SOS CH 33 (Patreon)

At that moment, as Noah confirmed his choice as well as his resolve moving forward, a sensation of weightlessness took over him and he soon found himself free falling as the world and the ground around him had seemingly digitized and melted into the surroundings.

A black world with strings of 0s and 1s interconnected parallelly, colored in green, in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. Everything around him had turned into a simulation of sorts, a digitized architecture of ever shifting green.

The free fall and the architectural makeover of a digitized world went on for what felt like hours, even though it also felt like mere minutes had passed. The world was in such a state that the sense of time had gotten even more skewed. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity and more, his surroundings finally stabilized, and redefined themselves as the strings interconnected into a set pattern— it got back its shape and colors, zooming from a digital architecture to reality as his surroundings morphed into a wide area with vast and infinite trees in all directions, as far as the eyes could see, and he finally landed on his feet.

“A forest?”

He looked at his surroundings in utter confusion before immediately ducking as he sensed the air being split by an incoming projectile.

‘This is the second fucking time this is happening. Is it too much to ask to at least let me observe the surroundings first before being jumped on?’

Bang~!

Only after ducking and avoiding the attack did he finally hear the sound of the gun afterward. His actions had given him a good sense of his moving speed and he couldn’t help but be impressed by his new capabilities.

‘Where is the gunshot coming from?’

He spun on his heels and looked behind, only to be greeted by a hoard of bizarre creatures, humanoid in shape, with deformed structures that made them look like creatures that seemed to have come out of a horror movie.

Their eyes were vacant and their bellies were bulging and deformed in grotesque twists and knots. Their skins were abnormally pale, as though they didn’t have a single drop of blood in them, and the sight of the creatures caused Noah severe discomfort— memories of a past that he thought he had already forgotten resurfacing with their appearance.

Noah started to frown as his eyes scanned and observed the horrific creatures deeply, more keenly. He had a feeling that he was able to recognize those monsters. No, more than the monsters themselves, he was able to clearly identify the uniforms they were donning above their bodies; even though they were almost tattered beyond recognition. And what intrigued him the most… was perhaps the motif that matched the ones of the soldiers back on Earth, his home planet. It was a really close resemblance, but he wasn’t completely sure of its identity.

“Hello…”

Immediately, a battalion's worth of guns was immediately pointed at him and Noah made a very smart move this time, perhaps the smartest one he made in recent times.

He… started running away from them at full speed.

— I thought you didn’t run away from enemies?

I am not running away. This is just a strategic retreat.

Noah could have simply jumped and massacred every single one of those beings then and there, their weapons being far too old for them to be functional, but he didn’t and there was a good reason why.

[Mission: Survive! The colony is under attacked. Flee until the time limit runs out. Do not engage in any form of combat, your chances of winning are near zero.]

[Warning!!! In case you are about to get captured one advice… Kill yourself. You do not want to be alive and in their hands.]

Noah did not take those warnings lightly nor did he dare to dismiss them. The warning themselves was a kind of clue and as disbelieving as he was, Noah was starting to grasp just where he was.

This should not be possible but… He already understood that in this place — Nothing was truly impossible on this universe.

Rather than moaning about the matter, he accelerated further, creating a small shockwave as he went beyond his usual speed and broke through the barrier of trees and went deeper into the forrest. On his back, chasing after him, were a group of more than 60 monsters… attacking him with their deformed weapons with pin point accuracy and a never ending barrage of bullets, however, Noah was fully prepared to take them on.

The back of his armor extended and changed into a large three-layer shield of unknown materials, protecting his body from the incoming barrage of bullets. He was also keeping his senses spread wide to accurately trace for the signs of any assassins or perhaps snipers aiming at his body from a distance.

How long do I have to survive?

[Time Remaining: 71H: 50M: 20S]

Well, it was pretty useful to keep track of time at least. It had been a long, long time since he had an exact time frame to work on or any time fram to be exact.

Truly he felt like he was finally returning to civilization.

Noah grinned as he jumped to the right and avoided a blistering canon ball of mass destruction being shot at him in supersonic speeds.

There was one paritcular reason he did not bother killing any of them. If his speculation were right then the moment he even killed a single one of those creatures, his importance and danger rating in their mind would increase tremendously and thus it would make his current situation even harder than before; the difficulty would continue increasing until he wasn’t able to circumvent it properly and succumb to the overwhelming difficulty and be unable to properly take part in this simulation.

He needed to assess their numbers and how powerful the technology they had at hand to run these simulations. Furthermore, he also needed to figure out if this was an individualistic test or if it were a group test with everyone inside. If it was the latter, then he would have some cannon fodder he could use as bait to throw at those monsters.

The frantic running course seemed ready to continue for all eternity but soon, Noah was able to see the trees surrounding him from all sides gradually thinning, indicating the gradual appearance of a clearing.

It was then—

[Warning!!! Change in mission!]

[New Mission: As the highest difficulty had been chosen by the individual, the goal had been changed from survival to total elimination. As the highest difficulty was chosen, the weapons held by the enemies were updated. The number of enemies have increased and so did their resilience, toughness, physical abilities, and their ability to react to any and all issues.]

[Warning!!! In search of fairness, the highest level has been adjusted based on your Dark Matter level.]

Noah was utterly baffled as he felt the presence of the monstrosities chasing him increase ever so slightly. They were on a completely different level from the ones that had been chasing him a few moments ago.

If he had the confidence to crush all of them easily, now he would have to wonder just how much he would have to sacrifice to crush them.

— So you are still going to crush them either way?

Either I crush them or they crush me. No brainer.

Of course, this wasn’t a question of wanting but rather if he was really capable of doing so. But Noah was not deterred by the new mission. In fact, he liked it far more than the survival mission he was given. After all, fleeing was not something he had a fondness for. It went against his code of conduct.

Finally escaping the forest landscape, Noah stopped and observed the fortress in front of him keenly. His eyes moved all around, grasping everything and searching deep down in his memories.

Watching the slightly broken flags flying with the wind at the very top of the fortress, he took a deep shaky breath before releasing it altogether.

Now his memories were coming back in full throttle. He did not need any more confirmation as he finally had all the pieces of the puzzle in mind.

“Hah…”

The reason he was confused was simple. He had actually never seen this place himself or rather had only seen the traces of the ruins that had been left behind by a gigantic space laboratory.

This place was not some unknown place in this void.

This was—

“Mars colony.”

And obviously, the ones chasing him were none other than?

— They are Parasites.

Just what the fuck is going on here?

———

(AN: Getting back on the groove. So, what was my problem? Well, as some of you who have been following me on Scribble Hub and Webnovel know, my first novel is called Son of the Hero King and was under a contract. Well, I recently terminated it. SHK will go back to being a non-contracted story. Though I will eventually start publishing myself on Amazon KU etc.

So what does it mean exactly for you guys?

SHK is a fantasy progression-type story set in my own way with my spin on some myths. The start is very smut-heavy and the story was written three years ago. So the start is a little rough but I believe all those who started my story loved it because, unlike many harem authors, I actually take the time to develop the characters. Furthermore, even when I say smut heavy, I never went past the 10% mark so there is that. The start has more smut but as he goes on, it diminishes quite a bit to the point hundreds of chapters can go without smut. Currently, I am at 600 chapters and 900K words so it’s a substantial amount and I will start publishing it on RR in December. Hopefully, you will like it.)