Not Betting My Life
KRAAAASH—!
I barely slipped the blow as the thing's hand came whipping for the back of my skull.
Instead that rubber-stretch arm smashed into the wall like a sledgehammer, pulverizing concrete — then the same hand snapped straight back and snagged my clothes.
Crazy bastard…
I spat a curse under my breath, twisted my torso, and sliced the caught hoodie hood free with the kitchen knife I'd kept tucked inside. Then I vaulted the stair railing.
But the thing's unreal physique was so overwhelming it completely ignored even that quick reaction of mine.
A thick hand clamped down—
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—
It caught my head mid-fall toward the lower stairs in one massive grip. The fingers were so huge each joint coiled around my face like a snake.
But shock was shock, and I still had to keep fighting.
Still caught, I started sawing at its ring finger with the kitchen knife — so it simply flung me, hard, down the corridor past the far end of the stairs.
WHOOSH—
THUD-CRASH-BANG—!
A sudden weightlessness, then impact. I tumbled end over end down the hallway. When I shoved myself up, coated in dust and blood, a classroom door beside me burst open and a middle-aged teacher's corpse came lunging in.
I didn't even look. I swung the kitchen knife, punched it through the neck, then jerked it sideways like a lever and severed the spine.
A moment later the lunatic on the stairs twisted that grotesque neck this way and that, staring at me. I spat dust-gritty saliva and reset my stance.
Then my vision spun once, hard, and settled again. I frowned.
…Concussion? Well, after a throw like that.
And I understood: if I'd still been an ordinary human, this would already have been over.
Hoo…
My emotions spiked. Maybe it was the heart hammering so strangely fast, but I took a small breath and forced myself calm.
…I dropped the bat earlier and don't even know where it is. At least I packed the kitchen knife as a spare — small mercies.
But there was no way I was taking this thing down with just that. Landing a hit would be enough in theory — the problem was that arm reach made it look impossible.
Meanwhile the creature seemed genuinely curious, watching me stand there thinking while I stared it down.
Until now it had only seen jointed dolls that shattered the moment it hit them and threw them. Seeing me still more or less intact must have woken some playful streak.
It didn't approach. It just kept staring. I recognized the opening.
…Running's not an option. Not until I've at least checked the rooftop.
And checking the rooftop didn't have to mean a frontal assault.
I yanked the side window open fast and, before the thing could flinch and react, swung my body out onto the fifth-floor exterior.
Just as it came charging with that grotesque gait and shoved its face into the window frame, I grabbed the next window ledge and shifted over.
I flipped it off while it stared at me with those deep-sea-fish eyes.
"What are you gonna do about it, staring like that?"
Too damn big to even climb after me.
But the second it heard me — as if it actually understood — it grinned, flashing those nightmare teeth, then came thundering down the corridor and jammed a hand straight into the window I was hanging from.
CRASH—!
It shattered the glass in a spectacular spray and waved that hand around without a single scratch — but of course I was already gone, hanging from the next window over.
It stared at me again, seemed to grasp that this wasn't working, pulled its hand back, and then slowly — very slowly — began forcing that two-meter-plus body through the window frame.
Even while it did, those eyes stayed locked on me, neck twisting like a wrung rag. Honestly, a normal person would have flinched under that pressure and fallen.
But I wasn't normal.
My heart was racing, sure, but I honestly didn't know what I was feeling. Focus seemed sharper, at least — that was fine.
Anyway, it was moving exactly the way I wanted. So I quietly gripped the ledge and dropped to the window on the floor below.
While that nauseating gaze stayed fixed, I dropped one more floor, then faked it out completely — swung around the building corner and out of its line of sight.
After that I made a show of smashing a window and climbing inside, then immediately climbed full power back up the exterior, window by window.
Sure enough, right as my hand caught the rooftop railing and I hauled myself up, I heard the thing realizing it had lost me and going berserk on the lower floors.
"…There we go. That's what a brain with actual nutrients flowing through it looks like, you cucumber-brained bastard."
Having a head and a brain didn't mean shit if you weren't even properly alive enough to use sugar and run intelligence.
I snickered, set my feet on the rooftop floor, and gave the place a quick once-over.
"…No way."
Nothing stood out.
I denied it under my breath and walked toward the center of the roof.
Don't screw with me. Seriously.
A thing like that was sitting up here guarding the place, and it was another dud? That couldn't be right.
But no matter how I looked, there was nothing special at all — just empty cold.
And then something caught my foot.
I looked down. Something familiar was embedded dead-center in the rooftop floor.
"…What the hell is this. A gear?"
A few hours ago, on the van that was now mine, I'd glimpsed a decoration just like it. It was turning — slowly, very slowly.
Same insane level of detail as the van's, but the color was different.
