Gravity Fluctuation (13)
'Not yet?!'
I grit my teeth at the turret's direction that stubbornly refused to change. In my heart, I wanted to go down there and destroy everything, but that was only possible in my imagination.
The moment I went down now, I would be grabbed by countless hands reaching out from all sides and torn apart.
The infected power loader stunned by the Alpha Series self-destruct,
The ghouls whose bodies were blown apart and crawling on the floor,
The Lampreys living in the creep and using some mutants as hosts,
The Deathworms that melted the special storage bay doors and finally appeared,
Venomous monsters—all of them were charging toward the Albatross barreling down the runway.
The spectacle of them emitting all sorts of monstrous sounds and aggressively displaying their hostility left everyone watching in stunned silence.
The reason for the chilling quiet was that, at this moment, the defense turrets of military base Keter were trying to shoot down the Albatross. No one dared to speak carelessly.
Just as Roxy's one-turn effect ended and the next turn was about to begin, and I couldn't calm my nerves from growing impatience—
The defense turret that had seemed ready to attack us at any moment with energy fully charged suddenly froze with a clunk. Judging by the still-ready energy, there wasn't a problem with the turrets themselves.
With apprehensive hearts, we didn't take our eyes off those turrets. No, we couldn't. The turrets started to turn, locking onto a new enemy.
Soon, they unleashed destructive fire upon the mutants that had been chasing after us. Chunks of flesh were viciously blown skyward.
Boom! It was only after seeing a cluster of them explode that we could finally cheer.
"We made it! We made it! We're alive!"
"Y—yeaaah...!"
I didn't know who shouted first, but I pressed my back to the wall in overwhelming relief. The tension that gripped me let go as soon as I realized we were out of immediate danger.
As expected, it was Licorice. I knew she could do it. If only she had been a little faster, it would have been much safer, but just succeeding was a huge feat.
Normally, this was when Licorice would call and boast about her greatness, but no matter how long I waited, the call didn't come. My confusion lasted only a moment—imagining her situation, I couldn't help but smirk.
'She must've had a hard time.'
I thought about calling Licorice myself but stopped. While I caught my breath after gulping down a high-grade medical drug, Celestia approached me, waving a biocell in her hand.
"Sit tight. Do you even know the state you're in, Hyun-woo?"
What about my condition? Maybe my thoughts were written all over my face, as Celestia's expression hardened.
"Doesn't it hurt here?"
"Where exac—?"
Before I could even finish asking, I caught my breath. I had no choice but to endure. Celestia poked my back and a thunderbolt of pain exploded through my body.
"The back of your suit is completely torn up. Besides your back, other places are scratched and melted. Thanks to the biocell, there won't be any scars, but you need to rest for a while. That's the only way you'll heal quickly."
Celestia pressed the biocell onto my back with deliberate care. A chilly sensation spread—a mild analgesic effect from the cell touching my skin. I must've gotten hurt fighting that 10-meter Deathworm.
If I was like this, Nadia must also have quite a few injuries. So I forced myself up onto my feet.
"Hyun-woo? You heard what I just said, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then where do you think you're going?"
"To check on Nadia. She's probably hurt just like me."
Normally, Nadia would've come to check on me before Celestia. The fact she hadn't meant she was probably too injured to move.
"Haaa, never mind. You don't have to. I actually checked up on Nadia before coming to you."
"... Really?"
"Of course."
According to Celestia, Nadia was currently sleeping like a mouse in the Power Loader's cockpit. She wasn't badly hurt, but the accumulated stress inside the cockpit must have crashed over her, knocking her out as soon as she relaxed.
Carry seemed to be in a similar condition. Since he was a robot, he didn't suffer much outward strain, but his circuits had overheated from the control overload and were cooling down.
'... Now that I think about it.'
I remembered hearing a half-hearted cheer when the turret hacking succeeded. That must've been Nadia.
Nadia had really pushed the Power Loader hard. Even if it was technically within spec, those specs didn't take the pilot's condition into account.
