The Jungle Turns the Hunt
Morning had come at last to the forest where fog and darkness had allowed no one to see even a hand's length ahead. Pale light spilled down over the shadowed forest floor, the earth still damp with dawn mist and dew.
That moist soil was stamped all over with footprints — the trails left behind by the pirates and their Walkers on the move.
Now that the sun was up, moving and searching posed no great difficulty, unlike in the small hours. But the mood among them had changed considerably from when they'd first arrived here just hours before. Stranger emotions seeped from beneath their helmets — faces half-hidden in shadow.
Fear. The instinctive dread that prey feels when it knows the predator is close.
“Vice-boss. Do you think the adjutant's still alive?”
“Shut it.”
“…Yes, sir.”
The moment Dylan growled, the man clammed up at once.
They were currently tracking the missing vice-adjutant with their detectors. The man had vanished mid-ambush, and nine times out of ten, the monster had dragged him off.
Damn it all! If the boss finds out about this…
The vice-adjutant was someone the boss had personally assigned to assist Dylan. If the boss ever learned that such a man had been taken by the monster, he would never let Dylan hear the end of it.
To escape that miserable future, he had to take the monster down no matter what — alive or as a corpse, it made no difference to him.
“Enemy contact!”
The instant a Walker pilot shouted, everyone opened fire on the creatures hiding in the trees. Within seconds, a creature reduced to little more than a lower half dropped to the forest floor.
“…Damn it, more Wood Devils. There'll be two more out there. Find them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nothing but innocent Wood Devils kept dying, over and over. The real quarry still hadn't shown so much as the tip of its nose.
It was possible the thing had simply fled this place far behind them — but Dylan was certain it hadn't.
That thing is a hunter.
A hunter capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with the deadliest predators on this continent. It would not stop its slaughter until every last pirate who had entered this forest was dead.
“Vice-boss! Look over there!”
One of his men pointed up into the trees. Dylan raised his head expecting a Wood Devil, but what hung there was something far worse.
“…You son of a bitch.”
Flayed corpses dangled from every tree, hung in clusters.
It was a message. A warning — we'll make you look like this too — or a taunt: you're not even worth this much.
Reading the meaning in those hanging bodies, Dylan gritted his teeth.
“Sh-shouldn't we clean them up?”
“…….”
Dylan and the pirates here had little in the way of camaraderie. The only reason anyone suggested dealing with the corpses was the other predators in this forest.
There was no predator in the immediate area powerful enough to threaten the pirates. But the explosion at dawn and the stampede of Plant Lizards made it impossible to rule out predators from far away coming to investigate.
Take the Horned Gigant, for instance. A bipedal carnivorous reptile whose body was covered in scales as hard as a ship's outer hull, with jaws strong enough to crush a Heavy Walker with ease. Worse, the things always traveled in mated pairs — one fight meant facing two at once. With the personnel present, standing up to a Horned Gigant couple would be a losing proposition.
…And their sense of smell is sharp.
The monster that had strung up these corpses clearly knew that too, and had arranged them this way deliberately. Anyone tracking the vanished vice-adjutant would have to pass through here — which meant a very real chance of running into yet another predator, drawn in by the smell of blood.
“Drag those corpses out right n— no. Wait.”
Dylan, about to order his men to clear the bodies, bit his tongue.
No. Would a thing like that really do something this predictable?
This was a creature that had predicted their landing site and planted land mines in advance. The odds that such a cunning bastard had left the corpses untouched were slim to none.
He hung them at a low height.
In the footage his man had sent earlier, the corpses had been strung up far higher. Not now, though. They hung low enough that even a pirate in powered armor could jump from where he stood, grab one, and pull it down.
Almost as if he were inviting them to clean the bodies up.
Suspicious.
Dylan raised his Purple Spray Gun and let loose at the corpses hanging from the trees. Purple flame gushed from the long barrel's tip, setting corpses and wood alike ablaze.
The precariously hanging bodies crashed to the ground — and the moment they touched the earth, they detonated with a thunderous roar.
“You filthy bastard!”
