Chapter 86: The Core |
I should have come without eating it.
With each *squish squish* of my footsteps, something not yet fully dissolved, which I presumed to be a drone, sloshed around inside my body.
It’s not that it won’t dissolve, but the dissolving speed is slow… The foreign feeling is no joke.
But I think it couldn’t be helped.
It’s not like I swallowed it out of spite for shooting a laser at me.
I couldn’t tell what had happened.
It’s just that the drones exposed to something like a bomb Kim Cheonsu detonated didn’t completely stop but wriggled intermittently.
So… It would have been troublesome if I had left them alone, and they suddenly got up and chased me, shooting lasers.
It was for my own safety, so it really couldn’t be helped.
It would be fine if it was lighter, but it seems heavy because it’s made of metal.
No matter how much food I put in, it never sloshed around like this.
Anyway.
Feeling the taste of the metal melting inside my body, I calmly entered the steel serpent’s body.
This is the second time I’ve been inside something this huge.
But the impression was completely different.
When I was swallowed by the giant sky-swimming whale, I felt this strange feeling of being captured by a living creature.
But now… Well.
Maybe it’s because I came in of my own volition, but rather than feeling like I entered a body, it felt more like entering a building.
In fact, even putting that aside… The place I’m laboriously moving through right now was barren. It is too barren to be called the inside of a living organism.
Filled with parts of unknown function, the interior of the steel serpent definitely had a stronger appearance of a mechanical device rather than a creature’s insides.
And then, hearing the *click-clack* of mechanical devices interlocking, it also felt like an animal’s cries or movements.
It certainly seems to be an entity that’s hard to understand.
Why did something like this charge at me to eat me?
Was it really trying to eat me in the first place?
I don’t know.
Well, it should at least say something as it charges at me.
Who knows.
Maybe I’ll have to learn a computer language to talk to this thing.
Imagining a conversation with a machine in my head, there’s nothing but *beep beep* or 0’s and 1’s, so my imagination is becoming impoverished.
With such thoughts, I wonder how far I’ve come.
As I slowly progressed on the cold metal chunks.
I felt the atmosphere around me had somehow changed.
There was no change in what I could see right now… But I sensed it had changed perceptually.
Unable to explain that strange sensation in words, my jelly trembled.
The body that had been sloshing until now had quieted down.
And in my sight.
I saw something floating far away.
I don’t know what it is, but it gives off a strong impression of being important just by looking at it.
I’m not sure what it is, but I get the feeling it’s similar to the precious thing floating around inside my body.
Without Han Seori’s guidance and with my knowledge pouch spinning round and round, I had properly found my way to where I needed to be.
Sensing my jelly puff up with pride, I observed that floating thing for a moment.
The object suspended in the air was spherical in shape, like the one inside me.
Occasionally emitting a small sound and faint light… It gave the impression of being busy with something.
In fact, there was a high possibility it was actually doing something.
If that’s the core that moves the steel serpent… Now that the steel serpent’s body has been severed.
Its task would be obvious.
Well, this isn’t certain either.
In the meantime, it floated around busily and then bounced up and down as if angry.
Watching its quick movements, it seemed that if I swallowed it into my body, it would be like facing a situation where a pitch-black monster bursts out of my stomach.
With blue jelly splattering everywhere… Imagining it popping out covered in lots of jelly made my stomach a bit… queasy.
I don’t think resolving things by eating it will work this time…
Indeed, the guardian totem was swallowed by chance when a gap opened up. But normally, forget swallowing, there was a high possibility my body would have been crushed if I tried to eat it.
But now there are no factors to bring that luck.
With only me in this space, there’s nothing to help me.
Then… What should I do?
I was a little stumped.
But it’s not like I had much time to think, either.
*Screech. Clank.*
A strange sound of something that had been misaligned clicking into place began to be heard.
Seeing the steel serpent’s body vibrating… It seemed the steel serpent would move soon, whether repairs were finished or not.
Hmm.
At that moment.
I remembered a product called jelly cleaner for keyboards.
A very excellent thing that catches two rabbits, fun and practicality, by pouring something similar to my current body onto the keyboard to clean it…
…Actually, in theory, that’s how it was, but in reality, it was a vicious thing that wrecked keyboards.
