Ch.335Legion (3)

The green, purple, and countless other pigments blend together, staining the black carapace.

A wave of unholy colors, like an expression of chaos itself, creeps slowly into my head.

“Hssssss!”

“Hssss!”

The collector bugs hastily retreat as they see me emitting an ominous light. As always, that greedy ‘color’ doesn’t care what the enemies do.

The predatory light resembling AMorph wraps around the monster’s tentacles. The amount of energy gathered is much less than when I was enhanced with ‘Tyrantroid,’ but it shouldn’t be underestimated. The Psychic Breath enhanced by the colors of the Deep is more threatening than anything else.

Like water droplets falling along stalactites, the energy gathered at the tips of my three-pronged head materializes into a sphere.

Given my massive size, the Psychic Sphere enhanced by the colors of the Deep was considerably large. No. 26, riding on my back, controlled the sphere’s movement with perfect timing.

The enhanced Psychic Breath flies at high speed. Like a soap bubble bursting upon impact, it exploded above the collector bugs.

Unlike other times, there was no intense explosion. The rainbow-colored foam silently sucked in the swarm of bugs. If one bug tried to escape, it only met with more death.

‘Good. I can end this with this.’

The moment I thought that.

Something unbelievable happened.

The bugs touched by the enhanced Psychic Breath’s foam turned blue, then disappeared from my sight.

Through the gap created by the disappearance of some bugs, I could see the queen. A blue afterimage remained in her numerous eyes.

Alshas, mounted on the queen, was sneering at me with upturned lips.

‘Warpboy’s ability? How?’

According to the setting, Outspacers are beings from another universe. That’s why their method of faster-than-light travel differs from other species.

For an Outspacer to move, they absolutely need a bio-portal. No matter how many Metallic Gremlins they devour, it should be impossible for them to steal Warpboy’s teleportation ability, ‘Warp Guide.’

Then there’s only one answer.

‘…It’s a Perk.’

Unlike in the game, they can either enhance their legion without restrictions, or they’ve acquired faster-than-light travel capability through some method I’m unaware of.

‘Fortunately, it’s not exactly the same as the original.’

If they could travel faster than light without penalties like Warpboy, there would be no need to send troops through bio-portals. They could just bring multiple queens and transport the entire legion.

Either that queen with Alshas is a specimen specialized in faster-than-light travel, or there are limitations on moving the entire legion.

‘Either way, I need to deal with it first.’

Originally, I planned to destroy the bio-portal in the pit, but the situation has changed.

That queen is more dangerous than the portal. I have no idea what abilities it possesses or what effects they have.

I deactivated the colors of the Deep and prepared a normal Psychic Breath. I planned to clear the enemies in front with the breath, then approach the queen in one go.

Just as I was about to execute that plan, I sensed an intense energy reaction outside the bio-dome. The Lightning God’s divine lightning, which I’ve been hit by twice before and am now familiar with.

A golden beam pierced through the dome’s outer wall and struck my wing. As my body shook, the Psychic Breath flew in the wrong direction. The purple breath created a new hole in the water fortress’s remaining dome and disappeared.

I raised my central head to check above.

Through the gaping hole, unwelcome enemies appeared.

Numerous ships filling the red sky. The elite fleet of the Surveillance Office I saw before infiltrating Beryan02. Among them were the Lightning God and Imperial Motherships.

‘Alshas!’

He wasn’t just riding on the queen for show. He must have used a clone to contact the Surveillance Office outside the planet.

“The situation at MPS-05 is not good. There are too many enemies on the ground as well.”

“There’s the bad flappy thing that bullied the big one.”

Outspacers below, the elite fleet of the Surveillance Office above.

This is the first crisis I’ve faced since becoming an adult.

‘How do I break through?’

There’s an Imperial Mothership, but Cosmic Bolt has a charging time and can’t be used immediately. I can withstand their other attacks with my carapace.

‘Should I make the Outspacers and Cult fight each other?’

That thought crossed my mind for a moment, but I quickly dismissed it.

Alshas and the Outspacer queen aren’t fools. Even if I try to create confusion here, the chances of them falling for it are low.

‘Should I transform into a Bone Beast and fight? Or should I use the Mark of the Hunt now?’

Both aren’t bad options, but they lack the decisive power to turn the tide. With so many enemies, there’s a limit to how many I can kill alone.

‘I need one decisive blow.’

Just like how the collector bugs retreated out of instinctive fear when they saw the colors of the Deep.

I need overwhelming terror.

‘What could I use… wait.’

As I pondered, one characteristic flashed through my mind.

A characteristic I acquired at the pirates’ fortress but never used.

