153

Torches in both hands, a torch on my head, too.

And a torch on my tail, a monster that had danced itself into a frenzy.

What was it?

Answer: Me

“Damn it! My base had been turned into a blood-and-flesh bath!”

What awaited me after I had swaggered into the cryosleep chamber, fully prepared, was—exactly as the words said—a “meat festival.”

If it had been a steak party of premium cuts, I would have gone wild with joy, but unfortunately this was a struggle against writhing fresh meat that reeked of rot.

A web of flesh that had been stretched densely all the way up to the darkened ceiling, and a strange bulge that seemed to be the core of a pulsing, heart-like mass, finally ground down what was left of my sanity.

“AAAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!”

Anyone would have wanted to scream.

Up until I went in, it looked like it was in a “weak and dying” state, but the moment I took a few steps into the room, it sealed the entrance with flesh and then burst through the ceiling to attack me.

I reacted on instinct and countered with my torch, but it immediately cut away the burning parts, and wave after wave of flesh surged toward me.

I frantically lit every spare torch I had and ended up like this… yet the flesh’s rolling assault still did not let up as it kept coming at me.

I kept moving forward, grilling everything as I went, but right now I had been forced into stumbling back and forth, blocked by a rain of meat.

With this kind of thing continuing, of course I wanted to scream.

I considered forcing my way through, but if I did that, I would not achieve my original objective.

So I held my ground and defended while trying to keep a constant distance from the meat mass.

‘The torches should still be fine… but when exactly was it going to run out?’

And since I was not resorting to brute force, it took advantage of that and kept sending small portions, to the point where I started doubting whether it had any intelligence at all.

At this rate, I would also have to pay attention to the oxygen in the room.

Having decided that, I kept it at bay with the torches, retreated once, burned away the flesh spread across the wall, and then threw a roundhouse kick into the exposed outer wall to punch a hole through.

I immediately broke two more holes the same way to prevent it from becoming an airtight room, and I burned the surrounding flesh as well.

The stench of scorching meat assaulted my nose, but I had no room to care.

I lunged forward and pressed my torches into every bit of pink that caught my eye.

But before it could spread, it cut itself away to minimize the damage, so burning at random was not very effective.

So I closed in toward what seemed to be the central pillar, but the attacks intensified and left me no choice but to focus on defense.

For something so big, my torches were small—my coverage was limited—and it seemed this was about the limit of what I could block perfectly.

As I hesitated, wondering what to do, a chunk of flesh suddenly fell beside me.

The shower of flesh from above was blocked by the torch I had attached to the cloth wrapped around my head, so this one seemed to have simply missed its mark.

Still, I could not just ignore it, so I quickly swung my torch and burned it to ash.

I was grateful it burned out fast, but the extra motion forced me to step back.

Maybe it learned from that, because the number of chunks falling from above began to increase.

I had been burning the meat projectiles coming from all directions, and now the added pressure from the ceiling forced me to change position.

I leapt to dodge the raining flesh-bullets, burned the area the moment I landed, but a piece I missed slammed straight into my shoulder.

I instantly scorched the chunk stuck to me, but there was no sign of anything melting.

That brief hesitation froze my movement—but my opponent did not care.

Even so, it was definitely time to test something already.

While swinging my torch, I caught an incoming chunk of meat with my fist.

I kept burning what flew at me, then stared at the meat stuck to my hand for a moment, but nothing happened.

It was just sticky and disgusting.

“Might’ve been too cautious,” I muttered with a weary tone, and advanced while lazily batting aside the meat bullets with my torch.

Greasy chunks of meat stuck all over my body, but nothing melted at all, and I pressed fire into the flesh mass clinging to the floor and ceiling that supported the pillar.

As a finishing blow, I kicked the burning mass and destroyed the lower part of the swollen core.

Then I thrust both torches forward and burned through the section that stretched up to the ceiling, and the central core—now without support—rolled onto the floor.

At the same time, the flesh spread across the floor tried to swarm it, but of course I burned it away with the torches in both hands and on my tail.

I had successfully separated what seemed to be the core.

I burned the flesh stretched across the floor and ceiling and swept aside the waves that appeared, trying to reclaim the core.

As I kept kicking apart the remains, which had visibly slowed and gradually turned the color of rotten meat, blackened clumps began to drip down from the ceiling.

Presumably, any parts not connected to the core could not be maintained for long and ended up like this.

The pulsing meat was slowly increasing in volume, but… I was not stupid enough to allow that.

I cut off the growths with the saber I pulled from the backpack I had set on the floor and tossed the pieces away to a suitable distance.

When I observed them for a while, the severed chunks slowly blackened and stopped moving, just as I expected.

Convinced that victory was close, I waited, occasionally prodding the writhing core with the tip of my sword.

“…Looks like there’s no more, huh?”

Had it been about thirty minutes?

I kept waiting while slicing up the still-bloating mass at a steady pace, but the split-off bodies never came.

That meant it was out of ammo.

All that was left was to eat it… and if I bit into it, it would do the rest on its own.

I lifted the throbbing meat mass with both hands, opened my mouth, and sank my teeth into it.

‘Ha—yes! It went perfectly! Now—’

I had acquired the cells under the best possible conditions, even factoring in the loss of reason.

But what struck me was an overwhelming drowsiness I could not resist.

‘What? Wait, how—’

The order was wrong—and as my knees buckled, I jammed the torch I was holding into the bitten meat, right before my consciousness faded.

When I woke up, what lay before my eyes was what had once been a piece of meat, now burned to nothing.

I remembered what I heard.

I exhaled deeply.

I was honestly glad I had been safe after passing out.

After all that preparation and struggle, if I had woken up to “I was inside the meat,” I would have lost myself in rage.

Aside from my body being slick and greasy with oil, the result was largely satisfactory.

But the Nemesis Code was different.

“Haa…”

A sigh escaped me.

I had not dreamed.

I had only heard a voice, and then it was over.

In other words, it was a failure.

“Anti-cheat measures, seriously…?”

Yes—Dr. Zeta had built a mechanism into the Nemesis Code.

For example, say there were two people who possessed the code.

If both of them knew the Nemesis Code existed, there was one method they could use.

They could repeatedly “eat each other’s flesh after separating it beyond detection range.”

If the other person was still alive, or had not been dead for long, then as long as the flesh stayed fresh, authentication would occur.

Acquiring the code and killing the other party were not the same thing.

That was presumably why it made you lose your reason—but Dr. Zeta had sealed this loophole in advance.

And the Nemesis Code seemed to be managed not by individual, but by type, which was why, on my second attempt to acquire the same code, the synthesized voice first said, “Cheating detected.”

The explanation that followed—“Same-type code confirmed. Authentication using the same code will not be performed.”—also included a warning that I would get the same result even if I acquired a code identical to my own.

Meaning: my last resort, “excavating the buried underground facility,” was no longer usable.

Whether I should lament that my plan had failed, or rejoice that I had gained information, I exhaled deeply once again.

My odds of survival had undeniably dropped, and I left the place without saying a word.

As an aside, the test subject’s body I had thought was “eaten” was found intact in shape, but in a sticky, glossy, slime-coated state.

What had that meat mass been thinking when it absorbed them?

A faint mystery remained—a thoroughly unpleasant ending.