Harem Online: My Party Is Full of Beautiful Celebrities

Chapter 151: Ant Queen

In the middle of Cascade Valley, where every waterfall emptied into the vast lake spanning the crater, the water stopped behaving like water.

Moments ago, the lake had still been churning from the guild war and the flood Martin had unleashed across the valley. Waves slapped against broken stone. Foam gathered around torn roots and shattered monster bodies. The whole crater should have been noisy with aftermath.

Instead, the lake grew quiet in a way that felt deliberate.

The waterfalls kept crashing, but the sound seemed farther away now, muffled beneath a pressure that settled over the valley. Surviving players on the upper ridges felt it before they understood it, that slow tightening in the air that made hands close around weapons and eyes drift toward the center of the lake.

There, beneath the surface, a thin black line opened.

It did not spread like spilled ink. It curled inward first, patient and precise, then began pulling the surrounding water into itself. Crystal-clear blue folded into gray, gray thickened into black, and the purity of the lake vanished strand by strand until the center became a wound darker than the deepest shadow.

The wound turned.

Water rose with it.

A grinding roar pushed up from beneath the lake as a waterspout climbed into the air, dragging sheets of water after it while every waterfall around the crater continued pouring down from the cliffs. The rising column swallowed those falling streams whole, taking the valley’s own lifeblood into itself and staining it black on the way up.

Unlike a storm, which scattered everything in its path, this force gathered the valley into itself.

The waterspout twisted with purpose, each rotation heavier than the last, and the darkness inside it pressed outward as though something buried under Cascade Valley had finally found a spine. Black spray lashed across the air, but the droplets refused to fall. They hovered above the lake in trembling swarms before the column reclaimed them.

A figure moved inside the spinning water.

At first, only fragments showed through the dark veil: the reach of long limbs, the curve of armor, the line of a narrow waist drawn beneath a powerful chest. With each turn of the vortex, the shape sharpened. Hips formed. Jagged antennae lifted into a crown-like silhouette. Four arms unfolded and vanished again behind the churning black.

The entire lake pulsed.

Every waterfall around the crater shuddered, and for a heartbeat it looked as though Cascade Valley itself had flinched. The waterspout swelled higher, bloated with stolen water and Dark Forces, until the peak of it clawed toward the sky.

Then the column ruptured.

Black rain burst outward and swept across Cascade Valley. It spattered slick rocks, broken trenches, abandoned shields, torn banners, tree roots, and monster corpses that had not yet dissolved into light. Each droplet hissed on contact, left behind a pulsing stain, and sank into the ground as though the valley had no strength left to reject it.

At the center of the ruined waterspout stood a humanoid female ant.

She had not fallen from the vortex. She had simply appeared where the darkness collapsed, standing on the lake’s surface while black water hardened beneath her clawed feet. Streams slid down her body and returned to the lake in thin, oily ribbons, leaving her motionless amid the storm she had just been born from.

For several seconds, she did nothing.

That stillness was worse than an attack.

Scaled armor covered her body like a natural exoskeleton, polished black beneath the rain with a faint purple sheen. It hugged her voluptuous curves with such deliberate precision that nature alone could not have shaped it. Around her neck and shoulders, jagged plates rose into a regal collar, while the armor over her chest dipped so low that protection clearly had not been the point.

Black plates cupped and framed the heavy swell of her breasts, drawing attention to her ample cleavage rather than hiding it. Each slow breath made the armor shift against her chest, guiding dark rain down exposed skin before it disappeared beneath decorative scales. She had the obscene allure of a monster matriarch designed for worship and terror in equal measure, a corrupted queen whose creator had cared more about sinful presence than battlefield practicality.

Thin crystal veins threaded through her armor like cracks through obsidian. Some glowed faintly from within, while others pulsed with black-red light from the center of her chest, curved beneath the generous weight of her bust, and trailed down her abdomen toward the sharp elegance of her hips. Her body mixed soft abundance with insectile menace, every seductive curve framed by hard armor and razor-edged limbs.

Her long legs looked powerful enough to split stone, ending in clawed feet that barely disturbed the lake beneath her. One pair of segmented arms hung at her sides with eerie grace, slender and monstrous at once, while the second pair rested behind her back in a folded, blade-like posture that made her stillness feel less passive and more restrained.

Her face almost passed for beautiful.

The longer anyone looked, the more wrong it became. Her cheeks were too smooth, her jawline too perfect, and her black lips parted around teeth no human mouth should have held. Long antennae trembled above her head, twitching through the rain toward every sound in the valley.

She was not merely a monster. She looked like the darkness had tried to remember a queen, a mother, a lover, and an executioner, then carved all of them into the same body.

Her fingers twitched.

The movement was small, but it broke the awful poise around her.

A harsh breath dragged through her throat. Her shoulders tightened, lifting the jagged plates along her collar. Crystal veins flashed across her armor as her head tilted to one side, slow and uneven, the way a person might move after waking inside a nightmare that had already lasted too long.

