Ch.21Ghost Ship of C-08 (2)

Infiltrating the battleship wasn’t particularly difficult.

It did have some security systems in place, but they were crude. Embarrassingly so compared to the research vessel.

‘They’re pirates after all.’

People who only plunder probably never thought they’d be plundered themselves.

The auxiliary organ under my jaw began tracking vibration patterns. The core of the metal battleship wasn’t far away.

After confirming the reactor’s location, I ran along the corridor.

The battleship’s corridors were so filthy it was hard to believe this had been a military vessel.

The walls were different colors in various places, as if they’d torn off and attached parts from other ships, and boxes filled with plundered goods were carelessly stacked throughout the corridors.

As I ran through what was essentially a garbage dump, I sensed enemy movement.

Two opponents. One human, one Insectman.

‘Let’s deal with them here.’

I crouched behind some nearby stacked boxes. As footsteps approached and the human was about to pass by, my tail precisely targeted his neck.

“Gack!”

“!”

A fountain of blood spurted from the decapitated corpse. The Insectman, who lost his companion in an instant, gaped at the sight.

An ordinary person would have been stunned, but my opponent was a pirate after all. Even in his shock, he pulled out a communicator.

When I opened my palm, a serrated tentacle shot out and wrapped around his wrist. The sharp saw-like edges on the tentacle mercilessly tore into his flesh.

“Kyaaaak!”

His forearm became like something put through a grinder. The communicator he was holding fell to the floor before it could serve its purpose.

When I retracted the tentacle covered in the Insectman’s distinctive green blood, the remnants clinging to its surface were absorbed directly into my body. A different flavor from humans tingled in my brain.

‘Tastes like green grapes.’

Human blood has a stimulating taste, but Insectmen have a fresh fruit flavor. I’d like to savor it more, but unfortunately, the situation didn’t allow such leisure.

I charged at him with full force. Though it was a short rush, the enhanced body type’s effect gave me increased weight, resulting in considerable destructive power. The creature I rammed was smashed into the corridor wall.

“Kek!”

A short scream and the sound of breaking bones came from him.

If he were human, he would have died from shock already, but he was an Insectman with tenacious vitality. He was still alive and struggling to escape.

I used my lower arms to pin down his arms and my upper arms to grab his split jaw.

“Kyaak! S-spare… kek.”

I’m tired of hearing final pleas for mercy.

I applied force to the jaw in my hand and tore it off with a pulling motion. He died with his head split open.

I left the human corpse alone and hurriedly devoured the Insectman’s body.

‘As expected, NPC races don’t count.’

In the game, Insectmen are classified as sentient beings, but they’re an alien race that players can’t play as. Because of that, they don’t count toward the evolution conditions for becoming a Juvenile.

‘I’ll just eat this and move quickly.’

At other times I might enjoy this leisurely, but I still have much to do. I quickly chewed and swallowed his meat.

After licking up all the blood from the floor, I stuffed the human corpse into a box.

“Patrol team, what’s going on? Why aren’t you answering?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then answer faster, you punk. Slacking off.”

“Sorry.”

I casually responded through the communicator the Insectman had dropped before dying. Thanks to my mimicry ability, they had no idea the communicator’s owner was already in my stomach.

After finishing this brief battle, I headed toward the reactor again. I didn’t encounter any new enemies on the way.

I would have preferred if the reactor’s security was this lax, but my wish wasn’t granted. Android guards were protecting the area around the reactor.

Security-stingy pirates suddenly using expensive androids? They must have deployed what they’d plundered here.

‘Androids are tricky.’

Destroying them isn’t difficult, but what comes after is the problem. The moment I attack, they’ll send a signal to the battleship’s central AI. Unless I’m planning for all-out war, attacking androids should be avoided.

‘How should I strike?’

The auxiliary organ under my jaw squirmed, searching for weakly defended areas.

Unlike humans, androids are machines, so they don’t have obvious vulnerabilities. The androids’ heat tracking devices would detect me if I tried moving along the ceiling or walls like I did on the research vessel.

‘I don’t necessarily have to confront them directly.’

I turned around and headed to the floor above the reactor. After passing through rusty metal stairs and chaotic corridors, I arrived at someone’s bedroom.

The bedroom smelled musty and foul. The mattress used as a bed had yellowed, and empty liquor bottles rolled around on the floor.

I lifted the mattress with my four hands and moved it aside. Bugs that had been hiding underneath scurried away in surprise.

‘This should be about right?’

Standing where the mattress had been, I extracted spores with my lower hands.

The acidic fluid flowing from the spores began to corrode the floor. Acrid smoke rose as a hole quickly formed in the dirty metal plate.

Through the hole, I could see the top of the reactor.

A human would have noticed the floor above the reactor melting, but my opponents were androids. As robots that operate according to programmed instructions, they’re vulnerable to unexpected situations.

