kscans

Chapter 106 - Chapter 8. The Strength of Simplicity

"That's less like a bullet train and more like the nose of a jet."

I muttered from my swaying seat on horseback. A gigantic white worm rotated a spiral of red light on its surface, like a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon.

I was currently riding parallel to it, heading west. We kept a sufficient distance, but I felt a primal fear watching the colossal object move with a rumble that shook the ground.

Fortunately, it was slower than a carriage. If it had the speed of a horse, we would have been completely helpless. Thanks to its pace, even a horse carrying two riders could easily overtake it.

Of course, that was because one of the Knight Order's most skilled riders was handling the prince's spare horse.

As usual, I was just clinging on for dear life in the back. What do you expect? I'm a civilian.

"Prepare to engage."

Unlike a civilian, the Knight Order couldn't afford to keep its distance. Forming ranks, they approached the mobile entity known as the Slug, drawing their bows from horseback. In a way, this was the ultimate form of an organization.

Their opponent was the most primitive kind of organization imaginable, one that moved based on the transmission of a single signal. It possessed no language, not even a nervous system. It was a mass of fungus, not even an animal.

"Commence attack."

Arrows flew toward its head. The glowing arrowheads indicated they were tipped with sorcery gold, but the creature's rotating head deflected them all. I see, at that rate, it could probably destroy a castle wall. If it ever got inside a town...

One village had already had half of it shaved away. We were lucky the evacuation was complete and that the slime mold didn't actively attack people. For them, moving toward a source of magic was likely the priority.

"Aim for the torso."

Prince Craig's order rang out. A wedge formation of knights charged into the white torso. Though the beast had no eyes, it seemed to react to their magic, inching slightly toward the knights. But that was all. The knights, lances held ready, timed their attack and thrust them into the defenseless body.

The slime mold writhed as it took the hit, its body convulsing. White fragments scattered like spray. Several knights were thrown from their horses.

However, the monster continued its advance as if nothing had happened. It paid no mind to the fact that a part of its body had been gouged out. It had no sense of pain, after all. The damage probably amounted to killing a few of the individual organisms that composed it.

Another unit moved in to take their place, heading for the Slug. Horses pulled a sharpened log from either side. Fighting a battering ram with a battering ram, so to speak. With synchronized timing, the two logs slammed into the slime mold's torso.

With a wet splat, a portion of the slime mold's body, perhaps about a tenth of it, burst apart. Cheers erupted from the knights. But the torn-off piece of its body immediately reshaped itself into another Slug. Then, the small slug approached the main body as if nothing had happened and instantly merged back into one.

The creature’s path shifted slightly, causing one of the knight units trying to evade it to break formation.

I knew it.

It had no clear command structure, just an overly simple and primitive system based on self organization. Even the slime at the center of that red spiral was probably just another single entity. It was no different from how the center of an ice crystal is just a water molecule, the same as any part at its edge.

Even if we crushed its head, the remaining parts would likely form a new one immediately. There is a certain strength that comes from being simple and primitive.

◇◇

"Just as you said, Ricardo, that thing isn't a single giant monster, but a colony of many Mucus creatures. We were fortunate to crush three before they could merge, but even two pose a great threat. To think our attacks would be so meaningless."

"Is the one to the south also heading for Bertold?"

"It seems so. While moving west, its course is gradually shifting north."

We were holding a meeting inside a campaign tent. Two pieces were placed on the map. They weren't heading straight for Bertold, but were slowly altering their angle.

Thanks to this, we, who were heading directly for Bertold, could get there first. Incidentally, most of our transport convoy was already on its way there. The radar carriage with Mia, Fulsy, and Noel was with them.

If the Knight Order ignored the mobile body, they too could reach Bertold ahead of it. But there was no chance of victory by challenging it head on.

"You said there was something you needed to confirm, Ricardo."

"Yes."

The question was why the mobile body was heading for Bertold. The reason it was moving west was simple. In my old world, slime molds seek light. They form mobile bodies to escape nutrient poor environments and find new ones to release their spores, so they move toward the light of the sky.

So what about this monstrous slime mold? Since it was generally heading west, its destination appeared to be the magic of the western Red Forest. However, the one we just saw, and the one moving in the south, both seemed to be angled toward Bertold. Unlike the slimes before, its dull reaction to the knights' magic weapons suggested that the monster preferred magic with a mix of chaotic wavelengths, miasma, over the orderly magic controlled by humans.

