Surviving the Primordial Era (5)
I quietly bowed my head and gently parted my lips.
From between them, dark red streams of blood gushed out. Beneath me lay a corpse—my kill, the beast I had slain. With only a slight exaggeration, a single one of its arms had been as massive as my entire body. Pain and exhilaration surged through me in equal measure.
The gap in our base attributes had been vast. Even wrapped in mana, a single glancing blow had pushed me to death's door. Despite multiple stat increases and the resulting level-ups, a sharp ache still radiated through my ribs and spine. It was the sort of wound that simply needed time to heal.
I set aside the steel spear and leather armor I had purchased, panting as I slowly shut my eyes. The armor was reduced to tatters; using it again looked out of the question. I would have to buy a replacement. I had earned plenty of coin, after all—though there was another purchase I wanted far more than new armor.
I had no idea how it worked mechanistically, but the phrasing carried the unmistakable nuance of an 'inventory.' An inventory—that staple convenience every isekai protagonist wielded as if it were their birthright. The kind of absurd cheat born purely for plot convenience, leaving anyone who stopped to ponder the physics scratching their head.
Of course, this version probably lacked the godlike utility of a true video game subspace, but merely being able to stash items would radically overhaul my survival strategy. To start, most logistical headaches regarding food, clothing, and shelter would vanish into thin air.
God, I want it.
With that in hand, it felt like I could accomplish anything. Taking down that behemoth had netted me six thousand coins; bagging just one more creature on that scale would put the prize well within reach.
"You won't be receiving such a massive payout next time," Belba chimed in, dumping a bucket of ice water over my ambitions.
"Why not?"
"I analyzed the monster you just dispatched. It appears to have been a rare variant—a specialized monster scarcely found in any other dimension."
Her frequent communications with other realms were showing; terms like 'monster' rolled off her tongue without hesitation now. More to the point—that overgrown brute was rare? Usually, things that looked like that were just cannon fodder waiting to be cleaved apart in droves by some heroic chosen one.
"It is not a matter of combat power," Belba clarified, "but of evolutionary adaptation."
Put that way, it made sense. The abnormally swollen fat reserves, the habit of burrowing deep into subterranean dens—every trait was tailored for enduring long, solitary periods in a single spot. Contrary to its fearsome exterior, it might not have cared for fighting at all. Strictly speaking, did that make me the villain? The poor bastard had only been defending its territory.
Yet I felt no guilt. Under the unyielding laws of this primordial wilderness, petty morals had long since faded into white noise.
I glanced at the slain beast one last time, then opened my status window.
[Apnea Ⅰ] [Body Transformation Ⅰ] [Suggestion Ⅰ] [Superhuman Strength Ⅰ]
Wait, what? Since when did so much change?
"...Heh. I've been working hard on system updates, you know!" Belba preened.
I inspected the revised screen closely. The statistical leap struck me first—Strength, Agility, and Constitution had all leveled out cleanly at twenty-five. Leveling up truly was the ultimate shortcut. Still, even accounting for that, my mana pool seemed absurdly inflated.
"That is because you developed your mana through a method outside of standard level-ups and Predation," Belba explained.
"Outside of them? You mean..."
"Yes. You touched upon the next boundary for an instant and successfully brought it under your control. The mana circuitry itself widened, resulting in a sudden surge in capacity."
A welcome development. Seeing numerical tiers affixed to my skills made tracking my progression far simpler, and having my height and weight listed added a touch of personality to a screen that had previously felt barren.
There was just one detail I couldn't quite wrap my head around.
"Isn't that weight a bit excessive? It's not like I'm carrying belly fat."
Since my line of sight hadn't shifted drastically compared to my past life, I knew I was relatively tall. But seventy-one kilograms felt unexpectedly heavy for this frame.
"It cannot be helped," Belba replied flatly.
"What do you mean, it can't be helped?"
"Your musculature has undergone repeated biological compression. Furthermore, mana possesses its own subtle mass. And then... your chest."
"Alright, stop. Got it. Point taken."
Knowing full well what my original gender had been, she loved slipping in these sly little verbal jabs. I waved my hands dismissively and gave a brisk nod. Her explanation was sound enough, but her touchiness whenever my physical traits came up was becoming a pattern. She fixated on certain feminine proportions with peculiar intensity.
Did she have some sort of complex? She didn't even have a physical body—what did she have to be insecure about?
In my head, I pictured a grumpy, incorporeal Belba hovering in front of a surveillance monitor. Confinement in this primeval wasteland was doing wonders for my daydreaming skills. Let's see... she would probably be pint-sized, barely reaching my collarbone. A tiny frame completely devoid of curves, no matter how fitted her clothes were.
The kind of girl who looked like she was swimming in her dad's clothes whenever she wore an oversized t-shirt. The kind who stubbornly downed a glass of milk every night before bed hoping for a growth spurt. And above all, undeniably cute.
Hmm... Not bad for an off-the-cuff concept. In fact, it fits her shockingly well. Am I a genius or what?
