Night Hunt (2)
Night fell once more over the jungle, a wilderness blanketed in redwoods stretching hundreds of meters toward the sky.
Deep green foliage mingled with the crimson of the trees, staining the forest darkness a deep indigo. Through that heavy, chilly gloom, six Heavy Walkers pushed forward with their lights on.
Let's see here.
I looked down at them from my perch among the branches. Honestly, now that I'd reached the Young Adult stage, I could simply drop down and crush every last one of them — but I had my reasons for holding back.
I can't afford to let my true form be seen.
If Muriel learned that I was a Young Adult, she would either prepare accordingly or flee into space to get away from me. Aside from the cruiser, I hadn't found any other ship in her possession, but if she had some means of escaping to orbit hidden away, I would have no way of stopping her.
To prevent that, I had to destroy all six Walkers in a single instant — before any camera could catch a frame of me. And right now, I was waiting for that exact opening.
"Sleep's for suckers, huh? What kind of shit job is this?"
"Hey, you sure it's around here?"
"Yeah. It's close. Very close."
"Goddammit. Thing's supposedly wounded, and it's still running circles around us."
"Well, if it's close, that's something. Let's grab it quick and head back."
Bored from a full day of nothing but trailing tracks, the Walker pilots grumbled among themselves.
Perfect.
Everyone's guard was down. That was my moment to strike.
Hidden in position, ready to ambush at any second, I wound the tip of my tail tight around a tree and stretched my upper body out over their heads. By pure coincidence, the number of Walkers matched my tentacles exactly — six. I activated my Erosion Tentacles without delay.
Six sharp appendages came down like a hail of arrows, each one aimed with pinpoint precision at the cockpits of the six Heavy Walkers.
The tentacles punched through the tops of the cockpits and went straight for the pilots' heads — plucking them out or crushing them where they sat.
"...!"
The Griffon Wolf, which had been aware of my presence for some time now, lunged forward. The blood-drinking tentacle that sprang from my hand missed its mark and lashed uselessly against bare ground.
The Griffon didn't stop there — it leapt.
Its body defied the laws of nature, soaring into the air. It moved as if invisible steps hung in the sky, kicking off empty air and darting upward with startling speed.
A chain connected to the Walkers was locked around its throat, but it seemed the beast had never intended to run in the first place.
Like an eagle that has spotted a fish, the Griffon came at me in a swift strike. Its target wasn't my upper body — it was my tail, the very part anchoring me to the tree.
I released my tail in an instant, spread my gliding membrane, and launched myself toward another tree. In that split second, the creature's forepaw smashed into the redwood I'd just abandoned.
CRACK
The hardy redwood caved in under the blow, gouged deep by its forepaw.
"?!"
Its eyes went wide — it clearly hadn't expected me to dodge by taking flight.
Having landed on the new tree, I shook my tail tip hard. Great quills, each larger than a kitchen knife, flew through the air toward the beast still hanging there.
With an eagle's eyes, the creature read the trajectory of every incoming quill in a heartbeat and twisted clear of them all. The moment it touched down, the pilotless Walkers toppled slowly forward, one after another.
"What? Why did every signal just cut out? Mother of the Sky? What the hell is going on?"
"The Walkers fell to it."
Muriel's flustered voice crackled out of the comm unit inside one of the Walkers. The Griffon answered her in short, sharp tones that recalled a bird of prey.
"What? You said it was wounded!"
"It healed. Sometime in between."
"You shi—? What kind of bullshit is that! Hey! Pull the footage off the Walkers and show me! I want to see it with my own eyes!"
Sorry, but I can't let you do that.
I activated my Acidic Fungal Gland. The acidic fungus surged up from near my esophagus like something boiling over, and I vomited it down onto the Walkers' cockpits.
The acid spray scattered and splashed, spreading across all six machines at once.
"I'm dealing with it right now."
"Cut the crap and pull the feed already— zzzzzt"
"..."
The cockpits melted away in their entirety, taking the cameras and comm units with them. The Griffon pressed the chain around its own neck against the fungus and snapped it clean off.
Watching that, I was certain.
This one was a player too.
"You're· a· player."
"Yes."
The Griffon answered flatly, never taking its eyes off me. Then it frowned.
"...Damn it all. I finally thought I'd found a little happiness, and now I run into the psycho bitch, then the Morph-fucker, one right after another."
Judging by the conversation between the pilots before the Walkers died, and by her attitude now, the Griffon Wolf clearly didn't get along with Muriel at all.
Two players already.
It seemed more players had come to this world than I'd assumed.
I'll look into that later.
First, I had to deal with the Griffon Wolf before Muriel could get here. Its ambiguous posturing made things uncertain, but one thing was sure: after falling for one of Muriel's tricks, carelessness had cost it plenty.
Perhaps it sensed my killing intent, because it began to slide slowly sideways, keeping its body low like a lion stalking prey, circling with deliberate patience. I drew my long tail behind me, hunting for an opening of my own.
There's a wound on its belly.
I knew the Griffon's regeneration was exceptional, so it must have been a deep one. Even now, droplets of blood were falling from between its hairs.
As I sized it up, its gaze swept over my body in turn. A Griffon's eyes carried an effect much like my Insight trait — the ability to identify an enemy's weak points.
Not that it'll do you any good.
Given the gap between us, I held an overwhelming advantage. And on top of that, its injuries hadn't fully healed.
If I were some other Amorph, it might have stood a chance — but this one knew exactly what I was, which must have been suffocating beyond bearing. Proof enough was the violent pounding of its heart. Tension. And fear.
"Kyao!"
After that brief mutual probing, it was the Griffon who drew first blood.
