Chaos Unbound (4)
"The newly acquired unit with over 60% compatibility, Sophia, is about to awaken. Do you intend to leave her as she is?"
"If this were before, I might have. But now there’s no need to leave her alone."
[Conscious Link]—a function that lets me connect to the communication network shared by everyone. Honestly, if I had this function, there was no reason for me to communicate through nothing but text on a screen.
We could speak directly, after all. I still had time before leaving for the tournament venue, so I leaned back comfortably in my chair.
"Very well. Then I’ll see you there."
With Agares’s voice still lingering in my ears, my consciousness began to fade, slipping away as if I were falling asleep.
When I woke again, I was in a completely new space, not a dream. By now, I was familiar with this place, and I immediately began searching for Sophia.
"There she is."
It didn’t take long to find her. Crossing the vast expanse, I approached her side and slowly reached out to wake her.
She had likely spent herself in brutal combat, but the dark chestnut bob cut framing her face still revealed her to be a beautiful woman.
"Sophia. You should be able to get up now."
"Mm, ngh?!"
At my touch, her body gave a violent shudder and her brows furrowed. Soon after, she opened one eye, slowly, as though she couldn’t believe what she was sensing.
"Ah..."
And the moment she saw me, she let out a breathless murmur. Fear, mystery, confusion—all of it mixed into her gaze. It wasn’t a reaction I found unusual, so I ignored it and got straight to the point.
"Who are you?"
"Come to think of it, I suppose you never received any explanation... or, rather, you didn’t."
Unlike Lark or Lena, she had no information about me. That left me, flustered, with the burden of explaining myself—and us—to her.
I hurriedly recalled Karin’s face. The Karin who, when speaking her philosophy and proselytizing to others, could talk like a river pouring over a cliff; I tried to remember what sort of text she’d displayed when persuading people like Lark.
"We are the ones you know as the Black Beetles. Our true name is Ascalas. As for what kind of existence we are, and what purpose we serve, you’ll understand in detail once you come to in your new body."
"That’s impossible... W-wait, come to think of it!"
Compared to everything that had happened so far, my explanation was almost plainspoken, and she shook her head in disbelief before suddenly widening her eyes. It was as if something had come back to her.
She was probably remembering her final moments.
"Why did you bring me to a place like this? I’ve heard the Black Beetles are monstrous creatures that kill people and use them as feed..."
"That is, of course, an undeniable fact. But we don’t use everyone as feed. If you remember, there were others who joined us to obtain what they wanted, much like the ones who saved you right before your death. Not just anyone can do it—only those with an extremely rare and exceptional talent."
"Then you don’t just eat people... you turn them into monsters."
Horrified, Sophia looked at me with a flash of hostility. If I thought about it from the other side, her suspicion wasn’t wrong. She had lost everything to monsters from beyond her world.
To her, we would look the same. That was an undeniable truth. But the once frail, inexperienced boy who couldn’t sleep over a single malicious comment was no longer someone who would even blink at such a thick, sharp hostility.
"Sophia, as a loser who was pushed out in the competition, you don’t actually have a choice. I don’t feel like letting go of you after obtaining you at such cost, either. But the fact that you have such high compatibility means there’s surely a desire in you that’s carved into your bones. So this will hardly be a bad contract."
"...If it were you, if it were you, the one who seems to be the leader of the Black Beetles... do you know who stands behind the undead?"
The hostility in her eyes wavered, then finally receded. Instead, she asked me about the skeleton player—the one responsible for the zombie catastrophe. As expected, her primary desire was revenge. Revenge against the being that had ruined her life, her routine, her family.
I was familiar with that. Most of the ones who ended up at my side had first been burning with a fierce thirst for revenge.
"Against that enemy of ours as well, we may put you—newly born—at the front of the line when the time comes to cut off his head. If you can live for nothing but that from this moment on, then by all means, open your eyes."
It was time for her mind to return. Sophia’s consciousness before me sank once more into darkness, and the Sophia growing inside the cocoon through the experience points I had invested into her opened red pupils within her blackened eyes.
I had already examined her condition in advance and made her into what seemed the most suitable high-ranking species: a Host.
Somewhat unexpectedly, she emerged from the cocoon with a nature quite different from that of a Knight.
