After the Empire Fell, I Met My Rebel Group Chat Friends IRL

帝国覆灭后我和叛军群友们面基了[虫族]

after-the-empire-fell-i-met-my-rebel-group-chat-friends-irl

Hatchling

Settling In

Online Friends

Alai

The Visitor

Service

Injured

Strange

Hero

Jealousy

Short on Money

Hiring

Model

Blood-Crack Marks

As little darlings held in the palm of the entire Empire&#x27;s hand, high-ranking male insects possessed enviable wealth and supreme power. But lower-ranking male insects of the same sex had to make certain contributions while enjoying their privileges. This was an unwritten rule in the Bird of Paradise community, and a truth known to every male insect who wanted a better life.



 Gu Ting, whose psionic grade was only F, was among them.



 The day after seeing the sub-females off, he received a notice that the Male Insect Association in the Bird of Paradise community—also known as the Gem Association—would be calling on him.



 The male insect originally responsible for this work had spent the entire previous night partying with sub-females and naturally could not get out of bed so early in the morning. Thus, the job fell to the female insects who worked for the Gem Association.



 To enter the Bird of Paradise community successfully, the female insects wore collars made of light metal around their necks. The collars possessed a powerful discharge function: once one detected the voice of a male insect already registered in the community&#x27;s central system, it could discharge electricity at that male&#x27;s command. One could even say that a shock collar placed a female insect&#x27;s life in a male insect&#x27;s hands.



 When Gu Ting opened the door, he heard the brown-haired female across from him struggling to suppress pained, ragged breaths.



 &quot;Cough, cough. Good day, honored Excellency.&quot; The instant he saw the male insect, the sturdily built brown-haired female smoothed out his breathing. No one looking at him now would have guessed that ten minutes earlier, he had been shocked by his collar on another male insect&#x27;s command and left convulsing on the ground.



 &quot;Hello. Please come in.&quot; Gu Ting stepped aside from the doorway and even had Tuantuan pour water for the visiting females.



 The brown-haired female in front was visibly flattered and overwhelmed. Even the subordinates behind him looked disbelieving.



 &quot;Uh... Your Excellency, it&#x27;s like this. First—please allow me to introduce myself. I&#x27;m Ari, a work-group leader within the Gem Association. We&#x27;ve come to visit you uninvited today regarding volunteer service at Firenze.&quot; The brown-haired female cleared his throat. His fingertips, pinching the cup, had turned white with tension as he organized his words with extreme care.



 &quot;Volunteer service?&quot; It was Gu Ting&#x27;s first time hearing of this activity. &quot;What do I need to do?&quot;



 &quot;Your Excellency, if you aren&#x27;t willing, we can... Hm? Wait? What did you say?&quot; Ari froze. He and the female insects behind him exchanged looks, clearly unwilling to trust their ears. Ari even thought he might have been shocked too badly and was not thinking clearly—how could a male insect agree to volunteer service so readily?



 &quot;I&#x27;m asking what the volunteer activity requires me to do.&quot;



 The expressions on the females&#x27; faces made it more than clear how poorly this work had been going.



 In fact, Firenze and its Bird of Paradise community had not had this service activity at all a few years ago. But in recent years, alien beasts had rampaged on a massive scale across the Empire&#x27;s frontier planets. Female insects graduating from military academies became fresh blood in battlefield forces while still young. Having never received psionic soothing from a male insect, they could only rely on sheer brute strength to slaughter alien beasts after insectification.



 Female insects were indeed formidable after insectification. In particular, those with high constitution grades and superior innate genes could grow to the size of a medium spacecraft in insect form, stomping several alien beasts flat with a single foot. But such females were only a small minority. Average individuals made up the majority, and more females could not insectify into giant forms. Thus, they were often the first to be injured on battlefields against alien beasts.



 For female insects trapped in the endless cycle of insectification and injury on the battlefield, what they needed most was not even medical repair equipment, but psionic soothing from male insects.