‘Engine cleared with this.’

I poured spores over the reactor.

–

Elchen Dvarah had been pirating for 10 years already.

A Hulk Mutant as a pirate? No one expected Elchen to remain active for so long.

Originally, Hulk Mutants have short lifespans. Genetically engineered to die early, they usually perish within two years.

And what about pirates? The average survival period for Space Dog rookies is less than a month. Even veterans rarely remain active for more than a year.

Elchen had overcome both adverse conditions.

He was a Hulk Mutant modified by House Egerton, so his lifespan was longer. His intelligence was also far superior to ordinary pirates, allowing him to remain active for so long. Thanks to this, he had become a figure now considered an elder among Space Dogs.

Even for Elchen, who had been through all sorts of trials, the scene unfolding before his eyes was quite shocking.

“Requesting backup! This is the bridge command center! It’s breaking down the door!”

“Damn it! We have no personnel to send!”

“N-no! I don’t want to die!”

“Where’s the captain? Where did the team leader go?!”

“The team leader died earlier! Get a grip!”

“Hee, heehee. We’re all dead. Heehee.”

“Anyone with ammo left!”

“It’s breaking through the door! Everyone, combat ready!”

“Damn it! Smoke grenade!”

“It’s inside… AAARGH!”

“AAAAARGH!”

“Help… ACK!”

With that final scream, the recorded video stored in the command center computer ended. The hologram turned off, but none of those present spoke up.

‘What the hell is going on?’

When he boarded the ship, he thought something was strange. Setting aside the weird plants stuck all over the place, there wasn’t a single person anywhere.

Even if everyone had died in an attack, there should be traces on the walls or floor. Blood stains or bullet casings.

But this ship had none of those. As if the research vessel had been a ghost ship from the beginning, there was no trace of people at all.

Elchen decided he needed to learn more about the attacker.

So he ordered his subordinate to search through the recorded videos to understand the situation.

The result was the video he just watched.

Those holed up in the command center facing an unidentified entity looked truly desperate, even to him, a cruel pirate.

There must have been several battles before they reached this point, as hardly any of them were uninjured. Some were missing limbs, while others had intact bodies but broken minds.

The video ended with the command center door being breached. It was easy to imagine what happened to them.

“Hey. Play something from earlier.”

His subordinate played a video recorded before that.

“This is command center. B3. Join us as soon as maintenance is complete.”

“The route is complex. Everyone move carefully.”

On screen, a muscular soldier with short hair was giving orders through a communications officer. Next to the soldier stood several people in luxurious clothing.

The video showed their first encounter with the unidentified monster and the subsequent search process.

‘The soldier must be in charge of the ship’s defense, and that fragile-looking guy behind must be Eusung Samuel.’

It started normally, but it didn’t take long for the atmosphere to change drastically. Screams of soldiers came through the communicator, and the leadership in the command center began to panic.

‘The forces sent were annihilated.’

That’s what he thought, but the situation wasn’t over yet. What happened next truly surprised Elchen.

While the leadership was bickering, the unidentified monster suddenly appeared.

‘It attacks the head here?’

I don’t know how it got in, but the creature began killing people like a fish in water.

The white temple floating on the black starry sea was stained with blood.

The one who barely stopped the creature was the soldier commanding the troops. He pulled out a plasma pistol from inside his clothes and attacked the monster.

The monster seemed to recognize the weapon as a threat and became more cautious than before. It hid, then used a fire extinguisher to create smoke before lunging at the soldier.

‘It’s definitely an intelligent creature.’

A high-risk organism with very high intelligence.

Having encountered various organisms during his genetic modification treatments, Elchen instinctively knew this monster was being discovered for the first time in this universe. Because if such a dangerous creature existed, Megacorp would have already captured it to extract its genes.

Anyway, the battle between the monster and the soldier ended with the monster’s victory. It wasn’t so much the soldier’s fault as the monster’s good luck. A misfire from another soldier caused significant damage to the commander, which led directly to his defeat.

The creature, seeming to know reinforcements would arrive, retreated immediately after killing the soldier.

“…Damn it.”

When Elchen decided to take this job, his biggest concern was how to deal with Noble Capital’s retaliation, especially from House Yugin.

But after watching the video, it seemed he should worry first about safely finding the corpse on this ship.

“Hey, Garlic.”

“Y-yes?”

Elchen called to Garlic in the command center.

Garlic had been so lost in thought that she couldn’t take her eyes off the hologram. Only when Elchen called did she snap back to her usual timid self.

“The communication was cut off yesterday, right?”

“Y-yes. We were originally supposed to meet yesterday. But when the ship didn’t arrive, we spent a day looking for it.”

On the way here, they had already gathered information about the research vessel’s personnel. There were 222 people aboard, including 96 soldiers. If asked to annihilate them, Elchen could do it within half a day.

