The Evil Spirit (2)
"Was the meal to your liking, Lord Denver?"
"To my liking? It went far beyond that. T&C quality through and through. Especially the main dish — I've never tasted anything like it."
"It's an oven roast featuring Earth-bred pork. Because the stock was raised by pure free-range methods in an environment closely modeled on old Earth itself, the meat is prized for its exceptional richness."
"Hm. I was under the impression that pigs had gone extinct entirely."
"My exploration teams managed to secure breeding stock at great expense, and my family succeeded in establishing a breeding program. Within a few years, we intend to launch it on the market as an entirely new brand."
"Haha, magnificent. If it ever reaches the market, I'll be first in line to buy."
Among the Noble Capital families, the T&C family stood as the undisputed pioneer of colonial development. Their power flowed from the endless resources pouring out of their countless colonies.
Those conditions had allowed the T&C family to secure influence in a way that set them apart from every other house. The politics of cuisine — that was how they exerted their pull on MegaCorp's upper crust.
They held colonial worlds numbering in the hundreds, which meant they could source ingredients from planets of every conceivable environment. As a result, the luxury food market catering to the elite had been all but monopolized by the T&C family.
To be fair, when it came to sheer share of MegaCorp's food supply, the Yujin family — producers of gene-modified staples — far outstripped them. The Yujins fed every low-income household in MegaCorp's territory, so that was only natural.
But the profits earned by cultivating fresh, rare delicacies and keeping the upper crust in their good graces were never trivial. The proof was sitting right here at the table: Denver, after finishing the banquet's courses, found himself looking at Lyla in a whole new light.
She chose these dishes deliberately, tailored to my palate.
The private dining room, the menu — every detail matched Denver's tastes. With intelligence-gathering of that caliber, the odds of her blundering at the Board of Directors meeting were slim. Reassured, Denver speared a piece of crispy pork rind with his fork.
The instant he raised it to his lips, the doors of the banquet hall swung open and two people hurried in.
"What is it?"
It was Lyla's secretary and Vice-Commander Vickers. Both half-ran to their respective masters' sides.
"My lord, urgent news."
"Urgent news?"
"We've lost contact with the four knights assigned to guard William."
At the vice-commander's words, Denver's face hardened into stone.
All four, wiped out?
The Silver Lion Knights were garrisoned aboard the Edgerton flagship, charged with its defense and with boarding assaults against enemy vessels. No fleet in existence prioritized anything above protecting its flagship — and so the knights who guarded the Edgerton flagship represented the very peak of the family's ground forces.
Whatever enemy had annihilated four warriors of the family's finest special unit was no opponent to be taken lightly.
"...And your response?"
"Already handled. I dispatched the remaining twenty knights. Jacob is commanding them."
"Good. Order the knights deployed outside to return to the ship as well— hmm?"
Denver, calmly issuing instructions to Vickers, abruptly stopped mid-sentence.
At the far end of the table, Lyla — who was receiving her own report — wore a strange expression. The face that had maintained perfect composure all evening was now twisted grotesquely out of shape.
Having listened to her secretary's emergency report in full, she called out to Denver while clinging to her composure by a thread.
"Lord Denver. A report has just come in that the Silver Lion Knights stormed a hospital and massacred civilians without mercy."
"...What?"
"Allow me to show you."
At Lyla's gesture, the secretary manipulated a terminal pad and cast a holographic screen across the banquet hall's wall.
"This is Sara, live on the scene for Daily Mars. I'm standing before Commercial District Hospital No. 2, site of tonight's horrific atrocity."
"Please tell us — what exactly was happening inside?"
"I was hospitalized after getting hurt on the job. I stepped out for a smoke, and — I swear — four people in these bizarre suits walk in and start tearing the hospital apart!"
"You mean people in armor?"
"Yes! Armor! Those 'beep' sons of 'beeps' in armor started shooting or whatever, the perfectly good walls came crashing down, and 'beep' people got 'beep' and 'beep—' I mean, they'd gone completely 'beep' insane!"
"Thank you for that illuminating account. With the Board of Directors meeting just days away, what does it mean that these 'armored ones' have slaughtered civilians inside the T&C Special Trade Hub? What, exactly, have this city's administrators been doing? For more on—"
Lyla cut the feed there with a wave of her hand. The hologram winked out, and a heavy silence settled over the banquet hall.
It was Lyla who broke it.
"Lord Denver. I do not believe for a moment that the Edgerton household's retainers would commit such an atrocity without reason."
"......"
"That said, this matter is no longer the Edgerton family's problem alone. I am the administrator of this city, and I have every right to know what is unfolding within it. So I ask you — tell me."
It was a demand to lay every card on the table before blood was spilled.
Dewver had adopted a courteous posture throughout the banquet, and by now Lyla understood that Denver looked favorably upon T&C. That was precisely why she had framed her demand as a polite request for cooperation.
