A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Expedition (3)
To them, it was simply a rather familiar backdrop.
In other words: massive test tubes jutting out every which way from a chaos of machinery and flesh, wires and blood vessels so thoroughly tangled that telling one from the other was hopeless. Tentacle-like things sprouting in abundance. Clumps of meat strung together across every surface by nerve cells and mucus, sticky as spider silk. Things that looked like pipes but, if you touched them, pulsed with the unmistakable feel of living veins. Mechanical devices that twitched when prodded. And so on, and so forth.
No matter how you looked at it, the place felt like nothing more than a grander version of Griyanaar's laboratory — and that was precisely why the three of them, faced with a scene that would have sent anyone else (Belial especially) into a full-blown burn-it-all-down frenzy, simply glanced around with practiced indifference and decided to press on with the search.
Of course, first they had to deal with a few things…
KRA-KOOM! CRACK!
Gurgle-gurgle, PSHHHHH!
CLANG-SHATTER!
"My, my."
"It would appear they mean to welcome their guests."
"Nyaha, these ones look stronger than the last bunch-nya."
Barely a few minutes after they stepped inside, muscular naked monsters smashed through the frosted glass of the test tubes and came lunging out. Tentacle-beasts burst free from the meat-masses on floor and ceiling with wet PWOOSH sounds, trailing torrents of fluid. And last of all, something that seemed to have swallowed an entire section of the research wing's equipment whole — a colossal abomination roughly the size of a large bus, bristling with razor-spined tentacles, armored carapace, and a maw full of hideous teeth — shattered several relatively intact test tubes as it lumbered forward.
Had Icarus been watching, he would have been shouting Whoa! Boss fight! without a second thought. But that was the situation they had to clean up first.
Of course, Smeragi's earlier "high evaluation" had been a high evaluation of them as sandbags and nothing more. The thought that opponents who wouldn't pop in a single hit had finally shown up sent Smeragi into a delighted frenzy — and she wasn't alone.
"Hmm. At last, creatures worth fighting seem to have made their entrance."
"Is that so?"
Oxianor, who had been nursing a quiet boredom of her own, reshaped the living formalwear she had on into a suit of living armor and plunged straight into combat.
The result: in less than ten minutes, the muscular brutes officially designated Combat Bio-Weapon, Type-Orc lay sprawled across the floor with every muscle in their bodies ruptured. The tentacle-monsters designated Combat Bio-Weapon, Type-Ten, which had been trailing some unidentifiable slime from their tips, had their tentacles ripped out while still alive and were likewise reduced to corpses on the ground.
As for the star of the show — the giant beast…
"Hmm. Griyanaar?"
"What?"
"You don't seem interested in taking this one along, do you? Unlike that trap-type creature a moment ago, you appear rather indifferent toward it…"
Oxianor, looking for all the world like a lady knight in armor, had the thing skewered on a pair of massive tentacles grown from her transformed arms. Spikes erupting from the inside out had turned it into a porcupine, and it was gushing blood in thick sheets — or rather, not just blood. Blackened, rotting chunks of flesh were bubbling out alongside it in companionable spurts.
"I was interested at first, but a closer look showed it's the same kind of monster as the ones scattered around us."
"Hmm. That bad, is it?"
"It just swallowed a whole piece of equipment and bulked up. Nothing worth keeping. Fine to scrap."
"In that case, I shall dispose of it thoroughly here and now, so as not to leave it in our way."
The moment Griyanaar pronounced it worthless, self-destruct viruses poured in through the spikes Oxianor had driven through its body, and it began dying slowly from the inside out.
While Oxianor and Griyanaar earnestly debated whether to bring the earlier trap-creature back as a sample — and a gift for Icarus — our little kitty Smeragi was sliding around through the reeking slime, and, for good measure, finishing off any monsters that still had a pulse, putting on a thoroughly catlike display the entire time…
"Mrrrow?"
Even though she had torn every last visible monster to shreds, some lingering sense of life kept prickling at her from somewhere. She tilted her head at the incomprehensible situation for a moment — then:
"Mrrrowww? Aah, found it-nya!"
