Double Helix (3)

Damn bastards…!

Elchen lay sprawled among the heap of twisted steel that had once been the cargo bay. His auxiliary heart had been destroyed by Garlic, his own subordinate—but he possessed a second heart, and that was the only reason he was still alive.

The problem was that he was barely clinging to life as it was.

The auxiliary heart served to stabilize a Hulk Mutant pumped full of genetic modifications. A Hulk Mutant without one was living on borrowed time. He'd been lucky enough to be an engineered creature—if he hadn't been, his body would already be coming apart at the seams.

You dare betray me? You fucking bitch, I'll make you beg me for death.

In truth, what enraged him more than his brush with death was the existence of the traitor herself. He wanted nothing more than to drag her in right now and tear her limb from limb—but there was something he had to do first.

Fuck. Of all the things to break, it had to be that.

Garlic was clever. She'd known full well it was an impact-triggered detonation device, and she'd smashed it without a moment's hesitation. Which meant the timer wired into the reactor was already counting down. In exactly ten minutes, everyone aboard this ship would be dust.

Me? Die here? Don't make me laugh! Do you have any idea who I am? I'm Elchen Dvara, dammit.

Even with the paralysis still gripping his body, he strained against it, inch by inch. The single burning conviction that he would survive, no matter what, was all that drove him.

｢Baby, does it still hurt?｣

Number 26's voice reached me as we ran. I could feel the one she was carrying in her small hands trembling.

[Zzzzzzzz (I'm all healed already)]

｢Really?｣

Thanks to my Regeneration trait, a torn carapace was something I could patch up in no time. A wound still remained on my leg, but the bleeding had stopped. I stroked Number 26 with one small hand as I turned the problem of Sihyeon over in my mind.

A sneak attack probably won't work.

Those eyes of hers—the Terror Devil's eyeballs—possessed clairvoyance. Even if I hid, she would see straight through me in an instant. And this was only my guess, but I suspected she had another sense on top of that, one that detected invisible enemies.

Meanwhile, I was operating under a time limit. Dragging things out by playing hide-and-seek in that situation would only work against me.

The detonation device the boss had carried activated on a strong impact. The moment the device was pierced by Sihyeon's blade, the timer must have started running.

I doubt the countdown is a short one.

The bomb was the boss's bluffing card. Even if it went off against his will, he would have given himself enough leeway to shut it down somehow.

Every instinct told me to go disarm the bomb first, but that wouldn't be easy either.

It was Sihyeon who had driven the device through the boss's heart, setting the bomb off in the process. She'd known from the start that a bomb was planted on this ship—and knowing that, she'd taken such a reckless action for one obvious reason.

She's trying to steer my movements.

Even my preoccupation with the bomb was factored into her calculations. She was probably counting on me to make a run for the escape pod.

…A strange sense of déjà vu.

Just as I had manipulated my enemies' actions when I fought the pirates, Sihyeon was employing the exact same strategy. Seeing this, you might call it the feeling of fighting another player.

At any rate, there was only one outcome she could want from cornering me like this.

A frontal assault.

She intended to subdue me with overwhelming force at a place of her choosing. That was Sihyeon Yujin's strategy.

As long as she kept pushing me back, I would have no choice but to go along with it—

If I were a 'normal' player, that is.

Let's start by sorting out the factors working against me.

Three conditions were currently unfavorable to me: the time limit, attack and defensive capabilities inferior to my enemy's, and a lack of information.

Of these, the time limit was the one I couldn't solve right now. I couldn't afford to split my attention between the bomb and the fight. I had to shut the bomb out of my mind entirely and focus on one thing only: killing the enemy.

As for the lack of information—I'll just have to close that gap by facing her directly.

If I'd been a player who favored some other race, she might well have broken me. But I am an Amorph player. In the entire game, no one outside the development team knew more about genetic traits than I did.

Which leaves my attack power and defense…

I'd briefly considered heading to the situation room and devouring the cyborg, but that path had problems too. When I evolved to the next stage, my body would be completely helpless for at least several hours. If the bomb went off, or if I was discovered mid-evolution, it would all be over.

