To the Dragon's Nest (4)
"Damn it! Big D is down! So is Konjay!"
"Now's not the time to worry about them! Keep running!"
Five heavy walkers thundered through the ship's corridors, their engines shrieking.
The hole that had opened behind them was long gone. Far from reassuring them, that fact only pushed them closer to madness. A suffocating dread settled over the squad — the fear that this place might swallow every last one of them alive.
"Right? Left? Which way do we go?!"
"Where'd everybody go? Where are you—" kzzt, kzzkrk"—!"
"Don't split up! We stay together!"
Countless forks in the passage that hadn't existed moments before kept appearing one after another. A walker lagging behind the group fell irretrievably out of formation.
This can't go on!
The walker they rode, the Sentinel, was built for combat — and poorly suited for survival in isolation. Its power consumption was so ferocious that long-term operation was all but impossible.
The cargo ship was finished, and the shuttle they'd arrived on had likely met the same fate. There was no telling how much longer they would have to remain inside this monstrous vessel.
"Everyone, stop!"
Mackay called the three remaining walkers to a halt.
"Check your energy reserves! If our walkers die, we're dead."
At those words, the cyborgs hurriedly pulled up their walkers' remaining power readings, realizing their mistake a beat too late.
"Energy's fine for now, but... goddamn it!"
"What's the point?! We're going to die here anyway!"
"There's nowhere to run!"
His comrades were right — their situation was grim, to say the least. They were, for all practical purposes, sitting inside the belly of an enormous beast.
Even so, Mackay had one card left to play.
The Machine Council will send a rescue team. All I have to do is hold out until then.
A month ago, the Machine Council — the supreme governing body of the Star Union — had issued a directive to every department and civilian vessel: upon encountering an unknown lifeform or substance, it must be registered in the Starlink database without exception. Alongside it came an order making it mandatory for all ships to install a special signal chip manufactured by the Council.
Space was crawling with countless lifeforms; reporting every single encounter bordered on the impossible. And the signal chips? They amounted to open surveillance of a ship's activities — hardly something civilian vessels would welcome.
Any other faction would never have gotten away with it. The Star Union could, because the Machine Council held the power to issue compulsory commands to every android and drone produced within its borders.
That was why the cargo ship Mackay and the cyborgs had arrived on carried a signal chip too. With the ship destroyed, the Star Union would know what had happened within an hour or two.
"Survive one day, and the rescue team from the Population Management Department arrives. We hold out until then."
"What? How are they supposed to know where we are?"
"Don't worry about that. The Star Union will have our status within hours."
The ship's exterior profile, its position, and the data gathered from the sampled interior branches had already been transmitted to the Starlink database.
Which meant the survivors had exactly one job.
"We have to buy time until the rescue fleet arrives."
"Time?"
"This thing can probably make faster-than-light jumps. If it moves to another star system, the rescue fleet's search window stretches out — maybe indefinitely."
The cyborgs nodded.
JP-99 was a border system, but it still fell under the Cult's dominion. A colossal monster like this wandering around without FTL capability would have been detected ages ago.
"We need to stop it from escaping."
"What? Are you insane?!"
"Impossible! You saw what happened — attacking this ship is useless. It heals right away."
"I know that. Shooting blindly just wastes ammo. That's why we pick a target."
"A target?"
Before answering, Mackay shared a file with the group — the survey drones' maps, merged into a single composite.
"Look at this."
"?"
"Most of the layout changes, but a few sections stay identical every time."
"So what? What's that supposed to mean?"
"This ship — or monster, or whatever the hell it is — if it's a living creature, it still needs vital organs, right?"
"...You're saying those identical sections might hold something like its heart?"
"Exactly. If we get in there and destroy an organ, we can disrupt its FTL jump."
At Mackay's proposal, the cyborgs fell silent.
His theory was riddled with holes. If they followed his word and walked into a trap, they'd be lambs to the slaughter. The trouble was, nobody had a better idea.
With their lives on the line, the whole squad sank into deliberation. But cold reality wasn't inclined to wait for them.
