Reincarnated as a Mushroom?-Chapter 49 - 48: "The Carrot, the Lash, and the Skyborne Sinner"

Chapter 49: Chapter 48: "The Carrot, the Lash, and the Skyborne Sinner"

Chapter 48: "The Carrot, the Lash, and the Skyborne Sinner"

I woke up groggily with Kimchi spooning me like a clingy, heat-leaking radiator in love. Her antennae twitched with self-satisfied smugness, her thighs wrapped around mine with enough pressure to simulate a slow, affectionate guillotine. I was about to sigh and accept my fate as a living plush toy when a deafening, unnatural whoosh split the volcanic air like a god’s sneeze.

A shadow passed over us. Not the sun. Not a cloud. No, Crystal had apparently decided enough was enough and deployed a Wing Ripper to extract me from the feral embrace of her least house-trained Prime.

The creature descended with the subtlety of a falling war crime — all vibrating wings and serrated aerodynamic malice. This variant was particularly absurd: a cross between a dragonfly and a pterodactyl, built with the express intent of violating enemy ship hulls via supersonic impact and overwhelming psionic screeching. In low orbit, a thousand of them could shred a fleet before the enemy even realized it wasn’t a meteor storm.

The one before me now, however, was a freethinker — bulkier, smarter, and about as mobile on a high-gravity planet as a whale in a swimming pool. She lay sprawled across the cracked obsidian plain, her limbs trembling slightly under her own weight.

"Greetings, designated mate of the Hive Queen," the freethinker intoned in perfect psionic syntax, her voice resonant and slightly nasal. "This unit has been dispatched to retrieve you. Per Queen Crystal’s directive, you may now mount me. There is ample space. Please be gentle."

I began my climb, fumbling up her sloped wing like an overgrown toddler learning to crawl. The moment my ass made contact with her carapace, the poor thing shuddered beneath me like a lovesick adolescent.

I blinked. "The fuck was that?"

I brushed it off — probably nothing. Probably. Kimchi, on the other hand, had narrowed her eyes with all the heat of a dying sun. She knew.

She climbed on behind me, claws clicking, tail twitching, breathing far too slowly. The moment her thighs brushed against my back, the Wing Ripper shuddered again, this time with outright fear. That was understandable — Kimchi had coiled herself around me like a predatory vine with no respect for personal boundaries, and was now audibly licking the rim of my left ear.

"Let us be off, freethinker," I said, deadpan. "And if we happen to pass a volcano, feel free to drop this parasitic clinger behind me directly into the magma."

The ripper released a soft ripple of psychic amusement, while Kimchi retaliated with a playful nip to my neck and a low, obscene purr. Then we were airborne.

She took to the skies with grace unexpected from a creature that looked like it should collapse under its own weight. We soared across rivers of lava and geysers of scorched gas, surfing on convection currents like ancient dragons who had decided physics was merely a suggestion.

As we flew, I stared out over the planet I had come to see not as a death world, but as a paradoxical home. There were no forests here, no oceans or verdant plains. Just molten rock, ash storms, and silence — a crucible. Only the strong could breathe here, and only the deranged could thrive.

Crystal’s hive had done more than survive this place. They had dominated it. They had taken a volcanic tombworld and built a goddamn empire. And I — some idiot flung into the stars with a cheat code he didn’t ask for — had become their center of gravity.

Twelve hours later, we arrived.

I dismounted ungracefully, as always, and walked up to the freethinker’s immense head. Her eye clusters glittered like polished sapphire. I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the chitin between them.

"Thank you, pretty girl," I murmured.

Crystal felt that kiss, even from deep within the hive. A warm pulse of maternal affection slid across our bond. Kimchi, predictably, experienced both jealousy and affirmation in a tangled emotional knot.

Despite being drenched in affection every waking second, part of her still occasionally worried — that maybe I loved the idea of her, the evolved form, not her in totality. So when she saw me kiss the ripper, something in her brain exploded like a faulty fusion core — jealousy, pride, despair, love, all combusting into a single raw feeling:

Mine.

She was still mentally unraveling when I turned and slipped behind her.

With a grin, I slid both arms around her waist and kissed the nape of her neck — right on the sensitive spot where her neural ridges clustered. Kimchi gasped, hips bucking, steam rising from her skin like she’d just been thrown into a sauna with intent.

