Hunger

He had no way of gauging how far he had slid down.

It had been quite some time since the scraping of legs behind him had cut off completely, and at some point, the slope of the metal gap had grown gentle. Only after it bent once more, and then once again, did his body come to a stop on its own.

It was not because the strength that had driven his flight had run out. The feel of the air had changed. Instead of the damp heat of the swarm, cool, uniform air settled over his scales.

There was no light.

And yet, it was not as though he could not see at all.

Now his eyes tore into the darkness first and read it. Living things emerged as body heat, metal as cold temperature, and freshly scratched marks as residual warmth that had not yet cooled. Even in the pitch-black space, hot and cold things clotted in place, forming outlines.

If the fluorescent mist in the sewers had served as a faint light source, this place was different.

The inside of the gap where he had hidden himself was cold and narrow. The walls had been torn away here and there, revealing rough cross-sections, and beneath the floor, long, straight metal structures were embedded at regular intervals.

They looked like railroad tracks, yet were a little different. They were far too smooth to be tracks for wheels to roll along, and the supporting structure was unfamiliar as well.

An image from the far side of memory flashed by.

A long car body that did not roll along the rails, but floated forward as though gliding. Whether he had seen it in person in his first life, or only encountered it in some passing video, even that was vague. Still, something similar came to mind.

Is it like a subway? Or something else along those lines?

The thought broke off there.

He was hungry.

It was different from the ravenous craving of instinct surging up as before. It was not the urge to tear apart whatever was in front of him and sweep it all inside. He was simply empty. As if the things that had only just barely been woven together were on the verge of unraveling again, his insides were far too cleanly hollowed out.

If he did not eat, he would die.

That simple sensation was strangely clear.

The area beneath his scales chilled first. It felt as though the internal circulation that had just been put in order was already drying out. The circulation was turning slowly, but instead of driving his whole body, it spun uselessly in one place. The surface of his scales, which had been faintly alive until just a moment ago, was already growing rough.

It had only been once.

He had merely severed one of the things binding the swarm together and escaped. He had not even used the ocular art for long. Truly, it had only been for an instant, enough to twist half a beat and create an opening.

And yet the price was not brief at all.

If he encountered a large one again in this state, it was over. That judgment came first.

Immediately after, the sensation that had pressed down on the battlefield followed. The pressure that had seemed as though it would drive even his breath into the ground. The gaze that had reached beyond illusion.

Red eyes.

It probably had not chased him all the way here right this instant. But his body already knew what came next. If he faced it again in this empty state, he would not even be able to run. Without the strength to cut off his traces or the leeway to read an opening, he would be crushed right where he was.

He turned his gaze outside the metal gap.

There remained small fry that had been pushed out of the swarm. Small insectoid contaminated entities, wandering as their leg joints clicked against one another. Little things drawn by the scent of scattered bodily fluids. Each individual one was no threat.

Even so, he did not immediately look deeper in.

First, he had to confirm.

What his current body could eat, and how long it could endure on it. What had meaning, and what was merely flesh. If he chased after a dense energy wave just because he was hungry and ended up encountering a larger one, it would end there.

He twisted his body and slipped just a little way out of the gap. It was a place his previous body would have gotten caught. Now it was different. It took almost no effort to squeeze out.

It was not that he had gained some remarkable skill. He had simply become smaller. But that difference was significant.

He chose the nearest one.

It was a many-legged contaminated entity the size of a palm. Half its carapace was broken, and the energy inside was faint. The moment it raised its antennae, his body slid forward first. His jaws closed, one joint was severed, and black fluid spattered.

It was brief.

In the past, he would have checked once more where its weakness was, but there was no need. The place he had to sever revealed itself first. No, rather than seeing it, he sensed it inside his body. It felt as though the point where flesh and shell were misaligned protruded ever so slightly, and his body bit straight into it.

He swallowed the remaining body.

He waited.

Nothing changed.

There was the sensation of something entering his stomach, but even the feeling that he had eaten it was faint. It was as though it had not even fallen into his hollow insides, merely brushed the surface and vanished. One was naturally not enough, and ten would be the same.

No, perhaps even tearing apart and swallowing hundreds would make no difference.

The grade did not match.

What his body demanded was not flesh.

He sharpened his gaze and swept it over his surroundings.

The darkness was still dense, but more things caught his attention than before. Among the little clumps of body heat, things that were subtly different were mixed in. Though so faint they were almost imperceptible, some were empty inside, while others had a thin condensation remaining beneath rotting flesh.

It was far from enough to call a complete yao core, but at least something like its dregs was there.

The moment he distinguished that difference, a strange sensation brushed down his spine.

There was something that touched him before sight did.

Beyond a metal wall, behind a bend, he vaguely caught the tremor of a small individual passing by. He did not see it with his eyes. He did not hear it, either. Yet he did not miss it.

Even though he had not opened his ocular art.

He flicked his tongue out briefly. The smell of metal, rotten bodily fluids, damp poison, and a minute tremor mingled among them. It was not a sense that ended with his eyes and tongue. It was truly close to a thin omen, but there was something that reached him beyond the wall.

Right now, he did not have the leeway to pay attention to that side.

First, the ones with condensation remaining.

He severed one individual a little farther inside. At a glance, it was not very different from the first, but its inside was different. The moment he swallowed it, for a very brief instant, he felt moisture run through one of his drying blood vessels. His inner circulation, too, connected instead of spinning uselessly for that instant.

Breath remained in him.

That was truly all.

