Origin (36)
"Die! Dieee!"
Nadia was beating up the pureblood supremacist, who staggered from a direct hit by a flashbang. It seemed the stress she'd built up was more than I thought, and there was considerable force behind her blows.
【(⋆ˋ⑉̈ˊ)൭൭⁼³₌₃】
Once Carry joined in, the pureblood supremacist became so thoroughly wrecked that he was unrecognizable from before. Nadia didn't hesitate to end him when he stretched mangled fingers at an odd angle, trying desperately to reach his dropped gun.
Life snuffed out in an instant. I awkwardly watched the two catching their breath, then cautiously spoke up.
"Nadia, you remember we need to keep one alive, right?"
I wasn't implying it was too much to kill them all. After all, I was the one who killed the incapacitated pureblood supremacists just now. I wanted them dead too. I merely intervened because there was something I needed to find out.
"... I know."
"You damn impure scum—"
"Shut up!"
Nadia grabbed the plasma cutter she was holding and struck him right across the head. She didn't switch it on, so it was no different from a blunt weapon.
Thunk! With a clean hit, the pureblood supremacist collapsed unconscious, letting out a choking sound. Blood trickled from his split forehead. Even monsters more grotesque than ghouls seemed to bleed red.
I completely restrained the now-unconscious pureblood supremacist. Checking even inside his mouth for any bombs, I made sure he wasn't hiding a suicide mechanism—so common in movies, where a switch is hidden in a back molar. Fortunately, there was nothing of the sort.
'Will he know anything useful?'
He seemed the highest-ranking among the underlings, so I kept him alive for now. To be honest, I doubted he'd tell us what we wanted to know.
Before long, the pureblood supremacist came to. He rolled his eyes, bared his teeth in frustration at being bound and helpless, and then, almost at once, gave a mocking laugh as he glared at me, Nadia, and Carry. His gaze ended up fixed on the entrance to the power control room, slathered in that substance called Creep.
"... They say there's no cure for stupidity. You impure filth. So you entered in there, did you? The scent of 'Grace' clings deep to you."
Grace. There was that word again. I dug at some of the Creep sprawling over a now even broader area than before. The pureblood supremacist seemed on the verge of a fit seeing it up close, but ground his teeth at his own helplessness.
Despite the murderous glare he fixed on us, I felt nothing. If I was scared just by such a look, the dead Blue Eye might weep tears of blood in hell.
"You keep calling it 'Grace'. What exactly is it?"
"Grace is Grace. Nothing more, nothing less."
"You're spouting nonsense."
It wasn't the answer I'd hoped for, but I kept pressing with various questions, refusing to let go of a faint hope.
How many of them were there, where was the comms jamming device installed, what exactly was their purpose, and so on. I voiced every lingering doubt.
Of course, the only answer I got was a string of curses telling me where I could shove my questions.
"Just kill me, idiot. You're not going to get the answers you want."
"Well, I figured as much. I already knew you wouldn't tell us anything useful."
I sighed quietly, and the pureblood supremacist clammed up. He didn't care about his dead comrades, didn't care about his own injuries. It was as if he anticipated death and even looked forward to it.
I continued, watching his stoic demeanor.
"So I decided to observe instead. Why did you guys hesitate to enter the Creep? What exactly does it do? What's different about us? I want to find those things out."
We were all running out of time anyway. Muttering to myself, I dragged the man across the floor. As soon as he realized where I was taking him, the pureblood supremacist burst into crazed laughter.
Before that laughter had even subsided, I threw him onto a mound of Creep. The squelching sound tickled my eardrums. He spat blood, then tried to speak.
"If brute strength is all you believe in, you won't live long."
"..."
I—no, we—watched the pureblood supremacist without a word. Blood dripped from Nadia's wounds, and the Creep began to react.
Slowly, the Creep started to grow, engulfing his lower body. Just as with the old man's corpse—was it using organic matter as nourishment?
He was still alive, so... did that mean he'd be broken down alive?
