Don't Look at the Night Sea
Inmate No. 37811 remembered that night with perfect, crystalline clarity.
He had been strolling the prison after dark with his lover, same as always, when he found just the right kind of prey. His lover adored prey like that — the kind that made such a lovely sound when you gave them a light swing, stripping flesh from bone at the speed of sound. So he swung his lover, tore the meat off the man, and smashed what little dignity remained in something that was no longer even human. He could still feel it, even now: the sorrow of that prey wailing like a wounded animal, soaking into him through every pore, and the sensation of something inside him filling up, rich and complete.
If only he hadn't shown up at just the wrong moment, Inmate No. 37811 would have had the most satisfying night of his life.
"Hey, Whip Ghost."
The voice from beside him yanked Inmate No. 37811 out of the sea of memory.
Whip Ghost. That was what they called him — because he never went anywhere without his lover, the whip, a thing so close it might as well have been part of his body, and because he had shown the people around him, time and again, how he swung it without a second's hesitation and tortured whoever stood in his way.
"...What?"
"Look over there. Isn't that the guy you've been looking for?"
"......!"
Whip Ghost studied the spot his partner was pointing at. Sure enough, the man he'd been hunting was right there — along with a scrawny companion of unknown origin.
"Just like you said, that bastard's completely drunk on that arrogant Super Rookie reputation of his. You figured he'd pop up anywhere that looked like it had something valuable, and you were right."
Honestly, even as he'd said it to his partner, he'd only half believed it. And yet here they were. Whip Ghost felt the still, settled surface of his emotions begin to boil.
That bastard. That cocky new Orange.
Everyone around him kept putting him up on a pedestal — Super Rookie this, Super Rookie that — and the little shit actually believed it, walking around with his shoulders puffed out like he was somebody. Even now, just thinking about that interrupted date with his lover was enough to jerk him awake in the middle of the night.
What was it the kid had said? That if they ever ended up in a Dark Zone together, they'd run into each other sooner or later — so he'd better run well when the time came.
Crunch.
Whip Ghost tracked the so-called Super Rookie's movements with bloodshot eyes. The bastard and his companion walked right up to the wide-open front gate of the port logistics warehouse, then started opening it without even caring about the racket it made.
He'd heard that nobody had a way to open that gate, so everyone either struggled over the walls or just gave up. How the hell had this guy opened it?
Not that it matters.
Once they went into that warehouse, getting back out wouldn't be easy. The noise had already gone up, and the warehouse was boxed in by high walls on every side.
"Perfect. Bolt. You drive them inside."
"You actually gonna do this?"
"He's the bastard who interrupted our date. He even had the gall to 'warn' me. A brat in the seventy-thousands, of all people...!"
"Heh heh. Poor bastard."
The man they called Bolt let out an ugly laugh and drew a metal-framed slingshot. Unlike an ordinary slingshot, this one had been modified in all kinds of ways — accuracy and stopping power were more than enough.
Fweee!
He started casually popping steel pellets like it was a bored little game, and the other side reacted immediately. The scrawny, nameless companion glued to the Super Rookie's side had far better instincts than expected — pinpointing exactly where the pellets had come from and returning fire.
Thwack!
"Son of a bitch! That kid can actually shoot!"
A thick, long arrow — nothing like a steel pellet — slammed into the wall right above Bolt's head, and he let out a groan. Not that he was scared. If anything, he was purely enjoying himself.
"Decision's made. Whip Ghost, you take the Super Rookie. I'll kill the archer. I'll pin each of their limbs with steel pellets, then give them a nice, thorough kneading."
"Whatever. As long as I get to wreck that one, I don't care."
Whip Ghost and Bolt glared at their targets as they vanished through the gate, and slowly got ready to move. Other inmate teams that had already noticed the commotion would be creeping toward the port warehouse in silence, looking to loot it themselves. Fortunately, the targets they'd marked had backpacks that looked plenty fat. If they took them down fast and just snatched the packs, they wouldn't even have to worry about running into the other teams. And even if they did, they were confident a little intimidation would be enough to send anyone packing.
That was what it meant to be in the thirty-thousands.
More than that, this weird sound of waves I've been hearing for a while now is really getting on my nerves. Am I just stressed because of that damn bastard?
If so, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Stress had a way of dissolving on its own once you'd thoroughly ruined someone.
Tonight, the Super Rookie was going to be torn to shreds by the Whip Ghost.
We decided Lucy would store the secured cargo in a corner of her pack instead of mine. By my own assessment she had stamina to spare, and she'd kept up without complaint through long marches and drawn-out fights alike. She didn't show a hint of strain even with a full-sized backpack on her shoulders. What a talent.
