When I returned to the camp on the coastline, the sailors were moving hurriedly.
“Hurry up! The avalanche will come here soon!”
“Not enough materials!”
“Cut down trees and use them as barriers!”
The sailors had doubled their camp fences and cut down the scrub and piled them up like barricades. The three hooded people were also coming out of the log house, and I could see them talking about something in front of the translucent egg.
The content of the conversation was interrupted by the voices of the sailors and the sound of their work, so I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, but they seemed to be discussing how to protect the eggs.
But what happened all of a sudden? There is no doubt that they are preparing for an attack from something, but there shouldn’t be many monsters that can pose a threat to them as I’ve hunted almost everything around the coastline. If there are enough numbers to threaten their defensive line――could it be the Empress Ant larvae?
The sailors’ high-pitched voices reached me a little further away, and my hand holding the ARX-160 involuntarily tightened.
Considering the habits of Empress Ants, they must have commanded the larvae to attack here in search of food. I don’t know the situation inside the caldera yet, but my hunting caused a shortage of prey on the coastline, and I wonder if it reacted to the newly landed sailors――or to that egg.
――What should I do?
I returned to the campsite to confirm that one of the hooded men was the 8th Prince of the Kingdom of Drak, Zagir. If it can be confirmed, the translucent egg brought from outside the island must be deeply related to the Viceburn Empire.
Once that’s done, what will I do――?”
Should I annihilate them and destroy the egg before they can hatch and become a threat to the Kurtmerga kingdom? However, the armistice treaty between the Kingdom of Drak and Kurtmerga has not yet been abolished. Maybe that’s why they’re on a labyrinth island in the third country, the Filtonia Islands Alliance…
If they launch an attack from here, if nobody sees it coming, it might end up into a full blown war between the two countries.
They probably don’t know me directly, but they should know who researched Labyrinth Island at the same time that many sailors and their employers migrated to Labyrinth Island, just like I did.
Then――no matter what the Viceburn Empire plans, no matter what the pedigree skills of the Drak Royal family are, if that egg is destroyed, the whole plans will fall apart. I don’t know if it’s a larva or a herd of monsters, but I should take advantage of the attack on the campsite and destroy it.
Once I had decided what to do in response to the situation, I accessed the inventory and selected the firearms I needed for the task. Silent shooting from a distance would be effective in controlling the situation so that no one could see that I had destroyed the egg.
I chose a silencer as an attachment to my M24A2, and pulled out a ghillie suit from my avatar outfit to monitor the situation in the bush. The M24A2 is a bolt-action SRF sniper rifle that has already been used many times. The ghillie suit is a camouflage uniform that can be said to be synonymous with snipers, and the whole body is covered with grass and twigs. If you wear this and lie down, people won’t be able to distinguish you from plants as long as they don’t come too close.
I left the campsite for a while and lay down in the bushes on the uphill. This allows me to look down on the campsite and keep the whole area within range. Of course, the translucent egg was also within the angle of fire. It’s obscured by the wall of the hut at an angle, but I know it hasn’t moved from there. Even if I couldn’t see it directly, it’s easy enough to shoot through the walls of the hut.
The ghillie suit is camouflage clothing that deceives one’s eyesight, but if there is one weak point, it is that it traps heat inside. The sunset time on the labyrinth island near the equator is late, and it’s always hot and humid. Just when I was thinking about wanting a straw for the plastic bottle I drank while lying down, I began to hear the sound of people pushing their way through the bushes.
Here they come――
The sound range is wide, and the number of footsteps that follow is large――it’s the juvenile organism. The sailors at the camp seemed to have noticed the sound, and waited for the larvae to appear one after another with long swords and spears at hands.
“Here they come! Don’t be fooled by their appearance, it’s obvious that they’re not human, but a kind of monster!”
The person who spoke just now was one of the hoods, giving instructions to the sailors in a strong, but youthful voice.
Is that hood the leader of this group?
I followed the man with the scope I attached on the M24A2 and waited until I could see his true face hidden under the hood. The battle began shortly after. The larvae with the appearance of the cat-eared, mouse-faced, and raccoon-faced beastkin emerged in large numbers, menacing the sailors with their glowing red eyes.
The sailors were armed, while the juveniles were sparsely armed. I can’t say that they’re bare-handed, as they’re carrying rocks and fallen trunks that can be held with both hands.
“Ｕｗｏｏｏｏ!”
Then, there was a roar that could be said to signal the start of war. A herd of white cat-eared giants rushing out of the scrub smashed into the camp fence, behind which mouse-faced and raccoon-faced men can be seen chanting magic.
