SGT CH218

Inside the pitch-black disciplinary chamber, time stretched out infinitely, the boundary between day and night blurring into chaos.

Only the service droid arriving on a set schedule to deliver rations allowed X to perceive the passage of time.

According to his vague calculations, he had been shackled within the disciplinary chamber for nearly four months.

During that entire span, not a single bug had ever visited.

For the first two months of his confinement, due to the loss of his wings and severe injuries, his physical energy had depleted at an alarming rate.

Yet starting from the third month, whether because his wounds had finally scarred over or for some other reason, the energy within his body ceased its rapid drain.

This, instead, filled X with an inexplicable sense of dread.

The entire world seemed to fall dead silent, as though a piece of his own body had entered dormancy and slumber.

X did not understand where this panic and unease stemmed from, until the fourth month drew near, when a sharp, twisting spasm tore through his abdomen without warning.

X’s face drained of all color from the agonizing pain.

A heavy, dragging sensation pulled from deep within his lower belly, and understanding crashed over him in an instant.

Far beyond the physical torment was an insurmountable psychological despair and agony.

Just moments ago, he had lost a cub.

A cub that had not even had the time to fully take shape.

He had already lost a cub once before.

Fourteen years ago, beneath the artillery bombardment of the Dark Star Region, he had lost his little male.

And now, he had lost his second cub.

This had been a cub far too quiet, far too sensible.

It had remained noiseless inside his womb, even slipping into dormancy a month prior simply to divert more vital energy to sustain him.

He had known nothing of it.

The moment he became aware of its existence was simultaneously their farewell.

He hadn’t even had the chance to properly feel its presence.

Fourteen years ago, the living souls of the Dark Star Region were like mere ants under the bombardment of the Zerg Empire, obliterated with effortless ease.

Fourteen years later, even as an S-grade female and a Major General of the military, he remained nothing more than an ant before a high-ranking male of imperial royal blood, incapable of securing even a thread of survival for the cub in his womb.

He could protect nothing.

He could safeguard no one.

Amidst endless torment and despair, X’s mental realm fractured inch by inch, yet the strength coiled within his flesh surged in inverse defiance, shattering the bottleneck that shackled almost every female alive.

—SS-grade.

His brain felt as though pierced by countless gaping holes, savage gales howling through the ruins.

Amidst the shrieking squalls of his rampaging psyche, X caught the sound of distinct footsteps.

Before his conscious mind could even engage, an SS-grade female’s acute perception had already informed him of the male’s identity outside.

The heavy door to the disciplinary chamber slid open.

Clad in a lavish, noble formal suit, the Prince appeared at the threshold.

Blinding illumination flooded the chamber.

X had not witnessed such piercing brightness in an eternity.

Yet he refused to close his eyes, staring unblinkingly at the male advancing toward him step by step.

The male wore a cold, rigid expression, his lips pressed tight, carrying a look of profound reluctance and annoyance.

His gaze merely grazed over him for a fleeting instant before darting away.

“You were meant to be locked away here by me for the rest of your life, but…”

The Prince paused, taking a moment before pressing on:

“Tomorrow, His Majesty the Emperor and the Marshal are hosting an adulthood ceremony for me in the palace, and there is a ball… As an exception, I permit you to accompany me outside.”

The male spoke with haughty aloofness, not even deigning to look him in the eye.

“Heh.”

X let out a low chuckle, his face devoid of mirth, etched entirely with bitter mockery.

The Prince furrowed his brows slightly, glancing at him in confusion, displeasure surfacing across his features.

“What difference does going out or staying make? It is merely switching to another cage. I am tired, so I will not leave. Why doesn’t Your Highness stay behind and keep me company as well…”

As X spoke, the chains shackling his frame shattered into fragments link by link, and he slowly lifted eyes saturated with blood-red crimson.

Realizing something was wrong, Mu Si’s feet instinctively stepped back, glancing back in panic toward the exit.

Electricity crackled and hissed violently along the inhibitor.

Tilting his neck, X rolled his cervical vertebrae, raising a hand to rip the inhibitor collar cleanly from his throat.

With a crushing clench of his fingers, he crumpled it into a mangled clump of scrap metal.

Upon his person, there were no longer any restraints.

Mu Si’s eyes widened in sheer horror, spinning on his heel to flee.

At such close quarters, however, how could a male ever outrun a female?

Much less an SS-grade female.

Razor-sharp talons burst clean through his chest from behind.

The male’s voice drowned within his throat, reduced to a ragged cough choked with bloody froth.

X collapsed to the floor, dragging the male down with him.

The male sprawled backward in the pool of blood, his platinum-blond hair stained crimson, yet still unreasonable in its breathtaking beauty.

Propping himself over him, X quietly felt the ebbing of his life.

The male’s constitution had already been depleted, terribly frail.

That heart beat far more feebly than the last time.

His conclusion was already sealed.

The male struggled weakly, glaring at him with eyes brimming with tears of agony; within those eyes lay an unspoken interrogation, alongside something else.

X could not decipher it, nor did he wish to.

Or rather, his shattered mental realm could no longer support coherent thought.

With his mental realm collapsing and his body having forcefully broken through to SS-rank, his own life had long entered its final countdown.

Having personally ended the male who had drugged him and brought death upon his cub, he held no remaining will to live.

He could go reunite with his little male, and his unborn insect egg…

A tear of blood slipped down, landing upon the male’s pale face.

The male abruptly ceased his struggles; gazing at him with tear-filled heterochromatic eyes, he unexpectedly smiled.

A smile steeped in fresh blood.

This smile left X utterly at a loss.

“X-gege…”

The male called softly, coughing bloody foam from the corner of his lips, yet stubbornly insisted on lifting his hands to loop around his neck.

That address, which seemed to hail from the deepest recesses of ancient memory, petrified X in place.

He allowed the male’s hands to drape over his neck without moving.

Beside his ear, the male whispered in a dying breath:

“You come… to die with me…”

He had murdered an imperial prince; regardless of the court’s sentence, he could never escape death.

He was destined to die anyway.

What was more, his mental condition could not sustain his survival in the slightest.

Yet that final murmur of “X-gege” from the Prince left X in a daze, sending a violent tremor through the ruins of his collapsed mental realm.

“Why… did you…”

X wanted to ask something, but abruptly lost his voice.

The male had already breathed his last in his embrace.

Still maintaining that posture of an embrace…

Judging by this posture alone, they truly appeared like an inseparable pair of lovers… dying together for love.

X’s question was left without an answer for eternity.

For reasons unknown, his heart ached so savagely it felt as though he were dying.

X violently coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Coughing with gut-wrenching agony, his strength deserted him, slumping limp atop the male’s cooling body.

In that awkward, intertwined embrace, he plunged into darkness…

…

Just as his consciousness was on the verge of sinking into absolute oblivion, a formidable, unyielding surge of psychic power suddenly dragged him violently back…