CHAPTER 312: CREATING WHAT?

Liliana didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her team knew how she worked.

When she was deep in thought, running the numbers in her head, pulling apart the patterns and putting them back together, they kept quiet.

There were no unnecessary guesses, no filler talk, just silence and focus.

She crouched again, gloved fingers tracing a path in the dirt near the edge of the tunnel. She was calculating the distances, the growth, and the estimated expansion rate.

She wasn’t even using tools—just memory, instinct, and the kind of experience that didn’t rely on machines.

The numbers didn’t make sense. Not at all. Nothing in nature spread this fast unless it had help.

"Bring me the device," she said without turning her head. "The one we pulled from the cultist team last week."

Her second-in-command was already moving. She knew which one.

A few moments later, the device powered up, flickering once as it cut through the fake surface layer of garbage data.

Junk visuals vanished. Underneath, something real started to take shape on the screen.

Liliana leaned in.

It wasn’t a list of locations. Or files.

It was a partial map.

Not a surface map. A tunnel grid. A layered one.

Her eyes narrowed as she scrolled through it.

Dozens of branches.

Symbols at the joints. Sharp angles, repeating marks. These weren’t beast tags. Not even close.

They were too clean, too deliberate. This wasn’t instinctive carving. This was designed. A language. Maybe code.

"They weren’t just breeding monsters," she muttered, almost to herself. "They were building something."

Her team came in closer, trying to see.

She zoomed in.

The tunnel markings weren’t laid out by distance from entry—they were marked by depth. Depth and branching direction.

And the further down it went, the more organized it became. Not random at all. Some of the farthest nodes weren’t even near this area.

They were under zones that had been declared cleared months ago. A few looked like they went beneath inhabited regions, cities, military hold zones, and even old research sites.

She stood up.

"Get me a satellite sweep—300 kilometers, full top-down."

The comms officer didn’t look up. "Already filed that request. Central denied it. They said the sector’s locked under cult containment protocol."

Liliana didn’t pause. "Tell them I’m overriding it."

"You don’t have clearance, ma’am."

She looked at him for the first time.

"I’m not asking."

He hesitated. That was enough.

A scout leaned in, keeping his voice low. "You think this is tied to the cult?"

"Yes," she said, not even blinking. "But not like we thought. Not some ritual site. This isn’t about summoning or prayer.

This is logistics. Movement. Storage. Coordination. They built this while we were busy chasing shadows above ground."

She turned back to the biggest tunnel opening. The Earth dipped down at an angle that shouldn’t have been stable. But it held. And the deeper part wasn’t just dark—it felt full.

She stared a moment longer.

"Pull the unit back fifty meters."

A brief pause.

"Now."

The team did as told, shifting back in formation. No one questioned the order.

She stayed where she was.

Took three steps forward. Just into the mouth of the tunnel. Not deep.

Enough.

The air changed.

It wasn’t stale, or musty, or wet. It wasn’t like the decay you’d expect from an old cave. It was warmer.

Not in temperature, but in tension. Something was giving off energy. Something that shouldn’t be.

She closed her eyes for just a second.

And there it was.

Not a growl.

Not rocks falling.

But a low, pulsing rhythm. Like coded noise wrapped in static. Not loud. Not violent.

Deliberate.

She stepped out again, straightened, and turned to the others.

"This isn’t a leftover infestation," she said. "It’s coordination."

The comms lit up with a ping. A warning from one of the nearby listening posts.

Unconfirmed tremors. Patterns in the soil. Consistent with subterranean burrowing.

She didn’t need to think twice.

"Reroute nearby patrols. Pull last year’s underground scan data. Compare every recorded route."

"What exactly are we looking for?" one of them asked.

She didn’t hesitate.

"Connections."

And then, calm as ever:

"We’re not cleaning up someone else’s mess."

"We’re standing on a fuse."

"And whoever lit the other end... they planned this a long time ago."

—

The next nest—or hive, if she was being more accurate—wasn’t far on the map.

But reaching it wasn’t going to be simple.

They couldn’t use aerial drones. Couldn’t risk active scanners. Too much noise. Too many eyes.

Everything had to be done on foot.

No vehicles. No comm bursts.

Old-school infiltration.

The deeper they went, the stranger the tunnel structure became.

Rough stone gave way to something smoother. The walls started to shine faintly under light, like they’d been coated in resin or something almost organic.

But it wasn’t resin. It wasn’t even bone. It was... layered. Manufactured. Like bone crossed with ceramic, but grown instead of built.

It wasn’t natural.

It wasn’t even pretending to be.

Liliana moved to the front of the group, steps carefully. She raised her hand once when she felt a soft give beneath her boots—ground that shouldn’t have shifted.

They all stopped immediately.

No talking.

They moved again once she gave the signal.

They didn’t find a nest.

They found bodies.

Two of them. Armor half-burnt, weapons still strapped to their backs. Their faces were ruined beyond recognition. No dog tags. No salvageable data.

But their gear—marked.

Cult sigils, crudely carved into their chest plates and not painted. Carved. On purpose.

And between them?

Something else entirely.

It was shaped like a heart but twice the size. It was made of thick, wet muscle lined with crystal veins. The veins pulsed every few seconds—slow, steady.

Alive.

But it wasn’t a living thing. Not in the usual way. It was a fusion of muscle and tech. Artificial but biological. Not made in a lab. Grown.

Liliana crouched beside it, tapped her comms quietly.

"Subject located. Marking site. Sending vitals now."

"Copy," the reply came. "That’s the third anomaly this week."

"No," she said, standing. "This one’s different. They’ve stopped modifying. They’re creating now."

"Creating what?" came the question.