 Male and female insects differed enormously in physical ability and psionic power, but if the two complemented each other, the potential they could unleash was boundless. Every female soothed by even a D-grade male insect would gain some improvement in aptitude, evolving into the most powerful weapon against alien beasts.



 This should have been a gift ordained by fate, but the imbalance in the male-to-female ratio had created the difficult, unchangeable situation of today.



 Firenze had such a medical facility dedicated to housing injured female insects. Firenze had been built for male insects from the outset, so the facility was pitifully tucked away in a corner of the bustling, affluent planet. Its cold gray décor was utterly out of place there, a location no male insect from Bird of Paradise wished to set foot in.



 As the number of injured female insects had grown year after year—some of them high-ranking females on the verge of collapse after being unable to receive psionic soothing for years—the Empire had no choice but to establish the medical facility on Firenze and have some more &quot;manageable&quot; low-ranking male insects attempt psionic soothing. It was not that the Empire did not want high-ranking males to step forward; they simply could not persuade them to do so.



 High-ranking male insects had no shortage of noble female insects behind them. Given their possessiveness, they would never consent to their male insect taking part in volunteer service. Thus, the Empire could only turn its attention to males with low psionic grades.



 Yet even the lower-ranking male insects in Bird of Paradise were not easy to invite. Since taking over this task, Ari had visited nearly a hundred male households in the community. Very few had agreed. Indeed, if Ari had not been a naturally thick-skinned rhinoceros beetle, he might not have withstood the shocks that male insects&#x27; voice commands had triggered.



 At the home he had just visited, Ari had nearly been shocked unconscious before he barely managed to leave. Even after paying such a steep price, they still had not persuaded that male insect. Even low-ranking male insects remained lofty and untouchable; they watched, amused, as female insects cried out and rolled on the ground in pain, yet were stingy with their mercy.



 Therefore, Ari and the females behind him found Gu Ting&#x27;s response unbelievable at first.



 Yet the young male before them continued to leave them in that state of disbelief all the way until they delivered him to the medical facility at the edge of Firenze.



 Ari, driving the hovercar, looked dazed as he stared at the silver-gray words &quot;Firenze Medical Center&quot; in the distance, then at the slender back carrying a small backpack and not even needing a female to lead the way. Once again, he felt that everything that had happened today was unreal. &quot;So... we just brought a male insect to the medical center?&quot;



 &quot;Yes.&quot; His equally dazed, slow-witted female companion nodded. &quot;Although he&#x27;s an F-grade male insect, he—he&#x27;s so gentle and considerate... He&#x27;s only fifteen? If he weren&#x27;t underage, I&#x27;d want to court him. With the money I&#x27;ve saved, I should have a chance of pursuing an F-grade male insect, right?&quot;



 Another female shattered his fantasy. &quot;Maybe you would have had a chance before. But after he comes back from the medical center today, I&#x27;m sure he&#x27;ll have many military females pursuing him. Even if those military females can only live in the medical center for the rest of their lives, the contribution points they possess are more than you could earn in a lifetime.&quot;



 &quot;Yes...&quot; Ari sighed as well. &quot;Your Excellency Gu Ting is far too gentle. In all my years working for the Gem Association, this is the first male insect I&#x27;ve met like him. Even without an outstanding psionic grade, his personality alone will win over many military females.&quot;



 —After all, they all knew that a female on the verge of running dry found it difficult to refuse the favor of a gentle male insect. It was their pitiful fate, and their helpless acceptance after they had lost the power to resist.



 Elsewhere, Gu Ting, unaware that he was being discussed, held the straps of his backpack. He declined Ari&#x27;s initial offer to wait for him until his service was finished. Gu Ting had no intention of slacking off during the nearly day-long service assignment. Rather than have Ari waste time waiting outside, it was better to let him attend to his own affairs.



 The medical center was somewhat desolate. Compared with lively, even excessively luxurious Firenze on the other side, this place was like a loophole forgotten by God among the insects. It received no attention at all; even the weeds by the entrance had nearly grown to half Gu Ting&#x27;s height.



 Gu Ting had some doubts. Was this really a suitable place for sick insects to recuperate?



