The trio stepped through the portal and into a wall of thick, humid air. The overcast sky cast everything in muted grays and greens, lending the swamp an eerie stillness that felt ripped straight from a horror movie. Every breath carried the scent of stagnant water, decaying vegetation, and something faintly metallic, like a storm waiting to break.

  A distant croak echoed through the murk, answered by a rustling that was either the wind or a scurry.

  Dexter took a slow inhale, then gagged. “Yup. This is exactly how people go missing in every swamp flick ever made.” He waved a hand in front of his face as if physically shoving the stench away. “Ugh. I’d like to formally file a complaint against Louisiana’s swamp funk.”

  Quinn scanned the area. The swamp was dense, tangled, the kind of place where even the air had secrets. “You’re the one who couldn’t wait to get here,” he muttered, stepping carefully over a massive root that curled from the muck like a skeletal hand.

  Dexter grumbled. “Yeah, but I was picturing beignets and jazz, not getting slow-cooked alive in dirty sock soup.”

  Emily strode past him, completely unbothered, her boots barely sinking into the spongy earth. “Did you remember to turn on your suit’s air filtration setting?” She shot him a knowing smirk and a wink.

  Dexter blinked. “…There’s a what now?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sim, would you please enable Dexter’s air filtration and temperature in his climate settings before he passes out, please.”

  The air around him immediately cleared up and the temperature dropped to a cool, refreshing breeze. His suit’s nanofiber layer wicked away the sweat, and the putrid swamp air suddenly smelled... pleasant?

  Dexter exhaled in bliss. “Ohhh, soooo much better.”

  “Do you notice any upgrades?” Emily asked.

  He paused, sniffing the air. “Wait. Is that—lilacs?”

  Emily grinned. “I had Sim expand the filtration boundary about a foot outward. Your suit now purifies the air, making it breathable and pleasant. Think of it as—”

  “A suit air freshener.” Dexter snapped his fingers. “Emily, you absolute legend.” He stretched his arms dramatically. “Man, it’s nice having a woman’s touch on the team. I mean, I don’t need new drapes back at the Secret Sanctum, but this?” He gestured vaguely at the invisible bubble of purified air. “This is ‘DA BOMB.’”

  Emily shot Dexter a look. “Sim, remind me to talk to you about drapes.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Sim said.

  Dexter gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Sim chimed in. “Would you like to continue bantering, or should I update you on the mana anomalies?”

  Emily straightened. “Right. Sim, what’s the situation?”

  A soft ping sounded in their interfaces. “Coordinates locked. The strongest mana signatures are concentrated around a large tree, roughly two hundred meters due east.” Sim said.

  Dexter flicked his wrist, and his micro-drones flared to life—sleek, firefly-shaped constructs that glowed faintly in the gloom. With a thought, he sent them forward, weaving through the tangled branches like living embers.

  Quinn’s senses were on high alert. Something felt... off. “Does something just feel off to either of you?”

  “Like what?” Dexter asked.

  “Like the mana here is somehow different,” Quinn tried to explain.

  A moment later, Dexter’s display pinged. Dexter frowned. “Huh.”

  Emily caught Dexter’s expression and immediately tensed. "What?" she asked, already shifting closer.

  “I’m getting some… weird readings around the base of that large tree.” His fingers danced over his bracer as he adjusted the filters. The heat signature display flared to life, showing a chaotic cluster of tiny shapes— dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Then something shifted. Dexter froze mid-scroll. His stomach dropped.

  “…Uh, guys? We have a problem.” His voice was too flat. Too controlled. That wasn’t a joke.

  Quinn straightened, all traces of humor gone. “How bad?”

  Dexter swallowed. “Sim, can I relay the drone feed to the chat system?”

  “Connected,” Sim confirmed.

  “Check your video feeds.” Dexter said not believing his eyes.

  A holographic projection flickered to life before them.

  The tree loomed ahead—an ancient, towering behemoth, its twisted roots curling like the grasping fingers of some long-buried thing. Its bark was thick, gnarled, and slick with swamp moisture, half-submerged in the murky water.

  And covering it—sprawling over the bark, creeping across the roots, clinging to the very air itself—were beetles.

  Hundreds of them. At first glance, they looked normal. Sleek, segmented bodies gleamed with an oily sheen, their dark carapaces streaked with faint, ridged patterns. Their spindly legs moved in eerie synchronization, antennae flicking like tuning forks, searching. But then, one of them vanished. A breath later, it reappeared three feet away, a faint, ghostly streak of mana trailing behind it like a fading afterimage before solidifying again.

