The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

Chapter 473 473: Rodion Dungeon Exploration (5)

At that moment, Rodion's helm dipped once, the motion eerily in sync with their decision—as though he heard the conclusion through stone. He drew his cloak tighter. The fabric's nano-threads shimmered, altering hue to a muted slate that matched the cave walls. A readout blinked across Monkey's feed:

<Middle path selected. Cloak draw: active. Noise damping 85%.>

Elowen's lips parted, a satisfied little breath escaping. She slid one finger toward the cookie plate but did not take another; her attention glued to the sentinel below.

Rodion moved.

His first step was soundless, heel rolling to toe like silk sliding over glass. The moss seemed to accept him, compressing without so much as a squeak. He paused exactly at the midpoint between stalactite drips, then flowed forward again. Every movement obeyed the cavern's quiet heartbeat. Even his cloak's hem floated, guided by micro-fans at the inner seams that neutralized random flutter. The readout above him updated, line by line:

— External sound output: 12 dB (below cave ambient)

— Thermal bloom: within moss temperature variance

— Reflective index: acceptable

Stalactites overhead continued their cadence. Plip. Plip. He timed strides so droplets never hit the back of his head plate, never hissed off metal. To an outside observer he was less a knight and more a shadow teaching itself to walk.

Behind him, the Scarabs tracked side alcoves, sending pulses of light that painted hidden pockets. A pulse revealed a hollow in the left wall—nothing but debris. Another pinged the right: faint skeletal remains of some long-dead crawler, brittle shell sparkling like frosted sugar.

Elowen allowed herself a slow exhale, tension bleeding from her shoulders. "He looks almost… gentle," she whispered, maybe to herself, maybe to Mikhailis.

Mikhailis hummed softly. Gentle like a scalpel, he thought, but aloud he said, "That's precision. Gentle is just the outer layer of a hammer you don't see until it falls."

Monkey's lens adjusted focus on Mikhailis, capturing a hint of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. The bronze butler produced a folded linen, stepping in to dab the smear away without a word. Mikhailis raised an amused brow but did not protest. Elowen's smile quirked, watching her consort be fussed over like a child.

A faint gust stirred the cavern. Rodion felt it first: microscopic motes dancing in his optics. He raised his left wrist; a vent popped open, sampling air. Humidity level climbed another point, but temperature dropped by three—evidence of a downward draft further along the central corridor. Possibly a pit, or a broken ventilation shaft still faintly alive.

He transmitted the reading upward. Monkey overlaid a ripple effect on the corridor map: falling air current, potential vertical hazard.

Mikhailis rolled his shoulders, speaking half to Monkey, half to Elowen. "He'll shift his stance right about… now." As if listening, Rodion repositioned his center of gravity, knees bending slightly—prepared for sudden elevation change.

Elowen's eyes widened. "You still think like an adventurer."

He shrugged a blanket off one knee, revealing travel-scuffed boots hidden under the silks. "You can file the crown, but the habit stays."

Below, Rodion slowed near a jagged ridge where the floor stones jutted at uneven angles. He crouched, pressed a gauntleted palm to the ground, and waited. A faint tremor passed under his fingertips—distant, rhythmical, like something heavy shifting far below.

From the feed, data popped: Seismic echo: periodic. Likely hydraulic operation or burrowing creature. He logged it, flagged caution.

Scarabs chirped at varying pitches, a coded conversation about potential detour routes. He responded with a low click from his helm—command understood.

Then, without looking back, he slid deeper into the middle corridor, swallowed gradually by its velvet dark. The overhead glow faded, until only the periodic sparkle of Scarab wing lights outlined his silhouette.

Back in the royal chamber, the projector dimmed to match the corridor's darkness, bathing Mikhailis and Elowen in a deeper shade of blue. The queen pulled her blanket closer. Mikhailis leaned sideways, shoulder brushing hers—a quiet promise that both sentinel and sovereign were safe in this muted midnight.

He entered without a sound.

_____

Stone archways loomed over Rodion like the ribs of a long-dead giant, their edges lost in threads of moss that swayed in the faint, hollow breeze. Vines dangled in curtains, brushing his pauldrons and whispering across the matte surface of his cloak. Moisture gathered there and rolled off in fat beads that hit the floor with tiny, echoing ticks. The corridor tapered ahead—once wide enough for wagons, now little more than a stone throat.

His proximity sensors pulsed a soft amber warning. A quick thermal sweep returned no heat signatures at ground level, yet something restless prickled in the air overhead. Rodion eased his gaze upward without tilting his helm, relying on a micro-servo in the visor that allowed a discrete optics roll.

