Ch.163163. Training

After that, he sliced through several more hair tentacles and mutated substance tentacles, and he could feel his sword gradually deteriorating with each cut.

Woooong───!!!

Though he occasionally tried to turn the tide with his plasma pistol, the white entity seemed to read his thoughts, easily dodging the plasma bursts from the muzzle.

Once, it even opened the tip of a tentacle like a mouth and swallowed the plasma whole.

‘············Kuk!’

From the way it deliberately dodged attacks despite being able to block them,

he could tell it was toying with him········.

But that knowledge didn’t change his immediate situation.

Nevertheless, the mercenary captain refused to give up and was contemplating his next move.

In close combat, he was at a disadvantage due to technique and weapon issues,

but carelessly increasing distance and attempting ranged combat, which wasn’t his specialty, would only lead to being blocked by that white entity’s tentacles.

Therefore, judging that simple methods wouldn’t work,

and that he needed a radical solution that completely changed the premise—

‘Take this!’

“········Oh? Are you serious?”

Whoosh───KABOOOOM!!!

Accepting that he’d be caught in the blast, he activated the self-destruct function built into the plasma weapon’s battery,

converting it into an improvised plasma grenade, and threw it at the white entity, causing a massive explosion.

“············Kugh!”

The situation was so urgent that he couldn’t even form a psychic barrier,

but the mercenary captain managed to deploy a force field just in time, resulting in only slight damage to his body.

As for the interior wall, even if it was an ancient relic, a wall with no particularly important pipes couldn’t possibly withstand a plasma grenade.

As the wall shattered and he collided with the wall of his own room beyond it,

he telekinetically pulled a sword that came into view, gripping it like a dual blade───

and hurled his tattered psychic sword with all his might.

Whooooosh!!!

The psychic sword cut through the air as it flew.

Unable to detect the white entity in the dust cloud, perhaps due to its stealth ability,

this throw was merely intended to clear away the dust.

But just then.

“Haaaam───”

Crunch!

With a sound like something being bitten, the smoke before him instantly vanished,

and what entered his vision was········absolutely shocking.

For some reason, the walls around the white entity, unlike the shattered wall behind him,

were hollowed out in perfect circles, as if scooped with a round ice cream scoop.

“Mmmm mmm········munch munch········gulp.”

And in the middle of this bizarre scene, the girl-shaped entity was moving its mouth as if eating something,

then swallowed with a gulp before extending its tentacles again.

───Slash slash slash!

But the mercenary captain was different now than before.

With his original weapon, a one-handed single-edged sword he had just retrieved, he cut through three tentacles in one stroke,

then attempted to restrain the white entity using telekinesis.

“Hmm········how annoying~.”

Of course, the restraint was immediately broken with a comment suggesting it was completely ineffective,

but the mercenary captain advanced toward the entity through the tentacles, thinking that buying time was enough.

Whoosh───slash!

───Slash slash!

He cut through three tentacles striking from the floor,

pushed away tentacles trying to wrap around his limbs with telekinesis,

and telekinetically threw nearby objects to keep the entity at bay.

It was a skillful response worthy of someone who could confidently claim close combat with telekinesis as his specialty───

“Hmm········maybe I’ll just eat you?”

The entity before him was not a life form within common sense that could be handled with mere skill.

“Ha-aaam───”

Crunch!

The moment she opened and closed her mouth,

suddenly a sphere-shaped section of space seemed to be carved away around a specific point,

and the objects flying toward her disappeared.

“············?!!”

Startled by what appeared to be space deletion—considered the pinnacle of spatial psychic abilities—the mercenary captain

could roughly guess what this attack was after seeing her munching afterward.

‘Deleting space········no, eating it?’

Though somewhat bizarre to express in language,

it was clear that this organism had the ability to form a spherical area in its field of vision and eat? everything within that area.

Of course, he still considered it more likely to be actual space deletion,

but based on his own perception, there was a high possibility it was consuming all matter within the space.

‘───Hup!’

Therefore, he momentarily released high-concentration psychic energy throughout his body to block the space deletion psychic power while

maintaining his charge, intending to land a solid hit on her.

