Chapter 132: Male Zerg Star Pirate × Female Zerg Undercover Agent (16): Inside the Book, Outside the Book, Different Paths

【The male Zerg spoke lightly, but Avis knew how difficult it must have been.

A hatchling born among wolves, raised inside a star pirate crew from the very beginning.

They hadn't even spoken the same language.

The inherited memories of the Zerg contained only the Zerg language.

He had had to learn the wolves' language from scratch.

He'd been so tiny then.

The wolf beastmen hadn't even known what he needed. Even if they'd sincerely wanted to care for him, there were bound to be things they'd overlooked.

Avis could almost picture it.

A tiny Ul sitting among the wolves, letting out little howls as he learned the wolf language.

It should have been an adorable image.

Instead, it made his heart ache.

"'Ul'... was that name given to you by them as well?"

"You could say that."

Lying on his back, Ul replied,

"At first I couldn't understand what they were saying. Whenever they wanted me, they'd imitate my voice and call me with a very gentle wolf howl. I gradually realized they were calling me, and eventually it became my name."

"Then..."

"...Ulrich?"

Avis asked cautiously.

Ul smiled.

"The latter part comes from my female parent's name. I found him later."

Avis searched his memories of the female Zergs in the pirate crew, trying to match someone to what Ul had said.

As if reading his thoughts, Ul said,

"He's not with the pirate crew anymore. He has his own organization now, his own life. We meet once in a while, but we don't keep in close contact."

The universe was simply too vast.

Ul was no longer the little hatchling who needed his female parent to feed him.

They both had lives of their own.

Either of them could disappear into deep space at any time and lose contact for months.

Even getting in touch wasn't easy.

When Ul first searched for news about him...

He had only wanted to know whether he was still alive.

That answer alone had been enough.

Avis leaned down and embraced him.

Just as he had comforted that anxious male Zerg aboard the pirate ship.

Except...

The male Zerg's unease back then had all been an act.

Now...

He was pretending that nothing had ever hurt him.

Avis wanted nothing more than to pull him tightly into his arms and comfort him.

Ul genuinely didn't think any of this was a big deal.

After spending so many years crossing the stars, what hadn't he seen?

What hadn't he experienced?

This female Zerg was simply too soft-hearted.

To him, ordinary partings and reunions became proof that Ul was someone to be pitied.

Ul lifted a hand and hugged him back before whispering into his ear,

"Alright, Officer. I've already answered a lot of questions."

"If you want to interrogate me any further..."

"I won't cooperate so obediently."

"You'll have to show me your skills."

"...Mm."

Avis answered quietly.

He understood.

He would use his own interrogation techniques...

And make the male Zerg talk.

His hand reached behind Ul.

One sweep of his fingertips...

And the fabric split apart.

Avis lowered himself, pressing close enough to block the opening with his own body.

"Wow."

Ul gasped softly.

His free hand flew to cover his mouth, his eyes sparkling.

He really shouldn't have underestimated Avis's interrogation skills.

At this rate...

He was going to confess everything.

My account password is...

Numbers were already beginning to flash before Ul's eyes.

Moving more slowly, Avis tightened his hold from every direction before asking,

"When did you first start paying attention to me?"

"From your very first day in the pirate crew."

"You were just too handsome, sweetheart."

The military female Zerg's interrogation methods were simply too formidable.

The pitiful pirate leader hurried to confess everything the moment questioning began.

Avis hadn't expected his appearance to be what had given him away.

Of course...

It was more likely the male Zerg was simply talking nonsense again.

Still, the compliments and affectionate forms of address made the tips of his ears turn slightly red.

"Was it you who switched my communications with Military Headquarters?"

Avis continued the interrogation.

"Yes."

Ul pitifully raised both hands in surrender.

Hopefully...

He'd be shown some mercy.

Avis had no intention of sparing him.

Instead, he continued his merciless questioning.