"The corridor's moving!"
"Shit! Everybody run!"
As the four walkers sprinted forward, the passage heaved and twisted. The narrow corridor warped, then bloomed outward into a vast chamber.
"Is what I'm seeing real?"
"F-fucking hell, I'm losing my mind."
A Sentinel stood roughly eight meters tall. The space that had abruptly opened before them was easily three or four times that height — and impossibly wide.
Even Mackay struggled to keep his composure in the face of something so absurd.
"E-everybody, get a grip!"
Steadying his comrades, Mackay activated his weapon systems, resolving to shoot anything that moved. That was when a strange sound reached his ears.
What was that?
It was a sound one almost never heard in the vacuum of space.
Wind?
From somewhere above their heads — from a place where nothing was visible — an odd sound was rising.
The instant Mackay swung his gun barrel toward the ceiling, ready to fire at whatever it was, the source of the sound came crashing down on them.
"Aagh!"
CRASH.
A short scream, then a deafening boom. Mackay swiveled his camera around to find one walker sprawled on the floor.
The Sentinel's hull wasn't as durable as a warship's outer plating, but it carried an built-in ship-grade shield in compensation.
The cockpit — armored behind shield and heavy plating both — now bore a hole two meters across. The cut was as clean and precise as a plasma cutter's work, its edges still glowing a faint violet.
No pilot remained inside the punched-through walker. Only droplets of blood spattering down among the ruined machinery told the story of what had become of him.
"Wh-what the hell was that?!"
Three walkers now, Mackay's included.
Then the sound of wind again. Mackay, realizing it was the prelude to an attack, shouted in a rush.
"Here it com—!"
"Huh?"
CRASH.
Before he could even finish, another walker went down. A two-meter hole, the same faint violet afterglow along the wound — and a pilot vanished without a trace, leaving only blood and scraps of flesh behind.
"Goddamn it!"
They'd barely been in this chamber a few minutes, and already two walkers were gone. Only Mackay and one comrade remained.
"Watch for the wind sound!"
"Mother of... what kind of wind blows in space, for fu—"
Leaving his trembling, wide-eyed comrade to keep watch, Mackay quickly examined the destruction. In the process, he spotted a smear of blood on the floor.
The camera of the walker synced to Mackay followed the trail. The scattered droplets led across the floor and stopped at the base of a wall.
There lay their fellow cyborg — sprawled, all four limbs severed.
"Hiii—?!"
"......"
They had found the missing man. That was the good news.
Where's the other one?
The cameras on both walkers tilted upward.
And there, clinging to the corner where wall met ceiling, was it.
A green devil with tentacles jammed into a cyborg's face, draining the fluids from his body.
"Kk— kkuhk, kkugh, kgh, kkuhk..."
｢■｣ ｢■■｣
Every opening in the man's face — eyes, nose, mouth, ears — was plugged with tentacles that swelled like straws as they fed. Each time they pulsed, the captured cyborg shuddered and let out a grotesque moan.
Seeing that, Mackay reached a decision.
I have to run.
"U-UWAAAAAAAH!"
Just then his comrade opened fire on the monster. It vanished like a mirage in the blink of an eye.
While his panic-stricken comrade drew the creature's gaze, Mackay ran.
There was only one goal: the door ahead.
Open that door and get out, and I'll wake up from this nightmare. The thought consumed him.
"Kkhk?!"
CRASH.
Behind him came a short moan and the heavy collapse of a walker. The hand of Mackay's walker touched the bulkhead door.
No beating of a devil's wings pursued him. He wrenched the door open and stumbled through.
CRASH.
"Hah... hahh..."
Only after sealing the door behind him could he finally release the breath he'd been holding. From the other side of the door — silence.
Just as he let himself relax—
A voice spoke from behind him.
"Well, well. Dinner walked right in on its own two feet?"
A flat, casual voice — utterly wrong for this nightmarish place.
The moment he heard it, Mackay understood.