The problem is, we don't know either.
The knights had been dispatched in the first place because of the secret entangled with William. Now that the men sent to retrieve him were all dead, the odds that William still breathed were vanishingly thin.
The only person who knew the truth was gone, and Denver's position had become one where even empty reassurances were hard to offer. Mishandled, this wouldn't merely endanger the Board of Directors meeting — it could ignite open war between T&C and Edgerton.
Best to give her what I know, then.
Letting out a sigh, Denver laid out the situation as he understood it and the orders he had given his subordinates.
"So you're saying this incident is connected to the police officer called William?"
"It is."
"...Some time ago, I heard that an unidentified smuggling organization attempted and failed to smuggle a Mountaincrawler out through the Port District before fleeing. There may be a connection."
"Whether the culprit is a Mountaincrawler or not, we'll confirm with our own eyes. Vice-Commander."
"Yes, my lord."
"Contact Jacob. Tell him to activate his camera — we need to assess the situation."
"Understood."
The vice-commander reached Jacob over comms, then manipulated the terminal pad just as Lyla's secretary had done.
The handsome face of a Black man appeared against the banquet hall's marble wall. On his pauldron, a tiny image of a woman in a bikini had been painted.
"The Governor-General of the Special Trade Hub is watching. Sync your camera and report the situation."
"Yes, sir. Sync complete. The target — Hospital No. 2 — we are now approaching."
｢Squad 2, Tennessee. Sync complete. Arrived at the rear entrance.｣
｢Squad 3, Ferris. Sync complete. All clear.｣
As Jacob manipulated his helmet, the camera mounted on it linked up with Vice-Commander Vickers's terminal. Through the hologram, the smoke-choked hospital came into view.
—
Squad 2 is entering through the rear, Squad 3 holding in reserve.
The figures in silver armor were surrounding the hospital with lithe, economical movements. Elite, and it showed — their physicality was on an entirely different plane from the enemies I'd faced before.
Had I still been inside that hospital, I would have had a genuinely difficult fight on my hands.
But I'm already outside.
I had left the hospital behind and now crouched atop a media company building nearby, observing the enemy. The auxiliary organ at my jaw was working without pause, harvesting data — the knights' movements, their chatter, everything.
Upgraded far beyond its old form in function if not appearance, the organ could now intercept even the conversations crackling over their comm units. Thanks to them helpfully narrating their every move, I knew exactly where they would breach, and exactly how they intended to hunt me.
｢Squad 1, breach!｣
｢Squad 2, breach!｣
Once I'd confirmed them going in, I crawled down the side of the building. Every reporter in the district had bolted for the hospital hunting for the scoop of the decade, so the building stood empty.
My feet hit the pavement with a resounding crack, but the streets were already drowned in chaos — police, reporters, ambulances, fire engines wailing in from every direction. No one noticed my footsteps.
｢Squad 1. Confirmed fire inside the structure. Squad 2 — switch from thermal detection to vibration sensors.｣
｢Squad 2. Switch complete.｣
｢Squad 3. Standing by.｣
Even as I ran, my auxiliary organ never stopped feeding me intelligence, sifting the torrent of data for one thing only: the knights' comms chatter inside the hospital.
Not much time left.
Metal Absorption still had plenty of duration left, but the Paragon of the Hunt was the problem. Of its ten-minute limit, roughly eight had burned away in the hospital. Two minutes, at most, remained.
I have to devour as many of the knights at the station as I can before the transformation drops.
Every last Edgerton knight was a gene-modified human. They hadn't been pumped full of genetic material on the scale of a Hulk Mutant or Sihyeon Yujin, but they were still prey packed with far more useful genes than any ordinary citizen.
If I'm paying the cost anyway, I might as well squeeze out every drop.
A true Amorph drains everything an enemy possesses, down to the last strand. Thanks to the Paragon of the Hunt, the distance from the hospital to the station shrank to almost nothing.
Six knights stood guard at the station's entrance.
They hadn't yet registered the shape sprinting toward them. I decided it was time to put my new ranged weapon to work.
Quill Launching Tail: A tail organ that fires lethal barbed quills is formed. Replaces the Barbed Bone Launching Organ.
*P.S.: Unlike a hedgehog, Amorph needn't worry about that particular dilemma. Must be nice.
My tail looked completely different now. Its tip was sheathed in long, stiff quills, evoking a cactus — or a porcupine bristling spine to spine.
The quill trait and the Barbed Bone Launching Organ had fused, giving birth to something new.
And unlike the old organ, this one fires in bursts.
If the old organ had been a sniper rifle, this was a machine gun. The quills sacrificed some penetration compared to the bone darts, but once embedded in a body, they kept burrowing deeper into the wound — and they could carry neurotoxin on top of that. Against multiple enemies at once, it was the perfect weapon.
