Chapter 23

chapter 23

crunch!

i yanked the throat of one of the pirates with a swift motion. his head, still partly attached to the spine, dangled, brownish blood oozing profusely.

this guy belonged to a species called rockwalkers. they were an intelligent species that lived on a planet filled with rocks and metals, sustaining themselves by consuming minerals. while their initial appearance in the settings might have sparked curiosity among science fiction enthusiasts, in the actual game, they didn’t differ much from regular humanoids.

except for their skin, which was as rough and hard as stone, everything inside them, including the flowing blood, was just like any other biological being.

using the rockwalker’s head, from which blood was dripping, i vigorously struck the head of a nearby cyborg. the cyborg’s head became as unrecognizable as a watermelon smashed to bits.

‘that makes it two teams.’

this time, our target was the group heading to the laboratory. just like the group that went to the armory, they entered the laboratory in a state of complacency. when i arrived, only three of them remained.

the other three had already dissolved into the acidic slime.

‘sigh, lost two of them.’

i munched on the remaining lower halves of the cyborgs. just to be sure, i detached one of their legs and tried eating it, but it didn’t count towards the evolution condition. it seemed that the text box only recognized those i had killed.

similarly, the predation effect didn’t trigger either. the chance of the predation effect occurring on corpses i hadn’t killed was quite low. it was almost like sampling, and it didn’t seem to count for much.

i spat out the steel i had been chewing on. in the game, even amorph could chew on machines, but it was challenging to adapt to it in reality. it felt like chewing chicken bones down to the marrow.

“cough, hack, guh...”

next to me, 26 was killing one of the cyborgs. it seemed to have caught on, as it hunted skillfully without my help. although the cyborg struggled desperately to tear 26 apart to escape, 26 held onto its neck, choking it without moving an inch.

even as a cyborg, at its core, it was still human. if it couldn’t breathe, it would die.

before the cyborg’s breath was cut off, i destroyed its heart with my tail. as i killed the prey, 26 retreated from the throat and sent a pulse in my direction.

「baby, are you hungry?」

[zzz zzz (i have to kill creatures like this)]

「yeah.」

[zzz zzzzz (then eat that)]

「alright, enjoy your meal.」

i felt sorry for 26, but i had to kill and eat the cyborg for it to count. i gave 26 the rockwalker and picked up the cyborg’s corpse.

just as i was about to take a bite, the communication device on my combat arm, which i had been carrying, rang.

[alive and kicking, you guys. report.]

[i-i’m in the command center. ah, still in the middle of work!]
[in the cargo container, these guys seem incredibly wealthy. there’s so much stuff to take; it’s like a gold mine.]

[boss, the dining area is in complete chaos. there’s not a single edible thing left.]

“we’re searching the armory.”

[why aren’t the guys who went to the lab answering?]

after mimicking the voice of the guy from the armory, i answered quickly and then swiftly bit into the cyborg’s body. the small organ structure in my throat mutated quickly to produce a new voice.

in a short amount of time, after finishing the mutation, i looked at the communication device that had been lying next to the corpse and replied.

“no issues in the lab.”

[huh? you’re not the communication officer, right? why are you holding the communication device?]

“uh, well, the communication officer is currently preparing for the demolition.”

[...is that so? alright then, click.]

the boss ended the communication with a suspicious tone. whoever the boss was, they seemed quite intelligent. it was unusual for pirates to maintain such a systematic hierarchy.

normally, hulk mutants had reduced intelligence due to the side effects of genetic modification, but this boss appeared to be different.

‘maybe they’ve been modified with some technology i don’t know about.’

these smart hulk mutants were a creature i hadn’t encountered in the game.

‘i doubt the original is around anyway. let’s be cautious just in case.’

‘predator senses’ followed by an intelligent hulk mutant. the differences from the game keep piling up. it’s making me nervous but also piquing my interest.

‘come to think of it, there’s 26 too.’

that pink bubble amoeba busily munching on rockwalker’s internals is quite different from its game counterpart. it might be the mascot, but it certainly wasn’t as intelligent in the game.

the unidentified enemy had already launched an assault.

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‘a clever one.’

even high-ranking humans fell for the imitation, but elchen wasn’t fooled. perhaps the hulk mutant was more like a clever beast than an intelligent being. it seemed he had noticed the trap through his wild instincts.

