The Red Forest (1)
｢Something feels different about you.｣
That was what No. 26 said to me first thing in the morning.
As always, she had picked up on my change immediately. Probably because she considered me something worth watching over.
Strictly speaking, we guarded each other more than anything else, but I couldn't say I minded. In the real world and in the game alike, I'd rarely met anyone who loved unconditionally the way she did.
[Zzzzz zzz zzzzzz (I ate a bad guy and got bigger)]
｢Big Baby's growing up so fast, so clever!｣
[Zzzz zzz zzz (Thanks. Here, eat this)]
｢Okay!｣
She extended her tentacles and swept up all the mushroom-like plants in one go.
｢Grow up quick-quick so we can bring Little Baby here too.｣
[Zzz (Yeah)]
When I patted her clever little head, her pink body glowed brightly.
Just then, PS-111 woke from dormancy for her nutrient replenishment cycle. I generated Tooth Fairies and handed them out to Mother of the Sky and PS-111.
｢Er, um, I'm good.｣
"Thank you."
Mother of the Sky shuddered at the sight of the Tooth Fairy and shook her head. Instead, PS-111 beside her accepted hers, along with the one Mother of the Sky had refused.
"Is this a new transformation state?"
Perhaps because No. 26's psychic power had mingled with it — even PS-111 showed curiosity about the appearance of my tentacles.
[Zzz zzz zzzzzz zzzz (No. This is a permanent change)]
"Energy wavelengths unregistered in my database are distorting the light."
She swallowed the Tooth Fairies in a single gulp, then her eyes gleamed with interest.
"If you would provide a sample…"
[Zzz (No)]
Even I didn't fully understand what the Color of the Abyss could do. There was no way I could hand that over to her. Not only did I have no idea what side effects it might inflict on her, it wouldn't do me any good either.
If it goes wrong and turns uncontrollable, that'll be a real headache.
When I flatly refused, she sulkily crunched down on her Tooth Fairy.
With the simple breakfast finished, I explained the day's plan to the kids. I told them I would need to act alone so I could test my newly acquired Mark of a Formidable Foe.
｢I wanna come with Big Baby too.｣
[Zzzzzz zzzz zzz (Sorry, but not this time)]
I still didn't know exactly how this trait worked. With uncontrollable traits, it was hard to tell whether they were landmines until you'd actually used them.
I had no intention of dragging her into danger for nothing.
[Zzz zzzzz zzzzz (Instead, help Middle Baby)]
｢Why Middle Baby?｣
[Zzz zzz zzzz zzzz zzzz (While I'm gone, you'll find a nest and food)]
The night before, I had briefly spoken with Mother of the Sky about what we'd do in the morning.
She said that while I ran my experiments, she'd scout out a place suitable for a nest. Since her eyesight was the sharpest of anyone's, she claimed she was perfect for finding territory.
She's not wrong.
She had plenty of experience fighting against me in the game. Because of that, she knew exactly what kind of place an Amorphous chose to nest in. If anyone could locate a hiding spot for us, it was her.
Plus, even if Galagons roamed the area, No. 26 and PS-111 could easily evade them. The two of them could both sense Galagon psychic power.
[Zzzz (Be careful)]
｢Don't worry. I'll be as careful as I can.｣
[Zzzzz (I'm counting on you)]
｢Th- you be careful too.｣
She hesitated, added that one line, then quickly looked away. Whether yesterday's memory still lingered or not, her attitude toward me seemed awkward.
If I told her not to worry about it, she'd only get more flustered. So I answered with a simple nod.
And with that, we split up to our separate tasks.
I ran through trees that grew taller and taller the higher I climbed. Branches spread out in countless directions, tangling with those of the neighboring trees, so hardly any light reached the interior.
Only the sound of air whistling through the branches filled the space — a sound like the growling of some great beast.
The gloom was bad enough on its own, and with the blizzard raging outside without pause, the whole place carried a deeply unsettling atmosphere.
I ran for a long while through the utterly deserted forest.
