Flesh Is Stronger Than Steel
The moment they cleared the entrance, a land drowned in gray rose up to meet them—along with air so thick and stifling it nearly choked the breath from their lungs. Nam Gong-ryun poured inner energy into his respirator.
The energy fed into the device, ran through its internal calculations, and formed a precise current that flowed back into his body. The current spread through his nose, bronchial tubes, and lungs, pushing those organs to their absolute limit. In short, the respirator was a tool that performed qi circulation and breath regulation automatically. So long as inner energy remained in his body, it would burn that energy as fuel and carry out its duty without pause.
Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.
The vehicle cut across the gray expanse. Outside, a gray horizon stretched on forever, broken only by the occasional mining machine the size of a building lumbering through the landscape.
Inside, the mercenaries clustered in twos and threes, talking quietly among themselves.
"Gong-ryun. Shouldn't you be burning off that liquor by now?"
"Mm. I was about to. I wanted to stay as drunk as possible a little longer, though."
Nam Gong-ryun closed his eyes and began circulating his energy. Qi rose from his dantian, swept through his body, and rapidly broke down the alcohol in his system. It was the most basic regulation method—something any modern person could do.
His mind cleared almost at once. He was stone-cold sober again, and bored out of his skull.
With nothing better to do, Gong-ryun's head drifted, soaking up the other mercenaries' chatter like ASMR.
"Cheonsalseong's woken up lately—it's chaos out there…"
"Did you see that samurai fight a death duel at the inn last time? Those bastards throwing down outside their own territory…"
"Who the hell started the crap that hydra tails are good for hair loss? No matter how much I eat…"
"There's got to be a giant space-locust nest under this planet. Nothing else explains how they keep…"
Half of it was talk he had already heard; the rest was pure nonsense.
They rode on like that for a while, ASMR humming in the background, until they reached the problem site: Mining Zone AE-21.
"That's the mine. Hydras have been coming out of there. Work's shut down and the laborers evacuated. You all know the drill. Kill everything you see. Destroy any nests you find as you go. We'll call in a quarantine team later, but wipe them out as thoroughly as you can. I'll take you to the entrance."
With the guide's briefing finished, the mercenaries gripped their weapons and headed for the mine.
The place looked like this: a vast hole punched into the middle of flat ground, as if a meteor had landed there. Diameter roughly one kilometer; depth five hundred meters. Once they decided to dig, they had gone all out and torn the earth open in every direction. Probably hired a high-level expert to swing a fist a few times.
At the bottom of the crater, several smaller tunnel mouths opened further in. They had excavated the crater first, then switched to tunnel mining once they hit the ore veins. Using a master to carve out a crater only needed to happen once or twice, after all.
The hydras had appeared in those tunnels. "Tunnels" was underselling them—once you stepped inside, they were fairly spacious. Floors and walls had been reinforced flat, and even the narrowest shaft kept a clearance of about three meters on a side.
At the tunnel mouths, the guide bid them farewell.
"There are several entrances, but the paths all connect eventually. You all downloaded the map I sent earlier, yes? Then go. Good hunting."
A dozen-odd mercenaries picked their entrances and ambled inside.
Three or four men entered each opening—except the one Nam Gong-ryun's party chose. Only Gong-ryun and Un-rang stepped through.
"The lighting is excellent. The last mine we hit was abandoned—not a single lamp."
"We nearly died that time. An arachne almost tore my throat out."
Still near the entrance, they walked the broad shafts and talked as they went, following the map toward the expected hydra zones.
They had gone deep enough that the passages began to narrow when their sensory perception picked up life ahead.
"Here we go."
A moment later they could see the hydra waiting up the tunnel.
"Krrrrr…"
A hydra was a monster that looked like a lizard and a snake stitched together. Belly, legs, and tail hugged the ground; chest and neck reared up to free its line of sight, rising to about the height of a man. A long tail trailed behind it, and on the end of that long neck sat a dragon-like head.
From snout to tip of tail it stretched twice a man's length, and its body was two or three times thicker. All of that bulk was muscle.
Its hide was a brown leather tougher than a crocodile's, and its back bristled with threatening spines like a porcupine. The head was a snake's skull crowned with menace-horns—horns harder than titanium.
The creature drooled as it stared them down. Some forty razor teeth glittered in its jaws.
"I'll take this one."
Un-rang said it casually and stepped forward, whirling his iron staff.
The hydra's eyes went prey-mad. It dropped low, belly flat to the ground, coiling its tail in loose S-curves. Lizard limbs bent into a launching crouch.
Drool ran. Eyes flashed. It measured the distance—then leapt.
