Survive (1)

...No point agonizing over it.

I decided to cut the despair off right here.

It wasn't that I was more of an optimist than most, brushing things off without a care.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The Amorph is a hardy, battle-born species — but not as a Hatchling.

I was a bundle of nothing but possibility and potential, and right now I was nothing more than a fragile creature that would die within the hour unless it ate something.

Which meant I had to get moving before my remaining energy hit rock bottom.

The place I found myself in was the interior of a massive metal structure.

And I knew full well what it was — a ship built of alloy, swimming through the sea called space. A starship.

Going by the design, Mega Corp or the Star Union.

Either way, neither faction was one I'd welcome.

Scanning my surroundings, I spotted containers roughly three people tall, stacked in tiers, and plastic boxes nestled among them.

When the auxiliary organ beneath my jaw wriggled, all manner of information came flooding into my mind.

What a strange sense.

Experiencing Super Sense firsthand — which in the game had been rendered as a minimap through gameplay convenience — felt completely different.

How should I put it? Smells registered like sounds, sounds became visible — all five senses scrambled together, converted into information and delivered. It was a sense that perceived everything within range, all at once.

At the tips of my claws, I could feel the thrumming of a fusion engine pulsing somewhere below. The faint scents of phosphorus, carbon, and a dozen other elements drifting through the air teased the ends of my auxiliary organ.

The organ sifted through those many smells, plucked out one crucial fact, and sent it to my brain: food was nearby.

Replenishing my nutrition was my top priority. Knowing food wasn't far off was encouraging.

My three pairs of legs diligently carried me toward the prey, stepping across the cold metal plating.

Each time my claws met the grating floor, a faint clatter rang out.

I threaded my way through the forest of containers and reached a plastic box, then used my claws to scramble up on top of it. Up close, I could see it was secured with a combination lock.

Thank god it's a combination. Let's see here.

I pressed my jaw close to the keypad. The auxiliary organ wriggled across its surface, and the fingerprints smeared there flowed into my mind.

One, two, three... wait. No way.

The combination felt oddly familiar. On the off chance, I jabbed the buttons firmly with my forelegs.

Sure enough, the lock released with a click.

Wow. 1234. You're kidding me.

So even in the space age, this was the best security money could buy. I offered a silent thank-you to whoever set that password and pried open the lid.

Inside, vacuum-sealed Calorie Bars were stacked to the brim. I pulled one from the top, tore the wrapper, and took a bite.

The dense, powdery texture was exactly like chewing on a rubber eraser. The in-game tooltip had said it was designed with nothing but nutrition in mind, and that seemed to be the honest truth.

Ugh. Well, at least it gets the job done.

High-calorie, as advertised. I could feel strength flooding back down to the very tip of my tail.

Just as I raised a foreleg to grab a second bar, something registered on my senses. My tail lashed out like a loosed arrow and skewered the unidentified thing.

A cockroach?

Impaled on my sharp stinger, it was indeed a cockroach. It squirmed to escape, then went limp.

As if drawn by something beyond my control, I bit into it. Its chitinous shell cracked between my teeth and its juices sprayed out. The thing had clearly eaten well and grown fat — it was remarkably juicy.

The moment I finished it off, a text box appeared — different in content from anything before.

Oh?

Getting a Genetic Essence this fast — decent luck.

Genetic Essences were the alpha and omega of running an Amorph. The more essences you collected, the stronger a creature you could evolve into.

Wings, huh.

In a game set in space, wings on their own didn't carry much meaning. But this wasn't a game — it was reality. Considering how fragile I was as a larva, it was a fairly useful trait. It would give me air superiority when hunting, and an edge when fleeing.

Accept.

A tickling sensation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spread across my back, and wings sprouted — smooth, resilient, with that distinctive chitinous sheen.

Nice.

I decided to test them out.

But how do I actually move these things?

Unlike legs, wings weren't a body part humans were familiar with.

Still, they'd grown from my back, so I tensed up around where my trapezius muscles would be, on instinct. Apparently I'd guessed right, because the wings began to flap, slowly.

It burns way more energy than I expected.

A few flaps were all it took to figure that out. Flight consumed a tremendous amount of energy.

I stopped moving my wings and tore into another Calorie Bar.

If I want to make real use of these wings, I'll need something more.

Gaining wings was a welcome stroke of fortune, but the cockroach's true prize lay elsewhere.

It was a trait I absolutely had to acquire for a smooth, comfortable survival.

First objective, set.

I chewed thoughtfully on the Calorie Bar.

First, I would become a cockroach massacre machine.

I remembered reading a story like this when I was young.

A man named Jonah fled from God's command and was swallowed by a whale at sea. An ordinary person would have died, but Jonah was under divine protection, so he survived three days in the whale's belly before escaping. Having survived death, Jonah faithfully obeyed God's word from then on.

The reason I'm bringing up an old tale out of nowhere is that my current situation resembled Jonah in the whale's belly.

I too was wandering through the belly of a steel whale drifting through weightless space, in search of prey.

I pressed myself flat against the wall and waited motionless until a cockroach passed beneath me. My tail became a barbed fishing line and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠snatched it up.

Thwip.

Like a fisherman hauling in his net, I carefully reeled my tail in. The creature, skewered on my stinger, seemed to grasp its fate and struggled desperately to break free.

Not a chance.

