Eden and I enter the door at the end of the hallway finding a room full of beds. The majority of them are empty, but a few seem to be occupied. We move between the beds tossing the sheets from each, checking for any familiar faces. A few have nurses or doctors hiding beneath, but I ignore their nervous weeps, going about my business as usual.
“I don’t see Jimmy, Eira. All these people look fairly normal,” Eden says.
I nod and proceed to contact Aponi.
‘Aponi, have you found Kardama or Jimmy?’
‘They’re in a big room connected to the medical facility.’
‘But I think I’m in the medical facility. I can’t imagine they’d have two in one place.’
‘If you’re in that room with all the beds keep going; it’s laid out a bit strangely. Ah, I guess I should mention, there’s a hidden door in the back. It’s fuckin’ weird and creepy back here,’ she pauses before saying, ‘Gotta go, just be careful. See ya soon.’
“A door?” I murmur to myself.
Looking toward the back, I notice an inconspicuous curtain. I rip the curtain from the wall, finding a small vertical crack.
“This place and their hidden doors. How annoying.”
Eden taps her claws against the wall. “Another hidden door? Like in the wine cellar?”
“Yeah, use those claws of yours and stick it in the gap. We’ll force it open.”
“Okay…” She gazes at her claws. “By the way, how do I get these things to retract?”
“Worry about it later. For now, just focus on helping me.”
I extend my own claws, and the two of us push our nails into the crack, pulling with all our might. The door creaks as gears scrape against one another. Eden grits her teeth, exposing her fangs, but the door refuses to open more than an inch. I bite my lip, allowing some blood to leak, which I then solidify and use to prop the door open the single inch we were able to force it open.
We release our grip. “Eden, do you have any Stat points left from your last level up?”
“I used most of them… it was too tempting to place them, but I do have a few.”
“Put them all into Strength. I’m saving mine just in case we run into anything big, but all your Stats should be so low you probably need points in everything regardless of what it is.”
She looks at me a bit worried. “...It’s not going to make me super muscular, is it?”
“No. It doesn’t work that way. You won’t get muscular unless you are actively trying to get muscular.”
“Okay, s-sorry, but the Cosmic System refused to answer that question when I asked. I-I prefer to not look like an amazonian or anything.”
‘That system refuses to answer any questions. I have memories of Callista trying to talk to it. Its answer was always about how it has no biases, and to be fair, it truly is unbiased, almost to a fault. Hmm, if I remember correctly, Callista was fairly attached to it probably because it was one of the few things that made it through all those millennia alongside her. The only thing that never changed… Psh, anyway, I still need to give it a piece of my mind after sending me into the worst tutorial in the history of tutorials. I shall never forgive it for the humiliation.’
She stands motionless for a moment, staring off into space, before turning to me and nodding. I add some more blood to the small amount I’ve been using to hold the door open, and we try again. This time with the blood pushing and with Eden stronger than before, we manage to get it open just enough to squeeze through.
Just as we are about to enter, I hear the footsteps of two familiar Brutes coming up behind us.
Throwing up my shoulders, I scold the two Brutes, “Goliath, Dolt, were both of you waiting for us to open the door before coming in?”
“Guh?” Dolt says, moving forward to grip the door. With hardly any effort, he thrusts the doors open. Goliath grins broadly while Dolt gives me a thumbs-up. Now feeling exasperated, we enter finding another room full of beds. Repeating the same process as before, we toss the blankets from the occupied beds.
‘Oh? Are these the people they have been experimenting on?’
What looks to be a man in his forties lays in the bed, unmoving. His arms have some kind of weird gray flesh spreading from an area near his collar. The flesh is rubbery, and touching it reminds me of rubbing the side of a fully inflated balloon. Several IVs run into his arms, pumping serums into the rubbery flesh as if sustaining it.
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‘...Hmm, that flesh? Is it a graft from the living weapon? It seems similar to what the documents said? If that is the case, shouldn’t they be transported to the place-between or whatever they called it?’
I glance at the IVs and then at the flesh. Squeezing the IVs to stop the flow of serum, I glance away. ‘I believe it said they’d disappear if no one was watching them.’
The IVs become loose, so I turn back, finding the man has disappeared.
‘So, it seems like they’ve progressed their research since the time those documents were written. These serums are keeping them from vanishing… Anyway, I really don’t have time to explore this further right now.’
Eden walks up behind me. “They aren’t here either. Just these people with the weird gray skin—the ones from the document, I assume.”
“Ah, you were able to figure that out.”
“Well, I saw you messing with that one person. You probably shouldn’t touch their skin.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “It’s not a disease. Not only is it due to a skin graft, but I doubt it would even work on anyone a few levels above the base level. Anyway, I appreciate your concern, but we need to get moving.”
