The Cult's Priest (2)
The player group Jason belonged to was one that viewed every being besides themselves as NPCs.
They shared a similar disposition to the group aiming to clear the game, with one crucial difference.
They had little interest in leaving this world. Unlike the real world, here they were kings — mythic beings in the flesh.
Jason had lived a reasonably decent life back on Earth, but he had never once found it as satisfying as the life he lived here. The others in his group were in much the same boat.
In that sense, they weren't so different from the players who had chosen to assimilate and live out their days in the world of Space Survival.
Except that what Jason's group wanted wasn't assimilation. It was domination.
And within that group, Jason had drawn an exceptionally good starting hand. Through sheer luck, he had been reborn as a stag-horned Cultist — nobility of Cult society — which let him adapt to this world with remarkable ease.
On top of that, he possessed a perk that synergized brilliantly with the Cult.
Those around him worshipped him, and his own power exceeded the Cult's natural limits. His ego was bound to swell beyond all reason.
After learning that this was the world of Space Survival, he had lived like the protagonist of a comic or a novel.
Like collecting unique characters in a game, he made every useful NPC his own, and anything that blocked his path he simply eliminated.
Whenever a woman caught his fancy, he would bind her with psychic domination techniques like Ultra Control. As a result, the number of "lovers" he kept within the empire alone had surpassed twenty. And the slaves who didn't even merit the word "lover" were too numerous to count.
To him, this world was a playground. Apart from his group comrades, everyone in it was nothing more than a toy. When a toy grew boring, he handed it over to Chloe or Jubaka to use as experimental material.
A tyrant who saw even his own kind not as equals, but as slaves. That was Jason's essence.
In truth, this lifestyle was proof that the man who seemed to have everything was, in reality, profoundly lonely — but he never realized it.
In any case, perhaps because he had lived so long without wanting for anything, Jason found the painful reality now crashing down on him absolutely unbearable.
Worse still, the one who had orchestrated this whole mess was Morph-fucker, the player he despised most.
He had killed his seventeenth lover with his own hands, and now the Temple Guards he had cherished and cultivated were about to be buried alive.
While he busied himself holding up the collapsing ceiling, the creature's form was changing. Gray bone and chitin were sprouting across that uniformly black body, and the body itself was swelling larger by the second.
The name of that trait was Bone Beast. One of the combat traits Morph-fucker had favored back in the game.
Having fought him many times, Jason knew exactly how dangerous that trait could be.
'Fine. Enough is enough.'
If he let himself be dragged around by Morph-fucker any longer, this might become more than he could handle. He resolved to use the third perk he possessed.
Four years ago, there had been an incident known in Cult society as the Vortex One Cult Purge Operation. That was the official story; in truth, it had been a war between players.
Jason, Chloe, and Cynthia had joined forces and succeeded in hunting down a Coldblood ranker, and in the process, Jason had gained a new perk.
'It's a bit early to use it, but….'
Blocking the falling rock and ice with Reflection, Jason activated his third perk.
Behind him, a translucent golden shadow took shape.
Antler-like protrusions erupted wildly from the head of the golden figure, giving it the appearance of an ornate crown. Golden energy particles swirled constantly around its arms, resembling the hem of a robe. Below that, it had no lower body of its own — instead, it was fused directly to Jason's spine.
Embedded in the glowing golden figure's face was a single violet eye. When that eye turned toward the mind-controlled Temple Guards, something strange occurred.
The Cultists' bodies transformed into golden particles and merged with the golden figure.
Having absorbed all eleven Cultists, the golden figure's color grew far more vivid than moments before. When Jason raised his arm, the golden figure raised its arm in perfect unison.
Then, in a blinding surge of light, their bodies shot upward.
-
'What was that?'
Even mid-transformation, my auxiliary organs caught the anomaly.
It was a type of energy I had never sensed once since arriving in this world. It resembled psychic power, but felt far more concentrated.
The enemy player had used that power to punch straight through the collapsing cavern. He blasted up through the ceiling and flew away, leaving me alone in the underground.
'I can't sense the other Cultists anymore.'
Before the player fled, that inexplicable energy had devoured every trace of psychic power in the vicinity. Given that the Cults' signature energy had vanished entirely, it wasn't hard to guess what had become of them.
'An energy-absorption ability?'
Such creatures existed, but it was not something a Cultist should be capable of. He had clearly used some means I didn't know about.
'And I don't see any equipment I don't recognize.'
The gear the player wore was the Dragonslayer Set, obtainable as a quest reward. Beyond that, nothing else registered on my senses.
'I'll have to go up and see for myself.'
Fighting blind against an enemy I lacked information on was dangerous — doubly so when that enemy was this strong.
For all his thuggish behavior, the player handled psychic techniques with obvious skill. And the perk exclusive to players seemed extraordinarily powerful as well.
'…Still, this fight is unavoidable.'
He was the one who had chased me all the way to this godforsaken planet. Even if I ran, he would find a way to follow.
'So I'll finish it here.'
Transformation complete, I began punching through the mounds of packed ice with arms that had grown overwhelmingly larger than before.
The ice chunks that had seemed boundlessly massive before I activated Bone Beast now looked like snowballs clutched in a child's fist. Even the Ice Horror's bones, once large enough to drape over my whole body, no longer felt the least bit imposing.
Naturally. My body now stretched nearly a hundred meters. And it wasn't just length. The thickness of the chitin covering me, and the size of the densely layered synthetic scales, had scaled up along with everything else.
