The Monument (1)
The Monument — a colossus of a skyscraper rising out of the Administrative District of the T&C Special Trade Hub.
Veteran players called this place the BlXck MXrker.
'Honestly, when you look at that twisted, spiral shape, the resemblance is uncanny.'
Of course, the alien relic from the classic horror game shared only its appearance with this thing — the lore was night and day.
After all, the Monument in Space Survival didn't drive people insane or twist them into grotesque shapes.
'Instead, it grants a buff to whoever owns it.'
When a specific clan held the Monument, it gained a clan-exclusive trait called Slave Trade.
Clans bearing that trait saw the profits siphoned from their owned planets pumped up to at least double.
Which was why every major clan dreamed of seizing this monument by any means necessary.
Thanks to that, war never ceased in the Special Trade Hub.
'In a way, it really is an homage to the Black Marker. Plenty of clans rushed into reckless wars over this single monument and ended up utterly ruined.'
For the record, I had no interest in owning the Monument.
'What interested me were the clan members who would come here trying to claim it.'
Back in the day, I had infiltrated the Monument through all sorts of methods to skim Genetic Essences off clan members.
Once, I'd even snuck in the same way I did now — faking death with my Playing Dead trait.
"Haah. I was planning to hit the Entertainment District tonight and blow off some steam."
"You're married and you still go to those places?"
"Tch, that's exactly why I go. Take it from me — never get married."
"You psycho."
"Overtime with the year-end holidays right around the corner? Is this for real?"
"It's not like you have a lover to go home to anyway. What are you whining about?"
"Goddammit. So people without lovers aren't people now? I want to spend my vacation lounging at a resort too. A fateful encounter in some exotic locale, destiny, romance, and then a bittersweet parting…"
"Enough with the crap and start hauling this stuff."
The researchers chattered as they carried their equipment in, never once suspecting that I was alive.
'Good.'
While they were distracted by their pointless chatter, I activated the Colonial Parasite.
From the fingertips of my lower right arm, black threadworms slithered out one by one, glistening and writhing.
'All of you, under the dissection table.'
Four parasites tucked themselves beneath the table at my command.
"Hm?"
"What? What is it?"
"Weird. I swear something just moved."
"It's dead, dumbass. Quit obsessing over nothing."
One researcher studied me carefully for a moment, then went back to his preparations.
'Four researchers total, and every one of them wearing a mask.'
My parasites had zero offensive capability. On their own, they could never breach a mask.
'I'll have to carve an opening for them myself.'
Firing the spines from my tail to punch holes in the masks would do the trick — that much was certain. The problem was the surveillance cameras. Moving now was out of the question.
Reading the camera angles through my auxiliary organ, I confirmed there was no blind spot to speak of around the dissection table where I lay. A thin, small object like a parasite might slip past, but any significant movement from me would trip the cameras instantly.
'I'll need a smoke screen to hide the tail movement.'
Conveniently, a shelf of chemical reagents sat right near my tail.
'But those alone won't produce a big enough cloud. Triggering a chemical reaction would take a catalyst — something like an acid, say. And my blood just happens to be strongly acidic.'
'Looks like I'll have to wait a little longer.'
They had come here to dissect me, after all.
The moment they started spilling my blood would be the moment I moved.
"Alright. Everything ready?"
The head of the Dissection Team, under the Biological Management Division of the Science Lab, clapped his hands to break the tension.
Beside the dissection table stood a stainless-alloy table for laying out instruments: scalpels and surgical saws, a plasma cutter for splitting thick hide, chemical solutions for preserving sliced tissue samples, and more.
Even in the space age, dissection hadn't strayed far from its primitive form.
"So where do we start?"
"It's lying face down. The back, probably?"
"Let's take it slow. Skin tissue samples first."
At the team leader's order, a researcher picked up a scalpel. The auxiliary arms of his exoskeleton suit raised a cover glass and a genetic data scanner.
"Let's find out what kind of animal we're dealing with first."
He drew the blade across the creature's arm.
"Huh?"
Far from slicing through the hide, the scalpel's edge had been ruined instead.
"That's insanely hard. We're talking Mountaincrawler-adult grade here."
"Try this."
A colleague handed over a Sonic Blade. It was a medical cutting tool rather than a military model, much smaller, but the effect was the same. When the researcher thumbed the switch, a thin blade sprang from the stubby rod's tip, keening with an eerie ultrasonic vibration.
"Now then—"
Just as he brought the Sonic Blade toward the corpse—
"Huh?"
"It moved."
He'd seen the monster's tail twitch — and this time he wasn't the only one. The colleague beside him tilted his head.
"The muscles must be relaxing out of rigor mortis."
"Y-yeah, that must be it."
"Whew, nearly jumped out of my skin. Then again, if this thing were alive, we'd all be dead already."
"Hey, don't say creepy stuff like that."
"Enough chatter. Get the skin sample."
