Jungle (3)
"Ugh, what's wrong with this thing now?"
The pirate pilot in the cockpit slammed down his comms unit. He smacked it a few times, powered it back on, but it wouldn't respond at all.
"Must be from the guys."
He couldn't make out what it said, but it was clearly a transmission from the teammates who'd visited Camp 17.
The pilot called in his fellow pilot, who was outside, to get the transport moving.
"Hey, the guys called in. We're taking off, so get in. Now."
「I'm finishing this cigarette first.」
"I said we have to go!"
「Oh, come on. Seriously.」
"Shut the door properly when you come in."
「Yeah, yeah.」
Once he'd watched his grumbling companion climb aboard, the pilot prepared for takeoff. The instant the transport was about to lift off, the whole craft rocked violently.
"What the—?"
The pilot hurriedly checked the warning indicators: the cargo bay door at the rear hadn't sealed properly.
"You absolute moron — I told you to shut the door and get in."
The pilot switched on his comms and hailed the crewmate inside.
"We're taking off. Close the door and get in here, fast."
「kkzzkkzzt」
"I said close the door!"
No answer came — instead, the cargo-door indicator on the dashboard flipped from red to green. The door had closed.
"About damn time. Taking off — hold on tight!"
The moment the pilot pulled back on the yoke, the transport shot into the sky.
"Yes, yes, it's true! The skin was flayed clean off and hung from a tree... What? Ah — yep. Recording and transmitting now."
The pirate reporting to headquarters over his comms activated the small camera mounted on his helmet. The camera beside his lantern panned slowly, streaming footage of the corpses laid out on the ground back to the main body.
Thanks to the wire cables running from the Walkers up to the giant trees, dealing with the corpses hadn't been difficult.
"What in... what kind of demon does something like this?"
Like any Spacedog cartel, the Humanity pirates carried plenty of cruelty in them. Before coming here, they'd done unspeakable, hideous things to innocent Wolves.
But even they had never conceived of hanging a human being — skinned whole — from a tree.
While his teammate reported and filmed, a sharp-eyed pirate examined one of the blood-soaked corpses.
"...The blood's still warm. Hasn't been dead long."
Which meant whoever had done this might still be nearby.
"F-fuck... I thought the Bio Scanner wasn't picking up anything?"
"...If it isn't registered in the database, it won't show."
The Humanity Cartel had collected the genetic data of nearly every creature native to the Saintopia 02 continent — but something from outside was beyond even them.
An unknown enemy. Worse, a monster that treated humans as prey, possibly lurking close by. The pirates' knees went weak all on their own.
"When's the transport getting here?!"
"We called it, so it'll be any... ah, there it is!"
Branches and leaves churned wildly overhead. With a deafening roar, the transport's lights flooded the depths of the forest.
"Good. Everyone, move out."
The only clearing near here that could take a transport lay outside Camp 17, and the pirates naturally assumed the transport would fly that way.
"Huh?"
"Why is it doing that?"
The transport suddenly wobbled, then began bleeding altitude fast — as if it meant to ram the ground. And the direction of its dive was exactly where the pirates stood.
As the distance closed with terrifying speed, the pirates' faces drained white.
"Everyone, get clear!"
The pirates dove behind trees and rocks. The Walkers tried to dodge too, but it was far too late. The falling transport came down like a lance, straight through a Walker.
Crushing the Walker beneath it, the transport exploded, flame climbing the giant trees. The roar rolled through the entire forest, and sleeping birdlike creatures burst skyward in a startle, all at once.
"Wh-what the hell is this?!"
"That's our transport!"
The pirates who'd taken cover stared, hollow-faced, at the blazing wreckage. Their ride out had just been blown to scrap, and they wailed in despair.
But their misfortune wasn't finished.
Something black erupted from the flames and hurled itself at the second Walker. It was far larger than the machine, and the Walker toppled without even managing a counterattack.
The thing that had downed it drove a tail spike into the pirate seated in the cockpit. The spike was nearly spear-length, and the pirate died on the spot without even a scream.
Having crippled the Walker, the creature bounded off into the forest depths.
It had all happened in a blink, and the pirates could only gape. Only after it vanished did they come back to themselves, screaming and shouting.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
"FUUUUUUCK!"
"What in the hell was that thing just now!"
"How should I know!"
Having lost a transport and two Walkers in a matter of moments, the pirates spiraled into full panic.
"Th-this place isn't safe!"
"Everyone, run for Camp 17!"
The heaviest firepower the pirates had here was those two Walkers with their Plasma Launchers. This forest was riddled with Dangerous Organisms that couldn't be fought without them.