The coiled tail unspooled for thrust; its viscous belly skated the floor as it charged, limbs shoving for acceleration. Snake glide fused with lizard scramble. It came on like a boat sliding over ice—like a rough-edged ghost.
"Krrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiik!!!!!!!"
Jaws flung wide for a bite that could chew through cars, the hydra barreled in.
And the android Un-rang met that charge head-on, waiting for the perfect instant.
The moment the hydra's head reached fully within two meters of him—
A staff the height of a man carved a perfect circle through the air, right to left, ripping the wind apart.
The iron staff struck the hydra's temple dead-on and rang its brain like a bell. The monster lost its center and staggered—but inertia kept the charge surging forward.
As if he had known it would, Un-rang flowed right in a smooth footwork step and let the mass slide past. In the same motion he spun once for torque and drove the tip of the staff into the hydra's flank like a billiard cue.
The hydra slammed into the tunnel wall and half-embedded itself there.
Before it could recover, the staff speared into its skull like a lance. With its head pinned against stone, every ounce of the impact dumped straight into the brain. The skull caved in the way a watermelon caves under a hammer.
"Hmm. Easy enough."
Un-rang flicked a little blood from his clothes as he spoke.
"Doesn't seem like a particularly strong strain. The mutations haven't progressed far."
"Yeah. They've only just been discovered."
The real headache with these cosmic hydras was that they mutated to fit their environment over time. With each generation the threat spiked, so they had to be wiped out early.
Still, newborn hydras found this soon were manageable for run-of-the-mill mercenaries.
"Well. One down—so the rest should start pouring in any second."
With that, Un-rang and Gong-ryun fixed their eyes on the long shaft ahead.
And then—
—Kieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
—Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!!!!!!
—Krrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik!!!!!!!!!
The cries rolled toward them.
The nearby hydras had sensed their kin's death and were swarming in.
Neither man flinched.
Un-rang and Gong-ryun took position—Gong-ryun in front, Un-rang behind.
Gong-ryun the shield, Un-rang the spear: a phalanx formation. They used it often in tight tunnels like this.
A phalanx in name only—Gong-ryun was bare-handed. Shields had gone extinct in this galaxy long ago. Bare flesh being stronger than steel was simply common sense.
"An iron-bodied robot taking the rear rank. Feeling anything about that?"
"Your durability is still better than mine, isn't it?"
They traded the nonsense for only a moment.
Then the ground shook, and the monsters boiled out of the shaft ahead as a pack.
Identical hydras. Five of them.
They charged in a jumbled mass, like hungry ghosts clawing up out of hell's gate.
Just before the distance closed—
Gong-ryun layered protective hard qi over his whole body and settled into a guard. Both arms rose to frame his face; knees bent slightly, one leg braced back so the impact would not knock him down.
He would take the charge head-on. He had that much toughness—that much defense. The protective hard qi forged through slave labor was one of the few things he could truly brag about.
—KWAANG!!!!!!
The lead hydra smashed into Gong-ryun.
He gritted his teeth and absorbed the hit. His body slid back a little without breaking the guard. At the same time the hydra tried to bite; he jammed his arm sideways into its maw the way you train a vicious dog. The arm did not sever. Hands and arms were the toughest parts of Gong-ryun's body.
"Kkkuuugh!!!"
It hurt like hell—but he held without real damage.
The hydra, on the other hand, had its charge completely stopped and stood frozen in place.
Behind it, the others that had been charging mindlessly piled into the first one's blockade and tangled together. They recovered fast, though, and spilled out to either side, snapping jaws toward Gong-ryun.
That was when Un-rang's staff work erupted from behind him.
Un-rang flooded the iron staff with inner energy and, in a spear-thrust posture, smashed the heads of the hydras squeezing past Gong-ryun's flanks. Three rapid thrusts in a single second.
A head darted in—he struck. Another head darted in—he struck again. It looked exactly like a game of whack-a-mole played with hydra skulls. Soon those heads caved helplessly inward, and the monsters spat out strangled groans.
So Gong-ryun held the front while Un-rang checked every bite aimed at him and piled on the damage.
Even so, they were cosmic monsters—they did not die that easily.
Gong-ryun reached down with the hand that was not jammed in the hydra's jaws.
And laid his palm on the creature's belly-hide.
Contact. Once the palm touched, it was over.
Inner energy gathered in Gong-ryun's palm and flared into a searing blaze of qi—then clenched shut.
Golden Seize Hand was a technique for seizing an opponent.
He seized the hydra's belly-hide.
Seized it—and tore.
—Kwadeuk!
Gong-ryun's hand punched into the hydra's gut. He ripped the hide open and shoved inward at the same time. The flame of inner energy had not gone out. Deeper. Farther in. Like driving a pencil straight through a loaf of bread.
