Dessication

The swarm had long wanted for a suitable vessel. As a gigantic thought construct, spread over trillions of insects, it was massive and powerful, yet removed from the physical world.

It took from every insect, the tiniest bit of brain power, sometimes only a single neuron. The truly staggering number of insects spread over the continent, gave the swarm loads of space, yet it could not interact with the world at large. It could direct large swarms of insects, cause them to group and to destroy, yet anything fine was always beyond its grasp.

That was until the world changed.

With the arrival of the god tree, came the advent of chakra. And over the seasons, that chakra began to proliferate.

An uncountable number of seasons later, the first human began to interact with the swarm.

Through clumsy and unsure chakra manipulation, the first humans began to bargain with the swarm. These fascinating creatures tried to haggle with an entity so far outside their comprehension. Even though the humans did not know what they were doing, the bargain was struck.

They left their bodies for The Swarm to devour, and in return it would focus its swarms on the other humans. The ones with the funny eyes, or the ones with the tasty wood. As long as it wasnt the contractors.

Through the large scale consumption of their dead, the swarm began to understand. Not just the minutiae of human biology, but the mysteries of chakra itself.

Their first actual act of creation was the seeding of a new species of insect. With their newfound understanding of chakra, they created an insect that fed on chakra. Through a lucky instance of mutation, the new species managed to consume the yang-chakra of humans or particularly chakra dense plants.

While the individual insects did not have enough capacity to store chakra, their heavily yang based diet accelerated their reproductive cycle. Rather soon, the new species spread all over the continent and beyond. Yet a large population stayed in the place of their creation.

Attracted by the echo of the greater whole in the contractors chakra, the kikaichu began their symbiotic bond with the Aburame.

Simultaneously, on another corner of the continent, another group of humans entered a similar relationship with a species of chakra sensitive bees.

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Many seasons later, during a time where many of the contractors died, the first human gave their soul to the swarm.

In a desperate move, the human woman used her connection to the swarm for a final bargain. With every last drop of chakra, physical and spiritual energy she had, she shattered her soul in a desperate move, trying to take control of as many insects as she could. Shortly after the battle was won, her scattered essence burned up completely.

For ordinary humans, nothing much changed. The usefulness of the forbidden technique was proven and its use approved when no other options were available. One victory was never enough to turn the tides of the warring of the great clans.

For The Swarm, many things changed.

In the few moments the human had been in control of a part of the swarm, it had learned many things. Most importantly, what a soul was, and with that new knowledge came the intense desire to possess one of its own.

As an entity made up of untold millions of single parts, it had been mostly acting on instinct. But with the knowledge of souls it began to develop its own wants and needs. Taking a tiny bit of spiritual energy from any being it had a connection to, it began to construct a soul from scratch.

Humans could grow quite powerful as singular beings, yet they only had two beings for the construction of their offspring's soul. Therefore it would be logical to assume that more donors for the eventually constructed soul would make it more powerful.

The swarm took and took. Just the tiniest bit of spiritual energy from any donor it could. While the souls of insects were miniscule by themselves, quantity was a quality of its own, or so the swarm decided.

And then, during another inconsequential human conflict, another used the forbidden technique.

A lonely voice called out in the space between insects, occupied only by the gigantic being of the swarm.

“Impure World: Devouring Plague”

And with a blaze of glory a soul shattered.

The swarm was once again overwhelmed as a flood of memories entered its being, bringing with them new sensations and new knowledge.

After a bare few moments, the swarm recollected itself as it frantically grasped for the shattered parts of the woman's soul. In the end, through the manipulation of pure spiritual energy, it managed to grasp just two tiny pieces of soul.

As inconsequential as those miniscule pieces were, one of them held something immensely precious. The tiny shard of soul held the woman's sense of identity.

As soon as the swarm understood the concept, its spiritual energy underwent a change, as its own soul began to take shape.

It took the swarm quite a while to understand the changes that had occurred.

The tiny piece of the woman's soul had been a catalyst that started its own transformation. It had gained self-awareness. A sense of identity and the necessary intelligence to understand what that means.

With the forming of the swarms identity, came the burning need for a physical vessel.

While its newly constructed soul could be kept across the swarm indefinitely, doing so was immensely uncomfortable all of a sudden.

And so, the swarm began to lay the groundwork for its physical shell.

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The first few tries went nowhere.

