Origin (32)
I rummaged through the dead pureblood supremacists' belongings. I had made holes in their bodies to instantly cut off their breath, and now, squatting down as I searched the corpses, I probably looked shocking to any observer—but none of us cared in the slightest.
We were only intent on collecting trophies. We couldn't afford to miss even the smallest thing.
Nadia, with a perfectly calm expression, dismantled the suit worn by the pureblood supremacist. She seemed determined to uncover every hidden item.
She pulled out a scanner from Carry's transport box and detected each metallic reaction. Knowing how insane these people were, I'd wondered if they might have implants inside their bodies, but nothing of the sort appeared.
Sometimes, blood would splatter during the process, but she simply wiped it off without much fuss. The only wounds Nadia ever reacted to were mine. She was endlessly cold when it came to her own or others' injuries or deaths.
"Hyun-woo, this seems to be all the bullets I could find."
"That's even less than I expected."
Clicking my tongue, I eyed the sparse amount of ammunition, not even enough to fully fill Nadia's small hand. The disappointment was greater since there was only one gun, too.
The firearm's condition was the worst. It looked as if it had never been maintained, with rust all over and some parts so battered they had bent out of shape. I doubted whether it could even fire properly.
Still, I took everything. These relics of a bygone era might not be much, but increasing our ranged weaponry added to our overall strength.
I picked up the bracelets I'd set aside. The pitch-black bracelets indicated their owners had lost their life signals. Unlike the other bracelets, I couldn't access the stored data.
I took those, too. Whether they contained data or not, if I left them to Licorice, maybe she could get something out of them.
"... We did as we were told, but wasn't dealing with them immediately a bit premature?"
Celestia looked on with concern. It wasn't the simple fact that we had killed the pureblood supremacist patrol that worried her—Celestia had agreed to dealing with them, after all.
What she worried about was the effect their deaths might have. If a team suddenly disappeared, there would be a noticeable gap, and pureblood supremacists noticing something amiss might appear. If that happened, it would be only a matter of time before our presence was discovered. That's what she was getting at.
She didn't mention whether we should have found out things like shift intervals, the total number of teams at the robot production facility, or why they were still here.
She knew as well as I did: these guys wouldn't talk easily even under torture. In fact, it was questionable whether we were capable of torturing anyone properly.
There's a huge difference between ending lives quickly and inflicting pain methodically to extract information.
"Just in case, I took anything that looked like a communication device. There weren't any particular security measures, so if anyone calls, we might be able to trick them."
"Even if we alter our voices, won't they find it suspicious if we can't answer properly? They might ask for a password or something."
"In that case, we'll just kill them too."
I spoke nonchalantly, and immediately surprised myself. Had I sounded too indifferent?
But only for a moment; I steeled my heart. I'd already decided on killing them, after all. And isn't there a saying that the dead tell no tales?
Just like those pureblood supremacists, who remained silent to the very moment they died when their bodies were paralyzed.
Celestia was probably right that, instead of killing them right away, it might've been better to confirm their patrol routes. That would have made moving around much easier; knowing their paths versus not knowing made a big difference.
However, we just didn't have enough time. Was I supposed to just wait until I learned how often they rotated?
'It's better to get deeper quicker with the time we have.'
Just then, I'd received word that the team moving from the town to the refinery was ready to depart. We had to time the security protocol activation to coincide with their arrival at the refinery for our plan to work.
We loaded the recovered weapons and some ammunition into Carry's transport box. The weapons weren't that large, so there was still plenty of room left after loading them.
We shoved the pureblood supremacists' corpses into a dim corner—hard to find unless someone searched thoroughly. I frowned at the bodies, already stiff from the outside temperature.
'... A medicinal smell.'
Although not as strong as the pureblood supremacists I'd seen in the residential area, even these freshly killed ones emitted a stinging, chemical odor—something sharp and acrid, akin to disinfectant alcohol, clinging to my nose more with every breath and enough to give me a headache.
It was just a smell, but there was a problem: I was still sealed in by the suit's functions.
Even using up the oxygen pack on my suit, I could still smell the chemicals. Nadia and Celestia didn't notice it at all.
As always, it seemed I alone could perceive it. Actually, even the ones outside the facility who treated us like lunatics had given off a fainter scent than these guys. It was always difficult to endure, though.
I guessed the difference was rank. According to Celestia, these silent corpses outranked those others.
If that's the case, how pungent would the smell be on the highest-ranking pureblood supremacist? I had a feeling it'd be absurd.
'If I can smell them, I wish I could do it in advance—then I'd notice them sooner.'
Such ambiguity—it's maddening.
I returned to Nadia and Celestia, who were keeping watch. We set off again; there was still a long way to go.
"Hyun-woo, if we turn right here, we'll reach the materials warehouse. What do you want to do? It's on our route, and it's one of several paths to the deep sector."
"Let's pass it by."
Without hesitation, I answered Celestia's question. The only reason we'd included the materials warehouse on our route was because there was a chance old power loaders or industrial gravity chain connectors—a.k.a. Big Hands—might be left there.
We'd planned to drop in, but I changed my mind. The deeper we went into the facility, the easier it was to count the intact items rather than the broken ones.
It looked as if a swirling, massive force had swept through the facility—everything in sight was destroyed. Viscous slime was stretched out in long trails on the floor.
