Became an Evolving Space Monster - Chapter 256:

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Before humanity ventured into space, other intelligent beings had already done so.

These beings were frail in body but were blessed by the gods with extraordinary powers.

Guided by the “Providence” set by their gods, they ventured into space and called themselves the “Cult”.

At first, they could barely travel between moons. The gods’ blessings hadn’t extended to aiding their journey into space.

But the Cult did not give up. Instead of relying solely on their innate psychic power, they devoted themselves to technological development.

Their lunar voyages eventually led to the exploration of planets and colonization within their star system. From a small planet, these intelligent beings eventually built an empire spanning multiple star systems.

In the grand scheme of the universe, however, this was but a fleeting moment. Countless civilizations had risen and fallen before them, and theirs would be no different.

The Cult Empire’s prosperity was short-lived. Internal strife, corruption among the rulers, and ceaseless wars rapidly shortened the empire’s lifespan. As a result, their former glory is now but a shadow of what it once was.

The Kesha Arma space fortress is one of the many remnants left behind by that once-luminous empire.

If translated into Megacorp terms, “Kesha Arma” means the “Wealthy King.” This space fortress was established to protect a mining planet.

In the days of the empire’s prosperity, mining ships from various races would frequently use this fortress. True to its name, this place was a center of the empire’s wealth.

Had the mining planet’s resources not been depleted, it might still be that way today.

Once the resources of the planet that justified the fortress’s existence were exhausted, Kesha Arma’s importance plummeted. In an era when the empire was in decline, it had no means to maintain a fortress that yielded no profit. What was once a key strategic point just a hundred years ago had now become a complete burden.

When the costs of maintaining the fortress far exceeded the benefits, the empire made a simple decision.

To abandon the space fortress that marked the end of their golden age.

With the withdrawal of the Cult’s warships stationed there, the space fortress was left unclaimed. Technically, it still belonged to the Cult Empire, but in reality, it had no administrators or military presence.

Those who remained were the ones who made a living by catering to miners or those looking for an empty shelter. It was inevitable that an ownerless city would devolve into a slum.

Kesha Arma became another abyss within the cosmos.

The ones who took control of this fallen “King of Wealth” were the Marcio Cartel.

They’re one of the top five most powerful cartels in the entire spacedock.

Typically, spacedock cartels avoid settling on planets or space cities. They have many enemies, and they never know when a punitive force might show up. Instead, they prefer to invest in heavily armed ships where their members can live.

However, the leaders of the Marcio Cartel have always taken a different approach.

They earned credits by “brokering” the crimes of other pirates. They set up black markets for cartels that mainly engaged in smuggling or connected those involved in human trafficking with the upper echelons of Megacorp, and so on.

Just as Kesha Arma once profited by acting as an intermediary between the mining planet and the mining ships, the Marcio Cartel profited by acting as a middleman for pirates and criminals.

Ironically, this business model was what allowed Kesha Arma and the Marcio Cartel to survive. Even Megacorp and the Star Union, who loathed spacedock, were their clients.

A lawless zone sanctioned by the universe’s major powers—that was the Kesha Arma of today.

And today, as always, crime was rampant within the pirates’ fortress.

“Shit! Go for the head! The head, dammit!”

“You’re the only one I trust! I bet all my credits on you!”

“Argh! You bitch! Why are you cutting off his arm?!”

What was once known as the 5th Armory…

A place that had once been filled with all kinds of weapons was now packed with a frenzied crowd.

Humans, Cyborgs, Wolves, and Coldbloods—beings from different cultures and backgrounds—all shouted at a single sight.

Within the iron cage, two naked men were fighting.

Though their appearances, skin colors, and the weapons in their hands differed, they shared two things in common. Both wore heavy restraints around their necks, and both were covered in blood from head to toe.

This was a gladiator arena run by pirates, one of the many commonplace abysses in the city.

“Yeah! Just a bit more! You bastard, you can do it!”

“Huh?! What’s wrong with that guy?! Argh! Damn it!”

“Woooo! He won! He won!”

“Aaaah! My credits! Nooooo!”

The brutal fight ended when the man wielding an axe beheaded the one armed with a spear.

The emotions of life and death weren’t confined to the cage. The crowd around the arena was equally caught up in feelings of exhilaration and despair.