"You were the one communicating with me all these years?"

"Yes."

"We were online friends..."

"...pen pals..."

"...for three years."

Ul smiled shyly.

"I just wanted someone to talk to."

"You call that talking?"

Avis ground his teeth as he bit down on him.

Ul's scalp tingled.

"I was wrong..."

"I'm sorry..."

"I won't do it again."

Avis knew perfectly well there was no longer any such thing as "next time."

Even so...

Those words softened him.

For the moment...

He let Ul off.

By the end of the interrogation, even Avis's breathing had become uneven.

He braced himself against the bed to steady his slightly trembling body, refusing to reveal any weakness.

"Why me?"

he asked.

"Hm?"

Ul blinked in confusion.

"Why did you choose to toy with me?"

"Because I was the undercover agent?"

Avis stared straight into him.

The male Zerg who had suddenly appeared in his room...

That incident had always remained especially important to him.

He knew it had all been deception.

Even so...

He still wanted an answer.

"Because I liked you."

Ul answered quietly.

"I never intended to appear in front of you so suddenly."

"But my mating season arrived without warning."

"I wanted to spend it with you."

Looking at Avis timidly, he silently begged for forgiveness.

Avis knew this male Zerg was exceptionally good at acting pitiful.

But...

It worked on him every single time.

More accurately...

As long as it was him...

Everything worked.

Even if the male Zerg simply sat there without doing anything...

Avis would still find himself drawn to him.

Those simple words—

"I liked you."

—left him completely at a loss.

At the same time...

He felt grateful.

Out of all the female Zergs, Heavenly Garuda, and other races aboard that ship...

The male Zerg had chosen him.

Avis devoted himself to serving him with complete concentration.

He asked nothing further.

...】

[Avis, you call that serving him? Let go of my Male Lord's hands already! I'm so angry I'm punching the air! Did you forget Lord Ul is still handcuffed?!]

[Zerg female Zergs really have no taste. (Heavenly Garuda look of disdain) Such a wonderful male Zerg, and you don't even know how to appreciate him.]

[This is an outrage against His Lordship! And all you controlling, sadistic Heavenly Garuda should be arrested!]

[Oh? Really? If we're arresting people, then not a single one of your male Zergs would escape. Don't forget why Ul ended up wandering outside the Federation in the first place. That male Zerg was truly ruthless. He made even a pregnant female Zerg unable to survive. His mate would rather wander homeless than stay with him. Even after escaping the Federation, he still wasn't spared. He spent a fortune hiring the military to hunt him down. Chasing a pregnant female Zerg day and night like that—if female Zergs weren't naturally so resilient, the egg would have been lost long ago. Both parent and child would've died.]

The Zergs fell silent.

None of them could refute it.

Just moments ago they'd been mocking the Heavenly Garuda because their males never came back after leaving.

Now the same issue had landed squarely on their own heads.

A pregnant female Zerg had been driven to flee.

Because of that, Lord Ul had ended up outside the Federation, taken away by wolves and raised among star pirates.

[The military only wanted to bring him back. Federation law would have protected him. Male Zergs who commit domestic abuse are imprisoned.]

[Tch. If they were really going to protect him, they should've done it sooner. What's the point of saying all this afterward? If he hadn't been desperate, would he have run?]

[Look at how your Federation enforces its laws. It couldn't even guarantee the safety of a pregnant female Zerg, forcing him to flee while allowing such an important strategic resource—a high-ranking male Zerg egg—to end up outside the Federation.]

The Zergs were furious.

They wanted to argue.

Wanted to insult the Heavenly Garuda.

But in the face of facts...

Words felt powerless.

Eventually, a male Zerg who didn't want to be lumped together with everyone else searched through historical records and posted what he'd found.

[Ul mentioned that the latter part of his name came from his female parent. I searched records using the name "Rich." His Male Lord... or rather, his former Male Lord... was tried twenty years ago and sentenced to prison.]

