What surprised me, though, was that no window with info about that creature popped up before my eyes when I looked at the monster. It meant that when the team of the scout spaceship scanned the planet, the planet-scanning technology somehow overlooked this creature.
“Okay,” Vlad said. “I know what is happening here.”
“Enlighten us then about the situation,” I said.
“That ugly thing is the mother that created all those alien bugs,” Vlad said. “It must telepathically have been controlling them or something. Remember our very first mission where we had to kill a Raid Boss?”
“You mean the giant half-intelligent spider that made other spiders attack the colonists?” Nate said.
“Yeah,” Vlad said, nodding. “Once we killed that giant spider, the smaller ones were no longer under its influence and just ran away from us. I think the same is going on here. This thing must be a Raid Boss too. If we kill this ugly thing, the smaller alien bugs will no longer be interested in attacking us.”
However, there was a flaw in his logic. If that thing was actually a Raid Boss, which was basically a very powerful and hard-to-kill opponent, then we would have been able to see its level and health bar. But we were not able to see it, so we had no idea what level the creature was and how many hit points it had.
It did not deter Vlad, though. Before any of us could say anything, he opened up on the creature. The cavern became filled with the crack of gunfire. The rounds the Russian fired were charged with dark energy thanks to one of the skills he had learned, so they exploded when they impacted the creature. Yet the armor plates covering the monster’s body bore the brunt of the attack, leaving the creature undamaged.
Within three seconds, Vlad dumped the whole mag into the creature. The resultant silence was almost painful.
“What the fuck,” Vlad said, dumbfounded at how little—if any—damage he had done to the monster.
The creature’s reaction was surprising as well. Instead of charging at us, it took a few steps backward.
“Do not shoot at me, please,” a strange voice suddenly said from somewhere. “I pose no threat to you, humans.”
“Who said that?” Tamerlan asked.
“I think it was the creature,” Nate replied. “At least the voice seems to have come from its direction.”
“It can speak?” Tamerlan asked, surprised. “Raid Bosses have never talked to us on our previous missions.”
“It’s just messing with us, guys,” Vlad snarled. “Don’t let that monster bamboozle you.”
The Russian had already reloaded his weapon and had his sights lined up on the monster.
“Don’t shoot!” a high-pitched female voice suddenly cut through the air as a woman ran out from the shadows of the cavern and stood protectively in front of the huge monster.
However, Vlad was already putting pressure on the trigger. Nate jumped toward the Russian and smacked his palm at the underside of Vlad’s assault rifle just as he pressed the trigger, sending the spray of bullets into the ceiling of the cave.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Vlad snarled at the big British guy.
“Are you blind?” Nate shot back. “There are civilians here!”
The Russian turned his head to look in the direction of the huge creature as two more persons, both male, came out of somewhere and stood next to the woman in front of the giant monster.
“What the hell is going on here,” Vlad muttered angrily.
The three persons were dressed in black-and-red uniforms that bore insignia of our organization, The Weaponized.
“This creature is friendly,” the woman said. “Don’t shoot at him.”
“Guess we’ve found our scientists,” Nate said.
“And they are alive and well,” Vlad said almost disappointingly.
“I guess you were dispatched by the organization,” the woman said. “You’re here to get us out of this place, right?”
“That’s correct,” Nate replied.
“Finally,” one of the men said with visible relief. He was the youngest of the three scientists, in his late twenties or early thirties.
The other man, who seemed to be in his fifties, did not look excited at the news for some reason. And neither did the woman, who seemed to be in charge here.
She nodded at us and said, “My name is Claire.” She pointed at the older man. “This is Brandon.” He nodded at the other man. “And this is Simon.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “Can you please tell us what is going on here, Claire?”
“Sure,” the woman replied. “But first can you give us a minute?”
“What for?” Vlad barked.
The woman seemed surprised at his hostile reaction. She quickly took a grip on herself, though.
“Just a moment, please,” she repeated and turned to face the alien.
She said something to it in a quiet voice.
“All right, Clair,” the creature replied. “I’ll be here.”
The alien had said it clearly and loudly, though as far as I could tell its mouth was hardly moving. I wondered how the heck the creature could be talking. Its insect-like mouth with protruding mandibles did seem to be appropriate for talking.
“Let’s go,” the woman said to the two men.
The older one, Brandon, did not seem keen on leaving the cave. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to stay here. Still, he began to follow the woman. The other man, Simon, was clearly all too glad to get out of this cave, and probably from this planet as well. He all but ran across the cavern and was the first out of it. For some reason, he did not seem to be afraid to be attacked by the alien bugs outside. Probably because he had three armed-to-the-teeth warriors guarding him and was sure that we would protect him. He did not know that we ourselves had almost been killed by the same aggressive alien creatures.
However, we made it back to the mobile base without accident, encountering no alien bugs at all. I wondered where they all had disappeared to.
Once inside, we looked out the window to make sure the alien bugs were not about to charge at the base out of the surrounding foliage. They were nowhere in sight, though.
