Sakti sat on the bridge, opening the star map once more. A myriad of small planets immediately surrounded him.
The white male Zerg was curled up in a nearby chair, fallen into a deep sleep.
It was currently in a state where seeing the worker Zerg before it inspired terror, yet not seeing him inspired even greater dread. Their first meeting had left a deep enough psychological scar of Sakti as a murderous executioner, but on the other hand, he was the only being currently in control of its fate. It had no choice but to depend on him to survive.
Even in sleep, the male maintained a slightly curled, defensive posture.
Three days ago, drawing on his extensive experience as a cat owner, Sakti had tossed the male into the washroom immediately after it emerged from the healing pod to scrub away the mottled scents clinging to its body. The mixture of healing fluid, the male’s sweet pheromones, and the lingering scents and fluids of other low-level workers had caused Sakti’s scent glands—which were more sensitive than a bloodhound’s—slight discomfort.
What gave him an even bigger headache was that the male couldn't bear the weight of armor. It couldn't simply throw on an exoskeleton suit like he did to serve as clothes. In the end, he had been forced to pull out a length of fabric that looked suspiciously like a bedsheet to wrap the creature in.
The Zerg were a fierce people; switching to xenomorphic forms during combat was common, and running around naked was practically a daily occurrence for them.
However, Sakti could not accept the "breezy" feeling of exposed legs. He only had to close his eyes to imagine his etiquette officer fainting at the sight. He would rather wander around in a set of exoskeleton armor that was overly heavy for a human but negligible for a Zerg.
The male had stood there obediently, watching as the core-species worker expressionlessly tied the bedsheet into a knot that was impossible to undo. It looked as if it had something to say but didn't quite dare. It kept stealing glances at him, looking away, and then peeking again, thinking it was being subtle.
Sakti stood straight and glanced at the cowering white Zerg. "Speak."
The male spoke slowly, tentatively. "Writing... I can give it to you."
It clutched the fabric on its body as if ready to bolt at any moment, its two pairs of eyes blinking uneasily. "I can let you write."
"Do... do you want it?" Its voice trailed off at the end, tinged with uncertainty and a hint of sycophancy.
Sakti: ???
He took a moment to process this before realizing the male meant it could teach him the Zerg Universal Language.
It had to be said that while Gra—he was still using that casual designation for the creature—could speak some Human Universal, its grammar was often fragmented. Verbs and adjectives were more difficult for it than simple nouns. Its speech possessed a certain "beauty" that defied normal word order, often giving Sakti the illusion that he was listening to a regional official who had abandoned their local tongue to give a written report in Human Universal; the general meaning was there, but upon closer inspection, every sentence was a disaster.
This proposal caused him to study the male for a moment, until the creature began to hunch its body again out of unease, following its instinct to make itself look as small as possible. Its thin, half-severed scaled tail wrapped around its own legs, trying to suppress their trembling.
This male was somewhat different from what he had expected.
Sakti smiled slightly and stepped back, giving the creature some breathing room.
It was very clever.
And very perceptive.
Ever since it had initiated conversation in Human Universal while still in the healing pod, Sakti had realized Gra was different from the males in his previous knowledge. Its level of intelligence regarding reading the room and struggling for survival was truly impressive.
Even when its teeth were chattering with fear, the male could summon the courage to speak up at the right moment to reasonably garner attention and value. Its judgment of Sakti’s mood was admirably precise.
He did not fear intelligent beings; managing a clever creature was far less taxing than dealing with a dull one.
"Fine," Sakti replied, tilting his head to signal the male to follow.
He led the creature all the way to the bridge.
While exceptionally capable employees were certainly beloved by bosses, employees who worked for free brought even more joy.
Sakti pressed the creature into a grueling cycle of learning. Gra explained the universal symbols on the control panels and flight logs one by one. Every time the male uttered a syllable, Sakti repeated it in his mind.
The unlucky male was like a conscripted laborer, forced to accompany a terrifying high-level core-species worker through three days of language lessons, never getting a chance to return to its own cabin.
When it couldn't hold out any longer, it would wrap itself in its blanket and sleep in a chair on the bridge. Upon waking, it would be hauled back to the worker's side to continue the inhumane tutoring.
Once the decision was made to follow the original route to the energy star without changing the destination, only a few days remained of the voyage.
Sakti immersed himself in the sea of learning with an attitude that completely disregarded the male's well-being. Before reaching the energy star, he needed to make himself look more like a "native" Zerg.
The former overachiever, who had mastered multiple human languages in his past life, decisively added Zerg Universal to his repertoire.
This level of effort, enough to make a human linguist weep, would have certainly earned him a targeted ad on the Inner Rim Network: *Sign up for XX Course and master a foreign language in three days!*
For the first two days, he had Gra read every bit of text found on the ship. From the third day onward, he began using Zerg Universal for simple conversations with Gra, and the lessons shifted toward a brief history of the Zerg and information on the various core ethnic groups.
Upon realizing that four years had passed since his natural death in his previous life, Sakti closed his eyes and let out a low, sigh-like buzz.
But in the next second, this sentimentality vanished.
The good news was that the cosmic lines and timelines seemed to be intact.
