The Crossroads (4)
When the Monument came under attack by an unidentified enemy, Denver Edgerton had evacuated along with his retainers. And while everyone around him was thrown into a panic, he had judged this to be the chance of a lifetime.
If the monster's corpse gets stolen now, no one will ever know.
The Monument's leadership, the Chief Administrator included, would be far too occupied fighting the intruder to notice. They would catch on eventually, of course — but by then, the Edgerton flagship would already be gone from the city.
Having made up his mind, Denver summoned the newly appointed vice commander, Jacob, and a handful of his knights.
"You're ordering us to retrieve the creature's corpse, Your Excellency?"
"That's right. Find it by any means necessary. If we don't, this whole venture earns us nothing."
With the Board of Directors Meeting turned into a shambles, Saddam Chamberlain's path to the CEO seat had sailed across the river. Which meant Denver, who had backed T&C, was left in an awkward position as well.
With that thing in my hands, the project would leap forward by several stages.
If he succeeded in developing the new Hulk Mutant, he would never need to depend on T&C again. And his own standing as family head would harden all the more.
So Denver left Jacob and his party behind and boarded the transport. The moment he reached the Port District, he headed straight for the family flagship. The docks along the way were choked with ships preparing to depart — the Zhao family's starship, come to greet the Board of Directors, along with every administrator stationed in the Administrative District. Everyone was scrambling to run.
As he arrived at the flagship, his chamberlain rushed over to report.
"Your Excellency, the elders insist on departing ahead of you."
"I have business here. Don't wait for me. Depart."
DENVER settled into the throne in the flagship's command chamber and waited for word from Vice Commander Jacob. By the time he had drained nearly all the wine his chamberlain brought him, the long-awaited transmission finally came.
"Did you find it?"
｢There is no corpse here, Your Excellency.｣
"What? Did you check anywhere besides the laboratory?"
｢Yes.｣
News that the thing wasn't in the lab genuinely startled him.
They hauled the corpse away in the middle of all this?
As far as he could tell, order in this city had collapsed long ago. The very managers sworn to defend it were bolting en masse — who in their right mind would be fussing over a monster's corpse?
Instead, another possibility occurred to Denver, and it raised gooseflesh across his entire body.
The attack on the Monument... could it be?
The thing might still be alive.
They didn't execute it — they captured it alive!
He should have found it suspicious from the start. This was a creature that had butchered the Edgerton family's elite ground forces, the knights of the Silver Lion Order, and then murdered even Vickers — the former vice commander, a veteran among veterans — on top of it all. Everyone knew the Defense Fleet's army was second-rate. Troops whose standard-issue weapon was a gauss rifle could never kill it.
Not when it shrugs off plasma bolters.
No doubt the Defense Force had pinned it down with launcher fire and dragged it to the Monument's science laboratory. There they had studied it, wringing out results impressive enough to present before the Board — and then something had gone wrong, and the whole thing had collapsed into this catastrophe.
"With the creature missing, the hand behind all this is obvious."
｢Yes. The culprit behind this incident is most likely...｣
Having grasped the full shape of events, Denver asked the only question that mattered.
"Did you find its trail?"
｢The genetic tracker confirms it exited the building. Beyond that point, the trail appears to have been erased — we cannot trace it.｣
Jacob reported that they had lost the thing, but Denver wasn't particularly worried. What mattered was that they had confirmed it alive, and fleeing.
"It may be camouflage. Don't forget to search inside the building as well."
｢Understood.｣
"And transmit the creature's genetic data immediately."
｢Yep.｣
Denver cut the transmission and called for his adjutant.
"The vice commander will be sending genetic data. Load it into the Bio Scanner and sweep the city."
"Your Excellency — if we do that, T&C will certainly file a protest."
"I don't care. Execute at once."
The Bio Scanner was a piece of equipment that, once fed the genetic data of a specific organism, would locate that organism anywhere within a fixed range. With the right data input, it could track human beings too — which was why an unwritten law existed among the great families never to use it on one another. Employing it inside another family's territory required explicit permission.
That was exactly why his adjutant had tried to dissuade him, and Denver couldn't have cared less. Relations with T&C were already ruined; how much worse could they possibly get? And if the Edgerton family secured the monster, the new Hulk Mutant project would be complete within a month. When that day came, it would be T&C on their knees, begging him to sell.