She hadn't even worn a proper pilot suit, so the strain inside the cockpit must have been no joke. She even managed attitude control midair with the thrusters.
Despite her piloting skill, Nadia had never been formally trained to endure harsh conditions. The way she'd always followed my lead without complaint was amazing in itself.
'I really should heap praise on her later.'
Nadia, who handled the Power Loader with her small hands and took on mutants with toughness; Carry, who reduced the control overload. I couldn't help but feel proud and glad at how reliable they both were.
Celestia, Eric, Kanna, and the soldiers all did their part as well. If not for them, recovering the Albatross would have been impossible.
"You've done enough, Hyun-woo. Let me handle things from here."
Celestia told me to rest—she would check on Nadia again herself. I nodded. While I watched her take care of Nadia, a jolt and a transmission came through. It was from the Albatross's bridge.
- Albatross, taking off!
Judging by the acceleration, the hull finally started to lift. With the ship's size and the main engines offline, all the power fell on the Griffin, so takeoff must've taken some time.
'So we're finally going.'
I looked at the scenery outside the window. As Keter's defense turrets started attacking the mutants, those monsters began returning fire at the turrets, and the defense facilities were slowly getting overrun.
No matter how powerful, there was no way to withstand those numbers. The turrets were being destroyed one by one—had we stayed a moment longer, we would've ended up like that.
- With no fixed destination, we'll evade the pureblood supremacists by staying airborne over Titan for now.
As the briefing continued, the calm voice abruptly turned to panic.
- Everyone aboard, tend to your wounds— ...huh, what's this. Griffin! Increase speed!
- What more do you want from me at this point?! With the size difference, the engine's already overheating and about to blow!
- Do it anyway! Something's chasing us from behind!
- What? Son of a...!
The transmission was suddenly cut off. As the speed ramped up in silence, those of us in the cargo bay exchanged nervous looks. The tense atmosphere returned.
I staggered over to the cargo bay door—I wanted to see what was chasing us from behind.
... K-thoom!
An earth-shaking sound. Since the Albatross had already left the ground, it was free from that shock. But another kind of impact struck.
"... What is that?"
A waterspout was rising from the Sea of Tranquility. No, more precisely, it looked like a waterspout. The ground split in a straight line as tiny particles composing the land were thrown upward.
The column soared so high it almost reached the murky sky, resembling a true waterspout. The horizon of the Sea of Tranquility was in ruins, swept by something unidentifiable moving over the land.
A murmur spread through the cargo bay. People were anxious about facing danger again right after escaping. That anxiety hit its peak when the thing under the ground revealed its form.
A gigantic body surged up from below, devouring the air. For a moment it seemed to clamp down as if biting, then it burrowed back into the ground.
The blue sand billowing outward like spray truly made it look as though it was swimming in a sea. The sand spouting up showed no sign of descending again. It was no optical illusion—a gravity fluctuation was occurring.
To a casual viewer, that sight might even look mystical, but once the monster appeared there was only a sense of extreme wrongness.
It resembled a Deathworm. But was incomparably larger. On a completely different scale of power; they simply weren't in the same league.
'A bud.'
The Bud swept past the vicinity of military base Keter, and perhaps due to its presence, Keter began collapsing. The pillar-like reversed icicles shattered, and the parasitic base structure started crumbling too.
"... That's the special entity, bud."
Kanna muttered blankly, overwhelmed just from seeing it at a distance. No matter how new the mutants, they were beneath the Bud.
The moment you saw it, you realized instinctively that it was qualitatively on another level—like Kanna and the others did, without needing any explanation.
They understood, as if by instinct, that this was a Bud.
- Griffin! Gain altitude now! That monster is chasing us!
- Impossible! We're at the real speed limit! If I force her any higher, the engine will just die!
The Bud was pursuing the Albatross with shocking speed for its size, throwing us into a state of emergency. Having already maxed out the speed, there was no room left to climb.
The gap between the enormous Deathworm and the Albatross shrank, its form growing more distinct. I cut into the confused chatter over the comms.
