Day 323

[bite_the_hand]

There are Nation Eaters in the ruins.

[Although Eren's mental voice is steady, there's a frantic edge to it. His training as a soldier is helping him keep his thoughts clear and focused enough to report what happened to the Network, but it's easy to tell that he's not remotely okay right now.]

My overlay was killed by a pack of them. They were smaller than they were supposed to be. One was a 5 to 6 meter class, and another was a 2 to 3 meter class. There were at least two more, but I only heard them so I can't give an exact class for their sizes.

They have some kind of psychic power that made my overlay fascinated by them, although not enough to affect his judgement much. The larger one acted weirdly peaceful at first but then it attacked without warning. The fascination changed to fear when my overlay managed to stab it.

Comments

[desperate_times_right]

What? The ruins, too?

[bite_the_hand]

There're in other places too!?

[There's a note of panic, but he quickly gets himself back under control.]

Right. They came out of the ground, so there's no reason they couldn't burrow to other areas. Where else have they been seen?

[capital_asset]

Scatter-Spore. There was a dead one in one of the buildings.

[Raidou has been noticeably quiet on the network since Gil's death. His mental 'voice' probably won't reassure anyone; it's completely flat and drained of all affect.]

[bite_the_hand]

Shit, you're right. My overlay did think these small ones would fit a lot more with the damage patterns he saw there. I almost forgot about that part since that was just before- before the things attacked.

[capital_asset]

The smaller size is a hunting adaptation - they've gotten smaller because their food has.

[bite_the_hand]

At least that probably means they need to eat and aren't just killing for sport.

[capital_asset]

...Yes.

[desperate_times_right]

The limestone caves, couple of days ago. They got Gil. I don’t know how many, though.

[bite_the_hand]

Which means so far they're only coming to the surface in more isolated places, but at any moment they could attack a more populated area. And looking at Scatter-Spore... I think there's a lot more than four. The ground under every Spire could be crawling with the things right now.

Fuck.

[desperate_times_right]

Do we know anything about what draws them?

[bite_the_hand]

No. I- He was tekeing when they found him, but I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

[desperate_times_right]

Hana thought they were called by sin but that sounds like mythological nonsense.

[bite_the_hand]

Probably, but we shouldn't rule it out. Assumptions get people killed. ...They definitely could've been created by "sin" though. Those things look about as natural as the Titans. I wouldn't be surprised if they were meant to be some kind of weapon, or were some other byproduct of people being awful to each other.

[desperate_times_right]

Ghalib reaved two people in the caves but I hadn’t heard anything like that about the ruins.

[bite_the_hand]

I said they could've been created that way, not that it attracts them now. Has anyone tried to find out how they were made? That could tell us the key to freeing this world from them.

[desperate_times_right]

I haven’t heard anything, but my overlay wasn’t exactly big on history.

[bite_the_hand]

Even if she was, I doubt they'd know anything about it. I doubt anyone would know something like that anymore. Most of their history has been lost because they fucking forgot how to write books!

[That last thought comes through as a mental shout. His thoughts never lose that frantic edge, but for a moment it's mixed with a frustrated anger.]

[desperate_times_right]

Hey.

[Yeah he’s stressed but she’s not super into the yelling]

We’re doing what we can, here.

[bite_the_hand]

...Right. Sorry.

[desperate_times_right]

I’d imagine it’s a good way to keep the populace in line to gatekeep access to knowledge like that, but I can’t believe they don’t even have signs. How do people find anything?

[lightnovelexperiences]

Welcome back. Can I just say that dying is never fun, and I'm sorry you had to go through it, even temporarily?

[The girl he sparred with earlier is weirdly sympathetic to him, and speaking as if she has personal experience with dying as a traumatic inconvenience.]

So, Nation-Eater spawn, adapted to be smaller - stories tall, but not many. Call the runts City-Eaters. Them shrinking makes sense, there's less food to go around and that sounds like about the size of a young Mundane dragon - even those needed miles of pastureland to hunt enough large game, never mind the huge elder dragons.

And of course they're psionic, everything else here is, why not them too.

[a pause. Concentration, thinking.]

You became afraid after stabbing it, and fascinated before. Huh. That seems significant but I'll be damned if I could say why.

[bite_the_hand]

Thanks. I knew the circumstances could make it worse, but I didn't... I didn't think it'd be like that.

[Eren's been a Traveler for years now. This might be his first time personally experiencing death, but thinking of it as a traumatic inconvenience has been normalized for him - normalization that's a big part of why the first hand experience is messing with him so badly now. In a different circumstance he'd question why someone so new to Traveling already seems so accustomed to it, but he's not thinking clearly enough for that to register right now.]

City Eaters? Is that something some of the locals know or did we make that term up? My overlay didn't know at least. If he had, he wouldn't have been such a fucking idiot.

I don't know if the details of what the emotions were is important or not, but there are people here who'll have a better idea than me if it is.

[lightnovelexperiences]

City Eaters was me BSing a better name. God knows it's apt. And I know, like, nothing about psionics here; we should talk to the experts.

I'm glad that rezzing here doesn't seem to have any other knock-on effects, anyway.

[bite_the_hand]

I'm not good with psychic skills at all, not just the ones here. Which is why I made sure I reported that detail about the emotions. There's probably something to it that I'm not seeing.