"My little love bug," I whispered, lips brushing against her burning flesh. "You’ve gotten awfully bold since my hivemind charisma upgrade, haven’t you?"

One hand slid downward. Her armor melted away like sugar under flame.

"I think it’s time I introduced a new kind of punishment."

Kimchi trembled as I pressed deeper into her warmth. Her head lolled. Her voice was ragged.

"Please, hah... do whatever you want. I’m yours. All of me. Always yours."

I brought my other hand up and cupped her chest, fingers dancing over her hypersensitive skin. She moaned again, nearly buckling.

She had a weakness. I knew it well. Her nipples were her off-switch, her brain’s big red "panic and cum" button. And I was pressing it — slowly, deliberately.

She was riding the edge, body quivering with the pressure of an orgasm that refused to fully bloom.

And then—

I stopped.

Her eyes snapped open. Lust. Confusion. Panic.

I grabbed her by the hair, forcing her gaze up to mine.

"What exactly," I growled, licking her juices from my hand, "did you think you were being rewarded for?"

Kimchi whimpered.

"You tortured me for hours on the flight. You acted like a horny demon in heat. And now, because I’m nice, I’m going to train you properly. No more freebies, little bug."

With one last dominant shove, I tossed her to the ground and strode off toward the hive entrance.

Inside, I felt a twisted sort of satisfaction. The "stick" had stopped working on Kimchi. She liked being punished too much. So I had a new tactic: the carrot. A taste of pleasure. Then denial.

Let her want. Let her ache.

Maybe it would retrain her behavior. Maybe it would backfire spectacularly. But damn it, I was going to try.

Behind me, Kimchi knelt in stunned silence. She understood. She understood too well.

The second I was out of sight, she convulsed — violently. Her whole body tensed and spasmed in a chain of orgasms she hadn’t planned for. She bit down on her own wrist to muffle the scream, refusing to ruin my lesson.

That only made it worse. The suppression magnified the pleasure. She nearly blacked out.

Five minutes later, she was upright again. Composed. Determined. Quietly glowing with aftershocks. She followed me down into the hive, her expression beatific, her thighs still quaking.

When she found me in my lab, already buried in equations and genetic diagrams, she said nothing. She just sat nearby, watching the man she loved more than life itself — her mad scientist, her mate, her monster — and smiled with reverence.

And that was how the next phase of our madness began.

Chapter 48: "The Carrot, the Lash, and the Skyborne Sinner"

I woke up groggily with Kimchi spooning me like a clingy, heat-leaking radiator in love. Her antennae twitched with self-satisfied smugness, her thighs wrapped around mine with enough pressure to simulate a slow, affectionate guillotine. I was about to sigh and accept my fate as a living plush toy when a deafening, unnatural whoosh split the volcanic air like a god’s sneeze.

A shadow passed over us. Not the sun. Not a cloud. No, Crystal had apparently decided enough was enough and deployed a Wing Ripper to extract me from the feral embrace of her least house-trained Prime.

The creature descended with the subtlety of a falling war crime — all vibrating wings and serrated aerodynamic malice. This variant was particularly absurd: a cross between a dragonfly and a pterodactyl, built with the express intent of violating enemy ship hulls via supersonic impact and overwhelming psionic screeching. In low orbit, a thousand of them could shred a fleet before the enemy even realized it wasn’t a meteor storm.

The one before me now, however, was a freethinker — bulkier, smarter, and about as mobile on a high-gravity planet as a whale in a swimming pool. She lay sprawled across the cracked obsidian plain, her limbs trembling slightly under her own weight.

"Greetings, designated mate of the Hive Queen," the freethinker intoned in perfect psionic syntax, her voice resonant and slightly nasal. "This unit has been dispatched to retrieve you. Per Queen Crystal’s directive, you may now mount me. There is ample space. Please be gentle." ƒreewebɳovel.com

I began my climb, fumbling up her sloped wing like an overgrown toddler learning to crawl. The moment my ass made contact with her carapace, the poor thing shuddered beneath me like a lovesick adolescent.

I blinked. "The fuck was that?"

I brushed it off — probably nothing. Probably. Kimchi, on the other hand, had narrowed her eyes with all the heat of a dying sun. She knew.

She climbed on behind me, claws clicking, tail twitching, breathing far too slowly. The moment her thighs brushed against my back, the Wing Ripper shuddered again, this time with outright fear. That was understandable — Kimchi had coiled herself around me like a predatory vine with no respect for personal boundaries, and was now audibly licking the rim of my left ear.

