His professional life was riding high, yet he had nearly failed the "makeup exam" for his relationship—the contrast was stark.
Clark had directly brought over another Alpha-class long-range vessel to serve as a transport ship. Along the way, he delivered everything Sakedi needed, including but not limited to mental power detection and appraisal equipment, as well as deep-link plugs.
Now, they were both well and truly in the same boat.
The Core Seed had obtained the management rights to Ja and organized his own armed forces as he wished; the Grey-wing, in turn, had found a suitable executor for his illicit, under-the-table dealings. Both sides felt they had gotten the better end of the deal and were highly satisfied with the transaction.
According to current production capacity, the energy planet could gather the required quantity of goods for this trade in four small cycles. Consequently, Sakedi’s time suddenly became extremely scarce.
He had been leisurely tinkering with a gift, but the sudden notice of an "international business trip" forced him to tear up his original schedule and rewrite it entirely.
When he asked Clark what the trade items were, the silver-gray female paused for a moment before replying, "You don't need to handle them. Just return immediately after delivery."
Sakedi understood then why a high-ranking Zerg would engage in such a clandestine operation.
During their first meeting, the other’s claim—"I was staying briefly at the satellite base to handle some star-core energy ore issues when I heard the news of Katla’s fall"—translated roughly to: "I was preparing to rob my own house when I realized things had gotten messy at home, forcing me to poke my head out and look."
Transporting star-core energy to humans was an act of a total traitor, regardless of which Zerg tribe one belonged to. Even as a direct descendant of the King Worm, if something similar happened during wartime, it would be enough for all the Zerg to swarm and devour his cheap boss until nothing was left.
This made Sakedi curious about what kind of price the private garrison on the other side of the deal—a group that didn't exist in the Empire's official records—had offered to make the habitually cold and shrewd Grey-wing willing to take such a massive risk. At the same time, he wanted to see what kind of humans would actually trade with the Zerg.
Clark’s mouth was shut tight as a clam; he wouldn't say a single extra word, only telling Sakedi to leave as soon as the delivery was done. Since he couldn't get answers from his boss, Sakedi planned to find a way to play the recipients later.
This was actually a good thing. He had been struggling with being out of touch with human society for too long, and now the opportunity had delivered itself to his door.
The only difficulty lay in arranging the daily affairs of the energy planet, setting up protective measures, and comforting the male. After all, in Sakedi's eyes, nothing was more baffling than the concept of "feelings."
The mess he had made finally came back to haunt him. To get the male to speak, the Core Seed had previously blurted out a reckless threat about leaving Ja, and he had laid it on a bit too thick. Even after explaining everything and the male gradually returning to his habit of clinging to him, the female would sometimes see Gela sitting in the nest, staring blankly into space.
The white male appeared as calm as ever. After finishing his work at the Information Nest, he often taught the Common Tongue to the sub-adults, En and Enna. The two little ones would surround him, and the other males would gather around as well, a small cluster of Zerg creating a stable and peaceful atmosphere.
However, as soon as Gela was alone, he would fall into a slight state of dissociation.
Sakedi felt this wouldn't do.
A male's mental power was far more sensitive than that of a thick-skinned female. Gela had already experienced being abandoned by his tribe, and then Sakedi had told him he was leaving without providing any context.
Thus, while the Core Seed kept a sharp eye on the production lines, he also rapidly delegated future arrangements to all the tribe members around him. Then, he poured every spare second he squeezed out into crafting the gift, nearly grinding sparks out of the underground air-raid shelter.
Fortunately, when he first excavated this space, he had considered pressure resistance and explosion-proofing. He had let those Mandible-types dig as thick and deep as they could regardless of cost, creating an unshakeable steel fortress.
As soon as Clark’s long-range ship delivered the items he needed, the Core Seed locked himself in the underground area with everything, staying shut away for an entire small cycle.
Hidden underground was an entire weapon production chain, which had gone into production at the same time as the energy stone refining line. Previously, the Short-wings had supervised the production of small weapons, but now the black worker female cleared everyone out, leaving only himself.
A massive frame had been erected there, along with countless cables and a half-assembled, gargantuan killing machine.
He had finished half the work in the previous few small cycles and was contemplating the next step when the farce occurred—the one where he had been startled in the middle of the night, rushed out of the nest, and stood in the wind all night.
When he received the temporary overtime task, he had criticized Clark for being a traitor, only for the two of them to now become a pair of traitors.
In his original plan, he intended to give this gift to the male as a "grand starter pack" for the next phase—a phase that meant chaos and disorder. He hoped the other would have enough power to protect himself amidst the oncoming strife and battles.
His sphere of protection was limited to Ja, and his identity meant he would face enemies from both sides. Humans would not accept a former ruler who had turned into a female Zerg. In fairy tales, a dead hero is best left dead. Meanwhile, on the Zerg side, he only had Clark as a "plastic" ally for now, and that guy seemed to have a mountain of his own tribal messes to deal with.
The business trip plan disrupted everything. He had to give this key to calamity to Gela ahead of schedule to prevent any uncontrollable accidents while he was away. Once instability hit the Grey-wing tribe, it would inevitably affect the energy planet.
Sakedi suspected Clark had long guessed he was up to something, but the other had turned a blind eye, providing resources as if he were blind.
It had to be said that Zerg technology differed vastly from human technology. This caused him to change his mind multiple times while crafting the gift, repeatedly overturning his initial prototypes; he had gone through five, six, seven, or eight versions of the exterior design alone.
A discarded core power reactor was easy enough to refurbish, but the core crystals provided by the Grey-wings looked nothing like the ones humans used, and the programming languages were worlds apart. Not to mention, the link plug looked like a living organ, with long connecting elements trailing out that simply wouldn't connect to a main body made of inorganic matter. It was beyond ridiculous.
