City in the Dark (4)
I wondered if I'd seen it wrong, but when I looked again, the translucent text window glowing in the air was still there.
'It really showed up. It's not quite what I had in mind, but still.'
I had wanted a trait that reinforced the teeth themselves, but Bite Force didn't pose any particular problem either.
It wasn't as though Amorph's bite strength was especially weak to begin with. A skull that could crunch through a human head without effort compared favorably to Earth's animals, if anything.
But in the world of Space Survival, where armor and equipment boasting extremely high defensive ratings lined every shelf, that level of biting power hardly qualified as special.
'Amorph's oral structure is closer to a mix of snake and ordinary animal.'
Widening the jaws to lock prey in place with the teeth was serpentine, but the chewing that came afterward resembled the manner of a common carnivore.
'With the Bite Force trait, the bite itself can become a weapon.'
In the game, Bite Force had been a middling trait. Like Beast Claws, it wasn't a problem to lack — but it belonged to the category of traits that were useful to have.
Besides, using the Transcendence System required thirteen body-related traits. With every single body trait precious in my current state, having even something like this was far better than going without.
'With Bite Force, that makes twelve. Just one more to go.'
The moment I accepted, my head began to transform all over.
A slight ache spread through my jaw, followed by the grinding of bone against bone as it grew larger than before. In step with it, my skull swelled bigger as well, and the auxiliary organ beneath my jaw stretched longer and thicker along with everything else.
The change didn't stop at mere size. My teeth prickled and itched as their structure shifted subtly from before.
It was no dramatic mutation, so it didn't take long to complete. When it was done, I studied my reflection in the subway car's reinforced glass.
Overall, my head was larger now, and the shape of my skull carried a slightly different impression. Where before it had tapered sharp like a ratsnake, it now looked thick and heavyset, like an anaconda.
My teeth had changed too — the ones corresponding to a human's canines had grown longer than before. Just a little more growth and they could rightly be called fangs.
'It looked kind of cute in the game...'
Was it because this was reality? The face staring back at me was far more terrifying than before.
And it wasn't frightening to look at alone. With jaws reinforced by Bite Force, I could probably chew through the alloy hull of a starship's interior without much trouble.
'I'd love to test that out, but...'
Regrettably, it was time to get off.
The next station was only minutes away, so I needed to prepare to disembark. I picked up the bag the reporter had dropped.
'Now, how do I get out of here?'
According to William, this train was the last one of the night. There would likely be few people waiting at the next station — but one thing nagged at me.
'That man on the platform earlier.'
Judging by his bearing as the train pulled away, there was a good chance he had reported me.
When I'd been on that platform, my Morphing Organ was already active, so he would have seen me as a cop. Thank goodness he hadn't seen a monster — the problem was that he'd watched me crawl up from the tracks onto the platform.
'I'll have to leave through the doors on the opposite side of the platform.'
Before long, an announcement chimed that the station was approaching. I moved through the cars, working my way as far from the platform as I could manage.
The train slowed, and a sharp metallic screech rose from the wheels grinding against the rails.
'Just as I thought.'
Keeping my body pressed low, I peered out the window. Far off in the distance, transit security officers stood waiting for the train. I gripped the door on the far side of the platform with my combat arm. Thanks to Amorph's tremendous strength, the door slid open with ease.
Before the train reached the platform, I hurled myself out into the open. I couldn't say how it would have felt at full speed, but an impact like this I could endure well enough.
I landed safely on the tracks without a scratch, and hurried away before they could board the train.
"What the—? Hey, this door's open over here!"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Leaving the startled security guards' voices behind me, I crawled into the darkness along the rails.
When I returned to the nest, No. 26 and Adhai were awake. No. 26 was batting at spores with her tentacles in play, while Adhai preened her wings.
Seeing me, No. 26 lit up her whole body in welcome.
｢You're back?｣
[Zzz (Yeah).]
｢Big Baby something different?｣
She'd noticed the change. She came closer and, curious, ran a tentacle over my face, stroking it.
｢Big Baby growing so fast!｣
[Zzzz zzzzzz (I'm at my growth spurt age).]
｢Very admirable.｣
Adhai's curiosity had evidently been piqued as well, and she came over to me.
｢Elder｣｢Changed｣
[Zzzz (Yes).]
｢Mouth｣｢Tentacle｣｢Cool｣｢Splendid｣｢Mighty Young One!｣
Adhai seemed especially taken with my thickened auxiliary organ. She broadcast a wave proclaiming Mighty Young One and crouched low before me.
'So Galagons respond favorably to the shape of tentacles? That wasn't in the lore.'
Galagons were NPC creatures, and rare ones at that, so their ecology was poorly documented. In my case, I only knew Galagons in terms of where their weak points were and what to watch out for. I didn't know much about their actual behavior.
'Still, if they think well of me, that's nothing but good.'
Unlike No. 26, Adhai was bound to me by contract. If someone like her harbored affection for me, so much the better.
｢Big Baby is baby, so eat lots and grow fast.｣
[Zzzz (Thank you).]
｢Want to grow fast too.｣
She had climbed onto my shoulder and was patting my head when she suddenly deflated, shrinking in on herself. It seemed she was bothered by the fact that I grew so quickly while she did not.
'Hmm.'
Looking ahead, accelerating No. 26's growth was an important task in its own right.
It had been the same back at the apartment complex, fighting the androids — there were limits to fighting my enemies alone. If my traits were fully secured, perhaps not, but under my current circumstances, hunting targets with any margin for error was anything but easy.
If the two of them hadn't been there that time, things would have been far harder for me. With worse luck, I might even have fought alone and lost.