Evolution is on hold… ah.

As I mulled over evolution, something suddenly came to mind.

That thing in the laboratory. With it, I might just be able to turn this losing battle around.

Psionium!

I turned my steps back toward the laboratory.

If I consumed the psionium, I could wield the power of a Sub-adult for a short time.

Sihyeon Yujin possessed the Gallagon's Claw trait, allowing her to release a blade-wind laced with psychic power and other energies—what gamers would commonly call sword qi. Right now I had zero resistance to psychic power, which meant I had no answer to the Gallagon's Claw.

But what if I became a Sub-adult? At the Sub-adult stage, my evolution bonus would grant me a psychic resistance trait. If she were a genuine Gallagon, maybe not—but if she'd merely had the claws grafted on, my carapace could hold out against them.

Plus, I'd gain a ranged attack.

I have the Sawtooth Tentacles, but at best those are good for mid-range harassment. They'd be hopelessly outmatched by the Gallagon's Claw on her arm. Worse, my senses were wired directly into them—if I lashed out carelessly and got one severed, the feedback would be catastrophic.

The Sub-adult's ranged attack doesn't have that weakness.

If I had to nitpick, the downside would be the heavy energy consumption? But I had to settle things before the psionium wore off anyway. There was no room to worry about energy.

When I reached the laboratory nest, I set Number 26 down.

[Zzzz zzzzzzzz (Wait here a moment)]

｢Where are you going?｣

[Zzzzzz zzzz (There's something I need to grab)]

｢No, Baby.｣

[Zzzzzz (Don't worry)]

Number 26 refused to budge even after I told her it was nothing serious. She had something she wanted to say, but it seemed hard for her to get out—her body flickered with anxious, unstable light.

[Zzzzzzzz (What is it?)]

She hesitated, and in the end said nothing. Any other time I would have waited until she found the words, but right now I didn't have that luxury.

I left her there and approached the laboratory refrigerator. Inside, stored in careful preservation, was a violet liquid. I took it out and drained it in a single gulp.

Ugh!

My body burned as if set ablaze. When Number 26 had been forcibly injected with the drug, I'd had a vague feeling it would hurt this much—but the pain was beyond anything I'd imagined.

In the game, drinking it simply popped a buff icon at the top of the screen. But this was reality, and I had to endure every moment of my body being forcibly mutated by the drug, raw and unfiltered.

It felt as though someone had seized my skeleton and wrenched it longer by force, agony surging from every joint. My muscles swelled taut like over-inflated balloons until they split. Even the carapace covering my body grew heavy at a staggering rate.

The pain was so overwhelming that I dropped to my knees without meaning to. I nearly screamed, but I clenched my teeth and somehow held it in.

…I can't pass out over this much.

How long had passed? The agony that had bordered on blacking out slowly receded. It was as if I'd compressed years of growth pains into a single minute.

Having come through the transformation intact, I rose to my feet. As always, a translucent text window was there to greet me.

It worked.

Several of my traits showed noticeable changes. The reinforced exoskeleton I'd received as a Juvenile bonus had been upgraded into the Monster Skeleton. With the Type's effects stacking on top of my Chitinous Carapace, my height had grown considerably—I was a little over two meters now, perhaps. And my tail had lengthened to nearly four.

And I've grown horns, too.

Magnificent horns reminiscent of a yak's had sprouted from the carapace covering my head. Made of the same chitin as my carapace and further reinforced, they were both incredibly hard and razor-sharp. Until now, the carapace on my head had served purely as protection, but with horns I could actively ram or gore my enemies with it.

Checking my arms and legs, I could see they'd grown far thicker than before. One detail worth noting was the faint violet shimmer glinting across the surface of my carapace.

A psychic barrier. Been a while since I've seen one of these.

For as long as the trait remained active, it was as if a shield against psychic power enveloped my body. Sihyeon's Gallagon's Claw could be blocked by this.

And finally—the Barbed Bone Launching Organ.