The one I'd seen before had been a thrifty-looking bronze. This one wasn't just flashy.
It was pure, radiant gold, ticking — ticking — as it turned at a crawl. The fact that I hadn't noticed it until now was almost stranger than the thing itself.
I stared at it for a few seconds, then finally bent and reached for the gear.
Among the countless turning wheels, only the largest one at the very center stood still. The moment my finger touched it—
A sudden flare of golden light burst out. Before I could even snatch my hand back, an unidentifiable voice spoke right beside my ear.
Recognition complete.
Subject confirmed under Dimensional Law: Extinction World Species Human Rights Guarantee Act.
Artifact Name: Project Gear
Grade: None | Tier: GOLD
Product Error: None detected.
Initiating product power activation.
Initiating product AI activation.
3… 2… 1
And then the common sense that had already been flipped upside down after the apocalypse flipped over one more time.
Nice to meet you, first user. Do they call you Master here? Owner? Lord? New dimensions really are fun.
I'd like to give you a proper greeting face-to-face. Could you come downstairs?
Hmm… exact location relative to the user: one floor down, left along the hallway, then left again, straight ahead. The room name is… Broadcast Room? What does that mean?
A sudden, bright female voice. I stood there speechless for a second before I managed to open my mouth.
"…What the hell are you. Where are you even talking from?"
I'll answer that. In detail. But for that, the user has to come find me here.
"Broadcast Room? I just go to the Broadcast Room?"
The voice wasn't outside my ear — it was inside my head, awkward and wrong. I scowled hard as I spoke, and it answered.
Yes. Just get here, and I'll walk a user unfamiliar with Greater-Dimensional systems through everything from one to ten, nice and slow.
So please don't die. Less than a week into the end of the world, even running from a Beta Type would be too much for you.
It kept spouting only what it wanted to say, then shut up before I could even react. I stood there with my face twisted for a moment.
Then the cold wind on the rooftop snapped me back. I pressed my furrowed brow flat with my fingers and muttered.
"Fine. Broadcast Room, huh?"
Let's see that face of yours.
Dimensional Law this, Beta that — it sure seemed talented at talking in ways nobody could understand.
Still, whatever it was, if it could help me, there was no reason not to go find it.
Thinking that, I grabbed the closed rooftop door to yank it open — then narrowed my eyes, turned, and climbed back down over the railing to a lower window instead.
If I ran into that thing, there was no answer. Better to be careful where careful was due.
A few minutes later I opened the Broadcast Room door and stepped inside.
More accurately, I stopped halfway through and scanned the interior with open suspicion — then something cracked and twisted out in the hallway, and I slammed the door shut fast.
"…I'm here. Come out. Stop hiding."
Understood~
As if it had been waiting for those exact words, the voice came from a computer sitting in one corner of the Broadcast Room.
Then, with no power at all, the monitor lit up on its own — and I locked eyes with a form I'd never seen in my life standing inside the screen.
I said nothing. Just stared with my face fully scrunched. The creature rubbed its cheek with a wing, looking embarrassed and unsure what to do with itself.
Aww… staring like that is kind of embarrassing. I mean, I do have a bit of a reputation for being pretty even in the Greater Dimensions, but still.
"…What? Pretty?"
A crow wrapped head to toe in bandages saying that — pretty how, exactly?
At my reaction it blinked, looked itself over once, then drooped its head, dejected.
This part can't be helped. Once an apocalypse starts, every supernatural force that touches that dimension has to be realized through the Administrator's power. So their tastes get mixed in pretty heavily.
"Administrator — you mean that mummy?"
Mummy? Mummy? Hmm… what's that… Ah! Pfft—! Yes. That's right. Not just appropriate — a perfect description. A corpse that's been rotting for thousands of years.
It covered its beak and fought desperately not to laugh. Honestly, from where I stood, that whole look was even funnier.
"So that mummy is involved somehow? That's why you're stuck as a crow?"
Hmm? No. The 'taste' part is just these bandage scraps. Being stuck in this non-human form is simply because I don't have enough power.
"…."
I decided to move on there. Honestly, that wasn't the important part.
"Change of subject. First — what exactly are you? Can you actually help me?"
Help? Come on, of course! You think 'help' even covers it?
The crow answered with total confidence, winked one red eye, and switched the screen.
What kind of help do you want? The specific cause of the apocalypse? The identity of the Necro that keeps harassing the user? Or maybe…
It trailed off, pointed at itself, and twisted its body in what — given the situation — was clearly meant to be a seductive pose.
I waved a hand dismissively with a cold expression and said one thing.
"Skip all of that. Tell me how to put down the bastard currently wrecking this building."
Beta Type, was that the name?
Until I tore that thing's throat out, I wasn't leaving this school.