Cutting the Tail
While the search for an exit was underway, Alan threw himself into a proper investigation of the cavern's interior.
Even as fixed illuminators made from enormous Moon Crystal Lenses bathed the Icesteel crystals in light, not a single fragment crumbled loose.
Several of the illuminators had been knocked out of commission by the scale-worms' attacks, and the combatants were busy exterminating the cavern's owners one by one.
Figures in white lab coats operated observation instruments, examining both the scale-worm corpses and the Icesteel crystals.
Round shapes clung to the surface of the crystals like grapes, and faint, wriggling movement could be detected within.
Taylor witnessed the scene as well.
"A scale-worm spawning ground? Then what's with the legs? Why does a worm have legs?"
"Brother, about that—do you perhaps have something wrong with your eyes?"
"Alan checked them for me just a few days ago. I can see fine. It's the worm that shouldn't be underground, that's my point."
The moment the words left his mouth, the worm's belly skin began to churn—like a swarm of elongated creatures thrashing about in a frenzy. The movement built to a breaking point, and then—
Kieeeek!
The abdomen ruptured, and baby scale-worms poked their faces out. Whether they had devoured something in there, their bellies were plump and swollen, and they tumbled downward with wet splats.
It was enough to make anyone's face scrunch up in disgust, but the researchers operated their Evies without so much as a flinch, unleashing spells to dispatch the little creatures. The more they did, the more frenzied the adult scale-worms became—but dealing with them was the combatants' job anyway.
Golems and automatons handled most of the defense. Even when something broke through the front line, the combatants' bodies were shielded by thick mana barriers.
The fighting was intensely stimulating at first, but repetition breeds numbness. The combatants, too, were beginning to show signs of boredom.
"Can't we just seal up all the holes?"
"You think we haven't tried? These things burrow through solid rock—what's a plug going to stop? Just do as you're told. The Colonel is sending us a Death Eye... ah, there it is."
A silver-gray sphere emerged from the very passage Alan had slipped out of. It floated through the air, drifting toward the combatants.
Whenever a scale-worm blocked its path, a section of surface armor would open and a gun barrel slid out.
KWAAANG!
A single shell reduced a five-meter scale-worm to a spray of blood. Detecting numerous enemies, the sphere extended barrels in every direction, taking on the silhouette of a sea urchin.
With the enemies wiped out in one blow, the commotion in the cavern died down fast.
Watching the combatants celebrate among themselves, Taylor scowled.
"Don't tell me..."
"What is it?"
"The Death Eye's observation capability is nothing to sneeze at. Low-grade invisibility magic is child's play for it to see through."
Just as Taylor said, the Death Eye began to change. Its surface armor rippled and reshaped itself into something like a human pupil, sweeping this way and that to check for any enemies still lingering nearby.
Each time the Death Eye's gaze passed over a spot, a heavy mana wavelength surged. And that gaze turned toward the place where Alan was hiding.
Viiiing!
It pulsed with noticeably stronger output several times, then turned its eye elsewhere.
Taylor let out a breath of relief, and Shiva gave a thumbs-up. Alan himself paid the reactions no mind—he was staring fixedly at the Death Eye.
I'd love to examine that thing...
Its hovering, observation, and bombardment capabilities were genuinely appealing. There were surely other functions too, but those were the three traits that stood out.
Just then, Taylor gave Alan's shoulder a light tap.
"Alan, you see that over there?"
"Yes."
Where Taylor pointed, another passage bored into the rock—of all places, in the direction opposite from where they stood.
That meant they would have to cross the open cavern, and worse, the squad members who had just finished fighting were returning to alert positions.
No matter how good his concealment was, it worked best when he stood still. The moment he moved, the odds of being spotted by the Death Eye shot up dramatically.
"There is a way."
"Which is?"
"Turning the enemy against the enemy. It was originally a means I researched for evasion—but it seems it has other uses."
Alan put thought into action at once. Before anyone noticed, the spider clinging to the ceiling scattered a fierce pulse in every direction.