My left forearm had transformed into something new entirely. Below the wrist, in place of four fingers, sat a long, rod-like organ. Its shape resembled a gun barrel, and that was exactly its function: a biological firearm.

Except it fires barbed bone instead of bullets.

The structure launched barbed spines, generated automatically inside my body, through a small aperture at the tip of the barrel organ. Seen like that, it might look unremarkable—but the advantages of the Barbed Bone Launching Organ were anything but small.

The barbed bone hits harder than a Plasma Pistol.

Its raw destructive force was modest, but its penetrative power was monstrous—the ideal weapon against heavily armored opponents. If I'd fought the boss as a Sub-adult, he'd have been riddled into a honeycomb before the fight even got going.

And I can imbue the barbed bone with trait effects, too.

Just like my Contamination Organ, I could fire acid spines or poisoned ones. In other words, I now had a gun that let me choose my ammo as I pleased.

My spore-spewing Contamination Organ had merged down into a single unit, but unless I was going down the nest-specialization route, that was arguably a net gain.

That concluded the inventory of my new abilities. The last thing I needed to confirm was my time limit.

Time remaining is probably about five minutes.

In the game, psionium's duration had been five minutes.

Absolutely not a long time. I needed to force a decisive clash as quickly as possible.

The moment I finished my preparations, Sihyeon entered my sensory field.

I linked into the nest and activated every spore along her approach path. I had to shave off as much of her strength as I could before we fought. Fortunately, perhaps because I was now a Sub-adult, the spore activation was far faster and more precise than my earlier attempts.

She's coming.

A deafening boom rocked the entire ship. She must have blasted through the corridor in one go—the slime dripping from the walls to threaten her was intolerable to her.

I cut the link and immediately scooped Number 26 up into my arms. She, who had been lost in some unfathomable worry moments before, flickered her light on and off repeatedly, apparently fascinated by how much bigger I'd suddenly become.

｢Wow! Baby got even bigger!｣

[Zzzzzz zzzzzzzz (I'm going to run—hold on tight)]

｢Waaah!｣

My destination was where the bomb was planted: the reactor.

It was a place sensitive enough to detonate from the slightest mishandling—and around the reactor, even she would find it hard to fight at full strength.

I was running with Number 26 cradled against me when Sihyeon appeared from the corridor ahead.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Drenched in corrosive slime, her clothes had melted away to leave her nearly half-naked—yet not a single wound marked her body. She glared at me and drew the Gallagon's Claws from both hands.

Danger!

I flung Number 26 behind me without hesitation.

There was no time to feel guilty about it. Her assault had already begun.

As the white blade carved through the air, a crescent moon of sword qi formed in its wake. Like a guided missile, it slammed into my body without the slightest deviation. Violet sparks scattered where it met my barrier, and a gash split open at the point of impact.

Ugh.

Though the barrier held, it didn't stop the attack completely—a dull ache throbbed through me. Fortunately it wasn't a deep wound, nothing my Regeneration trait couldn't mend.

"Huh?"

Sihyeon tilted her head. Apparently she found it strange that I was standing there unharmed.

As surprised as she was to see me, I was just as astonished in my own right.

I shouldn't have been able to see that coming.

The Gallagon's Claw was terrifying not only because it was a psychic attack, but above all because its attack trajectory was invisible. You had to predict where the strike would land based on nothing but the sight of her swinging—which was exactly what made it so brutal.

And yet, just now, I hadn't missed a single detail of her attack. I wondered what on earth was going on, and then something surfaced in my mind.

Don't tell me—the Psychic Organ?

I'd never once obtained it in all my hours of play, so it had never occurred to me that such a feature even existed.

I'd gained unexpected intel, but I was in the middle of a fight. I filed the information away to savor later and charged at her instead.

My two reinforced legs detonated against the corridor floor. Type, traits, and evolution stage—the synergy of all three made my charge truly explosive.

Like a missile fired from a silo, my body shot toward Sihyeon. My movement had been faster than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she anticipated; her pupils dilated ever so slightly.