Her appearance was very different from before. Her face remained nearly the same, but her body, wrapped in a thin black carapace like scales, revealed every curve beneath it, while at her waist there now hung the massive body of a centipede like a tail.
When she straightened the centipede’s body, armored in a hard exoskeleton and lined with countless legs, her feet rose from the ground and her head nearly touched the cavern’s vast, high ceiling.
"..."
Sophia merely looked down at her changed body and, from time to time, touched it lightly. Like Robinson, she had long since departed from human appearance, yet she seemed oddly calm now that she had become this.
Of course, I, who had become completely used to such things by now, felt nothing at the sight either. In fact... I had reached the point where I found those inhuman forms beautiful, including Lena and Karin.
"What the hell."
I slapped my own cheek. I was clearly getting drunk on the atmosphere.
"If the Knight handles the legion’s vanguard with her reckless charge, the Artillery handles the rear with firepower, and the Priestess takes care of support and internal affairs, then the Host is in charge of maintaining and controlling the legion. Using the spawning spores stored within her body, she can breed Minions on her own even when there are no targets to infect with essence."
"So she can mass-produce troops even in places where we can’t build a nest."
Hearing Agares’s explanation, I took another look at the high-ranking species I had never studied before: the Host.
As the description had suggested, her role was indeed clear. A mobile incubator. If we sent out each kind of high-ranking species together, we could turn any place into our land without needing to build a nest or spend any resources.
"This gives us a much wider range of strategies."
My head throbbed. But I didn’t dislike it. In the end, these complicated branches of possibility were proof of our growth.
Compared to only a few months ago, when all we did was fight, this was absurd progress.
"Then I suppose it’s about time we prepared to go to the arena..."
"Wait. There’s still one thing left."
I was about to put my phone away, break the Conscious Link, and return to reality. But just then, Agares stopped me.
"Why all of a sudden?"
"We’re not done yet. At present, the spores inside Sophia, now a Host, are completely empty. You need to infuse her body with the Great Lord’s essence before she can produce spawning spores."
"Can’t that be done after I get out of here?"
"Your Synchronization Rate is currently 45%... at this level, it may become a rather novel stimulus, so why not try it? Consider it a suggestion from your guide."
Agares insisted that I watch Sophia in this state.
It was rather questionable. I had tried Essence Infusion on Karin several times before, but every one of those had been nothing more than a few taps on a screen.
"And this is supposed to help me?"
"...I assure you it will."
Still, with Agares pressuring me that strongly, it was difficult to refuse. And while I was hesitating, Sophia had already reached the deepest tunnel of the Great Lord’s lair.
[Essence Infusion on Sophia]
"Looks like nothing’s different."
I muttered under my breath as I gave the order through my phone. For the moment, there was no change at all.
"Hm?"
And then, at the very instant the Great Lord, crouched as always to infuse essence, raised its massive body and wrapped Sophia in its tentacles to hold her still, her body surrendering without resistance...
the consciousness of the woman lying before me slowly rose, eyes still closed, and approached me.
"Shouldn’t you be getting ready by now?"
"Yeah. I’ll bring Hajin hyung, so go on ahead."
It was time to board the vehicle to head for the arena. Im Chan-gyu sent the rest of the team off first, then headed toward the next room.
"We should be going now, though?"
The door was locked tighter than usual. He knocked, but there was no answer. He sent a message, but no one read it.
He was always glued to his phone, so there was no way he would simply ignore a message unless something was wrong.
"Hyung?"
With that thought flashing through his mind, Im Chan-gyu grabbed the doorknob and jiggled it. In that instant, the door flew open, and Hajin showed his face through the gap.
"I’m coming out now. Go down first."
"Did you sleep? But you’re sweating..."
"A-ah, I had a nightmare."
He forced out an awkward smile and sent Im Chan-gyu back downstairs.
Afterward, he roughly wiped away the sweat that had gathered on him, let out a deep sigh, and changed into his uniform. Top and bottom, all of it. Then he threw them into the washing machine and turned it on.
"This is not good."
"Shut up. I’m never trusting you again."
He even tore out the earbuds he had been wearing, grabbed his phone, and hurried down to the lower floor.