Evolution (1)

The ship's conference room. This was where the vessel's senior leadership—team leaders and above—gathered whenever something important came up.

Life aboard a ship was, for the most part, quiet and uneventful. Which meant that "something important" was just another way of saying that a serious problem had occurred. Everyone sitting in this room knew that much, but not one of them had imagined it would be like a nuclear bomb going off.

"…What do we do now?"

The question came from the Medical Team Leader, the man responsible for the crew's health. His eyes drifted toward an empty chair.

Any other seat might be empty and no one would care—but that seat, of all seats, should never be vacant.

The chair belonged to the Research Team Leader.

"Whew, damn it. I don't know."

"……"

Yuseong spat out a curse, but not a single person in the room moved to call him on it. They all felt exactly the same way.

Yuseong ran a weary hand down his face. He had no idea how to handle this. He wanted to take drugs and forget everything, but he was the captain of this ship. Everyone was waiting for him to speak, so he had to say something—anything.

"Ahem. Have you determined the cause of death?"

"Judging by the naked eye, the Research Team Leader was killed by an attack to the throat. It looks like she was cut by something small, like a saw, but we'll need a precise examination to know for certain."

"A precise examination. In other words, an autopsy?"

The Medical Team Leader nodded at Yuseong's question.

He had put the word into the air, but both men knew perfectly well that it was impossible to carry out.

An autopsy on a member of Noble Capital.

No Noble Capital family, not one, tolerated anyone laying hands on their dead. These were people who treated others' bodies like toys to be played with, yet regarded their own as something almost sacred. If so much as a single scalpel mark appeared on the corpse, the Noble Capital would never let the Medical Team Leader who conducted the autopsy off the hook.

"Security Team Leader. How far along is the search for the culprit?"

"We've reviewed every surveillance camera on the ship, but there was nothing unusual. The prime suspect, the guard, is currently under interrogation."

"Do you think he's the killer?"

"Based on the information gathered so far, it's highly unlikely."

"…Report to me the moment the search turns anything up."

The most important person on the ship was dead, and the killer was unknown. Yuseong barely suppressed the impulse to abandon ship and run.

He knew exactly what had become of the researcher who hadn't listened to Kisaragi. The man had had his brain extracted alive and turned into a test subject. A promising talent reduced overnight to nothing but a brain, floating inside a specimen tube.

That was the fate of someone who merely failed to obey her. He could scarcely imagine what punishment awaited anyone connected to the death of a Noble Capital.

"You're all aware of what happened in the laboratory."

"……"

"…Mm."

"If none of you want to end up as nothing but a brain on an electric rack, then you had better come up with a plan."

At the words brain and electric torture, everyone in the room flinched. To avoid the worst possible future, they all threw themselves into furious brainstorming.

"What if we call it an accident during an experiment?"

"Think before you speak, Navigation Team Leader. We're not talking about one or two researchers here. How exactly do you get them all to keep their stories straight?"

"Heh. Listen to this guy talk. And this is why you're still a Middle Capital."

"What did you say?"

"Then how about this? Bad food poisoning—"

"And we'd be the ones taking the fall! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If you want to die, go die alone, Technology Team Leader!"

"What was that? Creatures with no skills beyond eating dare to open their mouths! What Capital are you from, anyway?"

With anxiety clogging every skull in the room, the meeting was never going to function. It collapsed into chaos in an instant.

As men seized each other by the collar and shouts flew back and forth, someone slammed a fist down hard on the table.

"Quiet!"

It was the Crisis Management Team Leader, the man in overall command of the ship's soldiers.

"Infighting will only make this situation worse."

Having silenced everyone in a single stroke, he paused briefly before speaking again.

"Captain. Our current position is near planet C-08."

"What of it? What's your point?"

"C-08 is Space Dog territory."

Understanding at once what the Crisis Management Team Leader was driving at, Yuseong's eyebrows twitched.

"You're saying we blame this on those sons of bitches. Because of their attack."

"Precisely. The confusion of the assault simply left us no time to confirm the Research Team Leader's fate."

Yuseong stroked his chin.

The Space Dogs were marauders who drifted through space plundering whatever they found—one of Mega Corp's principal enemies. They were masters of ship-to-ship ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠combat, so veteran even warships commanded by seasoned soldiers tended to take damage fighting them.

If warships took losses, what chance did this vessel have? It was a mere research ship. Heavy damage was a foregone conclusion.

And in the course of such an attack, an 'unfortunate accident' could happen as easily as anything.

Report that we were ambushed by them, and the Research Team Leader's death can be smoothed over.

