Ch.117Night Hunt (1)

“We’ve arrived.”

“Let’s go.”

Six Heavy Walkers and one beast disembarked from the transport ship.

They had come here on Muriel’s orders to search for survivors where the Lightning God’s bolt had struck.

The once-fertile land teeming with life just hours ago had now become a desolate space with only fire, sand, and death remaining.

They wandered around the withered wasteland with various detection equipment activated.

“Huh? Hey! There’s something over here!”

One of the Walkers discovered traces on the ground and called to his comrades. As the other Walkers approached with metallic sounds, he filmed the traces with the video camera attached to his Walker.

“Boss, did you see? There are drag marks.”

“Damn, that crazy monster. It’s not dead?”

“It seems not.”

“Ask the Sky Mother what condition it’s in.”

“Yes.”

One of the Walkers yanked hard on the large chain in his hand. The Sky Mother, with the chain tied around her neck, was dragged over limply.

“Kuk!”

“Hey, these are its traces, right?”

“We know it walks on two legs, but looking at this, there are marks where its body was dragged. What’s going on?”

“It would be better to speak truthfully. Unless you want to see your ‘family’ die.”

“…Tch, wait.”

The Sky Mother reluctantly examined the traces carefully. With her superior senses that surpassed advanced machinery, she determined the condition of whatever had left the traces and spoke.

“…He dragged half his body away. Judging by the shed exoskeleton pieces between the grooves and the acidic reaction marks on the ground, he’s injured too. Looking at the direction, he went into the forest over there.”

“You’re not lying, are you?”

“You can verify it, can’t you? Why don’t you check?”

Currently, the Sky Mother had a special chip implanted in the back of her head by Muriel.

It was a device that read the wearer’s brainwave patterns to determine if they were lying or having impure thoughts. As long as this chip was embedded in her head, the Sky Mother couldn’t tell lies.

“Hmm? Well, fine. Of course it couldn’t have survived the Lightning God’s attack unscathed.”

“What should we do?”

“It’s injured, so it couldn’t have gone far. Find it and kill it. The Sky Mother should be able to kill it, right?”

“I can kill an injured Juvenile.”

“Hehe, you heard her, boys?”

“Yes!”

After the communication ended, the Heavy Walkers collected the fallen exoskeleton pieces and followed the traces leading to the forest.

Above their heads, the transport ship flew, checking if the traces continued into the burning jungle.

Muriel’s subordinates had no doubt they could easily dispatch the monster that had left these traces.

But there was something they didn’t know.

The Sky Mother certainly hadn’t lied. She had simply answered exactly what Muriel had asked.

In the opposite direction from where they were heading, there were traces the Walkers hadn’t discovered.

It was a half-collapsed hole.

There were many holes created when Redwoods or rocks embedded in the ground had been completely uprooted. The pirates mistook it for something similar to other traces, but the Sky Mother, with her extraordinary hypersenses, could tell.

That it was a hole dug by a snake-like creature with a long body.

‘Ha, that AMorph. You finally evolved into a Subadult.’

The Sky Mother concealed the fact that only she knew.

Her eyes, with a collar fastened around her neck by the pirates, gleamed coldly.

–

When I begin a hunt, there are elements I check first.

Information, time, location.

First, information.

Knowing who the enemy is, what equipment, characteristics, and skills they possess, what strategies they use, and how much they know about me makes combat much easier to navigate.

AMorphs become extremely powerful with successful evolution, but the path to get there is treacherous. Everyone except me is an enemy. So how much information I acquire is crucial.

Next is time.

I consider whether to move during day or night, whether the enemy is aware of my attack, or when they might become aware if they aren’t already, then choose and prepare for the appropriate time to hunt.

Finally, location.

I need to know the enemy’s position, the terrain, where to lure them, and where to settle the score.

So how much advantage do I currently have in attacking the enemy?

Starting with information, she and I don’t know much about each other, but at least I have an advantage over her.

‘Muriel mistakenly thinks I’m a Juvenile.’

Her use of the Lightning God would have been a decent choice if I were a Juvenile. No matter how quickly I fled, it wouldn’t be easy to escape the Lightning God’s range.

‘Still, she’ll want to verify.’

This is a woman who installed bombs on her cruiser in case it was hijacked. She’ll want to confirm whether I’m dead or not. As they investigate the explosion area, they’ll soon discover I survived.

‘This is the critical point.’

She’ll think I’ve been critically injured by the Lightning God’s attack.

In reality, I did sustain injuries, albeit minor ones, from the Lightning God and the cruiser explosion. My outer skin was heated, and parts of my carapace fell off.

Even now, pieces of fallen exoskeleton remain in the traces where I crawled into the forest.

These were all deliberately left behind.

To make the enemies believe my condition is worse than it actually is.

Hiding my evolution stage and my condition to make the enemy misjudge my state.

The information war began the moment I emerged from underground and hid in the jungle.

‘They’ll try to track me by following the traces, but…’

Detection machines often malfunction in this jungle. They won’t lose track of me completely, but it will take them considerable time to find me.

While the enemies slowly track me, my task is clear.

Confirm Muriel’s location and change the battlefield to my advantage.

Fortunately, I accessed data stored in the cruiser’s computer before it was destroyed.

Thanks to that, I could predict where she might be.

There are two large campsites where she might be located.

The vast jungle area spreading from the center of the continent and the canyon area with the Volf native village.

I was certain Muriel would be in the jungle area.

‘Because the Temple of the Forgotten Land is in the center of the continent.’

The “Temple of the Forgotten Land” is like a dungeon in other games, housing powerful unique equipment.

