Apocalypse Architect: A Tower Defense LitRPG

Chapter 186: Summoning the Swarm

In an instant, the soaring, ninety-foot pillar of fire startled the adult Parasitic Silkworm on the rooftop.

From the moment they had entered the sector, Jax hadn’t seen the beast twitch a single muscle. Now, it was moving.

“Holy crap,” Vance breathed, standing beside Jax as the heat washed over them. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that thing was just a massive corpse. It’s actually moving!”

“Don’t get cocky,” Jax warned, his voice tight. “Its abilities are lethal. It spits a highly toxic silk. Once you’re caught in its web, the poison paralyzes you, and you’re done. No hope of survival.”

Jax ordered the team back, and they hauled ass toward the safety of their fortified building.

Behind them, the concussive, crackling roar of bursting eggs continued to echo off the skyscrapers.

At the apex of the Tianhai Building, the Parasitic Silkworm finally unfurled its massive wings. The sheer span of them blotted out the stars. It beat the air once, launching its colossal, bloated body off the edge of the skyscraper, desperate to salvage its brood.

It spiraled down, the downdraft from its wings kicking up a localized hurricane of dust, before landing heavily in the plaza.

By this time, Jax and the crew had sprinted up the stairwell and reached the third-floor kill box. They crowded around the shattered windows, nervously tracking the Tier 7 predator.

“It moved! We actually pissed it off!” one of Vance’s men shouted, half-terrified, half-ecstatic. “I should have gone down there! Stomping those eggs sounded incredibly therapeutic!”

“Focus,” Jax barked, cutting off the chatter. “Start thinking about where you’re going to dive when it attacks. A Tier 7 is not a hundred Tier 6 bugs duct-taped together. It’s an apex predator.”

“What else can it do?” someone asked nervously. “Besides the silk?”

“The silk isn’t just sticky,” Jax clarified. “The mucus evaporates on contact with the air. The resulting gas is intensely toxic. If you breathe it in, your nervous system locks up.”

“And it can fly,” Vance added grimly. “That’s the real problem. Standard automated defenses can’t track an aerial target of that size moving at that speed.”

Down in the plaza, the Silkworm realized the futility of saving its nest. It opened its cavernous maw, spewing massive globs of thick, translucent mucus onto the inferno.

However, the gasoline-fed fire was too intense. The mucus sizzled and boiled away, feeding the flames rather than extinguishing them.

Jax watched from his vantage point, a tight, relieved grin on his face. “If it had reacted five minutes earlier, it might have smothered the blaze. But the fuel has soaked through to the foundation. It’s too late.”

Realizing its brood was lost, the Silkworm threw its head back. A deafening, ultrasonic screech shattered the night air. The roar carried a physical weight, a shockwave of pure, unadulterated fury.

Jax knew the rules of the game. He had murdered its children; it was going to murder him.

The Silkworm’s wings snapped open.

Its massive body launched into the sky, banking sharply before accelerating directly toward Jax’s fortified building.

“Brace!” Jax roared, pulling the industrial remote from his pocket.

He slammed his thumb down on the red master switch.

The heavy trunk cable screamed as thousands of amps flooded the circuit. The enormous sphere atop the Defense Tower ignited with blinding, ethereal blue light. Countless arcs of plasma danced across the orb’s surface, hungry for a grounding point.

Volt was hunched nearby, his eyes glued to the digital readout of his current sensor. He was sweating bullets, watching the system load push dangerously close to the melting point of the spliced cables.

Flap! Flap!

The Silkworm’s wings beat the air, shedding a cloud of bioluminescent scales. It looked like a woman wearing too much foundation powder; every movement released a thick, glittering dust into the night.

“Distance! Thirty yards!” Vance yelled.

“Twenty yards!”

“It’s in the zone!”

The moment the beast crossed the threshold, the Defense Tower shrieked. A thick, jagged bolt of blue lightning discharged from the orb, striking the Silkworm dead center in its thorax.

The impact was instantaneous. The scales floating around the beast were highly combustible. The lightning ignited them, triggering a cascading series of mid-air explosions. The sky bloomed with silver and blue fire, like a terrifying, lethal fireworks display. The crew watched, utterly mesmerized.

The Silkworm shrieked in pain and immediately banked away, retreating from the tower’s effective range.