I observed everything—every last bit of it. Right now, we were crossing a line. I had no intention of looking away.
"Ah, holy tree... One who follows you..."
His response was as if he was hallucinating. His pupils dilated as if under the influence of drugs, and his limbs began to shake as if possessed by a spiritual entity.
Standing in the center of a blood-soaked area, we watched death, while the pureblood supremacist joyfully greeted his end at our feet. The scene was striking and surreal. It was impossible to tell who was good and who was evil.
"I will become the fertilizer for a new age. We, the pureblooded, will be reborn and become immortal!"
A fanatical outcry, absolutely convinced of its truth. His eyes, contorted in ecstasy, landed on me. The pureblood supremacist's tirade of praise and curses abruptly came to a halt.
At almost the same time, his heightened emotions seemed to drop into a cold, endless abyss.
"... What are you?"
"..."
Had he seen something in me too? Come to think of it, the pureblood supremacists who saw me up close right before dying all had similar reactions.
Anyone who saw my eyes through the helmet would falter, then panic, and finally be overcome with terror—as if their own assumptions were being denied.
I stepped forward, stopping at the edge of the Creep.
"That's what I want to ask you. Just what am I?"
"... No. No, it can't be. You, you—! How can you possibly be the second—! No, no! If that's true, then I'll never be pure—!"
Consumed by a terror he couldn't even understand, the pureblood supremacist tried to back away from me, shuffling with bound limbs, desperately inching away.
"Bl- Blue Ey—urk...!"
His struggles didn't last. His body began bulging as if something was happening internally.
'... Blue Eye?'
Why did that name come up now? My helmet's visor was set to blue light initially, but that option was off at the moment.
Suddenly, I remembered Nadia saying my eyes looked like they'd turned blue. Curious, I briefly removed my helmet and checked my reflection in a reflective panel.
But my eyes were jet black, not blue at all. No matter what color you add to black, it stays black. That's exactly how I looked. Not even sure if there was something mixed in at all.
"This can't be! This can't— Monster, you bastard aaaagh...!"
The man's body rapidly swelled, making broken, glitching noises before he burst apart. The Creep absorbed the newly introduced organic matter and expanded its territory.
So this is what they meant by Grace? If Grace meant being broken down and killed explosively, why were we still unharmed?
When we entered, the Creep hadn't reacted this aggressively. It had simply been torn or trampled as we moved.
Ever since entering the Creep-laden entrance to the power control room, I'd asked Nadia and Celestia to notify me immediately of any abnormal symptoms, but they both reported feeling nothing out of the ordinary.
Nor did they now. When the pureblood supremacist exploded, both quickly checked themselves but then breathed a sigh of relief.
I flicked off a lump of flesh that splattered onto my suit and muttered,
"If you're going to die anyway, you could at least answer our questions first."
From their reactions, it seemed there really was something special about me. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't something these people liked.
My mood sank. Just as I saw ghouls as monsters, the pureblood supremacists saw me as a monster. When the real monsters were them, why did they look at me that way?
Forcibly shaking off the unpleasant feeling, I stood and asked, making sure to compose my voice before speaking.
"Celestia, are you sure there's nothing you want to ask?"
"Yes. Even if I did, he wouldn't have told us anything useful. And someone like him wouldn't know where my brother is, anyway."
"That's true."
There were no more pureblood supremacists left in the robot production facility. Reinforcements could possibly arrive from outside later, but that was none of our concern.
Besides, we were leaving for the refinery.
Any pureblood supremacist who showed up later would have to deal with the security robots now coming back online, not with us.
I exchanged looks with Celestia, who gave a firm nod. With everything in our way cleared, it was time to initiate the protocol.
Celestia operated the terminal, and soon an alert echoed through the entire facility.
【Alert. Under Myosotis's authority, Security Protocol Fortress of Last Resort has been activated. Proceeding to Phase One. Restoring facility and resuming production lines. Current operational capacity: 13%.】
The facility, badly damaged by the pureblood supremacists' attacks, began to revive. Though more than half was destroyed, the number of functioning systems would slowly increase as self-repairs progressed.