Sakedi held the information connector and light screen, trial-and-erroring bit by bit. He frequently had to dismantle entire components and outer armor to redo them, nearly working himself to the point of nausea.
The feeling of holding a pile of semi-finished parts that wouldn't fit together was truly indescribable. He couldn't imagine how long it would have taken to finish this pile of junk without the full set of supplies Clark provided. A kid next door would have been moved to tears. If every test during his military service had been like this, he suspected he would have deserted in the first year.
After experiencing countless problems—nearly collapsing the underground factory, accidentally causing explosions, dismantling and reassembling, improvising when he hit a wall, recalibrating over a dozen connecting elements after plugging them in wrong, the refurbished power reactor failing to keep up with mechanical performance, and constant debugging due to incompatible programming languages—the Core Seed finally crawled out of the underground space in the very last minute of the small cycle.
The black female looked like a ghost, drifting all the way to the Information Nest in a floating daze.
The white male was conducting extracurricular tutoring, with the two early sub-adults squeezed beside him, chirping and humming as they clung to him.
His eyes vacant, Sakedi reached out and hauled Enna, the female, out of the way. Then, before En could explode, his other hand tossed the male of the two brothers aside as well.
Gela was startled.
The Core Seed had previously told him he would be busy with some private matters for a while and might not appear recently. Yet, their next meeting found him looking like his soul had been sucked out.
Ignoring the angry hissing of the two cubs, Sakedi sat directly on the ground. His mind was still a chaotic mess of thoughts like "this graduation project is too hard," with stars dancing before his eyes. By instinct, he reached a hand out toward Gela: "Food."
Females were very resistant to hunger, but that didn't mean they didn't get hungry. Having not eaten for an entire small cycle while performing a massive amount of physical labor, the Core Seed was now nearly catatonic. It wasn't that he had some masochistic streak, but Zerg biotechnology was simply unreasonable; the entire link plug was like an octopus.
Perhaps the manufacturers hadn't expected a solo operation like this. If certain parts weren't quickly connected to all elements and tuned to a stable state, all the tentacles would fly everywhere and crawl all over the place. Before the cabin was fully sealed, he had experienced about a dozen bizarre instances where he’d turn his head only to find the link plug had crawled away on its own. It was impossible to stop midway.
Any normal human seeing it would have nightmares for a week.
Gela, who had found some food and rushed back, dismissed the members of the Information Nest early and stuffed the food into the female's hands.
Sakedi stuffed a beast leg into his mouth, mumbling the word "bath."
He was covered in dust, oil, energy stone powder, and a mixture of various debris, looking like a refugee who had been fleeing for eight hundred years.
The white male hesitated. "Should I get you some salt?"
Zerg were very fond of a mineral powder with a name that sounded like "scrubbing salt." Water was scarce on the energy planet, so most Zerg chose to roll around in scrubbing salt for their daily cleaning, much like a puppy rolling in the snow. This powder had excellent cleaning effects and could effectively polish scales and wings, making it a favorite.
Seeing the other unable to even keep his eyes open while still stuffing food into his mouth, Gela instinctively chose the faster method.
However, the Core Seed shook his head while biting down on a beast pincer.
"Water," he said. "I want to soak."
Even after soaking in a small pool on the lower level of Angon, Sakedi still hadn't let go of his food. His arms were still numb from the prolonged high-precision operation, shaking as if he had Parkinson's.
Theoretically, an adult Core Seed female had high attack and defense and could maintain long-term operation even in harsh environments, but he was truly exhausted these past few days. Even with the assistance of heavy machinery, the workload was comparable to a human carrying a thousand heavy bags in a day and walking up ten flights of stairs without an elevator.
Gela, who had finished handling the interrupted tasks and rushed over, saw the female floating face-down in the pool and almost thought he had drowned. Such a thing was unlikely for a Zerg, but it certainly looked that way.
Massive black wings were spread across the water and draped over the ground by the pool; the other was as motionless as a dead bug. Just as Gela hesitated over whether to wake the Core Seed, Sakedi flipped over with a splash.
He became a dead fish floating face-up.
Gela: "..."
He wanted to laugh but held it in, simply approaching the other gently.
Golden-brown eyes snapped open. The female finally seemed a bit more awake. Upon seeing the male, his black wings immediately wrapped tightly around himself.
The male sat quietly by the pool, leaning against the soaking wet female. No matter how he suppressed his emotions, he had missed the other dearly lately. During this small cycle that the Core Seed had disappeared, Gela had experienced busy days and nights where sleep was hard to find. Without the entwined tails and the arms that would catch him the moment he entered the door, the male grew increasingly fearful of the coming separation.
Even though Sakedi had explained clearly that it was just a short cargo transport, he was still very afraid. He had seen too many departures with no return. For instance, the tribe that abandoned him, or the brothers who died in accidental battles. Separation was the norm of this universe; everything that drifted would eventually return to drifting. Whenever he sat alone, sniffing the scent of the other's pheromones left in the nest, he would feel sad.
The next second, a pitch-black whip-tail splashed out of the water, instantly coiling around the male's slender white scaled tail.
The black Core Seed had, at some point, leaned his upper body against the edge of the pool. Because his height was lowered, his large frame felt much less oppressive than usual.
Sakedi, with the nearly finished beast pincer still in his mouth and his tail entwined with the other's, reached up to touch the male's cheek.
"Let me rest for a bit."
His golden-brown eyes looked at the other, heavy with exhaustion. His habitually deep voice was somewhat raspy.
"Then, I'll take you to see the gift."
***
**Glossary**
