Became an Evolving Space Monster - Chapter 355
Only Noblemtl
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“I will give you 10% of the minerals I own.”
“Guys, the captain wants to fight. Prepare to attack.”
“2, no, 30%!”
“Everyone stop. Hey, did you say Jinchen? How can you be so petty as the owner of the boat?”
“… Then how much do you want?”
“70%. If it’s 70%, I’ll send it as is.”
Jinchen almost swore at the pirate’s request for more than half.
‘That damn pirate bastard is real!’
But I could only curse inwardly and remain quiet on the outside. In the first place, even if they demanded that I hand over all the minerals, I would have to accept it. If I could get out after exceeding 70%, I would be fortunate.
“Okay, okay. I’ll hand over the minerals… .”
“Captain, a new signal has been detected.”
“what?”
“What is this?”
It seems that not only them, but also they have discovered something over there. The pirate leader’s gaze turned elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Jinchen also checked the new marker that appeared on the constellation map.
A square-shaped sign was approaching them at a faster speed than the pirate ship.
“This is under the jurisdiction of the Shinoroku Cartel, so what’s with that kid?”
I thought it was another pirate, but seeing the pirate leader look flustered, I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t him.
“Are you guys trying to fish us out?”
“Oh, no! That ship is one we don’t even know!”
“You little shits! Everyone, fight… ”
Just as the angry pirate leader was about to launch an attack, the communication was cut off. And it didn’t stop there, the lights in the situation room suddenly flickered and the hologram shook uneasily.
“Why are you doing this?”
“An unexpected radio interference phenomenon has occurred!”
“Why all of a sudden?”
“We’re good at that too…”
Jinchen held back a sigh that was about to escape his lips at the sailors’ incompetent response. Suppressing the rising irritation, he stared at the shaking hologram.
And then I noticed something strange. The square marker that was there just a moment ago had disappeared from the map.
“Where did the square mark go?”
As soon as he spoke, the lights in the situation room suddenly went out. Soon, the emergency power was activated and a red light came on in the situation room.
“What happened?”
“We, we don’t know either.”
“Fuck! If you don’t know, you have to find it!”
“Yes, yep!”
Only after Jinchen shouted and urged them did the crew members move.
“Captain of the Navigation Team, please take command for a moment instead.”
“yes?”
He ignored the disbelieving looks from those around him and came out of the situation room. The situation was not normal. It seemed that he would calm down if he wore the intermediate-level reinforced suit in the captain’s room.
He hurried back to the captain’s quarters and put on his enhanced suit. The metallic sound that flowed out whenever the enhanced exoskeleton moved, and the electronic sound of the activated mechanical pads gave him a sense of stability.
As I was leaving the captain’s cabin, even carrying my laser rifle, the entire ship suddenly shook violently. It was a shock I had never experienced since I boarded the mining ship.
And that wasn’t the only problem. There was a loud noise as the ship rocked. The mining ship must have hit something.
“Situation room! Is everything okay there? Situation room!”
I tried to contact the situation room, but the communicator was completely dead.
‘Is this the work of pirates?’
It was clear that the guys had attacked the mining ship. He injected the strengthening agent built into the suit into his body. He knew that there were side effects to injecting the strengthening agent, but it was better than dying.
After completing all preparations, Jinchen headed to the situation room.
The hallway, lit up with red emergency lights, was terribly eerie. It felt like a lie that I had been running along it so familiarly just a moment ago.
‘Why is it so quiet?’
If pirates had entered the ship, there should have been a loud noise, but the corridors were completely quiet. Even the Hulk mutant would have been unable to wipe out the crew in such a short period of time.
‘What’s going on?’
After losing contact with the pirates, everything went out of his control. The more he walked, the more beads of sweat dripped down his neck.
Fortunately, nothing happened until he reached the situation room. He could see the door to the situation room firmly shut in front of him.
Jinchen, who was about to open the door, suddenly had a strange thought.
How could there be no one coming and going from the situation room when the ship was hit so hard? And this silence. It was absolutely not normal.
He carefully put his ear to the door to hear what was coming from inside.
“!”
The moment he put his ear to the door, he was startled.
It wasn’t the cold air rising from the alloy walls that made me panic. It was the sound I heard inside the situation room that I shouldn’t have heard.
That tiny sound was definitely a scream.
“Fuck, shit!”
Something unknown had entered the situation room and was committing terrible acts. Realizing this, he immediately turned around and ran to the other side of the situation room.
As he ran in his heavy armor, the hallway thumped. He heard the door opening and the air escaping. Something in the situation room must have heard his footsteps and come out.
Behind him he heard a strange sound, as if several sharp objects were scratching the alloy wall. And the sticky, wet smell of iron assailed his nose.
‘Oh, don’t come!’
Instead of using the laser rifle in his hand, he chose to run away. Thanks to the booster he had taken, he was able to run very fast. The eerie metallic sound mixed with the thumping footsteps gradually diminished.
‘We have to escape on an escape pod!’
If he escaped by taking the escape ship, there was a high chance that he would be captured by pirates, but he didn’t care. It would be much better to be captured by pirates that he could understand than to confront an incomprehensible being.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… .”
Jinchen mechanically cursed and continued running towards the escape pod.
As the distance to the escape ship was approaching, a group of people appeared in front of him.
“…shit.”
The face of the one leading them looked familiar. It was the pirate leader who had been communicating via video communication just a moment ago. Jinchen must have been wearing a reinforced suit and had infiltrated the inside of the mining ship.
The pirates were talking about something while holding the crew of the mining ship captive.
Since it was a foregone conclusion that he would have to fight them if he encountered them, he quickly hid behind the wall at the fork in the road.
‘huh?’
