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Chapter 20

In space, humanity was divided into two major factions: MegaCorp and StarUnion. Both were powerful enough to control dozens or even hundreds of star systems, but in the vast and expansive universe, they were mere specks of dust.

Infinite space, filled with countless galaxies and celestial bodies, extended beyond their reach. For example, C-08 was one such place.

In this uncharted territory untouched by MegaCorp, StarUnion, or any other sentient beings, hostile entities lurked in groups.

C-08 was an area managed by the Space Dogs, a particularly ruthless cartel among them.

The Dvara Cartel.

Notorious raiders were currently ravaging the newcomers who had entered their territory.

“Help, please!”

“Gahhh!”

The agonized cries filled the luxurious interior of the passenger ship. Inside the vessel, armed guards lay lifeless alongside innocent victims.

“Take everything they have!”

“Kill the men and violate the women!”

The ruthless raiders were anything but ordinary. Some had ant-like heads, while others had half-machine bodies. Some carried loot, while others dragged noblewomen away with sinister grins, disappearing into the unknown.

Although the raiders’ appearances and actions were diverse, they all shared one common trait.

A crimson clover tattooed near their shoulders, signifying allegiance to Elchen Dvara, the leader of the Dvara Cartel.

The members of the Dvara Cartel were all former soldiers, mercenaries, or criminals, making them a burly bunch.

They all boasted above-average, muscular bodies, but one among them stood out.

Standing at a towering 3 meters tall, his entire body was covered in muscles. His head resembled a lion with red mane-like hair and bestial ears. His right eye and arm were cybernetic.

A hybrid of human, beast, and machine, he was none other than Elchen Dvara, the head of a large family of 50 people.

Seated diagonally in the captain’s chair, he watched disinterestedly as his subordinates plundered. Next to his chair, heaps of spoils collected by his subordinates were piled up, but he showed no interest whatsoever.

‘These measly riches. What a waste of effort.’

As Elchen was sticking out his tongue, he locked eyes with one of the captives who had been led away by his subordinates. The captive, or rather, the ship’s captain, shouted upon seeing Elchen.

“Look here, Captain! How can you do this to us?”

Elchen replied, “What are you talking about?”

“We hired your mercenary group for protection! Is this how you protect us?”

Elchen, a hulking mutant from MegaCorp, stood out even among the other cartel leaders. Those unfamiliar with him might be surprised by his genetically altered appearance, but Elchen’s true weapon was not his physique.

Elchen’s true weapon was his cunningness.

He was a member of the Space Dogs cartel but had brazenly registered as a mercenary under MegaCorp. His preferred tactic was to turn against his employers when he deemed them gullible.

“You foolish idiot. Who hires mercenaries for protection anyway?”

“What?!”

“Do you think we’re friends? It’s absurd to expect that a complete stranger you’ve paid a few bucks to will solve all your problems.”

“You shameless…!”

“Why are you acting this way? You’re just trying to save money, too. MegaCorp swine always act like this.”

“You son of a…”

There was no obligation to respond to the losers’ barking. Elchen responded to the captain’s curses by merely turning a deaf ear.

“By now, the MegaCorp Defense Force must have received the distress signal and mobilized! When they arrive, all of you will face execution!”

“Oh, how terrifying. Go ahead, take them away.”

“Profit! It’s not worth killing all of you. I’ll tell the defense force myself to turn all of you into hulk mutants!”

“Wait.”

Elchen’s eyebrows twitched. The tuft of fur between his beast-like ears quivered, as if expressing his discomfort. He despised the idea of turning them into Hulk mutants because he had been forcibly subjected to genetic modification by MegaCorp.

The foolish captain had touched a nerve.

Elchen rose from his seat and approached the captain. When his subordinate, who had been holding the captain, extended his hand, he pulled a machete from his belt and handed it to Elchen.

The machete, commonly known as a jungle sword, looked like a mere dagger in his hands, given his towering height of over 3 meters. His appearance was quite, if not extremely, intimidating, causing the captain to swallow hard.

“W-what is it?”

“Hey there, Captain. It seems you’re not well-versed in MegaCorp mercenary laws, so let me educate you.”

“Huh?”

“If mercenaries betray their employers during a mission, it’s a grave offense. But it’s invalid if there are no witnesses to prove it, you know?”

“What are you saying?”

“You called in the Defense Force, didn’t you? What a waste of effort. There’s no one here to explain your side of the story.”

The captain’s face turned pale as he understood the implications.

“A-are you planning to exterminate us?”

“I don’t know about such noble phrasing. But there’s one thing for sure…”

Elchen grabbed the captain’s hair ruthlessly. Despite the captain’s screams of pain and futile kicks, they were no match for the monstrous muscles before him.

