Double Helix (2)
The Medical Team Leader could not blink his eyes.
So this was what a Star Union beast-fighting arena looked like.
Inside a colosseum walled in by metal and machinery, two monsters faced each other down.
His new master, Elchen Dvara, looked like a machine forged in hell itself. The grotesquely elongated, massive arms; the crimson mane whipping like a raging fire; the alloy armor caked with dried blood and shreds of flesh — every detail of him was a horror unto itself.
And what monster would dare stand against such a hell-forged machine? His gaze slid to the far side of the arena.
A ghost waited there.
A shell gleaming a brown so dark it was nearly black, armor plating sheathing its head and chest, a cascading heap of tentacles hanging like hair, four arms that gave the impression of a human skeleton clad in plate armor, and a tail long enough to double its body length.
The Medical Team Leader had seen with his own eyes how many souls that black ghost had devoured. The last gasps of soldiers dying before him still haunted his memory, impossible to forget.
The devil's machine against the specter of the slaughterhouse.
The hulking, ponderous monster and the lithe, armored one hurled themselves at each other at the same instant.
Every time the bastard took a step, the ship's corridor shuddered. The chieftain closed the distance in moments and swung his arm in a vast, sweeping arc.
The bone shield wrapped around his arm came flying in, aimed at crushing my skull.
There was nothing to be gained from taking that hit, so I ducked beneath it and lashed my tail out at him.
Just as the flexible tail was threading through a gap in his guard, a heartbeat away from punching into his chest, I froze.
The bomb!
Hesitation mid-battle is a sin. The chieftain did not let my opening slip away. A fist that could pulverize alloy plating slammed into my head.
A shockwave erupted with a thunderous boom. The residual energy that my head's thick carapace couldn't absorb raced down my body and rippled out into the corridor. The ceiling lights, unable to withstand the tremor, shattered one after another.
"What the—?!"
He had misjudged, same as I had. The hardest parts of my body were my chest and my head. If his strike had been aimed at an arm or a leg, it would have been a clean, decisive blow.
He looked rattled to see me still standing. I seized the opening, pressing my body flat against the floor and using my four arms and two legs to slither out between his legs.
"Grrrh, you damned bug!"
A ponderous sole, like the foot of an elephant, slammed down on the deck. But I was already gone.
Having put distance between us, I gave my head a light shake. I hadn't absorbed the impact completely — a faint dizziness lingered.
So that was the plan.
I'd wondered why he kept talking about a bomb. So that was what he'd been counting on. If my skull hadn't been so thick, I'd have died right there.
That's dirty play, isn't it?
I'd pulled the same trick plenty of times myself, but being on the receiving end of it was, once again, irritating as hell.
With a bomb trigger wired to his heart, going for his chest was far too dangerous. I had not the slightest intention of triggering an explosive ending by poking where I shouldn't.
Which means I need to aim somewhere else.
"Hrgh. Your attacks are useless, you insect."
The chieftain laughed, triumphant. Apparently he believed he had no weaknesses.
In the current situation, it wasn't an entirely wrong claim. Aside from the chest, there weren't many worthwhile targets.
The bone armor encasing his arms and legs was harder than my own reinforced body. Short of a plasma weapon, piercing it was impossible.
Even aiming for the unarmored gaps wouldn't be easy — he would defend them with everything he had.
But.
There were two things he didn't know.
The first was that I possessed the Nerve Venom Gland trait. The moment I punctured him anywhere at all and injected the venom, the fight was over.
He seems to have guessed as much, though.
The chieftain was paying particular attention to my tail. Even before his berserk state, he had dodged my tail strikes rather than blocking them. Whether it was wild instinct or intelligence gathered in the command room, he knew my tail was dangerous.
But what am I to do about that?
The truth was, the venom could be drawn from my teeth and claws as well as my tail. Break through his shell and land a strike, and victory was mine.
So how did I crack the shell that the chieftain trusted so absolutely?
He was fixated on my four arms and my tail — but in reality, I had one more weapon.
The thin rod gripped tight in the small arms of my chest: the Sonic Blade. I'd grabbed it in the fitness room on the off chance I'd need it; I never imagined it would come in handy this quickly.
The Sonic Blade was a weapon that excelled at exactly one thing — cutting power. The moment it struck the bone shell it would snap, but that didn't matter. A small wound was enough.
No matter how thick and massive a dam may be, it collapses from a single hairline crack.