The researcher scraped the Sonic Blade along the monster's arm. The hide was so unforgiving that metal ground against metal, spraying sparks.
"That is not a sound an animal's body makes."
He kept working the blade until at last a scratch began to form in the creature's outer skin.
"Ooh, nice. Just a little more and—ah."
In that instant, the Sonic Blade's edge gave out entirely and the ultrasonic effect cut off. The tool was wrecked — but fortunately, he'd managed to shave off a tiny fragment of the hide.
"Small as it is, the analyzer can work with it. Into the machine it goes."
"Tch. Absurdly tough bastard."
"Let's break out the plasma cutter."
Two researchers picked it up. Normally a cutter's recoil demanded it be anchored to something immovable — the floor, usually. But they were wearing exoskeleton suits with auxiliary arms engineered to bear heavy loads, more than enough to absorb the recoil.
The auxiliary arms clamped the cutter steady. The pair adjusted the emitter nozzle toward the corpse through the cutter's terminal and pressed the activation button.
A thin green beam spewed out and scorched the surface of the hide.
No matter how sturdy a creature's biological armor, plasma energy could breach it.
Meanwhile, the data analyzer processing the sample chimed its completion notice. The researcher reading it turned pale and called for the team leader.
"What's wrong?"
"This creature isn't registered in the MegaCorp database, sir."
"Really? So it's a new species?"
"That's the strange part — apparently it's sharing genetic data with dozens of different species—"
Before he could finish, trouble erupted from the team working the cutter.
"Team Leader! There's smoke coming off its body!"
"No, wait! That's not smoke!"
"Holy— its blood is ACID!"
Just as the researcher shouted, blood welled from the corpse and began eating through the dissection table.
"Blood spray! This way! Watch out!"
The cutter's beam had sent Acid Blood spattering toward the researchers. Had the man beside him not yanked him backward, the researcher would have taken a grievous wound.
"Ow — hell. Thanks."
"Keep your head in the game."
As the thanking researcher checked himself over, he spotted something strange clinging to his colleague's body.
"Huh? What is that on you?"
A black threadworm clung to the man's side. He wondered if his eyes were playing tricks — they weren't. It was wriggling, crawling upward.
"Eh? Wh-wh-what is that?"
He wasn't alone. Without any of them noticing, threadworms had latched onto the other researchers as well.
"What the hell is—"
The moment one researcher convulsed and swung an auxiliary arm to tear the worm off, the shatter of glass rang in his ears. Then came the sound of liquid splashing, and a searing heat bloomed against his back. He turned — and saw the table of chemical solutions roaring with flame.
Thick black smoke from the burning chemicals billowed up in an instant, swallowing the researchers whole.
"F-FIRE!"
"Gahk— gwehk! Khh!"
"Get the extinguisher!"
As the panicked researchers stumbled about, the corpse that had lain so quietly on the table squirmed. The monster's tail flicked once, and the spines at its tip launched toward the researchers' faces.
"Ah?!"
"What the hell was that?!"
Fortunately — or perhaps by design — the spines merely grazed past the faces of the team leader and his crew. The masks tore open, exposing bare skin to the toxic smoke.
"What is this stuff?"
"Where did it even come from?"
Confusion gripped them all as sharp objects shredded their masks out of nowhere. But what they truly should have feared was something else entirely — the black threadworms clinging to their bodies.
The parasites streaming from the monster's flesh swarmed up their bodies at blistering speed and lunged for their faces.
"AAAAH!"
"H-help! Somebody—!"
"Gwak! Gahk!"
The researchers clawed at their faces, but the parasites were already inside their masks. They coughed and hacked, desperate to force out the worms burrowing into their noses; they raked their own faces trying to snatch them.
Had they stayed just a little calmer, they could have used their powerful auxiliary arms to pinch the worms and pull them free. But the sudden fire and the assault of an alien parasite none of them had ever seen stripped away their sanity.
Hiss—
The sprinklers triggered by the smoke drenched the lab in water. And beneath the pouring spray, the researchers collapsed one by one under the parasites' attack.
"…Kh."
"………"
The last one standing, the Dissection Team Leader, fought with everything he had to dig the parasite out of his own mask. By the time the worm was half inside his skull, he'd finally managed to grip its tail end with his fingers. The slick, revolting texture crawled against his palm, but he pulled with all his strength. The thing, lodged deep in his nasal passage, stimulated the back of his throat rather than let itself be dragged out.
"Ughk! Khk! Kehk!"
Even gagging violently, he kept his grip — he'd nearly pulled it free. And then, suddenly, every ounce of strength drained from his body.
'Why… what's happening to me?'
Embedded in his limp wrist was a long, slender spine.
By then the parasite had darted deep into his nose, but he could feel no pain at all. His knees buckled on their own. And as he fell, he saw it.
The monster, prone on the dissection table.
Its white eyes, fixed on him.
It had never been dead at all.