It wasn't just to put distance between myself and the kids. Right now I was tracking the traces of a certain 'creature'.
It has to be here somewhere.
In the game, Galagon nests were classified as hunting grounds that were notoriously difficult to raid. They existed only on planets with extreme cold like this one, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, volcanic worlds seething with lava — making the approach itself an ordeal.
Even if you managed to prepare properly and get inside, problems remained.
Because the area around the Dragon's Nest is a danger zone.
The lands near a Galagon nest swarmed with powerful creatures of Galagon rank or higher. These creatures either served as the Galagons' prey, or played a role in keeping the Galagon population in check.
Simply put, the planet hosting a Galagon nest was itself absolutely crawling with APEX-class creatures.
Given that there's an Ice Horror and Winter Walkers here, there must be other creatures too.
I already knew every monster that lived on this frozen world where the Dragon's Nest lay. I'd raided this place plenty of times back in the game.
While my four legs worked busily, the auxiliary organs beneath my jaw diligently searched for traces. Then, in the distance, I sensed movement.
I dropped low and slowed my pace.
Since I hadn't released the Clever Underdog state, my body stayed small enough not to exceed 5 meters including my tail. Given a decent-sized boulder or a thick tree, I could hide my whole body.
Using the terrain for cover, I cautiously closed in on the direction the movement had come from.
Before long, I spotted the creature through the trees.
Four meters tall, with a skeletal build, grotesquely elongated arms and legs, white fur — and a pitch-black face that stood in stark contrast to it. It was the Winter Walker, hunter of the snowfields.
For all its reputation as a hunter, though, the creature's behavior looked remarkably sloppy. Its white eyes were hazy, fogged over like mist, and it paid me absolutely no attention despite my proximity.
The Winter Walker sat in the lower rungs of this planet's food chain. Because of that, it was known for never letting its guard down.
There was a reason it was acting so strangely.
The smell.
The air was thick with a delicious aroma, so pervasive it was like smelling your neighbor frying savory pancakes through the rain on a wet day. The creature was walking toward the source of that mouthwatering scent.
Perfect.
I tailed it from a distance. The thing shuffled along with its eyes fixed blankly ahead, looking for all the world like it was under hypnosis.
In a way, hypnosis might be exactly the right word.
As I followed, the scenery around me gradually began to change.
The most obvious change was the color of the densely packed trees. The bark, once a near-black brown, was now coated in crimson moss, as if blood vessels had swelled to the surface.
Even the snow blanketing the ground had been stained red, as if someone had doused it in syrup. And that wasn't all — the air carried a sweet scent, like actual syrup.
Found it.
That red moss, wafting an aroma so rich it made me dizzy, was the trace I'd been hunting.
The Winter Walker, catching the scent just as I had, greedily lapped at the moss clinging to the tree. Every time its tongue touched the moss, its whole body shuddered like a drug addict riding the orgasm of a fresh hit.
That red moss was a toxic substance produced by an APEX-class monster of tremendous power. But it wasn't the kind of poison that inflicted pain on its victims or drove them into hallucinations.
It's closer to a drug.
Just as a Venus flytrap lures insects with its sweet scent, that red moss drew in the surrounding creatures with the perfume of delectable prey.
Even to me — bearer of the Complete Immunity trait that granted resistance to poison and viruses — the scent was almost unbearably seductive. A Winter Walker with virtually no resistance to toxins would never be able to withstand it.
But that alone won't satisfy it.
Just as I'd predicted, the creature pulled its head away from the tree, its face now etched with an even deeper thirst.
It couldn't help itself. That red moss carried an overwhelmingly powerful narcotic effect. Ingest even a trace of the substance, and you'd be reduced to a slave of this forest in an instant.
As if its earlier lethargy had been a lie, the creature hurried deep into the forest thick with red moss.
I followed, keeping just enough distance that I could barely keep it in sight.
I couldn't go too deep. If I wasn't careful and got trapped in there, it would be all over.
Keeping every nerve in my body on edge, I crept forward — and one by one, other creatures began to appear around me.