  Emily’s stomach twisted. Then another one flickered—phasing in and out of existence like it was tunneling through the air itself. A ripple of chittering clicks passed through the swarm, as if they were communicating.

  Emily’s breath hitched. “Tell me I didn’t just see that.”

  Dexter’s fingers flicked over his bracer, zooming in on the drone feed. His stomach lurched. The beetles weren’t just climbing the tree—they were climbing in midair. Hundreds of them, their glossy, segmented bodies flickering like corrupted data, scrambling over something invisible.

  Emily stiffened. “Are they—?”

  “They’re not flying,” Dexter whispered. His voice lacked its usual sarcasm. “No wings, no wind, no nothing. They’re just... walking on air?”

  Quinn’s expression darkened as he studied the projection. The beetles weren’t just swarming randomly. They had a pattern. A rhythm. Like they were following unseen pathways, tethered to something the human eye couldn’t perceive.

  Every few seconds, a beetle vanished, just blinked out of existence. A heartbeat later, it reappeared feet away, a thin tendril of mana residue hanging in the air before dissolving.

  Then Dexter noticed something worse. The ones moving toward the tree? They didn’t land. They passed through it. A dozen beetles flickered in rapid succession, tunneling straight into the bark. The moment they phased through, a series of small, precise holes formed, swiss-cheesing the massive trunk.

  “Yup. I knew it. Bullet Beetles. I hate it.” Dexter said.

  Emily sucked in a breath. “Is that even possible?”

  The wounds were instant, but the tree fought back. Thick veins of golden mana pulsed from within the bark, sealing the wounds in seconds. The wood healed itself, knitting back together as if the attack had never happened.

  Quinn exhaled sharply. “That tree should be dead.”

  “Oh yeah. Super dead,” Dexter muttered. His eyes remained locked on the shifting, pulsating mass of insects. “Instead, is it… regenerating?”

  “I see it too,” Quinn agreed. His voice had lost its edge of skepticism. “I know self-healing when I see it.”

  Emily narrowed her eyes. “Dex, can you switch to X-ray mode. I want to see what’s underground.”

  Dexter hesitated for half a second—did he actually want to see what was underground?—but tapped the command. The screen flickered, shifting to an X-ray overlay. What they saw wasn’t just tunnels. It was a labyrinth. Veins of twisting, snaking passageways wove beneath the swamp, burrowing deep. Every layer teemed with movement. And within those tunnels? More beetles. Thousands of them. Their pulsing, faintly bioluminescent bodies slithered through the dark, churning through the earth like some nightmarish hive-mind machine.

  Dexter let out a low whistle. “Dude… That’s one massive colony.”

  The drones pinged in rapid succession, adjusting their proximity scans. The data kept coming. The tunnels didn’t just go down—they spread all the way around the tree and down about 30 feet.

  Emily’s grip tightened on her bow. “That’s more than a few hundred.”

  Quinn’s jaw tensed. “That’s an invasion.”

  Then, with a sudden movement, one of the beetles tunneled through the air—straight into Dexter’s drone and the feed cut to static.

  Dexter flinched. “Aaaaand we lost a drone.”

  Emily and Quinn didn’t respond. They were still watching with their enhanced vision.

  Quinn’s expression darkened. “If those things can burrow through solid objects like it’s paper, what do you think they’d do to us?”

  Emily’s stomach twisted. “It would be like getting shredded by a machine gun.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Dexter exhaled sharply. “Yeah, that’s not how I want to go out.”

  Quinn’s jaw clenched. “And if they can phase through anything…” He finally turned toward them, his voice low. “We might be completely defenseless.”

  Silence.

  Emily inhaled slowly, steadying herself. “We need to trap one. Figure out how it works. Let me try something.”

  They walked a little closer to the tree staying back far enough that they still didn’t see any beetles near them.

  Emily reached out with telekinesis, locking onto one of the closest beetles. It twitched in midair as she lifted it, its spindly legs thrashing, mandibles clicking in sharp, agitated snaps. The beetle’s oily black carapace shimmered, its segmented body twisting in her mental grip. For a moment, she had it. Then, it blinked. A split-second flicker, and it wasn’t there anymore. Emily’s focus shattered as the psychic tether snapped. The beetle reappeared five feet away, scuttling furiously into the tree and phasing through the bark like a ghost.