I don’t think it was fun either.
Because my energy was only drained trying to detach the sticky pieces.
Anyway.
The point is that ‘jelly’ broke the machine.
Comparing a keyboard to that floating object is probably very rude…
But aren’t I also on a different level from cheap jelly sold at 〇iso?
Although I sugarcoated it with words, in the end, it meant I would physically resolve it because it looked easy.
So.
I sprang up from my spot and toward the floating spherical something.
I ran *squish squish*.
I thought I approached stealthily, but it quickly noticed my existence.
The circular lights, which feel like eyes on its body, started to flicker.
Now that I was discovered, there was no other way, so I just charged at it.
Using the momentum from running, I realized I had one misconception as I floated in the air.
…Seeing it up close.
Its size was much larger than I thought.
Whether it grew or was an optical illusion, the sphere in the sight of me floating in the air looked difficult to swallow, let alone swallow and pop out.
*Splat!*
Eventually, my body, floating in the air, touched the sphere with a sticky sound.
Then, as if to shake me off, it began to wildly swing its body.
It felt like a wind strong enough to flap human skin and the mouth if it had them.
For now, it ended at the level of splattering jelly, so it had no effect on me.
But my sight was flipping this way, and that way, it was a bit dizzying.
…Now, what should I do?
Its size is larger than I thought, which is confusing.
But soon, I made up my mind.
I thought that no matter how big or small it is, what I have to do doesn’t change anyway.
Sticking tightly to its body, I concentrated and spewed out tentacles.
And then.
I stretched the tentacles toward what is presumed to be its eye, where the spherical light comes from.
I can see the blue tentacles laboriously entering where the light comes from.
Just like jelly cleaner seeping into keyboard keys.
I wonder if it will break if I somehow put it in and stir it randomly.
In computer terms, it’s like putting something sticky into the system unit and stirring it vigorously…
Ugh, just imagining it is terrible.
In human terms, it might feel like inserting tentacles into the ear and stirring the brain.
…I regretted imagining it as my stomach boiled, but as if reacting to my imagination, I felt the tentacles spewing from my back, randomly stirring its insides.
I also felt sensations presumed to be various parts, and there were places where I felt electric tingling.
I sprayed mucus on whatever I touched and beat everything the tentacles reached.
It wasn’t easy because every time a tentacle touched something, the sphere violently shook its body.
Tensing my body so that it would not fall off while simultaneously controlling the tentacles was an extremely headache-inducing task.
The one fortunate thing is…
My feeling that my regeneration ability had increased from before was not wrong.
The tentacles stretched out farther than before, and I felt them quickly regrow even when cut by something.
Just as there was nothing like a jelly cleaner for breaking keyboards.
It seemed jelly was also excellent at breaking machines.
The moment I thought that, I put more force into the movements.
From all around the sphere.
*Clank clank clank clank clank!*
An ominous sound was heard.
Just hearing that sound made the jelly stand on end.
The chilling feeling I felt when dodging the laser outside…
Began to be felt from all directions.
*Whiiing!*
It wasn’t just a feeling.
Lots of red dots aimed at me were seen in my expanded vision.
The things I thought made up the steel serpent’s body were now aiming at me. Their laser pointers pointed at me like guns.
I feel the surroundings getting hotter with increasingly loud sounds.
It seemed that once that heat reached its peak, the laser would erase my existence.
I put more strength into the stretched tentacles.
It didn’t seem that falling off now would cancel that out.
…Because it looked like there was no way other than breaking the thing, that was using such an extreme method, akin to self-destruction.
Adding mass to the tentacles, I stirred more diligently with the tentacles and spread mucus.
I also didn’t forget to dig toward the center with the thought that there would be something at the sphere’s core.
*Whiing…*
The laser targeting me is getting thicker and more numerous.
I felt my jelly boiling.
I was exposed to the lasers without being able to dodge them because it was hard enough just to move the tentacles while attached to the body.
Fortunately, there was no laser as powerful as the one I ate… If I hadn’t eaten that thing… I might have really become jelly pieces right away.
At that moment.
Something.
A strange sensation was felt by the tentacles.
In the center, I dug into.