“My hobby involves stripping the skins off MegaCorp swine.”

The machete in Elchen’s hand gleamed ominously.

By the time his hobby was over, there were no living humans left inside the passenger ship. As always, after the looting was done, there was nothing but an unpleasant silence.

While his subordinates cleaned up, Elchen returned to his training room. The pirates who had been guarding the ship all came out to welcome him.

“Have you returned?”

“Yeah. Handle things as usual.”

“Understood.”

The deputy captain disappeared somewhere with the face skin Elchen had thrown. After undergoing some proper treatment, that face skin was intended to adorn Elchen’s throne.

“Come to think of it, don’t we have more to do today?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re off the hook. Bring Garlic.”

A little later, a petite woman with black hair and glasses was brought in by the subordinate. She was the Cartel’s ace known as Garlic, owing to her exceptional intelligence. Her colleagues nicknamed her that because she was rumored to always smell like garlic.

With her long hair flowing and shoulders hunched, Garlic, who appeared timid to anyone, greeted Elchen with a trembling voice.

“Oh, hello? Boss, You…you called?”

“Yeah. There’s some work around here, right? What happened?”

“Well, I was supposed to meet someone around here today, but they suddenly lost contact, so…”

“What?”

“Ah!”

As Elchen frowned, Garlic visibly shrank. If it had been another subordinate, they would have been swiftly dealt with, but Garlic was the smartest person in the cartel. She was a woman of unknown origin, but her intelligence and obedience had earned her Elchen’s favor.

Elchen calmed his anger and asked her to explain.

“Explain properly.”

“Uh, I have an acquaintance on the research ship led by Captain Samuel. They asked me to help with the disposal of a body that came from there.”

“Samuel’s family? What brings them all the way here? Well, fine. So, who’s the body?”

“Um, it’s a Noble Capital body. A woman from the Yujin family…”

Titan’s Third Capital asking for the disposal of a corpse from Earth’s Noble Capital, that was quite an imbalance considering their status difference.

“Those crazy bastards. How much are they offering?”

“Well, during the last communication, they said they could give one million credits.”

“A million?” Elchen chuckled.

He knew well how meticulous the Noble Capitals were in handling bodies. Even if they offered 10 million or 100 million credits, it was an unacceptable condition.

“There’s a conspiracy here.”

Elchen had been aware of the uneasy atmosphere within MegaCorp recently. Rumors had been circulating that the old king of Earth’s Yujin family was being challenged by the young blood of Mars’ Eden family.

Although it had nothing to do with Elchen, he still smelled money.

The primary business of the Eden family was ship development, but secretly, they were focusing a lot of effort on genetic modification. What Elchen knew was that he was secretly developing a prototype of a new Hulk mutant, directly from the Eden family.

‘Wait a minute. What if I intercept the body and hand it over to Eden?’

He didn’t know the identity of the body, but if it was from the Yujin family, it was obvious they had undergone some extreme genetic modification. Being practically a living relic from the Earth’s Noble Capital, they would certainly pay a fortune.

Of course, Elchen despised the Eden family, but personal grudges and credits were separate matters.

‘Actually, if I do this, it might lead to a showdown between Eden and Yujin, and both of them will be screwed.’

Determined to loot the body, Elchen asked Garlic again.

“Communication went down, you say? Was it an attack?”

“That…that I’m not sure about…”

‘Whoever they are, they must be pretty audacious to cause such a commotion in our territory, right?’

Garlic, having sensed that her boss was lost in thought, quietly withdrew. After the cleanup was finished and his subordinates returned, Elchen gave the order.

“As soon as the cleanup is done, we’ll depart. Our destination is Samuel’s ship. Prepare for communication tracking.”

“Yes!”

As his subordinates moved efficiently, Elchen pondered his next steps.

Once the cleanup was complete, and the returning subordinates were aboard, the Dvara Assault Ship disappeared from the spot at superluminal speed.

The remaining passenger ship soon exploded and turned into cosmic dust, leaving no trace of the unfortunate souls that had been here.

***

***

‘Hmm?’

I woke up from my rest, and there was a slight impact outside the ship. I thought it might be a collision with space debris, but it seemed too artificial, as if someone were knocking on the ship’s door.

“It’s them.”

I focused my senses linked to the nest on the location of the impact. I could feel the ship’s hull like my own body, and the outline of the one causing the impact became clear.

Unlike the round and oval research ships, this one had a long, sleek design that reminded me of black. The surface of the ship was painted with red clovers.

‘No one would graffiti a ship like this except the Space Dogs.’

The battleship was attempting a forced docking with the research ship, pushing against the damaged outer wall. Through the breach, a few individuals entered the research ship.

‘They’re fast.’

