Phase Two
KUUUUNG! CRASH!
The boss Machine Spirit's crushed-headed chassis listed hard, then toppled sideways and slammed into what had once been the Bio-Supercomputer.
Its original plan had been to fatten itself inside the Bio-Supercomputer, then burst out at the very last possible moment and fuse with the entire space station. We had put a stop to that. The dream was dead for good, and the rage it had to be feeling now was beyond anything language could hold.
If I had to put it in terms anyone could understand: picture a conscript sergeant on the eve of his final leave, only for some pint-sized missile out of North Korea to get the whole thing cancelled. Now imagine how vicious, how utterly unhinged, the tantrum that follows is going to be.
Phase Two! Phase Two!
Wasn't the thing climbing out of the glass tank and changing into a mechanical body already Phase Two?
No. For a Machine Spirit, the costume change is Phase One. Phase Two is the last desperate thrash it puts on once the costume stops being a costume.
I tore across the chamber, screaming it at the two men still shivering, soaked to the bone in sloshing coolant. Along the way I slapped down the spare charges I'd been carrying, plugging every spot Ahn Moon-ho hadn't gotten to yet.
"What the hell is Phase Two?!"
"If you don't want to die, we need to get out of here right now!!"
"Then you should've just said that!"
Lee Duho snapped it back at me, hoisted Ahn Moon-ho over his shoulder, and started running. Neither of them could swing a hammer or fire a gun in that state, so I had no choice but to fall in behind them and provide cover.
And of course.
A metallic screech, then a staccato burst of fire. A handful of Machine Spirits the boss had never chosen — still lurking, still waiting for their shot — came at us like it was finally their turn, latching on with manic persistence. None of them hit particularly hard on their own, but they were living things wearing mechanical bodies, and they pressed us with the kind of acrobatic, lightning-fast movement that simply should not have been possible.
"You son of a bitch, you dare take a nibble out of a human?!"
CLANG!
The Machine Spirit that had lunged for Ahn Moon-ho's dangling, wildly bouncing throat? Yeah, Han Seungho-Man just sent that one packing. You're welcome.
"W-wait! The bombs… I haven't finished plant— uurp!"
"Don't talk! You'll bite your tongue!"
"I'd rather bite my tongue than— I'm gonna throw— hlek!"
"Shut your damn mouth!"
Under Lee Duho's murderous warning, Ahn Moon-ho had no choice but to hurl his backpack toward me. I plucked it out of the air without breaking stride and flung the remaining explosives in every direction, as generous as a guy scattering feed to koi at the edge of a pond. Fortunately, Machine Spirits didn't give a damn about anything but warm human flesh until they started splitting, so none of them snatched up a bomb and swallowed it.
The floor shuddered with a deep, rolling rumble.
It's already done prepping Phase Two? In the game that took at least five minutes!
Normally, when a boss transitions, the polite thing to do is summon a tidal wave of trash mobs to annoy the players, or spam environmental gimmicks — floor debuffs, instant-kill mechanics, the usual. This thing had zero professional courtesy. Screw the gimmicks, it said, and just shook off the stun and stood up itself.
I burned through more than half the Modular Exo-Suit's output on that last hit. I can't pull the same stunt twice.
On top of that, Lee Duho's hammer was starting to lose its integrity. A few more swings and it would snap for sure. Even with my EFD knowledge, there was only so much I could do to patch it. Melting the whole thing down and forging it from scratch would honestly have been easier.
A raw, living howl rolled up from behind us just as we reached the foot of the spiral stairs, having barely managed to beat back and dodge the Machine Spirit rabble. The sound put ice down my spine.
A Machine Spirit shedding its mechanical appearance meant it was done playing. It meant that from here on, it would follow the survival instinct every living thing is born with — and start thrashing, ugly and indiscriminate, with nothing held back.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
Ominous noise and vibration rolled up my back, followed by the very real terror of approaching mass. Instead of following the other two up the stairs, I did what my Sixth Sense told me to do — planted a foot on the stair railing and launched myself upward.
The foot of the staircase I'd been about to climb exploded into splinters under a heavy lash of tentacles. One second slower and I would have been ground meat along with those stairs. And people still want to tell me not to rush the Sixth Sense tech on Alpha Fluid?
"You disgusting piece of shit."
Take a hit that hard and have the decency to stay down and die ugly, like a person. There's always one that has to cling on and beg for just one more round.
But the first rule of a perfect win record is this: the moment you win, you leave. That's how you survive in a hyper-competitive society.
"You're trash at this, you know that?"
I don't play with noobs~
I swung the hammer through a brief taste of weightlessness, and the tentacle cluster crumpled and bounced aside. A blade would have sheared through even a tentacle that thick in one stroke. Being a blunt weapon, it seemed to cut the damage in half.
"Guess we just weren't meant for each other."
Using the hammer any further had become more trouble than it was worth. I hurled the brainless lump of metal — a one-trick slab of stupid iron that suited its owner perfectly — as hard as I could, used the recoil to grab the still-intact stair railing, and hauled myself up. The tentacles came climbing after me.
We go up!
"Ah. One thing first."
Click.
I mashed the detonator I'd pulled from inside my coat. A third wave of charges went off without mercy and began ripping the Deep Sector apart. A space station this well-built would take dozens of bombs on the outer hull before you punched a hole in it — but a compartment packed with sensitive equipment and structural members was a different story. Internal detonations hit a place like this where it hurt.
The result:
A section of the coolant-flooded server tank blew apart, and a hole that should never have opened tore wide. It was a truly large, truly beautiful hole.