The instant a fissure spread through his impregnable fortress would be the moment the goddess of victory smiled upon me.
"Graaaaaah!"
He leapt. Empowered by his berserk state, he closed on me at a terrifying speed.
I scrambled backward, using all six of my arms and legs. The spot where I'd been standing exploded, and the corridor shook.
Fast and strong.
Despite his colossal frame, his movements were astonishingly quick. Even evading with every limb except my small arms, I was barely keeping ahead of him. Usually, speed like that comes at the cost of power — but he was wanting in neither.
Of course, nothing in this world is perfect.
Hulk Mutants have a chronic flaw. I had to hold out until it surfaced.
Wrecking the ship's interior as we went, we burst into a vast open space.
The stale reek of rusted steel rising off stacked containers greeted us.
The Cargo Bay — the first world I had laid eyes on when I opened my eyes in this life.
I drove power into all six of my legs at once and launched myself high into the air, vaulting from container to container. A roar bellowed up from below.
"Arrogant little—!"
As if such things could possibly stop me, he simply charged straight through the containers.
Rectangular metal blocks weighing tens of tons toppled like dominoes. The steel plating covering the floor tore loose and went dancing through the air.
The insects that had been hiding all over the bay came scurrying out at the sudden arrival of the apocalypse. I snagged a fleeing cockroach, popped it into my mouth, and tucked my body behind a container.
Against that kind of monstrous strength, a head-on fight was out of the question. There was only one option available to me here.
Wait.
I hadn't been running purely for the sake of running. Hulk Mutants burn through energy at a ferocious rate, which forces a brief recovery period midway through combat. Flail about recklessly like that, and the body forcibly shuts down its own assault.
Not long now.
The auxiliary organ read the chemical processes flaring through the enemy's body and the mechanics of his energy regulation — all so I could strike at the perfect moment.
The auxiliary organ told me: the two hearts inside his body were fine-tuning their output against each other.
Now that I think of it, he does have two hearts.
Where was the trigger wired to? The main heart of a Hulk Mutant sits on the left, so the left side was the likelier choice — but he was a cunning monster. I couldn't be certain.
In the instant my mind lingered on his hearts, he spotted me.
"Brrrraaaagh!"
Damn it.
A fist carrying strength enough to hurl ten-ton containers like toys grazed my shoulder.
A throbbing pain flooded in, but it was nothing I couldn't endure. I counterattacked immediately.
My tail, thrust like a spear from a grandmaster of the art, drove toward the gap in his joints — the one stretch of him bare of bone.
"You insect!"
He wrenched his arm up in a hurry, and my strike came to nothing.
Before he could lunge again, I yanked my body backward. A container crashed down exactly where I'd been standing.
"Graaaah! Run away then, you cowardly little bastard!"
That was a mistake. Stop fixating on the heart.
I couldn't let myself be dragged into the enemy's game. Slipping out of his line of sight, I focused every sense I had into the auxiliary organ.
The beast was breathing like a furious bear, ragged and hot. At a glance, he seemed to be running perfectly, without a single problem.
But I could see it — the components making up his body were crying out for rest.
Carefully, I crept up over the containers, and there he was: the beast smashing everything within reach to pieces.
"Gr... grrrhhh..."
Steam rose in wisps from the muscle fibers exposed across his skin — the byproduct of his body venting the heat building up inside.
By all rights he should have halted all movement and entered his recovery period, but he refused to stop. He was undeniably slower than before, yet that monstrous strength still remained.
So they modified him to shave down the weakness, as advertised.
Even so, they hadn't managed to erase the recovery period itself. I didn't waste the opportunity — I slammed into the container with everything I had.
My body became an arrow loosed at full draw, splitting the air. Perhaps it was my hide's coloring bleeding into the gloom of the Cargo Bay — he registered me a beat too late.
"Die!"
He tore chunks out of the floor and hurled them.
Projectiles far heavier than a manhole cover came screaming at me. My Amorph-honed instincts and the auxiliary organ computed the trajectories of every lethal obstacle.
My feet landed on crumpled, shredded alloy plates — I leapt across stairs of floating metal, closing the distance between us.
"Hraaagh?! You dare—!"
Flustered by the near-miraculous agility I was displaying, the enemy still refused to lose momentum. The instant I touched down before him, he raised both arms high. He meant to bring those elephantine hands crashing down on me.