My plan was to punch my horns straight through her abdomen, but she was no pushover. She drew the Gallagon's Claw from her other arm and knocked my horns aside.

Grk!

"Faster than before, aren't you?"

She must have acquired a strength-boosting gene as well—the power behind it was staggering, easily surpassing that hulking Hulk Mutant's. If I weren't a Sub-adult, my neck would be snapped right now in counterattack.

Her slender leg flashed toward my abdomen like lightning. I tilted my body sideways to evade the kick, and from a half-prone position on the floor swung my tail in a wide arc. The nearly four-meter tail raked across the floor and tore into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her thigh.

"Hahaha! That won't be enough!"

I knew it. Her stance wavered slightly, but no trace of pain crossed her face.

But my assault wasn't finished. With my tail still coiled around her, pinning her in place, my left forearm leveled squarely at her head.

"Hm?"

Fire.

With a sound like a piano string snapping taut, the barbed bone launched from the tip of the organ where my wrist should have been. Before it could pierce her skull, she hastily raised the Gallagon's Claw to block it.

"Not bad, actually? Forcing me onto the back foot like this."

Even as she spoke, she swung the claw and sliced through my tail. I'd anticipated the counterattack and was already letting go.

In that instant, her black hair began to glow red.

Red hair? Wait—don't tell me—

I scrambled to put distance between us, but I was a hair too slow. For a mere moment—less than a single second—a hazy languor, as if I'd come down with a fever, wrapped itself around my entire body. The moment I woke from that dreamlike sensation, excruciating pain flooded in from my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tail.

I barely recovered my senses and retracted it, but the wound was grave—nearly a third of its girth had been sliced away.

That was the Red Mist's ability, wasn't it!

The Red Mist was an apex predator native to jungle-type planets. A jaguar-like beast with a crimson mane, it could exhale hallucinogenic pheromones from its fur. On paper that sounded harmless enough, but anyone caught in those pheromones could never escape by their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠own will, making it a genuinely fearsome ability. The only countermeasure was to open the distance and minimize the hallucination's effect.

It was an animal as rare as a White Gallagon. Where on earth had she gotten her hands on that gene?

"Trying to keep your distance. You know your Red Mist well, it seems. You really are getting interesting."

She smiled, looking pleased.

She really is a formidable opponent.

With her hallucinatory ability in the mix, I had to force a conclusion before the psionium ran out. Once I reverted to Juvenile form, my ranged options would vanish entirely.

This is exactly when I need to stay calm.

Panicking wouldn't change a thing. Composure—waiting patiently for my opening—was the only path to victory I had.

Once my tail had recovered somewhat, I threw myself at her again.

"Kahaha! Now that's more like it!"

She laughed and kicked at my arm. While my arm swung uselessly through empty air, the Gallagon's Claw drove in toward my groin.

Her attempt to gut me was foiled by a twist of my hips. And my lower arms hadn't been idle all this time—from the apertures between my four digits, a jet of mucus-laced slime shot straight at her eyes.

"Ugh!"

No matter how strong she was, sheer visceral disgust was beyond her control—her eyes squeezed shut for an instant. I didn't let a momentarily incapacitated enemy go to waste.

I drove my sharp horns at her shoulder, but to my disappointment the strike landed shallow. She'd yanked her shoulder back just in time, leaving nothing more than a gash across her body.

"You keep trying to spoil my fun, don't you?"

Her hair began to glow red again, and I beat a hasty retreat, firing a barbed bone at her as a parting shot.

"Tch!"

She clicked her tongue, cutting off the transformation mid-stride, and knocked the barbed bone aside with a freshly drawn Gallagon's Claw.

That just now—?

She fired sword qi back at me in counterattack. I flattened myself against the floor to evade it, then locked my gaze on her once more.

Just as I thought.

She stood there composed, as if nothing had happened. But I could detect the unnatural tension lying beneath her expression.

I had a fair idea now of what her weakness was.

You can't use two abilities at once, can you?

At last, I had the key to cracking her open.