Of course, Yuseong bore responsibility for protecting his crew and would not escape scrutiny entirely—but given the known danger of the Space Dogs, the matter would most likely end in a fine. The Noble Capital's blade of vengeance, after all, would point at the Space Dogs rather than at Yuseong.

"It's not a bad plan, but there's a problem. Our armament isn't enough to handle the Space Dogs."

"On that point, please don't worry. I have acquaintances of long standing. I'll contact them."

An odd stillness settled over the conference room.

Among Mega Corp's senior officers, honest men were rare. Most kept a separate slush fund for bribing the upper echelons—it was practically standard practice. Even so, no one had expected the seemingly upright Crisis Management Team Leader to be one of them.

This bastard. He didn't strike me as the type, but he's got a line to the pirates.

Like everyone else in the room, Yuseong had no love for the Space Dogs either. But there was no other way.

"Roughly how much will it cost?"

"At least a million credits."

"……"

Yuseong wanted to curse at a figure amounting to roughly half the ship's worth, but he barely held it in.

The Noble Capital was a power even the Space Dogs dared not touch. They would be taking a risk too, so at this price, the deal had to be considered reasonable.

Damn it. Spending blood-earned credits on garbage like this.

Yuseong knew that as well as anyone, but no one welcomed an unexpected expense. Unless some other option presented itself, he had nothing. The only thing left to do was accept the offer.

"Mm. Fine. Get it ready."

"Thank you, Captain."

"In exchange, you make absolutely sure the job is done cleanly."

"No problem."

And so the matter was settled, entrusted entirely to the Crisis Management Team Leader.

Yuseong was about to close the meeting when the Medical Team Leader raised a hand.

"What will you do with the body?"

"Keep it in storage. When the Space Dogs come, we hand it over. See to it that no one else touches it under any circumstances."

"Understood."

Nothing more was said, and the meeting ended. Yuseong left the conference room, praying fervently that he would never have to gather here again.

So this is the Juvenile stage.

Seeing and feeling in reality what I had only ever seen in the game was an entirely different sensation.

I looked down at my feet—no, my hands.

In my Hatchling days, all four pairs of legs had been built for one purpose: crawling along the ground.

Now things were different. Every pair except the rearmost had evolved into something resembling arms.

First, the four combat arms. One pair jutted from my flanks, another from just below my shoulders.

In shape, they looked like human arm bones with muscle grafted and bound over them. The hands at their ends resembled a raptor's talons, each finger splitting into two opposing pairs of claws. Judging by the vicious sharpness of those nails, they could tear through a man's flesh with ease.

Combat arms.

They were sword and shield combined—made for striking enemies or shielding my body. Not that I'd lost any of my old abilities. Sucker-like protrusions still lined the spaces between my fingers, letting me scale walls or cling to ceilings. It was, in every sense, a change worthy of the word 'enhancement'—or 'evolution'.

Let's see here.

I flexed the four arms. The upper pair felt reasonably familiar, moving something like a human shoulder, but the lower pair was deeply strange. Describing it in human terms, it was like the sensation of engaging your lats during a pull-up—if some intricate organ performing complex functions hung from that part of you, this is probably what it would feel like.

What a novel sensation.

The awkwardness passed quickly. It was my body, after all, and after a few experimental movements I had a rough feel for them.

Combat arms sorted. Next up—these little guys.

The adorably small arms near my chest.

Measured by length alone, they were shorter than my Hatchling legs had been. Their hands differed from the combat hands too, boasting an opposable thumb like a primate's.

These exist for fine manipulation.

As the presence of a thumb made clear, the small arms were dedicated to intricate work—operating computers or terminals, handling weapons and tools, that sort of thing.

The arms weren't the only change. My body, once built like a lizard belly-crawling across the ground, had restructured itself for bipedal locomotion. Along with that shift, the hide covering my back and belly had evolved into an armored outer carapace. Below my chest and waist, I now sported a primate-like pelvis and digitigrade legs.

The legs were far thicker than the arms, their muscle density extraordinarily high. The region that had once been my fourth pair of legs had taken this new shape to serve bipedal movement. The tail at my rear had lengthened and thickened like a dinosaur's—clearly a change for balance—and the venom barb riding alongside it had grown with it, now nearly the size of a dagger.

I've gotten bigger too.

Standing upright, I was just under a meter tall. Measured head to tail-tip, I came to nearly two meters—enormous growth compared to before.

I'm a Juvenile now, so the strategy has to change.

Until now, evading the eyes of my enemies had been the whole of survival. Not anymore. Hunting and survival had shifted to nearly an even split.

Survival is more or less handled. Time to think about what comes next.

Genetic essences inside the ship were all slated for theft, but I needed to plan beyond that. What would my targets be going forward?

When the text box popped up, new letters had appeared beside my objective.

