We continued jogging through dark, stony underground corridors for several minutes. Near the beginning of the jog, the fetid smell of rotting vegetation and old, weathered stone was distinct and hard to overlook. If we hadn’t been following the guards, I might have wondered if we were really going in the correct direction. However, the guards continued running, seeming completely sure of their path, and we followed.

However, keeping up with the guards proved more difficult than expected. I had an agility of grade six - but my legs were extremely short, since I was four, and my stats were also somewhat weakened as a result of my age. After a minute and a half, as we started to lag further and further behind, Sallia sighed, and then picked both of us up and then started running more quickly. While age hindered her movements as well, Sallia had an overwhelming enough stat advantage to keep up with an adult male despite only being four years old.

Finally, after running for about five minutes, we reached a giant doorway made of iron and brass. The leader of the guards quickly grabbed a small box from his pocket, then stuffed it into a cube-shaped hole in the middle of the giant doorway. I felt a whir of binding essence snake throughout the door, before it started hissing and groaning. I could hear machinery creak and groan in protest. Then, the doorway started to swing open, like the door of an ancient vault welcoming explorers for the first time.

Before us lay another set of corridors. They were made of brass and iron, and the walls glittered with a polished, metallic sheen that spoke of hours of maintenance and careful attention to detail. The floors were also made of brass, and I could hear the whir of machinery in the distance. Strangest of all, there was a constant, rhythmic thunking sound that echoed throughout the facility every two seconds, as if it were on a constant loop. I could not figure out what the thumping sound was, or what it was for - it didn’t sound like anything was being crushed, or stirred, or even as if the sound came from a machine at all. Even though the sound should have reminded me of industry, I was strangely reminded of a giant, beating heart, echoing deep within the facility.

It was unnerving.

Unlike the stone hallways leading to this facility, the underground facility had hallways leading into several different directions. The guards immediately turned left, and continued jogging towards the base commander they had mentioned earlier. I looked after them, and then paused. Following the guards had been useful for getting us into this facility, but I didn’t see a reason to continue following them anymore. As interesting as this facility was, we were here to rescue Felix. We might explore the facility, steal documents, or investigate this facility’s research as well. but rescuing Felix was by far the most important thing we had come here to do..

I asked.

said Sallia.

asked Felix. I could detect both nervousness and excitement in his mental communication.

I said, feeling a smile pull at my lips.

We were doing this. We were really doing this.

Ever since I had come to this world, I felt, at least in part, like I had been beaten down by my circumstances.

In our previous world, we had been killed by the living universe because it looked at us. In the Market, we had found a few answers, but were still left with far more questions and worries than solid wins. In this world, my mother was a drug addict who I couldn’t have a proper conversation with, because she was almost always high, and Felix had been born as a test subject. Food was hard to get, and opportunities were even harder to find.

I could use a win right now. And rescuing Felix would definitely make everything seem easier. We weren’t waiting anymore, we weren’t stalling to build up more abilities and prepare ourselves.

We were just here. Ready to rescue Felix and then get out of here.

said Sallia.

The three of us started moving straight.

After less than thirty seconds of light jogging, we came upon our first interesting room.

To our right, instead of brass and iron, I saw a giant glass window. The glass window had a copper tint to it, making me think that it wasn’t regular glass. However, it was still clear enough that I could easily see through it.

On the other side, I could see several batches of items I couldn’t understand at all. To be honest, in a sketchy government facility, I had expected to see all sorts of things - secret military technology, weird healing technology, industrial projects that had some issues with them… all of those would have made sense to me.

However, what was laying inside of the room was very different.

In the room, I saw four swords. Which made no sense at all - this world had pretty firmly moved beyond the era of cold weapons, and gunpowder was so dominant in warfare that nobody bothered manufacturing swords anymore. They were seen as relics of the past in this world, and the only place people even used melee weapons these days was when they were too poor to afford real weapons.

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The swords looked new. Which left me scratching my head.

Why the heck were swords stored in this facility? What the heck was wrong with the government?

