Read Novel Full Chapter 506: Copy in case of Emergency
Chapter 506: Copy in case of Emergency
"..." I don't move, I can't move, my body is static as if trying to run might make the predator that found me attack, so I just stay frozen, staring at this bitch's body on the ground.
'It was a miscalculation...' I never thought she would alert a dangerous monster that was already behind me. She must have noticed the monster's approach, just as I also noticed when I felt something bad closing in.
"Ara, ara, ara, what do we have here?" I hear a mature, almost seductive voice. Through the sound vibrations in the environment, I detect the shape of her silhouette, realizing it's a girl.
'A humanoid... that's even worse...' The Abyss is full of evolved monsters who have gained humanoid forms, and a humanoid is stronger than a normal monster.
"So you're the little thing that changed the entire ecosystem of one of the areas in my territory." The tone is venomous, clear disgust and anger over it. I don't hear footsteps, but the sound is getting closer.
'I can't detect her.' My body has involuntary tremors and twitches. I can't detect this thing even though she's only a few meters away from me.
"You have an... interesting scent... where have I smelled it before?" She talks to herself, a curious tone.
"..." I see her shadow looming over me, and with that, I know she's just one step away. My body seems to want to flee madly.
"You look scared, but you didn't kill yourself. You're strong." When I feel her palm touch my back, my body tries to run, but I fall face-first to the ground, and I realize my legs have been torn off before I could even process that I lost them.
"Ugh."
"No, no, no, no running away. We have a long conversation to have, don't we? Did you know that little 'game' of yours with spiders caused me problems? Those little crawling pests killed some of my personal servants and devoured some of my favorite toys." Her frustrated tone is obvious.
"You may move." When she says that, my legs regenerate and I jump backward, facing her, seeing the appearance of this absurdly strong monster.
"..." She's a tall girl, at least 10 feet tall, with massively large breasts and dark pink eyes. The sclera of her eyes is completely black while her skin has a pink hue. Her hair is very long, reaching the back of her knees, and is a light pink color.
Her body is almost entirely in these shades of pink, red, and reddish-pink to differentiate one part from another, while her posture is strong and her gaze is dangerously seductive.
She isn't wearing clothes, but she isn't naked either. It seems she has some kind of tentacular "thing" covering her private parts. And with her appearance, it's obvious she's a tentacle monster.
'Damn it, damn it!! A tentacle girl? You've got to be kidding me!! Just my luck, a tentacle!!?' It's obvious what she is. Immediately, I start building my mental protection. I'm sure if she doesn't try to kill me, she'll try to control me.
So I immediately start creating "Pandora Copy"—an exact copy consciousness of myself. It will act like me, have all my memories, think like me, and do everything as I would without knowing it's a copy. And of course, it will be slightly more curious than me, so it can gather information for me by asking questions.
'I just need time! 30 minutes.' I didn't think I'd encounter a tentacle monster so soon, so I hadn't created the copy yet.
"W-What's your name?" I ask, all tense.
"Mnemosyne. You may call me that, little girl." She looks my body up and down.
"I see. You are a very fertile girl. Your internal structure is impressive. Your regenerative power is one of the highest I've ever seen, even though you are of a low level. And you already produce milk with impressive nutritional content." She assessed me in less than a second with such precision.
'There's no way I can win against this!'
"You're a servant of Echidna... Urgh!" A tentacle emerges from nowhere in the ground, grabbing my throat and squeezing. Mnemosyne's gaze turns cold and dark.
"Do not say her name with such disrespect. It's pathetic for low-level inferior beings to try and utter her name." The force of the tentacle increases, becoming so intense it's about to tear my head off, so I twist my head and bite the tentacle, tearing it off.
"Oh?" She's surprised, but the Devourer passive doesn't care about resistance, so I was able to bite and cut through.
"...Interesting... Well, I think I've seen enough. You caused me problems, so die." Thousands of tentacles surge from the ground on all sides.
'W-What?! She wants to kill me?!' I can tell from her look—the complete lack of interest in trying to keep me alive. Because she's too strong to need someone like me without reason.
"W-WAIT!!" She attacks, too fast for me to defend, but slow enough for me to see that I'm going to die. This son of a bitch knows exactly how much force she needs to kill me.
"I'M ECHIDNA'S DAUGHTER!" I shout the information I least wanted to say, because since I arrived in the Abyss, my mother's servants painted a picture of being utterly untrustworthy.
But when I say that, she stops. Her tentacles are centimeters away from piercing my entire body and leaving me with more holes than Swiss cheese.
"...Pandora." She says my name, but I never introduced myself.
"Your scent... yes, your scent was familiar... you're the little sister of that bitch Azraelith." When she realizes this fact, her smile becomes disturbingly large and distorted. She licks her lips, which allows me to see her extremely sharp teeth.
