Ant Hell (3)
"Hah… hah… hah… hah, huhh, hah…."
Selene, a warrior of the Temple Guard, sprinted along the ice corridor.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
The silence that hung over the entire passage said everything about what had become of her comrades. The others had sacrificed themselves so that she—the one trained in the Memory Storage Technique—might live.
Knowing full well that their enemy was a devil that devoured souls.
To think monsters like that actually existed in this world!
As she ran, the scene she had witnessed only moments ago replayed itself in her mind. White skeletal frames rising to several times the height of a Cultist. At first, seeing it, she had assumed some colossal creature had come back to life as bare bones.
It hadn't taken long to realize the truth—that it was something wearing the bones and carapace of a giant beast as armor. And rising up alongside those bones, perched on 'its' head, had been her comrades.
The first Cultist she'd spotted was the squad's leader, Krishian. He was impaled through the horn that jutted from the monster's skull.
Below him, from the pointed, theropod-like snout, a leg—one of her squadmates', by the look of it—hung loose and twitching.
The sight was so surreal that she and every one of her companions had simply stared at it, frozen. Then came a sickening sound, and the struggling leg went limp. Only when that sound—her comrade's death knell—reached her ears did she and the others snap out of it.
A roar tore from their throats, and steel shrieked as weapons were drawn. The same sounds that always rang out when they hunted a monster.
The Temple Guard detachment sent here had brought the very best equipment to capture the Three-Headed Demon. Demolishers that manipulated matter itself to destroy it, Champion Shields that fused psychic power with ether for a drastic leap in defense, Dragon Scale reinforced armor forged from a monster's scales, blades honed from White Gallagon claws.
The Temple Guard was one of the Empire's supreme elite units, so naturally their equipment was supreme as well. And the ones wielding that equipment? The best of the best.
If their enemy had been nothing more than the bone-clad monster, they would never have fallen so easily.
There was a single reason the battle had slipped so far from their expectations.
The enemy, contrary to their expectations, was not one—it was many.
The moment the great monster rose, the other monsters that had been hiding beneath it revealed themselves. A creature with a human head and a spider's body. A creature with the body of a pink balloon and long, sinuous tentacles.
The spider monster absorbed the Champion Shields' composite energy. Every time its hooked claws raked across a shield, chunks of the barrier's energy peeled away wholesale.
The bone-clad monster targeted only the guardsmen whose shields had weakened. It moved with a grace that seemed impossible for a body so massive. Each time it lunged, another comrade was gored by its horns or crushed beneath its enormous feet.
And last, the pink balloon monster. It didn't move with the agility of the others, but it possessed a terrifying ability all its own.
It was the most powerful psychic she had ever seen in any monster. It fell short of the young High Priest Jason, perhaps—but it was more than enough to overpower everyone present.
Because of the balloon monster, all contact with the outside had been nearly severed. The torrent of psychic power flowing from its body jammed every psionic technique—telepathy, Soul Link, all of it.
To the Cult, psychic power was a limb of the body. Even the Temple Guard couldn't perform at its full strength with their psionic abilities shackled.
Her comrades dodged as best they could and struggled desperately to mount a counterattack against the two monsters.
But for all their efforts, the number of guardsmen left standing dwindled rapidly.
The monsters moved as though they understood every strength and every weakness of the equipment the Temple Guard carried. When the spider monster nullified a shield, the great monster struck. When they moved to evade the great monster, the pink one constrained their movements.
It was useless even when the Demolisher-bearers tried to open fire. The monsters would shrug off any other attack—but the Demolisher alone they dodged, without fail.
They showed coordination surpassing that of Temple Guardsmen who had breathed in rhythm with one another for decades.
The result was a slaughter.
The hunters of monsters had become the hunted, butchered like livestock.
The spider monster gouging out a Cultist's entrails with its hooked claws. The pink balloon monster lifting guardsmen into the air with psychic power and tearing them limb from limb. And the great monster swallowing the Cultists still alive.
Selene would carry that sight with her to her grave.
When their number of twelve had fallen to five, her comrades had shouted at her to run—told the Memory Storage practitioner to flee.
For their deaths not to be in vain, Selene at least had to survive. She knew it too, which was why she'd turned her back on them and run.
The memories are all stored. If I can just deliver them to Lord Jason—!
She kept trying telepathy as she ran. The farther she got from the balloon monster, the weaker its power grew. A little farther, and she would be able to transmit these memories to her comrades.
"!"