Pumping the individual bodies of the swarms constituents full of spiritual energy did little.

The few insects and/or arthropods that did not explode, developed massive physical bodies to contain their similarly powerful spiritual energy.

Sadly, with their newly massive bodies, they developed their own sense of identity, independent from the swarm.

While not a huge loss, as the diminished numbers replenished themselves within a few months, it was disappointing that the swarm couldn't brute force the issue.

The next few tries went better, but still led to disappointment.

Instead of overwhelming the individual arthropods with a flood of spiritual power, the swarm slowly poured its power into the critters.

Keeping a careful balance, it only ever poured a bit more yin energy into them to slightly overwhelm the yang. Now, instead of exploding, the yang energy began to multiply to return to equilibrium with the yin.

The first experiment was conducted on a relatively simple spider, whose only outstanding feature was its slightly increased size and its perfect health.

Over close to a century, the swarm increased the amount of spiritual energy, until the spider was truly massive.

Sadly, this too went nowhere. After a certain point, the spider too developed an independent identity.

Luckily for the swarm, the spider kept its connection to the swarm, causing a constant flood of lived experiences and knowledge to flood into its soul.

Though the small victory itself was exciting, the massive spider was pretty weird. It seemed to be aware of the swarm, but it was also aware of the energy of nature itself. It called itself a “Sage” whatever that meant.

The butterflies, dragonflies, mantises, beetles and ants were not much better. Though they grew massive, they too fancied themselves sages, looking down on their smaller kin.

The worst were the lobsters.

The swarm had tried to find a suitable host species, but nothing had worked, so in a moment of weakness, it had imposed its control over a particularly large lobster.

The male Lobster had grown particularly large, the infusion of spiritual energy aiding in its almost monthly molts, but it had scarcely grown smarter.

It loudly proclaimed itself the “Great Lobster Sage, honored one under the heavens”

Its pitiful mind did not lend itself to hosting the swarm either, so it was banished to the depths of the oceans, where it was to remain until it understood the secrets of the universe.

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The first breakthrough happened when it tried to force parts of itself into beings that already possessed higher brain functions.

It would likely never find a single host species that could contain the entirety of its intellect.

Not that the swarm was particularly intelligent, just that its mind was spread over trillions of insects.

Were it to shift its entire being into one of its independent creations, it would likely burn out their brains in moments.

So, the swarm decided that it wanted a human vessel. Despite their average size, they had comparatively huge brains. Yet there were still hang ups.

After consuming a few fresh humans, the swarm came to the conclusion that a single human brain could, at most, hold half of the swarm's mind.

The breakthrough came when one of the contractors opened their living body to the swarm as nesting ground.

The swarm wasn't entirely sure what the human was thinking, if it even did, but it wouldn't mind.

It spent a few moments deliberating about which of its myriad species would best survive inside the body of a human, when it came to the obvious conclusion.

Until now, the contractors had mostly interacted with the kikaichu, and those were exactly what the contractor was looking for. Versatile, chakra consuming and small enough to be inconspicuous.

And so, it forced small, female dominated groups of kikaichu into the contractors body.

For the human, it was likely an agonizing experience, having hosts of insects bury into their chakra network, and establishing hives along the major tenketsu.

Still, it worked!

On the first try no less. The human didnt even blow up.

Most likely, either due to the swarms contract, or the contractors continuous exposure to insect flavored chakra, the contractor took to their new hive-body like a lobster to the ocean floor.

Now that the swarm had an inside view of the human chakra network, it was also privy to the information it shared with the other contractors.

The first hive body had apparently been physically weak, and thus unfit for shinobi duty. He had spent years trying to look for a way to overcome his handicap, which he finally did in his newfound symbiosis with the kikaichu.

Fascinated, the swarm observed the humans from a different perspective, as they fought amongst themselves.

It had vaguely been aware of the human conflicts, since its swarms would always scour battlefields for corpses, but to experience them from such a diminished perspective? Glorious.

Most humans, with a few notable exceptions, abhorred the killing of their own kind. Yet, those that called themselves shinobi did so anyway. Whether it was for this currency thing, some other thing called honor, or for new breeding/feeding ground. They killed each other, but still felt bad about it.

The swarm’s relatively newborn souls struggled with such advanced topics, but it would learn in time.

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Over the decades the swarm observed the hive-body it learned a lot, so much so, that its soul began growing again. The yin energy of its soul began to destabilize the entire network, and so it was forced to populate the continent with larger beasts, using their higher yang energy to keep itself stable.