Through his binoculars, Jax assessed the damage. His stomach dropped. The electric shock, which had instantly vaporized a Tier 5 creeper just hours ago, had merely scorched the Silkworm’s armor and burned away its loose scales.

“The amperage isn’t high enough!” Jax shouted. “Volt! Crank it!”

“Copy that!” Volt twisted the dial on his terminal, pushing the load further into the red.

Zzzzz-crack!

The plasma on the tower’s orb intensified, the blue arcs thickening into aggressive, snapping whips of energy.

ROAR!

The Silkworm landed on the roof of the Tianhai Building. It reared up, its maw expanding to an impossible width.

A barrage of thick, white silk threads shot across the chasm, raining down on Jax’s position.

“Hit the deck! Move down a floor!” Jax screamed, diving for the stairwell.

The crew scrambled, piling down the stairs in a chaotic tangle of limbs. The moment Jax cleared the landing, a horrifying hiss echoed from the floor above.

Jax paused, looking back up the stairwell.

The white silk had draped across the concrete ceiling and floorboards. It wasn’t webbing. It was acid. Like red-hot iron dropped onto a block of ice, the silk melted straight through the reinforced concrete, boring deep, jagged holes into the structure.

“Holy shit,” Jax muttered, his eyes wide. “That’s a hell of a lot worse than a Tier 4 spider.”

He carefully crept back up the stairs, peering through one of the melted gaps. The Silkworm was pacing the opposite roof, clearly hesitating. It wanted them dead, but the crackling aura of the Defense Tower gave it pause.

After several tense minutes, the Silkworm realized its ranged attacks couldn’t penetrate the lower floors. Frustration overrode its caution. It took to the air once more, diving straight into the kill box.

The tower fired. Another massive bolt of lightning slammed into the creature.

This time, the increased amperage hit home. The Silkworm’s body erupted into flames as the voltage cooked its internal fluids. It thrashed wildly in the air, shedding burning scales like falling meteors, before crashing hard onto an adjacent roof.

It rolled, crushing masonry beneath its bulk, until the flames were smothered.

The Silkworm staggered upright, smoking and charred, and glared directly at Jax’s building.

Jax met its gaze through the optics. There was a chilling, hyper-focused intelligence in those multifaceted eyes. It was pure, distilled killing intent.

“Volt,” Jax said, his voice steady despite his racing heart. “Can the grid handle another surge?”

Volt checked his smoldering terminal. “We can push it, but we are out of time. If you don’t kill it on the next pass, the cables are going to liquidate. The system will short, and we lose the tower.”

Jax stared at the beast. It wasn’t attacking. It was just sitting there, twitching.

“Did it figure out our power limit?” Jax muttered. “Or is it just scared of the juice? Dammit, if it doesn’t commit to a charge, we’re screwed.”

He turned to the group. “Are there any other egg clusters nearby?”

Vance paled. “You aren’t seriously going back out there to burn more eggs? It’s already aggroed! If you step outside now, it’ll dive on you instantly!”

“He’s right,” Volt warned. “It’s suicide.”

Before Jax could argue, the Silkworm changed its behavior. It stood up on its hind legs and began to beat its wings in a strange, rhythmic pattern. Massive clouds of the glittering, bioluminescent scales poured from its body, catching the high-altitude wind and drifting out across the city blocks.

“What the hell is it doing?” Jax asked, bewildered. “Why is it shedding its armor?”

Elena stepped up beside him, her sniper rifle lowered. “It’s not shedding. It’s broadcasting.”

“What?”

“The scales. They carry its pheromones,” Elena explained, her voice dropping into a grim register. “The wind is carrying its scent across the entire city. It’s calling the brood.”

Jax lunged for the window and looked down at the streets below.

The glittering scales were settling over the ruins like a toxic snow. As the dust hit the pavement, the scattered, surviving insect monsters suddenly stopped. Dozens of them raised their heads, tasting the air.

Then, the shadows moved. From the alleys, the sewers, and the collapsed basements, hundreds of dormant insects surged into the streets. They weren’t moving randomly. They were forming a tidal wave of chitin, and they were all charging directly toward Jax’s building.

“Well, shit,” Jax breathed. “They’re coming. Everyone to the walls! Prepare for a siege!”