The first ANBU mission was finally over.
When the squad regrouped, they found shelter in a cave.
Inside, the air was surprisingly warm. With flame insects raising the temperature, the chill of the snowstorm outside couldn't reach them.
"It seems we won't be leaving tonight," White Fang said, glancing at the blizzard beyond the entrance.
Maki nodded, her gaze following the heavy snowfall. A moment later, a Dragonfly fluttered weakly onto her outstretched finger. Its wings were stiff, already frosting over.
Creatures like this could only endure harsh conditions for so long. Eventually, the body's limits would give way. In such weather, even reconnaissance was becoming impossible.
The insect's fragile wings were especially vulnerable—unless they were reinforced with bio-steel, though even that was difficult to develop.
Maki opened her hand, letting the Dragonfly go. As her first experimental model, it had proven useful enough. But this one was already too damaged.
It dissolved into the air, leaving only an empty shell behind. Outside, dozens more Dragonflies were falling from the skies. With too little chakra to sustain themselves, they scattered and disintegrated into nothing.
Only by conducting a rapid, large-scale sweep could Maki even justify summoning so many at once. Still, their collective flight made them more resilient—huddled together, they could retain warmth long enough to extend their usefulness in hostile weather.
White Fang glanced at the hollow husk on the ground. "Maki… just how much chakra do you have?"
"Me?" Maki replied. "Not much. In fact, the least among us."
"That can't be right," White Fang muttered. "Maintaining a swarm like that must take an enormous amount of chakra."
"The average Dragonfly weighs only 1.5 grams. A swarm of 500,000 comes to just 750 kilograms—less than a ton."
"Less than a ton is still a lot," White Fang countered.
"Not compared to a Summoning beast," Maki said evenly. "Those start at a thousand tons, sometimes tens of thousands. My insects are insignificant next to them."
"To summon and sustain a swarm like this isn't a burden to me."
White Fang swallowed hard. He couldn't find words.
Insignificant? These insects were basically living explosive tags. Even a behemoth of tens of thousands of tons wouldn't walk away unscathed from them.
"What do they eat, then? Chakra?"
Before Maki could reply, Naori cut in, her voice cold: "Captain White Fang, you ask too many questions."
White Fang scratched his head awkwardly. He knew it was bad form to pry into another shinobi's secret arts. Still, he couldn't help himself. The ability was too extraordinary not to wonder about.
Maki only smiled faintly. "It's fine. These insects don't feed on chakra at all."
Unlike parasite species, the Dragonfly lacked the ability to hatch rapidly. Instead, Maki had refined them through her clan's secret art.
A technique she had personally overhauled four times across eight years of study, especially after mastering sealing jutsu.
The first refinement separated rapid hatching as a dedicated function.
The second, two years later, enabled gigantification.
The third transformed barriers into towering superstructures.
And the fourth, completed four years ago, made the process portable—allowing her to shrink and carry the technique at will.
When Dragonfly was hatched ahead of time, Maki had used a poison barrier formed in her palm. The parasites within her body provided the nutrients and vitality necessary for the accelerated hatching.
The essence of this technique was the forced speeding of cell division—but that came at the cost of shortening the insects' lifespan.
To Maki, that wasn't a concern.
Dragonflies were born only to die, a fleeting existence meant to burn bright for a short moment—like fireworks.
---
"You don't feed on chakra? Then what do you eat? Meat?" White Fang asked, curious, though Maki didn't seem bothered by the question.
"Protein," she replied simply. "It doesn't have to be meat. Anything with protein will do. Even one's own kind."
White Fang frowned. "If you're breeding them on such a massive scale, the consumption must be enormous. Even for something as small as an insect. My ninken already eat me out of house and home."
"You're mistaken, Captain," Maki said calmly. "Every living thing's activity is supported by energy, which comes from nutrients. All life in the wild exists for one purpose—to collect enough energy to survive. Once activity begins, energy is consumed. To keep moving, it must be replenished. This is the essence of predation."
"When the energy consumed exceeds what is taken in, creatures hunt more, until the balance is restored—until they are full. That is why even a small dragonfly eats hundreds of mosquitoes a day, several times its own body weight."
"On the other hand, a bear in hibernation survives because it lowers its activity, spending almost no energy, living off stored fat."
"In the same way, by putting an insect swarm into dormancy—suspending all activity—their food needs drop drastically."
Maki adjusted her glasses. "Dragonfly weighs 1.5 grams. To maintain her normal functions, it needs food equal to about 5% of its body weight daily. Now scale that up: its swarm numbers half a million, with a combined mass of 0.75 tons. At 5% consumption, how much food would that require, Captain White Fang?"
White Fang scratched his head. Numbers were never his strong suit.
He was an excellent graduate of Konoha's academy, but this was… beyond him.
Maki supplied. " 75 kilograms. Less than a hundred kilos of food."
"Oh! I see now!" White Fang nodded enthusiastically. Maki's explanation made it sound simple, almost obvious.
Which was exactly why, to her, the cost was laughably low. Not even worth as much as cheap toilet paper. In fact—cheaper.
Because for that one hundred kilograms of food, Maki spent nothing.
Why? The answer was simple—
---
"Still, even if the total is small, feeding that many individually must be a nightmare, right?" White Fang pressed. "Do you handle all of that alone? When I feed my dogs by myself, it's already a headache. Cooking their meals, grooming them—it's exhausting, and that's just a dozen dogs weighing less than half a ton altogether."
He was fishing for tips on how to make pet care easier.
But Maki only smiled. "Captain White Fang, that is the true secret of my clan's art. I can't share it."
"I see…" White Fang looked disappointed, though not crushed. Caring for his ninken was second nature by now. If anything, he felt restless without it.
---
Maki turned her gaze toward the mouth of the cave.
Raising a swarm of this scale was not simply a matter of feeding. It was the power of a superorganism. Specialized colonies gathered resources, others expanded those resources through her own versions of animal husbandry, agriculture, and even mining. Still more were tasked with feeding and maintaining her various forces.
Nothing was wasted. Every ounce of energy was squeezed for use, every shard of steel repurposed into a blade.
It was only a prototype now.
But before Maki's eyes, the outline of an empire had already begun to take shape.
_____________________
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