There, flattened against the rough vault, were three shapes that only barely betrayed their presence: Stalker Frogs, each the size of a blacksmith's anvil. Their slick hides mirrored the corridor's marbled grey so perfectly they looked carved from the same stone—until a throat sac flexed in the dim, a glimmer of mucous sheen giving them away. They lay in that patient pose of ambush predators: limbs tensed, eyes half-lidded, waiting for that vulnerable fraction of a second when prey passed beneath.

Up in the royal chamber, the projector's view expanded as Monkey sharpened contrast. Scarlet outlines blinked around the frogs on the overlay, picturing their positions in jagged angles. Mikhailis leaned closer, candlelight catching silver in his irises. "They're waiting for back exposure," he said quietly, as if speaking louder might tip the monsters off. "Classic ambush pattern. Leap delay of two-point-five seconds after noise trigger."

Elowen tucked a stray lock behind her ear and studied the red silhouettes. "And if he never gives them the back?" she asked, voice soft, a trace of thrill in it.

"Then they get impatient," Mikhailis replied, dragging a finger through the ghost-blue interface. Come on, Roddy, prod the trap.

Rodion's left hand slid to a slim compartment at his hip. A fingertip pressed a recessed switch—hiss—the tray lifted, revealing a dozen pebble-sized spheres etched with silver runes. He selected one and rolled it across gloved knuckles, weighing the balance, absorbing the etched vibration code. To untrained eyes it looked like a stone; to his sensors it was a calibrated sound lure tuned to natural cave acoustics.

He tossed the pebble behind him with an almost lazy flick. It pinged against the wall and skittered across the floor, settling near a pile of debris. The sound rang in the narrow hall, bouncing between stone ribs like a drop of water in a crystal glass.

Instant reaction. The two frogs closest to the lure contracted—bulging legs coiling under slick bodies. Their eyes widened, pupils narrowing to vertical slits. In the next heartbeat, both launched from the ceiling, stone dust puffing in their wake. They cut through the air in heavy arcs, dew-soaked membranes flapping.

Rodion moved in the same instant. Blades whispered free from hidden sheathes, their steel edges reflecting the faint glow from overhead stalactite drips. He pivoted on his forward heel, cloak spiraling around his calves in a controlled swirl. The momentum carried his right hand up and across just as the first frog descended.

Steel met skull in a clean, rising stroke. The creature never felt the ground—its head parted in a geyser of blackish ichor, body flipping end over end before thudding beside the lure. A second blade reversed in his left hand waited for the sibling beast. The amphibian, slower by a quarter second and suddenly confused by the failure of its partner, attempted to twist mid-air. Too late. The left blade sliced across its belly with surgical precision, spilling a sheet of viscous fluid before the limb severed at the shoulder. The corpse slammed to the floor, sliding several feet on slime.

In the chamber above, Elowen inhaled sharply, fingertips grazing her collarbone. She watched Rodion's blades paint silver arcs that folded back into silence. She exhaled only when the second body settled.

The third frog clung to the arch, wide jaw trembling. It hesitated—prey had turned predator too quickly. Its stone-mimic skin rippled, camo pattern glitching in panic. Rodion's visor caught the flicker. Without ever tilting his head, his arm snapped up. A flat throwing knife slid out over his wrist from a spring sheath. He flipped it once—silver glint—then hurled it with a tiny roll of his fingers. The blade didn't so much fly as thread an exact line of air, burying itself in the exposed spine behind the creature's skull. The frog convulsed, legs scraping the ceiling in mute agony, then dropped like a sack of wet sand.

The knife's hilt quivered a moment, then stilled. Rodion never looked back to confirm the kill. He retracted the twin swords in a singular, fluid motion—click—and stood once more in rest posture.

Elowen let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd held. "He didn't even look."

Monkey zoomed on the fallen bodies. Two Scarabs descended with surgical intent, extending needle-probes from their abdomen ports. They hovered over the chest cavity of the second frog. Thin instruments pierced glandular sacs, drawing shimmering green fluid. The extraction vials sank into their thoraxes with a hiss of sealing runes.

On the screen a designation appeared:

[Venom: Paralyzing Class C — Viable for arrow coating.]

Rodion's HUD registered the text. He paused only to nod. A microservo in his helm performed the barest dip—a thank-you, perhaps, to the small engineers at his side.

Upstairs, Mikhailis, half-reclining on the pillow nest, reached for the plate beside him. "Efficient," he muttered, already grabbing another cookie.