He'd hidden bombs inside the corpses, rigged to blow on impact. In other words — a double trap. The monster had prepared a snare where clearing the bodies was a problem, and so was leaving them.
“…Ghh. We're getting out of here. Fastest route, now.”
“Understood!”
Passing through a corridor strung with bombs was hardly an appealing option, but there was nothing for it. Better that than having the explosion draw every other predator's attention.
Dylan and the pirates left the corpses behind and moved out quickly.
“Fifty meters ahead — the vice-adjutant's movement has stopped!”
They were closing in on the creature, and yet Dylan only felt more uneasy. He couldn't begin to guess what trick it might be plotting this time.
“Everyone, halt.”
It looked like he'd have to inspect this one himself, Unyielding Mask and all.
“You, you, and you move with me. The rest of you, hold position.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dylan advanced with a handful of his men. Pushing through the dense undergrowth, a wide clearing opened up before them. At the base of a tree in the clearing, the vice-adjutant sat leaning against the trunk.
Whether the monster had gnawed on him or not, the powered armor he wore was severely damaged — everything but the abdominal section had been torn away.
Dylan swept the perimeter of the clearing with the Unyielding Mask first. If the creature were cloaked, it would show as a violet glow — but not a single living thing appeared anywhere around them.
A check of the vice-adjutant confirmed he was still alive — his body twitched faintly.
“You rotten piece of work. You alive in there?”
“Mm, mmph! Mmph!”
He must have been gravely injured, because he couldn't move — nothing but moans escaped him. Dylan gestured to his men.
One of the pirates cautiously approached the vice-adjutant.
“Adjutant, sir?”
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
As the pirate drew near, the man's moans grew more frantic.
“Huh?”
Only up close did the pirate notice something wrong with the vice-adjutant's body. His belly had swollen to an grotesque size.
The moment the pirate reached out to touch his abdomen—
The powered armor burst open, and the black worms clinging to the inside of it leapt out and swarmed the pirate.
-
Good.
The tooth fairies I'd planted had begun their work. Now it was my turn.
Hidden in stealth via Metal Absorption, I had climbed to the crown of a giant tree, staying above the enemy's detection range.
So the man in charge has some brains after all.
Spotting the bomb trap had been fairly clever — but it was still within the range of my predictions. Their eyes had been locked on the corpses alone, never once looking up, and thanks to that, none of them had noticed me hiding in the treetops.
Right in the palm of my hand.
I leapt down from the great tree. My target: the Walker preparing to fire from the rear.
My body, made tremendously heavy by the effects of Nightmare Horizon, plummeted at terrible speed. Screams had already risen from the front, and the Walker charging its Plasma Launcher never saw me coming.
“Wha—?!”
“Aaagh!”
The Walker I slammed into toppled forward — and its charging launcher fired, vaporizing the two pirates standing in front of it.
“It's, it's the monster!”
The pilot's shout rang out from inside the cockpit. I'd meant to crush him flat in one blow — a pity it failed. The thick steel plating had bent like taffy under the collision, but not enough to kill the man inside.
The other pirates and Walkers turned at the pilot's cry.
I activated my Ghost Claws and plunged my hand into the cockpit. A few quick swipes silenced the pilot for good, and I flung myself forward — a plasma beam skimming my back by a hair's breadth.
⌈ Pain Mitigation activated! ⌋
Damn it!
I thought I'd dodged clean. I hadn't. The beam had shattered the dorsal plates on my back. Until they regenerated, my psionic disruption trait was unusable.
Hard on the heels of the beam, purple flame sprayed at me from all sides — every remaining Purple Spray Gun opening up at once.
…God, it's hot.
The psionic flames scorched my outer hide. The Purple Spray Gun wasn't just powerful — its fire, like white phosphorus, refused to go out. Composed of raw, unrefined psychic energy, it burned on and on until a set amount of time passed.
As it happened, I was a Psionic Enhancement Type, with both a psionic resistance trait and Pain Mitigation. So the heat stopped at the level of unpleasantly hot — if I'd been missing even one of those, I'd have been writhing, unable to move at all through the agony of my own flesh burning away.
And I went and used Metal Absorption for nothing. Damn.
