The Swarm Mother's Fire Breath
It is natural for serpents to unleash their breath.
"Devour. Breed. Migrate. They forever repeat only these three commands. Their behavioral algorithms matched a locust swarm with a precision that made the skin crawl. That same savagery that leaves no living thing in their path."
— Answer given by a renowned biologist of the age when asked why the Space Locusts were given such a name.
"Breath attack!!"
"We have to figure out exactly what kind of breath it is!"
And then the breath fired.
A seething red fireball erupted from the Swarm Mother's maw and hurtled straight toward the spot where Gong Ryun and Un-rang stood. Both men flung themselves in opposite directions.
KWA-AAAAANG!!!
The breath slammed into the ground where they had been an instant before. The moment it touched earth, the surface erupted in a violent explosion.
"Fire-type!!! It's a fire-type!!!"
"Single-shot explosive type! If it had been a flamethrower type we would have been in real trouble, hahaha!!"
"So we can just kill it like this?"
"Exactly! The most common type there is! As long as we dodge the breath well enough!!"
"Good! Let's go!!!"
They sprinted toward the Hydra. The creature spat several more fireballs, but both men had enough experience to handle it. Un-rang used his footwork to flow and change direction like water, slipping past every blast. Gong Ryun, less skilled in footwork, simply timed his rolls and threw himself hard to the side each time.
Un-rang, the superior footwork master, reached the Swarm Mother first. When its massive claws swept down, he angled the side of his iron staff and deflected the strike with exquisite precision. The follow-up bite he stopped by ramming the staff straight into the creature's open jaws.
Kkirrr-heuk!!!
The tip of the staff, loaded with internal energy, smashed into the Swarm Mother's soft palate. The monster reeled in pain, then clamped its jaws shut on the iron staff and tried to rake Un-rang with its claws again. Un-rang did not panic. Using the staff as a vaulting pole, he swung his entire body upward so that the claws whistled harmlessly past. Suspended in midair, he stomped on empty space with aerial stepping techniques and spun his body with violent force. The staff spun with him like a drill. He poured internal energy into the whirling weapon; the Swarm Mother took a grievous wound and spat the staff out.
In that same instant Gong Ryun arrived and launched the Golden Seize Technique. The Swarm Mother's posture was already broken.
"The belly hide under the chest!!! Aim there!!!"
Following Un-rang's shout, Gong Ryun drove his hand toward the softer hide. The monster, still reeling from pain, could not prevent the contact.
Golden Seize Technique.
Gong Ryun's hand crashed forward. Like a crocodile snapping at prey, the rough, rapid grip of his fingers closed in. The hand moved with such vivid life it seemed to possess a will of its own. Then it punched straight through the belly hide.
Kyaaaaaaaah!!!
First the soft palate, now the chest belly. The Hydra was given no respite from agony.
Kwadeudeuk!
Gong Ryun's hand kept burrowing deeper, the Golden Seize Technique stretching toward the organs. The Hydra fought with everything it had. Both mantis-like foreclaws lashed out at once. Gong Ryun caught the right-hand claw with his free hand and applied the Golden Seize Technique with both arms at the same time—one hand still gouging into the organs, the other crushing the claw in a death grip. Un-rang raised his staff and blocked the left claw.
Both claws pinned, the Swarm Mother was left completely exposed to the hand digging through its guts. It tried several more bites, but Un-rang interfered every time.
Kiiiiiiiiii!!!
In the end the Swarm Mother chose its final option.
Breath.
Strikes were not working; it decided to blast them off at point-blank range.
"Breath attack!!! Should we fall back!?"
"No!!! We finish it right here!! I'll handle the breath—Gong Ryun, inflict as much damage as you can!!!"
With those words Un-rang shoved the Hydra's claw hard enough to fling it away, then snapped into stance before the claw could return.
Lotus Ascending to Immortality
Internal energy flooded the iron staff until it shone pure white. Then the energy began to flow, carrying the laws of martial arts with it—like lotus petals scattered across a pond by a whirlwind, drawing circles, diffracting. Un-rang drove the staff upward from below in a perfect arc aimed straight at the Swarm Mother's central head.
The monster instinctively sensed the ominous current of energy and opened its jaws wide to unleash its breath at Un-rang. Whatever happened, it would not simply take the blow.
The Swarm Mother's throat glowed crimson. The breath was already racing up its neck; the fireball would erupt any second.
"Now!!!"
Un-rang's shout rang out. Gong Ryun answered by packing every scrap of internal energy he possessed into his gripping hand. That burning fist tore deeper through the entrails, scattering shredding force through the surrounding organs. Then he twisted. The monster's insides became a washing machine—an industrial top-loader. The worst possible agony of organs being ripped apart crashed over the beast.
