Rescue Fantasy (11)
When I closed the door again, the sound of cymbals being struck faded away. It was a relief—I was worried it might continue.
"Phew..."
Only then did Celestia sigh in relief, slumping with her back against the wall. It wasn't as if we'd just fought an intense battle; we'd merely made our way through Utopia. Yet Celestia was drenched in cold sweat.
She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to still her pounding heart, and asked,
"... Hyun-woo, there was nothing there. Are we just overreacting?"
"Probably."
I nodded, keeping my guard up. It was an unpleasant space. A place that must have once brought joy had now become nothing but a source of unease.
There was something beneath us.
I wasn't talking about the piles of corpses stacked like mountains. Nor about the way those corpses all wore expressions as if in paradise.
I meant something more fundamental than that. The way the corpses had been arranged. Probably something that was a new type of mutant. I hadn't checked closely what it was or what it looked like.
No, the truth was, I couldn't have. My instincts were blaring constantly, warning me not to look at it head on.
I couldn't make out its true form, but I could vaguely sense its shape.
´
"An eye."
Or maybe eyeball, or pupil. I remember something like a strange energy current—not organic tissue—drifting in the air.
I considered having Carry take a picture, but gave up. The reason was simple. The security robots scattered across the Utopia arcade were all missing their heads, down to a stubborn degree.
I guessed that whatever it was didn't like being observed by others. I'd never experienced anything so disturbing.
A monster that could mesmerize people? I'd never imagined anything could artificially tamper with a person's mind.
Its way of stimulating the emotions at the bottom by watching was similar to a stalker's, but the result was completely different.
"It feels like a raw crystal."
A thought flashed through my mind—the mental attack seemed similar to the pulse of a blue crystal ore.
Disturbing one's vision and making one perceive a warped reality, forcibly causing symptoms like headache, spreading invisible pulses—those sorts of things.
It wasn't exactly the same, but the feeling was similar. If so, could what I saw have been just a hallucination, and that thing is normally an ordinary object? The fact that I was just now noticing the smell of blood lent weight to that theory.
With so many bloodstains, the air should have been thick with the iron scent.
I immediately held up a finger and wiggled it.
"Celestia, how many fingers do you see? Be honest."
"One. You're waving it."
"It's clear, so you haven't taken any mental damage."
"... That's all it takes?"
"It's the simplest, but it's effective. Your hands are intimately connected to your perception."
It was a basic way of checking one's grip on reality. By not just seeing but also stating how many fingers were visible and in what way, you could confirm the state of a person's mind.
Of course, this only worked if the person listening was sane, but I was fine. My mind was intact.
I'd been entering dark mine tunnels for three years. I'd long ago finished the process of reaffirming who I was.
"How do you feel right now?"
"Just a little dizzy, otherwise fine."
"You might have been exposed to blue crystal ore, so take a moment to catch your breath."
"What about you, Hyun-woo?"
"I want to check something."
When I picked up the detector, Celestia insisted she wanted to check it with me. I flicked her forehead as she tried to rise, and she plopped back down. She tried a few more times, but her strength kept giving out.
It seemed she'd exhausted her mental energy. Understandable. If the presence I'd vaguely sensed was real, the fact that she hadn't done anything rash was good enough.
"This'll be over soon, so don't regret it later—rest when I tell you to. And remember what you said earlier? You'd follow my instructions completely."
"Okay..."
Leaving Celestia with Carry, I finally checked the detector. If affected by the crystal's pulse, its circuits would be damaged.
While crossing Utopia, it had felt wrong, but stopping to check had seemed dangerous.
I still clearly remembered the laughter and shouts coming from the playroom. Claims that they'd cast off filthy flesh and been reborn as pure beings. They probably weren't pureblood supremacists. Survivors must have fallen under a spell and gone mad.
As I checked, I found evidence of damage to the detector's circuits. As expected, the attack had used some kind of pulse. It had been the right choice to keep moving rather than stop.
The monster wasn't invisible; instead, the entire space was under its influence. The longer we stayed, the less likely we'd have escaped its effects. Hadn't we, in fact, seen those bizarre eyes?
"If there had been blue crystal ore, the detector would've caught it."
Nadia had added the detection feature. It could even sense tiny fragments inside a mimic, but it picked up nothing here. That fact unsettled me. The sense of discomfort clung to my throat, a constant reminder.
"I'll have to warn them. There could be a monster that attacks the mind."