He had thought he'd escaped that hellish chamber. He hadn't. He had simply walked into something worse.
That saves me some trouble.
The walker that had fled Adhai's assault and bolted straight into this chamber took one look at me and froze in raw terror.
Me — fused with the reactor, wielding a forest of erosion tentacles like so many hands.
This was a cyborg who trembled at the mere sight of sweet little Adhai. I must have looked a great deal more frightening.
The walker tried to raise its stormgun at me and failed. My erosion tentacles had already wound tight around its arms and legs.
By the way, she's gotten a lot stronger.
Perhaps thanks to the Mother of the Sky's good instruction, Adhai had wielded her Super Acceleration with real mastery even in a cramped, enclosed space.
Super Acceleration is a Green Gallagon's signature ability, but strictly for movement and evasion. No one uses it as aggressively as she had, in a sealed chamber like this.
Before, she would've taken serious damage pulling that off.
Adhai had wrapped her whole body in Purple Lightning and, on impact, used her psychic power to simply melt her enemies away.
Put simply: imagine coating yourself in the psychic flames of a purple flamethrower and body-slamming your opponents.
Come to think of it, that's a technique the Cult players used all the time.
Wrapping a weapon in a psychic shield before clobbering someone, or — like Adhai — sheathing yourself in psychic fire and charging in, and so on.
Thanks to the newly learned method, Adhai had minimized the damage she took on impact. As a mutant, her physical abilities fall short of other Gallagons', so the technique suits her rather well.
Of course, even that approach isn't flawless. A Green Gallagon's psychic power simply isn't that strong. With output already lacking, enveloping her body in psychic energy can't provide total protection.
She can afford to fight more aggressively now, but until she becomes a White Gallagon, she still needs to watch herself.
Once we reach the Dragon's Nest, I'll look for a way to evolve her.
She'd taken in a decent amount of energy, so once I finished with this cyborg, we'd depart immediately.
Fused with the reactor as I was, I set my erosion tentacles to dismantling the walker. As I peeled the machine apart like peeling bark, a cyborg trailing a tangle of cables dropped out of the wreckage.
My tentacles coiled around the male cyborg, who was quivering pitifully.
Let's run an experiment on this one.
Prey devoured through the ship's Essence Harvester's Jaw couldn't be used as material for the Human-Faced Beast trait. I'd tested it on several hundred subjects just recently — the Predation Effect triggered, but no genetic profiles were stored.
Is it because I'm fused with the ship?
While merged with the vessel, only a portion of my physical traits remained usable. The Human-Faced Beast trait was among the locked ones, so perhaps that was the reason.
And so, despite having devoured several hundred people just now, the faces on my back were still the Cult-based ones.
The Morphing Organ works, though.
How one even goes about disguising oneself as a ship this size, I had no idea. I'd actually tried it, but it wouldn't take — as if some condition had to be met first.
Whatever. Not important right now.
My tentacles yawned wide open, preparing to swallow the cyborg whole. Seeing that, the man began to laugh like he'd lost his mind.
"Khh, kugh-kuhk! I die here, but — hurk — you're going to die soon too."
Usually all I heard was begging — spare me, I'm sorry, and the like. This was a rather novel set of last words.
Not that it made me any likelier to spare him.
I ignored him and moved to swallow him whole — and then a word burst from his mouth stopped me cold.
"S-soon — a St-Star Union fleet is coming! You can't escape!"
"A Star Union fleet?"
It was true these ships carried vital personnel, but to the Star Union they were a necessary evil — indispensable to the community's functioning, yet an embarrassment the Union would rather not acknowledge. Why would they send anyone to rescue such a thing?
Besides, this was Cult territory. The odds of the Star Union courting a major diplomatic incident just to come looking for me were low.
Wait.
A sudden, uneasy thought sent me rifling through the walker's wreckage. Among it was the computer mounted in the walker itself. Using several slender tentacles, I powered up the half-dismantled machine.
On its screen remained a communication log — a transmission sent to Starlink, the Star Union's central database.