AI’s scream was still ringing in my head.
My body tilted once more.
Only then did Noise come into view.
He was a little below me. He was falling with nothing to grab on to. The equipment hanging at his waist tore free first, and fragments of his shattered terminal scattered into the darkness.
“Boss!”
My body moved before I could think.
A flow took shape between the collapsing steel frame, the slanted sheet of metal sinking askew, and the empty space yawning below. I spread my dao power thinly and hooked it onto the space ahead; the distant gap folded inward in an instant and locked together. The sensation of falling twisted, my vision cut out briefly, then continued.
Shrinking the Earth.
Noise’s belt and protective gear were right in front of me.
I curled my body around him.
“Hup!”
Noise swallowed his breath.
I didn’t stop. I hooked my dao power again toward the collapsed support beam. The foothold that had been out of reach came directly underfoot.
Crack.
Thud!
Noise’s body rolled onto the steel frame. I coiled up beside him and came to a stop.
Only then did my surroundings register.
Blackbeak was gripping a steel beam with one hand amid the collapsed structure. The two wolf-types were holding on as well, their claws dug in. One had lowered its body toward the side where Noise had fallen, and the other stood as if blocking the way in front of Blackbeak.
Noise couldn’t speak for a while. He looked back and forth between me and the darkness below, then barely managed to turn his head toward Blackbeak.
“Boss.”
His voice had barely come out.
“Just now, that was…”
Blackbeak looked at Noise, then lifted his chin toward me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“Then move.”
“Yes, sir.”
Noise immediately lowered his head.
— Huh.
AI’s voice popped up inside.
— What was that just now? Magic? No, a spell art?
I didn’t bother opening my mouth.
Even after using Shrinking the Earth twice, I didn’t feel hollowed out like before. Ouroboros immediately rewound the space that had emptied, and only a brief dry heat passed beneath my scales. It was clear the efficiency had improved. Still, it wasn’t free. If I burned through power carelessly inside The City, hunger would come for me in the end. And to fill that hunger, I would have to seek living energy; things like that were always found near danger.
We moved downward.
The slope was almost completely blocked. Structures and steel beams that had fallen from above the waste compression yard were tangled together with the remains of black masses, sealing off the passage. Severed cables swayed in midair, and several bent support beams still held heat.
Noise took out his remaining auxiliary terminal.
The screen was half shattered, and only a few live lines glowed faintly.
“Boss. The existing route is blocked.”
Blackbeak asked, “Can we break through?”
Noise scanned the obstructed passage.
“The moment we try to force it open, there’s a high chance of collapse. Moreover, with our equipment gone, it’s impossible.”
“What about a detour?”
Noise quickly checked the terminal.
“Some of the signals underground are still alive. But the path directly connected from here is blocked by debris. We’ll have to go around. The map for that side cuts off midway too.”
Blackbeak’s lips hardened.
Noise lowered his head.
“I’ll try to reacquire it.”
Just then, something slipped out of the debris.
At first, I thought it was a severed cable. A single black tentacle slid out from between the bent steel beams. It gleamed like wet flesh, and black dust and points like blue embers clung across its surface.
One of the wolf-types reacted first.
Grrrrrk.
The black tentacle shot up.
Slash!
The wolf-type threw itself forward. The tentacle wrapped around its shoulder, and small protrusions dug into its flesh. The wolf-type growled low.
Noise stepped back, clutching the terminal.
“Boss, that’s not a signal from the nest-side creatures.”
Blackbeak’s finger flicked briefly.
Snap.
The other wolf-type immediately split off and blocked the front of Noise. The first one went at the wolf-type that had been caught and bit the tentacle at the nape, but the tentacle did not stop.
Noise’s voice went rigid.
“There’s no ring reaction either. Its movement is different from an ordinary contaminated body.”
— Ah, this. It’s because of the Wave.
AI said.
— It’s an infected body. If something’s exposed to the Wave for too long, it ends up like that. Contaminated body, human, or any other race—the inside collapses first. The nervous system gets tangled up first, the mind grows clouded, and later only the shell remains. From the outside, they all look like they’re moving independently, but what’s holding them from within is ultimately one thing.
Two more black tentacles sprang from the debris. One clung to the ceiling, and the other slid along the floor.
