Shadows (4)
It began the moment Code Black engaged the target.
On the fiftieth floor of the Monument, in the open-air observation deck, stood a girl in a red dress.
Her slender arms and legs and her small, delicate face were those of a young child — but anyone who looked into her eyes would recoil in horror.
"Calibrating Psychic Control Web."
Because her eyes were not human eyes at all, but ones that resembled a chameleon's.
Those eyes swiveled endlessly up, down, and side to side, surveying the entire Administrative District below.
This grotesque girl was Code Red, one of the Yujin family's secret weapons.
Above her head floated a vivid violet halo.
Had anyone capable of sensing psychic power been present, they would have seen it clearly: gossamer strands of psychic energy, fine as a spider's silk, spreading outward from the halo in a one-kilometer radius centered on her.
Lacking in potential, Code Red had never received Gallagon genes the way Code Black — her current partner in the operation — had, nor the late Code White before her.
Instead, she had been given genes related to combat support, so that she could assist the other Shadows.
One of those was the Angel Spider.
A predator native to jungle-type planets, it possessed the ability to weave webs made of pure psychic power.
Any creature caught in an Angel Spider's psychic web came under the spider's control, becoming prey without resistance.
Unlike the original, Code Red had no power to control other living beings.
In exchange, she had gained the ability to sense and direct the flow of psychic power across a far vaster territory than any spider.
Thanks to this technique — the Psychic Control Web — Code Red had been assigned to support the other Shadows from the rear.
Under normal circumstances, her duty would have been to feed Code Black a continuous stream of intel on the target. This time, however, that was impossible.
Someone had made a ruin of the sprawling control web she had deployed.
'Psychic power on par with my own detected. Target cannot be located.'
It was as if someone had hurled a stone into a spider's web.
Even with the web torn apart by the stone, the spider has no way of knowing who threw it, or how to stop them.
Right now, she was exactly that — the owner of a ruined web.
The one mercy was that her adversary did not seem as practiced in psychic manipulation as she was. If their positions had been reversed, she would have seized control of the web outright; the enemy, by contrast, made no attempt to wrest it from her.
'Focus on recovery first.'
She knew nothing else for certain, but if the spiritual attunement linking her to Code Black were severed, it would be a catastrophe.
Mindful of Black, she began methodically restoring the control web.
'?'
Then, she felt something new enter her detection range.
Her gaze lifted toward the black sky.
Amid the artificially maintained darkness, a green star was shining.
"A star?"
She knew the identity of the green flying body well.
Broad wings, a sleek frame, four horns and a tail — it was a Green Gallagon.
A Green Gallagon from who knew where was streaking toward the Monument at tremendous speed.
"Approaching enemy detected. Initiating interception."
Her instincts told her the Green Gallagon was hostile, and Red abandoned the spiritual attunement to deal with the threat.
She picked up the long rifle beside her — the sniper coilgun.
After loading a tungsten round packed with condensed plasma, she fired the coilgun into empty air.
Strangely enough, the bullet changed trajectory of its own accord and began arrowing toward the target.
She was manipulating the round's flight path using the Psychic Control Web, steering it wherever she willed.
And when it closed in on the Green Gallagon crossing the sky, the plasma round detonated.
'Target eliminated.'
The instant she believed her quarry destroyed, a flash of green light burst from the smoke clouds of the explosion.
"Hm?"
Careless of the plasma blast, the creature was closing the distance at a rapid clip.
"Resuming fire."
Having confirmed the target's survival, Red pumped shot after shot from the coilgun.
Dozens of silver, oval rounds leaping from the muzzle looked like a meteor shower played in reverse.
Red had no doubt this barrage would kill it. Reality proved her wrong.
"What?!"
She — whose emotions had been worn down to almost nothing, who so rarely changed expression — was aghast.
The green shape was evading the plasma explosions with astonishing aeronautical skill.
She had deliberately arranged the rounds to envelop the enemy from every direction at once in order to crush it in a single stroke, and still the Green Gallagon threaded the gaps with aerobatic maneuvers and slipped through.
As streak after streak of green death-light — light that stripped the life from all it touched — stitched across the night sky, chaos erupted inside the Monument.
Red knew her present course of action was reckless. She judged the enemy flaunting such impossible flying skill to be the greater threat, and that was why she had chosen it.
'A risk factor to Lord Akira.'
Code Black was mid-battle; Code Blue was guarding Akira Yujin. She was the only one left who could defend this place.
Yet despite Red's aggressive suppressive fire, far from being driven away from the Monument, the Green Gallagon was closing the gap at speed.
"Continue firing until target destruction is confirmed!"
The black heavens above the Monument lit up with the sudden splendor of a fireworks festival.
