Chapter 163: The Snake

In a space that was previously dead silent, a flare packed with full sensory and visual effects suddenly burst open, startling anyone who might be present.

Even that massive, writhing mountain of flesh seemed jolted awake by the noise, trembling violently like a poked milk pudding and showering the surrounding area with a drizzle of black rain.

Upon seeing those comical fireworks explode mid-air, Hiroyuki immediately recognized whose handiwork it was. Just minutes earlier, he had been thinking that although he and Uncle Oda had rendezvoused and confirmed each other's status, they still hadn't seen Tregear. Feeling uneasy, Hiroyuki had assumed the other had already plunged headfirst into pursuing his own agenda.

To think he would pull a stunt like this right now!

The meaning of this flare needed no explanation—it was a signal calling them over!

Hiroyuki felt a touch of hesitation. After all, having the script of Taiga in his head, he harbored serious doubts about Tregear. Even though the villain's temperament currently seemed more stable than in the original series, a leopard never changes its spots; for all he knew, this could be another one of his schemes!

Perhaps it was the fault of the screenwriters, but in the original story, Tregear sometimes caused trouble for no reason at all. He frequently acted recklessly, getting himself into dead ends for matters that yielded no benefit to him. There were even times when he would suddenly regret his actions midway through and step in to clean up the mess himself.

In short, this fellow could not be judged by conventional logic. He would commit evil out of sheer caprice, and occasionally do good deeds for the exact same reason, leaving people utterly bewildered as to what he was actually trying to achieve.

When Hiroyuki had watched the show previously, he had decisively blamed the writers of Taiga. Tregear's arbitrariness was largely driven by plot requirements: the plot needed a monster, so he unleashed one; the plot required him to lure out story characters, so he went around provoking them; the plot demanded he wrap things up and exit stage left, so he was dismissed with some flimsy excuse.

Yet, after spending these past few days interacting with Tregear, Hiroyuki still found his behavioral patterns inscrutable. But since the Captain had chosen to keep Tregear behind, a certain mutual understanding must have been established between them. Hiroyuki still trusted the Captain's judgment. Even if Tregear remained a volatile factor, the Captain surely had preparations in place, allowing Hiroyuki to temporarily treat him as an ally without constantly worrying about a knife in the back.

However, this was Noah's dream ruin, not the outside world. Would the tacit understanding between the Captain and Tregear still hold valid here?

At this moment, Hiroyuki couldn't be certain whether these fireworks constituted a stab in the back from Tregear or a signal flare indicating he had found the target. In any case, it was always prudent to deliberate before taking action. With this thought, and after confirming no visible dangers lurked nearby, Hiroyuki once again climbed up a large tree.

This tree stood just three meters away from him, looking thoroughly climbable at a glance. The footholds were placed just right, and the height was ideal, as if it had been naturally grown for the convenience of humanoid creatures to climb.

***

Over on Oda's side, he didn't harbor nearly as many reservations as Hiroyuki. Having not yet witnessed Tregear's malevolence, Oda reacted almost instinctively by running toward the direction where the fireworks had exploded. The current situation left no room for deep thought, primarily because he was being hunted down—

Although Hiroyuki hadn't told him much, Oda, as the protagonist of this operation, had acquired sufficient intelligence regarding Noah, Nexus, and the Space Beasts beforehand. He didn't need anyone to verify anything for him; as a battle-hardened warrior, his on-the-spot judgment on the battlefield remained sharp.

The defining traits of a Space Beast were its "indeterminacy," its ever-changing physique, and its nearly boundless parameters. This was because it evolved by consuming other living creatures and assimilating their biomass. Since Earth was a planet where aliens and local natives coexisted, it was hardly surprising for a Space Beast to exhibit bizarre abilities—everything depended entirely on its dietary composition.

Before falling asleep, Oda had carefully read the investigative report transmitted back by Zero. After all, that might well be the enemy he would face in the future, and having some intelligence was infinitely better than being completely blind.