The moment those records appeared...

The readers were stunned.

[Wait... there really was someone like that? Isn't this supposed to be a novel?]

[Have you forgotten what kind of novels An-shen writes? His inspiration comes from reality.]

[Then... does that mean there were really a Lord Ul and an Avis?]

[I looked into that as well. Perhaps there really were. Unfortunately... their ending wasn't the same as in the novel.

There was never a high-ranking male Zerg named Ul who joined the Federation.

This novel feels like another possibility from a parallel timeline...

One that simply doesn't belong to our reality.]

Both the Zerg and Heavenly Garuda readers froze.

[Wait... Ul never joined the Federation?! Does that mean Ul and Avis ended in tragedy? I'm crying!]

[I know novels are separate from reality, but... how can there be no Lord Ul? Did His Lordship dislike the Federation? I'm crying...]

[The Federation must not have done enough. That's why Lord Ul refused to return.]

[Then what happened to Avis? Did he spend the rest of his life alone in the Federation? My eyes are leaking... this is too heartbreaking.]

[I knew it! Everything after the second half of the novel was just Avis's fantasy! His Lordship never came back! Avis spent his entire lonely life living inside that illusion.]

[That's too tragic... I shouldn't have criticized Avis. I'd rather have watched him handcuff Lord Ul to the bed.]

[Even if he kept using the Male Lord Promotion Express.]

[Waaaaah...]

The female Zerg readers cried with complete sincerity.

As though they themselves had been abandoned by a male Zerg.

[...I think you've misunderstood something.

I said Ul never joined the Federation.

I never said Avis went back either.]

The female Zergs turned pale.

[The Wolf Crew discovered Avis, and he was executed for being an undercover agent?!]

[...]

[...I'm numb.]

...

Meanwhile...

Far from Zerg territory...

A massive black flagship cruised silently through the sea of stars.

Dozens of medium-sized ships followed close beside it like wolves hunting beneath the night.

Inside the flagship's private quarters...

A silver-gray-haired male Zerg was browsing a novel on his light screen.

The StarNet signal was unstable this far away.

Although relay stations had been set up along the route to strengthen reception, there was still considerable delay before novels from the Federation's StarNet could finally reach him.

Supporting his chin with one hand, the male Zerg patiently slid a finger across the screen while waiting for the latest chapter to load.

Beside him...

A female Zerg was taking care of their second hatchling.

Two little wolf pups born to other wolf beastmen had crawled over as well, howling for attention.

He simply scooped them up with one arm and fed them milk fruit juice together.

The male Zerg glanced over once.

Immediately...

A milk fruit was pressed into his own hand.

"I'm not a hatchling."

Even so...

He cracked it open and drank the juice inside.

Still...

It wasn't nearly as delicious as the milk produced by his female Zerg.

Their own hatchling had already begun weaning.

Lately, the male Zerg had been enjoying plenty of extra meals every day.

At last...

The newest chapter loaded.

While sipping the milk fruit handed to him by his mate, the male Zerg watched the scene of the female Zerg interrogating the male Zerg.

His eyes shone brighter and brighter.

The Zerg readers really didn't know how to appreciate something this good.

He had to do it himself.

His cheeks flushed.

His eyes sparkled.

Every now and then, he smiled shyly.

He looked exactly like someone secretly watching indecent videos of attractive female Zergs stripping.

Nearby...

The female Zerg rocking their hatchling to sleep narrowed his eyes dangerously.

He carried the hatchling into the nursery.

The two sleepy wolf pups were placed beside the baby so they could cuddle together while sleeping.

Then he returned to the bedroom.

Undoing the buttons at his collar and tossing aside his jacket, he walked over with half-lidded eyes.

"Male Lord..."

"Is it that good?"

"It is!"

"It's really good."

The male Zerg nodded enthusiastically, his gaze darting between the light screen and the female Zerg's attractive physique, unable to decide which deserved more attention.