‘it’s too late anyway.’

we had just left the laboratory and returned to the nest in the cooling room. currently, my auxiliary system is monitoring my designated area on the ship. the pirates’ movement towards the laboratory is clearly visible.

this time, i plan to attack the enemy in a new way. i laid down on the ship in the nest and closed my eyes. as my auxiliary system reached my designated area on the ship, my sensory perception, which had been limited to my physical body, gradually expanded.

my consciousness flowed through the ship, starting from the cooling room, through the corridors and into other rooms. the sensory flow that began in the cooling room spread like ripples through the ship’s passageways and chambers.

people who have used drugs often describe feeling something transcendent beyond the boundaries of their physical bodies. could what i’m experiencing now be something similar?

every time i breathed, the tendrils trembled, seemingly breathing along with me. the chill i felt from the metal plates that the tendrils enveloped made me shiver involuntarily.

finally, the auxiliary system completed the connection. the enemies were no different from creatures crawling within me. i issued a command to the spores with neurotoxic abilities along the path to the laboratory.

‘activate.’

as if issuing commands from my brain to the nerves within my body, the auxiliary system conveyed my orders to the tendrils. the spores responded by expelling their venom in unison.

from the ceiling, walls, rooms, corridors, floors – it didn’t matter where – a highly toxic substance that paralyzed living organisms rained down throughout the ship.

i could sense the confusion of the pirates as they grappled with this completely unexpected attack. desperately trying to destroy the spores and cut down the tendrils to escape, they didn’t last long. their bodies, in defiance of their owners’ will, turned into lifeless husks. some who quickly realized that the spores were the problem managed to escape, but the majority made foolish choices.

‘success.’

i had expected to fail, but attempting to control through the link to the nest was only possible after becoming an apex organism.

‘in the game, that is.’

i tried it in the real world, wondering if it might work, and it succeeded. of course, it wasn’t a reckless gamble. there were enough factors for success: the nest was still small, i was familiar with the areas i had already visited, and there weren’t many spores. my expectations had turned out to be spot on.

‘the ones who got away are just five.’

more than half had fallen victim to the spore assault. the seven who couldn’t escape lay motionless on the ground, waiting for death to claim them.

i rose from the nest. the thin tentacles below my chin dropped from the nest, and for a moment, i felt a sense of inertia. it was like the soul that freely roamed the infinite space was once again imprisoned in a body called the flesh.

the sense of inertia didn’t last long, but the energy expended in controlling the nest didn’t return. i felt a strong hunger, a sensation i hadn’t experienced in a while.

[zzzzzzz zzz (i’m hungry, let’s go get some food)]

「yeah.」

i carried 26 on my shoulder and headed for the laboratory. on the way, i saw fallen pirates. it was typical pirate behavior to mercilessly abandon colleagues who seemed hopeless. it’s good for me that i didn’t have to fight while hungry.

i gnawed on the fallen pirates unceremoniously. with each bite of my teeth, i could feel their bodies twitching. their movements were as lively as a freshly caught fish flipping about.

did they know? the more they resisted, the more saliva flowed into my mouth. my teeth tore into the enemy’s flesh without restraint, and my four arms crushed their bones and plucked out their organs.

i was so hungry that even machine parts passing through my throat didn’t feel repulsive. the silent feast in the corridor had come to a triumphant conclusion.

‘now, there are only two left.’

out of seven, five were cyborgs. i had already devoured eight cyborgs, so i needed only two more to complete my evolution into an apex organism.

i followed the traces of the pirates who had escaped, using one of the cyborg’s finger bones as a toothpick.

they were hiding somewhere other than the laboratory. it turned out to be the crew’s workout room.

‘of all places, they had to run here.’

the workout room was a spacious area, so it was probably chosen because it offered a good shooting angle.

the problem was that the dead crew members had also acted the same way. the place where camaraderie was fostered among comrades had long become a slaughterhouse at my hands.

from behind the broken door, the fearful people inside emitted pheromones and breath. it was clear they were startled as soon as i entered. the sight of walls and floors covered in blood as soon as i walked in must have been quite shocking.

more than 20 people had died inside. adding five more wouldn’t make much of a difference.

i handed the finger bone i had been holding to 26, who was on my shoulder, and stepped inside the workout room.

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