The Egg
I left the Food Factory and headed toward the submersible.
My footsteps, heavy with exhaustion, echoed through the empty city.
Every breath carried the faint metallic taste of blood.
The path back felt even quieter now that the noisy broadcast had fallen silent.
Only after that intrusive presence vanished did I realize how much comfort it had actually given me.
Now, only a suffocating silence wrapped around me, as if everything had been switched off.
Occasional scraping sounds against the building walls drifted by, but compared to the metallic shrieks of the murder machines, they felt almost like soothing background music.
“Haa… To think the sound of a Cyclops would feel peaceful.”
On Earth, that would have been unthinkable.
The clamor of crowds filling the streets, the electronic chime of convenience store doors sliding open, the soft aroma of lattes from a coffee machine…
All those trivial fragments of daily life now felt impossibly far away.
They seemed more like distant illusions.
All I had now was the crushing burden called the Deep Sea.
Not a single shadow of a Cyclops lingered nearby.
Only rows of weathered yet still faintly glowing blue glass windows stretched into the distance. Around me, there was nothing but tranquil silence.
Normally I would have been on edge, wondering when one might leap out. But now the area lay as still as a battlefield after the war had ended.
Thanks to that, I could walk to the submersible without trouble.
“Whew…”
A sigh escaped me, laced with fragile relief.
Perhaps because the tension had finally eased, my whole body felt a little heavier.
With my guard lowered, my gaze drifted away from my surroundings and settled on the egg I was carrying.
Its scales still held a glossy sheen despite their obvious age.
A black that resembled the Deep Sea, yet carried a faint greenish tint.
It looked exactly like the dragon eggs I had seen in webtoons.
When I tapped it lightly, the way one might test a watermelon, a sharp vibration rang through my fingertips as if I had struck solid stone.
What kind of creature could possibly hatch from something this hard?
The thought crossed my mind.
“…Will it be stronger than me?”
Under normal laws of nature, a hatchling fresh from the egg would struggle to defeat an adult…
But this felt like an exception.
The egg radiated an intangible pressure simply by existing.
If it could be hatched, perhaps it might fight in my place.
Such thoughts swirled as I walked, until I spotted the submersible half-buried in the wet sand.
I approached the rounded, fish-like front section.
From beside it, a familiar machine rolled toward me.
Whirr. Whirr.
“Yeah, I’m back.”
Assolution approached on its smooth treads.
The way its mechanical arms swished back and forth reminded me of a cat wagging its tail in greeting.
Without thinking, I reached out, and Assolution gently clasped my hand.
For a moment, warmth bloomed in my chest.
But that feeling lasted only a second.
When I noticed my mana slowly draining away, a wave of gloom settled over me.
It was like realizing the cat that welcomed you had only done so because it wanted a treat.
“So that’s why you were happy to see me…”
Assolution absorbed my mana and immediately began moving with more energy.
Even though it was a machine, the fact that we could share actions like this strangely comforted me.
Yet the moment it released my hand, Assolution began spinning in circles, scanning the area.
It released faint currents of mana from its body, probing inside my clothes, the gaps in my gear, and across my entire form as if searching for something it absolutely had to find.
Then—
Beep!
It let out a short alert and thrust one mechanical arm straight into the air.
The arm pointed directly at my chest.
At the black egg.
“…The egg? What about it?”
…
Assolution offered no reply to my confusion.
It simply froze with its arm aimed at the egg, radiating clear hostility.
Finding it strange, I activated the Scanner again, but the result remained unchanged.
“There’s nothing wrong with it…”
It was just an egg.
The information hadn’t changed, so I assumed there was no problem.
That was when it happened.
Slither.
“Hup…!”
Something was ripped out of my body.
My vision went white. My knees buckled.
I collapsed onto the rough sand, gasping for air.
“Haa… haa…”
Sitting on the gritty sand, I struggled to breathe.
The shock of having something vital torn from me refused to fade.
The egg had not taken my blood or flesh, but something far more fundamental.
It had devoured my mana—the very source that sustained my life.
An emptiness like half my heart had been scooped out crashed over me.