I'd known the Heaven central sector would be dangerous, but I hadn't expected this kind of threat. Still, it was fortunate I'd experienced it in advance.
The problem was, there was no clear way to defend against it, even knowing what it was. If it was like the pulse of the ore, unless we coated all our suits with a special material, we couldn't resolve the danger.
I summarized what we'd experienced here and sent it to those in town, then I checked Celestia's condition and the state of the entryway.
She was taking deep breaths to calm her frayed mind, and the passageway to the central hall thrummed with a faint noise. A sound that would once have been annoying now provided comfort.
"Yeah, this is normal."
It made no sense for there to be no operating noise in a facility. In such silence, even the sound of air moving should be noticeable.
But what had actually happened? Dead silence, until the digital billboard suddenly turned on, and then awkwardly the place filled with sound.
"Let's get up now."
"Sure. I'm ready."
"What about Carry?"
【\(-Ò｡Ó-")】
Carry waved his auxiliary arms, insisting he'd been ready for ages. At last, we stood before the door to the next sector.
〈Nexus – Central Square〉
【This is a public area. An incident has occurred within. Please remain in place until the security team resolves the situation. Current status: CLOSED.】
When I presented my credentials, the status changed from closed to open. We could enter now. But contrary to my resolve, the door jolted and then stuck partway open.
"Looks like something's jammed the mechanism."
"Then we'll have to cut through."
I rammed the plasma cutter into the mechanism and started burning a hole. I didn't have to make a big opening, just enough to clear the obstruction.
Before long, there was a loud clang as something solid fell. The force holding the door shut gave way, and I lifted the stubborn door up. The first thing I saw inside was a barricade.
Chairs with metal frames and decorative objects had been lashed together to form a makeshift wall. Warnings had been scrawled across the entryways leading to each sector.
【Absolutely do not open. Inside is full of monsters.】
【There are strange noises.】
These warnings were on the entrance to the medical sector.
【Even if you feel someone watching, do not turn your head. If you're captivated, you cannot return.】
【When is the rescue team coming?】
【This is hell.】
These were on the passageway we'd just left, leading back to Utopia. Some notes were hurried and scrawled; others looked heavy and pressed into the surface like a curse.
"They must have known something dangerous was in Utopia."
"And looks like there was a hell of a fight. A really fierce one."
Between the barricades, dead mutants were scattered. There were also the bodies of dead humans. Broken security robots showed that there'd been fierce fighting here.
"There might be ghouls pretending to be dead. We should check."
"Okay, what should I do?"
"It's not us—Carry will do it. Carry, set it on fire."
We could check everything one by one, but it would take too long. It was more efficient to just turn the place into a blazing inferno.
By changing the nozzle, we could limit the burn duration, so there was no danger of being caught in the flames ourselves. The facility wouldn't be damaged.
【(⌐■_■)-︻╦╤─】
Carry aimed his flamethrower, adjusting the angle to cover the widest area. With a whoosh, a blue sea of fire spread out before us.
Blue flickers danced before my eyes. Thankfully, no ghouls started moving. Just to be sure, Carry sprayed another round, but still there was no movement.
No one could survive being charred to a crisp like that, so I signaled Carry to stop. Carry took off his sunglasses.
"Nothing."
"... Hyun-woo, don't you think you've changed?"
Celestia's words came as she watched the flames die down. I just shrugged silently. Of course I'd changed. How could anyone not?
From the moment our everyday lives were destroyed, we'd had no choice but to adapt, whether we liked it or not. To survive, we had to change. When else had we ever killed so many things?
I spotted a bracelet lying on the floor and picked it up. It looked chipped, as if it had been trampled on countless times. It seemed completely broken; no matter how much I tapped it, there was no response.
I gathered up all the bracelets I could find, whether functional or not, then approached the nearest security robot. There were no signs of infection—seemed it fought to the end before shutting down.
This time, I'd received a useful tool from Licorice—a chip that allowed me to access the black box inside robots using my bracelet. Thanks to that, I could check the recordings without needing the robot's original bracelet.
With a little energy from my suit's energy-sharing function, I revived the robot's core, then identified myself with my bracelet. A flickering holographic screen popped up, looking about to expire.
【Internal data is severely damaged. Download?】
Damaged files might not play properly. Still, I chose to download them—at least I should check them once.
When I pressed 'Yes', the data transferred to my bracelet and I played it immediately. Soon, a hologram unfolded around us.