If we'd had more time, I would have dragged Lucy across the entire map and scraped every last high-value item off the floor. Unfortunately, we were in no position to take our time. First, there was the Call of the Sea debuff, gnawing away at our Sanity Gauge with every passing second. Second, there were the people on our trail — and those ones had a very high chance of being professional human hunters.
Why does something always interrupt my happy little farming sessions? Is it just me?
At this point I couldn't tell whether whatever great being had stuffed me into the world of EFD was griefing me as naturally as breathing, or whether this was the Dark Zone's personal revenge for ten years of me chewing it up, tearing it apart, and wringing every last drop of fun out of it. Personally, I didn't care if it was trolling or revenge, so long as the rewards were decent.
"This warehouse is quite large, though. Are you moving because you already know the way?"
"It looks like a maze at a glance, but logistics warehouses are actually divided into sectors, so finding your way is easier than you'd think. The place we just pulled the secured cargo from, for example — that's Sector A. Where we're headed now is Sector B."
"I can't really tell. No matter how I look at it, it just seems like identical shipping containers dumped everywhere at random."
"Read the cargo codes marked on each container. Every sector has its own code stamped on them."
Most people didn't know this, but every shipping container that came through a logistics warehouse was assigned its own code for the sake of smooth export, import, and quarantine management. Through that code, the logistics system could track a cargo's current location, what was inside it, which country it had left from, and which country it was bound for. And if, through some stroke of misfortune, a container got plundered by pirates off the African coast or lost at sea, you had to prepare an entirely new shipment from scratch and assign it a fresh code.
At any rate, we worked our way from Sector A to Sector B, then from Sector B into the next, continuing our container gacha as we went. The basic rule was simple: open only the green containers and give the insides a light once-over, and if we found one of the rare red containers, we opened it no matter what. Of course, after cracking a red one, we never forgot to plant a few booby traps in the surrounding area. There was no guarantee I was the only one who knew this gacha strategy, which made it the perfect way to deal with competitors a step behind us.
"Next one's the last sector. It's also the one that connects directly to the harbor."
"Ah — no wonder the sound of the waves kept getting closer."
"That's... not it."
Sometimes ignorance really was a kindness. I savored the weight of a backpack packed tight with high-value loot and took the lead.
When we reached the last sector, a familiar stretch of pier and an administrative office came into view. Contrary to what I'd expected, though, there was no massive cargo ship in sight. If there had been a vessel sitting there loaded to the gunwales, I would have been more than happy to hit that too.
No — maybe it's more natural that there isn't one.
Every container stacked here was thick with rust from long neglect, which meant it had been a very long time since any ship had come or gone from this place. The vessels that should have arrived ought to have arrived long ago, and the ones that should have left had already been gone for ages. An empty pier was only to be expected.
I gently caught Lucy by the head as she stared blankly out at the dark blue water and turned her face aside.
"You don't stare at the night sea."
"...Is that so?"
"Sit still looking at the water at night and you're just asking to see things that aren't there."
I wasn't the type to believe in ghosts, but I knew perfectly well how easily the human brain manufactured illusions — and how readily it accepted them. In an environment like this, with our Sanity Gauge being eaten away bit by bit, that went double.
...Splash.
See? Even now, there was a sound like the calm surface of the water suddenly leaping up.
Splash. Splash. Splash.
Ah, come on. No way.
Most of the Primordials that had sensed the humans who'd infiltrated this Dark Zone would be searching on land. There was no reason for one to suddenly show itself from the far side of the sea — a place that was, for all practical purposes, the edge of the map.
No. Wait.
I had seen Primordials burst out of lakes and rivers often enough while playing EFD. I had never once seen one come out of the ocean in real time. EFD had countless coastal maps, but the one thing the developers had never implemented was a function that let players actually go into the sea. That said, I had seen Primordials a few times that were presumed to have come from the ocean.
I started running along the outer edge of the pier with Lucy.
Splash! Splash! Whoooooosh!
Thinking about it, it wasn't as if there had been no hints. There was the suggestively named Call of the Sea debuff. There was the apartment complex and the enormous port sitting inexplicably on a remote stretch of coast. And above all, there were traces scattered everywhere of some suspicious organization having operated this place. EFD players had simply never witnessed this spectacle directly inside the game. The process itself had always been there.
"Leader! Something behind us...!"
"Don't look, just run! Now that we're this far in, there's only one way out!"
Right. Modern-city maps adjacent to the coast, as a matter of course, had no subway exits. What they did have — the ones people generally knew about — were mountain tunnels that seemed to lead to the outside, secret underground bunkers sitting alone in the middle of a forest, and four-person boat exits that spawned at random along the shore. And then there was one more hidden exit, and it was in the lighthouse we were running toward right now.
There it is!
I confirmed the midsection jutting out like an observation deck from a lighthouse that rivaled a wind turbine in height. That was this Dark Zone's hidden escape route — the Heliport.