The auxiliary organ screamed a warning. I knew it too. This was a monster that could hurl ten-ton containers like playthings — the power coiled in those two hands could be nothing short of devastating.
In a moment that felt like a frozen instant, I made my choice.
Force the breakthrough.
If I dodged now, there was no telling when the next opening would come. He was a cunning foe. Having exposed his weakness once, he would move heaven and earth to bury it the next time.
So the chance was now — and only now. I had to trust my skull, the one thing that could withstand even a plasma weapon twice over.
His two fists and my head collided. In that instant, a colossal fusion of mass, velocity, and raw force bore down on my body.
Energy my head failed to shed drove my feet clean through the deck, and the shell of my legs split open. A dizzying wash of pain and impact shuddered through me.
...Still. Not enough to break me.
Because I endured it, the moment I had been waiting for finally arrived.
His stance was broken from driving both hands down onto my head. I activated the Sonic Blade clutched in my small arm, and a thin, sword-like blade sprang from the rod.
What needed to be cut was right in front of me.
The small arm swung, and the blade opened a gash across his forearm. Having carved that single thin line, the weapon shattered with a burst of pressure.
While my small arm completed its duty, my combat arms did not sit idle. All four of them seized both of his arms.
"Kuh?! Wh-what are you—!"
The enemy cried out, demanding to know what I was doing. He asked, so I had to answer.
With my mouth.
"Krrgh!"
My fangs sank into his forearm. The hide was so dense that I barely scored the surface — but it didn't matter. All I needed was for my saliva to seep into the wound.
"Gyaaaargh!"
He flailed his arms violently and shook me off. I went flying and slammed into a mountain of containers.
"You dare *bite* me?! You goddaaamned... aaah?"
His voice stretched long and slurred, like a drunkard's. He looked back and forth between the wound on his arm and my face. Then he saw the venom dripping from my jaws, and his eyes went wide.
"H-how loooong?"
He brought his other arm down hard on the wounded limb, apparently trying to sever it. But the bone armor sheathing his body was far too hard for that.
The fortress that had protected him had become the prison that bound him. Failing to break his own armor, he shrieked.
"I-I aaaam, I aaaam—!"
A Hulk Mutant gone white as a sheet. Now that was a novel sight.
He tried to run, but he didn't get far. The nerve venom was already devouring his body at speed.
The bulk that towered well past three meters in his berserk state crashed onto the frigid metal floor. The look he turned on me was, for good or ill, an animal's.
The eyes of prey that has met its predator.
"P-pleeeease... spare me..."
Being decidedly non-human, the paralysis took weakly in him. I drove the venomous barb of my tail into him several more times.
Once he was reduced to barely drawing breath, I tore away the metal plating covering his chest. The trigger device sat just above his right breast.
Not a dead man's switch — a timer that armed itself upon receiving a heavy impact.
Figures.
Somehow I'd suspected as much.
If his opponent had been someone knowledgeable about Hulk Mutants, he'd have targeted the right heart first. In a Hulk Mutant, the secondary heart is the regulator that suppresses the side effects of the gene modification; without it, the body grows drastically weaker — and in the worst cases, falls apart entirely.
Losing the secondary heart means the fight was already lost anyway.
Most likely the intent was either to take me down with him, or to rattle me by letting me know there was a time limit. The bomb was his own, after all — end the fight quickly, and he could simply walk over and disarm it himself.
Well, his plan no longer mattered. The trigger device would take a little time, but my small hands could dismantle it.
All that remained was to savor the genetic samples packed inside the Hulk Mutant's body.
｢Baby!｣
Someone called out, and I turned. It was No. 26.
[Zzzzt(I told you to stay hidden)]
｢Baby, something terrible happened!｣
[Zzzzt(What?)]
Something about her reaction was off. She seemed restless — and, at the same time, terrified.
I was about to ask her again what was wrong when, without warning, my Predator Sense fired.
A blade of wind splits No. 26 open.
A blade of wind flies at me, too fast to evade.
I am dead.
Shit—!
I snatched No. 26 into my arms and threw us both to the floor. At the same instant, a streak of lightning split the space where she had been standing.
"Oh? Dodged it."
If not for the Predator Sense, we would both be dead.
I raised my head and saw someone standing at the mouth of the Cargo Bay. A slender, gaunt figure with long black hair spilling down her back stood there.
A woman? That's a person?
The auxiliary organ and my Amorph instincts were howling like mad.
Do not engage that "creature."
...Sihyeon Yujin.