‘The problem is that we don’t know the identity of that creature.’

After watching the video, he quickly identified the monster’s strengths. It compensated for its lack of raw power with intelligence and various abilities. Attacking it without any information would be like telling his subordinates to commit suicide.

Of course, Elchen wasn’t the type to care whether his subordinates lived or died, but he didn’t enjoy wasting manpower needlessly. Even if his subordinates died, they should extract as much information about the creature as possible before dying.

“That’s fortunate at least.”

“What?”

“The creature won’t know we’ve arrived.”

Being experienced pirates, they had infiltrated the research vessel as quietly as possible. Unless the creature had cameras installed throughout the ship, it was nearly impossible for it to detect their movements.

“First we find and kill it. Then we look for the corpse.”

Just as Elchen was about to give orders to his subordinates, one of them who had been outside ran up to him. Holding a communicator, he looked so shocked that his face had turned pale.

“B-boss! Big trouble!”

“What is it?”

“The battleship’s engine is damaged!”

“What!”

Elchen roared at those words.

How could a perfectly fine engine suddenly break down? He couldn’t understand.

His subordinate felt like death facing his enraged boss, but he had no choice. If he hid it and was found out later, having his head smashed would be the least of his worries.

The subordinate squeezed his eyes shut and finished his report.

“They checked and said the engine has completely melted down and is beyond repair!”

“Son of a—! Give me that!”

Elchen snatched the communicator from his subordinate.

After hearing the full situation from the other side, Elchen crushed the communicator in his hand.

“That motherfucking bastard!”

Not satisfied with just that, he grabbed an alloy chair fixed to the command center and tore it apart like paper. Seeing this, his subordinates quickly lowered their heads.

“Fuck! Garlic!”

“Yes!”

“Can you pilot this ship?”

“I-I need to check…”

“Goddamnit.”

“N-no, I can pilot it!”

“You, you, and you. Help Garlic. The rest of you come with me to hunt down that fucking monster. Follow me.”

“Yes sir!”

Elchen led his subordinates out of the command center.

He made a vow. When he caught the creature, he wouldn’t just stop at skinning its head.

–

‘Oh. He’s angry. Very angry.’

Having returned to my nest, I was aware of their movements. The boss, whose heart rate had doubled, was stomping around the ship with heavy footsteps. His subordinates were diligently following him, helping.

‘I’ll wait until they disperse.’

The research vessel is more complex than the battleship, with more facilities. Moreover, the enemies just arrived here. To search an unfamiliar place efficiently, they’ll have to split up.

What they don’t know is that there are still survivors on this ship. About 20 people, including the captain and some leadership, are hiding here and there.

Needless to say, I didn’t spare them out of mercy.

‘Megacorp really hates pirates.’

Some might surrender, but most will attack the pirates. When they’re fighting among themselves, I can just pick up the fallen fruits.

‘But that person is concerning.’

The human remaining in the command center. This being disguised as ordinary was continuously working on something while moving around the command center.

There were only three others with that being. Now would be the perfect time to attack, but I felt an uneasy premonition.

The AMorph’s unique intuition was warning me. This being is dangerous and I should be fully prepared.

‘Could this be the master Arnold mentioned?’

Siheyon Yugin.

The one Arnold said was similar to me. What did he see that made him say we were similar?

‘Probably a genetically modified human.’

True to being a species with extreme materialism and competition as their highest value, Megacorp has an intense obsession with life extension. Especially Noble Capital at the top of the pyramid—they would commit any atrocity without hesitation if it meant they could survive longer.

Megacorp’s genetic modification technology developed thanks to this social atmosphere. Hulk Mutants are merely a byproduct of this.

‘Even for Megacorp players, the endgame content is genetic modification.’

In the game too, there were plenty of users who were human only in appearance but modified themselves to ridiculous levels. Some used relics only Cult could use through psychic modifications, or flew through space without a spaceship—all sorts of people existed.

Given that, it was entirely possible that this House Yugin offspring was also modified beyond human limitations.

‘Kisaragi wasn’t much, but what about this human?’

If, as expected, this is a genetically modified human, they would be a challenging opponent for me now. Just as the enemy doesn’t know my abilities, I don’t know what abilities they might have. If they’re modified to the level of players, it wouldn’t be easy to win even after evolving to a Juvenile.

‘A genetically modified human. It’s been a while since I fought one.’

I said it would be difficult to win, not that I would lose.

I’m the one who devoured even top-ranked Megacorp players. Facing a strong opponent not only makes me feel crisis but also sparks interest.

‘Let’s put aside that being presumed to be Siheyon Yugin for now. Let’s deal with the pirates first.’

It would be troublesome if reinforcements arrived while fighting unnecessarily. I looked at the pirates again.

Just then, they were approaching the captain’s quarters where survivors were hiding.