Everything from weak creatures like Winter Walkers and Cavegoyles, to strong ones like Green Galagons.
Different species, but identical forms. Save for their heads, their bodies were planted in the ground, wrapped in cocoons shaped like crimson moths.
The stems connecting them to the earth pulsed ceaselessly, injecting something into the creatures. Every time a stem twitched, the captive creatures drooled, their faces beatific.
This was a food storage. Every one of them bound to the red stems was prey handpicked by the master of the Red Forest.
The Glacier Fiend.
The creature had an upper body resembling a stag beetle and a lower body like a plant trailing countless stems. Before it took root, it used the wings on its back to roam in search of prey-rich grounds.
Once it found a suitable location, it drove its roots into the earth and generated the red substance that would lure prey in. Beneath this frozen ground where I now stood, the creature's roots were surely spread thick and wide.
In other words, this entire sprawling Red Forest was its territory.
A Glacier Fiend that had successfully rooted itself was an extremely formidable enemy. It could control other creatures with its red substance.
More precisely, it uses narcotic substances to steer their behavior.
The creatures locked in those cocoons knew perfectly well who was handing out the drugs. So when the Glacier Fiend marked a target, they obeyed it with their lives on the line.
If the Glacier Fiend decided to kill me right now, every monster in those cocoons would hurl itself at me.
This should be far enough.
I abandoned the Winter Walker's trail and moved toward the area where the red stems grew most sparsely. The master of the food storage might be terribly sluggish, but the slaves it commanded were another matter.
What I was about to do next would thoroughly enrage the master of this food storage. If things went sideways, I'd need an escape route secured so I could bolt at a moment's notice.
After all, I'm here to test the Psychic Breath.
My targets were the prey hanging from the stems, lost in their ecstasy.
I settled into a spot where I could retreat easily and activated the Color of the Abyss. At once, the fur covering my body bristled stiff, as if charged with static electricity.
What's this about?
Startled, I raised one of my combat arms and saw a bizarre coloration seeping out from beneath the fur, through the chitin plating.
It looked violet, then green. Every shade imaginable writhed as if alive. And not just on my arm — suspicious lights boiled up from my entire body.
It doesn't feel like a part of me. I can't even detect its energy signature.
Unlike the Human-Faced Beast, the colors flowing over my body were clearly foreign. It was as if I had turned myself inside out and draped something else entirely over my skin.
Something told me strongly that keeping it up for long would be a bad idea.
I focused my senses on the Monster's Tentacles covering my throat and jaw joints.
Immediately, the writhing colors began converging rapidly onto the tentacles. The violet-and-green hues soaking them grew far more vivid.
The previously limp tentacles rose into the air, defying the laws of physics. The colors coating them spread outward like a single drop of paint falling into water.
If the sphere formed when I used Psychic Breath was like a violet sun, then the sphere now hanging before me had become something else entirely. It was a sphere that barely contained a horrific light — a riot of colors on the verge of eruption.
I hurled the endlessly seething sphere of chaos onto the red cocoons. Launched in the form of a sphere, it was utterly different from the Psychic Breath that had always fired as a beam of violet heat.
And the moment that sphere struck its target, I couldn't help but be stunned.
The countless lights within the sphere came pouring out and began to swallow the red cocoons whole. Struck head-on by the light and color, the cocoons lost their original shape and transformed into spheres identical to the one I'd fired.
The newly born spheres of chaos lunged at the prey beside them. And the same process repeated, over and over.
An uncontrollable chain attack. That was the effect of the Psychic Breath imbued with the Color of the Abyss.
｢Graaaoaaaaoooowwwwrrr｣
As the Psychic Breath spread and devoured the red cocoons one after another, a roar thundered from deep within. The master of the storage had been enraged.
The instant the roar died away, I felt the movement of numerous creatures stirring.
How many more of these storages are around here?
I slipped away, dodging the Glacier Fiend's slaves.
Sad for the creature, but the experiment wasn't over yet.