...Once doesn't do anything but leave you with the experience. Don't get killed too much too quickly.

[lightnovelexperiences]

I got rezzed a few times on Mundus.

It cost me the memory of my teenage crush's face. Remember her name, her hobbies, the fact that we had Ethiopian on our first date... but not her face.

Repeatedly dying is not one of my ambitions, don't worry.

[bite_the_hand]

...Similar stuff can happen here if it happens too much too quickly. Dying in Liminal Space itself is even worse.

[Part of him knows he should probably explain that in more detail, but he's really not up to it right now.]

[truerevelation]

... Ugh, shit. I was linin' up to head over there too, got some stuff I'm working on... what was goin' on when they showed up?

[bite_the_hand]

It was late at night. My overlay was searching through the ruins alone - he thought it was a person behind the disappearances and was trying to sneak up on them.

[There's a moments pause that's half trying to steady himself, and half trying to think of any other details that might be important.]

...He was looking through a pile of fresh rubble for clues, and was tekeing to help him do it. I don't know if any of that's important.

[truerevelation]

So this is all tied into this ...late night people vanishin' crap. Guess I ain't goin' in after dark, huh... was gonna make like I'd found a buncha whatever the old timers were cookin', rather than. Uh. Getting on the menu.

But ... I getcha. Disturbed somethin' by accident, huh... unless they were already hunting.

[bite_the_hand]

I think I- he probably disturbed them. He thought he'd found a cluster of crystals that could've bought years worth of food. He'd dug them out all the way down to what he thought was a weird rock they were embedded in. If the Nation Eater they were attached to was already hunting, it would've revealed itself sooner.

[There's a mental shudder]

Even then it just pushed him back at first. Almost gentle about it. It was strange.

[breakaleginhalf]

[Gil doesn't chime in on Eren's post when it goes up, for self-evident reasons.

His own contribution comes a day later, on 324 when he finally revives.]

I found three of them in the caves. One big one and two little ones.

[Like Eren, his mental voice is steady, but there's a hollow calmness to it - people who know the skill might recognise the use of Psychic Hypocognition.]

I was using the network when everything started vibrating, and I could hear this... sound, except it was outside human hearing range. Too high or too low, I'm not sure. Vibrating turned to shaking, like an earthquake, until it just - stopped, and I was scared shitless. Like, I was worried before, but this was... it made me terrified, instantly, worse than I've ever felt before. Couldn't even think properly from it.

[He sends a still image to the Network of the Nation Eater, midway through digging its way out of the wall. Gil's position is clearly close to ground level, skewing the monster much larger as it stares directly at him with its mouth open.]

I don't remember the rest as clearly, but. It came at me. I tried to fight it, and it threw me into a wall. Ripped my leg off, but- it. It didn't hurt. It-- the Nation Eater was just. Loud. The whole time there was just this... noise. Humming.

[capital_asset]

[Once Gil is back among the living and Raidou is on a more even keel once more, he chimes in again.]

About the Scatter-Spore expedition: I was able to examine and run scans on a dead Nation Eater I found in one of the buildings on the higher terraces. It was approximately 4.8768 meters long by my Control Panel's measuring, and there was an abundance of yeast and molds inside it. My best guess is that one of the Genitors it devoured managed to activate their war colonies and... killed it from within.

[He considers for a moment, then streams a memory of the encounter. Notably, while Raidou's point of view changes as he examines the creature, absolutely nothing else is moving.]

The crystals on its body appear to be the equivalent of functional antennae - there were radio signals around them that grew stronger in the presence of my Control Panel, which I suppose follows given that its scans are partially based on radio waves. I have the data from the scan I did on my Control Panel still, if someone more scientifically minded would like to take a look, but I can say that structurally they are extremely heat and pressure tolerant, but very sensitive to electromagnetic radiation and electrical current. They have no visual senses, but their senses of hearing and scent are superb, and very large Nation Eaters must be able to either cool their blood somehow or can function with it boiling - temperatures inside their bodies are extremely warm. The crystals they sprout are vulnerable to sudden transverse impacts.

According to the scan, for their metabolism to make sense, they would need to have a food source other than cities. The smaller ones can function well enough, but if the largest ones are the same, then they all should have starved. Granted, their smaller size is a hunting adaptation - their food is smaller, so they are as well.

...On another important note, I also talked to Pod's overlay earlier this week. She was in Scatter-Spore during the attack, actually in the Spire, where dozens of them attacked. One of them devoured her kythemates, but died before it could do the same to her. She said it was full of blight quorn; after it died, she took samples from it and ran. She also said that she 'felt' something running away while she was taking samples, and that she'd just felt it again before I saw her. She... might actually have picking up on your death, Eren. Or someone else's. When I'd talked to her the week before this, she'd mentioned that she was practicing her Pinning, but she was pulling all kinds of information that she normally shouldn't be able to that way.

In addition to being severely traumatized, she's also terrified that she's going to be forced to sacrifice herself to kill the Nation Eaters.

[truerevelation]

... they're throwing off radio messages? You get anythin' recorded or did ya just ... pick up that they were doin' it?

[capital_asset]

Just that they do it. But this one was dead - I might have gotten a different reading from a live one.

[Of course, if it had been alive, he might have been too preoccupied with not getting killed to try scanning it.]