"Even if I kill you, the insect race won't die out, will it?"
The Insect Queen hesitated, then nodded.
"Then if I kill you both, will the next Insect King and Insect Queen your kind evolves be friendly to humans?"
The Insect Queen paused. Understanding flickered in her eyes. She seemed to grasp what I meant.
That was right... If I only killed the Insect King and the Insect Queen, the next ones to evolve might
well see humanity as a mortal enemy. That
was when humans would be in the greatest danger. But if I killed the Insect King and got the Insect Queen to promise not to attack humans, at least
the insect race, under her leadership, would fear
me enough to leave humans alone. She had no idea I might already be dead by then.
The Insect Queen hesitated for a long moment. Then, to my astonishment, her enormous body split down
the middle, opening like the exoskeleton of some alien creature.
A bug barely over a meter tall crawled out.
No... Calling her a bug now didn't seem quite right.
She had four limbs. Her legs bent backward at the knee like a dog's, and she hunched when she stood. Her foreclaws... Judging by their
shape, they were already close to human
hands. The difference was that each hand had ten fingers. Her body was small and thin, its surface
covered in irregular black armor,
with a narrow waist.
Her head... It was an oval tapering to a point at the back, where an elongated skull stretched out
like an alien's. Two
huge compound eyes filled the front of her face. When she parted her lips, she revealed a row of sharp, triangular teeth like a shark's.
A slender tail. A body shaped in a perfect