“What the… hell…”
While I was still fighting to stay conscious, one machine moved within my flickering, film-like world.
Assolution swiftly snatched the egg from my arms and hurled it away.
Its treads screeched loudly from the urgency.
But the egg returned instantly.
As if that was its rightful place, it offered no resistance to being thrown, only to reappear beside me again.
Assolution repeated the action several times.
Throw. Return. Throw again…
Finally, it raised its arm high and slammed the egg down with full force.
Thud!
The dull impact of metal striking the egg rang out.
Yet the egg didn’t have a single scratch.
It simply rested peacefully near me once more.
Beep!
A small warning tone sounded.
When I turned toward the source, I saw Assolution.
Apparently extremely irritated by the egg, it tried different methods to damage it—sparks of magic, mana-infused punches, crushing it beneath its treads.
Despite every effort, the egg remained exactly where it was.
Watching this, I placed a hand on the ground and lowered my head.
Closing my eyes and focusing inward, I could sense my condition in vivid detail, as if viewing an X-ray.
The flow of mana, the steady rhythm of my breathing, the traces of training.
Fortunately, as time passed, my mana slowly began to return.
At least it hadn’t been drained permanently. That was some comfort.
Once the mana flowed back, my thoughts gradually returned to normal.
Beyond the simple sensation of being alive, my ability to analyze the situation began functioning again.
First, I need to organize what’s happening right now.
Repeating that to myself, I looked once more at the thing before me.
This egg was clearly not ordinary.
If it were merely the shell of a normal creature, Assolution would have no reason to show such wariness.
So what exactly was it wary of?
Clinging to that question, I naturally recalled what had just happened to me.
The moments I had felt my life was in danger.
There was the teleporting pursuit, but the mana loss I had just experienced seemed to match Assolution’s reaction most closely.
If my total mana were roughly 1.5 liters in volume, the amount Assolution usually took was only about a cup’s worth.
Obviously, that much recovered quickly.
But this egg was different.
Based on what I had just felt, it had stolen nearly a full liter in one go.
It wasn’t simple consumption. There had been clear intent behind the absorption.
And when my mana was taken, I hadn’t only suffered a loss of power.
For a moment, I had the illusion of seeing something.
Even though my eyes had been open, an unfamiliar shape had seeped into my vision.
I thought I had seen a pair of vertically slit yellow pupils.
A yellow glow that seemed to lure prey in the Deep Sea.
A massive body that blended an endless abyss with thick, heavy mana.
It looked exactly like the Deep Sea and the ancient city combined.
I instinctively understood.
This egg was no mere relic or creature’s shell.
It wasn’t mere speculation. It felt like an absolute truth echoing through every cell in my body.
My hand naturally moved to the equipment at my waist.
I pulled out the Scanner.
A very human attempt to banish the unknown fear.
I thrust a torch into the oppressive abyss.
The egg that would birth a colossal ruler remained perfectly still before me.
As if it knew I was doing exactly what it wanted.
But I could not turn back now. The unknown terror was too great.
Rather than live carrying hidden dangers, I would uncover everything.
This world placed extreme importance on causality.
Where there is a cause, there is an effect. Where there is an effect, there is a cause.
If it took my mana…
Then something must be fulfilled in return.
With anxiety and curiosity tangled together, I pulled the Scanner’s trigger.
A thin blue wave of light formed and swept across the egg.
As the blue light brushed its surface, the scales rippled for a brief moment, as if something inside was stirring.
A moment later, the Scanner emitted a soft beep and displayed text on its screen.
Haeasha's Egg
Hatching Progress: 1%
The blue letters reading Hatching Progress: 1% burned themselves into my pupils.
My heart pounded. Sweat began to form in my palms.
Was it tension? Or anticipation?
Perhaps both.
The price of mana had been the awakening of an ancient ruler.
A ruler who had existed long before this city was even built.
A being that had constructed an overwhelming civilization and was once considered comparable to the greatest corporations of a lost era.
A wild gamble that could become my greatest weapon… or devour me whole.
It had begun.