The 3rd Central Monitoring Room of the Monument.
The first session of the Board of Directors Meeting had already concluded, but that was no reason for the monitoring rooms to rest.
Anna, a female Cultist keeper with curved goat horns, checked the surveillance feeds with a bored expression. Her coworker — a male Cultist with a ram's horns — stretched and rose from his seat.
"Where are you going?"
"Coffee. Want me to pour you one?"
"Sure. No sugar, extra strong."
Once the male Cultist left, Anna returned her focus to the feeds. Her psychic power was specialized in observation, letting her monitor hundreds of camera feeds simultaneously. She wasn't unique in that respect, either — every Cultist working this Administrative District possessed one special psychic ability or another that served the city's management.
'Ugh. I just want to go home, shower, and sleep.'
Having an ability useful for the job didn't mean the job itself was pleasant. Originally, the 3rd Central Monitoring Room had three watchers — including a female Cultist named Jennet. If Jennet hadn't vanished, Anna wouldn't have been pulling overtime for days on end.
'That bitch. Runs off without a word. Honestly, I want to run off too.'
She grumbled inwardly and kept watching — and then something strange caught her eye.
"Lab 30 in the Science Lab? Is that… a fire?"
Beyond the camera, smoke filled the room, and the researchers were clearly in a panic. Moments later the sprinklers kicked in, and the lab became a sea of water in seconds.
"…What? Why are they all just standing there?"
The scrambling researchers froze mid-motion all at once, as if they'd rehearsed it. They held rigidly at attention, simply letting the water pour down over them. One among them had lost consciousness and lay crumpled on the floor — and not a single person moved to help him.
Something about the scene itched at Anna. The feeling that something was wrong.
Still — a fire meant it had to be verified. She picked up her comm unit.
Even after the transmission ended, Anna stared at her comm unit as if something about it bothered her.
'Why was he shaking like that?'
An emergency, maybe. But the researcher's voice had been trembling in a way that felt off. Almost as if he were afraid of something.
'And they're transporting a specimen in the dead of night?'
While she was deliberating, her coworker came back in carrying two cups of coffee.
"What's up?"
"The dissection team had a fire, but their response seemed kind of weird."
"That place is staffed entirely by weirdos anyway. Don't sweat it."
"…Yeah?"
His point wasn't unreasonable, so Anna let her doubts about the Lab 30 fire go.
'I've got plenty of other things to do as it is.'
Having shoved the whole dissection team business into a back corner of her mind, she drank her coffee with her coworker.
'Just as I expected — they contact us right away.'
One of my enthralled researchers had answered the call, but I knew exactly who was on the other end.
'The Cult.'
One of the Monument's defining features was that the Cult handled all interior surveillance. Humans waver in emergencies and leak flaws everywhere; androids lack autonomous judgment. The Cult suffered comparatively little from either weakness. And thanks to their psychic powers, their instincts were far sharper than a human's — they picked out stealthy intruders and traps with ease. Those traits made the Cultists who emigrated to MegaCorp natural fits for watcher and scout roles.
'Lore-wise, the Cult has a proud tradition of hunting dangerous prey, too.'
Like the Wolf, they were born hunters and watchers. Even in an age of starships crisscrossing the galaxy, remnants of the old hunting culture persisted throughout Cult society.
'Look at their exclusive Quest system — it's nothing but "slay this beast and bring back its horns," "bring me its heart," over and over.'
That said, Cultists working alongside humans tended to be less feral about it. On a Cult-homeworld, my plan would have been flagged instantly. But Cultists who'd joined MegaCorp had relatively dulled instincts — living inside human society meant juggling a thousand considerations, so they couldn't lean on instinct alone. They'd probably sensed something off and dismissed it as not their problem.
'Of course, if incidents like this keep happening, they'll act on it. That part's simply on me to be careful about going forward.'
Anyway — half of my infiltration plan into my primary target, the Administrative District, was a success. I'd made new friends, and I hadn't been caught.
"W-we will transport it as soon as the Team Leader regains consciousness."
At the researcher's words, I gave the faintest nod. My next destination was the Cold Storage — the facility that preserved the carcasses of massive animals like myself. As far as I knew, it had no surveillance cameras inside. I'd hidden among animal corpses to infiltrate it in the old game, so I was certain.
Beyond that, the facility layout was exactly the ideal shape I'd hoped for.
'I can simply order a researcher to fetch the samples.'
Since the distance was so short, the trip would leave behind very few authentication records — meaning very little for the watchers to find suspicious.
'Once I've finished consuming the genetic samples, I'll eat the researchers next. I can call them in around the time the Avatar of the Hunt's effect wears off and deal with the side effects in the same stroke.'
'Is there any way to make this even more airtight?'
A way to keep the Monument's administrators from finding out, even belatedly, that the researchers had vanished. Then, all at once, a good idea came to me.
'That phone call from earlier. I think it'll prove very useful indeed.'