Maintenance (3)
After devouring the Unique-grade equipment, I combed through the camp, scavenging for anything else worth taking.
All the while, Mother of the Sky had remained perfectly still. She had been mourning her dead kin.
A day later, she came to find me resting in the nest.
She said she wanted to help hunt the players. Otherwise, she argued, this kind of tragedy would only repeat itself.
If she's willing to follow on her own, that suits me fine.
Truthfully, I'd been planning to drag her along by force if she insisted on staying behind. Now that I'd become an Adult, I might well need her, and above all, her combat skills were simply too good to waste. She would make an excellent support for No. 26 and Adhai.
Since Mother of the Sky had volunteered her company, I took the chance to ask her everything I'd been curious about. How many players were there? Did groups exist in this world, like the clans of the game? When had everyone been transmigrated here? And why had no one ever seen the ending?
Between that, I spent the entire day extracting the information I needed from her.
It was hardly time wasted. She knew a great deal more than Muriel ever had.
Summarized, what Mother of the Sky told me went something like this.
So there was a gathering of players.
She had fallen into this world fifteen years ago, but the players' gathering went back far earlier than that.
By the time she learned it existed, however, the group had already splintered into rivaling factions, each nursing grudges against the others.
Their conflict had begun from a single point of disagreement.
Those who wanted to see the ending, and those who opposed it.
According to Mother of the Sky, a considerable number of the players at the gathering had already cleared the ending. Thanks to that, everyone who joined knew exactly what happened afterward.
Because before Galactic Conqueror opens up, the game asks whether you want to keep playing.
They pointed to the message that appeared upon completing an ending in Space Survival and claimed it was proof they could escape this world.
The problem was the method.
To see the ending, you had to kill the head of the race competing with your own—or beings of equivalent standing.
Among the players were individuals holding positions of real power: a Mega Corp CEO, Cult high priests, and the like. Telling these people to hand over their lives was, naturally, guaranteed to provoke resistance.
Worse, plenty of them had begun to wonder what would become of this world once an ending was cleared.
Some of the players at the gathering had survived for decades—some even more than a century. For them, the time lived in this world dwarfed their old lives many times over. Their existence here mattered far more than the reality they'd left behind.
And yet, remarkably, someone in the old gathering had once attempted the ending.
In its earliest days, the one who made the attempt had been a cyborg ranker—Rank 1.
He persuaded the members who opposed him to attempt the ending together, and then he actually carried it out.
Rank 1. Of course it was him.
He was a player with an absurd, almost cheating game sense. I'd challenged him a number of times myself and never won once.
On top of raw skill like that, the player perk he possessed was every bit as outrageous.
His perk related to equipment and module crafting—in the game, it had allowed him to add options that were absolutely impossible to append, without any limit whatsoever.
Thanks to his active use of that ability, the players in the gathering had been able to bypass the requirement of killing the leadership of an adversarial race altogether.
What remained after that was the raid boss: the subjugation of Vortex One.
On this point, the gathering's players had not worried much.
Every ranker who had cleared an ending had already won the game at least once. Rank 1, after all, was the only player who had ever single-handedly slain two Vortex Ones simultaneously.
But they failed.
What happened to them afterward was never learned.
Whether they were annihilated by the Vortex Ones, or defeated by some unforeseen enemy, no one knew—except, perhaps, the survivors.
What was certain was that most of the players who had attempted the ending died, and Rank 1 perished with them.
The survivors who crawled back would say only one thing: that seeing the ending was impossible.
Either way, with Rank 1 dead, there was no peaceful path to the ending anymore.
Which meant the schism between those who sought the ending and those who opposed it was all but inevitable.
And then there was a new piece of information that sharpened that conflict into something far uglier.
The plunder of perks.
Every player knew, at least, that each of them had received a perk of their own.
What they had not known was that a perk could be ripped from a dead player's corpse.
After Rank 1's death, at some point that information began to spread through the gathering.
What became of it afterward required no telling.
War between players.
Those who wanted the ending hunted down those who had chosen to stay, devouring their strength.
And those who had chosen to stay did exactly the same.
For their own gain, or simply to survive, they killed their fellow players.
...In a way, the ending was just an excuse all along.
In a different sense than Mother of the Sky, perhaps they too had drifted loose from reality and become true residents of this world.
The war had lulled into a lull these past few years, but before that it had been ferocious. So many players had died that fewer than ten remained, barely.
Of course, there might be others who arrive in this world late, like I did.
In any case, once we'd exchanged our brief introductions after the explanation about the players, I finally learned exactly who she was.
She was the leader of Savage Clan. No wonder I didn't recognize her—she looks nothing like she used to.
Understandable, really. Her in-game handle had been an entirely different name from Mother of the Sky. Her appearance back then had been tiger-Wolf-based, and her post-deification transformation hadn't been a griffon at all—it had been a Nue.