  Emily hissed through clenched teeth. "Well, that’s a problem.”

  Dexter raised an eyebrow. "Understatement of the year."

  Emily sighed, keeping her frustration in check. “Looks like once they phase out, I can’t hold them. That won’t be much help.”

  Dexter was already tapping commands into his bracers. His usual smirk was absent—replaced with focused intensity. “Alright,” he muttered, his drones adjusting positions. “Let’s see how these little freaks feel about high-voltage.”

  Quinn shifted. “Choose one that’s isolated. The last thing we need is them acting like wasps and swarming us.”

  Emily scanned the swarm, eyes narrowing. “There.” She pointed to a lone beetle climbing nothing—skittering through empty space in one of those invisible pathways. It was just far enough away from the others that a direct hit wouldn’t risk triggering the whole colony.

  Dexter grinned coldly. “Perfect.” He swiped a command. The drones repositioned, forming a triangular lock around the target. Their emitters pulsed with a faint, high-pitched hum, the air between them crackling with static buildup. Dexter’s fingers hovered over the command interface. "Let’s see how you like a little shock therapy.” His drone shifted position, its emitters flaring to life as a charged arc snapped from its metal antenna.

  Quinn, tracking its movement with enhanced perception, tensed. “Incoming.”

  The beetle flickered forward, tunneling through the air like a distorted glitch, leaving a faint, ghostly mana trail in its wake. It was almost beautiful, until it slammed into the electric net. A sharp, static pop detonated through the swamp. The beetle convulsed mid-air, screeching with a high-pitched, warbling chitter that didn’t sound entirely organic. Its form glitched, stuttering between dimensions, its exoskeleton crackling with arcs of electricity. For a split second, its body looked half-present, one part inside this reality, the other somewhere else. Then, the energy net failed.

  The beetle catapulted forward as if it had been fired from a gun, its trajectory warped by the electric surge. It crashed into the mud, still twitching, its bioluminescent veins flaring and pulsing erratically.

  Dexter’s grin widened. “Oh-ho, now that’s a reaction! Looks like electricity messes with their phasing but doesn’t stop it.” He flicked his bracer, recalibrating the drone settings. “Good to know.”

  Quinn crouched beside the beetle, his blade between them, studying it closely. “It can still phase through structured energy,” he said slowly, “but it gets disoriented.”

  The beetle twitched violently, its segmented limbs seizing. Its mandibles chattered, clicking out a rapid, rhythmic pattern—as if sending a signal.

  Dexter flexed his fingers over his bracer. “Alright, let’s see what happens if we double zap it.”

  His drone repositioned, its core humming with a rising charge. Blue-white lightning flared, crackling toward the grounded beetle.

  The instant the bolt struck, the beetle let out a piercing shriek, not just of pain but of warning. Its body flared like a distress beacon, bioluminescence surging to an almost blinding intensity as the veins beneath its carapace pulsed in a frantic, erratic sequence. The glow flickered wildly, building toward something—then, without a trace, it was gone. Leaving a faint mana trail.

  Dexter ran a hand down his face, staring at the empty patch of mud where the beetle had just been. "Great. So if we don’t kill ‘em fast enough, they just nope out. That’s super convenient." He said sarcastically as he exhaled through his nose. "Alright, new objective—we need a way to stop them from phasing. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our time playing whack-a-mole with extradimensional cockroaches. Ideas before we all end up as human Swiss cheese?"

  Emily was already thinking through the problem, her brows drawn tight. "Dex, your drones can scan for electromagnetic interference, right?"

  Dexter blinked at her. "Yeah… why?"

  She pointed to the massive tree where beetles were still flickering in and out, tunneling through the bark like it was air. "What if they’re not just burrowing through air? What if they’re riding the Earth’s magnetic field, like… a current?"

  Quinn made a noise in his throat, somewhere between understanding and concern. "So they’re not just tunneling. They’re… surfing invisible waves?"

  Emily nodded. "It’s possible. If they rely on a stable field to move, disrupting it might glitch their phasing."

  Dexter’s grin returned instantly. "Ohhh, you wanna break the Wi-Fi on their little tunneling hack? I like where your head’s at."

  Emily shot him a dry look. "Yes, Dexter. Because that’s exactly how magnetic fields work."

  Dexter was already moving, fingers dancing across his bracer’s interface, recalibrating his drones. "Alright, let’s see how they like fighting in airplane mode."

