Frozen Planet (4)
Early in the morning, I climbed up to the surface of the nest with Mother of the Sky.
A considerable weight of snow had piled up overnight on the chunk of ice we'd wedged over the nest entrance. After clearing it away, I waited briefly in the frozen corridor.
Mother of the Sky went out ahead of me — with her sharper eyesight, she was checking the sky for anything dangerous.
After a few minutes of scanning, she flicked her lion's tail and gave the all-clear signal.
Once we'd shoved the snow and ice aside and clambered up, the landscape looked exactly the same as it had before we went underground yesterday. The only difference was that the wind had died down — the kind of wind that could flay skin from bone. Thanks to that, even Mother of the Sky was suffering less from the cold than she had been.
Still, we can't stay out here long.
When I looked up, the sky was still choked with clouds. There was no telling when the snow and hail would come pouring down again, so we had to move fast.
"Remind me — what was it we need to get?"
｢A Winter Walker's heart, and an Ice Horror's.｣
The Winter Walker and the Ice Horror. Both were creatures that lived only on ice planets, or in the polar regions of Earth-like worlds.
Adhai knew of creatures similar to both of them. She'd seen a Winter Walker with her own eyes, and heard about the Ice Horror from another Gallagon.
Luckily for us, both of them are on this planet.
Not only did they come with the demanding requirement of a freezing environment, but neither creature's specs were anything to sneeze at. The Ice Horror in particular was a genuinely dangerous enemy.
"This won't be easy."
｢Yeah. The Winter Walker should be manageable, but the Ice Horror is the problem.｣
She was right. The Ice Horror was one of the most dangerous predators in extreme cold regions.
It was weaker than the Sea Demon or the Black Gallagon, both treated as sub-raid bosses, but its peculiar habits and superior raw stats earned it a reputation as a nightmare to hunt. Even in the game, I'd failed to take one down more than a few times.
But there are four of us.
A Gallagon, a Sea Demon, a Sub-adult Amorph, and an apotheosized Volf. Working together, we could bring the thing down.
And I need to kill an Ice Horror anyway.
In my case, evolving from Sub-adult to Adult required hunting thirty creatures classified as APEX. The Ice Horror counted as one, so adding it to the tally now wouldn't hurt.
"The question is where to find them."
｢Right. They don't roam the surface.｣
Rather than wandering in search of prey, the Ice Horror dug pit traps within its own territory and hunted whatever blundered into them. Simply put, it was a spider that lived in the deep cold.
Though it looks nothing like one.
Either way, finding an Ice Horror would take a while.
It could live anywhere there was food, but it was a master of concealment. I considered myself a decent hider, but I couldn't hold a candle to the thing. It disguised its territory and traps so convincingly that unless you got close, there was no way to confirm it was there.
If one's nearby, I could try luring it out.
But if there wasn't one in the area, we might have to range very far indeed.
｢The Ice Horror will take time, so let's find the Winter Walker first.｣
"Good call."
Mother of the Sky had reached the same conclusion I had.
Unlike the Ice Horror, the Winter Walker was an active hunter. Since even Adhai had stumbled across one, they clearly roamed widely enough that we'd find one soon enough.
With our target set, we raced across the snow-and-ice-choked plain.
A golden griffin tore alongside me as I crawled, shattering the frost and plowing through drifts.
Her mane and the sapphire pendant at her neck whipped wildly in the winter wind. Beneath the mane, the muscles of the lioness's body stood out in sharp relief, and her movements were as sleek as if to prove that all that dense muscle was no decoration.
She moved like the wind itself, but I was no slouch either.
My six combat arms had become legs, shattering the surface ice and hauling my body forward, while behind me my tail and the blunt claws studding my flanks shoved my massive bulk onward. Compared to her gliding across the air, my movements were loud and graceless — but I was just as fast.
Moving at the speed of an express train, we closed on the mountain range rapidly.
The black mountains rising above the white horizon looked like structures erected by some unknown intelligence. Perhaps my feeling wasn't far off, given that the nature which raised those peaks was itself something transcendent.
Along with the breathtaking scenery, the black mountains carried a thick scent of life. Slender trees grew in dense ranks across the frozen-hard soil.
Every tree wore roughly the same shape — no doubt an adaptation to this harsh cold environment. Long and thin of trunk, they spread their branches into complex crowns as they rose, and those branches interlaced with neighboring trees, locking one another firmly in place.
A form evolved to withstand the gales that battered this place without pause.
I need to be careful.
A forest meant abundant prey — ideal hunting ground for Winter Walkers and Gallagons alike.
I slowed down and focused on my auxiliary organs as I moved. Mother of the Sky, beside me, advanced with her eyes on our surroundings.
The four auxiliary organs beneath my jaw writhed, grazing the ground like tongues. Each pass fed the happenings of the area along the organs and into my brain.
Judging by the vibrations in the ground — two targets. Or maybe three.
Their strength suggested some distance away, but there was something odd about them. The vibrations kept tangling together and then separating, over and over.
What did that mean?
A fight.
I lifted my head from the ground.
As long as I could sense the movement of what might be our target in that forest, it was time to move quietly. Instead of my mimic organ, I used my Monster's Tentacles to call to Mother of the Sky.
｢You say there's a fight up ahead?｣
[Zzz... zzz (some distance off)]
｢We should check it out, then.｣
I answered with a nod.
Going by the vibrations, both parties were land animals. If Gallagons were involved, they'd be flying, and the tremors would have come far more intermittently than this.