The Death Eye, lazily patrolling the area, snapped its gaze up to the ceiling—then slowly swung its sightline toward the spot where Alan hid.
"Uh-oh. We've been spotted."
"They won't have time to deal with us."
Just as the Death Eye opened fire, something surging up from below interrupted it.
Scale-worms far larger than before began appearing like bamboo shoots after rain. Drawn by the aura of a great meal, these specimens were at least twice the size of the ones that had originally claimed the cavern.
Tunnel (4)
The battle Alan ignited by pulling the trigger was far more grueling than the last.
With the scale-worms' length at least doubled, their volume had multiplied several times over. Size meant power, and to sustain that power, their bodies had hardened accordingly.
They couldn't be brought down the way the smaller ones had been. The trigger had to be held far longer, and far more magic had to be poured into each kill.
Worse, the scale-worms' nature turned the battle into a chaotic brawl. They dropped from the ceiling and erupted from the floor, and the frequency of close-quarters encounters spiked accordingly.
Kieeeek!
The head of one caught square by a fireball went up in flames, and it shrieked as its body convulsed.
A creature longer than ten meters thrashing about covered an enormous area, and one combatant engaged with another specimen was swept into its torso.
The blue mana barrier shattered like glass. From there, it would be down to combat suit and flesh alone—and in sheer mass and crushing force, the scale-worm outclassed him several times over.
The worm he had originally been fighting swung its jaws wide and swallowed the fallen soldier whole. Each time its mouth worked, fragments of red-painted armor plate rained down.
Cayden squeezed his eyes shut at the brutal sight, but when Alan pushed at his back, he had no choice but to lift his eyelids, fighting to keep from stumbling.
"Focus. We have to punch through that."
"Now?"
"We could wait for one side to win, but the future is unpredictable. MM Corp could send more reinforcements, or a scale-worm we can't handle could show up."
When Alan struck his shoulder firmly, the focus nearly gone from Cayden's eyes came back. Even with his mind on the verge of bursting, he managed to voice one worry.
"That face of yours..."
"I'm wearing a mask right now, aren't I."
"Oh. Right."
The mask covered a considerable area, hiding everything from below the eyes to the chin. Still, to reassure the uneasy Cayden, Alan handed him an iron plate etched with several runes.
"Runes that disrupt recognition and observation. Even if footage gets recorded, you'll appear blurred. No need to worry."
"Thank you."
"Alan, ready?"
"Let's go."
The instant Alan finished speaking, Taylor took the lead. Shiva draped a white barrier over his body. Box fell in behind them, and Alan forcibly seated Cayden atop the Panther.
"Hold on tight."
The moment the veins stood out on the back of Cayden's hands, the Panther launched forward.
Before following, Alan swept the battlefield in a single glance. He focused his mind on the mana he had pre-spread through the area, and it wove itself into a dense net that enveloped the combatants.
What he was doing wasn't meant to help the combatants, or to hinder them—it was to eliminate variables.
As he drove his mana deep, three circles bloomed across his face, and his brow glowed brilliantly. The moment the light peaked to the point that even his visor could barely contain it—
His amplified mind seized the net-spread mana, imbued each of its countless threads, and set them moving with cunning precision.
What Alan was targeting were the observation devices used by the combatants and researchers. If all he did was disrupt video and photography, the time it took them to identify this side would stretch enormously.
Crack!
The lenses of action cams clipped to combatants' suits and shoulder cams on researchers fractured. The mana that had already infiltrated the devices also shattered their memory crystals.
It was possible because everyone's mind was consumed by the battle—and because the caster was Alan.
Multi-hacking that would demand sustained concentration even from a mage of considerable skill, finished in a single stroke—he then chased after his companions. The distance between them hadn't grown all that far.
"Oh, now that's..."
Running past the area where the researchers were mostly arrayed, in front of a massive Icesteel crystal, something caught his eye. A Moon Crystal dropped by one of the illuminators shattered in the chaos.
