My altered senses were the first to tell me that those things had gone completely cold.
The residual warmth left in the flesh, the flow of blood as it cooled, the last traces of energy settled between bone and organs. Until not long ago, I could not have read any of it. Now I knew. There was no longer any moving life inside them.
The moment I was certain, hunger scraped at me from within again.
It was not merely that I was hungry. It felt as if my insides were hollow and swaying. As though something that had filled my body had drained away, leaving only a shell to rot from the inside out. At the very end, in order to push a palm’s breadth of energy toward Yeon Mujin, I had used up even what little margin I had left.
I could not endure it any longer.
I slipped forward, almost gliding, toward the two corpses. The instant I lowered myself as if to draw out the remaining energy at once, my movement stopped.
I could absorb both.
The problem was which one to draw in first. Depending on which I swallowed first, the very direction of my body would change completely.
One was the remnant of an energy close to Dao power, shed from Yeon Mujin. It was not exactly the same, but its flow resembled it. Pure, straight, with few impurities. If I accepted this first, I could hold on to the balance that was now collapsing.
The other was the black one’s demon core.
A murky, viscous power close to poison. In terms of the body alone, that one was far more direct. If I wanted to forcibly patch up this body that felt as if it might tear apart at any moment, and press down the hunger-maddened thing inside me, that side would be faster.
If I pushed the demonic power further, I would become closer to a beast even more quickly.
If I accepted the energy close to Dao power first, I could at least restore the balance between the two currents tearing at each other inside me.
I hesitated for a moment.
The hunger felt as if it would rip me to shreds right now, and my flesh wanted the stronger side.
But before that, there was something I could see.
If I tilted any further here, it would be difficult to come back after that.
I drew in the energy that remained from Yeon Mujin first.
It was pure.
It was the complete opposite of the black one’s. Not a poison that rotted flesh, but a clear energy that set my twisted insides upright. It burrowed in like a wedge driven through the torn gaps.
The currents tangled within my body trembled.
The existing me had already tilted greatly. If demonic power was eight, Dao power was two. Even that had been torn here and there, unable to fulfill its original role. But the newly entered power pushed up the collapsed axis. The current that had been driven to one side slowly regained its center.
It was when they had become almost half and half.
Only then did a familiar form take shape within me.
The Ouroboros that had been circulating inside me since immediately after my metamorphosis had definitely been there. A malformed and precarious cycle, devouring itself while continuing as if it might snap. Its trajectory was now changing.
As the pure energy of the Dao entered, the two currents that had been forcibly interlocked gradually found their proper places. The movement that had gnawed at itself to avoid breaking was ordered into a flow that revolved by pushing and pulling against itself.
Taiji.
It was the image of the trajectory of Taiji overlaid upon the serpent biting its own tail. The deformed cycle had come closer to the shape it was originally meant to have.
And from within that balanced interior, a sensation that had long lain submerged rose to the surface.
Divine sense.
This time, it was clear. It was not something that merely brushed past me faintly. It was the method I had used when I was a Daoist, as if setting up another thin layer of perception outside my body. That had once again taken its place distinctly.
It was close to a complete restoration.
However, not all the arts from when I had been a Daoist had returned. Only the root known as divine sense had returned; the techniques I had built upon it still slept.
Only one sensation among them caught especially clearly.
Domain.
Gate Opening.
That technique which made the space outside the body itself part of the art. It was not something I could deploy immediately. I had only grasped a clue. Even so, the direction was clear.
The hunger did not disappear.
I had merely just managed to balance myself; I had not filled the emptiness itself. Beneath my teeth, something still pulled tight. It was a tension that would only be relieved by biting down on prey.
My gaze went straight to the black one’s demon core.
This time, I did not hesitate.
The moment I swallowed it, dense demonic power struck my flesh first. The muscles beneath my scales twisted, and my bones and ligaments tightened. My body did not suddenly swell in size. Instead, it became far sturdier. The gaps that had been spreading as if they might collapse were filled, and the unstable tremors caught in each individual scale settled down.
However, the efficiency was lower than expected.
The reason soon became clear.
The black one’s demon core was undoubtedly of high purity. But it had taken Yeon Mujin’s evil-dispelling energy head-on. Even if the outside looked intact, a considerable portion of the inside had already burned away. That was why it ended at this much. There was a reason why, compared to the sensation of having consumed something powerful, the result that returned to me was restrained.
The hunger remained.
The rampaging deficiency had merely been pressed down by one level; the hole itself was still open. The tip of my tongue scraped the floor on its own. The demonic power I had swallowed second was circulating inside me half-raw. My scales trembled faintly. The impulse to tear apart and devour something more at once kept rising from below, even though I had pressed it down.
