The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 454: Monitor Like a Game (3)

Around the pool, bark darkened into onyx gloss. Reflections seeped out of trunks, peeling like wet parchment until pseudo‑Rodions prowled in all directions — each tinted ghost‑blue, each with limbs longer than logic and a spine that bent in too many segments. Their feet made no sound, yet every step left a ripple in dead leaves, as though the ground briefly forgot its weight.

Mikhailis snorted tea up his nose. "Rodion, darling, your evil twins need posture lessons. Straighten those backs, boys!"

Gods, that's nightmare fuel. He wiped his mouth, toggled danger icons. Red triangles blossomed over every Echohound, but they multiplied too quickly for the HUD to keep tidy; it looked like confetti after a cursed wedding.

Three Soldier Ants took formation, mandibles locked, their chitin plating tinted by the cinematic gloom into bruised indigo. The ants clicked to one another—a staccato rhythm Rodion instantly parsed into range markers. He snapped two fingers. The squad darted wide, disappearing between tree roots big as siege wagons.

Mikhailis flicked a rune. An icon of twin blades burst above Rodion's vitals: [Precision Dash – Ready] Cooldown ticker spun from eight seconds down.

One Echohound broke ranks first, sprinting with joint‑snapping jerks. Its mouth split open all the way to where a neck should start, revealing a hollow funnel of shimmering code—fragments of Rodion's own tactical language swirling inside like teeth.

<Analyzing… echo uses my sub‑routine syntax. Defensive posture required.>

Rodion dropped low. Cloak scales refracted into a wavering smear; to the naked eye he became a shard of heated air. Precision Dash activated—he surged sideways at impossible angle, friction sizzling moss to ash where he'd once stood. Before the hound could redirect, a sticky gel mine plopped into its path. The orb burst, spewing violet goo that hardened mid‑air. The creature struck the mass headfirst; its face stretched like putty, glitch‑pixels cascading off as it thrashed uselessly.

A second hound lunged from Rodion's blind spot—except he no longer had one. A Fire Scarab dive‑bombed from a branch, self‑detonating in a sphere of gray spores. Anti‑mana dust soaked through the phantom pelt, each particle punching holes in its mirrored code. The beast yowled in a staticky parody of feedback, collapsing as its outline bled into static.

Mikhailis hollered, pumping a triumphant fist that nearly upset the tea tray. "Yes! Combo rating — S rank, thank you very much." He slid another biscuit between his teeth, crunching in time with HUD kill‑tally chimes.

One Echohound remained, pacing the edge of the pool. This one didn't attack; it studied Rodion, head cocking in eerie imitation of his earlier pause. Every few seconds the creature's skin flickered, revealing glimpses of circuitry too refined for disordered mana. Learning me, Rodion surmised. A perfect mirror soon.

He couldn't allow that.

<Running predictive threat tree. Outcome: 62 % chance mimic acquires Precision Dash on next cycle. Countermeasure: deny cycle.>

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Rodion sprinted, cloak billowing like storm smoke. The hound mirrored, blurring into a blue streak. They converged at the pool's rim. Rodion planted a heel, reversed momentum mid‑stride—Precision Dash on cooldown still? Two seconds left. No time. He flipped vertical, letting gravity yank him backward into a handspring that snapped both leg servos close enough to clip the hound's muzzle. That micro‑impact wasn't meant to harm; it redirected. The beast's dash carried it over the water's silver surface.

The pool accepted its twin, and for a heartbeat the clearing froze. Then the surface fractured into razor facets, slicing the Echohound into a dozen neat shards of shimmering code. Each shard hissed, pixelated, and dissolved like frost in sunlight. The pool stilled, darker now, perhaps sated.

Rodion straightened, tiny arcs of reflection‑mana crackling off his torso.

<Hostiles neutralized. Securing samples.>

He knelt, plucking three irregular crystals from the ashen residue—each pulsed with faint replicas of his own internal clock. [Echo Core Shard ×3] blinked onto the inventory list. The cloak registered damage lines where stray static had licked its fibers; the HUD dutifully adjusted.

<Structural integrity reduced by 2 %. Fluffiness at 94 %.>

Rodion's tone remained level, but the half‑second pause afterwards read like a raised eyebrow.

