Chapter 82: We Found the Source of Hollow Fever… The Entire Swamp Is Its Nest

Three Mire Hares were huddled beneath a root, alive but unable to walk. Nearby, a partially submerged reptile had been split open from the inside, its body covered in small transparent capsules.

These weren’t scattered victims. There were too many of them, and all of them were oriented roughly toward the same point.

The forest began changing too. At first, Raven noticed small white patches spreading across the trees and assumed they were fungus.

They weren’t.

Maelor collected a sample with a pair of long forceps. The surface gave way like wet skin.

Valeria grimaced. "That isn’t plant matter."

Predation confirmed it.

[Organic Membrane Detected.]

[Species Association: Hollow Thread Colony Structure]

[Function: UNKNOWN]

[Mana Conductivity: HIGH.]

Raven studied the tree. The membrane covered the bark from the waterline to nearly thirteen feet above it, with tiny filaments running beneath the surface.

"They aren’t living only inside hosts."

Maelor stepped back. "We never saw anything like this in the corpses."

"Because this isn’t part of the human infection cycle."

Garran looked around.

Now that they knew what to look for, they could see the same material on other trees. Translucent membranes stretched from trunk to trunk and connected submerged roots beneath the water.

The swamp was being covered.

Roland raised his bow. "I don’t like this."

"That makes you the most reasonable person here," Valeria said.

Raven ignored them. Predation continued reacting to the surroundings, but no longer to individual organisms. It was responding to the sheer biological concentration.

[Multiple Hollow Thread Signatures Detected.]

[Estimated Local Count: UNRESOLVED]

[Environmental Integration Detected.]

Raven frowned. "It can’t count them."

Maelor looked at him. "How many?"

"Too many to distinguish individually."

Garran stopped the group. "That’s enough. We have confirmation of a colony. We go back, bring—"

The Marsh Grazer collapsed.

This time, it stayed down.

Something shifted beneath the body. Not inside it, but under the mud.

A mass of filaments emerged around the corpse, wrapped around its limbs and torso, pierced the flesh with tiny structures, and began dragging it forward.

Garran stopped speaking.

Raven watched the body disappear slowly between the roots. "Now we know where they take them."

The captain stared in the same direction. "Five minutes."

"What?"

"Five more minutes. If we find something useful, we continue. If not, we turn back."

Raven nodded.

Reasonable.

Which meant something would probably go wrong in four.

It took three.

The ruins appeared abruptly, not because they had been hidden, but because they had almost stopped looking like ruins.

Massive stone blocks rose from the swamp in what had once been a circular structure. Tilted columns vanished beneath black water, and a half-submerged arch carried weathered symbols even Valeria didn’t recognize.

Very little stone remained visible. White, translucent membranes stretched across columns, roots, and broken walls like scar tissue, some of them pulsing slowly.

The air smelled sweet and rotten.

Raven stopped breathing for a moment.

"Masks."

Everyone covered their noses and mouths.

Maelor raised a small crystal. "Ambient mana..."

He fell silent.

Raven looked at him. "What?"

"It’s absurdly high."

FORGE reacted, not to the parasites but to something deeper inside the ruins.

[High-Density Mana Storage Signature Detected.]

The signal was far stronger than it had been the previous day.

[Candidate Biological Component Detected.]

[Species Classification Pending.]

[Reservoir Density: EXTREME Relative to Standard Mana Reservoir Toad.]

[Project Compatibility Analysis Available at Reduced Distance.]

Raven stared toward the ruins.

There.

Whatever FORGE was detecting was somewhere ahead, though he still couldn’t see it.

Garran noticed his expression. "Your target?"

"Something with a large reservoir."

Valeria surveyed the area. "That narrows it down very little."

Raven was about to answer when a deep croak rolled through the ruins.

Not threatening.

Almost satisfied.

Something enormous leapt from a half-submerged column and struck the water.

SPLASH.

The soldiers turned.

Raven noticed the crystals first.

Hundreds of them.

The creature emerged slowly from the water. It was a Mana Reservoir Toad, but only in the same way a wolf and a house dog were technically related.

Nearly six and a half feet from snout to hindquarters, its skin was such a dark green it looked almost black. Large sections of the abdomen had transformed into pale-blue crystalline plates, and every breath sent luminous mana flowing through them like liquid light.

FORGE appeared immediately.

[Species Identified: Deepwell Toad]

[Level: 23]

[Rank: Awakened]

[Evolutionary State: Stable]

[Relevant Structure: Deepwell Crystalline Reservoir]

[Reservoir Integrity: 100%]

[Mana Capacity: EXCELLENT]

[Discharge Stability: EXCELLENT]

[Sustained Output: HIGH]

[Prototype Rifle Estimated Compatibility: 94%.]

