I Had a Plan for Everything, Probably? (2)

Whoa!

Anyway, the day after I'd somehow managed to expose a hidden power of mine that even I hadn't known about, our so-called 88 Fleet reconstruction plan looked like it was finally starting to pick up real steam.

Of course, burning with determination was one thing. Actually getting anywhere was another.

As that readout made painfully clear, the first battlecruiser that was supposed to be the starting point of our entire fleet reconstruction was still sitting in the capital shipyard, mid-build.

The glorious 88 Fleet plan was, at minimum, a multi-month ultra-long-term project that demanded patient, stubborn waiting. So I decided to set it aside for now and finish the kaiju-related quests instead.

And right on cue, the kaiju breeding facility's growth finished as if it had been waiting for me.

My next construction target was obvious: an upgrade to the biology laboratory, which was already half-consumed by the neural network module and slowly transforming into something that looked like the infected ships from Peace-Frame — a game I'd played constantly in my past life — or the USG Ishimura from Dead Space.

The problem was that this structure was another thing I had zero memory of from my previous playthroughs. Figuring some ridiculous update must have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dropped, I dug through the gallery's wiki tab for information.

Wait, why is there nothing?

The complete absence of any information on the wiki tab left me tilting my head in confusion — and I wasn't even a cute girl, so the effect was wasted. But the thought only lasted a moment.

Oh, right. They're still writing all of this from scratch.

The moment users had been forcibly possessed into this world, their connection to the real-world internet had been severed. Every link to the old wiki tree had become useless overnight, and the community was rebuilding the knowledge base from the ground up. It made perfect sense that the information I wanted simply hadn't been written yet.

I closed the wiki tab and opened the gallery instead, running the same search there. Naturally, that process involved the usual daily duties of a board moderator — banning the random trolls that popped up, and handing a one-day ban to some idiot who'd titled a post Super Hot Pirate Empress.jpg only to dump a bikini shot of the Pirate King underneath it.

After about thirteen bans, I finally found the post I was looking for.

The contents, however, were… not ordinary.

…What?

I had no idea what was actually going on. But going by the images alone — a massive tentacle erupting from the base, coiling around a docked battlecruiser and trying to force its way into the nozzle, or expanding its territory deeper into the facility on its own — it looked extremely, extremely, extremely dangerous by any reasonable standard.

Wondering what the hell that thing even was, I immediately cancelled the biology laboratory upgrade I'd been about to start and ran straight to the current lab to figure out exactly what was eating what.

I Had a Plan for Everything, Probably? (2)

Jessica and I burst into the biology laboratory without ceremony. Griyanaar happened to be in the middle of some cheerful, delightful bio-experiments with the slaves we'd captured, so we decided to ask her whether what we'd seen was real.

Professor Griyanaar received our questions with a look of genuine fascination.

"Hmm, just a moment… so you're saying you want to 'upgrade' this biology laboratory — which is already linked to the neural network and is, for all practical purposes, a living organism?"

"Exactly that."

"Then it's a very good thing you asked me before going through with it, Commander!"

Her eyes lit up like a graduate student on fire with academic passion. She immediately raised a large screen from the floor through some bio-mechanical apparatus, then offered each of us a small sofa and told us to sit and listen.

The sofas felt warm, squishy, and vaguely alive. Jessica and I politely declined and elected to stand for the briefing.

After a long stretch of increasingly complicated explanation, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cut off Griyanaar's endless stream of technical jargon and specialist vocabulary and demanded a clean conclusion.

In response, she shrugged the lab coat loosely draped over her bare shoulders and answered with a casual flick of the fabric.

"The conclusion is simple enough. If you'd gone ahead with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the 'upgrade' without thinking it through… this biology laboratory would have become a monster with no intelligence whatsoever!"

"Oh…"

"A beast driven purely by instinct, in every sense of the word!"

Maybe she had a soft spot for giant kaiju the same way men romanticized capital ships. She said it with that signature little-devil smile of hers, clearly enjoying the mental image — but right after, when it came to the specific details I'd described from the gallery post, she tilted her head with open skepticism.

"That said… the form you described would be rather difficult to achieve, I think?"

"Hm?"

"Think about it. At the size you described, those tentacles would be dozens of times larger than the Kraken's."

"True."

"Right? And if something that big were thrashing and moving around the way you described, this base would be the thing getting smashed or flung around, wouldn't it?"

I just stared at her in silence, trying to process what she meant. Taking my blank look as an invitation, Professor Griyanaar proceeded to cram detailed physics principles and assorted technical data into my brain the way she would with a brand-new grad student walking into her lab for the first time.

Oh, shit.

My previously pure and unsullied mind was suddenly stuffed full of things I had never wanted to know. I also developed a profound grievance about why a sci-fi setting that had long since thrown conventional physics in the trash was suddenly lecturing me on physics — but Griyanaar must have noticed the look on my face, because she finally summarized everything into one clean statement.

"In short, what you saw was probably a heavily composited image. Anything else simply isn't realistic."

"Is that so…"

She waved it off, insisting that even if you mobilized every organic material on the base, you still couldn't produce a mass of flesh that large. At some point Oxianor had quietly appeared beside us and been listening in; she nodded in agreement.

"Miss Griyanaar is not wrong. Of course, it is not that the realization of such enormous tentacles is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠impossible for us, but…"

"But?"