She had been born while a shower of pure white meteors adorned the hem of the night's goddess.
She was the youngest of the Great Oude Grad's brood.
She was given the name Adhai, meaning daughter of the shining star.
Among the Gallagons, such a rare celestial phenomenon was an omen of good fortune above all omens.
And so all the expectations of Oude Grad's brood came to rest upon her.
Of course, it did not take long for those expectations to curdle into disappointment.
She had been born with a cursed body.
Unlike her kin, she was small.
As time passed, she did not change from the form she'd had when she first broke from her egg.
Weak individuals had no place in Oude Grad's brood.
She, with no prospect of ever growing strong, was cast out of the nest.
Having lived her whole life within it, her body feeble besides, her odds of surviving the cruel wilds were close to nothing.
After her banishment, she was slowly starving to death.
Had those strange little dwarves not appeared, she would certainly have died.
The dwarves were thieves who had come to steal the eggs of her kind.
They found her as they ransacked the nest and dragged her back to their own.
The dwarves jabbed her with strange little sticks — teeth or claws, she could not tell — and sealed her inside a block of cold ice.
Her memories after that grew hazy.
When she awoke, a certain creature stood before her.
Being uniquely weak among her kind, she had grown sharp-eyed, and she understood the creature at a glance.
It smelled something like her kin.
Her kind, who grew strong by devouring treasures saturated with psychic power.
But there were differences too.
This creature was a brutal predator that took pleasure in killing and devouring living things.
He had tried to eat her, and before she died, she had offered him a bargain.
She would give him the treasures of her nest if he would protect her.
Her kin, being the apex of the ecosystem, never bargained or negotiated with anyone.
Having spent her entire life dependent on her kin and every other living thing, she knew the limits of such survival better than anyone.
Even so, she steadied herself. She was weak, and so she had no choice but to live as a parasite clinging to stronger beings.
The creature seemed to know her kind well. It gazed curiously at her strange, alien appearance — and then it accepted.
That was how she first met her Great Elder.
｢Danger｣
Seeing the silver stones streaking toward her, she hastily folded her wings.
Her body plunged downward, and the explosions bloomed just above her head.
As she fell, her thoughts kept circling back.
The Elder, who had promised to protect her.
In her eyes, the Elder was clearly a superb predator — but compared to her kin, he had been frail.
The great metal structure where the dwarves lived was crawling with beings who could kill him.
And yet the Elder never gave up.
He strove without end, and in the end he fought the dwarves stronger than himself — and won.
So she came to admire him.
The thing that would let the Elder become great.
She wanted to learn it.
｢Strength｣｢Learn｣｢Hope｣
Falling toward the earth, she spread her wings wide.
Her body rocketed up into the sky, and the silver stones chasing her failed to keep pace, bursting apart mid-flight behind her.
Rolling her body, she slipped through the explosions with practiced ease.
Her small frame made such evasive maneuvers an advantage rather than a liability.
Had she not been a mutant, she could never have evaded so effortlessly.
The Big Elder and the Small Elder who raised her had taught her.
How a weak hunter like her could bring down prey stronger than herself.
And above all — how to survive alone.
She studied hard.
And someday, surely, if she kept at it.
｢Me｣｢Longing｣｢Great Elder｣｢Learn｣
Violet lightning lanced from her antennae and struck the silver stones diving in around her.
Green meteors swirled within the curtain spread by the night's goddess.
It was, precisely, the name she had been given at her birth.
She was Adhai, daughter of the star.
Code Black, her throat sliced open by my hand.
Her head lay tumbling across the ground.
'It's not over yet.'
The Black Shroud she wore remained.
The relic-grade reinforced suit known as the Black Shroud granted its wearer an unconditional escape from death once every three days.
Sssssss
The moment the Black Shroud's effect activated, the headless corpse and the severed head dissolved into wisps of black mist.
The resurrection point designated by the Black Shroud lay not far from where she had died.
'Resurrection fully heals all injuries and grants a special effect for a set duration.'
By its lore, when one died wearing the Black Shroud, the soul fused with the equipment and transformed into an entity called a Necrofector.
As a Necrofector, she would take only half damage from attacks of every type.
Moreover, every physical blow she landed would drain the enemy's life force and use it to empower herself.
On paper, those were superb effects — but there was a fatal flaw.
'Instability.'
In the unstable state, reason was lost, and the traits she originally possessed could no longer be used properly.
It was much like how, when my Avatar of the Hunt effect expired, I became a beast starved for flesh.
In short, she would become an evil spirit itself, assailing any living thing in reach.
'She'll get the buffs, sure — but she's an enemy with her sanity stripped away. Dealing with her won't be much trouble.'
The problem was what came after.