Before long, the monster's genetic data arrived from Jacob, and the Bio Scanner hummed to life with its new input.
"Target is moving toward the Port District."
"Just as I expected."
DENVER nodded. He had anticipated exactly this. The thing was a fearsome monster with a devil's intellect — one that understood its own strength and its limits perfectly well.
It means to slip away on one of the departing ships.
"Inform the knights aboard. Have them prepare for combat."
Rising from his throne, Denver issued the rest of his orders.
"All personnel are authorized to equip Assault Packs."
"Assault Packs, Your Excellency?"
Fifty knights remained aboard the flagship in total. Authorizing every last one of them to use Assault Packs — ruinously expensive equipment — was enough to startle even his adjutant.
"That thing is no easy prey. This time we don't capture it — we kill it. Ready the launchers as well."
"Understood, Your Excellency."
"And this time, I will command in person. Have my powered armor prepared."
DENVER glared at the monster's signal as it crawled across the display.
That creature belongs to me.
He did not doubt, not for a single instant, that he would be the one to win.
I dove deeper into the sewer, hiding myself from the hail of plasma fire. My auxiliary organs confirmed it: the enemy count had shot up in an instant.
They were lying in ambush.
Fifty enemies on detection alone. A precise flow of energy rippled across the surfaces of their bodies — every one of them wore high-grade powered armor, with Assault Packs fitted on top. They must have waited at a distance and then closed in at once on the jets built into their packs. I might have expected it from Defense Fleet soldiers, but an ambush from the Edgerton knights came as a surprise.
That said, considering the situation, I could roughly guess how they'd found me.
Over the past few days, the Dissection Team Leader had presented my genetic data before the Board of Directors. How eagerly the Edgertons in that room had eyed it — I didn't need to look to know. Unlike the game's lore, the real-world Edgerton family seemed deeply invested in genetic modification.
They meant to steal my corpse while the Monument was in chaos.
Except I had slipped out of the Monument's science laboratory long ago. Which meant that lab was sitting empty right now. With the corpse vanished, they had pieced together that I was still alive.
And the next step was probably a Bio Scanner.
Megacorp warships carry Bio Scanners — sensors capable of mapping an organism's bio-signature. Feed the machine a creature's genetic data, and it tracks that creature's location.
Under normal circumstances, using a Bio Scanner inside another family's territory is taboo.
The device could read even human signals in real time, so long as it had the data. Point it at a rival's domain, and you were announcing, loud and clear, that you intended to surveil their territory. That's why the Megacorp families had all sworn an oath never to point Bio Scanners at one another's land.
And Edgerton had just broken that sacred rule.
So they're desperate too, huh.
Ever since the Board presentation, their leash had apparently slipped entirely — they were going completely off the rails.
"Did you truly think you could escape me?"
A shout drifted in from outside — presumably the enemy commander. The voice was distorted through his helmet filter, but the obsession and madness threaded through it were impossible to hide.
This won't be easy.
Fifty knights, Assault Packs and all, in a melee. Even having read their intentions, beating them would be anything but simple. An Assault Pack shows its true worth on an open battlefield. Last time, my enemies had been hamstrung by the cramped sewer; this time, they wouldn't be.
Without the Paragon of the Hunt, winning will be hard.
But luring them down into the sewers wouldn't work either.
"Knights of the Order! Ready the launchers!"
Five knights were advancing on my position carrying plasma launchers. Their commander clearly had no intention of taking me alive. Then again — remembering how they'd fared in the sewers last time, this was probably the sensible call.
If five of them fired launchers in sequence, there would be no blocking it and no dodging it.
And if I dodge, the kids take the hits instead.
Maybe if I were alone. But No. 26 and Adhai were with me. No. 26 was managing well enough, but Adhai's wounds hadn't fully healed yet. It fell to me to shield them.
What do I do?
The terrain here was not in my favor. An ambush was worthless if they refused to come inside. And crawling out was its own problem.
Every exit is choked.
The enemy had drawn up their formation to concentrate their entire firepower on the manhole entrances. The moment I surfaced, I'd be shredded into a hive. Even circling around through another route was futile — the warship's Bio Scanner would track me the whole way.
...That leaves exactly one path.
It looked like I had no choice but to gamble.
[Zzzzz Zzzzzz (Everyone, fall back)]
"Big Baby?"
"?"