"You're thinking something weird again, aren't you?!"
The shrill shout snapped me out of my reverie, and I shook my head vigorously.
"I wasn't! Look, let's talk about my alignment instead. Why am I flagged as Evil? Is there some kind of debuff or penalty attached to that?"
"...You really weren't thinking anything strange?"
"I said I wasn't!"
Her intuition had gotten terrifyingly sharp lately. Could she be reading my mind? No, whenever Belba accessed my active thoughts, a distinct tingling sensation buzzed behind my temples. This was pure, unadulterated female intuition. Terrifying.
"Mmh. Regardless, you needn't worry over the alignment. It isn't judged by the standards of this world, but measured against all dimensions."
"Oh?"
A psychological evaluation calibrated across the entire multiverse. How fascinating. If another intelligent species ever arose here—and managed to survive—I wondered what verdict the system would hand them. Though, in a hellhole where life was reduced to killing or being killed, a benevolent alignment felt mathematically impossible.
"Then almost everything here would register as Evil, wouldn't it?"
"Most likely, yes."
"Heh. So if I were dropped into a normal world, do you think I'd register as Good?"
"......"
"...Hey."
Unbelievable. The silence says it all.
"MASSIVE NEEEEEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Sweet Jesus!"
Belba's ear-splitting screech blasted through my skull, jolting me wide awake. The sun hadn't even hinted at rising. My senses had already become hypersensitive to the slightest rustle, so an unprompted psychic banshee wail obliterated any lingering drowsiness in an instant.
Suppressing the rising spike of irritation, I rubbed my temples. "What happened?"
"Another intelligent lifeform just manifested! Two of them, in fact! A mated pair, male and female!!!!!!"
"Whaaaat?!"
How long had I waited for news like this? And a breeding pair, no less! "What race? What are they? Is it a species that exists in other dimensions?!"
"Yes! And it's a race renowned across realms for its incredible reproductive rate!"
My heart leaped into my throat. Could I finally meet beings capable of actual, rational communication? Granted, they were probably vast distances away, but that hardly mattered. Even if they turned out to be parasitic pests like vampires or succubi, I was ready to gladly donate my blood and vitality right now if it meant having someone to talk to.
Survival was the immediate priority. If I could, I wanted to hijack their brainwaves this second, command them to dig a hole somewhere safe, and tell them to start multiplying while they waited for me to arrive.
"What's their name? They aren't human, are they?"
"They're an incredibly famous race!"
"Famous for what?! Just spit it out!"
Caught up in my soaring excitement, Belba shouted at the top of her lungs:
"Orcs!"
Finally, upon this barren earth... an or... c?
...An orc?
Wait. What did she just say?
"A classic sapient race found in almost every fantasy realm! Orcs!"
"...Ah."
"Isn't that amazing?!"
...It's an absolute fucking nightmare is what it is.
Unable to mask the utter hollow deflation washing over me, I slapped a palm against my forehead. The blazing anticipation snuffed out in a heartbeat, leaving the quiet night air feeling bitterly cold. Sensing the sudden drop in temperature, Belba's tone grew cautious.
"Do you... not like them?"
"No, I do not."
Orcs technically counted as intelligent life, sure. Lore always spoke of orc families, orc clans, orc kingdoms. But the odds of me sitting down for a peaceful chat with an orc, let alone establishing meaningful cultural exchange, were practically zero. I'd have to see one in the flesh to know for certain, but visceral revulsion would almost certainly be my first reaction.
No matter how superhuman this physical vessel became, my psyche remained fundamentally human. It was a biological aversion. I felt the exact same disgust looking at scaled dinosaurs or bipedal horrors out here. They were hideous, unsettling, and alien.
To my mind, an orc wasn't a peer you reasoned with; it was a monster you put down. The threat of betrayal was far too high. Honestly, I just hated the idea. Of all the possible creatures, why did it have to be orcs? Anything else would have been better.
"Um... well, you see..." Belba began tentatively.
Still, what choice did I have? I had to cling to that shred of hope and go see them for myself. Who knew? Maybe my sanity was frayed enough by now that I could actually strike up a friendship with pig-snouted brutes.
"You don't need to go anymore," Belba murmured, her voice suddenly hollow.
I blinked, pausing my preparations. "What do you mean I don't need to go? Even if they're hideous, I should at least—"
Ah. Right.
"Are they dead?"
"Yes."
"Both of them?"
"Both of them."
I slowly untied the leather bundle I had frantically thrown together. Above, the sky remained pitch black. Not a single thing had changed. The indifference of the world was staggering.
Whatever had torn them apart would continue its existence without ever comprehending what it had just snuffed out. The victims had likely died just as ignorantly. The sheer futility of it all made even my own existence feel laughably fragile. I closed my eyes and circulated my mana.
A heavy, intoxicating heat bloomed deep within my chest, slowly radiating outward to burn away the chill of dread and lingering anxiety that clawed at my soul.