Gidque, a cyborg who had recently joined the Marcio Cartel, was among those cheering.

“Ha-ha, how much is this?”

He rarely bet against the odds, and now, he hit the jackpot.

Gidque plugged his terminal into the accounting machine set up in the arena. Seeing two extra zeros instantly added to his credits, he couldn’t help but smirk.

“Wow, underdog bet, hell yeah.”

“…Lucky bastard, I’m so damn jealous.”

The looks directed at him were far from friendly, but no one dared to approach recklessly. Everyone knew he was a member of the Marcio Cartel.

Enjoying the mix of envy and resentment aimed his way, he left the arena.

The cyborg, whose body was half-machine, was greeted by an intensely blinding light.

It was an artificial symphony of neon signs from the entertainment shops. Red, blue, yellow, green—all sorts of lights filled the street, making it nearly impossible to discern what anyone passing by was wearing.

It wasn’t just the advertisements that were a chaotic jumble. The buildings were as well. Some, like the arena that was once an armory, bore deep influences of cult architecture, while others were crudely built structures thrown together by outsiders.

In front of the dilapidated shops that seemed on the verge of collapse at any moment, pirates, vagrants, slaves, mercenaries, and all manner of characters loitered around.

In this slum-like place where nothing felt unified, if one wished to feel a fragment of the past, they only needed to look up.

Above their heads, “another ground” gazed down upon them.

Kesha Arma, a space fortress orbiting a planet, moved in sync with the celestial body. Through its transparent outer walls, the abandoned planet looked down upon the residents of the fortress. No matter where you were in Kesha Arma, you could always catch a glimpse of that desolate planet’s landscape.

Despite being in the presence of the pinnacle of Cult civilization, Gidque felt nothing. He had seen it for too long, and besides, the credits displayed on his terminal mattered more to him.

“Guess I’ll grab a drink.”

He had enjoyed his entertainment, and now it was time to fuel up. He headed to a bar he frequented.

As he entered, others, who were similarly passing time while drinking synthetic alcohol, greeted him.

“A round of synth-booze for this table.”

Gidque casually joined them at their table, prompting some of the pirates to give him surprised looks.

“Oh, what’s up, tin can?”

“That bastard must’ve won some money. You usually lose, but did you hit a jackpot bet?”

“…Damn it, I was about to say that.”

With a few rounds passed between them, the pirates, including Gidque, were quickly getting drunk.

“Tin can, gotta ask you something. They say in the Star Union, even jerking off by yourself isn’t allowed—is that true?”

“Yeah. Because of the population control or reproduction policies, it’s illegal. They conduct annual memory inspections, and if you’re caught…”

Gidque spread his index and middle fingers into a scissor shape, causing the other pirates to recoil in horror.

“Damn, that’s the scariest story I’ve heard yet.”

“You can’t have sex freely, and you can’t even jerk off. The fact you lived in such a place for decades is terrifying, man. Fuck.”

“Speaking of scary stuff, you guys hear the latest rumors? About the Satuah Cartel?”

“The Satuah? Those psychos? What about them?”

“A friend of mine knows some of the Satuah guys, and he said he lost contact with them completely two months ago.”

“Ugh, shit. I’m more shocked that you know those Satuah bastards. Get the hell away from me.”

The other pirates jeered at the fox-like Wolf pirate who claimed to know the Satuah Cartel. Then, a scarred human pirate chimed in.

“I heard something similar.”

“What?”

“The Satuah Cartel’s slave market vanished without a trace. I heard it wiped out their entire operation.”

Gidque was taken aback by the human pirate’s words.

The Satuah Cartel had a notorious reputation. Their primary trade involved capturing primitives from uncharted planets and selling them into slavery. They were big enough to set up massive slave markets on unclaimed planets, right alongside the Marcio Cartel. And the scale of their operations was said to be nearly as large as this space fortress.

“I don’t care what happened to those Satuah bastards, but things have been getting really weird lately.”

“Yeah, with the fall of the TNC space city, we’ve lost a major hangout.”

“Idiot, that place went down ages ago. Get over it.”

“I hear Outspacers have been getting rowdy again lately.”