Between the name and the form, I'd guessed she was someone I'd crossed paths with at some point, but I never imagined she'd been one of the Four Great Clans I fought on that jungle planet.
Savage Clan had shattered after its clash with me. Every last member had quit the game, leaving only the leader behind.
To think I'd end up traveling with her—in a world that was no game at all. Fate works in strange ways.
｢So where are we headed now?｣
[Zzzz (The coast)]
She was currently in griffon mode, moving alongside me as we left the camp behind and headed toward the sea.
With a backpack stuffed full of my newly acquired loot strapped to the tip of my tail, I tore through the forest at full speed, the griffon keeping pace beside me.
Whereas I slithered forward indiscriminately—flattening trees, soil, and rock alike without a shred of discrimination—she ran with elegance, flowing between the ground and the canopy in one unbroken rhythm.
Her body, once matted with parasite leeches, had been washed spotless on the way out of camp, and now it gleamed with sleek golden fur.
Even dirty, the dense, iron-hard musculature unique to a lioness had been striking; now, wrapped in beautiful fur on top of it, she looked every inch the majestic griffon.
Just as I carried the bag, the griffon wore a sapphire-studded pendant around her neck.
A necklace that allowed communication through thought-waves—a tool that had never existed in the game.
One of Muriel's companions was in charge of equipment.
The upgraded psionium, the Nano Spartan Module, the Blood Reavers—all the gear she'd used against me had been that companion's work.
Going by what Muriel and Mother of the Sky had said, that companion was a human belonging to Mega Corp. Which meant their identity was all but settled.
Garmelda.
One of the Noble Capital houses responsible for reinforced-suit development. In the game, players of that house had mostly specialized in logistics and supply.
Come to think of it...
When I fought the armed police back in the space city, the reinforced suits they'd worn were nothing standard-issue.
Mid-grade reinforced suits with shields built in.
Supply-grade reinforced suits fitted with shields were the dream equipment of most Mega Corp players. In the game, balance forbade their crafting—but this was reality. If I were a Mega Corp player, I'd bend every rule I could to build them.
Even if no player sat within Garmelda itself, leaving such brilliant minds unattended would only disadvantage me in the long run.
After the Dragon's Nest, I'll deal with them first.
If Ascension was the goal, Earth and Mars would have to be fully conquered no matter what. And with an equipment-development player attached, an entire planet's defensive capability would climb without end. That threat needed clearing out in advance.
Or should I clear them out before the Dragon's Nest?
I was deep in that thought when Mother of the Sky fired a thought-wave my way.
｢The coast? I figured you'd go after the Horned Gigants first. That's a surprise.｣
[Zzzzz zzz (There's something I need to do)]
｢Something you need? Oh—you're targeting an aquatic creature's essence first, to cross to another continent.｣
From what I knew, Mother of the Sky had been the Rank 15 Wolf player. Maybe that was why she understood so precisely what this planet's Amorph would need.
Unfortunately, wrong.
[Zz zzzzz zzzzz zzzzzz (No. The other continent can wait.)]
｢Then what?｣
[Zzzzz zzzzz z (I'm finding my friends first)]
No. 26 and Adhai came first. I had to find them before anything else.
At my words, the griffon's expression turned odd.
｢You have... friends?｣
[Zz zzzzz zzzzz zzzzz (Yes. We got separated when I came to this planet)]
Mother of the Sky tilted her head.
｢...You have friends?｣
[Zzzzz zzz zz zzzz zzzz (How many times do I have to repeat myself)]
｢Hm. Hard to believe.｣
[Zzzz zzzzz zzzzz zzz zzz (This isn't a game. There are no restrictions here)]
｢No—it's not because you're an Amorph. It's just hard to believe that a creature on friendly terms with you exists at all.｣
Mother of the Sky declared it flatly, like a settled fact.
I was genuinely dumbfounded.
Who are you calling a monster?
Looking into her eyes, I could tell she wasn't joking. She sincerely believed it.
Though, to be fair, it was true that I'd never had friends—in reality or in the game. In reality there had been all sorts of reasons, and in the game, playing an Amorph meant devouring friends and allies was simply more efficient than making them.
[Zzzzz zzzzz zz zzzzz zzzzz (Here, having companions is the advantage)]
｢...Now I'm curious what kind of 'friends' travel beside you.｣
[Zzzz zzzzz (Good ones)]
｢......｣
Mother of the Sky opened her mouth wide—then shut it again. She looked as though she had a mountain of things she wanted to say, but she said none of them.
And so we ran, without pause, for a solid half a day.
Meals were handled on the move—each of us snatching up wild creatures as we found them. Neither she nor I needed sleep for weeks at a stretch, so endurance was never a concern.
She still seemed only half-convinced that I truly had companions to meet, but she didn't raise the subject again.
In any case, as we traveled without rest, the thick, towering redwoods around us gradually began to thin.