Raven smiled slightly.

Finally.

Valeria saw it. "That’s the one."

"Yes."

Garran understood too. "The reservoir?"

"Ninety-four percent."

The captain looked at the creature, then at Raven. Neither of them said anything.

That argument could wait.

Something much stranger was happening.

The Deepwell Toad wasn’t infected despite being surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Hollow Threads.

It was eating them.

Its tongue shot out and tore a mass of larvae from one of the membranes. The toad swallowed them, and the crystalline plates along its abdomen glowed brighter.

Maelor took an unconscious step forward. "It’s absorbing their mana."

Another cluster of filaments tried to surround one of the creature’s legs.

The toad released a pulse.

BOOM.

It wasn’t a physical explosion but a concentrated discharge of mana that threw the Hollow Threads loose. The tongue struck again and swallowed them before they could recover.

Predation analyzed the behavior.

[Deepwell Toad Adaptation Detected.]

[Long-Term Diet: Hollow Thread Organisms — HIGH CONFIDENCE]

[Mana Reservoir Saturation Source: Repeated Consumption of Parasite-Stored Mana.]

[Underlying Evolutionary Path: High-Density Environmental Mana Exposure.]

[Hollow Thread Consumption Effect: ACCELERATED RESERVOIR DEVELOPMENT]

[Estimated Parasite-Feeding Duration: 7–14 Months.]

Raven read the analysis twice.

"It didn’t evolve because of the Hollow Threads."

Valeria looked at him. "Then what did they do?"

"Accelerated it."

Maelor understood immediately. "The old records said prolonged exposure to high-mana wetlands and underground springs could produce a Deepwell."

Raven nodded.

The ruins already contained an absurd concentration of ambient mana. A Reservoir Toad living here long enough could naturally follow the Deepwell evolutionary path.

The parasites had simply provided a shortcut.

"They steal mana from everything around them," Raven said. "Then this thing eats them."

Maelor stared at the crystalline abdomen. "So instead of filtering ambient mana slowly..."

"It’s eating concentrated mana that something else already collected."

The Hollow Threads hadn’t created the evolution. They were fuel.

This specimen had likely possessed the right environment and biological potential already. Months of feeding on parasites swollen with stolen mana had accelerated a process that might otherwise have taken years.

It also explained why smaller Reservoir Toads were dying while this one thrived. Normal specimens could digest juvenile Hollow Threads, but a large infestation could overwhelm them before they neutralized enough parasites.

The Deepwell had crossed that threshold. Its larger reservoir could tolerate far greater mana loads, and repeated exposure had turned the parasites from a threat into concentrated food.

A predator feeding on predators.

Raven respected that.

"Then it could help us," one of the soldiers said.

Maelor slowly shook his head. "One animal can’t consume an entire colony."

The soldier pointed toward the Deepwell. "But if it reproduces—"

"We don’t know whether it can, how long that would take, or whether the Deepwell traits would be inherited at all."

Garran stared at the creature with an expression Raven recognized immediately.

Strategic value.

Not sentimental.

Exactly the same way Raven was looking at it.

The Deepwell Toad croaked again and jumped deeper into the ruins.

Raven took one step after it.

Predator’s Instinct reacted hard enough to stop him immediately.

Not toward the toad.

Down.

"Back."

Valeria didn’t ask why. She moved, and the soldiers followed through training.

Maelor reacted too slowly.

Raven grabbed the back of his clothing and yanked him away just as the ground where he had been standing opened.

It didn’t explode.

It split.

The white membrane separated like a mouth, and something as thick as a human arm whipped out from beneath it.

Valeria launched a blood blade.

The filament split open, spraying gray fluid across the stone.

The entire ruin trembled.

Not with sound.

With movement.

Membranes stretched tight across every column at once, and Predator’s Instinct shifted from a warning into constant pressure.

"That isn’t a passive colony," Raven said.

Maelor stared around them. "What the hell is it?"

Predation answered.

[Large Biological Entity Detected.]

[Environmental Organism Integration: CONFIRMED]

[Primary Organism Location: Subterranean.]

Raven looked at the ground.

Not the ground.

Below it.

The membrane wasn’t simply covering the ruins.

It was part of something underneath them.

Garran raised his sword. "We leave."

Raven agreed.

Again.

That was becoming a habit.

Then the Deepwell Toad reappeared.

It wasn’t fleeing.

It was attacking.

The creature leapt from the top of a broken column and landed on a mass of membrane. Its tongue plunged into an opening and ripped free a thick white structure.

The membrane contracted, and something beneath the ruins responded.

A wet sound rolled through the swamp.

The water churned.

Dozens of partially submerged bodies raised their heads.

Humans and animals.

Some dead.

Some not.