Mother of the Sky and I moved carefully along the trail of vibrations.
As we drew near the epicenter, the distant crack of snapping wood and the cry of a beast reached us.
That low sound, something like a tiger's rolling growl, belonged to a Winter Walker. It was fighting its prey.
At the sound, we stopped moving. Any closer, and the thing would hear me coming.
｢I'll take a look from above.｣
Mother of the Sky flowed up into the trees with an easy bound.
The trees here weren't sturdy enough to bear my weight. I pressed my auxiliary organs back to the ground and eavesdropped on the enemies' sounds and vibrations.
The Winter Walker's opponent is small and agile.
Roughly the size of Mother of the Sky, and its legs...
Between eight and nine of them.
As far as I knew, no creature on an ice planet had eight legs. You'd have creatures with hundreds of legs, or none at all — but not that.
A species I don't know?
Just then, Mother of the Sky finished her scouting and dropped down from the trees.
[Zzz (see anything?)]
｢One of them's definitely a Winter Walker. The other one...｣
She hesitated for a moment, then continued.
｢It looks like a Screamer.｣
[Zzz (a what?)]
Why would a Star Union machine-monster — a Screamer — be here? If she was right, this planet lay within Star Union territory.
I swallowed how many Star Union ships? I never saw a route leading this far.
[Zzzz... (you sure?)]
｢Honestly? I'm not. Some creature that looks like a Screamer is fighting the Winter Walker.｣
It seemed I'd have to see it for myself. We moved out again.
Weaving through the trees, we reached the spot — and there was the Winter Walker and the mystery monster.
No. Let me correct that. There was the corpse of a decapitated Winter Walker, and a monster that resembled a Screamer.
"Hostile creature eliminated."
The thing standing in the clearing, now turned into a lake of blood, was a monster that even I, a veteran gamer, had never laid eyes on.
That's supposed to be a Screamer?
A human head and torso fitted with tubes, metal machinery, and a tail, crawling the ground on six legs of metallic frame — on that much it matched the Screamer. But the differences were more numerous.
Simply put, the thing looked less mechanical than the original.
A standard Screamer's mouth is sealed by a tube, so it never speaks for itself — the machinery talks instead.
This one's mouth had no tube attached; its lips were bare. It could make sound of its own will, and it didn't emit the rattling breathing that the tubes force on its kin.
Its face was intact, apart from the pallor of a Human-Faced Beast — but from the back of the skull onward, organic tissue, tubes, and machinery tangled together into a biomechanical sprawl. Unlike the Screamer, where machine and bare flesh divide cleanly, this thing's body made no such distinction.
The same went for the eight legs sprouting from its frame — metal skeletons laced over with red muscle and tubing. Beneath each long, slender leg, instead of feet, grew three pointed alloy talons.
If the original Screamer brought a scorpion to mind, the thing before me was a whip spider — a hybrid spider born of flesh and machine fused together.
And it isn't threatening in looks alone.
The decapitated Winter Walker had lost to this thing. Killing a Winter Walker single-handedly meant real skill.
That said, it hadn't exactly overwhelmed its opponent either.
Two of its legs looked badly crumpled at the metal frame, barely functional, and its torso — that tangled mess of machinery and flesh — was leaking dark red blood.
"Insufficient energy. Commencing self-resupply."
Muttering that, the thing opened its mouth and began ravenously tearing into the Winter Walker's corpse.
No reason to wait any longer, then.
If I wanted to know what it was, I could simply find out for myself. The Amorph way, as befits an Amorph.
Everything comes out once you eat it, after all.
Mother of the Sky read my intent and leapt up into the trees. At the same instant, I charged the thing mid-meal.
"Danger detected."
The thing read my ambush without so much as looking up from its meat. Still in its feeding crouch, it hurled itself skyward. I came barreling through like a runaway truck and slammed straight into the Winter Walker's corpse instead.
"Hostile creature confirmed. Subjugating—"
｢Not today!｣
Whatever the spider-monster had been about to shout from above never made it out of its mouth.
Mother of the Sky burst from between the trees and whipped her foreleg into its head. The thing's neck bent at an grotesque angle as it barely twisted out of the blow.
｢Tch!｣
Mother of the Sky landed, clearly rueing the missed strike. The spider-monster, having evaded both our ambushes, touched down and immediately put distance between us.
So it's not a Screamer?
A Screamer would have lunged the instant it reset its stance. This thing didn't. Instead it tilted its head as if scanning us, fixing both of us with its stare.
"Two hostile creatures confirmed. Left creature. 89% match with special target, C-type. The right one is..."
The thing that had been studying me flared its red eyes wide. It glared at me through those blood-hued lenses, head twitching in menacing little jerks.
"75% match with designated target. Main controller 'Pyra Eleven' order delayed. Independent judgment required. Commencing subjugation of targets."
Still babbling its cryptic protocol, the thing sank low and dropped into a fighting stance.
I too readied my attack without taking my eyes off its movements.
Whether it was truly a Screamer or some entirely new breed of weapon, I couldn't say. But if it was a Screamer, our problem had just grown far more serious.
The odds of a Screamer wandering this place alone are practically zero.
There was a very good chance reinforcements lurked somewhere I knew nothing about. Granted, with a Gallagon nest on this planet, they'd surely have inserted as a small elite force — but that was no reason to relax.
First, I deal with this thing fast. Then I decide what it means.
The instant the thought formed, the thing sprang like lightning and came at me.