Ch.164164. The Truth

This mercenary group, self-proclaimed as “The Travelers,” explored an ancient ruin according to my arrangements, which was actually a custom-made set disguised as ruins.

And that girl discovered at its core is,

simply put, a kind of bomb and tracking device.

A monster that, upon contact with psychic energy, triggers the monster genes engraved within her body to indiscriminately devour surrounding mass and multiply,

ultimately transforming the entire area into a monster zone.

She’s a preparation and training for Protocol 66, designed for contingencies,

and simultaneously a prototype of a next-generation monster, identical in form to the terminal I’m currently using.

Moreover, she served as a location tracker to pinpoint this relic ship whose connections I had completely severed to avoid detection,

allowing me to directly send my terminal into this vessel.

“…???”

Of course, without my control, her personality is nothing more than an innocent child,

so to properly begin my plan using this mercenary group, I needed to descend directly.

‘Alright, shall we head that way?’

And to initiate this plan, I first took control of the biological ship disguised as an ancient relic that had been touched by my hand from the beginning.

[—Hyperwarping System, activate.]

I activated the ship’s secret teleportation system,

instantly moving the entire vessel to hover above the Necro-Locist headquarters.

“Now, it’s your turn.”

“…goo goo?”

Approaching the child who was babbling in genuine ignorance, I placed my hand on her body and activated her function.

“You, come here.”

After drawing her soul to me and making it subservient,

I began transforming her physical body into a monster inside the ship, synchronizing this “monsterization”

with the entire synchronized vessel, returning the ship to its original form as a monster vessel.

Crunch… crackle…

In its inactive state, it was merely a ship with a somewhat unique form, but

the moment the activation switch was flipped, the internal facilities began devouring themselves and transforming into biological components.

“Ah—ah—am—.”

Crunch!

I captured the crew members inside with the eyeballs that were once lights attached throughout the ship,

then devoured them one by one through [Predation] activated via the terminal.

It’s more convenient to deal with them individually, albeit somewhat troublesome, to prevent any later disturbances inside.

Anyway, as the ship transformed into a complete monster and finally completed its transformation.

“Is it over? …ugh, tastes weird.”

Complaining about the strange aftertaste in the terminal’s mouth, I immediately teleported the temporarily digitized terminal to the control room through the ship’s network.

Unlike the previous sci-fi atmosphere, the control room now resembled something like a final dungeon room from a fantasy RPG game. I approached the protruding part in the center, like a volcano compared to its surroundings, and inserted the lower body into the hole at the very center of the protrusion.

The spine extending from inside connected with the terminal’s tailbone,

the leg parts transformed into tentacles connecting to internal nerve bundles,

and the upper body was completely covered by growing black latex-like fibers.

‘Connection successful. Startup beginning…’

After creating a temporary terminal in midair to check the status, which had no actual function,

I placed my hand on the head part of the terminal that was connected and serving as a controller, linking the psychic connection.

[Condense.]

With these powerful words, the cruiser-sized ship instantly began to shrink.

The convergence point was the connected terminal.

The overwhelming mass ignored physical laws as it shrank,

and shrank, and shrank further, gathering into that physical form and transforming—

The final completed form was the same size as the terminal, but its appearance was completely different.

Its basic form resembled a girl wearing a skintight bodysuit covering even her head, or something close to a female mannequin.

However, her head was covered with a helmet that had a hole in the center of the face,

and through that hole was an amber-colored, chilling eye,

while the skin was predominantly white, gradually glowing purple toward the extremities.

Additionally, milky-white tentacles similar to those previously attached grew like hair from the back of the helmet,

these tentacles becoming purple like the torso toward their tips.

Moreover, in the center of the almost pure white chest was a tattoo resembling tentacles extending from a giant mouth,

and in each hand, she held an impressive staff with irregularly attached hexahedrons at the end and a sword with a blade made of energy.

An inhuman yet simultaneously bizarre entity.

This was the completed terminal, a kind of pump designed to draw the power of the Hive Mind into the real world.

I used the terminal, an advanced monster I created directly, as the core,

and wrapped it in a vessel disguised as a relic that moved and gained traces of human emotions, forming a humanoid shape.

Although it could exert enough power to play marbles with planets if I possessed it directly,

if I actually did so, it would almost certainly collapse within about 10 minutes due to material and environmental limitations.

‘Now, everyone ready!’

Therefore, I moved the terminal to the exact center of the Necro-Locists’ mothership, a hollow Earth-sized nanomachine structure that had been preparing in advance,

a kind of small Dyson sphere (a massive artificial structure that completely envelops a star).

[Activate!]

Upon receiving the signal, the Necro-Locist mothership shot purple strings of psychic energy from pipes placed at regular intervals, connecting them to the terminal,

while simultaneously adjusting the sealed internal environment according to its intricately designed structure.

And at the exact moment this internal environment adjustment was completed.

《…I’ve done it.》

Successfully possessing the terminal directly, I was finally able to speak,

and at last witnessed the end of this decades-long plan—codenamed “Homunculus in the Flask.”

“Homunculus in the Flask.” As the name suggests, borrowed from a famous alchemy manga and Goethe’s Faust, this plan was designed to create a terminal I could directly possess without issues, enabling more direct intervention in reality.

Until now, I could only interfere with monster terminals by projecting an extremely small part of my consciousness,

and even then only indirectly, like controlling with a gamepad,

which was, paradoxically, because the size and caliber of my soul had grown too large.

Therefore, like the terminals I used against that damn Mesgaki terminal and Latishino, only faint thoughts bestowed upon the body were manifested externally,

making direct intervention extremely difficult until now.

Additionally, there was a reason why I had to execute such a complex and contrived method in such a roundabout way.

The material reality and the psychic dimension behind it are often compared to the front and back sides of thick paper.

Therefore, to metaphorically describe the method of indirectly exerting influence on the opposite dimension, it’s like spraying ink on the back side (psychic dimension) so it seeps through to the front (reality),

while direct intervention, like what I’m doing, is like piercing a hole in that paper with a needle.

However, forcibly breaking through the veil between the two dimensions would cause the world’s “homeostasis”—which summoned my soul to this world—to intervene and block that passage,

so I acted in a way that prevented that homeostasis from intervening.

I meticulously calibrated ancient ruins that I sent to the past using time-based psychic powers after their creation,

minimizing my intervention while arranging various prepared materials.

I deliberately handed over a ship to become a shell for medium-small powers, guiding them to store various relics inside,

and these artifacts, which absorbed the emotions of living beings through this special technology, shaped the terminal into a human form.

Additionally, I kidnapped some of the alien Locists I had previously annihilated,

and had them modified into Necro-Locists who, while not soul-bound to me, were completely mechanically controlled, to convert their mothership into a Dyson sphere for the terminal.

As the final procedure,

I naturally infiltrated the girl—who was both a location tracker to precisely locate the mercenary group’s ship drifting through the vast universe and a catalyst—inside,

completing the final step.

And finally, after placing part of my consciousness directly into the completed avatar in terminal form and looking around through the connected Necro-Locist headquarters—

《…Well, that’s it for now.》

Having confirmed my power and with no immediate tasks, I released the possession and immediately dispersed my consciousness to begin coordinating the next operations.