The Core: The First Guest

35. The Brutal Judge

Why wasn't I listening to him? Why was I remaining silent? I was afraid. Not afraid of him or his words. I was afraid of letting go, letting this fire out that had been building ever since Magus the 2nd had attempted to erase George and Tutor. I had never really cared about the stolen cr, yes it was offensive to have the stuff I rightfully earned taken away, it just didn't yet have much use to me when everything was free in VR. But people and friends, however, those things I cared about dearly. In that long time that I had spent with time frozen, watching Magus's finger hovering close to the button and not able to do anything, I realized something. Something profound. Some monsters would destroy everything you love for no reason, even for something as simple as a coin. What if George and Tutor were just the start of what I could lose? What length would Magus go to in order to get what he wanted? If humans were the key to obtaining a more dense cr technology, something that would allow him to steal from others without fear of justice, how far would he and his brood go? Would they destroy all my family and friends? Just to keep this secret to themselves?

As it stood, I could see that this Core had a terminal sickness. It was worse because it stemmed from the ones in power, making the rest of the Citizens at their mercy. I didn't know how to stop them though. If I did anything to this guy's harvester robot he could just transmit himself away... and that would be that. He would tell his family about me, about how I could damage cr and then every Magus in existence would be looking for a piece to cut off of me. Me, my friends, and my loved ones.

I had sped up time instinctively to give myself time to think rationally. To give me time to calm down. It wasn't working.

I could feel... something. It felt like my heart was on fire, like my blood was beginning to boil, my skin starting to steam.

I didn't see the change coming over me, but Magus did. I couldn't feel the cr shifting over my body, fluidly warping, lengthening my legs, adding spikes to the end of each of my joints, and terrible claws to the ends of my limbs. What I couldn't see, and what was visually most terrible of all was the circular maw that had formed on the front of my head, very similar to the maw of the monster that I had seen while doing my first surveying job.

<Recommend paralyze, silence, and cripple>

Two triangle marks of black appeared in exact locations on the back of Magus's robot body. I instinctively knew that those locations would destroy his ability to propel himself using cr propulsion and damage his transmitter, blocking him from escaping back to the safety of the Core and silencing all but the ability to speak audibly. What I didn't know was what would happen the moment I agreed with the recommendation.

My vision narrowed, darkening around the edges slightly as my world became hyper-focused. We were !^*! the Swarm of Death. We don't play with our food.

Our whole body tensed and something shot out of our mouth towards Magus while still in slow time. It startled me, the part of me that was still Kevin, it was exactly the same snakelike mouth that I had seen before. Its razor-sharp teeth hooked into the edge of Magus's robot, securing him to us while we moved forward in a blur, stabbing down twice in rapid succession on the black triangles located on his back with our dagger-like claws.

Our prey was not flying away or calling for help.

In rapid and merciless rakes of our powerful claws, we made each of his limbs fall to the deck of the carrier.

Our prey was not going to crawl away now.

My vision cleared, finding me shaking. What just happened? What the heck was that? I looked down at my limbs, finding that they had returned back to my smooth robot arms, yet knowing that the beast was part of me now, I could return to its form, our form, with but a thought.