'Evolution 1 complete' means becoming a Juvenile, right?

The Amorph's status was divided into six stages, requiring five evolutions in total. Hatchling, Juvenile, Sub-adult, Young Adult, Adult—and finally, Ascension.

Reaching Ascension counted as clearing Space Survival. In other words, it amounted to seeing the Amorph's ending.

The problem is that getting to that ending is absurdly hard.

Only a vanishingly small number of players had ever seen a species ending in Space Survival. The game displayed a list of those who had cleared it, and including me, it held barely twenty names.

Among the Amorph, I was the only one to achieve the ending—Ascension.

Ascension.

In the game, when an Amorph reached Ascension, the secret of the species' origin was revealed. Where they had come from, what they truly were—the hidden plot threads all resolved.

Reality will probably work the same way.

If I succeeded in Ascending, I might finally learn how I became an Amorph, and why I was brought into the world of Space Survival.

The problem is how to get that far.

I checked the newly added 'Type' entry on the text box.

Becoming a Juvenile opened a critical turning point in the Amorph's future: the determination of its 'Type'.

A Type was the equivalent of a class for other species. The difference was that other species gained a class first, unlocking related abilities afterward—the Amorph worked in reverse. Meet the conditions, and a Type unlocked; once unlocked, all abilities related to that Type received a powerful synergy bonus.

For example, if you possessed many physical-enhancement traits, the Physical Enhancement Type unlocked, and all your existing melee-oriented traits grew dramatically stronger as a result.

Given my traits, Physical Enhancement Type seems likely.

It was a Type I'd always liked, personally. Above all, once the chitinous hide was reinforced by a Type, I'd essentially become a living tank—just charging in and ramming enemies would reduce them to pulp.

Still, I should see what's available. Confirm—view list.

Just as I'd predicted, the Physical Enhancement Type was nearly satisfied. Thanks to the Reinforced Exoskeleton and Acid Blood traits gained upon becoming a Juvenile, I had secured a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠total of six physical traits.

But what's this?

The number beside the Psionic Enhancement Type was strange.

One of them must be Predator Sense. But what's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the 0.5? None of my traits should count as half of anything.

Acquiring a genetic essence required devouring a corpse nearly whole. Judging by the 0.5 readout, I'd presumably left something behind or failed to fully acquire it for some reason.

I cast my mind back over everything I had eaten.

A spider. A cockroach. A cat. Not one of them possessed anything resembling psionic power.

I ate every last bite of them all, so—ah.

I remembered.

Kisaragi Yujin.

Her corpse was the only one I hadn't finished eating.

I knew she had good instincts—but a latent psychic gift, of all things?

Psionic power was rare among Mega Corp humans, but not unheard of. She herself likely never knew—her talent had simply slumbered beneath the surface.

Psionic power is an absolute must-eat.

The Physical Enhancement Type was a matter of taste, but psionic power was another story entirely. The difference between having it and not was enormous.

Find the body.

I probed the air currents with my jaw's auxiliary organs. Factoring in the temperature, the humidity, and the state of my shriveled nest, I judged that roughly a day had passed since I entered the cocoon.

By now rigor mortis would be setting in, so I had to devour the corpse before it began to decay. The more the body deteriorated, the harder it would be for me to fully extract its genetic essence.

I'll repair the nest later.

Traits came first. I left the Cooling Room.

First stop, the bathroom.

Some trace of where Kisaragi had gone would remain around the bathroom. All I had to do was follow it.

On my way toward the bathroom, I dropped down into the corridor partway there—there were sections my enlarged body could no longer pass through.

It's night, so nobody's around.

My auxiliary organs, now grown to the level of true tentacles, hadn't merely gotten longer. Their range hadn't widened, but they had become far finer than before. No human approach registered within a fifty-meter radius; the only movement was the sleep-murmurs of those lost in deep slumber in their bunks.

Beyond a fork in the corridor, my auxiliary organs reported a guard posted in front of the bathroom. The vibrations of their yawning reached me all the way here. The soldiers who had kept watch through the night radiated weariness from every pore.

Not now.

That their condition was less than sharp worked in my favor, but there were simply too many of them. I'd already mapped the trail the corpse had left behind, so the feast could wait. I slipped off in another direction.

I followed the trail on and on through the corridors. It was possible only because surveillance cameras were absent everywhere except in front of the critical facilities.

Eventually I reached the zone where the ventilation passages grew wider, and I climbed up onto the ceiling.

Even in new territory, my senses did not lose the scent of the corpse.

As I crawled along, the smell of meat wafted up from below.

The morgue—a place where bodies were kept in cold storage. The space where the dead took their eternal rest lay directly beneath my feet.