"-Playing log-
【You are causing a grave breach of SSTC security. Cease all activity and surrender immediately. This is a warning. Disarm and surrender.】
The hard voice of a security robot played. That must be from the very one in front of me. Maybe because it was a bot stationed in Heaven's central sector, it put up a good fight against the ghouls.
Whenever a heavy shockwave went off, the screaming ghouls were sent tumbling; before the one at the center could get up, another nearby robot would link an attack and crush its head underfoot.
They said they mixed in models capable of demonstrative learning, and this must've been one of those.
Judging from the increased number of barricades in the area, this was after the situation had been going on for some time—more than when we'd seen it.
"Push—! If this wall falls, we're done for...!"
People with security team badges were pushing against the barricade, trying to block off the entrances to the various sectors.
That's when I heard a man shout.
"Seal the remaining entryway and fall back! Leave the rest to the robots!"
"Shouldn't we take at least one with us?"
"That's out of our hands now! The emergency code's triggered—we don't have control anymore!"
"Chief! There are still people in Utopia...!"
"So what, you want to go save them? After seeing all those corpses, you can still say that?! If you're not leaving now, get lost!"
The man addressed as "Chief" didn't even look toward the screams coming from Utopia. As he hurried off somewhere, the crack finally split wide open.
Who had said it? The truth about how few could fit on the executive shuttle spread rapidly.
Everyone had heard it. One by one, people glanced around, then dropped the barricade and fled—until there was no one left holding it.
【Fulfill your duty as security personnel. Desertion will not be tolerated. Immediate execution for breach of contract.】
The security robots tried to stop them, but they were overwhelmed just blocking the ghouls flooding in and could only just hold out.
The security bots reprioritized to defending here and let the fleeing team go.
After the Chief fled, we heard a horrifying scream from his direction, ending the recording.
― Playback unavailable-
When it was cut off, we collected and checked the black boxes of other robots. The stories were similar.
The security team, apparently after the executive shuttle, had escaped toward the reactor chamber room and hydroponic facility. Soon after, screams were heard from there too.
They'd abandoned those in Utopia to die in order to save themselves, but there was no paradise at the end of their flight. The phrase summed it up well.
As for the bracelets, all I could hear on their logs was sobbing in some dark, confined place. It was a strange recording.
"Mesmerized, huh..."
The security teams had known something was happening in Utopia—they'd used the word "mesmerized."
It matched what we'd felt there.
Didn't Celestia complain of a headache after hearing the violin? If I hadn't been there to hold her, she could have fallen off the skybridge.
The security team in the Nexus central square was dead. Or so it was assumed. In that case, who carved those warnings into the wall?
It couldn't have been a robot. According to the record, the wall had been blank while the last robot was still moving.
"So someone else came here after the battle ended, besides us."
It probably wasn't a group of pureblood supremacists. They would have thrown themselves to the mutants, claiming it a blessing, not left warnings for others.
I didn't know if the author was alone or part of a group like us, but I hoped we could join forces.
If they'd be a definite help, there's no reason not to bring them along. Especially since we were badly outnumbered by the pureblood supremacists.
So my attention shifted to another keyword.
"The executive shuttle... Celestia, is there a shuttle station around here, apart from the tram? I don't think there is."
"I checked too—there's no full shuttle station. But there is a single shuttle way out past there. There's a log showing a VIP visited the reactor chamber room for a tour."
Celestia flipped through the logs in the hologram window.
"A VIP? Who?"
"The record's vague, or maybe that's intentional—there's no clear name. Judging from the shuttle ID, it looks like someone from the military base command. The code here is only used in the military."
"A military base?"
Why would they visit the reactor chamber? Even if it was for a 'tour', the timing seemed oddly convenient.
Especially since it was the reactor chamber. Even though it's the Heaven central sector, the concentration of security teams here also stood out.
As Celestia and I were talking gravely, Carry, who had been scanning the area, suddenly made a face like he'd found something.
【Σ( °o°)】
Carry pushed aside something a security robot had been guarding. There was a still-functioning store.
More precisely, it looked like a pre-order store, as if waiting for a customer to receive goods. When I approached, the detector lit up.
Beep!
At the first alert, I drew my plasma cutter. Celestia readied her smart pistol as well.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
I mental-type mutant?
Is that the reason the title is "Rescue Fantasy"?
【( ⚆ _ ⚆ )】