"How much longer until we're out of the Sea of Tranquility zone?"
- At current speed, we'll be clear in under ten minutes!
If we took the shortest possible route, not the way we first came, it would take about ten minutes to escape.
We'd have to pray the engine could hold out that long.
Griffin's weapons couldn't be used, since firing would put the Albatross in the line of fire.
Absorbing all this information, I answered calmly.
"Don't try to attack—just focus on getting us out. That thing can't be harmed by our weapons anyway."
When the defense facilities at Keter crumbled and fired on the Bud, it hadn't even been scratched. If anything, it only sped up the destruction of the base.
"It seems to have been provoked by our intrusion into its territory, so once we're clear of the area, it likely won't chase us any further."
- Huh? How do you know...?
"It's just a feeling."
With that, I cut the comms. I stared at the Bud intently. As I watched it, it seemed to be watching me right back.
A bloomed Bud. A being named after what's called a Holy Tree. Even at this considerable distance, I knew its name. Or rather, I suddenly realized it.
"... Maker."
So it was you. The one that devoured the terraforming device, that arrogantly claimed the role of creator, that caused all these gravity fluctuations—it was you.
Wrapped in an indescribable emotion, I murmured. Did it hear me? Or was it some other factor?
The gigantic Deathworm—or rather, the bloomed Bud, Maker—ceased its pursuit of the Albatross just as we were about to exit the Sea of Tranquility.
Gradually slowing down, it came to a halt at a certain point and gazed at me in silence.
Even though I couldn't see any sensory organs, I could feel its stare unmistakably. When I thought about how the pureblood supremacists created something so unreal, I couldn't help balling my fists.
Honestly, I was scared. Other Buds felt manageable, as if I could come up with a way to handle them—but with this, I couldn't think anything of the sort.
Finally, as we crossed out of the Sea of Tranquility, Maker completely stopped following and turned away. Only after seeing it head back—and not after us—could we all finally let out the breath we'd been unconsciously holding.
"Haaah..."
Celestia, hanging awkwardly from the Power Loader, collapsed as her strength left her. Since she was still too tense to move, Eric took care of her in my stead.
What was certain was that, at least for now, the situation had settled.
***
It was Kanna's voice that broke the silence following our first encounter with Maker.
Having heard that the Griffin's engines were at their limit, she gathered everyone and unrolled a holographic map.
Kanna designated as our next destination a place surrounded by nothing. That wasn't a figure of speech—there really was nothing but a frozen sea.
Unlike 'Sea of Tranquility', which was just a name, this was an actual sea on Titan.
"We'll go here. Point Nemo, aka the Graveyard Orbit. We'll repair and rearm the Albatross there. There's still treasure to be found among the trash."
Point Nemo—a term referring to the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, the place in the sea farthest from any land.
While Titan's land had drill marks everywhere from mineral mining, the sea was considered so pointless that it was designated for dumping derelict satellites and ships.
These discarded satellites and ships were coveted by scrap dealers. But they could only drool; the only scrap they were allowed to take from Titan came from disposal sites in the Heaven mining base.
The reason collection at Point Nemo was banned was simple. Even as junk, much of the debris incorporated military technology. So only nearby military bases could oversee the area.
If anyone approached without permission, they'd get one warning, then be attacked immediately. Scrap dealers who tried to grab debris from Point Nemo all ended up dead; it wasn't an exaggeration.
"No one's managing it now, so we should be fine to approach. If, by any chance, survivors from other military bases are there, that's even better. We desperately need reinforcements—having them join us would help a lot."
Kanna, looking fatigued, continued right on.
"Most importantly, once we get there, we can rest. It's not a residential area, so there won't be any monsters, either."
There would be no threats. And if there were, we could handle them. At her words, everyone's faces brightened a bit. Utterly exhausted, everyone longed for a break.
"... Let's go right away."
With no alternatives, I nodded. Not that I had the energy to consider any. I just wanted to rest.
Everyone seemed to feel the same—the suggestion to go to Point Nemo, the Graveyard Orbit, passed unanimously.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】