His single-edged plasma sword, which arranged ultra-particles of plasma in a saw-blade formation and rotated them like an electric saw,

sliced through dozens of white tentacles as it flew toward her pale white abdomen───

“A─a─am─.”

Crunch!

As the girl closed her mouth making an “aang──” sound,

his right arm below the knee and the beloved sword in his hand were deleted by the space deletion───

“Keu, ungh·······!”

Squelch!

In that moment, gritting his teeth from the pain of his severed arm, he was immediately impaled on the left side of his lower abdomen by a white tentacle.

Not content with just penetrating his abdomen, the tentacle exited and swung forcefully, lifting him into the air.

“A-am~♡.”

Crunch!

By opening her mouth and swallowing his entire body as it rose into the air, she completely devoured him.

※ ※ ※

“Chomp, chomp, chomp········gulp.”

“Ugh, tastes weird·······.”

I—the Hive Mind—who had partially materialized the mouth formed in psychic space,

complained about the strange taste of the mercenary captain through my terminal in the form of a girl, right after swallowing him.

The terrible bitter taste from the bio-implant that substituted for his liver and secreted detoxifying components,

the texture of the plasma single-edged sword that felt like chewing on lead,

and even the terrible medicinal smell unique to humans who had undergone life-extension surgery.

It was such an awful taste that I wondered if sensory sharing was really necessary,

but since sensory sharing was essential, I had no choice.

Just when I was bored with nothing to do, I finally had something that required my direct intervention.

‘How am I supposed to endure this~.’

After saying that through my terminal in the form of a tentacle girl,

I happily moved my head side to side and was about to use my tentacles as legs to head toward my destination when───

“Over, over there!”

“Who───what is that?”

“Ah, caught red-handed.”

At that moment, I encountered lightly armed infantry who seemed like ship security coming to check on the commotion in the mercenary captain’s room.

“F-fire!”

Having noticed something was wrong from seeing a blood-covered tentacle,

the infantryman who appeared to be the highest-ranking ordered the nine infantry to open fire.

They fired laser rifles and shock wave launchers attached to the bottom of their guns like grenade launchers,

trying their best to stop me, but········trying to stop me with laser pointers and air guns?

“Did I underestimate them too much? Perhaps an invasive monster should look monstrous to everyone?”

Taking their fire head-on while slowly approaching,

I quickly extended my tentacles and skewered the heads of more than five humans at once───

“H-hiiiiiiieek········!!!”

“Run! Run!”

Clatter!

As the guards panicked in fear at the sight of their comrades dying so easily, dropping their weapons and fleeing,

I began moving slowly, very slowly, toward ‘that place.’

“Block it! Shield bearers forward!”

“Lower the bulkhead! Seal off the corridor!”

Since my route was obvious to anyone,

the ship’s crew sent combat androids made of synthetic materials and plasteel to buy time while they lowered the bulkheads.

The combat androids were all close-quarters shipboard combat specialists equipped with shotguns and shields,

which could be manufactured using the ship’s internal facilities that I had designed, but········.

“Hyah!”

KABOOOOM!!!

Before my tentacles glowing pink with psychic energy,

these downgraded mechanical monsters and metal plates were nothing more than scrap metal waiting to happen.

Crackle!!!

‘Oh, they’re using their heads a bit?’

There were also several attempts to spew psychic flames throughout the isolated area or to scorch entire rooms with high-pressure plasma.

However, such physical attacks were useless against this invincible nano-machine body.

While stoically enduring these attacks, I continued to advance, chattering away while wearing the personality of ‘that girl.’

“I-I can’t let you pass───”

Thud!

“I’m coming through~!”

After crushing the brain of a researcher? in a powered suit who was blocking the entrance, I headed toward the room where the isolation chambers were located───

‘Hello, little one. This is our first meeting for you, but the second for me.’

I encountered a girl drawing in the deepest isolation chamber,

a chamber that should have been ejected but was forcibly kept attached to the ship.

And with this, the final phase (endgame) of this mission began.