After ordering No. 26 and Adhai a long way back, I dropped flat against the ground, raising the carapace of my head like a shield to shrink my target profile as much as possible. Then I sank into the water flowing through the tunnel and waited, every sense my auxiliary organs possessed focused to a needle's point.
What I was about to attempt was something I had pulled off a few times back in the game, too. The problem was that even for me, it wasn't a technique with a guaranteed hundred percent success rate. In the game, dying to a failed attempt just meant a respawn and it was over. Here, this was reality. Not a single mistake could be forgiven.
Enough useless worrying. Focus.
A knight carrying a launcher leapt down into the sewer. The pressure of his footfalls spread across the water's surface and reached my auxiliary organs. One — then two — they poured in one after another, weapons primed the moment they landed.
"Launchers ready! Begin suppressive fire!"
"Charging 10…30%"
Everyone except the launcher operators opened up on me with bolters. Refined plasma energy battered down on my head carapace. Chunks of the thick armor plating were blown clean away, and the accumulated shock shoved my whole body backward.
Physical agony suppressed. Psychic shock and panic neutralized.
Focus.
I drove my combat arms deep into the sewer floor and anchored my body in place.
"Charging 60…80%"
Wait.
I could feel No. 26's worry pulsing toward me as the bolters' baptism hammered my shell. I gave no answer, holding my concentration.
"Charging 90%…"
The instant the plasma launcher's energy swelled to its limit — the plates along my back moved.
My dorsal plates, split into two ranks, pressed together, and the wavelength born of that contact raced down the length of the sewer tunnel. Its target: the knight at the head of the column. More precisely — not the knight's body, but the armor sheathing it.
The wavelength that commands precision machinery coiled around the reinforced suit the knight wore. The armor that existed to protect its wearer slipped free of its master's control and began obeying mine instead. The suit's systems were intricate, and ruling every function of it perfectly was beyond me — but what I needed now was not delicate, complex movement. All I demanded was one very simple act: rotate the upper half of the body, gun and all, toward the rear.
"Gahk!"
The body of the knight aiming his launcher at me twisted sharply backward. The muzzle was no longer pointed at me — but at his fellow knights.
"What the—?!"
The knight behind him lunged to stop the launcher that was about to discharge. But the unseen assault had not yet ended.
Gaze of Horror.
The eye-shaped patterns etched into my head carapace exuded a sullen, malevolent glow. Those carved pupils lit from within, fixing their gaze on the lead knight.
Seized by terror for a heartbeat, the knight's hand dropped away — and his body turned, just like the man in front of him. His launcher swung around with him, its barrel now facing the same direction his master's body faced.
Two of the five launchers were aimed not at me, but in the opposite direction — at their own comrades.
"Everyone fall ba—!"
"Charging 100%"
The charge completed before the knight could even react. Energy capable of shooting a warship out of the sky erupted from the tips of the two traitorous knights' launchers.
The plasma beams unleashed by the two lead knights tore straight toward the launchers clutched in their comrades' hands.
The moment the emerald energy kissed the still-charging launchers, a blinding flash swallowed my vision. An explosion vast beyond anything I had ever felt in my life convulsed my body. And even through all of it, I knew one thing with absolute certainty — the plan to turn the plasma launchers against their owners had worked.
When my sight recovered, what greeted me was not the pitch-black sewer but a panoramic view of the Port District. Nothing that could be called a sewer tunnel existed before me anymore. In its place stretched nothing but a vast, fan-shaped field of devastation. The knights who had been aiming at me had vaporized, leaving behind not so much as a grain of dust.
[Zzzzzz Zzz (Now. Everyone, out)]
"Yes!"
"Counterattack""begin"
I rose to the surface together with the kids. The knights still standing on the shattered concrete foundation were few. A large number had been caught in the chain detonation of the plasma warheads, or else buried alive when the ground itself gave way beneath them.
"Th-this is insane! This is impossible!"
Among the silver-armored knights, a single man in black armor was screaming. One look told me he was the commander.
Rank looks high, too.
Wearing a black powered suit that stood out amid all that silver — he had to be at least an elder of the Edgerton family.
I'll make use of him.
[Zzzzzz Zz Zzz (Handle the others)]
"Bad people who hurt Big Baby get punished!"
"Agreed"
Leaving the remaining knights to No. 26 and Adhai, I charged straight for the black-armored knight.
"Protect Your Excellency… ghk!"