It was faint. So faint that it was, if anything, clearer. What he needed was not quantity, but quality. But that quality was almost nonexistent inside weak creatures.

He had to find something denser.

The problem was that such things always gathered on the dangerous side. Wherever strong energy waves flowed, larger contaminated entities attached themselves. The farther down he went, the more pronounced that tendency became. It was a direction he ought to avoid.

And yet, in order to endure, he had to go that way in the end.

Eating alone is too slow.

That thought dropped into place.

He recalled when he had been a Daoist. With even a single talisman, he could supplement the flow, and if he laid out even a simple formation, he could create a moment to catch his breath. Spiritual sense was even more so. There had been methods he handled as naturally as his own hands and feet. Means by which he read with his eyes, stretched outward, and operated as though raising one more thin sense outside his body.

But now, he had no hands, and no materials.

Talismans did not work with just anything. If it could be solved by roughly picking up something similar and using it, there would have been no reason to worry in the first place. Formations were even more troublesome. They required position and time. In a situation like this, where he was moving as if hunted, they were close to a luxury.

It was insufficient to call it the spiritual sense from back then.

A complete restoration was even more impossible.

However, something closer to an imitation might be possible.

His current body had already changed. Even in the darkness, it read the difference between heat and cold, and before he saw with his eyes, the flow beyond the wall caught him first. Instead of hands and feet, his scales, tongue, and eyes as a whole moved like probes.

Even if it was not exactly the same as the old method, if he twisted it to suit his current body, he might reach it.

He had no leeway to hold onto that thought any further.

His insides dried again.

He raised his head.

Outside the metal passage, within the darkness leading farther down, several lines caught his attention. One was distant and thick. So thick that if he touched it now, he would die. Around it, he also read the flow of small fry clinging nearby.

Another was fainter than that, but unbroken. It extended far.

If he wanted to endure just enough not to die immediately, he had no choice but to feel his way along such a direction first.

And from that direction, something other than the smell of contamination rose and mingled in.

The smell of oil. Traces of half-burned insulation. A cross-section of metal that seemed to have been cut relatively recently.

They were traces that would not remain if this were a passage that had lost its function long ago. Either someone had passed through, or somewhere was still operating.

There was no certainty. Still, one thing was clear.

This underground was not merely a cavern. He had thought only the shell of a stopped passage remained, but somewhere inside, something was still flowing. The reason the large ones gathered near it was likely because of that.

It was not good.

In such places, a larger one was usually the first to take its place. And yet he could not look away.

What he needed now was not safety itself. It was enough leeway not to be crushed to death immediately when he met the red eyes again. The strength to read an opening to escape. One move to erase his traces. If he wanted to leave even that much for himself, he had to eat something denser.

To survive, he had to go.

He lowered his body.

His inner circulation turned quietly. It was not noisy like before. If anything, that made it more ominous. Like a beast drying out with its mouth shut, his insides were silently empty.

Start with what is close.

Only as much as I can endure.

And as quickly as possible, toward something denser.

He descended farther, following the side of the strangely structured rails.

Before long, humanlike shapes caught his attention in the darkness ahead.

At first, he thought they were humans. They were silhouettes that staggered on two legs, their arms dangling as they groped along the walls and floor. Wondering if there were humans who had survived down here as well, his body stopped first.

But the closer he got, the stranger it was.

There was no vitality.

They had body heat, but it was different from the warmth of living flesh. It was heat like a forced ember embedded in a cooling lump of meat. There was no breath, no pulse, no inner flow unique to humans. They were merely standing like humans.

For an instant, the grotesque armored form he had seen on the surface flashed through his mind. The oppressive presence that had flowed out from within the spiral mask. But he erased it at once.

They were not even worth comparing. The armored figure he had seen on the surface, distorted though it was, had been a single mass. The things before him were closer to low-grade shells that barely imitated the shape of humans.

One thing caught at him.

Their yao power was denser than expected.

It was clearer than the insect types. More inner condensation remained than in the beast-type small fry as well. For whatever reason, the more they maintained a human shape, the denser that energy was.

He severed the one on the outermost edge.

It died more emptily than an insect type.

But the moment he swallowed it, the reaction inside was different. Though faint, it was far clearer than the small fry from earlier. The second. The third. The less damaged they were, the more of a human form they retained, the denser the yao power inside them was.

Even so, it was more or less the same. Tearing apart a few more would not last him long. He could not fill his hunger with this. He would only waste strength.

He stopped there.

They were not wandering at random. Though they seemed to scatter, in the end they converged in a similar direction. They groped along the walls, scratched at the floor, and inserted their hands into gaps in structures before pulling them back out. Occasionally, they stopped and faced the same direction for a long while.

They were searching.

Whether for prey, usable dregs, or something else.

Whichever it was, if even low-grade creatures like these were gathering like that, they could not be empty-handed.

He was hungry. Hungry enough that he wanted to sever and swallow every last one in front of him right now.

And yet he did not bite.

They were better than the other small fry. Even so, they were much the same. Tearing apart a few more would only barely keep him breathing. It would be better to first see what they were looking for.

He lowered his body further. He did not follow directly behind them. Riding along the metal grooves above and the edges of collapsed structures, he moved while maintaining only enough distance not to be noticed.

Even when he lost them with his eyes, the sensation did not break. Even when they turned into places he could not see, the extremely thin remaining flow continued to catch.

For now, he would follow.

His stomach was starving, but information was worth more right now. Whatever lay at the end, there was a high possibility it would be better than the few in front of him.