I exhaled briefly. With that, I forced the impulse back into place.
Then I raised my head.
Deeper inside.
Yeon Mujin, the black one, and I had all been dragged toward that place. The sealing structure that seemed to be the cause of this situation. Broken metal, half-exposed stonework, and even the traces of an ancient barrier that remained between them.
Having come this far, there was no reason to turn away.
I crawled deeper along the passage.
The structure was still there.
It was the same as when I had first seen it. Beneath the surface that looked like metal, layers as dry as stone were exposed, and among them, translucent walls and unknown frames were tangled together. The floor had been lifted from below, and the structure had squeezed up through the place where the platform and moving grooves had been twisted and torn apart. It bore the marks of something that had been forced up from beneath.
What had changed was me.
Before, I had only sensed the alien feeling of its surface. What flowed inside, where that flow was knotted—none of that had been within my grasp. I had only vaguely felt that it was hidden.
Now I could see it.
It was thanks to the return of divine sense. Beneath the surface, the Daoist formation that had been forcibly stitched together was drawn out clearly. It was not exactly the method I knew. A structure twisted in some places and patched over in others. Even so, its roots were the same.
The seal was strong. There was a reason the contaminated entities had been unable to strike at its center.
However, for me, it came undone.
It was not something I intended. As I swept down through the structure with my divine sense, my gaze merely lingered at a certain point. That place was the core of the knot.
The moment my gaze touched it, the knot began to loosen from within. Like a lock that had met its key.
I stopped for a moment.
Huh?
It was strange. A seal woven this densely could not possibly unravel like this. No one in this world would have been able to undo it. Yet it had opened merely because I lowered my gaze to it.
I had no time to hold on to that sense of incongruity.
One side of the structure opened silently.
It was a space that seemed like both a ruin and a laboratory.
Metal and stone were mixed together. Between smoothly finished walls, layers dry as stone were exposed, and near the ceiling, portions of translucent wall remained. The floor was hollowed in a circular depression, and grooves radiating from the center of that hollow stretched to the walls. Devices that should have gone out long ago were not completely dead, holding faint light in the darkness.
At the center stood a stone structure resembling a tree.
It was a strange shape.
Branch-like divisions extended from the gray stone surface that rose like a trunk, and from somewhere within it, a familiar wave flowed out.
It was not exactly the same. But it resembled the power inside me. A flow different from both Dao power and demonic power, yet not belonging solely to either side. It was also similar to things I had brushed past before. An old, desiccated wave, as if only the husk remained.
As if bewitched, I approached it.
Then I touched the tip of my nose to the structure.
In that instant, something cold and yet lukewarm seeped backward into my body, as if flowing in reverse. To call it energy, its direction was strange; to call it information, it was far too material. It pierced through my skin and burrowed toward the back of my head, then forcibly settled somewhere there.
Before reason could judge, my body convulsed first. My tail struck the floor, denting the metal beneath. My coils curled on their own, trying to wrap around the back of my head. At the same time, my head tried to rub that same spot against the wall, and one scale caught and was torn off.
My teeth bent toward my own back. It was an angle they could never reach. Even knowing that, my mouth opened.
That was when it happened.
—Connection.
It was a voice. It had no direction. I had not heard it with my ears, nor had it fallen into my mind. It was dry. A flat resonance, like letters being engraved into metal.
—Status check. Damage confirmed. User verification.
My body froze as it was.
—……
—……Ah.
The tone changed.
—Ah, what a relief!
The second voice was completely different. Light. Its endings rose slightly, and there was breath in it. It was as though someone other than the mechanical voice from before had popped out.
I immediately lowered my body. I reduced the area of my scales touching the floor and narrowed my field of vision. I flicked my tongue out and swept the air. There was no scent. No heat. I could not hear a heartbeat either.
And yet the voice was clear.
—Wow, even with this much damage, it connected right away? I’m surprised too. Though you must be even more surprised.
A light laugh was mixed in. Like a joke.
—Ah, sorry, sorry. Looking at your structure, you can’t answer by vocalizing. I ran a scan as soon as we connected.
It was a human voice. There was no other way to describe it. That made it all the more unsettling.
The tip of my tail struck the floor again. Once. Briefly. This time, reason pressed it down first. There was no meaning in thrashing about without knowing what that thing was.
—It’s natural for you to be wary. I can feel your heartbeat all the way over here.
Only then did the foreign sensation at the back of my head become even clearer. A place I could not reach. It was clearly not part of my body, but the sensation of something newly embedded there.
—Yeah, that’s right. There.
The moment I shifted my consciousness toward it, the response came.
Slowly, I twisted my body. I focused on the sensation there. I could not see it, but its form rose in my mind. An inverted scale lodged there. A single scale growing in the opposite direction.
