I Am The Swarm

Luo Wen curled up into a ball, unsure of how long he stayed in that position. Suddenly, he felt something atop his head moving instinctively. A sweet aroma wafted toward him, and an unbearable hunger clawed at his stomach.

“Great, just let me starve to death already,” he muttered, forcing himself to resist the tempting scent. Luo Wen tried to calm his mind, planning to die by starvation.

However, the objects on his head moved more frequently and forcefully, grating on his already frayed nerves. Glancing upward, he was startled to find two stick-like appendages swaying wildly in front of his eyes.

“What the hell?! I actually grew a pair of antennae?!”

His despair deepened…

Ten minutes later, a small black insect was seen crouched beside a massive white egg, devouring it with gusto. The tiny bug was only half the size of the egg, but its tiny mandibles worked furiously. As its saliva coated the shell, the once-hard surface rapidly softened. Between bites, the insect also slurped up the egg’s viscous interior, alternating between solid and liquid. A perfect combination of “hard entrée and soup.”

“Damn, this tastes amazing!” Luo Wen exclaimed.

It wasn’t that Luo Wen had caved to hunger; no, he told himself it was all to silence the distraction. The gleaming white egg stood out starkly against the pitch-black surroundings, drawing his attention incessantly. Combined with his new vision, which seemed fundamentally different from his past human eyes, the whole thing was making him dizzy.

Now that he’d decided to eat this culprit, he could concentrate better, and a full belly might even give him more energy to starve himself properly later.

By this point, Luo Wen had pieced together some semblance of understanding about his current situation. In his previous life, he had been a well-informed young man exposed to an onslaught of online media—science fiction dramas, web novels, you name it.

What he hadn’t expected, however, was that his previous life would end so abruptly and that this new life would begin just as unceremoniously. Worse still, he had transmigrated… into a bug.

Yes, he now understood what he had become.

But bugs usually hatch in clusters, don’t they? So why was he alone, without any companions? This lack of a reference made it impossible for him to gauge what he looked like. Was he intimidating and awe-inspiring? Or just a plain old creepy crawly?

Luo Wen suspected that whatever that green-haired old man had done, or perhaps some innate instinct of the insect body itself, was responsible for his current state. In just one meal’s time, Luo Wen had already begun to accept his reality as an insect. He even found himself worrying about his image.

After devouring more than half of the eggshell, Luo Wen was full, content, and even feeling a faint sense of happiness. For the moment, he gave up on his thoughts of suicide. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, he mused. If there was a second life, then maybe there could even be a third. At the very least, this was a unique experience.

However, just as he was starting to comfort himself, adopting a more optimistic mindset and embracing the idea of living boldly, reality once again delivered a crushing blow.

Perhaps his shift in attitude bridged the final gap between his human soul and his insect body. As the two harmonized completely, fragments of information stored within his new body suddenly surged into his mind.

“The Infinite Evolution Insect? Iphieash? So that’s what I am in this life? That… actually sounds pretty badass.”

“Wait a second! That green-haired, decrepit old bastard did this to me? Damn it! This wasn’t an accident—it was a premeditated attack!”

“If that’s the case, my plan to die dramatically and start fresh in another life is completely out the window!”

Unfortunately, the insect body only retained a small amount of recent information. There were no miraculous bloodline memories or inherited skills, as seen in novels. Luo Wen absorbed what little there was, quickly piecing it together amidst his exasperation. Although the language spoken by that green-haired old man wasn’t one Luo Wen had ever encountered, he somehow understood its meaning perfectly. RÀ𐌽օ₿ЕȘ

“Ugh, just let me die already!” Luo Wen’s budding optimism quickly evaporated as he curled into a ball once more.

Half an hour later, Luo Wen found himself chewing on more eggshells while pondering his newfound insect life.

Based on the final images stored in the body’s memory, it seemed that he had been teleported away by that summoning array. This left him with three possible scenarios for his current location:

He had been sent back to his home planet.

He was still on that sorcerer-filled continent.

He had landed in an entirely unknown place.

Determining which of these was the case would require further observation. But for now, that wasn’t his top priority. The surrounding environment—filled with massive rocks—hinted at extreme danger.

Judging from the pitch-black surroundings, Luo Wen guessed he was underground. How deep? That, he couldn’t say. Now that the white egg had been mostly consumed, the area was even darker. Yet his eyes could still pick up faint traces of a unique type of light.

While this light wasn’t enough to discern his surroundings in detail, his antennae and even the tiny hairs on his legs provided a strange kind of feedback, guiding him toward the surface.

It was an indescribable sensation, one that Luo Wen could only understand through firsthand experience.

Following this sense, Luo Wen began using his front legs to claw at the rocks ahead, pulling them toward his abdomen. His middle and hind legs then worked together to push the rocks behind him.

Yes, he now had six legs. But as a bug, wasn’t that perfectly normal?

At first, his movements were clumsy, but he quickly got the hang of it. Perhaps he had a natural talent for being a bug.

As he dug his way upward, the surrounding rocks gradually grew warmer, until the heat began to make him uncomfortable.

The light ahead brightened until, finally, Luo Wen broke through to the surface. And with it, his worst fears were confirmed.

A vast expanse of yellow stone reflected the blinding sunlight. The scorching ground burned his abdomen and soft tail, making him feel like he was about to be roasted alive.

As he had feared, he was in a desert. The “rocks” around him were nothing more than coarse sandstones. If he hadn’t somehow arrived in a land of giants, it meant his body was extraordinarily tiny.

Sure, being small was normal for a bug. But for a former human with zero experience as an insect, this was a living nightmare.

Braving the searing heat, Luo Wen surveyed his surroundings. Not a single trace of vegetation was in sight.

His field of vision, however, was bizarre. It reminded him of those massive advertisement screens in shopping malls—assembled from dozens of smaller screens that worked in sync to create a seamless image. In his case, it wasn’t dozens of “screens” but thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, densely packed together to form his view of the world. Based on his limited knowledge of entomology, he guessed that he now possessed a pair of compound eyes.

Again, normal for a bug.

But nobody had told him that compound eyes came with extreme nearsightedness! Up close, everything was crystal clear. But anything farther away was a blurry mess. He couldn’t even make out the sun to determine whether it was the same one he had known from his previous life.

Still, using some mysterious, insect-specific sense he couldn’t describe, he determined that there was only one light source in the sky.

The novelty of these abilities was something no human could imagine.

Not that Luo Wen was grateful for the experience. He would’ve gladly passed on it.

Given the limited information he’d gathered, the scorching surface temperatures, and the potential dangers of the unknown, Luo Wen’s paltry three- to four-meter visual range left him feeling deeply insecure.

If there was no next life to look forward to, he decided he might as well make the most of this one. His plans for a dramatic death could wait—survival came first.

With his rear end raised, Luo Wen began burrowing back underground.

The act of digging felt almost instinctual. In no time at all, he had mastered various excavation techniques—digging up, down, left, and right with ease.

Once he reached a sufficient depth, the temperature cooled considerably. Exhausted from the physical exertion of digging and the emotional toll of his situation, Luo Wen finally allowed himself to rest.

Curled up in the darkness, one final thought echoed in his mind as he drifted off to sleep:

“I refuse to live with nearsighted eyes!”

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