 Suddenly, the silver-gray doors opened to either side, and a sub-female in a white coat poked half his body out. &quot;You... Um, are you a male hatchling?&quot;



 With their three-hundred-year lifespans, an underage male insect was indeed a hatchling to them.



 Gu Ting nodded. &quot;Hello, sir. I was sent by the Male Insect Association to do volunteer service.&quot;



 &quot;Huh? Volunteer service?&quot; The sub-female scratched his head, stepped aside, and led the young male inward. &quot;Um... Your Excellency, I-I&#x27;m sorry. We haven&#x27;t seen a male insect here in a very long time. You&#x27;re the first male insect willing to volunteer that I&#x27;ve met since I started working.&quot;



 As he spoke, the sub-female led Gu Ting to the medical center&#x27;s lobby, pulled out several forms and filled them in with a swish of his pen, then produced a small sky-blue badge and handed it over. &quot;This is a small device for monitoring your service. It&#x27;ll remind you automatically when time is up, and when today&#x27;s service ends, it will also settle your star-coin payment. You know about star coins, right? They&#x27;re currency with the same exchange rate as contribution points.&quot;



 Within Firenze&#x27;s Bird of Paradise community, contribution points circulated more often among male insects. Outside Firenze, star coins were the primary currency. Although their names and definitions differed, their actual exchange rate was exactly the same: one contribution point equaled one star coin.



 &quot;I know.&quot; The young male nodded. He had no objection to the sub-female&#x27;s actions, but could not help asking, &quot;Isn&#x27;t this supposed to be a volunteer activity? Why is there payment?&quot;



 The sub-female spread his hands helplessly. &quot;The star-coin payment was added at the beginning to attract male insects to participate, but clearly the contribution points their female suitors can offer are greater. So no male insect thinks much of the star coins the medical center offers.&quot;



 Gu Ting nodded. &quot;Then, I mean, what should I do now? I don&#x27;t know whether the Male Insect Association told you in advance, but my psionic power is only F-grade.&quot;



 If his psionic power were A-grade, Gu Ting would have joined this volunteer activity without hesitation. But now, as an F-grade at the very bottom, it was still unknown whether his grade would be useful to injured females.



 &quot;It&#x27;s all right.&quot; The sub-female led him toward the wards on the other side of the medical center. &quot;Male insects evolve a second time when they come of age. Before that evolution, male insects of any grade naturally emit pheromones from their bodies that female insects can detect. They&#x27;re faint, but sufficient as an aid in soothing females—so all you need to do is sit there.&quot;



 High-ranking adult male insects relieved and soothed females through their psionic power combined with physical union. Lower-ranking underage males could achieve a similar effect through their own pheromones, though it worked more slowly and to a lesser degree.



 The sub-female stopped. At the far end of the corridor was a ward marked &quot;A022.&quot;



 &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, but I can&#x27;t accompany you any farther,&quot; he said. &quot;The injured military females are very volatile. The approach of other females or sub-females makes them even more frenzied. But please rest assured: every military female in the medical center is bound with restraints. They cannot hurt you.&quot;



 &quot;It&#x27;s all right. Thank you for the trouble.&quot;



 Gu Ting drew a breath. Even separated by half a corridor, his nearly depleted F-grade psionic power could sense a tremor—a suffocating pressure that made him recoil slightly, both physically and mentally. That sensation alone was enough to show how powerful the female in the ward was.



 After collecting himself, the male insect slowly placed a hand on the door.



 The sensitive automatic door opened slowly. The curtains inside seemed to be drawn. Suddenly, a dark shadow flashed past, and the next second, something with a rough texture coiled around the young male&#x27;s waist and dragged him inside.



 Bang—



 The instant the automatic door shut, something heavy slammed viciously against it.



 The sub-female who saw it had his pupils constrict. He immediately pressed the communicator in his hand. &quot;Get someone here, now! The male insect volunteering today was dragged into A022 by the military female! Hurry...&quot;

Service

OldSenpaiOwl