On the other hand, the sailors also held their swords and spears against the protective fence, and in front of the egg hut where the eggs were enshrined, the three hooded men were chanting magic.
While staring at the clash between the two through the scope, I waited for evidence to convince me.
“Damn, they’re monsters after all!”
“What the fuck is wrong with these guys….”
“Rather than spouting nonsense, attack the monsters! No matter what they looked like, they’re the enemies!”
One of the hoods roared at the words the sailors divulged. Apparently, the larvae are showing a different appearance with mimicry, but the sailors seem to know that the appearance is a hoax. It didn’t seem like they’ve seen through mimicry, but apparently the larvae were mimicking something that doesn’t suit the closed space of the Labyrinth Island.
It was immediately clear that the larvae that had been knocked down were not human. The blood they shed was the same red color, but their pale white body crumbled as if it was melting. And in the blink of an eye, their corpses would change into a mottled pattern that was a mixture of cloudy liquid and red blood. There is no such thing as a magic stone remaining, and the way it disappears without a trace is not the same as a person’s death.
The number of larvae far outsripped the sailors though, and the simple charge eventually broke through the well-organized defense line. In the blink of an eye, the camp turned into a melee, and the three hoods were forced to engage in melee combat instead of with magic. A flock of cat-eared giants—a spectacle that can only be described as bizarre, and a rain of magic attacks pouring down from behind. Sailors were killed one after another, and they were surrounded around the egg hut.
“This is bad.”
“But… it’s the same thing if we leave this here and run away. Not only me, the country will perish.”
“But!”
“I have no choice but to hatch it now…”
“I, it’s dangerous!”
“That is the only way!”
I heard the voices of the hoods having a quick conversation in front of the egg hut. It looks like they’re trying to hatch the egg. The crosshair of the scope was aligned with the hood that seemed to be the leader, although I hadn’t confirmed his true face yet.
Then, this marked the end of the wait-and-see phase.
I moved the crosshair of the scope from the hooded man to the egg hut, and put my finger on the trigger――I shot through the walls of the hut and the egg inside while matching the timing to the impact of the magic attack from the rat faces and the raccoon dog faces――but I could not feel a hit.
If you cut or hit directly with a sword or stick, you can feel it through the weapon, but even if you shoot with a gun, it still exists. No――in my experience, it exists in FPS as well. Depending on the spread of the crosshair and the game device, you can know the impact by vibration.
When you hit something in VMB, the crosshairs will expand and vibrate, and in the case of the SRF sniper rifle, both hands will feel a slight vibration.
Considering the size of the egg, I don’t think it was removed, but I pulled the M24A2’s bolt handle, cocked it, loaded the next bullet, and pulled the trigger again. I didn’t feel the impact again this time, but I knew the reason.
I could see ice beyond the hole left by the bullet. As it turned out――the inside of the hut was covered in thick ice, and it stopped the bullets.
No one noticed my shooting, but while I was firing two bullets, I saw one of the hoods taking out a particularly large magic stone from his tool bag and throwing it into the egg. Light leaked out from the hole opened by the gunfire. It seemed to react to magic stone absorption. And the larvae reacted to that light and roared. Are the larvae aiming for translucent frozen eggs, or are they looking like high-quality masses of magic to feed the Empress Ants?
However, as the larvae’s encirclement network shrunk further, the battle at the camp site suddenly changed. The ice covering only the inside of the egg hut spread to the surroundings of the hut, freezing not only the three hoods, but also the feet of the sailor and the larvae who were fighting nearby.
“Oy, what the hell is this!”
“Is this ice your magic?! What are you doing in this situation!”
“Ｕｇａａａａａａ！”
“This, what the heck is this—!”
Frozen to the knees, the sailor and the larvae, unable to move, shouted, and the hooded men seemed unable to comprehend the change in the situation.
“It’s hatching…. It IS hatching!”
However, only the leader man showed a different reaction to the change in the egg. A torrent of shining particles erupts from the frozen feet, and a magic formation emerges at the tip of his right hand that was pointed at the egg, slowly rotating――.
I could tell at a glance that it was a pedigree skill that was based on a different principle than the magic of this world. As if to back it up, the hood was lifted up by the torrent that swirled up from my feet, and I could see the real face that was hidden in it.
――He looks just like Coty.
A male human who resembled Coty so much that one would think that he was her twin began to chant something with a joyful smile.
“――As I chant. Give me all of you, I will give you the key to life and pledge to share your destiny――”
However, before I pulled the third trigger, ice crystals suddenly grew from the egg hut, wiping out that smile and chanting from this world.
Burning Feathers 