Chapter 45
Chapter 45. The Hive
-Borgin! Do we fight?!
-No! Run for now!
The Patrollers knew their mission well: retrieve the scattered and wounded Warrior Corps.
And more importantly—stall for time.
-Scatter in every direction. Stay alive, friends!
The orcas who had been moving in formation scattered in all directions in an instant.
From this moment on, Yul also acted autonomously.
‘Since the Hive has only one main body, it should only be able to track one target… what?’
The Hive’s body elongated in an instant, stretching out violet tendrils toward the Patrollers.
‘Kraken!’
Like the tentacles of a Kraken, it extended immense tendrils in all directions, skewering the fleeing Patrollers.
【Authority—Madness (狂化) Activated】
Yul evaded the blow by accelerating explosively.
‘I was 5 kilometers away.’
The tentacle had been massive at first, but by the time it reached him, it had thinned into something like a thread—yet the fact that it could reshape itself this far was horrifying.
Detected from 20 km away, and with an attack range of 5 km… Yul realized half of the Patrollers had been taken out by that strike.
No one would have imagined an attack from this distance.
Watching carefully, he realized that at some point the Hive had detached its tendrils and fired them like torpedoes.
'Let's go down.'
Water pressure increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth.
By simple physics, those tendrils shouldn’t be able to move that fast deep underwater.
And Yul had acquired diving capabilities.
While dealing with humans, Yul had eaten metals like steel whenever he was bored. Thanks to his reinforced bones by [Metal Consumption] and the evolution of his [Oxygen-Storing Pigment], Yul could dive far deeper and stay submerged far longer than any other orca.
He immediately spun around and sank rapidly into the deep.
‘Time to move covertly.’
He activated the Mantra of Illusion, warping his entire body into a distorted mirage, just like Ogh of the Rising Tide. For a short time, he became transparent.
This interfered with enemy senses, making him undetectable even through echolocation.
‘I wish I could’ve used the Mantra of Illusion on the others as well.’
But the Mantra of Illusion required at least part of Yul’s own body, or Yul himself, to work.
He could only hope they survived on their own.
Resisting the crushing pressure squeezing his entire body, Yul hid within the heavy darkness of the deep sea and observed above.
The Patrollers who escaped the attack vanished from sight in moments.
After unleashing that strike, the Hive ceased moving and floated on the surface like a buoy.
Now was the perfect chance to observe this alien-like creature.
What was known so far was that countless mighty beings had been defeated by this monster.
At this moment, with no enemy detected, it drifted like a buoy on the surface, doing nothing.
It let the waves carry it, moving with minimal motion.
Its overall coloration was a pale violet.
Its body appeared to be made from many different creatures: the shell of a crab, the skin of a whale, the eyes of a sardine, the mouth of an anglerfish, the arms of a starfish, and perhaps even the scales of some massive beast.
Among all the creatures Yul had seen, it felt the most detached from anything “alive” except perhaps the Lord of the Abyss himself.
At least Abysarion, the Lord of the Abyss, somewhat resembled a jellyfish. This creature resembled nothing.
‘Like a chimera cobbled together by a mad scientist.’
There was no way such a creature could merely drift without structure.
‘There must be a core at the center. Otherwise, it would fall apart.’
The absorbed bodies formed a layer around it. If there were a core, they might function as an outer shell to protect it.
‘And it must be using magic to bind them.’
Some structure Yul didn’t understand was channeling magic throughout the Hive’s body.
Even now, while Yul held his breath, it was scattering ultrasonic waves, checking its surroundings through echolocation.
This had to be the result of “absorbing” an orca. Absorb other creatures and even use their abilities…
In any case, he needed to find the Warrior Corps.
Knowing the Hive’s sensory range, Yul decided to move beyond it.
While searching the area, he didn’t find the Warrior Corps, but he found a massive sailing ship nearby.
‘What!? A ship!? Why is there a ship here?!’
It wasn’t far from the Hive. Worse, it was directly on a course toward it.
Yul surfaced to check the ship’s flag.
‘That flag… the Kingdom of Aragon.’
The Kingdom of Aragon, a famed maritime power, was one of the Three Great Naval Powers alongside Frangia and Britain.
He had heard that Aragon, Frangia’s greatest rival, often sent explorers into the oceans to compete with neighboring nations.
But now, at this time, in the Outer Ocean of all places?
This place was extremely far from the continent. He had no time to admire or curse their overwhelming adventurous drive.
These explorers soon spotted the Hive floating on the surface of the sea.
Fascinated by the bizarre cluster of creatures, they slowed down and even approached it.
‘Stop, you crazy bastards!’
Before Yul’s warning could reach them, the dormant Hive would awaken first.
Yul instantly concluded they were finished.
* * *
The captain of the Argos floated exhausted alongside his crew.
They were advanced explorers sent on the orders of the Sailing Prince of the Kingdom of Aragon.
The first attempt had gone well. Instead of wandering blindly in search of a new route, they sailed according to a nautical chart supposedly stolen from a foreign nation.
But that didn’t last long. Their ship was caught in a typhoon, they lost their coordinates, and soon drifted aimlessly. Their supplies soon ran out.