When he reached the organs, he twisted hard and spun up rotational force. Every organ in range was dragged into that whirling qi and shredded like rags in a wash tub.
—Kieeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!!!!
The hydra screamed—and died in agony a heartbeat later.
That was Golden Seize Hand. Touch, and it was strong.
Against beasts short on intelligence, there was no more reliable martial art.
He finished one, then tore open the belly of the one right behind it the same way.
—Kieeeeeeeeeeek!!!
Agonized shrieks filled the tunnel.
While Gong-ryun held the line and put down two of them, Un-rang kept playing whack-a-mole—pounding hydra heads the whole time Gong-ryun braced the front.
The shaft was too narrow for wide swings anyway. And packed together like that, thrusting was by far the most effective option.
Crack. Crack. Hydra brains burst outward.
After a stretch of that standoff, every hydra had stopped breathing.
"Wow. Gong-ryun, your Golden Seize Hand really is something else. Honestly, this whole branch of martial arts—you've got talent to spare."
Un-rang spoke while finishing them off with the staff for good measure.
"Weirdly enough, any art that uses the palms is just easy for me."
"Look at this—the insides are completely ruined. Stronger than ordinary Seize Hand by a long shot. Qinna techniques aren't supposed to work like this."
Well. That was true. Originally, Seize Hand was a technique for locking a grip and chaining into joint manipulation—but for some reason Gong-ryun skipped everything after the grab and maximized only the seizing itself. In the end it had mutated into a martial art that turned a fist into something like an industrial press.
Gong-ryun truly had a gift for Seize Hand. The problem was—
"If only you could manage half that talent with footwork or light-body techniques."
"Damn it… what am I supposed to do when it's hard? Only the hand arts come easy…"
Anything that was not a hand technique left Gong-ryun hopelessly inept. He had never properly learned a single light-body method. Even the basic footwork Un-rang used every day was beyond him.
"And why don't fist arts or grappling work? Those use the hands too, don't they?"
"No… that's fists. Only arts that use the palm are easy for me…"
"You really are something, Gong-ryun. What kind of talent is that?"
He could only learn martial arts that used the palms. It was a bizarre, almost grotesque gift. At least protective hard qi was an exception—small mercies.
"Fingers are just barely included, though…"
"Gong-ryun. How many times do I have to say it—claw techniques are for the unorthodox riffraff."
"Since when does learning martial arts come with that kind of rule?"
"If I say so, then it is so. Tsk!"
"An android old fogey…"
Gong-ryun muttered under his breath.
With the finishing blows done, they pressed on.
Their personal devices logged the kills automatically; there was no need to collect anything.
After that they ran into two more packs of similar size and took their heads with the same formation.
They had walked a long while when they sensed something different—an unfamiliar current of energy.
"Oh."
"Jackpot."
The shaft widened abruptly into a sudden, spacious chamber. The earth had been hollowed out into a cavern big enough to fit a large house.
Sticky black liquid pooled here and there across the floor. And—
"Eggs!!!"
Hydra eggs lay everywhere. About twenty large ones, each half the size of a person. Roughly twenty more of a smaller type.
The eggs sat half-submerged in the black fluid, as if taking a hot-spring half-bath. The liquid maintained their temperature and fed them nutrients.
"No matter how many times I see it, it's a ghastly sight. We should wipe them all out at once."
"The breeding rate is honestly impressive. They've barely been discovered and already there's this many…"
"It's a racial trait of the cosmic locust species. There's a reason the galaxy nearly fell to them once."
"Then let's finish them before we get fallen on ourselves."
"Ah—but if there's a nest, there has to be a broodmother nearby—"
—Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…….
A deep, low monster-sound rolled through the chamber.
The largest black pool shuddered—and a massive body burst up out of it.
The broodmother.
The queen that laid the eggs and guarded the nest.
Twice the size of an ordinary hydra, three times as vicious-looking.
Its eyes burned a vivid red, and its forelegs ended in great mantis-scythe claws. Hide and threat-spines were more ornate as well.
Worst of all—it had three heads. One large one in the center, and a tiny head on either side.
Utterly grotesque.
"The side heads are tiny—so it hasn't lived long. Meaning it's dog food the two of us can handle!"
Un-rang said it with relish.
"Good. Let's kill it fast and smash every egg in here. Man, how much is the bonus for this gonna be?"
Gong-ryun was just as fired up at the thought of the money.
They stood side by side and settled into combat stances.
This was open ground, not a narrow shaft—no phalanx this time.
The broodmother hydra sloshed out of the black pool, lifting its heads slightly—
—Kiiiiiiiiiiiiing
A strange sound rose from under its jaws, and its throats began to glow red-hot.
"Breath attack!!"