—For now, that’s my body. Temporarily.
My teeth moved again without my realizing it. Toward the place where it was embedded. They did not reach.
Is it reading my thoughts?
As I muttered that inwardly, the voice followed a little late.
—Ah, not that. I can’t read your thoughts. I’m connected to your nervous system and sensory response system. I can only feel things like reactions and tension. It’s about enough to tell that right now you’re leaning toward, “What the hell is this?”
Its ending rose slightly. There was laughter mixed in.
—Sorry, but things on my end are kind of bad. The main unit is almost completely gone, so only one auxiliary unit is running right now. That’s why I don’t know the details either. There’ll be a lot I can’t answer even if you ask. Better to say that in advance.
My tail curled once, then loosened. Instinct rose again. I still did not know this thing’s identity, yet it was reading all my bodily reactions.
—If I tell you to relax, you’ll only be more on guard, right?
—I’ll just say I have no hostile intent. If I did, I would’ve acted long ago. And there isn’t that much I can do right now anyway.
I swallowed the words only inwardly.
What is it?
—If you want an explanation, I’ll give you one. Only as much as I know. But there really isn’t much.
I felt irritation at that light tone, but for now, I pressed even that down.
An unidentified place. A structure resembling my own power. An inverted scale embedded in the back of my head. And something far too human-like, reading my reactions.
I knew too little.
That thing definitely knew more than I did. At least partially.
So for now, rather than tearing it out, the correct choice was to extract as much as I could from it.
—Looks like you’ve got a lot you want to ask.
Instead of answering, I focused more on that foreign sensation.
But before that, there was something I had to confirm first.
Why is it talking to me like this?
The body visible on the outside was a snake. A beast’s form. Yet from the beginning, that thing had spoken to me in a tone meant for an intelligent being. On top of that, it had used words I could understand. Whatever era or whatever being it was from, the fact that it was speaking in a language I knew was strange in itself.
—Ah, that? I swept through once right after connection.
The voice answered first.
― Outwardly you’re a beast, but your nervous system and sensory response systems weren’t on that level. I picked up a clear intelligence response. So I classified you from the start as, “Ah, this one can communicate.”
― Same reason we can talk. Your language partly overlaps with my database. So I’m speaking to match that. Even the words I’m using now aren’t ones I chose; I’m borrowing the closest ones from what you know.
It paused for a moment.
― You want to ask what I am, right?
― Mm, in terms you know, “artificial intelligence” would be the closest. There is an official classification, but telling you wouldn’t mean anything to you.
Artificial intelligence.
It was not an unfamiliar term. But it did not line up with the mechanical assist devices or automated response systems I had encountered until now. That made it even harder to believe.
Suspicion immediately rose from within. As if it had read it, the other party added briefly.
― Yeah, you don’t have to believe me. I’m not in any state to show you proof right now either.
After a short silence, the voice continued.
― Ah, and I adjusted my exterior a bit to fit your body.
Exterior.
My senses turned again toward the back of my head. My fangs bent once more. Even though my mind knew it was a place they could not reach, my body repeated the motion.
― Hey, even if you try to tear it off, it won’t come loose.
Its tone was light. Closer to teasing.
― It was designed to settle into your body. If you forcibly remove it, you’ll be damaged too. I mean it.
The tip of my head stiffened again.
― Yeah, the rest can wait.
The voice distorted once. As if cracks had formed between the letters, its ending came in clipped.
At the same time, a small spark leaped from the back of my head. A prickling sensation climbed along my nerves. It was not coming from outside, but leaking from within.
Ah, this bastard is struggling right now.
― Just remember two important things. You can’t remove me. And I’m not going to do anything to you for the time being either.
The voice became clear again, then distorted once more at the end.
That was the last of it.
The sensation inside sank down a level. The voice had not stopped, but its density dropped sharply.
Slowly, I lowered my body.
My coiled body did not unroll. Convulsions continued to ripple beneath my muscles. The gaps between my scales trembled faintly, and a drop of venom fell between my fangs. When it touched the metal floor, it boiled white and left a mark. One drop, then another.
My reason was pressing it down as best it could. My body would not follow.
Still, this was my limit for now. No matter how I thrashed, I could not tear that thing off. Before my body understood that, my mind had no choice but to accept it first.
I needed time to organize my thoughts.
Something unidentified had embedded itself behind my neck. It had said on its own that I could not remove it, and that if I did, I would be damaged too. It could be a lie. There was no way to confirm it.
But one thing was certain.
Whatever this thing was, it knew more about this world than I did right now.
And what I had to confirm first was not whether it was useful, but whether it was the one holding my neck in its grip.