It loosed a short roar and launched itself at me. Its forepaws came driving toward my arms.
So it knows my head is hard.
Judging by the force that had shattered that redwood moments ago, it couldn't sever my arm, but it could very well break one. In other words — better to dodge than to block.
I twisted my body like a dancing cobra, slipping past its forepaws.
When its paw hammered into the ground, the impact rang out like a detonating grenade.
Its failed attack wrecked its posture, and I seized the opening — wrenching the Bone Axe from my hand and swinging it at the creature's back.
But just as its attack had failed, so did mine. In the middle of it all, the beast bent its body with impossible flexibility and slipped past my blade by a hair's breadth.
Riding the recoil of that contortion, it lashed out with a hind leg at my neck — or to be precise, at the region where my Monster's Tentacles resided.
Damn it!
I wrenched myself backward in haste, so the blow only grazed the tentacles, but considerable pain still flooded through me.
Not bad at all.
The Monster's Tentacles were a trait built on the psionic organ — something you'd never even see in the game, since no Amorph player ever acquired the psionic organ. And yet this creature had picked out the weakest part of my body in an instant.
While I retreated, marvelling at that, the beast made no follow-up attack.
More accurately — it couldn't. It was too busy evading the Erosion Tentacles bursting from my back.
The tentacles skewered the ground where it stood and the air above it, and the creature kicked off nothing, twisting through a feat of pure acrobatics to survive by the narrowest of margins.
But my arsenal didn't end there. The eye-shaped patterns on my head blazed to life all at once.
The Gaze of Horror bore down on the Griffon's mind.
For a heartbeat its eyes went glassy. It possessed a resistance to psychic attacks, and it recovered quickly — but by then it was already too late.
"Kgh!"
The blood-drinking tentacle fired from my hand raked across the Griffon's flank. It gritted its teeth and struggled backward, but my combat arm did not let it escape.
Holding its forepaw fast, I used the Ghost Claws. The instant my hand phased through to the bone and muscle within the limb, I released the trait's effect.
Naturally, my hand was far larger than the creature's forepaw — and the limb ruptured from the inside out.
"KRAAAAAGH!"
Even it couldn't stomach the agony of its own paw exploding from within, and it screamed.
In that moment, my other arm closed around its throat. And then I drove it straight down into the ground.
Unable even to resist, pinned in my grip, it was smashed into the earth.
For the finish, I brought my massive tail down onto its fallen body.
"Ghk!"
It vomited blood. That single blow had shattered its spine and both its legs. Had it not been a Griffon with such extraordinary vitality, it would have died on the spot.
Your instincts were good. Your opponent wasn't.
Your timing was terrible, too.
Subjugation complete. I seized the creature — barely able to do more than gasp for breath — and lifted it up.
"I· won't· kill· you· yet."
"..."
"Tell· me· everything· you· know."
I had no idea what its relationship with Muriel was, but they had operated together — that much was fact. Which meant it would know a great deal about her.
Whether I devoured it or not, I would decide after I'd wrung out every scrap of information.
But then it gave an entirely unexpected response.
"Hk, khhk, hrlk... You really haven't changed at all."
The Griffon laughed through the blood in its mouth. Of everyone I had ever killed, only one kind of creature had ever laughed in my face before.
"Are· you· insane?"
"Kuakh! Hrlk, hrlk... Not wrong. Because I'm about to do something insane."
With those words, it looked me dead in the eye.
Something was boiling in those amber eyes. It was not fear of death, nor despair at the prospect of being devoured by me.
According to the auxiliary organ beneath my jaw, that emotion was blazing, absolute fury.
"I'll tell you everything I know. If you demand cooperation, I'll give it. If you want to use me as a slave, do as you like. Eat me for all I care."
"What· did· you· say?"
"In exchange, promise me just one thing."
The blood-soaked Griffon spoke through clenched teeth.
"Give Muriel the greatest despair you can show her — you, the one they call the Morph-fucker. Promise me that, and I'll give you everything you want."
It seemed the relationship between the Griffon Wolf and Muriel was worse than bad. The hatred it carried looked genuine even to me.
"You're· hardly· in· a· position· to· bargain."
"I know. Hrlk. I know exactly what my position is. But you know it too, don't you? The parasite's weakness."
Its gaze shifted to my arm. The arm holding the Parasitic Colony.
"You· know· about· this?"
"Khk-hk. Do I ever know about it. Do you have any idea how much I suffered from that thing... hrlk. I don't know how much has changed now that it's reality — kuakh! hrlk... but it's probably not perfect. Far from it."
The Griffon Wolf's eye was anything but ordinary. Of every enemy I had ever faced, not one had read me this quickly or this accurately.
Thanks to acquiring the Infection Enhancement Type, the number of parasites at my command had grown to ten. And if I held still and focused, I could fully dominate the body of a single parasite-controlled being for ten minutes. In the game, I'd torn clans apart using nothing but the Mimic Organ and the Parasitic Colony more times than I could count.
Though it's true there are weaknesses.
It was superb for sowing discord among enemies, but the interrogation function itself hadn't improved dramatically. As I'd seen with William, a victim could still endure agonizing pain without speaking the truth — could still harbor thoughts of their own.
And it knows quite a lot about me, too.
From the way it talked, this thing had clearly fought me several times in the game. Though with Wolves especially, I'd fought so many that its memories of those matches were probably hazy at best.
Hmm.
When I fell silent, the creature closed its eyes as if to say, do whatever you want.
This half-dead Griffon Wolf was a rather fascinating creature.
What should I do?
I would have liked to think it over a little longer, but I had no time to spare. Decision made, I reached my hand toward its head.