Bone marrow fluid was being pumped steadily out of the enormous mountain of flesh.
Other bodily fluids were also a priority, especially its blood.
They had already filled more barrels than anyone had bothered to count, yet Scorpio's blood supply seemed inexhaustible.
"With molecular-level regeneration, I guess it really is an endless supply, in a way," Miori muttered.
After receiving permission, personnel from her family's company had also begun collecting the materials they needed.
Some of this could be used in weapons development.
"What are you doing? Don't worry about wear and tear! Get moving!"
She had noticed some of her employees handling the machinery gingerly, afraid they would break it if they pushed too hard.
"We don't have much time! Be rough with it if you have to!"
According to Kain, Scorpio could regain the ability to move at any moment.
They needed to collect as much material as possible before it recovered and had to be killed for good.
Just then, the aircraft's hatch opened again. Its owner returned with the doctor, who was wearing a protective suit.
He had taken her onto Scorpio's body for a closer examination. They had even gone inside through its mouth.
Miori would never have dared to do anything that reckless.
If Scorpio suddenly woke up, they would be finished.
"Mr. Kain, I haven't detected any anomalies."
Senju Kayo, who had been operating the aircraft, delivered her report to its returning owner.
He had asked her to monitor the radar for anything unusual in the surrounding area.
Actually, that was not quite accurate.
"Oh, but we've been picking up some strange radio signals."
Kain stepped up to the console and began examining the detected transmissions.
Under his hands, the display changed, revealing countless tiny, sharp ripples. Some of their sources were moving.
He narrowed the search.
They were coming from Gastrea of all sizes.
The radio waves spread outward with the creatures' cries.
At first, the ripples appeared disorganized. A closer look, however, revealed that they were gradually synchronizing, their frequencies drawing into alignment.
That seemed to amplify the waves, extending their range.
Strangely, when those transmissions reached Scorpio, they did not bounce off it.
They seemed to be absorbed.
Kain now understood why the light-quantum field he had erased was beginning to form again.
He had destroyed Scorpio's original consciousness. But the Gastrea all around it possessed faint traces of awareness, souls too weak to take any coherent form. Those traces seemed to be drawn here, gathering into a new consciousness.
If enough accumulated to animate Scorpio again, the resulting consciousness would be even more chaotic than before.
The creature might enter a permanent state of berserk rage.
"Hmm. So if we want to keep Scorpio in a vegetative state, we'd have to eliminate every Gastrea nearby?"
Sumire had learned enough from Kain to understand what those radio waves might cause.
But judging by the range shown on the screen, cutting off every transmission reaching Scorpio could require exterminating all Gastrea within a hundred kilometers.
"Hm?"
Suddenly, an extraordinarily broad ripple swept across the display, though its signal was extremely faint.
A transmission on that scale, coming from that direction...
"Could that be a signal from Libra?"
If Sumire remembered correctly, Libra, another Stage V Gastrea, was in that direction.
Half an hour later, a missile-shaped drone launched from the aircraft reached the vicinity of the largest signal's source and transmitted footage back to them.
"That's Libra."
Miori's pupils contracted slightly.
The raylike monster on the screen, more than a thousand meters long, matched the recorded appearance of Libra.
Besides its designation as one of the Zodiac, it had another title.
The Plague King.
Its primary ability was to spread a wide variety of disease-causing pathogens.
Any human settlement it passed through became a plague-ridden hell, littered with the bodies of people tortured to death by strange diseases.
And now that monster was moving.
It appeared to be heading their way.
"It looks like it's been calling Scorpio. Since it hasn't received an answer, it's coming to investigate."
Sumire rubbed her chin as she offered her assessment.
"Th-then what do we do?"
"The simplest solution is to destroy Scorpio. It looks as though Libra can tell its signals are being received, but it isn't getting a response. Basically, it's calling Scorpio on the phone. The call goes through, but nobody picks up, so it's coming to check."
"Huh? But if we destroy the phone and the call won't even connect, wouldn't that make things worse?"
Miori looked puzzled.
"If we destroy the phone, its signal should no longer be able to locate the receiver we call Scorpio. In that case, it probably won't come. After all, when Taurus and Virgo were killed, the other Stage V Gastrea didn't come to investigate, did they?"
That was the basis for Sumire's conclusion.
"Still, at Libra's speed, it'll take a while to get here. We can wait until just before it enters the sea to dispose of Scorpio."
Libra was currently on the Korean Peninsula. At its present speed, it would probably take another five hours to reach the coast.
That gave them five hours to extract as much research material from Scorpio as possible.
"Hm? Understood."
Kain had received a sudden call from Kisara, who was stationed at the facility in the Outer District.
He immediately brought up the ray-shaped aircraft's weapons controls.
The craft turned, pointing toward a location fifty kilometers away, and he magnified the image.
He had checked that location earlier. What he had not expected was for someone to fool his surveillance with something resembling optical camouflage.
They had projected a false image in front of the actual installation, a vast screen showing the facility sitting idle.
Now that enormous projection had been taken down.
"Is that... Heaven's Ladder? They've activated it?"
Miori's expression changed drastically.
Heaven's Ladder was an enormous electromagnetic railgun built during the Gastrea War.
It had never accomplished anything during that conflict and had simply been left to sit there afterward.
Now it was powering up.
Its muzzle was pointed straight at them.
The target was obvious.
Scorpio.
Whoever was behind this certainly was not doing it out of concern that Scorpio might go berserk again.
They had been denied a share of the spoils, so they intended to destroy the creature before anyone else could benefit from it.
An instant later, brilliant light blazed along Heaven's Ladder's one-and-a-half-kilometer rails, illuminating that entire stretch of sky.
Miori's face went deathly pale, as though the flash had drained all the color from it.
Damn it! Plenty of her company's employees were still beside Scorpio!
Almost simultaneously, another brilliant flash tore through the darkness around the aircraft.
Two torrents moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light met head-on in the sky!
(End of Chapter)
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