A massive volume of air screamed out into open space, and the insane suction tore internal framing, paneling, and insulation loose in sheets. Because we had climbed a step ahead, we managed to keep hold of the railing and keep going up. The thing chasing us in its last desperate thrash was another matter. It was simply too big. Even holding on looked like more than it could manage.
That was when a piece of the space station's system — the piece the Machine Spirit had forced into shutdown — came back online.
Connected to the space station's central control system. All functions are now fully operational.
Damn it, I knew I could count on you, Crazy Clock!
I decided the first thing to kill was the cosmic-scale suction trying to drink my soul up from below.
"Engage emergency compartment isolation protocol!"
Emergency compartment isolation protocol engaged.
As everyone knows, space stations are built modular. Fabricating one giant solid station on the ground and launching the whole thing into orbit is a brand of insanity that even a human empire in the year 40,000 couldn't pull off. That is exactly why a modular station is relatively easy to assemble — and just as easy to take apart. If things go south, you can jettison an entire compartment and haul ass.
A deep mechanical groan rolled through the structure. For efficient isolation and separation, the ceiling of the vast hollow chamber began to ease shut, not far from the stairs we were climbing.
"Hey! Get up here! The ceiling just started closing!!"
Lee Duho, a step ahead of me, was looking down and shouting. I kicked off the stairs with every last ounce of strength I had ever owned.
The boss Machine Spirit seemed to sense that something had gone wrong. It whipped its tentacles even harder, tearing apart the spiral staircase under my feet. I could feel the obsession in it — even if it never made it out alive, it was going to take me with it.
"But I slip it like this!"
I moved my feet faster than the collapsing stairs, and just as a warped frame tilted hard and my balance started to go, I hooked a lifeline of trap wire and grappling hooks into the wall and saved myself. Then I clenched my jaw and climbed, and climbed again.
In the Dark Zone, the one who survives ends up with everything. That is the absolute rule. If I wanted everything, I had to live.
A terrible shriek tore up from below. In the last sliver of a gap before the thick ceiling finished sealing the compartment off, I slipped out of the Deep Sector by a hair, leaving the boss Machine Spirit's scream behind me.
THUD. THUD. THUUUUD.
From underneath came the sound of it still pounding the innocent ceiling, still insisting on its own existence. In the end, a half-finished boss that had never become one with the station had no choice but to be exiled into the cold of open space.
…Farewell, you ordinary who merely ruled the Dark Zone in the age before I existed.
If you had a problem with it, you should have fused with the station and caved my skull in. But you couldn't, could you? Then I win.
"Hah! Hah! I really thought I was going to die."
I lay sprawled on the floor, dragging air in ragged pulls. Even with a strength-enhanced body, even borrowing the power of the Modular Exo-Suit that backed that body up, all I had managed was to shake the thing off.
If it had been possible, I would have liked to kill it and take a biological sample besides — but that would have been a certified throw, so I let the thought go without a shred of regret. I was alive, limbs attached. That was enough.
"That was close. Really close. All three of us nearly died down there with that monster!"
"We're alive, aren't we? Then we ought to grab a drink."
I caught my breath, grinning, then heaved my heavy body upright. The other two were every bit as spent as I was, and neither of them looked like they had the spare energy to play along.
I worked the worst of the ache out of my muscles and took a slow look around the station's interior as power began to come back. Lights that had been dead bloomed bright. The air started to warm. The station, pulling itself back toward something like normal, looked nothing like the first impression it had given us.
We blew the entire Deep Sector, so the highest-value prizes — the boss's biological sample, the Bio-Supercomputer's cutting-edge components and data — are gone. But if we just scoop up what's left on the lower levels, everyone should still walk away with a few million won apiece.
The thought was enough. I slapped Lee Duho and Ahn Moon-ho out of their half-vacant daze and told them it was over. Watching a pair of fully grown men go misty-eyed, like they were about to start juicing tears, was pretty hilarious.
"Thinking about it now, it really would have been dangerous if a larger group had gone into the Deep Sector with us. From entry through the fight to the escape, every step was a near thing."
"That's what I said. I was originally going to do it alone."
"What's more terrifying is realizing that wasn't a lie. I think I finally understand why they call you Super Rookie."
Lee Duho grumbled it under his breath and still gave me the credit. Ahn Moon-ho, falling in beside him, quietly nodded.
Back on the lower levels, we got a tearful reunion with our temporary party members, all of them safe except for a few wounded. What followed was, naturally, the farming. Together we shoved our noses into every last corner of the station and packed our bags for maximum Grid Efficiency before we were ready to board the fixed exit — the escape craft.
There were four escape craft, each built for six. Under ordinary circumstances, smaller parties that didn't divide evenly could work something out and share. The only other ways out were one-man emergency pods, or a space elevator on the station's exterior that existed only in EFD's "lore."
Though Crazy Clock did say the space elevator, for some reason, couldn't be used.
The fact left a small question in my mind, but I set it aside and watched the eighteen party members board the craft in sequence. The last two left behind were me and Ahn Moon-ho.
Just before we boarded, I decided to do what needed doing.
Click.
"…What do you think you're doing?"
"Your name's on the prison's blacklist. Word is you've been spreading ugly talk inside and stirring up the other inmates."
"Did you approach me with this in mind from the start?"
"No. I don't need to tiptoe around people like you. Like I said before, I could have killed you and your people whenever I wanted."
"Then why in the world—!"
"I was curious why the prison would bother blacklisting someone who doesn't even look that dangerous."
I hooked my finger over the trigger.
"So go on. Tell me. Give me a reason I should walk away from a prime contract and pretend I never saw you."
I prided myself on knowing EFD better than anyone alive, but my knowledge of this "world" was still at the newborn-baby level. So today, in this "safe zone" where no one could eavesdrop or peek, I was going to unlock a piece of the knowledge I didn't have.