‘Black Devourer Cannon!’

While facing the collector bugs charging at me again, I brought up the text box.

“Black Devourer Cannon: Infinite power is in your hands. Consumes 50% of the total energy you can store in your body to fire a shell.

*P.S.: Please be careful.”

The Black Devourer Cannon is a unique characteristic I created after escaping the space fortress occupied by pirates. The bio-cannon attached to my left tail exists solely for this characteristic.

Among the unique characteristics created using the transcendence system, this one had the simplest tooltip. It simply stated that it consumes energy to fire a shell. There were no special precautions except that it uses 50% of the maximum energy that can be stored in the body.

‘It seems fine up to this point, but…’

The reason I felt I shouldn’t be careless when looking at this characteristic was because of the postscript at the bottom.

In all the characteristics I’ve seen in the game and this world, I’ve never seen one that only says “please be careful.”

‘I was going to use it against Gigacracker before, but didn’t.’

I thought it would be more beneficial to steal Gigacracker, so I stopped the experiment. After that, I never had a chance to use it and kept forgetting about it.

‘This is perfect timing.’

While chewing on an attacking collector bug, I flew out of the bio-dome. Alshas, Isabelle, and the queen they were riding, along with a swarm of flying monsters, followed.

Outside, numerous warships greeted me. The Lightning God activated, and the main guns of the battleships spewed fire.

The red sky, where the night sun had risen, was dyed gold and purple. Against this, I brought out my strongest shield.

Formless heat haze flowing from my entire body condensed into a flat disc shape. The transparent disc, like a prism, refracted and dispersed natural light.

The energy beams filling the sky collided with the newly completed ‘Complex Spectral Body.’

Not one of them penetrated the transparent disc. The lights that came to kill me all returned to where they came from. The swarm of beams collided with the elite fleet, and the sky lit up brightly.

“It is estimated that about 3% of the Cult elite fleet’s power was lost in the current attack.”

I hear PS-111’s voice above my head. The damage is small considering how spectacularly they exploded. Alshas must have ordered them to respond.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

The real attack hasn’t even started yet.

After blocking one round of fire, I immediately charged toward the elite fleet. The Outspacer swarm following me changed direction and moved toward where the elite fleet was.

They made that choice to protect their allies now that the fleet formation was disrupted.

‘Not a bad choice, but…’

It’s a big mistake in the current situation.

Cult and Outspacers. Species that are enemies in the game have gathered in one place.

I moved my left tail to aim at the target. Pointing the cannon’s muzzle at the enemy, I used the unknown characteristic Black Devourer Cannon.

‘!’

The moment the characteristic activated, extreme weakness overwhelmed me.

After my head went blank, what followed was a torrent of energy. Massive energy gathered in my left tail. It felt as if all the blood spread throughout my body was rushing to one place. Because of this, I almost stopped flapping my wings and nearly fell.

Just before ‘it’ was fired, my auxiliary organs detected an anomaly.

The surrounding space warped strangely. As if something unidentifiable was twisting space itself.

As soon as I recognized this fact, ‘it’ was fired from my tail.

How should I describe it?

If the colors of the Deep clearly show what an excess of color and light is, this was the opposite. True to its name as a devourer, ‘it’ was absorbing all colors and light.

‘It’ flies, devouring light, air, color, and all elements of nature. Only a deep darkness, which could be somewhat similar to that unknown shell, remained in its wake.

And when ‘it’ became almost invisible.

An anomaly occurred among the gathered enemies.

When I first noticed something was wrong, I thought it was just a tiny dot. So small that I could have mistaken what I saw.

But that wasn’t the case.

It spread rapidly like ink dropped on drawing paper.

Like when the sun hides and night falls.

The black ink steals the colors from the ships and the Outspacer swarm.

No one could resist the black ‘thing.’ Neither the shields the Cult boasted of, nor the Lightning God’s thunderbolts, nor the Outspacers’ blue light. No one could escape from ‘it.’

‘It,’ which seemed like it would devour even the sun, disappeared in an instant.

The red color filled the space where the black had invaded the canvas called the sky.

As if nothing had happened from the beginning, everything was restored to its original state. Except for the ships and Outspacer swarm consumed by ‘it.’

The collector bugs and elite fleet that luckily survived were only about 20% of what they were before. The queen carrying Alshas and Isabelle was among them.

They didn’t attack me.

More precisely, they didn’t dare to attack.

How would you feel if you watched all your comrades disappear in a matter of seconds?

I’m certain that right now, only one emotion fills their heads.

Overwhelming fear.

‘Bone Beast activated.’

It’s time to drive home that fear.