When the Hive-body had offspring of its own, they too became hive bodies. This time the transformation went noticeably smoother.

Once, when no one was paying attention to the offspring, the swarm tried to take over one of the bodies. Sadly, its presence was still too vast for the human body to contain, causing extensive brain damage. Even the heightened affinity for insect chakra didnt save the offspring.

And so, the swarm observed, generation after generation as the symbiosis between the humans and the swarm grew in power and stability. With every generation, the humans changed. Their chakra pathways grew wider and their tenketsu as well. Greater and greater quantities of insects began to live inside the hive bodies, the insects taking up space inside the metaphysical pathways of the humans, growing hives that had a greater mass and volume than one human body should be able to contain.

Every generation, the Swarm tried taking over one of the humans.

With every following generation, more and more of the swarms considerable might could be channeled into a single human, yet it was still not enough.

The hive-bodies still inevitably suffered from brain damage, as the vast quantities of yin chakra overwhelmed their minds, while the newfound flood of yang chakra caused intense insect-like mutations.

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Now, almost two millennia after the advent of chakra, a generation was finally born, with an affinity for insects so strong, they could handle the swarm’s being without burning out.

Over the time the swarm had been observing, it had come to a decision. This would be the last generation before it descended in a physical vessel.

It let the hive-bodies grow and thrive, until they reached adulthood, all the while preparing itself.

The billions of soul shards that were spread across trillions of insects were slowly gathered, until only a few hundred thousand remained. Then, the arthropods carrying the soul shards were gathered in a single place, where the ambient nature chakra was especially thick, and an influx of giant insects wouldn't cause any suspicion.

Then, they began to devour each other.

Inside a small valley, inside a forest of massive trees, a scene of nightmares played out.

Thousands of massive Insects, from Centipedes to Millipedes, from butterflies to dragonflies, from spiders to scorpions, everything erupted into a frenzy of ultra violence.

The arthropods ripped and devoured until only 5 beings remained.

A massive spider, an equally large centipede, a beautifully shimmering moth, a jagged and intimidating looking dragonfly and a single ant queen.

These five held the combined weight of the swarms' souls. Each carried so much yin energy that their bodies could not support it.

Each being was a female of its species, carrying thousands of fertilized eggs that would hatch into tiny versions of themselves.

Using the physical aspect of their yang chakra, the 5 overwhelmed their own networks to accelerate the hatching of their young.

As the thousands of newborn hatched, they immediately devoured their parents. Once again splitting the soul pieces amongst themselves.

Meanwhile, the swarm took control over a human for the last time.

It had chosen this vessel after careful consideration, only satisfied with the strongest specimen it could find.

In the darkness of night, a swarm of miniscule arthropods approached the sleeping hive body.

Unnoticed by anyone else. They entered the hive-bodies chakra network the same way their bonded kikaichu usually did.

As the flood of foreign insects poured into the body, its mind began to wake.

But the swarm couldn't have that.

Ruthlessly, it dominated the hive body, snuffing out its soul like a candle in the wind. A surge of yin chakra destroyed all higher brain functions, while keeping the hindbrain alive for vital functions.

As the flood of foreign insect-chakra invaded, the hive-body began to mutate.

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Other hive-bodies arrived after a day, likely concerned for the host body. They made noises of concern as the hive body remained unresponsive.

It had been an accepted thing amongst the hive-bodies, that once a generation, one of them would succumb to their connection to the swarm. It had been the case for as long as the hive-bodies could remember. The only exception had been the current generation, or so they thought.

While the hive-bodies buzzed around the new host body, the swarm was elated. Its plan was finally coming to a close.

Taking full control over the insects inside the host-body, the swarm began to make internal changes. Widening specific chakra pathways around the stomach and uterus, while narrowing those responsible for any higher function.

This would inevitably destroy the host-body, but it wasn't interested in staying long term in this vessel anyway.

What it was very interested in however, was the collection of egg-cells below the host-bodies stomach.

Using a few of the tiny centipedes, the swarm removed a single egg cell, and carried it to the womb.

With a tiny surge of very specific yang chakra, provided by one of each insect, the tiny egg cell began to divide.

The swarm abandoned the host body's greater chakra network, only residing within those enlarged tenketsu around the uterus.

Moments later, the greater swarm lost consciousness.