Now that he thought about it, no wonder that Space Beast had vanished on the spot from the surveillance footage. It hadn't disappeared at all; rather, it had triggered a dream-entry skill, slipping quietly into the dreams of nearby neighbors.

For some time afterward, driven purely by instinct, this Space Beast had been continuously weaving through people's dreams. And its ultimate purpose was... to search for and attack the "immune system" targeting it.

This was the survival instinct of a Space Beast; it was frantically hunting for potential Dynamis candidates and obstructing them from acquiring the power of Noah.

Oda did a quick mental calculation, and the timeline matched up precisely with when he had started experiencing nightmares.

This realization brought a lingering sense of confusion. Since the beast had infiltrated his dreams, why had it merely trapped him and hindered his movements instead of outright killing him? In its early juvenile stage, a Space Beast possessed no advanced intellect and certainly didn't plot elaborate schemes; all its actions were governed entirely by instinct. If so, there could only be two possibilities for why he hadn't been killed: first, it was incapable of harming or destroying a candidate; second, killing a candidate might lead to catastrophic consequences, forcing it to hold back and simply keep Oda trapped instead.

This deduction gave Oda a slight boost of confidence as he continued sprinting toward the fireworks. Yet just fifty meters behind him, a massive thicket of intertwined blood vessels and bulging veins—roughly as thick as a dozen Odas bound together—slithered across the turf like a giant python. Everything in its path was churned into a chaotic mess by the black liquid oozing from the creature's body.

Generally speaking, snakes crawled much faster than humans. While lacking in endurance, a snake's speed in a short burst was more than double that of a man. The black python behind Oda had been chasing him for over half an hour without showing the slightest sign of exhaustion, and its serpentine morphology and locomotion were perfectly suited for navigating dense jungles. In contrast, even though Oda was a Naltan and a seasoned warrior, he was still a humanoid creature, stumbling high and low through the undergrowth, ultimately failing to outrun a snake.

He was on the verge of being caught.

It stood to reason that if, for whatever reason, it couldn't kill him, tying him up was still an option. Looking at its mimetic python form, this intention was glaringly obvious. There was no way he would let Hiroyuki rescue him a second time—Oda refused to let the beast have its way!

Before he knew it, Oda had reverted to his original Naltan form. In this shape, his physical agility and motor functions were vastly enhanced. Combined with his recent "warm-ups" with monsters, Oda felt he had recovered to his peak condition from his days as "Odisa, the Warrior of the Setting Sun."

Even so, he was only barely managing to run for his life. Against that massive mountain of flesh spanning hundreds of square meters, counterattacking was out of the question—unless he could also grow to giant size...

Oda had tried, but failed. He promptly abandoned the attempt, deducing that this dream space likely enforced a rule prohibiting gigantism.

If the trial required finding a temple, gigantism would be akin to using a cheat code, so banning it made perfect sense.

During his attempt to grow, Oda had sensed a stagnation in his energy flow. Normally, if his body were treated as a vessel, the prerequisite for gigantism was an influx of energy, a process somewhat akin to the sensation of inhalation. Yet when Oda tried to mimic the action of inhaling now, nothing entered his body, rendering any possibility of gigantism completely out of the question.

Right at that moment, a massive shadow gradually overhauled Oda from directly above, swallowing his entire figure in darkness.

Oda knew he shouldn't look back, but the terrifying pressure radiating from behind temporarily stripped him of his self-control. Like a tiny hamster paralyzed by the gaze of a venomous snake, he halted his steps and turned around.

Imprinted upon his vision was the silhouette of a rapidly forming giant black snake head. The serpent's head reared high, its neck flaps expanding outward on both sides—a textbook strike posture assumed by a serpent, imitated with terrifying precision...

Oda could roughly guess that aside from swallowing a snail and a creature with dream-walking capabilities, this Space Beast had undoubtedly devoured a cobra as well.