“Thanks to them, I’ve been raking in cash, though. There are tons of people hiring mercenaries now.”

“You’re talking shit because you’ve never fought an Outspacer, huh?”

“Are Outspacers tasty?”

“Bet your mom tastes better.”

“Pfft. Is the whole universe really going to shit?”

The scarred pirate’s low mutter shifted the mood at the table.

As pirates who sailed across dozens, even hundreds of star systems daily, they were often the first to notice changes in the universe.

And the scarred pirate was right. The universe was growing more chaotic than it had ever been before.

Gidque frowned at the mood-killing atmosphere. On a day as lucky as today, the last thing he wanted to hear was such ominous talk.

However, his comrades seemed quite entertained by the sudden ghost stories, eagerly starting to share tales they knew.

“Do you guys know why the Dvara Cartel fell apart? Turns out, they got caught by a ghost ship…”

“Nah, I heard from the Humanity guys that…”

Rumors about a black ghost ship that devoured spacecraft, secret stories about the downfall of space cities, and tales of demons that wore human skin and imitated people—it all seemed absurd.

The more Gidque listened to the pirates, the more he was dumbfounded.

It seemed they had forgotten where they were. This was a fortress built in the heart of space—a shrine to technology and science, and yet here they were spouting superstitions.

And mysterious monsters? Half the pirates visiting this fortress were in the business of capturing and selling those so-called “mysterious monsters”.

Gidque couldn’t understand what part of their stories was supposed to be enjoyable.

“I’m heading out.”

He paid his tab to the android and left the bar.

“Monsters, my ass.”

In this era of space exploration, monsters weren’t mysterious creatures or ghost ships that swallowed starships.

As someone who had once been human, then a Star Union cyborg, and now a pirate, he knew what true monsters were.

“…Might as well get some sleep.”

In a few hours, he’d have to go back to work.

And so, the lone cyborg disappeared into the crowd on the street.

—

While Gidque was wasting his life away at the bar, new visitors were arriving at the fortress’s military port.

True to a city dominated by a chaotic spacedock, the visitors were equally varied.

Pirate assault ships bearing cartel emblems, sleek and efficient Megacorp warships, rugged Star Union freighters, and various other civilian vessels—an array of ships easily entered and exited the city. There was no need for intense inspections since everyone’s purpose in visiting the pirate fortress was obvious. After all, it was laughable for a bunch of criminals to prevent others from committing crimes.

Hundreds of ships came and went from the military port. Among them, one stood out.

“Hey, that ship looks like it belongs to those Satuah bastards.”

“Weren’t they laying low? What are they doing here?”

The assault ship from the Satuah Cartel was notorious for its long, narrow hull and wide rear. It was an unusual design, modified from a decommissioned Megacorp vessel, making it a rare sight.

The anchor-shaped Satuah assault ship had just docked at the port. A few pirates disembarked and started talking to the port’s guards.

Pirates watching from a distance scratched their heads in confusion.

“What the hell? There’s a Wolf with the Satuah pirates?”

The Satuah Cartel was known for its all-human membership. They considered other sentient beings as potential kidnapping targets, making them outcasts even among the various races inhabiting the space docks.

Yet here was a white-feathered, amber-eyed Wolf standing among the crew. And not just standing—he appeared to be giving orders to the Satuah members.

This went against everything the pirates thought they knew.

The guards also seemed to find the assault ship suspicious. What should have been a cursory check turned into a full-on search of the ship’s interior.

Watching the guards follow the Wolf into the assault ship, the pirates assumed this fake Satuah vessel would soon be expelled from the fortress.

But the results of the search were entirely unexpected.

The guards emerged from the ship and took no action against the crew. In fact, it looked as if they had accepted bribes; they treated the Wolf with the same respect they would show to a cartel boss.

The guards even went as far as to help the Satuah crew. It wasn’t until two containers were unloaded from the ship onto the dock that the guards returned to their duties.

“…What the hell is going on?”

“What’s on that ship that’s making them act like that?”

The pirates had never seen the guards behave this way. Their gazes locked onto the assault ship.

Most were simply curious, but a few had something else in mind.

They were already thinking about finding out exactly what was on that ship.

And if it turned out to be something valuable, they were prepared to take it for themselves.