With the Barbed Bone Launching Organ gone, my lower left arm had reverted to matching my other combat limbs, but I felt no loss. Each trait had its own strengths. In a situation like this — subduing many foes simultaneously — the Quill Launching Tail was what I needed.
Without breaking stride, I gave my tail a violent lash. Dozens of quills, packed dense along its tip, streaked toward the knights.
｢Squad 1. Requesting status report from Squad 3 on overwatch.｣
"This is Squad 3. No contacts visi— kagh!"
Quills half a hand-span long punched into the knights' bodies. They recoiled, startled, reacting to my attack at last.
"Enemy! All squads, prepare to counter— what the hell?"
"W-we can't move!"
"The quills are lodged in the joints!"
The superior armor of their High-Grade Powered Armor meant the quills embedded themselves without penetrating — but lodged in the joint seams, they locked the knights' movements dead.
Quills are tough stuff.
Granted, against the power of that powered armor it would only buy me seconds, but seconds were all I needed.
They haven't switched to thermal vision yet, right?
Squads 1 and 2 had reconfigured their sensor suites upon entering the burning building. These six had not.
I opened my jaws wide. The ignition organ within pulsed, and a torrent of flame erupted up my throat and out into the open air.
"AAAGH!"
"He's breathing fire!"
The Magma Eater trait — the Breath of Fire — tore into the knights. Black smoke boiled up from the flames pooling before the station and seeped inside.
"Everyone, switch your vision systems!"
Veterans to the last — the enemy responded with cool precision even while blinded and crippled.
Of course, I had no intention of waiting politely for them to finish regrouping.
I threw myself at the knight in front handling communications. He took the full weight of my charge head-on and burst apart before he could even scream.
｢Squad 1 to Squad 3! Respond! What is your status?｣
"This is Rix! Ferris is down!"
With the clock ticking, I scooped up the dismembered knight's corpse and shoved it straight into my mouth.
In that moment, another knight, his sensors reconfigured, leveled a Vollter rifle at me.
"Huh?!"
But his plasma round never found its mark.
There was exactly one reason I had breathed fire.
To blind the enemy.
And the enemy, in this case, wasn't limited to the knights in front of me.
The cameras installed throughout the station counted too.
｢Big Baby, we're here!｣
My friends in the underworld — hidden within the smoke, moving to back me up.
"Ugh, ghaaaah, guk—!"
A knight snared in No. 26's 'binding' rose into the air. Like a child plucking a bug apart limb by limb, his arms and legs danced against his will.
"AAAH!"
"Rix!"
A wet crunch of parting bone, a burst like fireworks going off — and his arms and legs dropped away. The knight, reduced to a wobbly stump, flopped down into a spreading pool of blood. He shuddered for a moment, then went meekly still.
"Squad 3! We're under attack! Requesting reinfor— agh!"
｢What the hell is going on down there?!｣
｢Squad 2! We're moving to support now!｣
｢Damn it! Tennessee, hold your position!｣
｢But—!｣
Confused voices bleeding through the comms, knights plunging into panic after losing comrades in seconds.
It was all so familiar.
"R-retreat! Fall back— gack!"
One knight broke and ran, and a hole opened in his throat. It was Adhai who had struck, striking precisely at the enemy's weak point.
｢Living thing｣｢Neck｣｢Weak point｣
Adhai's psionic wavelength drifted softly through the smoke.
Had the knight activated the psychic shield built into his High-Grade Powered Armor, he might have lived. Showing his back mid-battle was his own mistake.
After that, it was a rout.
Barely minutes into the fight, the knights — half their number gone — had lost their minds entirely. The proud order that had always delivered victory to their masters was nowhere to be found here.
Only a flock remained, trembling in fear.
And a flock that has lost its shepherd, with wolves at its throat, can do only one thing.
Bleat pitifully.
But no wolf ever spared a flock because it wept — and neither would I.
I finished off the last three knights, then hastily gathered up two corpses.
Quickly, quickly!
Shoving the bodies into my mouth as I sheared them apart, I plunged into the station.
[Zzzzzt zzt-zzzzt zzz (Grab all the food and head back to the nest)]
｢Not eating here?｣
[Zzzzzzt zz-zzzzzt (No time. Carry what you can and follow me)]
｢Me｣｢Hungry｣
｢Okay. I'll take the rest.｣
No. 26 understood my urgency and dutifully extended her tentacles, gathering up two corpses. Adhai tried to lift one as well, but it was too heavy, and she gave up.
And so, four corpses in our grasp, we returned to the nest.
Just before the Paragon of the Hunt dissolved, I heard it.
One of the late-arriving knights, shrieking with fury.
From within the smoke and darkness, I smiled.