  With a flick of his wrist, the drones whirred into position, forming a tight triangular perimeter around the tree. The faint hum of shifting frequencies pulsed in the air as Dexter tweaked their outputs. "Gimme a sec—adjusting amplitude, tuning for max disruption… annnnnd EMP primed. Let’s fry some bug brains."

  The low-frequency pulse rolled through the swamp, subtle at first—then sharp, like a pressure change before a storm. The reaction was immediate.

  Beetles flickered violently, their movements stuttering mid-phase, legs jerking like someone had yanked their strings. Some dropped out of phase entirely, slamming into solid matter as if they’d miscalculated their jumps. Others reappeared fully corporeal, their exoskeletons clicking in what could only be confusion.

  Dexter let out a whoop, throwing a fist in the air. "Oh, yeah! That did something! Their phasing is totally janked up."

  Sim’s voice chimed in. “Confirmed. The disruption in the magnetic field has destabilized their tunneling ability. However—”

  Dexter groaned. “There’s always a ‘however.’ Just once, I want a ‘good job, team, you completely figured out the problem and we’re done and you can go home’ from you, Sim.”

  “However,” Sim continued, ignoring him, “the pulse won’t last forever. The beetles are already adapting.”

  Quinn muttered a curse under his breath. Sure enough, the swarm was shifting. A few of the beetles had stopped their frantic twitching, their bioluminescent bodies stabilizing as if recalibrating. Some flickered mid-phase, but instead of jerking violently, their movements started smoothing out—not fully functional yet, but getting there.

  One broke from the group, lunging toward a fallen log. It stuttered mid-air, legs flailing, but after a moment of struggling, it slipped clean through.

  Emily’s grip tightened on her bow. “We need something stronger—something that keeps them grounded.”

  Dexter flexed his fingers, already swiping through his bracer’s interface. “You want me to overclock it?” His grin turned feral. “Lets see how they like these apples.”

  Emily shot him a wary glance. “Dex—”

  He slammed the activation command. The swamp exploded with electromagnetic energy. Dexter’s drones pulsed hard, their emitters shifting to an unstable, pulsing white. Sparks spat from their cores, the air around them crackling with visible distortions. Even the murky swamp water rippled outward, reacting to the surge.

  The beetles reeled. Their bodies snapped in and out of phase, their limbs jittering like marionettes on frayed strings. Some collapsed outright, their exoskeletons clacking against the bark as they dropped, flailing in confusion.

  But the swarm wasn’t breaking. It was adjusting.

  Quinn took a slow breath, his voice tight. “They’re still adapting.”

  And they were. The wild, erratic flickering started smoothing out. The phased-out forms stopped stuttering mid-jump. Their movements were growing controlled again, slipping through reality in deliberate, calculated bursts.

  “Alright,” Quinn started, “disrupting their phasing slows them down, but it’s not stopping them. We need containment before they fully adapt.”

  Emily’s gaze darted between the flickering swarm, her mind racing. “Agreed. We don’t even know if they can be physically restrained. What if they can phase through anything?”

  Dexter’s usual smirk was gone, replaced with something sharper. “Only one way to find out.”

  He swiped across his bracer, pulling up his drone controls. "Let’s try boxing these suckers in."

  With a flick of his wrist, two of his drones shot into position, thrusters flaring as they established a tight triangular formation around a small cluster of beetles. A second later, a crackling blue mana shield dome flickered into existence over them. The reaction was immediate.

  The swarm recoiled as one, shrieking, their bodies crackling with erratic pulses of light as their phasing collapsed mid-jump. Some slammed into the shield with a sharp ZAP, their shells sparking on impact before they were launched backward, tumbling end over end in the mud. Others blinked forward instinctively—only to be violently repelled, their glowing bodies whipping back as if they’d hit a wall of solid force. One beetle almost made it through. It flickered halfway into the shield, its head emerging on the other side—only for the barrier to forcefully eject it. Its entire body flared with bioluminescent pulses, its limbs twitching violently before it snapped back, landing in a heap, its movements sluggish and disoriented.

  Emily’s eyes widened. “They can’t phase through mana-based barriers?”

  Quinn nodded slowly, piecing together the implications. “That’s huge. If we disrupt their tunneling and use our mana shields, we might actually be able to trap them.”