While watching from a hiding place, the atmosphere felt strange. It was far away and dark, so I couldn’t see very well, but the crew didn’t seem that scared. In fact, the pirates holding them seemed more desperate.
At that moment, Jinchen’s eyes caught a strange object. Behind the pirates at the back of the group, there was a pair of arms that he had never seen before. Those slender arms, reddened by the emergency light, held onto the pirates like lovers.
And very quietly, he dragged him into the darkness. He did so quickly and quietly that the other pirates had no idea that their comrade was gone.
It was a sight that was like a ghost story that the crew sometimes told. I couldn’t believe it even though I saw it with my own eyes.
When the thin, sleek arm of the woman shot out again and snatched another pirate, Jinchen realized that what he was seeing was not a ghost story, but reality.
He was not the only one to witness his subordinate being led away by a suspicious hand. The pirates also became aware of the disappearance of their comrade and began to be wary of the surroundings.
When the third victim came in the same way, the pirates’ weapons opened fire. The flashing green lights allowed Jinchen to see what was in the darkness.
A ‘snake’ with dozens of arms was suspended in the air, attached to the ceiling.
He didn’t dodge the attacks coming at him, but took them in stride, grabbing the pirates lightly. As his arm dragged the pirates away, the head of the ‘snake’ hidden in the darkness was briefly revealed.
It was the face of a stunningly beautiful woman. The pirates who were struggling while being held by her arms stopped resisting as soon as they saw her face.
But the moment the beauty opened her mouth, the pirates woke up from their illusions. The snake-like mouth had grown large and swallowed the pirates whole.
“Ugh, euaaaah!”
“What the heck?! You followed me all the way here!”
“Everyone run away!”
Even a pirate who has been through a lot has never seen such a sight. A snake with a woman’s face and arms swallowing a comrade alive.
Jinchen thought he should run away, but his legs wouldn’t move. His body was frozen in extreme fear.
and.
“I’m glad that my ‘little brother’ is adapting better than expected.”
A woman’s voice is heard from behind.
There were no women on board Jinchen’s mining ship.
So it was easy to imagine who that voice belonged to.
“The only regret is that you have to choose the food.”
The smell he had smelled in the situation room lingers on the back of his neck.
Jinchen stopped thinking.
‘There’s not as much as I thought?’
I grabbed the half-broken pirate ship and shook it as if I was emptying out the remaining snacks in the bag. The pirates that were left inside poured out into the weightless space. Regardless of whether they were alive or dead, they all went into my mouth, which was divided into three parts.
‘Ugh.’
Perhaps because he had grown in size, he didn’t even get a word from the dozens of pirates. The heads on the left and right licked their lips with their tongues, as if they weren’t satisfied.
“Big man” “Gourmet” “Gourmet”
Adhai, feeling good after eating a pirate, circled around me and teased me.
“You shouldn’t tease the big kid.”
“Gourmet” “Truth”
No. 26, who was being held in the small arms near the chest, seemed to dislike Adhai’s attitude and produced tentacles from his body. Then, he hit the small Gallagon on the head.
No, he tried to hit it. Adhai moved nimbly and dodged the tentacles, so the attack was in vain.
“Little Adult” “Attack” “Prediction” “Easy” “Now” “Not Right”
“really?”
“?”
“Really? Really? Really? Really? Really?”
“Wait a minute” “That” “A little” “There’s a lot”
“It’s okay because the little one avoids it well.”
“That” “It’s deadly”
Number 26, who had already entered battle mode, slipped out of my arms and started chasing after Adhai.
I left the two to play together and raided the ship to see if there were any pirates left.
At that moment, the Heavenly Mother emerged from the other wreckage. She flew towards me in her griffon form, spreading her agate wings.
“I found something strange while I was organizing.”
[Zuzuzuzu (something strange?)]
She showed me what she was holding in her beak.
Between 60 and 70 cm long, with a thin and elongated rectangular shape, a green rail on the front, a small terminal pad mounted on the top, and finally a small trigger and a shoulder rest.
They all matched the characteristics of the objects I used to see so often while playing games.
‘Plasma rifle?’
The history of plasma weapons is, by definition, a history of lightweighting and stabilization.
Developed for space warfare between ships, plasma weapons had tremendous firepower, but they also had many shortcomings. They were large and consumed a lot of energy, making them difficult to handle for anything other than warships.
After continuous research, the size of plasma weapons was gradually reduced.
The successful results of size improvement were the Plasma Launcher, Plasma Bolter, and Pistol.
However, if we view these as complete successes, there is a slightly subtle aspect to them.
First of all, the bolter is difficult to use without wearing a reinforced suit because of its weight and recoil. The plasma pistol has poor safety and is extremely expensive to produce. As for the launcher, it is out of the question since it was originally developed as a squad support weapon.
However, there is one plasma weapon that completely improves on these shortcomings.
That’s the weapon that Heavenly Mother showed me, the plasma rifle.
It is a perfect weapon that gets passing marks in weight, firepower, and safety.
The firepower is greater than that of a bolter, and there is almost no recoil. It is also light enough for a trained soldier to carry for long periods of time. It is also safe because it is made of rare metal, so it does not easily break even after long-term use.
Instead, it has a high production cost and requires high technology to be made, so only the top Mega Corp players in the game can make it. This is not particularly strange, since it is a weapon classified as the highest tech in the system.
Also, in the game, the plasma rifle was set as a weapon that could only be used on Earth and Mars. This is because the Seven Houses, concerned about the leak of manufacturing technology, strictly controlled its use so that it could only be used on designated planets.
‘But why is it here?’
[Zzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz (The pirates have plasma rifles?)]
“Yeah. Not all of them, but one person was holding them.”
Of course, thanks to the ability to trade between players in the game, mercenaries armed with plasma rifles could be seen everywhere.