With the help of the ultra-high-performance biological sonar mounted where a pair of cat ears ought to be, Smeragi finally pinpointed the source of the life she was sensing. Only it wasn't among the corpses strewn around them…
"What is it, Smeragi?"
"That big monster! There's a living reaction inside it-nya!"
"Mrr?"
The problem was that the giant beast in question had already been pumped full of Oxianor's self-destruct virus — its biological tissue and the equipment it had swallowed were rotting away together. Oxianor hastily cut off the virus injection, reabsorbed what remained into her own body, and set to work dismantling the beast alongside Smeragi with considerable enthusiasm.
And there, inside, amid the onslaught of modified living tissue that had tried to devour the entire facility, they found a single life-support unit that had held out for ages on the technological prowess of the ancient empire.
"Ohho?"
"Well now. A truly marvelous thing."
"How weird-nya. Wonder how this thing held out-nya."
Naturally, there was no chance their resident queen of curiosity, Gri-Gri, would simply let something this interesting pass.
"Let's pull it out right now."
"Mm."
The finer details will be omitted, but after a thoroughly spectacular hacking job of one sort or another…
With a soft hiss, the stasis field released, and a woman in a lab coat sat up —
"Eek— eeeeeek! H-how did a monster open this?!!"
"Ah. Whoops."
"Mm. Come to think of it, I forgot to change back."
—and the instant she saw Oxianor standing right in front of her, still clad in tentacles and spike-armor and staring straight at her, she fainted on the spot, blowing their fateful first meeting clean out of the water.
Of course, that only lasted a moment. Once she came to, the woman found herself overwhelmed by Oxianor's impeccably courteous manner — now restored to formalwear — along with Griyanaar's superhuman intellect and Smeragi's unnervingly peculiar gaze, and she began spilling everything of her own accord.
"Um, so, I'm a researcher who worked at this lab — my name is Rain… I heard the emergency broadcast about a Class-S biohazard outbreak and ducked in here for the time being…"
"Yes, yes, I more or less understand."
"So basically, you were the only one who survived when everything went down here, right-nya?"
"Th-that's right."
Of course, their supers weren't offering free mental-health counseling out of pity for Rain.
"Anyway — that empire is gone now. Collapsed. The world is currently split among four alien powers, each holding its own territory."
"Is that so… So the empire really did fall."
The point was to get her up to speed on reality fast, and nudge her into a cooperative frame of mind.
"In that case, do you happen to know where the 'research lab' is in this place?"
"The research lab?"
With all the mutations that had run rampant through the facility, the last thing they wanted was to waste more time wandering around hunting for it. Pure force of will, really.
And fortunately — or perhaps inevitably —
"Of course I know. It's right nearby, so you can get there in no time."
"Oh."
To Rain, the research lab was the place she had been working at until mere tens of minutes ago. And so the three of them set off at a cheerful pace, less like explorers and more like people heading out on a picnic.
A Bright and Wholesome Tentacle Dungeon Expedition Log. (3)
Not long after the three supers and one researcher started toward the lab…
Icarus — that is, I — watched a message I had been waiting for materialize before my eyes.
<<< Exploration of the 'Ancient Base Ruins'! CLEAR! >>>
"Oh, looks like they finally finished sweeping the place."
"The interior layout must have been quite a bit more complicated than expected."
"Yeah, that tracks."
After all, mutation and infestation had been going on in there for a very long time. No matter how brilliant Griyanaar and Oxianor were, maps were meaningless in a situation like that — of course it would take a while. If anything, factoring that in, they'd cleared it faster than I would have guessed.
And so, with the quest cleared, I found myself getting a little giddy at the thought of rolling those sweet guaranteed gacha pulls the moment the three of them got back.
But a moment later…
The researcher your supers rescued from inside the giant beast has turned out to be the very culprit who triggered the Class-S biohazard in this facility.
The moment your supers, having obtained the lab's records, uncovered that fact, the researcher immediately mobilized every power source and defense system in the base in an attempt to destroy the evidence!