MCDWTBS Chapter 55
by VolareChapter 55 Serra was stunned.
The newborn wings of the female insectoid had unstable energy. They flapped a few times in pain, then drooped down, causing Edwin to stagger and fall, his knees landing on Serra’s mental tendrils that covered the ground.
He propped himself up with his hands, the butterfly bones vaguely outlined by the clothing torn apart by his wings. His back rose and fell sharply in the lingering pain and exhaustion. Serra’s tendrils carefully placed him on the newly sprouted grass. His sculpted, slender body had lost some of its fullness after the transformation, but was still stunningly beautiful. Underneath the firm muscles and pale skin surged an astonishing power. His vulnerability added to his deadly allure, possessing both the innocence of a newborn lamb and the danger of a top predator.
Serra couldn’t look away. He could see faint, translucent holes in Edwin’s newly formed wings, the energy slowly filling those gaps. The wings also trembled slightly after being forcibly spread, covering the ground like an overly long cloak, merging with the surging tendrils.
Serra’s heart and wings trembled and shrank together. He recovered from the astonishment and shock, cautiously approached the silently panting Edwin, and reached out to help him up:
“Male parent, your wings have recovered, that’s wonderful! Are you alright? Does it hurt?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Serra realized it was a stupid thing to say. He became even more awkward, and didn’t dare touch Edwin without permission. His restless hands could only carefully hook back a few strands of dark hair that were blocking Edwin’s face, tucking them behind his ear.
The female insectoid in front of him slowly raised his pale face with a shimmering glow, his light blue eyes covered with a layer of water, even brighter and more dazzling than usual. There was no trace of pain in the female insectoid’s eyes. His eyebrows were relaxed, his face still showing the fatigue of a recent illness, and his lips were slightly dry, but he showed a smile.
Serra was stunned.
A smile was a rare thing on the dark-haired female insectoid. Having experienced everything Edwin had experienced, and being in Edwin’s situation, Serra wasn’t sure if Edwin would even smile. After all, no one had ever condescended to teach a female insectoid what happiness, joy, or satisfaction were, right?
He certainly didn’t dare to expect a smile from the female insectoid, never having been able to paint a sincere smile on Edwin’s face. But when he saw Edwin’s smile for the first time, his gaze and thoughts were drawn by the sparkling light in those blue eyes. His heart beat so violently that his ears almost rang, and his eyes could only hold Edwin’s relaxed face, only the light and shadow cast by his shining eyes and dense eyelashes on his delicate face.
“Young Male Master, my wings, they are still… they grew back. My strength is still here, I can… return to the battlefield, and fight for you, protect you.”
Edwin’s voice was a little higher than usual, almost permeated with a kind of sincere and joyful release. Serra knew that the dark-haired female insectoid had never been good at hiding his emotions, and this genuine joy and the strong emotion in the female insectoid’s words almost burned Serra’s chest. He wanted to cry.
“That’s great… that’s great, male parent. I mean… anything, do anything you want to do.”
He stammered, unwilling to let any of his words pollute Edwin’s overly pure emotions and overly real joy. He wouldn’t, and couldn’t, stand between Edwin and his choices. He couldn’t break Edwin’s wings that he had tried his best to open, he just couldn’t.
As long as he still had the face to think that he loved Edwin, he couldn’t stop Edwin from doing the right thing, fulfilling Edwin’s life and meaning. Because love is never just the dense, smooth notes in a grand ensemble, it is also lasting patience and the drawn-out, abruptly ending final note of a Dan role before the curtain falls.
It is also lonely endurance, enduring the consequences caused by the loved one, enduring the fear and empathy after fulfillment.
–Don’t let your incompetence ruin everything again, ruin Edwin.
He said in his heart, slowly suppressing the urge to cry, just gazing at Edwin for a long time, too cowardly to move his gaze first.