It was really weird. It had not been long that we had been attacked after landing on this planet. The whole place had seemed to be crawling with the alien bugs. Right now, however, there were none of them in sight. It was strange, to say the least. I was beginning to believe that Vlad might have been right after all. The alien we had met in the cave could be in charge of the smaller creatures.
“Okay,” Vlad said to the woman, his harsh voice snapping me back to reality. “Now that you’re comfortable, tell us everything, lady. From the beginning.”
Claire nodded, but before she could begin to speak, Vlad added, “But be short and to the point because I got a short attention span.”
“It took us some time to find this planet,” the woman began. “It seems to change its direction every now and then as you may know.”
“Yeah yeah,” Vlad said impatiently. “We’re well aware of it, of course. So don’t digress.”
“When we found it,” Claire continued, “our spaceship landed and set up our mobile base. Then the spaceship took off.”
“They just left you?” Nate asked, not sounding particularly surprised. By that point, all of us were well aware that the organization we worked for, The Weaponized, was not particularly pleasant and friendly.
“They were going to pick us up after we completed our job here,” Claire explained.
Nate nodded and said, “Please, continue.”
“Not long after the spaceship left, we were attacked,” Claire said.
Just like us, I thought.
“By the alien bugs, I presume?” Vlad said.
“Yes,” the woman replied. “Thomas and Penelope died in the attack”
“There were more of you initially?” Tamerlan asked.
“Our team consisted of five people,
” Claire replied. “Plus, the military personnel, our guards. Thomas and Penelope got killed. All the guards whose job was to keep us safe were killed too.”
Claire made a pause. It was obvious that she was still overwhelmed by what had happened, though she did her best to stay calm.
“What happened next?” Vlad goaded her on. “How come the rest of you survived?”
“I guess the alien saved them,” Nate put it.
Claire glanced at the British guy and nodded. “That’s right. His name is Mor by the way. At least, it’s what we call him. His actual name is way longer and way more difficult for humans to pronounce. So we just call him Mor. It’s a shortened form of his real name.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about his name,” Vlad snarled. “Tell us about that ugly critter itself instead. What is it? What is that bastard doing on this planet? For what purpose has it been creating all those smaller bugs? That’s what I want to know.”
Before the woman could say anything, Vlad added, “And don’t try to pretend it’s not Mor’s job, or whatever its name is. We killed lots of alien bugs today. And then we saw lots of them floating in cocoons in that cave. It’s not hard to put two and two together. We know that it’s Mor who’s been creating those monsters. Don’t you dare to deny it.”
“I’m not going to deny it,” the woman said. “It’s Mor who created all those creatures all right.”
“What for?” Vlad asked. He was talking in a very rude way, the way he always did.
Claire’s face hardened.
“Let’s me first clarify something for you,” the woman said in a cold voice. “First of all, please do not call him ugly. He looks very different from us, but it doesn’t make him ugly. From his point of view, we, humans, aren’t very attractive either.”
Vlad was going to say something, but Claire beat him to it.
“Let me finish,” she said. “Second, he’s an intelligent being. Just like you or me. Scratch that, he’s way more intelligent than all humans combined. He possesses enormous knowledge. Moreover, unlike some of the humans, he’s never rude and never aggressive.”
“Let me judge for myself” Vlad grumbled.
“Do you remember what happened when you opened fire on him?” Claire asked. “You dumped the whole magazine into him, but he never made any aggressive move, didn’t he? Instead, he stepped back and politely asked you not to fire at him.”
“True,” Nate said.
“He’s a very gentle and kind creature,” Claire continued. “He’d rather be killed than attack another intelligent being.”
“I doubt that,” Vlad said. “It didn’t attack me, because his body armor protected it against my bullets very well.”
“Don’t call him ‘it’,” Claire said. “He’s an intelligent creature, just like you.”
“It’s just a bug,” Vlad said derisively. “A very large one but still just a bug. So I’m gonna call it ‘’it.”
Claire’s face hardened. Before she could say anything, I put in, “Don’t mind him, please. He’s a jerk. Always been and will always be.”
“Fuck you, Dave,” Vlad snapped at me.
Totally ignoring him, I said to Claire, “Can you tell us what happened next and why has Mor been creating those alien bugs as we’ve come to call them?”
The woman nodded and continued, “Thomas, Penelope, and all the guards were killed by the alien bugs. Brandon, Simon, and I would’ve been killed too had Mor not showed up.”
“What did it do?” Vlad asked. “Ordered them to stop attacking you?”
Claire shook her head.
“Nothing like that,” the woman said. “Sure, he created them, but he has no control over them whatsoever. They don’t listen to them. They can’t even understand him. They aren’t intelligent. They are just insects and nothing more.”
“So it killed the critters that were attacking you?” Vlad asked.
“Some of them,” yes,” the woman replied. “The rest got away. Those creatures are really afraid of him and prefer to avoid fighting him.”
“Didn’t you just say that Mor would rather be killed than harm someone?” Vlad said, a proud note in his voice at the thought of catching her lying to us.
