My Swarm Academia: Call Of The Void

The ruined city was starting to become familiar to Kai.

"Well, I feel like it's starting to be a thing that will just happen whenever I use my Quirk strongly." Kai sighed. "And here, I thought I was going to have a perfectly nice day. I felt like I was making great progress with Deku. But I guess having a steady minefield of max zerglings and running him through the course three times was a bit of exercise of my Quirk for one day."

Kai closed his eyes and turned his Quirk the slightest bit on. Now he was able to generally sense where the Swarm was.

"There's something… there!"

Kai turned and ran. This time, he wasn't going to try to find a survivor to ask them questions. The last time had clearly taught that they wouldn't notice him.

Of course, if they did, chances were likely that they would just get more hysterical and he wouldn't learn anything anyways.

This time, he wanted to know what one of those roaches thought about everything.

Running at top speed, he found the back line again. But as he turned the corner to lay eyes on them, he was taken aback. Among the group of roaches were gigantic creatures two or three times their size. They had the six legs that roaches had but were a lot bigger and spikier. There was a glow that came from their back, as Kai was able to see as one leaned forward.

"Oh. So that's what they turn into. Wonder what they can do…"

Whatever that glow was about, it wasn't for decoration. The zerg weren't usually about that.

Kai ran up to them without any fear. After all, if his conclusions were correct…

Just like the human survivors before, the roaches and their bigger variants didn't react at all to Kai's presence.

Maybe this place was real, but Kai's presence there certainly wasn't. He could interact with what he wanted to so he could move around, but in the end, he couldn't change anything. So, he could open a door to go through it, but it would reset when… something. It wasn't going to matter what the exact condition was.

What was important was that he could walk right up to the roaches and… listening to the Swarm, he felt the name of ravagers. For a brief moment, he wondered why they knew any earth-based language at all, but then dismissed the thought. It had to be the woman that was leading them. They knew what she knew.

Kai climbed up the side of a roach onto its back.

"So, tell me what you know, roachie."

Resting one hand on its back, Kai closed his eyes and connected with the roach. The first bit of information he wanted was to know about this strain of zerg. Now that he was very familiar with its kind, he could theoretically summon them. However, with their mass being similar to a car, it would cost a lot more for him to summon and sustain them, just like with Arachne and Minerva. Kai wanted to know if it would be worth it.

Sigh. If only he'd thought about asking them directly before. Then it would have been easy to ask them to start developing a less lethal variant.

Which was going to be a problem as he saw the capabilities of both roaches and ravagers. Burrowed movement was nice, but acidic bile would be hard to make less lethal. Especially on the ravagers' artillery blasts. It would be very powerful, but he had to do things a bit more legally right now. He couldn't just blast down villains building by building.

He didn't even have a kill on sight allowance anymore.

Wait. He didn't have a license in the first place. Well, all Kai could hope for was for villains to come at him or the class with lethal force so that he could answer in kind.

Then again, decapitating and consuming people in front of the class would be bad for their mental health. Something was going to have to be done about that.

As a side note, why decapitation? Kai's mom always told him to leave something for criminals to be identified by. Heads are better than blood spatters, which tend to get mixed after a few kills. He had to consider the police, after all.

While Kai was distracted with the information he was getting and reminiscing, the pack of roaches began to move. Since his senses were tied together with the roach's, he barely noticed. It was like walking around your house on autopilot.

At least, until there was a bit too much shaking.

By shaking, Kai meant tank shells striking close by. He opened his eyes, looked up, and realized that he had reached the main battlefield. The roach he had been riding was still stuck behind its brethren, so it didn't have a personal worry, which is how he hadn't noticed until things became a little more imminent.

But that wasn't the thing that caught Kai's attention, though in a corner of his mind, he was getting ready to get the heck out of there. Dream or not, he didn't want to get hit by a tank shell to find out if it would hurt.

What really caught his attention was the biggest creature he had ever seen walk the earth. Er, this planet. Whatever. The skies were shadowed by huge creatures in the clouds, but this fifteen meter beast before him, as he completed the thought, took no less than five tank shells to its massive frame and kept walking, intent on stepping on them, or cutting them apart with their ten-meter scythes.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn! I may never have an opportunity to use one of these things. But if I do, I will NOT pass up that opportunity! Now THAT is Plus Ultra!"

Certainly, in the near future, he wouldn't have the space for one, much less a situation that really called for one. But maybe one day, all-out war would break out, and he could…

Kai sighed as much as he could as he ran out of the pack to safety. Things weren't likely to get that far. Rather, it would be better if he never needed one. He definitely wasn't strong enough to call on such a thing, and it wouldn't fit any jobs he had for it. It was already difficult to find ways to make full use of roaches with his current situation.

Slowly, the tanks that towered over the crowd all went silent, and were hidden by the wave of bodies that pushed forward.

Kai looked to the sky. There were large creatures with bat-like wings circling a building that towered over the others in the distance. That must be the objective.

"I wonder what's…"

Kai closed his eyes and reached out with his Quirk again. As soon as he reached one of those fliers, he latched on so that he was linked to it alone. As it circled the building, it had one thought.

Prevent terran reinforcements from approaching the palace. The Queen must have revenge by her own hands.

Kai hadn't pulled his telepathic tendril back before a scream surged through the hivemind. It disrupted everything, blocking the coordination between the zerg, until voices from behind Kai rerallied them. The voices sounded a lot like Arachne and Minerva. Broodmothers.

In a blink, he was back in his futon. Kai sighed.

"Can't I just learn something useful once? I thought I was going to get somewhere tonight," he muttered as he tried to go back to sleep. There were hours yet before school.