassian quickly scanned the visible titles.
Treatise on agricultural accounting. Again. Collection of inheritance laws. Commercial correspondence. Journal of a boring noble…
She was looking for something to read. Not something useful—just something to occupy her mind.
Something with pictures, ideally.
Her gaze climbed to the top shelves.
One book. Alone. At the very top of the last shelf.
A cover with an illustration.
It’s the only illustrated book in this library.
“Of course it’s at the top.”
She searched for the ladder—a tall wooden one on rails, designed to reach the highest shelves.
It was stuck in a corner.
Cassian pulled it, grunting slightly. It was heavier than it looked.
Quality wood. Solid.
She positioned it in front of the last shelf, at the bottom of the rail.
Made sure it was stable.
Then began to climb.
First rung. Second. Fifth.
Tenth rung.
She reached for the book.
And saw the spider.
Big. Hairy. Multiple eyes staring at Cassian from the book’s spine.
The spider panicked.
It ran.
Cassian panicked.
Her foot slipped.
The ladder’s foot scraped across the polished parquet.
Three centimeters.
Okay. Okay, it’s nothing.
Five centimeters more.
Actually, it’s something.
The entire ladder tilted.
Slowly at first. Then with terrifying acceleration.
Cassian screamed, hands desperately gripping the rungs.
CRASH.
The ladder hit the floor.
Cassian with it.
She lay still for a moment, waiting for her vision to stop spinning.
Nothing broken. Physically.
Then she realized her position.
The fall had wedged her between two rungs at mid-height. Her torso passed through one, her legs in a V on the other side.
Her black clothes hiked up. Her hair splayed around her like a disordered halo. Her back slightly arched against the wood.
What this looks like…
“It’s the cover of a trashy romance novel.”
She blinked at the ceiling.
A memory—blurry, unpleasant—briefly surfaced.
Hiro.
Bad memory. Very bad memory.
“I really hope no one is here to see this.”
---
The mosquito circled silently above the manor.
It had been releasing for several minutes already. Its pores excreted a massive concentration of calming pheromones.
Maximum dose.
This was not subtlety. This was heavy artillery.
Fatigue. Drowsiness. Heavy limbs.
These sensations descended on the manor like an invisible blanket.
It waited longer. Calculating.
Then descended.
---
Cassian yawned.
She was still in the library, finally freed from the ladder, sitting in an old armchair with the illustrated book on her lap.
Maps. It’s an atlas.
Interesting, but less distracting than she had hoped.
She yawned again.
I’m tired.
Her eyes closed for a second.
She forced them open.
No. Not yet. The sun isn’t even down.
Her eyelids weighed tons.
The atlas slowly slipped from her knees.
Her eyes closed.
The mosquito found Cassian in the armchair.
It observed her for a moment, compound eyes capturing a thousand angles of her simultaneously.
It approached. Its legs settled on the armrest with absurd delicacy for a creature of its size.
Its proboscis rose.
At its tip, the ring of microscopic denticles activated—those tiny, invisible structures capable of parting cells without rupturing them, insinuating between tissues like water between grains of sand.
The proboscis found its path.
Cassian did not move.
Blood flowed.
Rich. Dense. Laden with something the mosquito could not name but immediately recognized.
Yes. This is it.
It drank.
Quickly. Efficiently.
Cassian’s skin sealed behind it—perfect elasticity, no trace, no mark. As if it had never been there.
The proboscis retracted.
The hormonal signal arrived like a military order.
Lay.
Its abdomen contracted, ovipositor glands activating automatically.
Lay.
The mosquito felt the impulse. Irresistible. Programmed into every fiber of its being across millions of generations.
No.
For the first time since its species existed in this world, a mosquito said no.
It mentally closed the hormonal valve. Blocked the impulse.
And opened something else.
Dormant metabolisms activated. Processes normally reserved for larvae. Transformation structures its genome had carried forever, waiting for an opportunity that had never come.
This blood will not go to an egg.
It will go to me.
And the pain began.
A dull, continuous cracking. Like wood bending under too much weight, but from the inside.
The mosquito left the library—moving laboriously, its hind legs already thickening, lengthening, seeking a new center-of-gravity configuration.
It found the main hall. Wide. Empty.
And there, it suffered.
Its two pairs of hind legs thickened enormously—the chitin cracking to stretch, joints rebuilding under pressure. They became columns, pillars capable of bearing full weight.
Its four forelegs shrank in mirror inverse. Specialized. Two fingers. Three. A crude pincer seeking form.
Its thorax tilted—the center of gravity recalculated, its back permanently hunched so the heavy abdomen could find balance rearward.
The transformation did not stop.
The continuous cracking echoed through the empty manor, rising and falling with waves of pain.
And somewhere in the library, Cassian slept.
Unaware of what was taking shape in the hall.
Of what her blood had created.