Garran froze.

"Light..."

There were too many.

Raven counted at least twenty human bodies among the roots and black water before he stopped trying. Several wore hunter clothing.

One had the yellow quarantine band.

The missing expedition.

Their bodies were partially covered in membrane and connected to the ground through transparent filaments.

Valeria clenched her jaw. "Incubators."

Correct.

This wasn’t a contaminated swamp.

It was infrastructure.

Living animals produced mana. Dead bodies provided nutrients and usable tissue. The Hollow Threads used hosts, water, roots, and the swamp itself to expand.

Raven looked toward the ruins.

"The water isn’t the source."

Garran turned toward him. "What?"

"We thought the disease was spreading through contaminated water. It is, but the water is only transportation."

Maelor went pale as he looked around at the membrane network.

"Then this..."

Raven finished the thought.

"Is the nest."

The ground moved.

Not one section.

All of it.

Membranes tightened across hundreds of yards as the water began to bubble. A central section of the ruins slowly rose, sending stones sliding into the swamp and snapping roots apart.

What emerged had no clean shape.

It was pale, long, and partially segmented, buried beneath layers of membrane and fused bodies. Dozens of thick filaments extended from it into the surrounding swamp, while its front ended in a circular structure surrounded by soft plates and multiple breathing openings.

It had no visible eyes.

It didn’t need them.

Predation completed its analysis.

[Species Identified: Hollow Broodmother]

[Level: 27]

[Rank: Elite]

[Threat Classification: C]

[Colony Core Organism]

[Host-Network Integration: EXTENSIVE]

[Environmental Integration: EXTENSIVE]

[Estimated Active Hollow Thread Population: UNRESOLVED]

Raven kept reading.

[Available Biological Traits Detected:]

[Parasitic Mana Feeding]

[Host Preservation]

[Brood Network]

[Adaptive Incubation]

[Mana Distribution]

[Colony Sensory Web]

Predation reacted far more strongly to one of them.

[High-Value Trait Detected: Brood Network]

[Potential Effect: Establish Biological Mana Link Between Compatible Organisms.]

[Host Compatibility: 31%]

[Conflict Probability: HIGH]

[Neurological Restructuring Required.]

[Assimilation NOT RECOMMENDED at Current Host State.]

Another analysis followed.

[Host Preservation]

[Compatibility: 67%]

[Potential Interaction Detected: Predatory Regeneration]

[Possible Benefit: Foreign-Organism Stabilization / Metabolic Maintenance]

[Possible Conflict: Unwanted Tissue Preservation.]

Raven frowned.

Interesting.

Too interesting to make a decision about while standing inside the creature’s territory.

Valeria noticed his expression. "Your ability found something."

"Several things."

"Anything good?"

"Potentially."

"That word usually ends badly when you use it."

"I’ve noticed."

The Broodmother didn’t attack immediately.

Instead, the bodies around them began to stand.

One became three.

Three became six.

The hunter wearing the yellow quarantine band still had enough of his face left to be recognizable. His eyes turned toward Garran.

The captain knew him.

"Tomas."

The man opened his mouth.

No words came out.

Three Hollow Threads slid between his teeth.

Garran’s expression hardened.

Raven raised his knife. "That isn’t him."

"I know."

But Garran still took half a second longer than he should have to raise his sword.

Raven registered it.

The Broodmother had developed an excellent defense. It didn’t need to overpower intruders directly when it could attack them using people they recognized.

The first host charged.

Valeria moved two fingers, wrapping a crimson thread around its legs and pulling it down without cutting flesh. Another attacked from the side, and Roland put an arrow through its shoulder.

The body didn’t react to the pain.

"Retreat!" Garran ordered.

No one needed convincing.

They couldn’t fight the Broodmother here.

Not yet.

It had hundreds of extensions, infected hosts, contaminated water, and terrain that was literally part of its body.

Raven covered the retreat. Whenever possible, he avoided killing the hosts—not out of altruism, but because every destroyed body could release Hollow Threads into the water and make the terrain even more dangerous.

Valeria understood quickly. Instead of piercing torsos, she used Blood Magic to break knees, bind limbs, and pin hosts against trees.

"This is irritatingly harder when we aren’t killing them."

Raven caught an attacking arm and threw the host into the mud. "Yes."

"I’m glad we’re enjoying this together."

"I wouldn’t use that word."

A mass of filaments dropped from a branch.

Raven triggered Ember Spark, not on the creatures themselves but on an oil pouch Roland had prepared.

FWOOM.

Fire spread across the membrane.

The filaments recoiled immediately.

High thermal sensitivity.

Useful.

Then a soldier screamed.

Raven turned.

A thick Hollow Thread had wrapped around the man’s ankle and was dragging him toward the water.