The male was clever; it never asked why he couldn't speak the universal language, nor why he was ignorant of common knowledge that even a larva would know. It didn't even ask why he spoke the human tongue more fluently than the Zerg tongue.
Outside of teaching hours, it kept its mouth shut, offering not a single word about its master.
"Come here, Gra."
Beckoning to the newly awakened white male, Sakti shifted his body slightly to reveal the star map he had been obscuring.
The male blinked, startled by the name, then climbed down from the chair to approach the tall worker. It curled up by the worker's seat and began introducing the names and characteristics of the planets it recognized one by one.
Such conversations occurred several times between them.
At first, the male had looked utterly bewildered, projecting a sense of "Who is Gra?" This quickly transitioned into a submissive acceptance of "Oh, I guess I am Gra."
Sakti gradually moved some of the cargo to the bridge. During breaks in the lessons when the male was resting, he would mentally recite the newly learned words while using whatever tools he could find to dismantle and modify the scavenged weapons in bulk.
This resulted in the male having to navigate around piles of mechanical parts every time it approached him.
Before reaching the first jump point, Sakti cleared the entire bridge at top speed, sorting and storing the scattered items as if a violent tornado had passed through. He moved so fast that Gra’s expression went blank.
But the male understood why immediately—
The dilapidated raider ship’s alarms shrieked as it performed the spatial jump. In the next second, the artificial and Zerg-tech gravity fields cut out.
Everything that wasn't secured—or wasn't secured well enough—flew toward what used to be the ceiling. The entire hull shuddered violently as if it were about to flip inside out.
The safety restraint on the male’s chair gave a soft *click*. Before it could even feel terror or fly out of its seat, the high-level core-species worker beside it clicked his tongue. A black, scaled tail lashed out like a whip, pinning the male directly into the chair.
Gra gasped, then whispered a thank you in Human Universal.
The black tail remained wrapped around it until the gravity field resumed operation, only then sliding away like a serpent.
Through these few days of observation, the male had discovered that Sakti was far more stable than he appeared. Furthermore, when Gra maintained its humanoid mimicry, his attitude became particularly lenient.
He did not beat Gra, nor did he force Gra to mate. He provided meals on time. After discovering that first time that the male couldn't bite through the hard shells and skin of the xenobeasts, the core-species worker would crush the hard shells of the food before handing it over.
This made Gra less afraid when approaching him.
However, as they neared the energy star, a new kind of anxiety shrouded the male once more. It often watched the worker with what it thought were hidden glances, its drooping wings unable to stop rubbing together restlessly.
This anxiety reached its peak on the final day of the voyage. The worker across from it was terrifyingly intelligent; from knowing nothing of the language at the start, he could now hold intermittent conversations in Zerg Universal, ruthlessly demonstrating the staggering learning capacity of a core-species worker.
Gra felt that the other might have noticed its unease, but Sakti never acknowledged it.
When it stole another look at Sakti, the man had removed the exoskeleton armor from his upper body and was twisting his head back, trying to see his own nape and shoulder blades.
The tall worker had turned his head nearly a hundred and eighty degrees. Combined with his humanoid form, the effect was extremely horrific, looking like something that had just crawled out of a horror movie.
Below the shoulder blades, black Zerg wings were released from their sheaths, finally engorging with blood in the air. The thin wings possessed a nearly transparent quality and were longer than Sakti had expected, trailing down past the back of his knees.
"Speak." He acted as if he had eyes all over his body, fully aware of Gra’s scrutiny despite not looking at the creature.
The overhead lights cast a glow that made the newborn wings look as if they were coated in a layer of slowly flowing shadow. Faint light dripped along the edges of the wings, perfectly fitting the description of "iridescent black."
Sakti himself found them utterly repulsive.
But when he fluttered his brand-new wings, the sensation of power and strength was invigorating.
The Zerg wings, once active, functioned like air cutters, vibrating at a speed incomprehensible to humans, nearly shredding everything beside him.
He felt the male beside him cast a wide-eyed, envious look his way, while its anxiety became even more pronounced.
If Gra had been able to barely mask its unease before, at this moment, it seemed to radiate a sense of despair.
"Will you trade me?" the male asked softly.
It finally spoke, unconsciously tucking its crippled wings behind its back.
This time, Sakti turned his head back around.
The fully matured high-level core-species worker—from his neck to his chest, down to his waist, legs, and the talons of his xenomorphic form—possessed a powerful body of fluid, sharp lines. His unfurled wings hung behind him, and his black, whip-like scaled tail lay quietly in wait.
He possessed a strange, monstrous beauty that was both powerful and terrifying.
Gra looked as if it wanted to flee immediately, but it forced itself to stand its ground.
As the other approached with the steady poise of a great cat, the male almost completely stopped breathing.
Sakti stared at Gra for a moment, seemingly deep in thought. He watched the white Zerg use every ounce of its strength to hide its terror, even as its wings and tail trembled uncontrollably.
Then, he reached out and, as if patting a puppy, carelessly stroked the creature's head.
The male shuddered at the intimate touch, a restless, soft buzzing sound emitting from its abdomen.
The high-level core-species worker allowed a smile to touch his lips, his golden-brown eyes looking like a predator lurking in the shadows.
"No," he said slowly, holding the male's gaze. "You will not be a trade good."
***
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