— If its fluids or those protrusions penetrate into the nerves through a wound, you get infected. That wolf-type won’t last long.
I opened my eyes.
Ocular art.
The movements of the tentacles split apart. The one springing first and the ones following late, the places where force surged and the points where it recoiled—all were caught at once. Beneath the debris, between broken steel beams, the main body was buried.
I spread my divine sense thinly.
The inner flow of the infected body was revealed. The tentacles were branches, and the power was rising from the main body. Deep inside the mass of flesh was a slowly pulsing core; between that core and the outer shell, the junctions where fibers converged extended like lines.
It was not a point.
The weak spots appeared as lines.
The pattern inside my eyes turned.
The infected body’s tentacles came after me too late. The tentacle wrapped around the wolf-type’s shoulder loosened and curled back toward its root, while the tentacles on the ceiling and floor also lost their direction.
I bound the flow first.
The main body in the debris writhed. I pushed power into it.
Crunch.
The black mass of flesh beneath the steel frame was crushed. The tentacles trembled all at once, then went limp, and the protrusions digging into the wolf-type’s shoulder pulled out one by one.
Black liquid spread across the floor.
Noise couldn’t close his mouth.
Then I sensed another reaction above.
Thud.
The debris near the ceiling shook. Dust poured down, and several chunks of black flesh pushed their way down between the collapsed steel frames all at once.
Bang. Bang, bang.
The tentacles unfurled first. From between the sagging masses of flesh, wet branch-like things stretched out in every direction. Blackbeak’s finger flicked once more, and the two wolf-types split off to block Noise and the passage.
— Four of them. There’s one more above!
I know.
I opened my ocular art and divine sense at the same time.
Flow overlapped over form. The roots of the tentacles, the pulsing cores, the joints where fibers gathered, the seams where the shell thinned—all were revealed at once. It was no longer a sensation of marking a single point. The weak grain leading to the core connected like a line.
The first one was close.
I passed as though brushing past its flank and stabbed that line.
Puk.
Black liquid burst from inside the flesh, and the tentacles convulsed all at once.
When I twisted my body, the second one was extending tentacles from the ceiling. The core buried deep in its back and the branching point where three tentacles split away appeared connected in a single line. I used a collapsed support beam to climb once, then swept past over its back and cut that line with the tip of my tail.
Thwack.
All three tentacles lost their direction at once, and its body fell from the ceiling.
Thud!
Before the thing that had slammed into the floor could writhe, I drove my head into it.
The core burst.
The third was wrapping two tendrils around one wolf-type’s leg and pulling.
I considered using Shrinking the Earth, then stopped. It was inefficient.
Instead, with two layers of demonic power coating my scales, I kicked off a support beam and dropped down. My small body, carrying the full speed of the fall, plunged into the infected body’s back.
Crack.
The shell on its back burst. I pierced the exposed core with the tip of my tail.
Thwack.
The tentacles wrapped around the wolf-type’s leg loosened.
The last one was different.
The tentacles did not come first. The entire mass of flesh pushed itself out of the debris. It was twice the size of the previous three. Four things closer to arms than tentacles hung from it, and its shell was thicker too. My divine sense couldn’t easily catch the core.
— Snake, this one’s a little different. The core’s deep. You might not be able to stab it straight from the outside like before.
I narrowed my ocular art further.
If I took in too much, it blurred. I fixed only on the pulse of the core.
There it was.
Inside three layers of shell, amid a tangle of flesh and metal fragments, a slow, heavy pulse was turning. The weakness was not at the front. The lower abdomen. At the point where flesh and shell overlapped, one remaining seam showed itself like a line.
I burrowed downward.
The creature’s arm came down.
Boom!
The floor caved in. The metal plate split. I slipped through the impact and moved under the creature’s body. The tip of my head, coated in three layers of demonic power, stabbed that line.
The shell held.
Once wasn’t enough.
I twisted my body and put force into it again.
Puk.
The shell split open. The flesh inside parted, and the pulse of the core touched my scales directly. I pushed power into it.
Crunch.
The core shattered.
The creature’s four arms flailed through the air at once. They trembled, directionless, and soon sagged limply.
The mass of flesh collapsed.
Black liquid spread in every direction.
I exhaled.
Heat rose beneath my scales. My circulation had not collapsed, but the rotation of the Ouroboros pattern had grown a little heavier.