The sea stretched endlessly.
They had sailed far too far from the continent and no longer knew where they were.
There had been multiple mutinies on board, resulting in several captain changes, but even the newly appointed captain couldn’t find a way out of this ocean.
A world of nothing but open sea.
The sailors, unable to eat, were already collapsing from exhaustion. In a bit more time, they might even end up eating one another.
“Something’s there!”
When the lookout, endlessly staring at the water’s surface, shouted from atop the mast, the dazed crew rushed over.
“What is that?”
Something was floating on the surface of the sea—something that looked like a massive garbage island.
Looking closely, it was a creature.
A garbage island made of creature parts, one might say.
Some parts were soft, lumpy violet flesh; other parts looked like the shell of a sea turtle; others seemed to be fins of whales or sharks attached together.
“Whatever it is, can’t we eat it?”
“No matter what, sir, that thing looks wrong. It’s not a slime, and it’s definitely not a jellyfish.”
“Haul it up.”
At the captain’s order, the sailors swarmed over and poked at the thing floating on the surface.
They wanted to see if pulling it aboard would let them eat any part of it.
The moment they struck it with a pole, the violet flesh suddenly sprouted moving tendrils.
“W-woah?! What is that?!”
“Drop the pole!”
The purple tendril climbing up the pole fell away for just a moment.
Then tendrils erupted from nearly every visible part of the massive creature, stretching toward the ship.
“R-raise the sails…!”
The captain, who had shouted the command the loudest, became the first target.
He swung his magic-infused sword and severed several tendrils, but before the overwhelming number of them, he stood no chance.
Seeing the captain swallowed between the tendrils in an instant, some sailors leapt into the water, but they were captured even faster and absorbed by the Hive.
The tendrils covering the ship began seizing the humans one by one and dissolving them.
It attached the necessary organs to itself and converted the unnecessary parts into energy to absorb.
The Hive obtained the most superior component humans possessed: the brain.
Humans were a species that had allowed other physical traits to atrophy to maintain the organ known as the brain.
Realizing that this “brain” was the most important part, the Hive collected human brains and formed an organ from them.
The absorption efficiency was low, so it couldn’t perfectly replicate a brain, but the Hive now possessed a certain degree of intelligence.
-Drift… south.
* * *
Yul was chilled by the Hive’s ability to swallow an entire ship whole.
Even while observing from afar under the Mantra of Illusion, he couldn’t think of any way to fight it.
‘How do you deal with something that sprouts thousands of tendrils from its entire body?’
Yul had a guess about what the Hive had been absorbing: cephalopods, like squid and octopus.
Each tentacle of a cephalopod carries partial intelligence.
Even back when Yul had been a jelly octopus, he’d felt it clearly—each tentacle acted like a sub-core, helping the main brain with its own minor intelligence.
And now the Hive had absorbed humans. It had gained human intelligence. The Hive was going to become even more difficult to handle.
Yul didn’t approach. Instead, he circled around the Hive and inspected the creatures it had absorbed.
‘The violet flesh seems to be the true body.’
Connected by tendrils branching from that core, countless creatures were strung together like dried fish.
The problem was that the core didn’t exist in just one place—those violet tissues were spread throughout the entire mass, and the absorbed creatures were gradually turning into that violet flesh.
‘It captures a creature, connects a tendril, then slowly absorbs it and replaces its body with its own.’
It had no eyes, no ears, no nose—only slime-like flesh writhing and shifting, straight out of a horror movie.
Yul examined the orcas absorbed into the Hive.
They hadn’t been fully digested yet, still retaining their shapes though coated in violet flesh.
‘Members of the Warrior Corps.’
He sensed the awful fate that had befallen Nugh, but forced himself not to imagine it and carefully examined the faces of the orcas.
‘Nugh!!’
Nugh was there.
He seemed to have been absorbed while fighting alongside the other Warrior Corps members, his form almost entirely intact.
But he did not react to ultrasonic waves, he looked as if he were in a state of suspended animation.
Yul was filled with rage. He wanted to tear off the violet flesh clinging to Nugh right away. But first, he calmed himself and organized his thoughts.
After the Hive left, he immediately headed for the ship.
‘The ship… is intact. Not a single part is damaged.’
It had absorbed only organic matter and retreated perfectly.
If that ship survived and drifted around the ocean, it would eventually become a ghost ship. But Yul had no intention of leaving it as is.
Carefully, he moved toward the ship the Hive had disappeared from.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s any problem.’
There were no Hive fragments or any leftover slime.
Yul had approached the ship for a reason, because of the gunports visible along its sides.
‘A ship is technically a weapon, isn’t it?’
But would that interpretation count? Unsure, Yul focused skeptically and attempted to control the ship using the Mantra of Armament.
‘Feels like it might work?’
As soon as he thought that, another “weapon” immediately came to mind.
He activated the Mantra of Communication and sent a one-way message to Marchand.
-Marchand, I think we need to transport an item. Pause all trade for now. In the Kingdom of Britain, there’s an island called Skilg Brig, where a mage lives. Go to him and retrieve the weapon I entrusted to him. Bring it here.