If even production sector 2 was in this state, how much worse would things be at the inner warehouses for materials and equipment? I doubted there would be any intact equipment left.
"We'll cut straight across the center, as directly as possible."
"Hyun-woo, you're on alert—against something other than the pureblood supremacists, aren't you?"
It was Nadia, as always—quickest to catch on.
I nodded.
"Yeah, I have a feeling there might be a mimic here."
We hadn't identified what had the power to tear apart and destroy the security robots so thoroughly. What was certain was that almost none of the robots here had been shredded by bullets—they were simply annihilated.
Based on what I knew, such brute force could only be achieved by a mimic-type ghoul or a special entity called a Hive—beyond a regular ghoul.
I just hoped it wasn't the latter. As it was, we were short on time, and facing a Hive would make things impossible. Unlike with Blue Eye, we were even outnumbered this time.
A firefight would only draw the patrolling pureblood supremacists to us. Whether mimic or Hive, running into them wouldn't be good.
I remembered the mimic I'd seen in the residential area—monsters that moved along the tracks, perfectly duplicating the doors to Licorice's building and impersonating the original so convincingly.
If I hadn't sacrificed the hover bike back then, the operation in the residential area would have ended in failure. Let your guard down, and you're finished in a moment.
We crossed production sector 2 quietly. With this many people, though, completely concealing our presence was impossible; even with maximum caution, our presence flickered here and there.
... Dum... dum
A low, heavy, unidentifiable noise echoed from somewhere, as if the facility wasn't entirely shut down. It wasn't our footsteps—the pounding, pulse-like sound drowned out everything else.
The low noise spread out like ripples. Each time the waves, wandering the giant space, hit some obstacle in the facility and broke up, we would glance that way before focusing straight ahead.
My sharpened senses allowed me to grasp the surroundings, even with ambiguous, obscuring darkness. If we used flashlights, we'd be advertising our presence, so we couldn't risk that.
Before long, we exited production sector 2 and entered the defective product inspection sector. This area was brighter than the previous one.
That was because countless panels, displaying complicated logs, were installed everywhere. In the vast space—making you feel almost miniaturized—rails ran straight across, and though there were no completed robots or anything else moving along them, the rails themselves kept running.
A section of torn-off rail thudded repeatedly against the collapsed ceiling debris. Each time, a muffled thumping sound echoed. At last, we realized what had been making all the noise we'd heard thus far.
Spotlights shone here and there. By the way the lights moved, it must have been the pureblood supremacists. We decided to slip by in their blind spot rather than engage them this time.
Their patrol routes overlapped. They were a bit distant, but since we were in the same sector, it was better not to provoke them. Even if we neutralized them instantly, there was too much risk.
I crouched low, suppressing my breath. I moved one step at a time, matching my pace to the thudding echoes. With varying heights in the terrain, there were plenty of places to hide.
We began to creep past the pureblood supremacist patrol nearby. As we drew closer, I began to hear their conversation.
"No word from the ones who went toward sector 1."
"Leave them. They probably found some new toys to play with. Like us."
"They should still check in regularly. We're the ones who'll get blamed."
Were the ones who went to sector 1 the ones we'd killed? Or was there another team?
Their voices soon passed directly overhead, and Nadia checked with her detector. On the surface, there were only two pureblood supremacists, but the detector showed three blips.
'One more?'
I frowned, recalling their earlier conversation. Playing with toys—they'd said. I glanced around. Security robot fragments were scattered everywhere.
Most were completely destroyed, but a few cores showed faint reactions—broken things unable to move or even make a sound. Those must've been the toys they were talking about.
〈Defective Product Inspection Sector〉
【The main camera required for product inspection is not functioning. Energy supply is unstable. Workers in this sector, please check and reconnect the cables.】
A faint hologram window, barely illuminating the area, flickered unsteadily. One pureblood supremacist started to approach it but was stopped by another.
"Hey, don't go that way. They're distributing 'Grace' now that all the work there is done. Unless you want to be fertilizer, stay away."
"It's reached here already? That's faster than usual."
"Someone heavily graced did a sweep, so it's bound to be quick. Less work for us—good for us."
What could 'Grace' mean? The ominous word furrowed my brow, but the pureblood supremacists, oblivious to our presence, wandered around like this was their own domain.
They didn't seem especially wary. They were patrolling, but not seriously. Still, just in case, I planted a signal jammer where it wouldn't be noticed—ready to activate at a moment's notice.
We kept our distance from their patrol paths and moved quietly. Waiting for the pureblood supremacists to move away, tension and unease hung in the air—especially since the area they said was off-limits was the entrance to the power control room.
'Could there be a mimic in there? Is that why they said to stay away?'
Before long, both groups moved far enough away to disappear from sight. But if they were on patrol, they might loop back at any moment.
Just then, as I took a step, something sticky clung to my foot. The internal lights flickered, revealing a scene that made me curse inwardly.
A grotesque mass, like the swollen blood vessels I'd seen in the residential area, covered the entrance to the power control room. It wasn't quite the same as before.
There were no embedded blue crystal ores scattered about, and it looked more dead than alive—though just as gruesome.
This was the final gateway before entering the deep sector. There was no way around; we had to go through the power control room.
We traded grim, determined looks.
As I took another step forward, Nadia suddenly staggered. She looked as if she'd seen something she shouldn't have—a look of shock on her face.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
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