Ch.185185. The Truth of the Secret

‘I’ve been waiting for ten years…’

After retrieving that rampaging thing using my complete terminal, prepared for the aftermath.

‘…those damned bastards.’

I—we, enraged at those things—the root cause of this incident, the insane actions of some Hive Cult, separating their souls…

But hearing just this might raise questions.

How on earth, and why did this situation unfold?

And to understand that, we need to briefly turn back time.

※ ※ ※

According to the records I-we read through souls,

The culprits behind this incident were a micro-scale Hive Cult that I had scattered across the universe and paid no attention to—

More bluntly, one I didn’t even know existed.

These mere 24 members, including their leader, were originally human,

But they mutated to resemble Dolphinmen—not surprising given their common origin—to adapt to the planet’s aquatic environment.

That’s when their leader proposed:

To infiltrate among the Dolphinmen who resembled their appearance and spread their cult among them.

And so, all 24 Dolphinmen successfully infiltrated the mother city with fabricated identities,

Describing themselves as descendants of kidnapped Dolphinmen and settling in—up to this point, things went well.

But after this, all their plans went awry.

First, when they attempted to infect the Dolphinmen through a baptism ritual to accept them into their Hive Cult… it failed miserably.

As anyone could have predicted, these Dolphinmen were actually a fake alien species I created, similar to Lizardmen.

They were classified as an alien species that could operate officially separate from humanity,

But—though even they didn’t know it—they were actually bound to the Hive Mind from birth, despite their strong autonomy.

So genetically speaking, Dolphinmen could be classified as a subspecies of monsters, so how could any attempt to monsterize them possibly work when they were already monsters?

Among the various infection methods unique to each cult, this Hive Cult specialized in soul contamination.

Had it been a physical attempt, perhaps, but trying to subjugate souls that were already bound was destined to fail.

“W-what are you doing…!?”

Instead, their failed infection attempts were exposed when they had to “dispose of” and consume those who resisted.

As a result, 19 of the 24 were killed or executed,

Leaving them truly cornered.

And so, the cult’s remnants, trapped with nowhere to turn, finally played their last, desperate card.

The method they attempted only in their final moments, when they couldn’t even make a proper appeal.

It was to secretly infiltrate the Dolphinmen’s god-summoning ritual and corrupt it.

Fortunately, of the 5 survivors, only two were actually wanted.

The other three hadn’t just avoided detection—the cult leader had even risen to what could be called a high social position.

He had become the High Priest of the new religious district that was to become a religious center—essentially a rising holy figure in religious circles.

With easy access to privileged information, the Hive Cult leader one day heard about the summoning ritual for the Dolphinmen’s god called “Huge Ocean” at the upcoming grand ceremony, and suddenly thought:

Could they switch the god being summoned from this “Huge Ocean” or whatever to their own god, the “Maw of Deep Sea”—the Hive Mind?

Unable to expand their sect or recruit more members, the leader impulsively made this critical decision and began working secretly to corrupt the ritual.

He altered the patterns engraved on various symbols that would serve as catalysts for summoning the Huge Ocean,

And inscribed prayers praising the “Maw of Deep Sea” onto the psychic-knight fuel.

Additionally, taking advantage of the fact that even the priests were unfamiliar with the ancient Dolphinman language used in the summoning ritual,

He secretly injected phrases from the “Maw of Deep Sea” scripture, installed artifacts throughout, and conducted preliminary operations.

He carried out all manner of schemes by actively exploiting the similarities between “Huge Ocean” and “Maw of Deep Sea,” which had developed common features from being worshipped by ocean-based civilizations.

And then came the day of the final battle.

While the ritual was led by the Chosen Saint of the “Huge Ocean,”

The cult leader, as a high priest and one of those responsible for the ceremony, also played an important role.

Tasked with connecting the “Huge Ocean” to the psychic-knight power source during the ritual,

Once the ceremony began, he instead connected the “Maw of Deep Sea” to the power source.

And predictably, this ritual should have not just been corrupted but failed completely.

Even when all conditions are perfectly aligned for summoning a psychic entity with divine attributes, failure is common,

So how could merely corrupting symbols possibly succeed?

Normally, such a distorted ritual would have just wasted the psychic-knight and ended there—but here appeared a variable no one could have predicted.

The Dolphinmen couldn’t predict it because they didn’t know the ritual was corrupted,

The cult leader couldn’t predict it because he didn’t know the ritual was doomed to fail from the start,

And the Hive Mind couldn’t predict a variable it didn’t even know existed.

That variable was that “Huge Ocean” and “Maw of Deep Sea” were actually the same entity—both were aliases for the divine Hive Mind.

“Maw of Deep Sea” was what maritime civilization’s Hive Cults called the Hive Mind,

While “Huge Ocean” was how the disguised alien subspecies—the Dolphinmen—referred to the Hive Mind.

So both sides were referring to different names for the same entity—a coincidence so unlikely it shouldn’t have been possible.

And so, through this incredible chain of coincidences, something was indeed summoned… but it was not what either side had expected.

In an unprecedented event, a part of me-us broke off and descended into reality in response to the large-scale ritual,

And in the aftermath of this separation, I was even temporarily immobilized!

…Well, in truth, the “broken off power” was merely like a broken nail falling off,

And the “aftermath” was just like groaning from the pain of a broken nail.

Of course, this is just an expression—there wasn’t actually any pain, but that’s not important, so let’s move on.

What’s more important is that while we-I were immobilized,

The separated fragment of power began to move independently.

As mentioned earlier, it was movement equivalent to a reflex in human terms,

But the problem was that we-I were incomparable to a human body—it was more like an organism where each cell was a human being.

As a result, this fragment of our-my power, now able to move like a genuine living being, focused on the Hive Mind’s essential nature of predation and survival,

Particularly survival, aiming to maintain itself for an extended period.

Subsequently, this broken-off part of us-me, having consumed a massive amount of psychic-knight and an entire planet,

Constructed an independent temporary body that could sustain itself as long as energy was supplied.

If left alone, it would truly absorb everything, grow infinitely, and expand endlessly,

Eventually absorbing not just our-my main body without distinguishing friend from foe,

But potentially our entire galaxy.

Therefore, I-we had no choice but to deploy the complete terminal I didn’t want to show publicly,

And with this, the incident itself could be considered resolved.

Manipulating the deployed terminal, I made contact with that thing and separated the mass of broken-off power from its body.

And with this, having lost its resistance to homeostasis, it was ejected back to the main body through the nearby terminal serving as a passage, and the story ended… but.

‘…What should I do about this?’

Various follow-up responses were still needed.