One of the knights tried to shout a warning at me — only for an invisible force to clamp his throat shut. From a distance, No. 26 was stretching out her tentacles, casting Binding. Above her, Adhai wheeled through the air, raining purple lightning down on the knights.
Purple Lightning — a technique newly acquired with her transformation into a Green Galagon. Its penetration and raw destructive power were wretched, but it struck across a wide area, and above all, it carried a paralyzing shock. Nearly everyone here was wrapped head to toe in alloy. Against Purple Lightning, that matchup was poison.
The knights caught in the violet bolts convulsed from head to foot and dropped. Watching them fall, the other enemies kicked off with their jetpacks, taking to the sky.
"Electric attack! Take down that one fi—ghuh!"
"Eeeek! It's a monster!"
The knights who had dove at Adhai from above screamed in unison and began plummeting from the sky. Even I felt a cold prickle crawl over me, so I knew at once whose handiwork it was.
No. 26, who had been wringing the knights' necks with her Binding — at some point, half a dozen eyes had opened across her body, all of them fixed on the soldiers. In a space city without so much as a lake, let alone an ocean, the Fear of the Deep Sea was swallowing them whole.
"Hee, heehee! Heeheehee! Die! Die!"
"Snap out of it!"
"Aaagh!"
While the enemies reeled under the pincer assault of No. 26 and Adhai, I closed the distance to the black knight in a flash.
"Your Excellency! Call for support from the flagship!"
"We will hold this line!"
Two more knights stepped out to shield the black-armored man.
Don't get in my way. Move.
I lashed out with a tentacle and swatted one of them aside, then laid Hijacking on the other.
"Kkh?! Wh-what is—!"
I forced the arm gripping his bolter around and fired it point-blank into the skull of the comrade my tentacle had just felled. The head struck by the plasma bolt burst apart like an egg left in a microwave.
"God damn iiiit!"
Seizing the shrieking knight's body through my stolen control, I turned it to aim at the black knight. The man fought my grip with everything he had, but he couldn't overcome the armor's strength. The gauntleted finger, wrapped in powered plating, squeezed the bolter's trigger at my command.
The plasma bolt slammed into the black knight's back.
"Kuaaagh!"
Truly a man of high standing, it seemed — even after taking a bolter hit, his armor had held without catastrophic damage. Of course, absorbing the kinetic shock was another matter entirely. The black knight crumpled before long.
With my target down, I clamped my combat arms around the hijacked knight's helmeted head.
"Y-Your Excellency, hurry, evacuate… guuaaagh!"
Ghost Claws raked through the knight's skull inside his helmet. His body shuddered violently, and red blood seeped out through the seams of his powered armor. When I withdrew my hand, the corpse collapsed limply to the ground.
"Khh, uuungh!"
The black knight still couldn't steady himself, the shock of the bolter strike lingering in his frame. I advanced on him. The other knights were far too occupied fighting No. 26 and Adhai to intervene.
"S-stay back! Stay away from me!"
There was no one left here to protect him. I seized his helmet and tore it away. The man inside had dark skin. Blood welled at the corner of his mouth as he stared up at me, his eyes brimming with terror.
"You·are·their·com·man·der·."
"It— it can talk?!"
The man's eyes flooded with sheer disbelief. My speaking human language had clearly rattled him badly.
"So you really were a Hulk Mutant all along? I— I never imagined such technology existed!"
A Hulk Mutant? Comparing me to something so contemptible. My lips peeled back from my teeth before I even realized my anger. At the sight of my pointed fangs, the man shrieked in desperation.
"W-wait! I am Denver Edgerton! If you spare my life—"
Befitting a man of high station, his reaction was novel — he had apparently concluded that a creature capable of speech was one he could negotiate with. He had guessed entirely, hopelessly wrong.
He still doesn't understand what I am, does he.
I ripped his shoulder guard away with my combat arms and fastened my jaws onto his shoulder.
"Argh!"
The neurotoxin seeping from my fangs rode his bloodstream out through his whole body. Denver's blood, in turn, ran down my throat.
"Don't·need·it·."
"!"
The Mimic Organ drew from my mouth a sound nearly identical to the man's own voice. His eyes went wide with horror.
Then I reached down and fitted the helmet back onto the frozen man's head.
He didn't seem to understand, so I would have to teach him.
That the Amorph never negotiates.