An Age of Chaos
The brown giant of Brazil.
Ru-paul, one of the Five Calamities. This was the place where infectors who had surrendered to her and suppressed their instincts lived.
Among those infectors, the more intelligent ones maintained a kind of balance through the queen’s control and power. Even so, this giant nest was packed with all manner of different colonies, and the place was noisy every day with a thousand competing sounds.
At the bottom of that giant, in a desolate place where the only things standing were the pillars that supported the floors above, a group of infectors had gathered.
Some stood silently. Some sprawled listlessly.
Distinctly individual as they were, they looked as though they were waiting for someone.
The first to speak was a hyena-like infector.
"Krrk. Never thought the queen would call us. Has this ever happened before?"
He scratched his wavy brown fur with needle-sharp claws.
"Never, Gyarang. So all we have to do is report everything we’ve found."
The one who answered was an infector shaped like a dark pillar.
It was grotesque, like dark water constantly running down its surface.
It was hard to make out a face, or any clear shape at all.
Gyarang, who had stopped scratching his own fur while staring at him, grinned and bared his sharp teeth.
"Krrk-krrk. Croto. You say that like you’ve actually found something."
"And you? Haven’t you?"
"Old human! We haven’t even hunted the human who showed up again, so what would I have found? If I get the chance, I’d like to meet him. A human who took down Muaz..."
Just then, the silently waiting mass of slime swelled.
"Hungry. Let’s eat."
"Even now you’re talking about food? You really never change, Stalv."
"Need food to get strong. Strong, can serve the queen better. So eat. Who?"
Stalv. His body, once like a sluggish heap of slime, began to take shape.
In an instant he became a massive, muscular boar and rose onto two legs.
"Gyarang. Looks tasty."
"You want to fight? Do you mean to disobey the queen? If that happens, we’ll both die, so hold yourself back a little."
Gyarang waved a hand.
Red liquid had welled along his sharpened claws.
But at Gyarang’s words, Stalv made no effort to restrain himself and seemed ready to lunge, so Gyarang snickered.
"Well, if you can’t stand the hunger and charge in, I won’t just sit here either."
"Ughhh! Can’t wait!"
In the blink of an eye, the distance between them collapsed, and someone cut between the two.
"Both of you stop."
No one knew whether he had risen from the ground or dropped from the ceiling.
One moment there had been nothing, and the next he was between them: an infector with a bat-like form.
Gyarang looked at him and curled one corner of his mouth upward.
"Bento. Where were you off to, and only just getting back now?"
"Gyarang. Step back for now. Stalv, you too—settle your instincts down. Did you learn nothing from the queen?"
"But... Stalv is hungry! Hungry means no strength!"
"There’s nothing you need to use it for today, so endure it."
"Then I’ll endure."
Having succeeded in mediating the situation, Bento clicked his tongue.
That was because the one standing next to Stalv, while he was throwing a tantrum, hadn’t intervened at all.
Curled up in a ball, the creature had simply slept, snoring softly.
"Calm down, Bento. You knew that bastard would be like this."
"He’s insolent for someone who’s standing before the queen. If that Porusle brat is still asleep when she appears, I’ll personally cut his head off."
"I’ll join you. It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted the blood of a comparable specimen."
Gyarang moistened his nose with his long tongue, his eyes glittering.
One after another... none of them are worth trusting.
While Bento was thinking that he was at least the most normal one here, he suddenly felt a gaze and turned his head.
When had he woken?
Porusle had uncurled himself and was peeking out with only his head exposed.
Something like a white snake glittered with bright yellow eyes.
That gaze was directed past everyone’s backs.
Then, bowing his head, he spoke.
"Sssss... I greet the queen."
No one in the room had noticed it.
A chill ran down their spines, and the sluggish guilt of having greeted her late spread through their bodies.
They had no time to control the tears that surged up all at once.
With postures filled with boundless trust, the infectors prostrated themselves.
"We greet the queen!"
They repeated Porusle’s words exactly and pressed their foreheads to the floor.
And so only some of them could see her.
The click of shoes.
The sound drew nearer. Their racing hearts, too, were soaked through with reverence for the queen.
"Hm. You all gathered on time? How cute."
At that lilting, girlish voice, everyone shivered.
The queen who had taken them in, the queen who always lived in their minds.
Merely her existence brought them peace and fulfillment.
"I-I’m deeply honored that you would call us to your residence."
"Yes, Bento. You’re the sharpest one, so I remember you. You speak well, too—just as expected of the finest son born between Coolace and Marsteelte? Are the two of them doing well?"
Ru-paul murmured in a nostalgic tone, as if old memories had surfaced, and thought of the two of them.
The conquerors of the Rocky Mountains. The two infectors had felt a fierce attraction to each other’s strength and raised up their forces to turn the mountain range entirely into their own territory.
The method of increasing their numbers was simple. Reproduction.
They selected exceptional offspring and kept only the dominant genes through inbreeding.
Bento was the ultimate child born at the end of that line.
Reviewing his own life, Bento answered Ru-paul’s question.
"My mother and father are no longer with us."
"Oh my. Why not? Did they die because they lived too long? Or did they run away?"
"I ate them."
"That’s so unfair, Bento! Stalv’s hungry, and you went and ate them all by yourself!"
At Stalv’s completely unexpected outburst, Bento moved.
Shwaik! His wings whipped through the air faster than a razor-edged sonic burst.