【Warning. Contamination detected in the facility. Initiating decontamination procedure. All workers in sector, evacuate immediately.】
Sprinkler-like nozzles emerged from the floor, walls, and ceiling, spraying out a white mist. It was a gas to sterilize the contaminated space. The Creep seemed to shudder as the gas touched it, but with typical revulsion, it hung on.
【Caution. Contamination not fully eliminated. Physical removal will be required. No operational security robots currently available. Forcibly allocating necessary energy for security robot production. Facility operational rate: 13%, 14%... 】
Some sectors stopped new restarts, with remaining energy redirected to restoring the production line. The operational capacity began rising slowly but surely.
As the facility came back to life, thudding pulses echoed in our ears. It wasn't that loud, but we knew—this was just the preliminary stage.
The deep vibration resonated in my chest, washing away my discomfort. The Creep would soon be eliminated as new security robots, obeying system instructions, began their work.
We wouldn't have to clear it away ourselves. Not that we had the energy to.
I turned off the comms jammer and sent a text to Licorice.
- Licorice, the protocol is activated. It'll take some time before the robots are fully operational.
- Good. I'll coordinate with Myosotis using her authority. You three go to the refinery as planned. Meet up with Eric there.
- Understood.
Having given a brief status report, I turned to Nadia and Celestia and spoke.
"Let's go. To the refinery."
"Yeah!"
"... Okay."
With grim faces, we turned away, collected the used comms jammers and whatever intact weapons we could carry, and headed outside.
***
We traveled to the refinery on hover bikes.
At first, I thought we could just walk, but the refinery was a fair distance away, and more importantly, we'd used up quite a few supplies fighting the pureblood supremacists, so a stop to resupply was inevitable.
That didn't mean we took the hover bikes straight there in a beeline. Like with the robot production facility, we took a slightly roundabout route.
After parking the bikes and readying ourselves, we announced our approach. Eric, who had been hiding near some ice boulders with the Alpha series, immediately greeted us.
Eric did not greet us with excessive fuss, but instead examined us with a calm gaze. He didn't even ask if we were okay. It seemed he didn't think it was necessary.
With an expression of confidence, he exchanged a brief glance with Celestia, then turned to me. He seemed to want a quick summary of what happened at the robot production facility before entering the refinery.
I gave him a concise rundown.
The betrayer inside the facility and the virus they'd spread, the Grace and Creep, the patrolling pureblood supremacists, their relatively weak vigilance and poor equipment (except for firearms), the condition of their recovered weaponry and ammo, and the activation of the security protocol.
Eric nodded grimly, now understanding the overall situation.
"It seems it went more smoothly than I expected. I'm glad you're all safe."
"It's small comfort in a bad situation, but still, that's all we could do... What about Roxy?"
"He returned to the town. He'll be back soon, bringing the special cargo we've been preparing there—no need to worry."
Special cargo. I'd never heard exactly what it was, but I knew it was the key to this operation. Licorice had guaranteed it would be our breakthrough.
"Whomever is in front of us now will be different from the ones in the production facility. We won't know exactly until we get inside, but it wouldn't be strange if we encountered monsters instead of pureblood supremacists."
"Yes."
The pureblood supremacists we faced at the robot production facility felt like mere teasers. In fact, not even that.
We'd only fought their lowest rankers, with limited numbers and poor gear except for firearms.
But I knew those at the refinery would be different. Even though we've upgraded considerably, I judged we still lacked the clout to face them head-on.
'That's why we went to such lengths to activate the security protocol.'
If it was Licorice's plan, I believed it would work.
With all possible preparations made, it was time to enter the refinery and get a clearer picture of the situation.
If it turned out to be a trap, we'd break through. If it was a truly dangerous crisis, we'd solve it. No matter how complicated things looked, we really only had two choices.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
iirc, the pureblood supremacist's number is less than a hundred.