"Yes, I am..." Her gaze seems even more dangerous than before, but it was either this or she'd kill me.
"I know your older sister... yes, I know her very well... we have... an interesting past." Her tone is full of hatred. You can tell it's not "interesting" in a good way.
'I need to buy time to defend my mind...'
"Could you tell me?" I ask while the tentacles that were about to kill me retreat into the ground.
"Of course, little daughter of Echidna-sama..." She approaches me, standing in front of me. She's much taller than I am.
"That bitch, your older sister, humiliated me so much... I offered her a deal. I idolized her, who was Echidna-sama's daughter..."
"A deal?" I try to stall her.
"Yes. You see, I am a swarm monster... it means I increase my power by reproducing, creating more and more children. All disposable, but together they are a frightening force in the Abyss."
"I myself reached my position as Echidna-sama's servant by defeating one of her servants. That bitch was delicious. It felt so good to devour her body until only her torso remained and use her to create millions of my children..."
"Unfortunately, being a swarm monster has two disadvantages... First, we need other bodies to have children with special 'genetics.' So, a tentacle can only be a new type if it has a special mother."
"And the second problem is a body that can withstand the stress of having so many children. Most monsters in the Abyss focus on defense, meaning beings with high regenerative power are rare, even though they are the most perfect for this task because they never run out."
"What I offered your older sister was simple. I wanted her genes. My tentacle monsters would become much stronger by having the genes of a being created by the Abyss Goddess herself."
"With Azraelith, I would become the second most powerful being in the Abyss, below only the Goddess... I offered Azraelith everything for this. My body, my soul, my eternal servitude. All I wanted was solely to use her body once." She delivers a whole monologue that I pay partial attention to, focusing more on creating my mental copy.
"I can perform mitosis. As long as I had a single tentacle with her genes, I could make that tentacle be born from any body of any incubator."
"My body stores data from my children and replicates them, so I will always have different children... but she... she humiliated me in front of everyone... she beat me until I died, with my true body literally dying."
"And I only survived because that wretch didn't even really try to eliminate me, and I managed to escape in a small tentacle that carried my consciousness... I spent years weakened because of that miserable creature."
"I lost everything!! I lost my position, my power, and the respect I had!! I only managed to recover these things recently when a large part of my original power returned..." Her neutral tone is more chilling than if she were angry.
"W-What does this have to do with me?" I ask tensely. I need a few more minutes.
'Come on, come on, come on!! Hurry up!!' With every second, my fear increases. I need to finish soon and protect my head.
"What does it have to do with you... it's simple, little daughter of Echidna... you are a Tenebris Abyssus..." Her smile returns to her face.
"I didn't want Azraelith. I wanted the genes of her race... the rarest race of all, but with infinite evolution potential... I know my tentacles won't inherit the infinite evolution of a Tenebris Abyssus."
"But they will inherit the general adaptation—a weaker version, but still, the power to adapt is one of the most powerful things in the Abyss, which is always in a constant state of chaos!! If I can have tentacles with Tenebris Abyssus genes,"
"I will finally be able to reach level 5 billion." Her eyes shine with greed, and her plan becomes clear.
"H-Hey, you wouldn't do that to me, right? I have nothing to do with my older sister!! Besides, I'm the daughter of the Abyss Goddess. Do you really think forcing me into something is safe?" She ponders for a second and then replies.
"She won't know... besides, little of what you said matters. I tried being friendly once, and look what happened to me. I almost died and lost everything I had. I won't make that mistake again." Tentacles emerge, wrapping around me, holding me in place.
I feel my magic disappearing completely, being locked by something, while her gaze toward me is as if I were a sweet reward. But I'm still in the process of forming the copy, so it hardly matters that I can't use magic.
"I was going to kill you. You changed the ecosystem of one of my territories... but now things have changed. And you... you are my treasure." She hugs me—a strangely comfortable hug.
"What will you do with me?" I ask, trying to finish creating the fake copy soon.
"I'll take you with me to my home. I'll fill you with lots of love and children, and I'll take the position I always deserved here in the Abyss. And don't worry, Pandora. I'll give you all my love, my beautiful treasure." Her gaze is the most manic I've ever seen.
It's animalistic, wild, and... similar to me? Okay, that's kind of weird, because her gaze reminds me a lot of the psychopath Pandora Yandere. Besides, her wild attitude is very coherent with a wild beast.
She tried commensalism with my older sister. That tactic failed, and because it failed, she, as a wild being, changed tactics. And now she'll try parasitism with me.
'Shit...' I feel dizzy. Everything seems to spin while the tentacles holding me pierce me with needles and inject something into me. Things seem to darken while her voice becomes muffled, but the process of creating the copy continues on automatic, so I'll probably manage to finish creating it.