However, entry conditions are quite strict, and the Volf statues inside are powerful, requiring extensive preparation to tackle.

For instance, there’s a special energy field around the temple.

It can’t be detected from a distance due to the energy field, and communication equipment frequently malfunctions as you get closer to the temple. With bad luck, a transport ship might stop working mid-flight and crash.

That’s why players attempting to conquer the temple would set up supply camps at some distance from it. Muriel, like other players, would have established a large campsite in the jungle for temple conquest.

‘When I checked the transported item list, there were only weapons.’

And given the regular shipment records, they were definitely used for temple conquest. By now, she might have already completed the conquest and obtained the reward.

‘Was the reward the Golden Spear of Shaman?’

It’s equipment that increases attack power when killing sentient beings. The attack power increase per kill is very low, but there’s no limit to how much it can increase, so the more sentient beings killed, the more powerful it becomes.

If she learns I’m alive, she’ll try to increase her attack power even if it means killing all her subordinates or slaves.

‘I’ll need to confirm this directly.’

I raised my head, having been half-buried in the ground due to my work.

Thirty minutes ago, I had arrived near Muriel’s large campsite.

I reached here in a day and a half by sprinting at full speed without a single rest.

I was a few kilometers away from the campsite.

There, I was preparing a “battlefield” advantageous to me.

As far as my eyes could see, everything was covered in black slime.

The fresh grass had all twisted, replaced by blood-red vines. Among the vines, spores continuously emitting toxic fog had taken root.

Even the giant Redwoods standing on the corrupted land, though appearing intact on the outside, were rotting from within. If the thick bark were peeled off, black slime and insects would burst out from inside.

Fingernail-sized flying insects, hallucination bugs, flew around looking for people to infect.

After confirming that the nest was growing well on its own, I disconnected the link and stood up.

‘That’s the third one.’

I was creating nests in a pattern surrounding the campsite. Just as physical enhancement types and psychic enhancement types have perks that improve related abilities, nest enhancement types also have perks.

Specifically, when multiple nests merge into one, their characteristic effects are amplified.

When that happens, Muriel’s campsite will be attacked by toxic fog more severe than the inner swamps of the Saintopia02 continent.

‘Fighting there will make the Human Sacrifice trait shine.’

Before evolving into a Subadult, I acquired a trait called “Human Sacrifice” in the swamp. It has no effect on its own, but things change when corpses appear in the nest.

With the Human Sacrifice trait, the nest absorbs corpses and provides their energy to the nest’s owner. Even if my arms are severed, the energy absorbed through Human Sacrifice accelerates my recovery, restoring me to normal within minutes.

In other words, as long as corpses continue to be supplied, I become essentially a living zombie.

‘Plus, it counters the Golden Spear.’

I moved to find a new place to install a nest.

Creating nests consumes a lot of energy, so I made sure to replenish my energy regularly.

“Kuuk?!”

I devoured a gorilla with an ant’s head using my infection tentacles.

A carnivorous animal named ‘Andril’ with specs exceeding a Night Stalker, but it’s no match for me as a Subadult.

‘If I had time, I’d at least taste it.’

It’s just a shame I can’t.

After eating a few more Andrils, I found a suitable place to plant a nest and laid down.

As slime poured from my body and the nest was being created, I heard a strong noise above my head.

‘Hmm?’

It was the sound of a transport ship flying.

The transport ship began low-altitude flight, disregarding the trees covering the area. Then I felt seven large objects falling to the ground.

‘Have they found me already?’

Even with bio-scanners, finding me in this jungle wouldn’t be easy. Detection devices often become unresponsive or reset in the middle of the process.

‘Huh?’

The enemies who landed far away weren’t using bio-scanners to find me, as they started moving in a completely different direction. They were heading toward where there were traces of me crawling here.

‘I don’t know what’s happening, but…’

I need to clean up before the nest is discovered. Losing the nest would be worse than being discovered myself.

I disconnected from the fourth nest I had created and climbed up a tree.

Then I moved silently toward where the enemies were.

Thanks to my elongated body, I could simply stretch across if the distance between trees wasn’t too great, and when the distance was considerable, I used my gliding membrane.

After closing the distance with the enemies, I could see how they had tracked me.

Their composition was six Heavy Walkers and one beast.

I had seen that beast leading them a few times in the game.

‘A Volf who learned Incarnate?’

That creature resembling the mythical griffin, with an eagle’s head and a lion’s body, was definitely a Volf.

Unlike AMorphs, which aim for endless evolution, Volfs focus on reclaiming the divinity within themselves as an important part of their story.

The Volf’s transformation ability is deeply related to this setting; the closer they get to divinity, the more they can transform into sacred beasts like griffins or unicorns rather than ordinary animals.

Therefore, that Volf transformed into a griffin would be somewhere between the Juvenile and Subadult stages if compared to an AMorph.

‘A griffin could certainly do it, but it’s strange.’

A griffin’s eyes are as exceptional as an AMorph’s hypersenses, so it could track the traces I left even from high altitudes.

I understood how they tracked me using the transport ship, but a fundamental question remained.

‘It seems like a Named, but why is it with pirates… huh?’

As I watched the pirates with my camouflage activated, I momentarily made eye contact with the griffin as it turned its head.

It seemed not to have discovered me, naturally turning its head away. However, with my AMorph’s unique hypersenses, I could tell.

It had recognized me but pretended not to.

‘I don’t know why it’s doing that, but…’

I can capture it and find out the details directly.

I moved carefully above the Heavy Walkers.