Chapter 10: The Hunt

Cycles passed, measured now by the forest’s relentless, indifferent hum and the steady, demanding ache deep within his hypergraph where Pebble rested, contained but ever-present. The Silent Grove, the metamorphosis within the cocoon—memories sharp, analyzed, integrated into his new reality. He remembered shedding the silk shell, seeing his reflection in the still pool: the pale carapace fused seamlessly over his skin, lending his form inhuman angles, his violet eyes holding a new, colder depth beneath the familiar surface anxiety. Altered. Fundamentally reforged.

He managed to weave a simple kilt and cloak from durable vines and broad leaves, a fragile concession to memory, perhaps, over the agony-born armor that could flow over him at will. Pulling up the hood felt performative, almost absurd; there was no hiding what he now was, inside or out. Driven by necessity’s cold engine and the responsibility he now carried, he left the scarred silence of the grove behind.

He moved through the dense undergrowth, a paradox navigating a world of shifting rules. Armored, yet vulnerable beneath the shell. Powerful, yet eternally driven by the systemic energy deficit. The echoes of loss were now part of his internal architecture. Pebble’s quiet, sleeping presence was a constant anchor within the emerald partition in his core, a point of warmth against the cold logic his survival now demanded.

The journey towards the distant Giant Mountain—its jagged peaks occasionally piercing the dense canopy like teeth of obsidian—was a relentless negotiation with the hostile environment. The pull towards it intensified the closer he got, a resonant thrumming in his core, as if Pebble’s contained essence reacted to some unseen energy source, a beacon within the forest’s chaotic network. The path was fraught, not just with physical obstacles like thorns and treacherous ravines, but with the unpredictable landscape of his own altered state.

He tested his new limits cautiously, learned his revised parameters. The silk claws, forged from grief and desperate need within the cocoon, were lethally sharp but maintaining them drew significantly on his energy reserves. Hunting for sustenance via Integration felt different now – swifter, more clinical, necessary when the deficit became critical – yet Pebble’s contained presence made the fragmented psychic echoes of consumed SIs feel like a deeper violation, a disturbance near its quiet, shielded core. He avoided it whenever possible, relying on the strange iridescent fruit and energy-rich tubers Pebble occasionally guided him towards through subtle pulses of intuitive feeling. But the underlying hunger always returned, demanding compatible SI energy his body couldn’t synthesize.

One cycle, pushing deep into a petrified section of the forest where crystalline growths jutted from dead wood like angry, glittering jewels, his expanded senses screamed danger—focused, sharp, distinctly artificial. As the thought registered, it emerged silently from behind a cluster of quartz-like trees: a crystalline hound. Four-legged, elegantly lethal, its body composed of interlocking geometric facets that refracted the dim forest light in predatory rainbows. It moved with unnatural silence, its complex joints clicking softly, its multifaceted eyes glowing with cold, blue calculation. It wasn’t merely hunting; it was analyzing him, its energy signature resonating with a controlled, potent power chillingly familiar to Aris’s fragmented warnings about the simulation’s ‘God’ and its constructs.

Omega froze, the pale carapace flowing instantly, instinctively, over his skin. Pebble’s presence stirred within him, a silent pulse of primal alarm. Danger. High energy. Avoid. But there was no avoiding this. The hound lowered its head, a low growl like shearing crystal echoing in the unnatural stillness. Its calculated movements, its precise energy signature – this felt less like a wild beast and more like a targeted weapon, deployed specifically for him.

It lunged, faster than anything Omega had encountered before. He barely deflected the snapping crystalline jaws with an armored forearm, the impact sending painful vibrations jarring through the carapace. He slashed back with extended silk claws, but they skittered off the hard, energized facets with showers of sparks, leaving only faint scratches. The hound evaded his clumsy counterattack with fluid, geometric grace, circling, assessing, its multiple eyes tracking his every move, processing his capabilities with terrifying efficiency.