"Let us be off, freethinker," I said, deadpan. "And if we happen to pass a volcano, feel free to drop this parasitic clinger behind me directly into the magma."

The ripper released a soft ripple of psychic amusement, while Kimchi retaliated with a playful nip to my neck and a low, obscene purr. Then we were airborne.

She took to the skies with grace unexpected from a creature that looked like it should collapse under its own weight. We soared across rivers of lava and geysers of scorched gas, surfing on convection currents like ancient dragons who had decided physics was merely a suggestion.

As we flew, I stared out over the planet I had come to see not as a death world, but as a paradoxical home. There were no forests here, no oceans or verdant plains. Just molten rock, ash storms, and silence — a crucible. Only the strong could breathe here, and only the deranged could thrive.

Crystal’s hive had done more than survive this place. They had dominated it. They had taken a volcanic tombworld and built a goddamn empire. And I — some idiot flung into the stars with a cheat code he didn’t ask for — had become their center of gravity.

Twelve hours later, we arrived.

I dismounted ungracefully, as always, and walked up to the freethinker’s immense head. Her eye clusters glittered like polished sapphire. I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the chitin between them.

"Thank you, pretty girl," I murmured.

Crystal felt that kiss, even from deep within the hive. A warm pulse of maternal affection slid across our bond. Kimchi, predictably, experienced both jealousy and affirmation in a tangled emotional knot.

Despite being drenched in affection every waking second, part of her still occasionally worried — that maybe I loved the idea of her, the evolved form, not her in totality. So when she saw me kiss the ripper, something in her brain exploded like a faulty fusion core — jealousy, pride, despair, love, all combusting into a single raw feeling:

Mine.

She was still mentally unraveling when I turned and slipped behind her.

With a grin, I slid both arms around her waist and kissed the nape of her neck — right on the sensitive spot where her neural ridges clustered. Kimchi gasped, hips bucking, steam rising from her skin like she’d just been thrown into a sauna with intent.

"My little love bug," I whispered, lips brushing against her burning flesh. "You’ve gotten awfully bold since my hivemind charisma upgrade, haven’t you?"

One hand slid downward. Her armor melted away like sugar under flame.

"I think it’s time I introduced a new kind of punishment."

Kimchi trembled as I pressed deeper into her warmth. Her head lolled. Her voice was ragged.

"Please, hah... do whatever you want. I’m yours. All of me. Always yours."

I brought my other hand up and cupped her chest, fingers dancing over her hypersensitive skin. She moaned again, nearly buckling.

She had a weakness. I knew it well. Her nipples were her off-switch, her brain’s big red "panic and cum" button. And I was pressing it — slowly, deliberately.

She was riding the edge, body quivering with the pressure of an orgasm that refused to fully bloom.

And then—

I stopped.

Her eyes snapped open. Lust. Confusion. Panic.

I grabbed her by the hair, forcing her gaze up to mine.

"What exactly," I growled, licking her juices from my hand, "did you think you were being rewarded for?"

Kimchi whimpered.

"You tortured me for hours on the flight. You acted like a horny demon in heat. And now, because I’m nice, I’m going to train you properly. No more freebies, little bug."

With one last dominant shove, I tossed her to the ground and strode off toward the hive entrance.

Inside, I felt a twisted sort of satisfaction. The "stick" had stopped working on Kimchi. She liked being punished too much. So I had a new tactic: the carrot. A taste of pleasure. Then denial.

Let her want. Let her ache.

Maybe it would retrain her behavior. Maybe it would backfire spectacularly. But damn it, I was going to try.

Behind me, Kimchi knelt in stunned silence. She understood. She understood too well.

The second I was out of sight, she convulsed — violently. Her whole body tensed and spasmed in a chain of orgasms she hadn’t planned for. She bit down on her own wrist to muffle the scream, refusing to ruin my lesson.

That only made it worse. The suppression magnified the pleasure. She nearly blacked out.

Five minutes later, she was upright again. Composed. Determined. Quietly glowing with aftershocks. She followed me down into the hive, her expression beatific, her thighs still quaking.

When she found me in my lab, already buried in equations and genetic diagrams, she said nothing. She just sat nearby, watching the man she loved more than life itself — her mad scientist, her mate, her monster — and smiled with reverence.

And that was how the next phase of our madness began.

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