'In the game, dying is fine. Reality is not.'
A critical injury in reality put you at a far greater disadvantage than in the game. In the game you simply died and respawned — reality offered no such courtesy. A critical wound multiplied the odds of defeat, and defeat meant death.
'If I want to avoid that, I need to pay more attention to No. 26's growth.'
The problem was that I had no way of knowing a Sea Demon's growth conditions or process.
Sea Demons weren't as rare as Galagons, but they were hardly monsters players could casually study, so little was known about their ecology.
'Still, I can reason it out.'
Sea Demons inhabit ocean planets — the deep sea, specifically. If I narrowed down creatures with traits similar to deep-sea organisms and fed them to No. 26, she might grow rapidly.
Until now I'd been supplying her mainly with creatures I had no use for, but it seemed I needed to shift my thinking — toward creatures that wouldn't benefit me much but might do a great deal for her.
Fortunately, a few creatures on the smuggling list fit those criteria, even if only a handful.
[Zzzz zzzz zzz (Eat a lot and you'll grow fast too).]
｢Really?｣
[Zzzzz (Yes. We'll see).]
｢Yes!｣
｢Me｣｢Hungry｣
[Zzzz (You too).]
It looked like I'd be needing William's help after all.
Apartment Complex E, Residential District.
A man was passing the time watching virtual TV. Like most people living in the Residential District, he wore the vacant look of someone sunk deep into stimulating virtual reality, bored out of his skull.
Then the communicator beside him chimed briefly. The man's bleary eyes sharpened in an instant.
He shut off the virtual TV and studied the device. A single short message glowed on its small screen.
"So it's finally here."
The man — Jade Russell — murmured under his breath.
A year ago, Jade Russell had received a single command from Sihyeon Yujin.
Before the Board of Directors Meeting, he was to smuggle a Galagon disguised as a Fairywing into the space city ahead of time — and to infiltrate alongside it.
The Board Meeting hadn't been officially announced at the time, but Sihyeon Yujin was Akira Yujin's shadow. Obtaining critical intelligence related to Noble Capital before anyone else was no great feat for her.
The reason the Galagon was disguised as a Fairywing was partly that the two species bore a passing resemblance — but more importantly, Fairywing smuggling was almost nonexistent. Both Sihyeon and Jade knew that smuggling occurred frequently at the T&C Special Trade Hub, and the disguise was a safeguard in case any smuggling crackdowns took place.
With all preparations complete, Jade had pretended to smuggle the Fairywing-disguised Galagon into the Special Trade Hub — and had deliberately been caught. With the Galagon handed over to the Smuggled Animal Monitoring Team, his first objective was achieved, and he quietly escaped from the holding cell.
"So this is the moment this ability becomes useful again."
Jade looked down at the hand gripping his communicator. Suddenly its battery died, and the device's body began to slowly crumple, sucked into his palm.
After a few minutes, the communicator had vanished entirely, leaving nothing on his palm but a scatter of metallic powder and a mouth sprouting sharp teeth.
The Russell family was a family composed of those raised directly by the Yujin family — or, to be precise, by Sihyeon Yujin herself.
Sihyeon Yujin assigned each bearer of the Russell name a distinct role, and supplied them with whatever their role demanded.
Arnold Russell, for instance, had been granted the lavish weapon known as a Plasma Pistol, while Jade Russell had received transplanted genes from a creature nearly impossible to obtain.
The original owner of his genes was the Metallic Gremlin.
A notorious creature known as the predator of starships — a horror so dreaded that among sailors, not one claimed to fear nothing else.
Metallic Gremlins ranged from roughly thirty to eighty centimeters long, resembling hairless apes — with a few differences: their skin was entirely metallic in color, their faces bore no eyes, and half of each face was occupied by an enormous sucker-like mouth.
Grotesque as they looked, the true reason Metallic Gremlins became a byword for terror among sailors was their nature.
Metallic Gremlins swarmed together, drifting through space in search of food. And the Metallic Gremlin's food was metal.
Adrift in the void, the moment they spotted a ship they clamped onto its outer hull and mercilessly devoured the metal with those sucker mouths. Their speed was ferocious, too — a battleship hundreds of meters long caught by a Gremlin swarm would be stripped to its skeleton in less than a day.
Dangerous as they were, there was a worse problem: their small size meant ship radar rarely picked them up. Even cutting-edge sensors struggled to distinguish them from floating space debris or small meteors.
And even when detected early, their metallic bodies shrugged off laser weapons and refused to die. As a result, it was a constant occurrence for a Gremlin presumed dead to return and attack again later.
Thus, countless ships were even now ending their days as food for the Metallic Gremlins — such was reality.
Had he not belonged to the Yujin family, no one would have dreamed of extracting and making use of the genes of such a dangerous creature.
'Thanks to this ability, escaping wasn't difficult.'
Trapped in that holding cell, he had escaped using the Metallic Gremlin's power, finished reconstructing his face with a comrade's help, and hidden himself away ever since.
'Time to retrieve the Galagon.'
Jade rose from his seat.
The time had come to prepare for the flawless completion of the command given by his master, Sihyeon Yujin.
The container holding the Galagon was sealed with high-grade encryption — but it didn't matter. His ability could crack it without trouble.
Jade took out another communicator and contacted the comrades who had infiltrated alongside him. The Galagon needed to be kept in cryogenic freeze until Sihyeon Yujin arrived, and that preparation had been left to them.
'Well then, shall we?'
Everything was perfect. That was what Jade believed.
Which was why he could not have imagined it, not even for an instant —
The fact that his plan's most crucial piece, the Blue Galagon, was at this very moment walking circles around his feet in the company of strange monsters.