On top of all that, a second shell of the same material as bone now sheathed my body — a gray exoskeletal carapace shielding my black chitin beneath.
Thick bone spikes resembling scythes studded the gray exoskeleton in dense rows; even to my own eyes, I looked genuinely menacing.
To sum up my current appearance simply: it was as if the original Amorph had clothed itself in a full suit of animal-bone plate armor.
'And on top of that, I'm bigger now.'
I could justly be called a colossal monster. I had seen Bone Beast countless times in the game, but feeling it with my own body for the first time was undeniably novel.
'I'd like to examine it further, but….'
A battle with a powerful enemy awaited me ahead.
I climbed upward, shattering ice and rock as I went. The blunt bone spikes protruding across my body served as pickaxes and shovels, letting me carve through the ice with ease.
I surfaced onto the Ice Plains far faster than I had descended.
Outside, gray clouds hung heavy across the sky. The snowfield underfoot could no longer be called an ice plain — the center had caved in so deeply that the terrain had turned ragged and broken.
Ridges of snow and ice stretched in every direction. And beneath the darkened sky, he was waiting.
The player, with that bizarre golden figure strapped to his back. He had been waiting for me.
'So that's it.'
What caught my attention wasn't the player himself, but the strange thing clinging to his back.
Composed of golden particles, it was like a shadow without substance, and yet somehow it felt three-dimensional. Thanks to the Amorph's uniquely refined senses, I could tell that this thing was energy condensed to such an extreme that it had coalesced into a physical form.
The golden figure's body roughly matched the player's silhouette, but antlers bursting from its temples tangled together like a laurel wreath.
Its face held nothing but a single, vividly glowing violet eye. Around its arms the particles rippled like heat haze, giving it the look of something draped in long silk.
'Some kind of summoning technique.'
In Space Survival, a "summoning technique," despite the name, was actually closer to possession or manifestation of a higher-dimensional being. Coldbloods on the Vortex One Cult route, or heretic Cultists, could draw upon the power of a Vortex One.
'If it can manifest that solidly, the price must be enormous.'
Summoning was an extreme high-risk, high-return technique, not something to be used lightly. The enemy player was glaring at me like he wanted me dead, yet he showed no sign of having paid any tremendous cost to call that thing forth.
'Equipment effect? Or….'
Some special ability?
Either way, it looked anything but ordinary.
'…So he had a trump card up his sleeve after all.'
Even when I used God's Whip, he had seemed composed. He must have judged himself more than capable of handling it.
'Ordinarily, a summon fused with its user can't act independently.'
Most likely it was a type specialized in supporting the Cultist's combat, or a summon built for long-range warfare. Possibly both.
And that wasn't the only problem.
The golden figure was so alien that my attention kept drifting toward it, but the Dragonslayer Set he carried was equally troublesome equipment.
Take the black armor shielding his body, for instance. Forged from Black Galagon scales and hide, its defensive capability was considerable.
Granted, it was rated one tier below the Ice Horror's carapace — but being compared to a creature with absurdly extreme defenses in the first place was impressive enough.
'As I am now, I have no means of shattering that armor in a single blow.'
That might change if my body were reinforced through Hunter's Avatar, Bone Beast, or King of Monsters.
And the Dragonslayer Set wasn't just armor.
The player glaring at me drew the silver rod at his hip. The golden figure mimicked him, pulling something from its own waist in perfect sync.
Then, gripping the rod, he pressed down hard on it with his thumb. Black fire erupted from the tip, blazing wildly before gradually dying down and refining itself into a slender blade.
That torch-like weapon was the weapon component of the Dragonslayer Set: Purification. Modeled after the space weapon from that famous space opera film franchise from before my time.
I hoped that would be the end of it. Of course, it wasn't.
The golden figure's arm behind him shifted, transforming into a weapon shaped much like Purification.
Weapon drawn, the man immediately swept his blade in a diagonal slash toward me. The golden figure moved exactly as the player did — and the blade in the figure's hand stretched impossibly long, flying at me to cut me down.
'Tch!'
I wrenched my body aside just in time. The blade of golden particles grazed past the upper arm of one of my combat arms.
In Bone Beast form, my doubly layered carapace was sheared away with perfect, surgical cleanliness. And even after cutting me, the blade didn't stop — it flew on into the distance behind me.
Having evaded the first strike, I charged straight at him.
Every time my combat arms slammed into the ground, the snow and ice shrapnel erupted skyward. A tsunami of snow and ice, kicked up by a hundred-meter colossus in motion, crashed down on the player along with me.
'How will he respond?'
Reflection? Or some other psychic technique?
But the Cult player did something entirely outside my expectations.
No — to be precise, it wasn't him. It was the golden figure behind him.
'Ugh?!'
A split second of dread crawled up the Monster's Tentacles at the back of my skull, and I ducked my head forward at once. A whip-shaped golden arm scythed through the space where my head had just been.
With my head bowed low in that lunging posture, I spat a burst of acid fungus straight at the spot where he stood.
The green fungus flying amid the snow and ice was blocked by a brilliantly radiant golden shield.
Through the scattering blizzard, I could see the golden figure standing guard over the player, sword and shield raised. The Cult player, sheltered behind his summon, stared at me with the corner of his mouth curled upward.
'…Of course.'
This fight wasn't going to be easy.