With the purple flames clinging to my body, invisibility was useless now.
…But there's a strategy that works even like this.
Robed in fire, I charged the one remaining Walker. As I bore down on it, the pilot scrambled to activate the grenade launcher mounted near its shoulder — a secondary weapon.
Idiot.
The grenade, packed with condensed plasma energy, struck my head and ricocheted away. It landed right in front of the pirates still diligently pouring psionic fire onto me.
“You have got to be kidding—!”
Ignoring the blast behind me, I threw myself at the Walker. Unlike the one it had crippled helplessly at dawn, this one tilted its body, deflecting my charge. My horn scraped across the cockpit's outer armor, carving a long gash — but didn't punch through. Having evaded my horn, the Walker kicked out and shoved me back.
Committed as I was to the charge, a single kick sent me skidding hard.
Doesn't matter.
The Walker leveled its launcher at my compromised stance — but its intent never came to pass.
“Gyaaaaaagh!”
Because the psionic flames wrapped around my body had transferred to the Walker. The instant the cockpit was engulfed in purple fire, the pilot scrambled out in a panic.
Where do you think you're going?
I whipped my tail at the fleeing man. The tail, sheathed in hard scales, sent him flying far away into a tree — and the moment he hit it, he became what a mosquito is to a human palm.
“Fire! Fire and kill it!”
The pirate leader, who'd gone ahead on recon, had returned at some point and was screaming orders. The Auto Plasma Gun on his shoulder tracked me and fired.
I twisted my head and blocked the plasma bolt aimed at my arm. My skull rang with a sharp whine, but it was still bearable.
Time to change position.
I dove in among the pirates, dodging both the psionic flames and the plasma bolts. The Purple Spray Gun doesn't discriminate between friend and foe — the pirates with the heavy weapons faltered and stopped shooting.
“You half-wits! Shoot the damn thing, NOW!”
The pirate leader, sharp as he was, raged — but it was already too late. I wrenched every weapon free from my combat arms.
First, I brought my Bone Axe down on the head of a pirate frozen in confusion.
“Gahk!”
As his brains scattered, a blood-red bloodsucking tentacle lashed out and clamped onto another pirate's leg.
“Wha—?!”
The pirate dangling from the tentacle became a 1.9-meter cudgel, used to beat his own comrades.
“Gwhek!”
“Aaagh!”
Even pirates in hardened powered armor couldn't withstand a bludgeon made of a pirate wearing the very same armor. Like bowling pins, they went down in a sprawl.
Seeing it, the remaining pirates apparently decided their comrades were a lost cause and moved to fire up the Purple Spray Guns again.
I opened my mouth wide at them.
From the organ deep in my throat, pouches loaded with virulent fungus were ejected past my teeth. The black masses arced through the air and dropped behind the heavy-weapons pirates. With the pop of bursting water balloons, the vile fungi were released and latched onto the pirates.
“Kk, kkhyagyagyagak!”
“Agagagak!”
The pirates shrieked strange screams as they convulsed. Thanks to my Infection Enhancement trait, the effects of the space bacteria and my Rot Fungi Organ were now stronger than ever. The rot fungi, far more vicious than before, gnawed through the pirates' bodies at terrible speed.
“You, you sons of bitches… Retreat! RETREAT!”
The Walkers were annihilated, and the surviving pirates had been cut nearly in half.
At the leader's retreat order, the rest turned and fled.
I didn't chase them. Instead, I gathered up the pirates nearby who weren't quite dead yet.
“St, stop… gwhek!”
Recovery first — before I go hunting.
I crunched through the skull of a pirate still squirming.
The dorsal plates that triggered my psionic disruption trait were damaged, and my whole body bore burns from the psionic flames. Rather than rush after the enemy, it made more sense to heal my wounds, refill my energy, and then move.
Not that it matters — the Walkers and heavy-weapons troops are all gone.
The one who looked like their leader was armed with a Purple Spray Gun and an Auto Plasma Gun, but that was all. In this deadly forest, they were wounded deer, nothing more.
Now I'm the one who's “it.”
It was a shame my prepared traps had gone to waste — but that was fine. I happen to love a good chase, too.