Absorbing the Mother
"Mmm~ Using a bit of power after so long really loosens the body up."
Having wiped out the elite Crypters in a single stroke, Jincheon cracked his neck left and right, a look of pure satisfaction on his face.
Naturally the mercenaries—and even Jincheon's own women—wore blank, stupefied expressions; none of them had imagined he could be this strong. True, he had already dragged distant war wreckage across the void and stacked it right in front of the pirate fortress, yet there was a world of difference between merely seeing the result and watching the entire process unfold.
Jincheon flashed a brief smile at the silent or gaping mercenaries, then strode into the power room.
"Let's see what this Mother actually looks like."
At last the moment had come to face the sovereign of the space monsters—the Mother itself.
Jincheon smashed the power-room door open and stepped inside.
"This is the Mother?"
The instant he beheld its true form, Jincheon frowned in open disappointment. Honestly, the name "Mother" had raised his expectations just a little. Exactly what those expectations had been, he left to the imagination. Unfortunately, the moment his eyes fell on the three-to-four-meter gray mass squatting in the center of the chamber, every last scrap of anticipation was crushed without mercy.
Viscous slime, like the head of an octopus, kept its surface constantly moist; a steady thump-thump announced that the thing was very much alive.
"Th-this huge a Mother…"
"Just how many ships has it swallowed…?"
The mercenaries who had followed him in were stunned the second they saw its abnormal bulk.
Now that he knew what Crypters were, Jincheon had no intention of ever accepting another purification request. He therefore used the opportunity to examine everything he could about them.
Outward appearance is boring. There's a sealed hole mark here—does it birth Crypters through that?
The exterior offered nothing of real interest, so the surface inspection ended quickly.
"All right, time to remove the Mother without damaging the power core—"
"Wait."
The moment the mercenaries moved to begin the removal, Jincheon stopped them with a low, quiet command.
"…"
Having witnessed his power with their own eyes, they offered not a single protest and simply crouched in the corner.
Finding nothing further on the surface, Jincheon laid his hand on the Mother's body.
I've always wondered what the monsters in horror movies are thinking. Might as well settle that curiosity right now.
While still linked, he forcibly drove his own Simsang Segye into the Mother.
The mental world wrenched open; he could now read its thoughts—
Kikikikikikkkekkkkk—!
"Hmm…"
An ear-splitting screech and a wave of primal killing intent no civilized being could ever possess twisted Jincheon's face for an instant.
Huh?
Not only that—it was invading his Simsang Segye and attacking him?
How absurd the situation was: roughly equivalent to drawing Sword Gang without any Inner Qi method at all. Had he not lost his dantian, absorbed Chiwu's Essence, and survived the soul-battle inside the Simsang Segye where Chiwu tried to annihilate him and seize his body, he would never even have known how to open the mental world. He himself had floundered, nearly losing his soul because he had no idea how to fight there—yet this Mother entity counterattacked with ferocious precision.
In short, either the Simsang Segye was not new to it, or it struck with instincts that transcended ordinary cognition. The more pressing fact, however, was that it was baring its teeth and gnawing at him.
Who the hell do you think you're messing with?
Paaak!
!!
Inside the Simsang Segye, Jincheon simply crushed the Mother's soul beneath his own, reducing it to a wreck with almost casual force.
Not particularly useful, but I might as well absorb it as loot.
When souls merge, the grade of the soul rises and the memories of both beings fuse. The superior will can then absorb the lesser under its own lead; to keep from forgetting the existence of "I," one must never lower one's guard. Once, when Chiwu had been absorbing him, Jincheon had read the memory of the woman Chiwu loved betraying him, used that memory to reverse the flow, and under his own lead claimed Chiwu's memories instead.
Hmm? What's this?
As he absorbed the Mother's soul and sifted through its memories, Jincheon's expression turned to surprise. The knowledge required to birth organisms of tremendous physical power was impressive enough, yet what truly sparked his curiosity was the fact that the Mother could control the consciousness of every Crypter in real time.
With this method I could control the Crypters myself.
According to the Mother's memories, the number of Crypters it could create was virtually infinite. Their only drawback was that they did nothing until ordered—but if that flaw were remedied, they could be produced and employed in countless ways. Manufacture Crypters specialized for repair, combat, or defense, then send Will to pilot them. For Jincheon, who had already been fretting over how to crew a larger ship later on, the news was excellent.
Even with full automation a destroyer still needed twenty to thirty people, a cruiser fifty to a hundred, a battleship-class vessel a minimum of two to five hundred. If those numbers could be filled with Crypters, he could field an entire fleet with the personnel he already had.
"Hey."
"W-what is it, sir?"
When Jincheon turned toward the three team leaders, they jumped and answered like brand-new recruits.
"This thing's pretty interesting, so I'm taking it."
"That's…"
"You object?"
"…No, sir."
Across the galaxy many scientists shared exactly the same idea and poured their lives into research on controlling Mothers. A non-automated battleship required five hundred to two thousand crew just to bring every system online. Larger dreadnought-class vessels needed tens of thousands; titan-class ships demanded still more. Yet if Crypters could be controlled, those same giants could be operated by a few dozen people handling only the truly critical systems. Selling the Mother to such scientists would have fetched an enormous price—but the moment Jincheon declared he was taking it, no one dared argue. They had already seen with their own eyes that resistance would be crushed and subdued in an instant.
"Thankfully you still have some conscience. I hate bastards who treat goodwill like a right more than anything."
Jincheon lifted the Mother's body with a casual application of Heogongsbeomul. Instantly the energy it had been devouring flowed back into the ship as normal.