As the name implied, it was a crystal harvested from the moon—hard to come by, and expensive enough to account for seventy percent of an illuminator's price.
Alan's waist folded naturally, and his hand moved on pure instinct to snatch the Moon Crystal up.
Beep!
Box, scampering ahead, was also pilfering Moon Crystals on his master's behalf. When Alan hurled one like a discus, Box—having received the signal in advance—caught it with his pincers and tucked it away inside his chest.
While Taylor carved a path from the front and Shiva kept feeding him barriers, Alan subtly interfered with the combatants' magitech tools and magicware.
Hacking them into attacking each other would have been ideal, but the situation was too urgent, and their firewalls were far thicker than the cameras'—the time cost was steep.
So for now, rather than outright seizing control, inducing tiny faults in their components was far easier and more efficient.
"Stop! Cease fire!"
A combatant who had transformed his prosthetic arm into a cannon fired at a slightly wrong angle—into an ally.
"We're being hacked! Counter-interfere! No—why me?!"
Alan forcibly twisted the mana attempting to hack and drove it into another combatant's head. Apparently their resistance to friendly fire was weak; the artificial eyeball burst on the spot.
Alan slipped swiftly past the soldier clutching his face. The others had already cleared the open ground—all he had to do was arrive.
"There you are."
The moment Alan entered the passage, the waiting Taylor dashed forward again.
"Ugh! We're running again?"
"You're getting a free ride. Just hold on."
"I haven't eaten anything, my stomach's..."
Cayden groaned. His pale face spoke volumes about his sincerity, but escaping meant ignoring such trifles.
"Finish that sentence and you'll lose your tongue."
Taylor's warning shut the mouth of Cayden, who hung off the Panther like a sack of luggage.
After running for a while, the group slowed to a stop without anyone saying a word, leaning against the wall to catch their breath.
"Brother Alan, that mask is truly magnificent. With fresh oxygen supplied continuously, my physical performance holds at its peak."
"You're something else yourself."
"This is precisely the moment to praise Brother Alan's preparedness."
"He'd rather have memory crystals and books than compliments..."
"Wait."
At Alan's words as he scanned the path behind them, everyone fell silent. Taylor looked in the same direction and asked,
"Why?"
"Someone—no, something—is following us."
Alan raised the output of his mana-wavelength detector. The antenna pulsed out a strong wave, rendering the cave's interior on his visor as a polygonal mesh. And there, it caught something anomalous.
"The Death Eye. MM Corp came out on top, then."
It was a result he had more or less expected. They had driven off the scale-worms to research something—so no matter how chaotic it got, calling it a repeat of the same old work was fair.
"Shall we run again?"
"No. To escape safely, we cut off the tail."
Before Alan had even finished speaking, the space beyond lit up brilliantly. The light was the Death Eye's bombardment—a long-tailed streak flying at them like a comet.
"It has guidance capability too."
"Brace for impact!"
Taylor hadn't even needed to say it—Alan was already prepared. He generated a barrier with his Rune Canvas and ringed it across their front.
Then, impact. The mana beam struck the barrier at an angle, bent, and slammed into the ceiling.
CRUMBLE!
The ground must have been unstable, for it collapsed at once. Before Taylor could even shout, a wall of rock rose up between Alan and the rest of the group.
As Alan stared hard into the cavern, the silver-gray sphere came floating serenely toward him. Its surface was somewhat dented, but it seemed to be operating without serious issue.
Alan was pondering how to engage it while preserving as many components as possible. Had Taylor been there, he'd have barked at him—but with the rock wall in the way, it didn't matter.
Though to someone else, that contemplation might have looked like a man steeling himself for a last stand.
A deep, ferocious voice echoed through him. The voice alone was enough to imagine what its owner's form must look like.
"No. I miscalculated the angle."
"Might I ask who you are?"
"You have no intention of telling me. Then—could you simply let me pass?"