"We saw bugs. Nothing but bugs!"
Bell still shuddered at the memory. The moment they pushed open the doors, a tide of insects had surged toward them. Even as a Blood Marrow Worm, he had felt his skin crawl.
Spiders, centipedes, scorpions—nearly every poisonous insect imaginable was in there. Worse, they weren't locked in breeding tanks!
"We may be worms too, but that doesn't make us immune to venom, so fighting never crossed our minds. But there were some of our own kind in there, and they attacked us. They weren't the ones that had developed intelligence, though, and they were much bigger."
"They caught one of my companions. In no time, they sucked out his organs, flesh, and bones, leaving only his skin."
Blood Worms of the same kind?
As one of the few people who knew about them—though he had learned by eavesdropping, hardly an honorable method—Loa immediately guessed what Bell meant.
Blood Worms and Blood Marrow Worms were different. When the former turned on their hosts, they injected digestive enzymes, liquefied everything beneath the skin, then fed. The latter were the ones that chewed with a teeth-grating crunch.
"They must have been afraid we'd break through the swarm, because that guy threw the insect house doors wide open. Every bug already loose came straight at us. We had no choice but to retreat and wait for them to leave."
"So the Bibi Family did have a survivor?" Loa suddenly fixed him with a dangerous stare.
Look what I found. A hole in your story!
"No, he couldn't possibly have survived!" Bell cried nervously. "There were too many bugs in that insect house, and too many kinds. You could only go in with the strongest repellent. Even the Bibi Family didn't keep much of it! He only had