Then a sound reached her ears as she ran at full tilt. She hastily activated the Champion Shield on her wrist.
Where?
Shield glowing faintly gold, she swept her gaze around her. She thought she'd imagined it—but there it was again. Something was woven into the wind that blew through the passage.
Damn it! Where the hell are you….
Her eyes darted wildly, searching. The only thing visible to her was her own distorted reflection in the ice. The warped faces of a Cultist—and it looked as though her dead comrades were sneering at her.
You'll be joining us soon enough.
Temple Guardsmen were a corps that fought monsters; they were taught to keep their composure even in the gravest of situations.
But was it the weight of today's horrors—or some other, unknowable factor? Either way, she couldn't steady herself, like a rookie floundering through his first battle.
"Goddamn it! Where are you?!"
Having lost her poise, she wailed like a wounded beast. And in answer—or so it seemed—came the sound.
It resembled the sound of a banner snapping in the wind.
Only then did she grasp what she had been hearing.
It was the sound of a great winged creature beating its wings.
And unlike before, it was very, very close. Close enough to be directly overhead.
"……"
Her gaze climbed slowly upward.
To a place where nothing should have been but ice.
A creature with green wings hung upside down there, looking down at her.
The moment her eyes met its violet ones, she reached for her blade. Before her hand could touch the hilt, the creature's wings spread wide. The instant she registered that, she felt the strength drain from her body. The world tilted upside down before her eyes, and then she saw it—a familiar ankle.
Selene's mind sank into darkness.
｢Prey｣ ｢Fled｣ ｢Intercepted｣ ｢Success｣
[Zzzzz (Good job)]
Adhai came back, having gone out to deal with the one who'd tried to escape and hide. Dangling from the kid's back was a Cultist—nothing left of him but his upper torso.
Judging by how drenched in blood the kid was, she'd clearly rammed him at Super Acceleration.
Doesn't look like she took any wounds.
She had completely mastered the technique of wreathing her body in psychic power before charging.
Clever little thing.
I patted her head with a combat arm, then lifted the Cultist corpse hanging from her back with an erosion tentacle.
That's all twelve of them taken care of.
The tooth fairies I'd spawned had started the battle, but this was the first time I'd fought directly.
Their skill level matched my expectations exactly. There had been a few surprises, though.
Their equipment is far better than I thought.
My gaze drifted toward the gear the Cultists had brought with them. Dragon Scale armor, Champion Shields, swords honed from Gallagon material—and Demolishers on top of it all. Nothing but high-grade armaments.
I picked up a weapon that resembled a harpoon gun from among the arms scattered across the ground.
It looked unremarkable, but it was easily among the five most powerful standard-issue weapons used by ground forces in the Space Survival world.
They brought Demolishers. Were they planning to hunt a Gallagon or something?
A Demolisher fired rounds synthesized from dark matter and a host of other rare substances. Its heat ray carried a matter-manipulation effect—anything it struck, no matter how hard, disassembled into something like sand.
After all, the Ice Horror's carapace—the one No. 26 and I had broken with everything we had—had been punched clean through by Demolisher fire.
Defending against a Demolisher required specialized countermeasures. Countermeasures I didn't yet possess.
And these swords are pricey weapons too.
The white blades hanging at the Cultists' waists were forged from shaved-down White Gallagon claws. Their effect was to generate a psychic blade aura capable of cutting enemies from a distance—the same effect as the Gallagon claw Sihyeon Yujin drew from the back of her hand back when we fought.
People armed with equipment this good wouldn't have come here without a reason. I woke the Human-Faced Beasts fused to my head carapace.
"Why did you come here?"
"Th-that's…."
The five Human-Faced Beasts strained with all their might not to speak. It was useless.
Every Human-Faced Beast on my body was a being reconstructed from Amorph's flesh. Just as my arms and legs obeyed my commands, they could no more refuse my orders than those limbs could.
In the end, they spilled everything.
Their account wasn't long—but it contained critically important information.
What they had come to capture. Who was leading them.
Had I not confirmed it now, every one of us could have been in grave danger. This was high-grade intelligence.
So the young High Priest is after me.
He was the one who had argued for dispatching the Imperial Carrier and a carrier battle group to exterminate the Three-Headed Demon that appeared on PH-101—the planet the Cult called Saegil-08.
When the plan failed and he lost influence in the Imperial Council, he had reportedly come here himself, leading the Temple Guard, to redeem that failure.
What did that mean?
The player who was backing Muriel.