The female Zerg laughed despite himself.

His chest rose and fell from the lingering effects of nursing.

Sensing danger, the male Zerg shrank his neck, hurriedly pulled him down beside him, gently patted and massaged his chest to help ease the discomfort, then nervously asked,

"What did I do to make you angry?"

"Take it out on me."

"Don't bottle it up inside."

"It'll clog things."

As if he'd ever had the chance for anything to become clogged.

The female Zerg grumbled silently to himself.

He wasn't actually angry.

It had already been so many years.

They had two hatchlings now.

Although this male Zerg had deceived him terribly at the beginning...

His feelings had never been false.

The female Zerg knew exactly what kind of person he was.

What truly bothered him...

Was what could possibly be so fascinating that the male Zerg remained glued to the screen, even while looking at him.

Was the screen really more attractive than he was?

"What are you looking at?"

the female Zerg asked.

"You."

The male Zerg answered with perfectly innocent sincerity.

"Stop pretending."

The female Zerg kept a straight face.

"There's some shameless little female Zerg hiding inside that screen, isn't there?"

The male Zerg burst into laughter at his choice of words, laughing so hard he bent over.

After spending more than twenty years among star pirates...

Even this upright military officer had learned how to swear.

Completely bewildered, the female Zerg steadied the laughing male Zerg and asked,

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing."

The male Zerg finally managed to stop laughing.

Pulling the female Zerg down beside him, he said,

"Let's read the novel together."

The female Zerg watched in confusion as familiar Zerg script spread across the light screen.

The protagonists...

Were Avis...

And Ul.

In the novel...

He found an opportunity to take the male Zerg away from the pirate crew and return to the Federation.

The male Zerg followed him.

He even joined the Federation, obtained citizenship, and married him.

Watching the story unfold...

Avis found it unbelievable.

He had never imagined the male Zerg would return to the Federation and marry him.

His own life had taken a completely different path.

At first...

He simply never found the opportunity to leave with the male Zerg.

Later...

He became pregnant.

Then the male Zerg confessed everything.

He'd been furious.

The two of them had even entered a cold war for a while.

Yet...

For the sake of the egg's need for pheromones, he stayed.

Every night he slept beside the male Zerg wearing a cold expression.

But after their hatchling was born healthy...

He still never left.

He told himself...

The hatchling was still too young.

It needed someone to care for it.

Then...

The undercover agent whose identity had long since been exposed...

Continued "infiltrating" the pirate crew for another three years.

And another three years.

Now...

Twenty years had passed.

He'd gone from an insignificant nobody...

To the leader of the pirate crew.

He'd even had two hatchlings with the true leader behind the pirate crew.

"Do you want to go back?"

Ul asked.

After a long silence...

Avis shook his head.

He hadn't thought about returning to the Federation in a very long time.

At some point...

The pirate crew had become his home.

His male Zerg was here.

Their hatchlings were here.

His friends were here.

Everything familiar to him was here.

Now, reading the story inside the novel...

It felt like a lifetime ago.

As though it depicted another possible future for them.

A beautiful one.

But...

Their present wasn't bad either.

Looking down at the male Zerg in his arms, Avis's eyes filled with lingering affection.

In the story...

The male Zerg crossed the stars and went to the Federation for his sake, settling down in a country completely foreign to him.

Outside the story...

He was equally willing to stay for the male Zerg.

To remain in the pirate crew...

The place where the male Zerg had grown up and built with his own hands.

The knot hidden deep within his heart quietly came undone as he finished reading the novel.

Everything suddenly became clear.

Avis lowered his head and kissed the male Zerg's forehead.

When the male Zerg looked up in surprise...

Avis cupped his face and continued kissing him.

Ul quickly became dizzy from all the kisses.

Utterly confused.

When had Avis become this proactive?

Hadn't he always preferred making love with a cold, expressionless face?