  Dexter’s grin returned, wide and triumphant. “And here I was worried we’d have to fight them like Starship Troopers. Turns out, they’re less ‘unstoppable swarm’ and more ‘glitchy Wi-Fi.’”

  Sim’s voice echoed in their minds. “Interesting. It seems their phasing is directly tied to natural electromagnetic fields and whatever is feeding them mana. However, mana-generated structures are acting as a hard limit—likely due to the energy wavelength differences. And Quinn you are right about the mana. The mana in this area is a slight variant from normal mana. It looks like these beetles can use the local mana but can’t phase through normal mana creations.”

  Emily glanced at Quinn, the same realization settling between them. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Quinn didn’t answer immediately, but the sharp exhale through his nose said enough. His hands were already moving, channeling his mana outward, and a shimmering Mana Shield flared to life, expanding in a wide arc over the densest cluster of beetles still skittering around the tree.

  The effect was immediate. The swarm twitched as one, their forms stuttering mid-phase, as though their connection to reality had just been severed. Some dropped straight to the ground, legs flailing as they struggled to move, while others scrambled in jagged, erratic patterns, their bioluminescence flaring wildly in confusion.

  Dexter let out a slow whistle, watching as the swarm struggled against their sudden confinement. “Oh yeah. We can work with this.”

  Then, the clicking started.

  Emily tensed as a sudden sense of wrongness settled over the battlefield. The beetles weren’t panicking anymore. They weren’t scrambling blindly against the mana shield or reacting with instinctive bursts of movement. They were coordinating.

  Their tiny, glowing mandibles clicked in unison, an eerie, synchronized pulse that sent an involuntary chill down her spine.

  Quinn’s grip tightened on his sword. “That’s… not normal.”

  Emily swallowed, her eyes locked on the swarm. “They’re communicating.”

  Sim’s voice chimed in again. “They’re adapting. Possibly forming a collective response.”

  The swarm shifted as one. The chaotic skittering stopped, and instead of moving as individuals, the beetles began to clump together, their bodies interlocking in a seamless, writhing mass. What had been hundreds of tiny creatures now coalesced into something else—a singular, pulsing entity.

  Dexter took a step back, his bravado flickering just enough for Emily to notice. “Okay… why are they acting like that?”

  At first, it looked like nothing more than an incoherent pile of exoskeletons, but then the glow beneath their carapaces began to pulse in unison, their combined mana signature shifting, escalating.

  Emily’s breath caught. “Oh no.”

  Quinn’s instincts screamed at him, every fiber of his being telling him to break the formation and retreat, but his hands remained steady, his focus locked on the rapidly changing mass of creatures. “Should I drop the shield?”

  Before anyone could answer, the swarm screamed.

  A high-pitched, synchronized screech ripped through the air, a keening, unnatural resonance that bypassed their ears and went straight into their bones. The air itself vibrated with the force of it, rippling outward in waves that made the trees shake and the swamp water tremble as if something beneath the surface was stirring.

  Dexter clapped both hands over his ears, his face twisting in pain. “NOPE. NOPE. NOPE—MAKE IT STOP!”

  The sound didn’t just shake the air—it amplified the mana around them, distorting the already unstable swamp energy. Emily felt the pressure shift in her chest like something was pressing outward, like the swamp itself was responding. And then… something answered.

  A deep, guttural rumble rolled through the ground, not just a tremor but a slow, deliberate shift—something moving beneath them.

  Emily’s stomach dropped. She didn’t want to ask. She really didn’t. But the words slipped out anyway. “…Tell me they didn’t just call for backup.”

  “An extremely large mana signature is approaching… rapidly,” Sim said.

  Quinn barely had time to put up another mana shield before the swamp erupted/exploded in front of them. Trees bent backward from the force, the water and mud blasted skyward in a chaotic spray as something massive blasted into the sky.

  Then, a shadow.

  A boulder of rippling, plated armor, came crashing down in front of them. The air vibrated with the force of its arrival, a deep, resonant growl rolling through the swamp, sending another wave of instability through the battlefield.

  As the dust and debris settled, the colossal eight foot metal ball uncurled revealing an overgrown armadillo, its massive shell glistening with mana-infused plating, its sheer size making even the twisted cypress trees look small in comparison.

  It screeched like Godzilla as it got its bearings. It located them and didn’t hesitate.

  It charged, the ground trembled beneath its weight, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of its steps, each impact like a war drum pounding through the swamp.

  Dexter’s jaw went slack.

  “Oh, COME ON!”