Mikhailis laughed, pulling the plush throw over his bare shoulder. "That's still a solid A‑plus in adorable lethality. We patch you later." He'll want new quilting in those panels; note to self: order silk‑steel batting.

Rodion gave no verbal reply, yet his gait resumed with fresh sharpness—as though the cloak, even glitch‑blurred, still deserved to flutter like a champion's banner. Residual mirror‑mana hiccuped across its weave, causing sporadic flickers that tinted him ghostly one second, tyrant‑black the next.

Ahead loomed the mesa. No ordinary rise of earth; it looked torn from reality and left hanging by a child god mid‑temper tantrum. Segments hovered in tiers, each slowly grinding like lazy gears, leaving gaps that revealed star‑speckled void far too early for the hour. Between floats, rune‑fragments glowed weakly, spitting sparks that dissolved mid‑air. The stairs—if one could call them that—floated out of sync, shifting centimeters this way, that, in random pulses. Climb wrong, and gravity might misfile you into sky or stone.

Rodion approached the first step and immediately felt a tug in his processors. His logs skipped. He lifted his right foot—then blinked to realize the foot was already back down, same moss disturbed in the same pattern. Three‑second loop triggered. The HUD stuttered: Temporal Echo Detected.

High above, Mikhailis tapped the sofa's arm in time with the echo glitch. "Groundhog Glade," he muttered, remembering the ant team that lost all sense of forward motion. He zoomed feed; saw Worker Ants hesitating at the fringe, tapping the air like blind men with canes.

Rodion deployed a test unit: a Fire Scarab skittered forward—but the insect flickered, repeating its dash thrice before managing a full stride. Data clear: loop radius five paces.

Rodion marked the perimeter in red overlay.

<Adjusting.>

He reversed two meters, then sidestepped, watching the boundary ripple. Using shadow‑echo mapping—analyzing minute light discrepancies cast by his own cloak—he spotted a seam, a faint shimmer shaped like a bent doorway. Scarab trails mirrored along that crease, making a dotted path across a floating glyph‑platform half a jump away.

He stepped. Air thickened; time tried to snag him—but his momentum plus Precision Dash's residual buffer broke through. The platform caught his soles with surprising solidity. He was out. So were his ants, each following the mirrored breadcrumbs like railcars.

Mikhailis exhaled only then, unaware he'd been holding breath. Smart boy. He rewarded the courage by queuing gentle lute strums over the feed—Victory Jingle Lite.

Rodion wasted no time. He strode past half‑assembled stair slabs, leaping when necessary, magnets in his heels whining softly as they gripped iron‑rich runes to stabilize flight gaps. Up here air felt thinner; every breath sensor returned odd densities, as if molecules were half dream, half stone. Yet the final pool awaited—giant, arterial red, beating slow and heavy like the heart of an old god.

Scan began. The pool's code fought back, sine waves ping‑ponging up Rodion's arms, trying to read him the way he'd read the earlier water. But his new insulation—residual echo static plus null‑gel flecks—blunted the handshake. He logged core signature, pinned it, dumped raw into mainframe. Time left: 12 min before next geomantic fart rearranged the whole mesa into a jigsaw.

Then a vibration deeper than thunder rolled up the floating rocks. It wasn't sound—it was the sensation of reality objecting.

From behind, rust peeled from empty air. Plates of ancient technomantic steel slid out of nothing, clanking together in haphazard sequence. Spectral cables whipped like jellyfish tendrils, sparking lavender. A torso rotated into existence, half complete, gears exposed like broken ribs. And at the head: a mask forged of cracked glass and copper, its left cheek missing—yet the right lens burned bright.

Rodion's sensors hiccuped. That lens ID‑tagged as Rodion Mk 0—a defunct blueprint he'd cannibalized cycles ago.

The construct floated, dragging a broken leg that never fully formed. Its voice came in shards of binary stitched into speech:

"I… was… meant… to be… you."

Mikhailis lurched upright, knocking plates to the floor. Tea splattered, biscuits snowed.

I discarded that memory core months ago. Dread iced his chest.

Interface blared crimson: HIDDEN BOSS — Echo of Design

Underneath, a health bar stitched itself together, already pulsing malevolent orange.

Rodion slid one foot back, center of gravity dropping, blades unfolding from forearms like calm wings. His cloak tore free of residual static, settling straight as a knight's surcoat.

Rodion readied his stance.