This was different. Integration felt impossible, suicidal, against its controlled energy and formidable structure. Preservation? Pointless against an artificial construct, and the thought of bringing this cold, predatory artificiality inside him, near Pebble, was horrifying. It attacked again, claws of pure, sharpened crystal aiming for his throat. He dodged, manifesting more silk strands from his wrists, trying to bind its legs, but the strands dissolved with faint sizzling sounds against its energized facets.

Cornered. Outmatched. The energy cost of maintaining the armor and claws was rapidly draining his reserves. Pebble’s internal presence pulsed with simple, direct fear. Run? No. There was nowhere to run from something like this. He saw Aris falling, felt the heat of the village burning. Survival. Continuation. But how?

The forbidden texts Aris had shown him. The third option. Eradication. Destroy the hypergraph completely. Harvest the raw power. No trace, no echo, no psychic stain left behind. Only raw energy. And the unknown cost.

He looked at the crystalline hound, circling patiently now, seeming to know it had the advantage. A tool of the architect Aris called ‘Logos’? A test? A hunter sent to eliminate the anomaly? It didn’t matter. It was termination by its claws, or… this.

His hand trembled, not just from exertion, but from the weight of the decision. He felt Pebble’s quiet awareness recoil slightly within the emerald partition, sensing the shift in his intent, the raw, destructive nature of the energy he was beginning to gather. Forgive me, he thought, though whether to Aris, Lira, or the sleeping presence within, he didn’t know.

He dropped into a defensive crouch, retracting the claws, focusing all his will, all his desperate need for survival, into a single point of contact. He let the hound come closer, deliberately baiting it. As it leaped, jaws snapping shut with crystalline force, Omega didn’t dodge. He met the attack head-on, his armored hand clamping hard onto its crystalline foreleg, ignoring the searing cold of its energy burning against his carapace.

He triggered the protocol. Eradication.

Not a pulse, but a violent implosion of light centered on his hand. A searing white flash bleached the forest clearing, momentarily blinding him. He felt rather than saw his own armored skin fracture with incandescent, hair-thin lines of pure light, tracing the violet patterns beneath. There was no sound from the hound, only the overwhelming mental sensation of its complex hypergraph structure being violently unraveled, collapsing into raw data under the focused force of his will. Its physical form dissolved within the blinding light, collapsing into glittering dust that rained silently down onto the forest floor.

Then the energy hit him. Not the manageable, albeit invasive, surge of Integration, but a tidal wave, a raw, uncontrolled flood of pure computational power ripped from the hound’s core moments before its dissolution. It slammed into his system, overloading every pathway, feeling like it might tear his own hypergraph apart from the sheer, untamed volume. He gasped, staggering back, vision swimming in white static. Power. Immense, intoxicating, terrifying power, far beyond anything he’d ever felt – but it was wild, unusable, surging through him like poison, threatening to burn him out from the inside.

Immediately behind the raw power surge came the backlash. Not the psychic nausea of Integration’s fragmented echoes, but a crippling, hollowing recoil. A wave of pure emptiness flooding his senses where the hound’s complex artificial consciousness had been only moments before, a void screaming of utter annihilation. No echoes, no residual thoughts, just absolute, terrifying nothingness. The violence of the erasure struck him with the force of a physical blow, leaving him shaking, hollowed out. The guilt was a spike of ice through his core – not just for killing, but for unmaking. For wielding a power that didn’t just take life, but obliterated existence itself from the simulation’s fabric. He’d wanted power, needed it to survive. He hadn’t understood the horrifying intimacy of utter destruction.

He collapsed to his knees, trembling violently, the immense, unusable power thrumming dangerously within his overloaded system, the psychic scream of the void echoing in his mind. Pebble’s presence felt distant, shielded within its emerald haven, as if instinctively recoiling from the raw violence he had unleashed. He had survived. He was momentarily saturated with unusable power, fueled by annihilation. And the cost felt like it had burned away another irreplaceable piece of his soul, leaving behind only the cold necessity of survival and the chilling knowledge of the weapon he could become.