Suddenly, the sound of someone angrily yelling rings out from behind some nearby metal doors. I hold my hands up in hopes that the two Brutes won’t do anything stupid as I cautiously move to the door. Cracking the door open, I discover Sam in a fistfight with another man who seems to have had his shirt torn, exposing what looks to be a black exoskeleton underneath. Behind the man in the exoskeleton, Aponi clutches her shoulder with a large gash near her collar bone. Sam punches the man in the face and then twists his arm, preventing him from escaping.
Aponi raises her own arm, exposing the needle buried in her forearm; she slams it into the man’s neck. Seeing the surprise in her face when nothing happens, I fire a blood spike.
[‘Lv.1 Human’ Slain - 20% Contribution (Extra 10% for Killing Blow) - 2 Essence Acquired]
Immediately the man’s body begins degrading while Aponi’s collar commences healing.
With a click of my tongue, the two turn to look at me. “Learn your own Talent Aponi. It only works on corpses, not the living. Not to mention, using a Talent like that on a living person seems surprisingly cruel for you,” I say.
A drop of sweat falls along Sam’s cheek. “That was great timing and all, but were you not worried about hitting us with that spike thing?”
“Nah, I was pretty confident… for the most part,” I reply with a mocking smile, “Let’s skip the chit-chat; where is everyone?”
Aponi looks over her wounds while giving me an update of the situation, “Right. They’ve got the room where Kardama and Jimmy are surrounded by guys wearing these exoskeletons. We convinced the doctor that we needed to come back here for something, that way, we could let you through the hidden door.” She points at the dried-up corpse. “This guy apparently found out we were impersonating two of his buddies, so he wanted to kill us with his own hands. At least that’s what he said after he tried to kill me with a damn sword. Like! Who the fuck carries around a sword!?” she says angrily.
Sam rubs the back of his head. “I thought it was pretty cool until he tried to use it on us. Luckily I blocked it with my rifle, but it wasn’t a normal sword; it almost cut through it.”
Glancing nearby, I can see a dented sword with a blue blade. ‘Hmm, interesting.’ I store the blade in the ring.
“So, the only person that knows you are imposters is this dead guy?” I ask.
Aponi nods. “As far as we know, yeah.”
“Then you two get back to the group of guards. Tell them you were attacked, and work on sabotaging and slowing their efforts. Eden, the Brutes, and I will come up from one side and hold their attention while you two do whatever you need to.”
“Well, to be honest, the situation is complicated. We also thought you’d have more Brutes with you,” Sam responds.
My brow furrows at the concerns of the two. “I can go gather them if they are needed. What is the problem exactly?”
With Aponi’s wound almost fully stitched up by her Talent, she sighs dramatically. “It… it just feels wrong here. Like it should be obvious that we don’t work here, but no one’s noticed. Except for this guy, but there should be some kind of established command structure that would have discovered us by now. Instead, it’s just whatever this Doctor Wright says, but why are they listening to a doctor’s commands? Maybe basic directions, but they’re even listening to his strategic advice.”
Sam nods in agreement. “Then the other doctor in charge here hasn’t been seen in a while, but none of the guards wearing the exoskeletons seem concerned about it. From our military experience, there’s a lot of discrepancies. It reminds me of the time we were sent to that cruise ship where we met you. Like someone is pulling strings and forsaking procedures.”
“I trust both of you, and I trust both of your intuitions,” I respond immediately, “Still, do we have a choice? How long can they hold out? How long before they just decide to cut their losses?”
“We can delay for a time, but I don’t know how long,” Aponi says, crossing her arms, “We’re already the odd man out for not having the exoskeletons.”
“Hmm, well, I guess Eden and I can investigate, but I’m hesitant to dally for too long…” I sigh and purse my lips taking a moment to think. “...But that being said, you two are the ones with the military experience. For the most part, I’ve just used brute force, since I’m not a strategic combat specialist or anything. Thus, in the future, I’ll be leaving a lot of these types of decisions to you guys, so what do you think?”
The two of them glance at each other surprised by my words.
“Don’t look so surprised. I can’t do everything, and I don’t want to do everything either. So answer me, what do you two think?” I say.
Sam answers a bit warily, “A-after the cruise ship, we’d like to go with our gut, so we prefer to have more information before kicking another wasps nest.”
“Alright, if that is your decision, then we’ll wait. I can’t guarantee a long delay simply because of the Brutes, but I can probably delay them for a bit before they get bored.” With their answer, I promptly turn to leave. “In the meantime, I have an idea of a place I can check. Just keep in touch, and if the Brutes get bored, I’m not waiting any longer.”