“Yes, Mor would never do any harm to an intelligent creature,” Claire said. “But the alien bugs as you call them are anything but intelligent. Moreover, they are very aggressive. Even so, Mor doesn’t like hurting even such creatures. However, battling and killing some of them was the only way to stop them from attacking us.”
“What happened next?” Tamerlan asked.
“Well, for the next minute, Brandon, Simon, and I just stared at him,” Claire replied.
“It figures,” Tamerlan said. “You must be the first people who encountered an intelligent alien.”
“Yeah,” the woman nodded. “At that moment, we didn’t know that he was intelligent, though. I mean, we couldn’t communicate with him, so we just stared at him. We didn’t know yet if he was friendly or not.”
“Wait a minute,” Vlad said. “Hold your horses, lady. We heard him talk to us, didn’t we? Why couldn’t you communicate with him when you first met him then?”
“I’ll get to it in a minute,” Claire said. “Exercise patience, please.”
“Okay,” Vlad said as he shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t seem particularly interested, but at least he tried to be polite. “So what happened next?”
“Mor watched us as we stared at him, then he slowly turned and made a few steps away from us,” Claire continued. “He then stopped and looked back at us. At some point, we realized he wanted us to follow him.”
“Bad idea,” Vlad said as he shook his head.
“That was what we first thought,” the woman said. “However, we didn’t really have much choice. We couldn’t just stand there and wait for another bunch of alien bugs to show up to kill us. Moreover, the creature didn’t seem aggressive toward us. Quite the opposite in fact—Mor had saved our lives. And if he wanted to harm us, there really wasn’t anything that we could do to prevent him from doing so. He was way bigger, stronger, and faster than us. So we followed him.”
“What happened next?” Tamerlan asked.
“Mor led us to our mobile base,” Claire said. “So he’d actually guarded us so we could make it to the base alive and safe. Without him, I’m more than sure that we wouldn’t have been able to get to the base in one piece.”
The woman made a short pause before she continued.
“He returned the next day,” she said. “He just watched us through the windows, then left again. During the next few days, he would return and watch us and listen to us talk to one another. When we had to go outside, he always tagged along to protect us in case we got attacked by the alien bugs.”
“He didn’t talk to you?” I asked.
“No,” Claire replied as she shook her head. “He couldn’t at that point. Then, one day when he got to our base again, he suddenly began talking to us in English.”
“Really?” Vlad said, his brow furrowed.
“Yes,” the woman nodded. “Did you notice a strange-looking object attached to his neck when you met him back in the cave? It’s kind of stands out from the rest of his body.”
I had not. The whole of Mor looked weird. No part of him looked normal to me.
When we shook our heads, Claire said, “This thing enables Mor to talk to us. Consider it some kind of organic translator. He’d been listening to us talking to one another, learning our language, and developing this translator in one of his cocoons. And now he’s able to speak with us. He makes some quiet gurgling sounds, and the translator attached to his neck transforms them into words that we can understand. So when Mor speaks, the English words actually come from the translator, not Mor himself.”
“Wait a minute,” Vlad said, then pointed at Tamerlan. “My friend here ain’t a native English speaker. It took him a few months to learn enough English to ge
t by. And he’s still learning the language. And you’re saying Mor learned English as well as invented that electronic portable translator in just a few days, huh?”
“That’s right,” the woman said.
“How can this be possible?” Vlad asked.
“He’s very smart,” Claire replied. “Way smarter than any of us can imagine. His knowledge of everything is enormous.”
“Right,” Vlad said with skepticism.
“And by the way,” Claire added, “you are wrong about his translator. It’s not electronic. It’s organic.”
“Really?” Vlad said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes,” the woman said. “It’s a living creature.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Vlad said.
The woman shook her head. “No. Everything Mor creates is alive. Every device or weapon that he created for us is actually living creatures.”
“It gets weirder and weirder,” Tamerlan said.
“Yeah,” Nate said. “I think you should tell us more about Mor.”
Claire nodded her head and said, “I was going to. So once Mor was able to communicate with us, he told us a lot about himself. To save your time, I’ll give you a short version.”
“It’ll be appreciated,” Vlad grumbled. It was obvious that he was getting tired of this conversation. Mor was an intelligent alien that was very different from humans, but the Russian did not seem to be interested in it one bit.
“His race is entirely unlike humans,” Claire said. “I should probably have said ‘was’ because Mor is actually the last of his race. The rest of them died of some kind of very dangerous disease hundreds of years ago. As far as Mor knows, there are no more people of his race alive anywhere.”
“Hundreds of years ago?” I asked. “How come he’s still alive? Did they live longer than humans?”
“And why didn’t he get infected by that disease?” Nate added.
“The answer to the first question is yes,” Claire replied as she looked at me. “Their lifespan was much longer than that of humans. Mor’s age, for example, is almost six thousand years.”
“Wow,” Vlad said. “I wish I could live that long to play video games.”
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 37