The surrounding district had been laid waste by the battle with Black.
Countless people had witnessed us fighting, so silencing the cameras was already pointless.
Combat breaking out in the Administrative District was an entirely different order of problem from an incident in any other district.
'It's the brain that runs the city, after all.'
If the Monument's leadership learned that so vital a location was under threat, they would unquestionably mobilize the defense fleet. Not just ground forces — light patrol ships too.
And I didn't have much time left.
In roughly three minutes the Avatar of the Hunt effect would expire, and when it did, a warship's plasma rounds would reduce me to dust.
Of course, I'd already prepared for that contingency.
'Because I sent Adhai to the Monument.'
Adhai had gone to the Monument to deal with Code Red.
'To teleport someone through spiritual attunement, they'd have to be positioned where they can watch the battlefield in real time.
'And the only place that's possible is the Monument — the tallest structure in the Administrative District.'
Like Black, Code Red most likely possessed a trait that let her see objects at extreme distance.
'Her means of self-defense will be tied to that too.'
Spiritual attunement. Long-range detection traits. All of them skills suited to fighting at range rather than up close. Which meant Code Red's defenses were highly likely to be long-range weapons — a gun, something like that.
'Adhai is the perfect counter to Code Red.'
Green Gallagons specialize in speed-based hit-and-run tactics.
Just as Blue Gallagons, weak hatchlings that they are, carry the ability to call their kin, the defining trait of a Green Gallagon is blistering speed.
On top of that, she'd gained the Super Acceleration trait, which multiplies her already-fast flight speed threefold or more — so unless you can hit her with a wide-area attack capable of devastating a huge zone at once, pinning down a Green Gallagon is a nightmare.
'And Adhai is tiny, which makes intercepting her that much harder.'
A normal, unmutated Green Gallagon grows up to ten meters, so even at speed its hit profile is broad.
Adhai, though, including her tail, is barely the height of a middle schooler, with a wingspan under two meters per wing.
Her target area shrinks to something absurd — even an android or a warship firing at her would struggle to shoot her down.
'Once the fight erupts over the Monument's airspace, the defense fleet will have no choice but to worry about her first.'
Before sending Adhai off, I warned her.
When the clumps that reeked of metal came flying, she was to run.
As far as I knew, Green Gallagons were faster than Mega Corp patrol ships. The only vessels faster were Cult patrol ships and Edgerton's fast battleships — and neither existed in this space city.
'She's a clever little thing. She'll get out safely.'
While Adhai bought us time, I had to figure out how to eliminate Black and get out of this city.
'If no patrol ships have shown up even with everything that's happened...'
Ever since the battle in the sewers, a lethal virus had been spreading through the entire city.
Most likely the plague had swept through the defense fleet faster than I'd predicted, throwing their command structure into disarray.
'No. Worry about the rest later.'
The battle wasn't over yet.
Barely seconds after the black mist vanished before me, I felt Black stirring inside a ruin nearby.
Through the Black Shroud's signature effect, she had risen as a Necrofector.
｢Big Baby, there's the bad sooty one over there.｣
Number 26, climbing out of the crater, had apparently felt the same thing I had, and sent the signal.
The instant her thought-wave pulsed out, the wreckage of the ruin exploded with a thunderous roar.
From the heart of the firestorm, a pitch-black figure came walking.
Black's appearance had changed drastically from before her death.
Her white skin had been stained coal-black like the Shroud itself, and her eyes blazed crimson.
"Acknow... ssss... ledge... ssss... this."
Her voice crackled with static, hissing like a serpent.
Some of her reason seemed to remain, though it looked on the verge of unraveling.
"No... forgiveness, forgiveness, forgive... ssssss... can't? Can't, ssss, forgive... I am, special... a special, special existence, existence...?!"
No — let me correct myself.
She was, thanks to the Necrofector state, thoroughly insane.
As she babbled nonsense, her body suddenly began to twist and contort.
Much the way a Hulk Mutant mutates upon entering combat.
When I examined her with Insight, I saw she had a trait called Body Modification.
Once she became a Necrofector, the instability trait prevented her from properly using her original traits.
Skills might simply fail to activate, or a passive trait's effects might swing erratically — problems like that.
The Body Modification trait, too, had been warped by the instability.
[Zzzzzz ZuZu (Strong enemy, be careful)]
｢Yes. Big Baby be careful too.｣
The transformation took only moments, but afterward her form was no longer something you could call human — nor, for that matter, a Hulk Mutant.
All four of the eyes now sprouting from her face fixed on me at once.
"Die, die, ssssss, die? I am, Lord Akira's, ssss, die! The most special, ssssss, SHAAAAAH!"
The abomination made by the Yujin family roared at us.