Now, on top of the unknown attacker, the forest's own residents would come hunting them. Worse still, the flayed corpses were pumping the scent of blood into the air. Monsters would swarm in soon — that much was obvious — and the pirates ran.
Eight pirates sprinted between the giant trees. Above their heads, hidden among the leaves, countless eyes tracked their every step.
"We're not far from camp! Just a little farther and—!"
The lead pirate never finished the sentence. A long, serpentine shape poured down from the canopy, seized his head, and hauled him up.
The pirates behind him could do nothing but watch as their teammate vanished into the treetops.
"Acid—!"
Just as they were about to lose their minds entirely, another snake dropped and snatched a second pirate. Above them came the hideous crack of snapping bones, and blood rained down.
"Everyone firaaagh!"
"AAAAGH!"
The remaining six tore out their gauss rifles and fired blindly into the dark. Between the black trunks, they could just make out the silhouette of something huge leaping this way and that.
"Damn it! I can't see a damn thing!"
They emptied their mags at it, but the creature kept moving as if nothing had touched it.
And what they needed to fear wasn't only what prowled above.
"AAAAGH! Help me!"
"Hiiik—?!"
Dozens of insects swarmed over a pirate who'd been aiming upward. Palm-sized bugs bared glistening white fangs and gnawed at his reinforced suit.
"Agyagyagyagk!"
What the pirates wore were specially modified mid-grade reinforced suits with a high defensive rating. The suit held — it wasn't being breached — but that didn't dull one bit the agony of teeth grinding against flesh through the fabric.
"I've got you!"
Another pirate stopped firing and shouted to his teammate. That cry was the last line he ever spoke.
"Look out!"
"Huh?"
A crimson snake descended and dragged him away. The others whipped around to shoot at the spot where it had appeared — and spikes flew out of the darkness, punching into their throats.
"Urk!"
"Ghk!"
They staggered like drunks and crumpled to the ground.
Two pirates left standing. They dropped their rifles without a second's hesitation and bolted straight for the camp.
Honestly, reaching the camp wouldn't accomplish much of anything — but they had no room left in their heads for rational judgment.
As they fled, they heard heavy footsteps pounding after them. At first it sounded distant and faint; a breath later it had swollen until it felt like it was right at their backs.
Perhaps it was that crushing pressure. One pirate, sprinting blind, caught his foot on a branch and went down hard.
"H-help me! Please!"
"...It's been fun."
"You rotten piece of shit... AAAAGH!"
Leaving his teammate's scream behind him, he ran.
"Hah... hah... hah."
He'd been running for ages, and still no camp in sight. Above him, branches swayed with an eerie, mournful creak, and every tree looked exactly like every other tree. It was as if the entire forest had closed around him, grinning — go on, then. Try to escape.
But he couldn't stop. The thing would catch him in seconds.
The instant that thought formed, something furry slammed into him from behind, and the pirate face-planted into the dirt. Eight legs pressed down on his back.
"D-don't do this! Spare me!"
He begged the unseen thing for his life, and its answer was teeth. Razor fangs sank into the back of his neck, and a potent venom spread through his veins, flooding his entire body.
"GUAAAAAAAAGH!"
The pirate screamed his throat raw as every blood vessel in his body began to dissolve.
The monster that had ambushed him — the Nightstalker — savored its helpless prey with satisfaction. Then, the very moment its jaws closed, something seized its head.
"Hngh?"
「How. Dare. You.」
With a dissonance the forest had never once heard, the Nightstalker's thoughts came to an end.
'Why did you have to go and eat that?'
Holding the Nightstalker's corpse, its head half-crushed to pulp, I studied the pirate lying in front of me.
'Dead, huh.'
Unfortunately, the pirate had fallen to the Nightstalker's venom instead of me. Corpses I didn't kill with my own hands are treated the same as ordinary genetic samples. In other words, for any prey I don't personally finish off, the odds of the Predation Effect triggering drop to nearly nothing.
Even with the Hunter's Avatar active, unless I happened to acquire the same trait twice, such corpses could only be used as raw material for the Transcendence System — no actual benefit whatsoever.
'This is the problem with forests, I'm telling you.'
I wasn't the only hunter out here. Plenty of competitors, and if I moved too slowly, my prey got stolen right out from under me — like this.
I chewed down the Nightstalker's corpse and let my irritation settle.
'Hm. Not bad, actually.'
With the innards intact, the Nightstalker tasted, put simply, like a pepperoni croissant. Its organs carried a pungent, distinctive bite — whether that came from its venom glands or its powerful digestive acids, I couldn't say, but it had genuine character.
'Tasty, so I'll let this one slide.'
It was dead already, after all.
Once I'd devoured every last scrap of the Nightstalker, I gathered up the pirate's corpse. Couldn't eat it anyway, so this body was going to work terrifying the enemy instead.