!!!!!!!!!!!
The Swarm Mother's concentration shattered completely. At the same instant Un-rang's strike smashed into the underside of its jaw. The upward force slammed the jaws shut. Un-rang kept the staff jammed under the chin, preventing the mouth from opening again.
But a breath once begun never stops. The fireball still burned bright red inside the throat. It was a gun whose trigger had already been pulled; all that remained was for the bullet to fly, even if the muzzle was sealed.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Swarm Mother's eyes flew wide as it realized what was about to happen. Too late. The fireball breath raced up the neck, only to find the mouth blocked by Un-rang's staff. The two smaller heads growing on either side were still immature and unfinished; their narrow mouths could never vent a breath. The breath detonated inside the mouth.
KWA-AAAAAAAAANG!!!!!
Flames burst from the Swarm Mother's eye sockets and nostrils. The two side heads simply exploded from the shock. Gong Ryun, still elbow-deep in the guts, felt a flash of heat at his fingertips—the fire had filled even the internal cavity.
The stench of burning meat rose as the Swarm Mother slowly toppled.
Kung!!!
It hit the ground with a thunderous crash. The monster was dead.
"Whew. That was exhausting."
"You're telling me. Shit."
"Ahem, Gong Ryun! No foul language!"
Gong Ryun and Un-rang both collapsed onto the ground in a heap.
Pusuk!
Pusuk!
After a short rest they set about crushing the eggs. The shells were soft and rubbery; the slightest pressure made them collapse and burst.
Kiii-ierrrrrh…
A few were on the very brink of hatching. The hatchlings, surprisingly, did not look especially hideous—just oversized ordinary lizards. These were the creatures that would grow up to slaughter people. Left unchecked they would turn entire planets into nests, commit massacres, evolve at terrifying speed, and eventually duel high-level masters one-on-one…
There was a reason these things had once nearly brought the galaxy to extinction. Let even one survive and they multiplied like cockroaches and evolved again. That was the defining trait of the Space Locust species: infinite reproduction and infinite evolution. Hydras were merely one branch of them, and a relatively weak branch at that.
They had invaded from beyond the galaxy. Yes—these were life-forms from another galaxy entirely. Scholars speculated that before reaching our own they had already reduced several other galaxies to wastelands. Like a locust swarm they migrated from galaxy to galaxy, devouring everything in their path. Eventually they knocked on the door of our galaxy.
They chose the wrong opponent.
Humanity waged war against the Space Locusts for roughly a century—and won. The war had ended completely several decades earlier. Just as mankind had conquered plagues and insect pests, it had finally broken the Locusts' momentum and driven them into decline. No more vast insect armadas poured in from outside the galaxy; no more swarms measured in the trillions or quadrillions were observed. The cosmic horror that had ravaged and extinguished multiple galaxies was now classified as merely one more monster among the countless others of this galaxy. It had been reduced to a specially designated pest species requiring constant vigilance and early suppression.
And humans now used them as food ingredients as well.
Pusuk!
Pusuk!
They smashed every last egg. Once they had done this much, the quarantine teams that followed would finish any tiny eggs they might have missed and sterilize the entire site.
"Ahh, that feels good. Watching these things die fills the heart. We've done a fine deed today, hahaha."
"Yeah, it was a good deed. I feel pretty satisfied myself. We've done our share, right?"
"The bounty should be quite sweet too. Let's go have a drink."
"? You bastard—you made me neutralize all the alcohol I drank last time, and now you want to go drinking again?"
Gong Ryun was so incredulous that one of the rough curses he had lived with as a slave slipped out.
"Ahem, Gong Ryun! Drinking alone and drinking together are completely different things! And the reason you were drinking alone last time was because the flashbacks to your slave days gave you depression and you were moping around! If I hadn't dragged you out you would have spent the whole day crying in a corner and sipping again, wouldn't you?!! I did the right thing then!"
"…Shit, that's true, but…"
"And cut back on the swearing. Tsk!"
"…Fine."
This ridiculously helpful old fogey bastard…
Gong Ryun thought to himself.
"Let's go to the tavern the samurai wrecked in that life-or-death duel last time. I hear it's fully repaired now."
"They fixed it fast. Yeah. Carbonara and a cup of sake sound good."
"Aren't you sick of that carbonara yet?"
"You just don't understand the taste."
And so the two of them trudged out of the mine shaft. Outside, the sun was just setting. With that sunset as their backdrop, the two young men shuffled toward the shuttle vehicle.
As always the evening sky was beautiful, and another day for the dregs of the Unorthodox passed by.
(Illustration: Un-rang at a café. The food in his hands belongs to his other human friends.)