My sharp teeth sank into its head. Small but needle-fine, they worked ceaselessly, breaking the cockroach's shell and flesh down into something easy to digest. Only after what remained of it had been ground nearly to pulp — like the dregs of a blender — was it allowed down my throat.

Nutritionally speaking, the Calorie Bar won hands down. But in terms of taste, the cockroach was far superior. Thanks to that, I could do things no human version of myself would ever have imagined without the slightest hesitation.

It actually tastes like silkworm pupae, I swear.

The kind of flavor that practically demands a shot of soju alongside it.

That makes twenty. And still nothing.

Out of old human habit, I picked at my teeth with a foreleg and summoned the text box. At my command, a translucent window appeared before me.

That first pair of wings must have been beginner's luck. I'd devoured nineteen more cockroaches since, and earned only a single Genetic Essence from them.

The Chitinous Carapace isn't bad either, but...

The Chitinous Carapace was a powerful trait that dramatically boosted defense as you grew. Useful in the late game — but right now, it was dead weight.

Raising your defense from nearly zero to slightly less nearly zero as a Hatchling meant nothing. Something else mattered far more.

I need the Hardiness trait, and it just won't drop.

Hardiness was a common trait shared by most insect-type and plant-type creatures. And accordingly, its effect was extremely simple.

Reduces energy expenditure and slows aging.

In a game where lifespan didn't exist, it was the kind of trait only roleplay-focused players bothered picking up.

But now that the game had become reality, its value was entirely different.

With Hardiness, I wouldn't need to obsess over finding food nearly as much.

I couldn't live in this Cargo Bay forever. The vibrations seeping through the walls, the faint sound of footsteps — every time I sensed them, I was reminded of how little time I had left.

The owners of this ship — humanity — were my enemies.

Even setting aside the game's backstory, I found it hard to believe they'd take kindly to the sight of me.

Once they noticed supplies dwindling from the Cargo Bay, they'd come looking. And if I got caught? Death — or a one-way ticket to the experimental lab.

To avoid that bleak future, I had to meet the evolution conditions as fast as possible and cross beyond the Hatchling stage. Which meant expanding my hunting grounds beyond the Cargo Bay.

I've rambled long enough. In short: if I wanted to live, I had to keep killing cockroaches.

Time to change hunting spots.

Cockroaches were sensitive, clever insects; they would never return to an area where one of their own had died. They knew danger lurked where a comrade had fallen. At first I hadn't realized this, and I'd wasted half an hour stubbornly rooted to one spot.

Okay — hup!

I coiled all eight of my legs against the wall, pressing my body flat, then released the tension in a single explosive burst.

My body sprang away in an elastic recoil, taking flight.

While I hung in the air, my wings snapped open from my back. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The muscles along my spine — where a human's trapezius would be — clenched tight. As my wings began to beat, my falling body lifted slowly upward.

A monster that looked like a desert spider, flapping around on insect wings. Anyone with a weak heart would probably faint on the spot.

Even mid-flight, my eyes and auxiliary organ never rested, sweeping the area for cockroaches.

At this point I'm basically an honorary Amorph.

I was lost in that idle thought when two cockroaches registered on my senses.

One clung to the wall; the other was industriously scaling a plastic box.

I decided to take the closer one first — the one on the wall. My wings adjusted their angle, and my body banked toward it.

The cockroach had apparently been lost in its own little world, because it never noticed my dive. Like an eagle snatching a fish from the water, I seized it with my forelegs.

Before it could wriggle free between my claws, I stuffed it straight into my mouth. Its shell — polished like a well-shined dress shoe — cracked apart, and juices and shreds of viscera burst from its flank.

There was still one more to catch, so I kept the corpse clamped in my jaws and locked onto the next target.

Aw, no.

The one on the floor had noticed me. It scuttled down beneath the box to escape the predator.

Those tiny legs were heading for one place: the gaps in the floor. The moment it slipped between the alloy plates, the hunt was over.

I can't let it get away!

I shoved off the wall with all four pairs of legs for momentum and launched myself at it like an arrow off a bowstring. Its antennae and head were already disappearing into the gap in the plating.

With only its hindquarters still visible, I slammed down onto the floor like a dive-bomb. Every part of me crashed into metal with no softness to be found anywhere, and pain flooded in — but my mind was fixed entirely on its rear end.

My tail shot out the way a pit viper strikes its prey. It sliced through the air, and the stinger at its tip plunged into the hole in the steel plate.

The roach, just then heaving a sigh of relief that the danger had passed, convulsed in shock. Its tiny brain, resolved to flee at once, was bisected by the needle-sharp stinger before the thought could become action.

Phew.

By the narrowest of margins, I'd taken them both. My tail returned to rest with an elegant flourish. Dangling from its tip hung my proud trophies.

I finished off the corpse in my mouth first, then started on the one on my tail. I was nearly done with it when the message I'd been waiting for finally appeared.

Obviously, accept.

A vitality qualitatively different from anything before surged through my entire body.

Muscle wrapped itself around my long, spindly legs, thickening them, and the luster of the chitinous carapace covering my back and belly deepened to a healthy sheen.

This was only the beginning.

The Cargo Bay — colossal and vast by the measure of my own body, yet a mere sliver of the ship as a whole.

It was time to break through the walls of the world where I'd taken my first step.