Ting—tingtingtingting—
Wooooong—
Every system returned to life; machinery hummed into motion. Outside, bright ceiling lights banished the darkness. With the Mother's soul extinguished, any remaining Crypters aboard the freighter would now be nothing more than living corpses.
True to his word, Jincheon let every mercenary freeload the entire request, then returned to his own ship carrying the soulless Mother body. The employer cheered with pure joy at recovering the freighter; once it had been delivered to Keren according to the contract, each mercenary received a staggering seven hundred thousand credits. Even for a man of fairly high rank in a major corporation the sum was a painful hemorrhage—yet compared with the loss of the Larium it was a drop in the ocean.
Having earned enough to re-modify their mechas, Jincheon's party prepared to head for the commercial district.
"W-wait just a moment, please!"
The mercenaries suddenly called out and swarmed around him.
"If it's all right with you, would you become our leader—"
"No."
"Huh? Why…?"
"Do you find it fun just breathing and getting paid for it?"
"Of course it's fun, isn't it?"
"…"
They answered as though the question itself were ridiculous. Jincheon sighed; his analogy clearly did not translate in this world.
"Not me. I only tried it once out of brief curiosity. What I actually enjoy is piloting."
The mercenaries still failed to understand. They could not comprehend a man who deliberately walked away from the easiest path to easy money.
"My operating principles are fun, curiosity, enjoyment, and pleasure. Crypter purification was curiosity. That curiosity is now satisfied, so I have no further reason to do it."
With that final warning not to bother him again, Jincheon left with his women.
In the end the mercenary band dissolved. A few of them, however, had recorded the battle on their Bio Devices and uploaded the footage to the mercenary deep web. The reaction was, in its own way, entirely predictable.
Even the mercenaries who had been on the same request and insisted the footage was genuine failed to gain the slightest credibility. Anyone who knew even a little about Crypters understood that casually tearing them apart, exploding them, and slaughtering them without a single scratch was simply impossible. In the end the video was declared a composite, the poster was dog-piled, and the thread was deleted.
Yet that tiny incident would trigger an unexpected chain of events.
"Damn, they really blew them up good."
"Looks like a professional's work. Blended in without any sense of wrongness."
"Yeah. Even the direction the blood and flesh spray isn't clumsy."
Inside the headquarters of the Resily Mercenary Corps, a group of mercenaries on break were sharing a video on their Bio Devices and snickering among themselves.
"Hmm."
Resily, her pure-white scales flawless, found her attention drawn by whatever meme had them so entertained.
"My subordinates have been watching something with great interest lately. What is it?"
The aide walking beside her answered with a faint smile.
"A video recently appeared on the eastern-space mercenary deep web and was quickly taken down. The content was so absurd that it spread everywhere almost instantly."
"Absurd content?"
"Yes. A composite of some Terran single-handedly massacring Crypters."
"Pfft. Whoever made it should have at least tried for a little realism. If a Terran were that strong, the representative of the Taizan Federation would have changed by now."
"Still, people say watching him slaughter the Crypters so cleanly and exhilaratingly is quite satisfying. Perfect for stress relief, apparently."
"Stress relief? That good?"
"I watched it once myself. It felt so refreshing I almost felt better. Whoever made a composite or production this polished should quit being a mercenary and get a job at a broadcast station."
"Hmm."
Curiosity piqued by her aide's words, Resily decided it would only take a moment to look. There were times, sitting in this office, when one craved not deep, serious footage but a B-grade action movie that simply smashed and destroyed everything in sight.
She found the video on her Bio Device and hit play.
"…!!"
Thump!
The instant the protagonist's face appeared, Resily's heart pounded harder than it ever had in her life—so hard the mere sensation made her chest ache as though it would burst.
Th-this man…!
He was the exact double of the man who appeared in her dreams.
Moments later the footage showed him tearing Crypters apart and destroying them.
"Hahahaha. What do you think? It's a composite, but the exhilarating flavor is strong, isn't it?"
"…"
No… this… isn't a composite…
Her reason insisted it was false, yet her instincts screamed that it was neither lie nor fabrication.
I… know these movements…!
A violent sense of déjà vu washed over her as she watched the man—Jincheon—rip and crush the Crypters. Her already pale skin turned even whiter.
—Jinrang. It's Jinrang. I have to find him. I have to find Jinrang…—
Khh…! Shut up…!
"Commander?"
"Ah… yes?"
"Your expression looks terrible. Are you unwell?"
"N-no. I just want to be alone for a moment."
"Understood. I'll step out for a while."
"Mm…"
After sending the aide away, Resily made her way to an empty officers' lounge.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wanted to find the man before her eyes, crush him in her arms until bones broke. She wanted to feel his body heat. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to scream that she loved him.
"I… I'm disappearing…!"
Resily violently shook her head, fighting the fierce demand rising from her own heart.
Dangerous. If this man and I meet face to face… I will no longer be myself…!
She instinctively knew that the moment their eyes met, her existence would become something else. That was why the perfect likeness of the man whom the Terran woman named Im Hayeon—seen only in her dreams—had loved to the point of madness filled her with both intense longing and deep revulsion.
Barely mastering the turmoil, she spoke through gritted teeth toward the image of Jincheon casually slaughtering Crypters on the screen.
"I have to kill him."
To protect her own existence, this man had to die.
"I must kill him before he ever becomes aware of me…!"
Squeezing out every scrap of her will, Resily fixed a murderous glare on the man in the video—Jincheon.