In that case, there had to be a reason it wasn't heading straight west. This was on a map's scale, after all. The probability of even one of them coincidentally running into Bertold was low. It was impossible for two to be drawn to it by chance.

"The mobile bodies appear to be gradually picking up speed," Hyde said.

"As I thought."

In other words, something was guiding them. I had considered the possibility of control by the Imperials in the Royal Capital, but it would be unnatural for the creatures to speed up as they moved away from the capital.

The simplest explanation was that there was some element in Bertold attracting the slime mold. That a chemical substance that attracts it, aside from magic, had been scattered in Bertold. It was a plausible idea if you considered moth pheromones, but I couldn't understand why the slime mold would integrate two different types of information to navigate.

"Now that I think about it, the destroyed buildings Alfina mentioned..."

I recalled the vision Alfina had first told me about. The things destroyed were the castle wall, the cathedral, and a workshop with smoke rising from it.

I looked at the map of Bertold. If I assumed one of them broke through the wall near the eastern gate, then the three locations weren't in a straight line. They were arranged in a curve. That would make the workshop the furthest point.

So the Empire calculated things that far ahead.

Once I realized it, it was simple. The lumber in Bertold was what was attracting the monster. For example, salmon are said to return to their home rivers by detecting their subtle scent. What seemed like chaotic magic to us could be perceived by the monster as a distinct spectrum of wavelengths.

In other words, it was being drawn by the faint magic emitted by the lumber from its homeland, the Empire.

"So you're saying the Imperial timber in Bertold is attracting the monster."

"I'm almost certain of it. And this is our chance. If we turn this to our advantage, it won't be difficult to divert the attack away from Bertold."

If the Knight Order and Bertold's transport units could move the wood outside the city, they could alter the mobile body's course. But there were two problems.

The first was where the diverted path would lead. Of course, Bertold's safety was the top priority. If Bertold fell, the entire western region of the kingdom would be affected. Considering the Empire's hostility, we couldn't compare it to one or two villages. But I wanted to avoid that if possible.

I stared at Leylia Village on the map, thinking desperately.

The second problem was what the slime mold would do after reaching the wood. Would it settle there as a new territory, create a fruiting body, and release spores? Or would it continue on, plunging into the western forest? If the latter, I feared the impact on the forest's ecosystem.

After all, a species that had never been in the western forest would appear in massive numbers. It was entirely possible that predicting monster floods would become impossible.

"If we could just stop its movement, it wouldn't be impossible to wear it down and kill it," Craig said.

The mobile body uses that rotating spiral of magical signals to control the population of individuals. Therefore, if we could stop that spiral, its movement would also stop.

But even if we stopped it, the spiral would self organize and reform. A new spiral would spontaneously emerge from fluctuations like slight signal deviations among the uniform individuals or minute differences in density between them.

"Can you think of anything to stop the monster's activity, like what we fed the dragon?"

"We can't expect that kind of luck twice."

We had to interfere with the very mechanism that sends or receives the red signal. If we could do that, it might break down into individual slimes. A specific antibody or chemical compound. Even with the facilities of a pharmaceutical company from my old world, that could take years.

As for magic itself, I had considered a way to systematically search for such a thing, but that would take just as long. It wouldn't be in time for the monster that would reach Bertold in a few days. And there were two of them.

Wait a minute. The fact that there are two of them might actually be a good thing.

We could guide the slime mold. If so, there was a way to at least temporarily erase that spiral. However, even if that worked, the mobile body would eventually reform. Worse, it could result in the creation of a super giant mobile body from the two merging.

To prevent that, we would have to kill it completely while it was stopped. The Knight Order's forces, even if multiplied several times over, probably couldn't do it.

Use the terrain? If there were a convenient natural pitfall, we wouldn't be having this trouble. Besides, that thing looks like it would just carve its way out of the ground.

"Wait, carve the ground..."

I remembered my previous trip to Bertold. There was something near the city we could use.

I lifted my head from the map.

"It seems you have a plan."

"It's a huge gamble, though."

The difficulty was high, but it wasn't an impossible strategy for the Anti-Monster Knight Order and the transport capabilities of Bertold.

"Please send a fast horse. I have two requests for the Grand Duchess. The first is information on the weather around Bertold for the past few days. The second is something I need her to gather in Bertold."

I explained the contents of the letter I wanted sent.

"Understood. How shall we proceed?"

"Leave a surveillance unit behind. The rest of you, head straight for Bertold."

We would intercept the disastrous monster before it reached the city. Of course, I had no intention of doing any of the fighting myself.