Were they trying to find a way to make swords relevant again? Sallia would certainly like that, since she had talked about not liking guns. But I could see no reason whatsoever for the government to sink resources into studying swords.

Maybe they were historical relics? Maybe they were alien relics from space invaders who used swords for some reason? Or maybe…

I quickly ran out of ideas. Frankly, the swords just made no sense at all to me. They seemed so random and out of place that I wasn’t sure what to make of it at all.

I blinked in confusion, but after a moment, kept running. As much as I didn’t understand the purpose of this facility, rescuing Felix was more important. But now, my curiosity was piqued. I definitely wanted to investigate this facility more closely later.

The three of us kept running, and after several more seconds, we came across a second large door. Unlike the previous large door, this time, we didn’t have guards to conveniently open it up for us. There was another cube-shaped depression in the center of the door, indicating that we could open it if we had the key… which we did not have.

I grimaced.

I asked.

said Sallia.

said Anise.

I nodded, and used my own space-based vision to lock on to one of the four guards on the other side of the door. The four of them were sitting down at a table, and two of them were eating, while the other two were playing some sort of card game. It looked like they were either slacking off, or on break. It didn’t matter to me. I found one of the guards looking at the door, then used his perception to create an illusory version of the wall layered over the real one.

I said.

Sallia nodded, and reached out with her absorption essence. The door started collapsing in front of us, bit by bit. However, Sallia’s progress was very slow.

said Sallia, frowning.

said Felix.

Sallia immediately projected an image of the metal bolts, hinges, and springs that she could see with her metal-vision ability, and for a few minutes, Felix didn’t say anything else.

Felix sent. I could detect a trace of nervousness from Felix’s voice.

Sallia did as Felix suggested, and after a few moments, the door creaked, and then started to open.

“Door?” asked one of the guards turning around and looking straight towards us.

However, he didn’t see anything because my illusion was in the way.

“What the-” another of the guards, put down his sandwich and stared at the door in bewilderment.

“Aplos! It’s escaping!” one of the guards yelled, before he picked up his gun and fired wildly towards the other door.

The bullet bounced off of the door and landed somewhere on the other side of the room.

“I can’t see it!”

“AAAAAAAHHHH!”

I stared in utter bewilderment at the terrified guards, who had picked up their guns and were now wildly firing at the other entrance to the room.

Aplos? What’s that? I wondered. It sounded like the name of a creature…

Before I had time to think further, one of the guns floated out of the grip of the guards, flipped around, and then slammed into the owner’s head, knocking him unconscious.

A few moments later, Sallia quickly knocked the other guards unconscious with her stolen weapon, then floated the gun over to herself.

I asked.

said Sallia.

I paused.

I said, and grabbed all of the other guns before stuffing them into my dimensional backpack. They were a bit of a tight fit, but I managed to get them in.

sent Felix.

Sallia paused.

she said.

I rolled my eyes, and then checked with my spatial eyes to see if anyone had noticed our fight.

I didn’t see anyone who had noticed our scuffle, but considering how loud the gunshots had been, I doubted the base was still oblivious to our presence. They must be aware that something was happening, even if they weren’t sure what. With any luck, the other people in the base would attribute the gunshots to ‘Aplos,’ whatever that was.

asked Sallia, looking at the downed guards.

I hesitated. Were these people bad enough that killing them was okay?

I hadn’t hesitated to kill the invaders to the islands, all those lives ago, because they had been clearly trying to hurt the villagers of the islands. Killing them had, indisputably, been self defense.

But the thugs that had tried to hurt Sallia and I in the alleyway had felt much worse. They had wanted to hurt us, but maybe not kill us. I hesitated again… and then shook my head.

I said. Then, I frowned.

Sallia smiled.

Two of the guard’s arms simply twisted and bent with a flicker of absorption essence, while Sallia used the confiscated gun as a club to break the other arms of the guards. she said.

Then, Sallia turned towards the door on the other side of the room and popped it open using the same trick Felix had taught her.

We stepped past the ruined door and into another hall. And there, I felt something I had never expected to feel in this world.

Manifestation essence.