In the sunlight, the young male insectoid’s dark brown curly hair shone like oak wood polished with expensive beeswax, the ends of his hair plated with a layer of gold, almost melting into the surrounding vibrant spring. In his caramel-colored eyes, honey-like thick and gentle emotions flowed out, like a humid wind, lightly and heavily attached to Edwin’s body, allowing his joy and fatigue to slowly return to calm.
The female insectoid blankly and gently looked back at Serra, their gazes like seaweed intertwined in clear spring water, and Edwin instinctively felt that there was something in Serra’s gaze that confused him, those parts that were too blatant, too serious, that he didn’t know how to respond to. His heart beat more and more violently in Serra’s gaze, almost stabbing his chest.
A faint blush climbed onto Edwin’s cheeks, covering the back of his neck and the tips of his ears. He was like a deer illuminated by a strong light, frozen in the jungle by the river. A strange feeling of being captured made his blood heat up, and his still-recovering body experienced stinging pains in many places, causing him to frown.
“Male parent!”
Serra was startled by Edwin’s frown and instinctively reached out to grab Edwin’s arm, but his oozing male insectoid pheromones caused Edwin to choke. It wasn’t pain. In fact, the male insectoid pheromones did a good job of numbing the discomfort Edwin felt, allowing him to immerse himself in a vague sense of security and the belief of being cared for.
That would almost make the female insectoid feel comfortable, if Edwin didn’t know better.
The last thing he needed to do was to draw from his larvae the safety and comfort dominated by the female insectoid instinct. He was far from being so pathetic, and he wouldn’t use his larvae like that.
“It’s nothing.” The female insectoid reached out a hand, placing it on the male insectoid’s chest through his clothing, and slowly pushed him away. At the same time, the female insectoid staggered to find his balance, trying to stand up with his wings that refused to open again.
Serra let go of his hand, muttering apologies, desperately suppressing the barbaric and unfamiliar emotions that arose in his instincts after being rejected by the female insectoid. At this moment, the huge hemispherical defensive wall above the manor emitted a light red flash, and the voice of the main system entered Serra’s ears.
“Unidentified flying object has entered the Duke’s Mansion’s airspace. Monitoring has been activated. The aircraft is a commuter model produced by Indus918, an affiliated industrial planet of Celestial Palace Star. Non-combat standard. The pilot is a sub-male Chong. Identity confirmed, it is Ilia, the Yaci child of the Duke’s Mansion’s female attendant Sison. The aircraft is not equipped with weapons. Do you want to attack immediately, or let it pass?”
“Let it pass.”
Serra frowned slightly and used his tendrils to help Edwin stand up. Behind them, a series of footsteps approached from afar. Sison led several attendants of the Duke’s Mansion and stopped not far away:
“Young Male Master, Ilia has come uninvited, bringing the Pope’s oracle from Celestial Palace Star.”
Sison stated plainly, as always, thoughtful and appropriate, but Serra could feel Sison’s gaze falling on him, carrying more weight than usual – that was the silent and heavy longing of a male parent for his Yaci son.
“Sison, the Duke’s Mansion is Ilia’s home, he can come back at any time… regardless of the purpose, or what mission he carries. The gates of the Duke’s Mansion will not be closed to family, you can trust me a little more.”
“Of course I trust you, Young Male Master.” Sison said calmly, and Serra called up the manor’s main brain system to open the passage for Ilia.
“I understand, Sison, I also hope that Ilia will not leave this time. The Church and us are already at odds, it is not safe for him to go back. I will try my best to persuade him to stay.”
“……”
Sison didn’t reply immediately. After a moment, when the aircraft had already hovered in the Duke’s Mansion’s territory, he opened his mouth and said:
“Ilia has grown up, Young Male Master, he will always make his own decisions and be responsible for them.”
Edwin turned his head to look at Sison, his eyes containing concern for his former colleague, but he didn’t say anything. They both knew that in such a complex situation, no one could guarantee anyone’s safety. Staying in the Duke’s Mansion was not necessarily safe, and staying in the Church was not necessarily a dead end.
And they couldn’t stop their descendants from choosing their own path.