The one I'd judged to be a Black Gallagon-class powerhouse was a player. A player with far greater power than Muriel, at that.
If the enemy was a player, I would have to revise the plans I'd built so far.
Because he knows me well.
If he was a ranker on the other side, he was bound to know what to watch out for when fighting Amorph.
Once their forces merge, deceiving them with parasites or the Human-Faced Beasts becomes impossible.
The original plan had been to lure the enemies into the cavern where the Ice Horror lay. That cavern's walls and ceiling were so badly damaged that it could collapse at any moment.
There, I intended to bring down the walls and ceiling and bury everything under the glacier above. No matter how strong the enemy was, survival under hundreds of meters of solid ice was all but impossible.
At best, could a Black Gallagon-class powerhouse survive, depending on which psychic techniques he had? If he did, the kids and I would have swarmed him in a full-scale assault to subdue him.
But if he's already factoring me in as his enemy….
He would know I was setting a trap, so the odds of him moving as I intended were low. To fool him, I would have to think even harder.
…Better to have learned this now than never.
The moment I finished listening to their explanation, I made small adjustments to my original plan and called for PS-111.
"We have a new variable. Take the kids and head to the place I told you about, ahead of me."
"Understood."
She carried No. 26 on her back and readied to depart alongside Adhai.
｢Big Baby, see you later.｣
[Zz (Yeah)]
After saying my goodbyes to the kids, I hurried toward the nest. Along the way, I made sure to press my auxiliary organ against the ground to keep watch on the enemies' movements.
The timing is going to be tight.
Only a few minutes remained before the remaining two groups converged in one place. The group that had been ambushed by PS-111 and Mother of the Sky was moving with extreme wariness, so they hadn't yet linked up with the others.
If I detour through the nest first, I'll be too late.
I had to strike before the enemies joined forces.
I stopped in the middle of the passage. Pressing my head close against the ice, I attempted a link with the nest through the auxiliary organ beneath my jaw.
The nest, expanding on its own, had already dyed this area black. No spores had sprouted here yet, but the nest's mucus had spread this far and hardened, so transmitting a signal was possible.
If it's her, she'll pick up on it immediately.
Feeling along the ground with the auxiliary organ, I searched for a spot I could link through. Before long, the organ made contact with a tendril of the nest that had only just begun to spread.
A part of my senses poured out into the floor, and the wide passage began to feel like an extension of my own body. The link with the nest had succeeded.
Good.
I burst several of the spores inside the nest. In response, two objects lying in the marsh stirred. One of them soon began moving this way, the other alongside it.
Mother of the Sky, who had her prisoners in hand, had evidently read the signal I sent.
Keeping the link open, I rechecked the corridors of this underground space. The enemy player and the force he led showed no signs of moving.
While I kept my surveillance of them unbroken, Mother of the Sky appeared. She held a female Cultist in her beak.
Whether she'd snapped the Cultist's neck vertebrae when capturing her, nothing below the woman's neck moved so much as a twitch. Mother of the Sky knew the Dragon Scale armor carried life-support functions for its wearer, so she had taken precautions accordingly.
I carefully accepted the Cultist, mindful that she couldn't look at me. If No. 26 had been here it would be a different matter—but otherwise, the Soul Link was something to be cautious of.
｢What's going on? This wasn't in the plan.｣
[Zzzzz zz-zzzzzz (The plan's changed)]
I explained to her everything I'd heard from the Human-Faced Beasts. Flames flared up in her amber eyes as she parsed my wavelengths.
｢He's coming here himself?｣
[Zz (Yeah)]
｢…Then I absolutely cannot let him slip away.｣
[Zzzzzz (Of course not)]
A player—a player who knew about me—couldn't be allowed to walk away. Whatever it took, I had to pin him down.
｢So what's the play?｣
[Zzzz zzzzzzzz zzzzzz (Deal with the underlings first)]
The subordinates the player brought carried Demolishers and blades forged from Gallagon claws. Both were weapons capable of inflicting fatal wounds on me—which made them enemies I couldn't afford to be careless with.
And if they were being directly commanded by the player on top of that, they became a nightmare to fight.
Which is exactly why I have to hit them before they regroup.
I looked down at the captured Cultist.
Originally, I'd meant to flay her skin in front of the enemy to instill terror. But circumstances had changed, so her purpose needed a slight adjustment.
A player would never fall for it, of course.
But what about the ones who hadn't yet linked up with him?
I reached out toward the paralyzed Cultist.