The enigmatic presence who had boarded this ship alongside the pirates. The enemy I had resolved to face last of all had come looking for me herself.
"Precognition, hmm? Which gene is that from? I'd love to hear about it."
She strolled into the Cargo Bay, chattering with perfect ease. But for all the leisurely, day-outing lilt of her voice, her body was already poised to strike.
From her hand — no, from the back of it — a white blade jutted out. I knew exactly which gene that blade had come from.
White Gallagon genes, spliced with genes from something even higher.
It was a genome so rare I hadn't even decided whether I could acquire it upon reaching Young Adult stage.
And that was far from the only visible trait she carried.
This being was loaded with rare, useful adaptations. Even in the game, the only Megacorp players modified to that degree were those standing on the very threshold of the rankings.
An opponent I cannot beat as I am now.
I needed to disengage at once, regroup, and formulate a plan of attack.
But she had no intention of granting me the time to do it.
"Y-you, Ma, Garlic...?"
"You've worked hard enough."
"Khhk!"
She walked up to the incapacitated chieftain and ran the blade straight through the trigger device. Skewered through the heart as well, he vomited a great gout of blood and crumpled to the floor.
Damn it.
"Can't have you running off, after all. Right?"
The bomb's timer had almost certainly started counting the moment it was pierced. I didn't know how many seconds remained — but they couldn't have been many.
My plan to retreat and prepare properly had just been killed in its cradle.
What do I do?
Fighting her blindly was suicide. I knew nothing — not the depth of her combat sense, not what strategy she'd bring to bear. Fight without information, and nothing remains but defeat.
As I prowled warily, observing her, she flashed a small smile.
"I have a proposition."
A proposition?
Sihyeon drew things out with an air of perfect composure. It was an attitude I despised — but my position was one of absolute disadvantage. Better to set the irritation aside and think about how to crack her.
Those eyes — an Outspacer Observer? No. More likely a Terror Devil...
"You seem a lot like me, so I'll let you live."
What?
"If you serve me. Put simply — you become my pet."
It sounded like utter nonsense, but her eyes were serious. Even reading her bodily reactions through the auxiliary organ, she didn't feel like she was lying.
...She has no real reason to lie, anyway.
Just as her overwhelming power pressed down on me, she surely knew I was weaker than she was. That was why she could afford to stroll in wearing such an easy air.
"You're a creature that works in genes, just like me. And I would make a fitting master for you."
...
"So come to me."
The overwhelming powerhouse, Sihyeon Yujin, was speaking to me.
She was telling me to serve her. To become her slave.
｢Baby.｣
If I was being honest with myself, submitting to Sihyeon was the rational choice. The blade on her wrist was the claw of a Gallagon — its destructive force exceeded a plasma weapon's, and no amount of reinforced carapace could stop it.
And beyond that, she carried enough other implements of death to finish me a dozen times over.
I approached her.
Head bowed, using all six of my arms and legs. The way a hound grovels before its master.
"Good. The correct judgment."
｢Don't be scared. I'm right here.｣
But there was something Sihyeon failed to understand about me.
Why I loved the Amorph.
Why I poured myself into this ugly, useless character and let the community mock me with the name Morph-fucker.
She didn't know.
The reason I loved the Amorph was simple.
Freedom of choice.
A being that grows stronger freely, endlessly, through my choices — that is why I love the Amorph.
And so my choice could only ever be one thing.
[Zzzzt(It's all right)]
｢Baby?｣
The distance between us had shrunk close enough to read every detail of her satisfied expression.
I kicked my legs straight up at her face.
"!"
She evaded my feet at blistering speed — but that had never been the point. The acid blood that had been running from the shell she'd torn off me earlier. It splashed across her eyes.
"Khh?!"
[Zzzzt(Hold on tight)]
｢Okay!｣
Even a sliver of an opening was enough. In the beat of her confusion, I clutched No. 26 in my small arms and ran.
Sprinting on all six legs, I heard the Cargo Bay erupt behind me.
"Fine, good! So you want to play with me! Hahaha!"
Sihyeon laughed like a madwoman, eyes shut. She ripped the Gallagon claws free from both her hands and sliced through containers like they were blocks of tofu.
Play with her, is it?
Sihyeon Yujin was far, far stronger than I was.
Undoubtedly the first true monster of an opponent I'd faced since becoming an Amorph.
But I would show her that a fight is not always decided by strength alone.