Inside the base station, in a deep pit freshly eaten away by corrosion.
Grayish-white filaments covered the jagged rock walls, while a gigantic, ink-black worm lay at the bottom of the pit.
Strangely, the worm had no eyes, and seven circular mouthparts grew from its head.
"What is this...?" Bai Zhi murmured.
"A larva of the [Gaila] insect race's hive. All their hives grow from larvae like this," Cecil explained quickly. "Luckily, we found it in time. If it had burrowed into the planet's core, we would have had a real problem. There happens to be a junction for [Malindo]'s underground energy infrastructure beneath this base station. This larva probably came for the energy there so it could produce more larvae faster... standard practice for the [Gaila] insect race."
The enormous larva was already dead. Clearly, Cecil, who had discovered it first, had dealt with it before the others came down.
Long Xiruo asked casually, "This thing isn't exactly small. With your abilities, wouldn't it be easy enough to find even if it hid in the planet's core?"
"The [Gaila] insect race grows at a terrifying speed." Cecil shook her head. "Besides, if you and Miss Bai Zhi hadn't stumbled across what happened at this base station, we would have missed the best window to deal with it... by the time we actually discovered it, the larva would probably have matured, and who knows how many more larvae it would have scattered."
"Then you were pretty careless," Long Xiruo said flatly. "Someone sneaked in with something dangerous, and you had absolutely no warning."
The Princess remained silent.
"To be honest," Cecil said helplessly, "with the coronation approaching, far too many people have been entering [Malindo] lately. We simply can't scrutinize every single one. And..."
She paused, then looked at Lucia