Her eyes snapped open.

Black sclera surrounded violet irises, and thin vertical pupils trembled at their centers. They did not settle on the lake, the cliffs, or the players watching from above. They shook as though trying to focus on too many memories at once.

The scream that tore from her throat was not a battle cry.

It carried rage, but rage was only the surface of it. Underneath was grief dragged raw, rejection left to rot, and a hatred so old it had stopped needing words. The sound ripped across Cascade Valley, scraping over every ridge and waterfall with the shrill bite of chalk against a board, claws against stone, and metal bending past the point where it should have broken.

No one understood the language, and no one needed to.

Several Night Espresso players flinched and clamped hands over their ears even though the game would not give them true pain. Others stumbled back from the waterfall edges, boots slipping on wet stone as instinct overruled pride. The scream attacked concentration instead of flesh, rattling their heads, breaking their rhythm, and making status windows flicker across the ridge.

The ant woman’s hands flew to her head.

Her claws sank into the sides of her skull and scraped sparks from the natural armor there. She folded forward, trembling, only to arch back again when another force seemed to seize her spine. Her lips moved without forming words. Her antennae lashed through the rain. Plates lifted along her back as her shoulders locked so hard that the armor looked ready to split.

She gripped tighter, denting herself beneath her own claws.

Her face could not hold one emotion for more than a heartbeat. Grief softened her mouth before hatred cut through it. Panic widened her violet eyes, self-loathing dragged them down, and then rage returned with enough force to twist another screech from her throat.

The second scream came shorter, uglier, and less controlled, no longer aimed at the sky or the lake or the cliffs. It seemed to strike everything at once.

The lake answered.

Black waves rolled outward from her feet, lifting in uneven rings that rose, trembled, and collapsed like kneeling bodies. Beneath the surface, dark veins crawled away from the center of the lake toward the cliffs, rooting through the water with slow, hungry purpose.

Far above, Night Espresso’s surviving players reached the edge of one of the upper waterfalls.

They did not look like victors. They came soaked, limping, and silent, their formation much thinner than it had been when the guild war began. Cracked armor hung from tired shoulders, torn cloaks clung to backs, and several players leaned on their weapons while healers moved between them with strained expressions, counting mana reserves that were already too low.

Near the rocks, rangers crouched with bows lowered. None of them looked relaxed. They simply understood that being the first idiot to shoot the thing in the middle of the lake was a privilege no one wanted.

Kuro A reached the edge first and sank into a crouch without wasting a word. His gaze swept the black water, the crawling veins, the ant woman’s posture, and the strange way the lake shaped itself around her. After a silent count, he raised one hand just high enough for the players behind him to see, stopping them before their shadows crossed the open edge.

No one behind him argued.

A few surviving officers gathered behind him, but whatever authority they still had after the guild war quieted beneath the pressure rising from below. They gripped weapons, traded quick looks, and waited for Kuro A to decide whether they were staring at a boss, a claim core, or something worse.

Martin arrived last because Ao Tenshin needed half the ridge to herself and still almost looked offended that the mountain had not made more room.

The young Dragon Turtle lowered her growing body with exaggerated care, claws scraping wet stone while water streamed down her shell and dripped from the tiny horns on her head. Her cheeks puffed in fierce concentration as she tried to preserve her dignity despite the very obvious danger of sliding into the waterfall. Once her front claws found stable ground, she lifted her chin as though the awkward climb had been a majestic entrance planned from the beginning.

Martin stood on her shell with one hand near the Crystal Spear and the other braced lightly against one of her shell ridges. The tired confidence left from the guild war stayed on his face only until he looked down at the lake and his smile faded.

The black water was spreading wider now. At its center, the ant woman still clutched her head hard enough to crack the armor around her skull. Dark rain slid over exposed skin, obscene curves, and jagged plates, while the veins beneath the lake pulsed in time with her breathing. The longer Martin watched, the less the crater felt like terrain and the more it felt like an extension of her suffering.

Ao Tenshin’s attempt at dignity vanished.

Her pupils widened, and the tiny horns on her head gave off a faint blue glow. The black water answered with a pulse of its own, smothering the glow before it could strengthen. She lowered her head slightly, not quite hiding, not quite challenging, while a low, uncertain rumble moved through her throat.

Martin felt it under his boots. His fingers tightened against her shell ridge.

Kuro A kept his eyes on the lake. "Brother EMP."

"Yeah," Martin said quietly.

The ant woman’s head snapped toward their waterfall with terrifying speed. One moment, she was bent under the weight of her own scream. The next, her violet eyes fixed on the ridge where Night Espresso stood.

Every player froze as even the black rain stopped falling.

Martin, Kuro A, Ao Tenshin, and every survivor behind them stared down at the creature on the lake as a system window appeared before them.

[Awakened Territory Core: Monument of the Dark]

[Core Avatar Manifested.]

From that single glance, they all shared the same thought.

We’re fucked.