'I hoped it would, but the flaying tactic works in reality too.'
Even in Space Survival, with its extreme degree of freedom, skinning a corpse wasn't impossible. Players with butchering skills could harvest hides from rare beasts, and those hides served as reinforced-suit material or completed certain critical missions.
'...Though nobody ever used them to terrorize the enemy, I'll admit.'
Amorph could skin animals too, if it wanted. But the species trait prioritized Genetic Essence above everything else, so there was never any reason to bother with hides — that was the only reason it didn't.
As for me, I'd used the method because it was simply effective for hunting. A flayed corpse didn't slap any debuff on players, but the psychological damage was devastating. Not many people, as far as I knew, were delighted to see a body stripped down to bare muscle.
'Streamers especially hated it.'
After all, I'd forcibly cranked the age rating on their broadcasts.
In any case, I'd gotten a great deal of mileage out of the tactic, and I'd used it often back when I fought the four clans and on that one planet. Eventually I retired it — I'd used it so much that people had stopped being scared of it.
If this were still a game, it never would have worked. But this was reality.
The enemy had been badly shaken by the sight of corpses in a state they'd never seen before, and thanks to that, wiping them out had been easy.
'There are still more of them left out there, so... hm?'
I slung the pirate corpse over my shoulder and noticed a small light blinking on the helmet. A miniature camera, for recording footage.
'Well, that works out even better.'
I gripped the helmet with my combat hand and squeezed. The metal crumpled inward, and blood welled out from the pirate's head inside it.
'They've seen me on that camera, which means they'll come hunting for me.'
This forest held dozens of pirate camps — easily more than thirty. Tracking them down one by one would be tedious, and if the heavily armed enemy laid a trap of their own, I'd be the one caught in it.
'Any other time, I'd go to them myself.'
Not this time.
Making them walk into traps I'd built with their own two feet — that was the heart of this fight.
They'd watched me hang the corpses in the trees. Their vigilance had to be at its absolute peak right now. They'd strain every nerve to catch me.
Of course, if they could bring their heavy weapons to bear on me from every direction at once, this game would favor them — but thankfully, that was impossible.
'This terrain is rough going for transports. Landing sites are limited.'
The pirates who'd come to investigate the silent camp had landed in a distant clearing and moved in on foot. To catch me, they had no choice but to land at fixed points and proceed on foot.
Which meant predicting their movements would be anything but difficult for me.
Unless they burned the entire forest down from a cruiser in orbit, they were sitting in the palm of my hand.
'Well then. Time to get ready.'
I set off, carrying the pirate corpse and the Nightstalker's remains. Behind me came the tooth fairies, dragging the paralyzed pirates along by their limbs.
"......"
"......"
The pirates they hauled along, gouging furrows in the dirt, were clearly desperate to escape — right up until they watched me stroll along casually crunching through a teammate's head like a snack. After that, they became very well behaved.
The night would not last long. The Walkers they'd brought in, the equipment left behind at the camp, and the pirates themselves — there were a great many traps that needed building, and all of it would go to use.
"......"
"......"
The temporary command camp set up by Humanity's vice-boss, Dylan. Inside its operations tent, a dead silence had settled.
The cause was the footage sent back by the team dispatched to investigate Camp 17.
Dylan rewatched the recording several times over with cold eyes, then summoned his vice-adjutant.
"Get my gear ready. Pick out the thirty best fighters we've got."
"...Should we not inform the boss first, sir?"
"Fuck that. I'm the one in charge out here, yeah? You think the boss is going to let me slide after seeing what a clusterfuck this is?"
Dylan was the boss's favored Cultist, to be sure — but not so beloved that she'd paper over every last one of his mistakes. His boss regarded every subordinate as expendable ammunition. Dylan was merely a toy she happened to enjoy. The moment she learned something had gone wrong at the camps, she would toss him aside without a second thought.
"We already wiped out every Wolf village in the area anyway. One more job before we pull out — gutting one goddamn bastard isn't going to change a thing."
"Understood, sir."
Once his subordinate left with the order, Dylan played the footage again. He wanted to pin down as much as he could — what kind of creature this thing was, what weapons it used, what habits it had.
"You dare provoke me? Do you even know who I am?"
The boss might treat him like a toy, but Dylan was still the vice-boss of a massive cartel. A man seasoned to the bone in hunting Dangerous Organisms.
Gritting his teeth, Dylan replayed the recording again and again, until his men arrived hauling his personal equipment.
And yet, for all his preparation, an anxiety he couldn't quite name lingered in some corner of his mind.
The monster that slipped through the darkness, butchering his pirates one by one.
For some reason, the thing smelled faintly like the boss.