The smears of red and green paint fell away, and in their place appeared a sheet of paper brushed in blue.
I unslung the backpack from my tail and came to a halt on a white-sand beach where blue waves rolled in.
What I intended now was to fire a Psychic Breath through the Monster's Tentacles.
First time since I became a Young Adult, isn't it?
Adhai, so exquisitely sensitive to psychic power, would detect it even from far away.
｢What are you doing?｣
[Zzzzz zzzzz zzzzzz (Stand back. I'm calling them)]
She still didn't seem to believe a word of it, but she wasn't so foolish as to argue. Feeling the griffon retreat behind me, I readied the trait.
Beneath my cranial carapace, the bundle of tentacles woke and began to work for the first time in a long while.
Vivid purple tentacles writhed like the legs of an octopus, all of them swinging forward at once.
Then I felt the energy surge rapidly from the tip of my tail toward my head. Unlike before, every time the energy moved, the patterns across my hide flared violet in deliberate, cascading sequence.
｢......｣
Behind me, Mother of the Sky must have felt the staggering psychic power pouring off my body, because she backed away a considerable distance.
From the tail to the hindquarters, from the hindquarters to the loins and chest, and finally up to the tentacles near my head above the throat.
The Monster's Tentacles wrenched out every last dreg of psychic power steeped throughout my body.
And then—
That's... rather large.
Before my eyes appeared a purple sun six meters across. At twenty meters in length, it wasn't oversized for me, but compared to any Psychic Breath I'd fired before, it was absurdly, impossibly bigger.
The charge took longer, though.
I lifted my head, and the crystallized essence of psychic power raised by the Monster's Tentacles rose with me, tracking my movement.
...It's grown so heavy I can barely hold it.
From the outside I looked perfectly still, but inside that sphere, the breath of a dragon was churning.
This much would do. I released the sealed energy.
Above my head, a dragon of the cosmos spread its wings and soared. Each beat of its wings sent the white sand whirling upward, and the waves reversed themselves against the shore.
The heat-ray of psychic power, swelling the auxiliary organs beneath my jaw to aching, ripped through the air and climbed without end.
Higher. And higher still.
It flew on until it tore the white clouds hanging in that blue ocean of sky to shreds—and at last, it stopped.
When the dragon was gone, all that remained was a sky scraped clean of a single cloud, and violet particles drifting down like snow.
Judging that this would suffice, I lowered my upraised head.
[Zz zzzzz (Now we wait)]
｢......｣
Mother of the Sky, who had witnessed the whole thing, was staring blankly at the sky.
｢...Something's wrong. You should be a Young Adult—how is this possible? Don't tell me it's a perk effect? No. Unless your species changed, this should be...｣
Even as I lay sprawled on the white sand waiting, Mother of the Sky kept muttering unintelligibly, her eyes fixed on the path the Psychic Breath had carved.
Half a day passed like that.
Eventually she seemed to have talked herself into some kind of acceptance, because she was lying on the beach too. But there was fear threaded through her gaze—clearly, she wasn't resting as easily as I was.
Paying her no mind, I plucked up a crab that had been creeping furtively along in front of me and popped it into my mouth.
It should be about time for them to arr—hmm?
Just then, Mother of the Sky spotted something in the distance and rose to her feet. With eyes sharper than mine, she stared hard past a horizon flushing orange.
｢Morph-fucker.｣
[Zz (What?)]
｢...Don't tell me the friend you keep talking about isn't a Green Gallagon.｣
On this planet, there was only one Green Gallagon.
Adhai's coming.
I rose as well and settled in to wait for them. After about five minutes, Adhai's figure came into view for me too.
Hm?
Something was wrong. Adhai's flight was far slower than usual, and somehow unnatural.
What is it? What's happened?
Worst of all, I couldn't sense No. 26 moving through the water at all—she should have been following beneath the surface.
No. It couldn't be.
I hurriedly unfurled a new nest across the beach. It only needed to be big enough for Adhai and No. 26 to lie down.
But while I was still shaping it, the situation turned in an instant. Adhai could fly no further—she plummeted onto the sand.
[Zzzzzz (Adhai!)]
Mother of the Sky shot upward, caught Adhai in her beak, and landed smoothly back on the ground.
Adhai's condition was bad—there was no dressing it up. In seconds, the griffon's beak and the white sand around her were stained a deep, glistening red.
I took Adhai from Mother of the Sky, grafted Symbiote Spores into her body, and laid her down on the nest.
As the symbiotes writhed to life, pumping healing fluid into her small frame, Adhai's breathing eased. Even the terrible wounds—gaping deep enough to show bone and viscera—were visibly, if slowly, knitting closed.
How did this happen?
Adhai, arriving gravely wounded. And No. 26, nowhere to be seen.
Like a night sky darkening overhead, a black, formless dread settled over my heart.