The Legendary Beekeeper-Chapter 48: Fragmentation (1)

Fragment.

To cause something to become divided, broken, or scattered.

In short, the destruction of continuity.

The concept was... intriguing. Beelathorn could not deny that fact. But he could also not deny the fragility of ’self’.

The supermind fragmenting itself was one thing — after all, it got to pick and choose which parts of ’itself’ it would copy or transfer over— but what could be said of his human mind?

If anything, it seemed an easy way for the Hive to finally be rid of him... to have tiny pieces of himself copied, changed... erased, until he was exactly what they wanted him to be.

After all, they’d tried once before, hadn’t they?

’Heightened stress levels have been detected. Is there doubt on the process of fragmentation?’

’There are none. And fragmentation won’t be necessary,’ Beelathorn replied. ’There are safer ways to save time.’

"Queen’s Gaze."

Gold and ice crept in from the fringes of Beelathorn’s observable reality, subjugating every and all motion.

This was different from his previous castings... more forceful and absolute in its time stop mechanic.

’Has the skill changed, or is it just me?’ he asked his sole, unfrozen companion.

The other part of his mind stirred; he could feel it... quickening, like a flame in his head, squeezing itself to burn brighter... faster.

’That is part of the information offered to us by Beeralia,’ the other mind replied once it had made itself fast enough. ’The sentinel’s soul is home to another. Those of the Hive world call it a Frigus. A high-level creature, made of space and ice.’

’So what? We have space and ice powers now?’ 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

His other mind stirred once again. It seemed in this suspended time, it had to exert noticeable effort to keep up with him.

’Negative. A counter-balance is required to prevent the Frigus from corrupting our soul. Infection of our skill tree is evidence of the first stages of corruption.’

’But why?’

’Our contract was with the Sentinel alone. Beeralia has stated contracts do not extend to dominated souls unless offered so by the housing soul.’

Beelathorn sighed inwardly. ’So basically the sentinel scammed us?’

The other mind stirred. ’"Scammed" is an acceptable descriptor.’

’But what now? How do we counter-balance this... Frigus?’

Without Beelathorn’s action, his system index popped into view. It then started navigating through the different selections, like a haunted display screen.

It was only when the quest screen popped up did Beelathorn realize this was the supermind’s doing. Though he dared not think much of it, at least not now... for thoughts were louder than whispers here.

┏━━━━━❆━━━━━┓

❅❅〖Evolutionary Quest〗❆❆

〖Description〗: Dominate X1 [Ascended Grade] or X3 [High Grade] Ice Titan(s).

〖Reward〗: X1 [Soul of the Ice Aspect]

〖Difficulty〗: Certain Death

┗━━━━━━❆━━━━━┛

In suspended time, the information came to him all at once, as if whispered directly into his brain through High Apodiea. And he did not like its contents one bit.

’First of all, what the hell is an ice beast? And why is the difficulty at certain death?’

The quest screen faded out of view. ’The architect’s system has calculated our current chances of success to be null. And there are no records of "Ice beasts" within our memory index. We will require that information from someone experienced within this world.’

’So we have to ask her, huh?’ Beelathorn replied, his gaze fixed on the golden tag that floated above the Shadow woman’s head:

『Level 99 Player Rae [Ranked]』

『Spacial Ranking: 43』

’Affirmative. She is likely to hold the required information.’

The gold and ice withdrew, like a frozen lake rewound through time, and reality returned to normal.

"I will consider your offer," Beelathorn said. "But only if..." before he could finish the sentence, the Shadow Woman’s form turned to shadow, and was then blown to shadowy-ash by a small gust of wind from the window.

"Now why would you activate a skill on me, dearest?" a voice called from the walls - all four, all at once. "The rumours couldn’t be true, could they?"

Beelathorn’s gaze swept around the room’s perimeter, and yet he could still not see her. ’What rumours?’ he thought.

"It was a minor matter I had to attend to. No harm would’ve come to you."

The Shadow Woman laughed. "I doubt that. I can’t say your reaction was unexpected... men often turn to violence when their secrets come to light," she said in between laughter.

"But there’s so many more secrets we’re keeping from each other, aren’t we?"

Beelathorn’s brows furrowed at that. "What are you going on about? Show yourself, let’s finish our discussion."

The shadow woman laughed once more, and one of the walls twitched, as if a glitch in reality.

’An odd scent is being detected from the walls. They are likely false walls, tempered by the woman’s trait skill,’ the supermind chimed.

’Yeah, I got that.’

"The discussion is over, dearest. I have made you an offer. Now all that is left for us is to be wed, or..."

"Or what?" Beelathorn shot back.

"Tell me, darling. You wouldn’t happen to be Han Kim, would you? No. Actually, I’m sure you’re Han Kim. But whether you did what they say you did, that is another matter."

Beelathorn tensed at that. ’What the fuck is she talking about?’ On top of the sentinel’s bullshitery and the supermind breathing down his mind’s neck, he did not have the clarity or patience of mind to deal with this.

"Do you want to form this alliance or not? Enough mind games, I don’t have the time, nor the patience for this."

This wasn’t a complete bluff. The shadow woman definitely wasn’t the only person they could get information from, and she most surely wasn’t the safest alliance partner either.

"Mind games?" The shadow woman mused, before audibly clearing her throat.

"Han Kim. A ’newly spawned’ wanted for the death of 86 other newly spawned. Likely hiding out around the unclaimed territories," she recited, almost as if reading off a script. "Your bounty is 1 Legendary equipment piece upon presentation in front of Heron... dead or alive."

"They even have a cute sketch of you, dearest," she mused. Instantly, a notification chimed from the extension station.

『New message from [Player#64312: Rae Tanaka]』