Speed beyond the speed of sound.
Beyond the belated crack of air parting, Stalv’s jaw and mouth were seen impaled on the tip of Bento’s wing.
"Aghk. Urgk."
"Stalv still has so much energy. Good, good. Since you’re meeting each other in your brains anyway, let’s cut the chit-chat. Do you know why I called you?"
"Y-yes! I know!"
"Go on, Gyarang."
"You told us to find the old human who killed Muaz, did you not?"
"But you failed to find him."
"...."
"Don’t be disappointed. I didn’t call you here to scold you. I’ve lost interest in that matter too."
"Sss... Then is there another reason you summoned us?"
At Porusle’s question, Ru-paul, who had been silent, brushed her red lips with a fingertip and smiled.
"Yes. Chasing that fellow was exciting enough, but I thought of something even more entertaining."
"And what might that be?"
"Humans have been showing up here and there near your nests too, haven’t they?"
"That is so. They’re a nourishing food source. We did not miss a single one and consumed them all."
"Right. For you, they’d be tonic food. Those humans appear and kill your kind or other infectors, don’t they? Why do you think that is?"
Porusle could not answer.
It was a question he had never even considered.
Why do they kill infectors?
Why had they only now revealed themselves, to harass the rulers of the new Earth?
"I don’t know. It’s exhausting enough worrying about a rival species, so it’s hard to think about the welfare of a species that’s already been selected against."
"Then what about you, Bento?"
"Hmm. If I may offer my humble opinion... would it not be to reclaim territory?"
"Oh, close."
"I’m deeply honored."
With a faint smile on her lips, Ru-paul’s gaze moved to the rest.
"Gyarang or Stalv. And you... what was your name again?"
"I am Croto, my queen."
"Ah, I remember now. You’re so quiet I’d forgotten you existed. Don’t you three know?"
"How could our lowly minds possibly approach your insight, my queen."
Was it perhaps a particularly pleasing answer?
Ru-paul let out a soft snort and folded her arms.
"Then I’ll tell you myself. Those humans are securing the elements they need to survive!"
"Elements needed to survive...?"
"Yes! You know—clothes, food, and shelter!"
"But they looked as though they already had a homeland. Their clothing also seemed abundant enough to preserve their body heat."
"Krrk. Even so, they’re still a fragile species that dies if just one hole is punched through the body."
Gyarang sneered at Bento’s words, his lips twitching.
He seemed irritated that the queen’s attention had been monopolized.
"Gyarang. Have you not encountered humans yet?"
"There’s no way a backward species from that far behind in evolution could come to the Mongolian Plateau that I rule."
At Croto’s words, Gyarang shrugged and snorted before listening on to Ru-paul’s explanation.
"Yes, they may have a homeland. A homeland that will soon disappear."
"What do you mean?"
"Their homeland is going to vanish. So they’re probably after your land in order to secure territory. And while they’re at it, they’re wiping out the annoying infectors around them too. What do you think is left after that?"
"Food! We need to eat to live!"
"Ooh, Stalv, what’s this? You actually said something right for once."
At Stalv’s shout, now fully recovered, Ru-paul pursed her lips.
"That’s right. They need food. But they can’t eat us. Why? Because they can’t withstand the virus. Well, there may be a few who can resist it. But they don’t eat us. Or rather, they can’t. It’d upset their stomachs."
Only a tiny fraction of humans can digest the bodies of infectors.
For example, the brain.
Remembering why humans had extracted only the brains from the creatures in the canyon, Ru-paul continued.
"If they secure a homeland, they’ll need food too. It’s already been so long that even food that can be stored for ages would have rotted away. So they’d secure livestock or seeds and start farming."
"Sss. But cattle and pigs have long since gone extinct. So they’d try to secure seeds."
There were crops growing in the wild.
Some infectors even made those their staple food.
But they grew in virus-contaminated soil and were saturated with the virus themselves.
"Humans will need uncontaminated food. And not just that, but things that can be produced semi-permanently."
"Uncontaminated seeds. Could such a thing still remain on this Earth?"
At Bento’s question, Ru-paul stroked her chin.
Then she looked over everyone gathered there.
"That’s why I summoned you. Humans have always feared extinction and great catastrophe. So they must have prepared for it, and that place will exist somewhere on this world too. Now then, my children. Find those places. Find them, report them to me, and claim them in advance."
Her red tongue swept over her lips.
"If you do that, I think something very interesting will happen."
***
The summons was over.
Everyone scattered to their own corners.
Gyarang, left alone, had just turned toward his territory on the Mongolian Plateau when he shuddered.
I’ll be the first to carry out the queen’s order!
Though he hadn’t said it aloud, Gyarang already knew where humans had once stored seeds in preparation for the distant future.
Long ago, when he was still human, he had once visited the place himself for the sake of study.
The location of the seed vault in Korea still came to him with perfect clarity.
Korea National Arboretum and Baekdudaegan Mountain Arboretum.
The storage vault containing countless seeds was there.
Gyarang decided to return to his lair first.
He intended to select a few of the very best among his fellow Mongolians and set out for Korea.
"The queen was right. This is going to be very interesting..."
Those inferior humans had become strong enough to challenge infectors, even to trample them?
He wanted to see just how strong they had become.
At last, he would get to fight humans for the first time.
Gyarang’s eyes, brimming with excitement, glinted red as blood.
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