Growth
I had slain the cyclops.
The sense of hope that single word carried was beyond description.
It had become a faint lantern in a place where no hope could be seen. One could even say that existence had been born from nothingness.
Having achieved such a feat, I would normally have been jumping for joy, but…
“Ugh…”
Blood poured steadily from the wound the cyclops had carved into me. My left hand, which had erupted like a flashbang, burned with a searing pain as if it had been thrust into fire.
My condition was terrible.
If I didn’t do something immediately, I felt like I would collapse on the spot.
Perhaps because I had lost too much blood, my vision began to blur.
My mind started shutting down, and even the pain gradually drifted away.
The sensation of death.
Yes, that was the only way to describe the feeling slowly consuming my body.
I could no longer even hold myself upright.
The only thing I could do was lie down on the worn but neatly paved road.
The sight of this ruined city, seen while lying on my back, would be the last thing I ever saw.
[Truth Scholar has sent you a gift.]
—Truth Scholar: Take it and put it straight into your mouth!
What could it be? What effect would it have?
Before those thoughts could even fully form, I accepted the gift and shoved it into my mouth.
It looked like a black orb engraved with glowing green patterns. The moment I swallowed it, the effect revealed itself.
The terrible pain slowly receded.
First the burning sensation faded, then came the strange feeling of lost blood rushing back in.
After that mysterious sensation passed, my body was suddenly whole again.
My head cleared little by little, allowing me to observe my surroundings more carefully.
I was lying on the boundary road between the submersible and the city.
Fortunately, there wasn’t a single cyclops nearby.
If there had been… I didn’t particularly want to imagine it.
Once that wave of crisis had passed, the comment section began scrolling upward at an alarming speed.
Even though only verified users could chat, the pace was so fast that important comments were hard to catch.
Still, I tried to read every single comment related to the medicine I had taken.
Reconstruction Orb. That seemed to be the name of the medicine I had eaten.
And… an emergency tool? My body had gone from near death to complete recovery. Apparently things worked differently on the surface.
At any rate, I was just glad to be alive.
Still, there was one thing that didn’t sit right with me if I simply let it pass.
How was I supposed to repay Truth Scholar?
Well, Truth Scholar seemed satisfied, but if I just brushed it off, I might lose one of the people who could help me in a crisis.
Ignoring the desperate cries of those burdened by my exploration, I spoke up.
“Truth Scholar, is there anything you want? If it’s something I can do, I’ll do it.”
My statement drew an unusually excited reaction from Truth Scholar and worried reactions from the other verified users.
Even so, repaying the favor seemed like the right thing to do.
The gallery was my only means of communication.
Making enemies there would bring nothing good, and the gallery offered indirect ways to help through gifts or trades.
‘Besides, Truth Scholar seems like someone pretty high up…’
Someone who could invest so much time in the gallery and even hand out ancient artifacts. It was reasonable to assume Truth Scholar held a high position.
“As long as it’s within what I can manage…?”
At this point I was starting to feel nervous.
What kind of task was he going to give me?
After enough time had passed for me to swallow hard once.
Truth Scholar’s comment appeared.
“…Is that all?”
It was far smaller than I had expected, which was a relief.
Honestly, I had been worried he might demand something like “kill a creature stronger than the cyclops.”
Besides, both requests were things I had planned to do eventually.
Learning more about the ancient city would increase my chances of survival, and I had already intended to learn magic.
Swordsmanship was nice, of course, but it didn’t offer many practical applications for survival.
Magic, on the other hand, could be used in all sorts of ways.
Therefore.
“Yes, I’ll do it.”
I had no reason to refuse.
But it seemed one person disagreed.
I knew my talent was outstanding, but to reach the highest realms, one must focus that talent on a single path.
The Sword Saint’s words had merit, but my current goal was nothing more than survival.
Raising my realm would come after survival was guaranteed.
When I explained that to the Sword Saint, he seemed to understand to some degree.
In exchange, he gave me the next assignment: kill more cyclopes.
I stared blankly at the rapidly scrolling comment window and realized quite a bit of time had passed.
I immediately ended the broadcast and approached the bisected cyclops corpse.
Then I brought the Scanner close and began analysis.
Even though I had scanned it before, I did it again because the information changed depending on how long the scan took.
And soon.
Highly nutritious food. One of the byproducts of the experiments of the vanished ███. The 'Cyclops Cornea' is an essential material for manufacturing observation devices.
After excluding the information I had obtained before, only the important details were displayed in a simplified form.
Another item had appeared: an observation device.
Tap. Tap.
Since the Scanner also functioned as a bestiary, tapping the screen let me easily view all the information I had gathered so far.
For the record, I could only obtain information on creatures by scanning them myself.
The observation device was a building, not a tool, so creating one right now was impossible.
Pushing aside my regret at being unable to craft it, I grabbed the cyclops corpse.
At first I had planned to take the cornea, but I had burned it, rendering it unusable.
“The lower half would be better than the upper half, right?”
Like hunting a deer, I dragged the lower half of the cleanly bisected cyclops back to the submersible.
The upper half… its eye was far too unsettling.
The reason I had brought the cyclops back was because of the Scanner’s information.
‘Highly nutritious food.’ I was certain I could make use of it.
“Now, if I bring the Scanner close to the fabricator…”
Click!
When I moved the Scanner near the fabricator, it automatically attached itself to the machine’s side.
It felt strangely like watching a checkout scanner back on Earth.
Regardless, the fabricator downloaded the data from the Scanner and added new items to the list of things I could make using the cyclops.
As I looked through the list, I quickly found what I wanted.
Extracts only water from substances such as blood, seawater, or mucus. Depending on the material, it may have a fishy or metallic aftertaste.
Ham processed from highly nutritious cyclops meat. Excellent caloric value, making it ideal as emergency rations.
After looking over the list, I immediately placed the cyclops into the fabricator.
It was time to eat substitute food.
When I selected Purified Water and Cyclops Ham, a horrifying sound like flesh being twisted echoed out.
A moment later.
Thud.
Neatly packaged purified water and cyclops ham popped out of the fabricator.
I opened them with nervous hands.
The water was perfectly clear, as expected, and the ham looked better than I had anticipated.
I ate them with some trepidation.
…The water had a slight metallic taste, and the ham had a chewy texture like biting into muscle.
After eating, I thought to myself:
The deep sea really is shit.
I fell asleep that night with the firm determination to survive as quickly as possible and escape this hopeless abyss.
…That night I had a nightmare about a cyclops ripping open my stomach and crawling out.
The fourth day in the deep sea had arrived.
From having nothing on the first day to slaying a cyclops on the third, confidence that I could do this welled up inside me.
I entered the gallery and immediately started the broadcast.
The moment I turned on the broadcast, viewers flooded in.
However, the only people leaving comments were Truth Scholar and Sword Saint of the Draw.
Now that I thought about it, there seemed to be fewer verified users than I had expected.
There had been quite a few on Earth.
When I asked about it.
Ah, now I understood.
The moment those troublemaking anonymous posts switched to verified names, they became clearly identifiable.
Since the gallery didn’t show IP addresses in posts, it was normally hard to tell if someone was the same person.
And there was one more reason.
It was an old rule, so they didn’t know the exact details behind it.
Anyway, because of these reasons, not many people commented.
…That should have been the case.
But the moment I began exploring the ancient city, comments started pouring in at a terrifying speed.
Naturally, the most terrified of all was me.