Their actions were impeccable, typical of professional military personnel. Once they entered the research ship, their destination was clear: the bridge.

‘Whether they’re smart or just plain foolish…’

Any typical sentient being would hesitate in a situation where it was evident that the ship was in an abnormal state. But they acted without hesitation.

The current state of the Samuel’s research ship was so distorted that it would be difficult to recognize its original form. Even this pinnacle of advanced engineering designed to withstand the harsh conditions of space had become useless in the face of Amorph’s presence.

The smoothly polished alloy corridors had deteriorated to the point where the brownish stems jutted out like veins. The ceiling and floor relentlessly dripped a mixture of neurotoxins and corrosive substances. The melted alloy sections were now filled with the nest’s secretions.

Without someone to tell them that this place was a ship, no one would think it was anything other than a naturally formed structure.

In a way, this place could be considered a kind of garden, specially created for a specific entity.

The owner of this garden was me, The Amorph.

Like tomb raiders seeking treasure, they were blinded by greed. They didn’t even know where they had set foot.

I am currently lying in the second nest installed in the laboratory, monitoring the intruders. The unsuspecting intruders were manipulating the communication system on the bridge. Through the nest, the enhanced psychic device read the flow of their radio waves.

[Bridge secured. But something’s strange.]

[What is it?]

“There’s no one on the ship, and strange trees are growing.”

[Trees? Where would there be plants in space?]

[It’s real, boss.]

[That little shit. I’ll go check it myself. Or else, get ready to have your head smashed.]

[…Yes.]

The one speaking with a punk-like attitude must be the leader. The leader had an unmistakable presence that set him apart from the others.

‘A Hulk Mutant’

The sound of two high-powered hearts beating could be heard from his body. Seeing faint radio waves flowing over his skin, it seemed like he had implanted multiple mechanical devices.

Following the leader, others also infiltrated the research ship one by one. I checked each of them as they crossed over.

‘A pheromone is coming from his body; he’s an Insectman. Instead of a heartbeat, this one makes machine noises. A StarUnion cyborg. A multispecies cartel. That’s convenient.’

The conditions for evolving into an ascendant entity required killing ten individuals of two different species each, whose genetic material I would consume. Currently, I had filled half of them as humans, so the rest needed to be filled with ten individuals from a different species.

‘So far, the Star Union has the most with twelve, but what will happen now?’

In the game, it didn’t matter how they were treated as different races, but in reality, who knows. According to the settings, they were still considered humans, so whether to treat them as humans or an independent race would have to be determined by trying it out.

Continuing to wait, the number of individuals who entered the research ship was a total of twenty-nine. I thought that was the end, but one more human crossed over at the end.

‘Huh?’

The individual seemed extremely ordinary. So, I initially didn’t pay much attention, but upon a second look, I felt something strange.

‘Can a person be this ordinary?’

So far, I’ve devoured over a hundred humans, but among them, there hasn’t been a single one with a normal or average body condition. Every human had unique movements and sounds, like fingerprints.

However, the newcomer is different. Their body is anything but ordinary, almost as if someone calculated the average for all humans and produced this person like a machine-made copy of ‘normal’.

In summary, the individual’s body was arbitrary. Instead of a brain, there was a computer in their head, so they were meticulously ‘pretending’ to be average.

‘…A noteworthy character. Let’s remember that.’

With the arrival of this suspicious individual, no one else entered the ship. Now, it’s my turn.

I disengaged from the nest and got up. Number 26, who had been resting nearby, reacted to my movements.

｢Hey, where are you going, baby?｣

[ZZZZ (Going out)]

｢I’ll go with you.｣

[ZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ (It’s dangerous, so stay here)]

It puffed up its body as if it disliked the idea, but I couldn’t accommodate it. From now on, I was going to the enemy battleship.

[ZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ (Instead, protect that thing)]

｢That thing?｣

I pointed to the plasma launcher placed in the corner. Ironically, this weapon made by humans for slaughtering humans was resting after completing its mission.

[Zoom Zoom Zoom (Important)]

｢Yeah! Trust me, baby!｣

Trust, huh? I wonder if Number 26 knows what that means. Anyway, it seemed to like the idea of being given an important mission and hopped around happily.

With its farewell, I left the cooling room. The enemy’s guard was weakened, and this was the only opportunity to disable the battleship. By destroying the battleship’s power source, I could make retreat impossible for the enemy.

Afterward, the enemy had two choices. They could split their forces to guard both the research ship and the battleship, or they could concentrate their manpower on one of the ships.

Because they are greedy, they wouldn’t want to miss out on either option. They’d likely divide into a raiding party and a defense party. When their forces were dispersed, that’s when my hunt would begin.

It’s always been like that.