Breaking through the last one had drained a fair amount of power.
But then, inside the collapsed mass of flesh, one remaining energy caught on my divine sense.
It was the power left within the black liquid. The circulation inside my body reacted first. It wasn’t that I had deliberately tried to swallow it.
The Ouroboros pattern turned quietly.
The infected body’s crushed energy was drawn inside.
It did not rebound like poison, nor did it scrape at my insides. The mixed energy rode atop my circulation and dissolved naturally. The rotation that had grown heavy became smooth again, and the heat remaining beneath my scales subsided.
The hunger vanished.
Energy filled me.
That, rather, felt ominous.
— Wait.
AI’s voice lowered.
— You just swallowed that, didn’t you?
I didn’t bother opening my mouth.
— That’s something you’re not supposed to touch in the first place. Normally, it should twist you apart from the inside right away.
The black liquid was losing its power and cooling on the floor.
— So why are you fine?
A brief silence settled.
Noise stood frozen, holding the half-shattered terminal. He looked back and forth between the remains of the infected bodies scattered across the floor and me, then belatedly swallowed a breath.
Blackbeak said nothing.
He walked slowly among the dead things. Only after stepping one by one across the places where black liquid had spread and the marks where shells had split did he stop in front of me.
A short breath escaped him.
“Hah.”
Blackbeak’s mouth twisted.
“I thought the road was blocked.”
He spoke in a low voice.
“But it seems we’ve got another way now.”
Noise reacted first.
“Boss?”
Blackbeak glanced once at the blocked slope, then once at the black shadows spreading through the gaps in the structure above, before looking back at me.
“We’re turning toward the barrier.”
Noise’s face stiffened.
“…You mean that route?”
Blackbeak tilted his head briefly.
Noise swallowed.
“Boss, that’s too much of a waste. We spent years setting up a foothold inside the corporate district. If we open it now, everything will be exposed.”
Blackbeak let out something like a snort.
“It will be exposed. And yeah, it’s a damn waste.”
He swept his gaze over the collapsed passage and the structure above.
“But is this the time to be worrying about that?”
Noise shut his mouth.
Blackbeak continued.
“If we all get buried here and die, what good are those few years? We have to be alive for there to be any chances left.”
He said,
“There’s a disguised service passage under the barrier. On the surface, it’s a route used by the subcontractors for the corporate district purification filters.”
Noise’s expression crumpled further.
Blackbeak ignored it and went on.
“I’ll need you to open the way ahead a bit.”
I silently turned my body.
Blackbeak’s mouth twisted.
“Good.”
AI muttered inside.
— Wow, this is seriously insane. If you look at it nicely, it’s an emergency exit, but if things go wrong, we’re basically crawling straight into a death trap.
He was right.
If the service passage under the barrier was still intact, it was better than wandering around below. But there was no guarantee we’d make it safely to the entrance.
AI continued.
— The problem is what comes next. It means you have to keep opening the path from the front.
Noise tapped the terminal once. The screen flickered, then several surviving lines reappeared.
“To reach the service passage under the barrier, we have to cross the waste rail. With my equipment like this, I won’t be able to keep markers up for long. I’ll have to match the remaining signals with my memory as we go.”
Blackbeak nodded.
“Fine. You watch the route.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You two take the sides.”
The two wolf-types growled low. The injured one shook its shoulder once. Black liquid scattered onto the floor, but it still seemed able to move.
Blackbeak looked at me and said,
“The front is yours.”
From above, there came another pattering sound.
Black lumps fell between the structures. One struck a steel frame and burst apart, black tentacles spreading in every direction.
I immediately turned.
I pushed away the first tentacle that sprang up with my scales, then severed the next two. When I crushed and burst the central mass, the sagging tentacles lost their strength and drooped.
It ended quickly.
Beyond it, the presence from the barrier side pressed in.
Black smoke covered the sky, and beneath it, infected bodies were pouring down like rain.
My divine sense was the first to catch it.
It was not a simple swarm. The entire space beneath the barrier was seething, crushed under pressure. Tangled energy gathered together and writhed, and the screams of beasts and the sound of steel frames tearing traveled along the floor and reached beneath my scales.
Even AI fell silent.
It was the direction any living thing would turn its back on.
We headed toward that vibration.