The hatch opened, and Ilia, wearing the white robes that were uniformly worn by female Chong and Yaci within the Church, symbolizing purity and piety, walked out of the hatch.
He seemed to walk a few steps towards Serra and the others steadily, but he still couldn’t suppress his emotions, and trotted over. The silver bracelet he wore on his hand sparkled in the sunlight, but Serra didn’t miss the unfamiliar collar around his neck.
Serra’s energy field swept over Ilia, and the mental tendrils suspended beside him immediately grew venom-dripping barbs, extinguishing half of the sky above the Duke’s Mansion. The dark abyss roared silently, permeated with pungent anger.
“They put a miniature bomb on you? How dare the Church? You are a Yaci of the Noah family, my own younger brother!”
Serra’s anger caused his feet to gradually leave the ground. Mental tendrils wrapped around the astonished Ilia, quickly destroying the collar around his neck, and then pierced into the back of his head, extracting a particle bomb with blood plasma.
The tendrils wrapped the bomb, causing its explosion to silently annihilate. The male insectoid’s anger almost made all the female Chong and Yaci present tremble with fear, but no Chong knelt down in cowardice as they would when facing other angry male insectoids.
“Brother, I’m fine! All the female Chong and Yaci in the Celestial Palace Star Temple are equipped with these. They don’t want to kill me… In fact, what I bring is the message of reconciliation between the Church and the Duke’s Mansion.”
“Reconciliation?”
Serra seemed to have heard something extremely ridiculous. His eyes unknowingly turned into strange vertical pupils, and his tall body after development was half-lifted into the air, with countless terrifying tendrils showing a ferocious attacking posture behind him:
“After they killed me and the other Chong in the Duke’s Mansion, and almost killed male parent? After they attacked Duke Noah’s research institute, and are about to massacre the Duke’s Mansion?”
A rare trace of ferocity appeared on the male insectoid’s gentle and jade-like face. The corners of his lips curled up into a wicked smile, so sharp that it almost cut his face.
“War is inevitable, the Church and the so-called Pope will bear the consequences for the crimes they have committed.”
“Brother! I bring the Pope’s oracle, let me finish first!”
Ilia waved away Serra’s tendrils, looked up at the angry male insectoid, his eyes full of fear and worry, but not enough to make him lose his composure and will.
He had changed a lot, almost as different as two Chong from the young Yaci who was molested by his male father and didn’t dare to cry out loud, and the courage he showed almost made Sison show a tearful smile, while Edwin raised his eyes to look at Serra, whose face was twisted by anger, his wings trembling slightly, and a fair hand grasped one of Serra’s thick vine-like tendrils.
“Young Male Master, let Ilia finish speaking.”
The fangs and claws, covered with poisonous thorns, visibly curled up, becoming as soft and smooth as a water snake, obediently crawling under the female insectoid’s palm, and Serra quickly restrained his vertical pupils and antennae that were leaning forward due to anger, and dust fell on the ground.
“Okay, male parent. Ilia, let’s go talk in the conservatory.”
Serra softened his voice and even gave Ilia, whose eyes still showed fear, a smile. The battle a few days ago and Serra’s sudden first development – equivalent to a larvae’s delayed puberty – had obviously brought great changes to his emotions and body. Serra found it more difficult to control his emotions than before, and he was aware of this, but when emotions came and hindered his thinking, he was still a little unfamiliar and helpless.
Fortunately, Edwin was by his side. Ilia and Sison and the other Chong secretly watched his attitude change rapidly under Edwin’s touch, and many Chong showed surprised expressions.
No Chong had ever seen a second male insectoid that seemed to be tied to his master’s hand. As long as the female insectoid gently pulled the rope, the male insectoid would be as well-behaved as a kitten.
The scene was so strange that even the knowledgeable Sison let his gaze wander between Serra and Edwin for a long time, until the Chong successively sat down by the indoor fountain in the conservatory, and Serra brought a soft-cushioned antique chair to Edwin with a well-behaved face, his eyes full of expectation looking at the dark-haired female insectoid.