Year 2654 AD. Humanity had entered the era of biotechnology. Thus, insects became mankind's closest servants. But as insect populations exploded, they grew increasingly ungovernable, gradually dominating the natural world...
The night was enchanting. Lava-like crimson clouds roiled across the sky, smearing bloody streaks along the vault of heaven.
Dense drizzle fell like ox hair, trickling down every crevice in the stones of Kester Fifth Avenue. Under the crimson sky, it was as if spreading blood had submerged the entire city in a pool of gore.
This anomaly instantly drew countless pedestrians to a halt. As they marveled, they broke into cheers. Some devout believers even closed their eyes in reverence, prayed, then spread their arms, letting the eerie red light drench their bodies.
In a quiet alleyway far from the bustling crowd, oppressive silence lent a desolate air. On both sides of the alley, several tattered insect lamps stood unsteadily. Inside their filthy crystal shades, a few dying glowworms thrashed, casting overlapping layers of dim yellow light onto the ground.
Accompanied by unsteady footsteps, an elderly man with a grave expression shuffled from the alley's end. He raised trembling hands to brace against the stone wall, gazing at the sky's anomaly. Horror flickered across his deeply lined face.
"A hundred years... Another hundred years..."
The old man murmured, his weathered voice echoing in the ancient alley. Suddenly, the insect lamps went out, plunging the alley into darkness. The hunched figure of the elder gradually receded into the distance...
Kester City.
Within the great League of Lords, this city of a million permanent residents was considered small to medium-sized.
Beyond its walls stretched an endless expanse of dense forest. From afar, Kester City resembled an island standing in a green ocean—helpless, yet full of vitality.
It was early spring. The morning sun shone warm and gentle. The continuous drizzle of recent days had ceased, and last night's bizarre celestial phenomena had long vanished. Everything seemed to have returned to normal, and early risers busied themselves once more. In an instant, all manner of odd-looking humans filled the city.
Burly men with abnormally thick arms labored on construction sites piled with materials. Thin individuals with spindly, strange legs dashed through street corners, hawking newspapers to passersby... Such oddities were commonplace here. They went about their lives, seemingly proud of their unusual bodies.
The only ones who appeared "normal" were the beggars huddled by the roadside. These clearly human figures, ragged and emaciated, stared blankly with helpless eyes at the elaborately decorated insect shops across the street. As they watched people emerge happily from the shops carrying wooden boxes, their envy was obvious even to the blind.
They were the untouchables. In this biotech era dominated by insects, those without insects were the lowest of the low. Unable to find work in the city, and too frail to brave the vast forest, they piled into the city's filthy corners like beggars, surviving on garbage and silently awaiting death.
Perhaps to confirm their misery, a floating corpse drifted down the river beside Fifth Avenue. Like the untouchables, it was a completely normal-looking human, and appeared very young—perhaps not yet eighteen.
Despite his pale complexion, the youth was handsome. His once-beautiful brown hair was now wet and tangled; his tattered, patched jeans had turned black from the filthy water.
He had been a pretty boy, but floating helplessly in the sewage, he aroused no pity. Such scenes were far too common. Almost daily, untouchables died in Kester City. In the eyes of insect-owning passersby, death seemed the only destiny for these outcasts. The only emotion they felt was fear—fear that if they couldn't earn enough to buy new insect eggs before their own insects died, they too would end up like this floating corpse, reduced to miserable untouchables.
"Rick..."
In a corner by the iron bridge, a gaunt middle-aged man stared blankly as the youth in the water drifted away, eventually sucked into the city's sewer.
He had known the boy in the water. Only yesterday, he had shared a moldy insect oil cake with this boy named Rick by a trash can. He remembered that after eating half the cake, Rick had looked at the blood-red sky and said he planned to risk a trip to the forest outside the city. At the time, he had laughed at Rick's ignorance. Everyone knew the forest was the hunting ground of major insect hunter teams. Not even a lone, skilled hunter would dare poach there, let alone a helpless untouchable like Rick. He had thought Rick was joking. But the corpse in the water made him realize that Rick had indeed gone to the forest—and the result was becoming a corpse, dragged into the sewer to become food for sewage-dwelling leech insects.
"Untouchables... Are we really only meant to wait for death?" The middle-aged man stared at the water. In Rick, he saw his own future. Perhaps one day, he too would become a filthy corpse in the river or beside a trash can.
Countless tragedies unfolded daily, and this was but one. Yet compared to others, this tragedy was more than just a tragedy...