The Factory Must Burn
I had to blow up this goddamn factory. 'These bastards really are a cell-based organization.'
Yeonhee and I had just returned from the area where Cha Jin-hyeok had been when I received a call from Kang Yeonsu.
"Yeonhee, this is going to be harder than I thought. The guy listed as the building owner was under Fascination and couldn't remember a thing. After analyzing the documents they tried to destroy, I found out the organization operates as a strict cell system. It's easy to pick them off one by one, but digging all the way up to the very top... that's not something we can pull off in a short time."
They kept information strictly compartmentalized. The directors, known as Dokkaebi, would suddenly appear and deliver the chairman's orders. That was as far as Kang Yeonsu had managed to uncover.
This factory was probably one of those compartmentalized operations. 'DOH...'
I shook off the brief thought that had surfaced when one of the men inside suddenly shouted. It was a cry of pure joy. In a place this horrific, that bright voice felt utterly sickening. For a moment, the pure malice of humanity made my head spin.
"It's a jewel! An Evolution Jewel!!"
"For real? Whoa!! How long has it been?"
"Kyahaha— jackpot! How much bonus are we getting?"
"Even with the bad atmosphere lately, it'll be at least a thousand percent, right?"
"Everyone shut up and get back to your stations!"
They were so excited they even stopped their busy work and rushed over to the one who had shouted. Whatever they'd found must have been something extraordinary.
I moved closer and confirmed what they called an Evolution Jewel. To my shock, the jewel they spoke of was an eyeball embedded in the socket of a newborn child.
'...... It's dead.'
The hybrid lifeform had already withered and exhausted its life force. 'That jewel... it's saturated with the child's life energy...'
[Cold Judgment]
[Cold Judgment]
'Are you telling me to stay calm right now? Are you basically telling me to become a monster? Will you shut the hell up?!'
When I inwardly vented my rage, the messages finally fell silent. I gripped the arm that was itching to draw my sword and continued watching what they were doing.
One of them reached out with filthy hands toward the baby and began carefully extracting the eyeball. The beautiful silver glow it emitted made it worthy of being called a jewel.
The man who seemed to be in charge examined the jewel, then pulled out a palm-sized piece of paper from his pocket and tore it apart.
'He's sending a signal.'
It was an item called a 'Safety Note' that notified others who carried the same paper of an emergency. It was the same item Yeonhee had received a few sheets of from Kang Yeonsu at the café yesterday.
"A Dokkaebi will be here soon. Let's do some cleaning for the first time in a while."
'Cleaning? In this situation? Didn't an emergency signal go out?'
Had they really not sounded the alarm in the birthing area alone? If that was true, it was absurd. Or perhaps because this place was located at the exact opposite end from the prison, they never imagined an intruder could reach here so quickly.
Either way, if the one who received the message was on the same level as the dwarf-type item specialist I'd met yesterday, I needed to get out of here fast. He was an S-rank hunter—someone I couldn't handle no matter what I did right now.
But even if I had to leave, I couldn't just let these pieces of trash walk away.
The people handling the delivery of babies in the birthing area were all low-ranking hunters below E-grade. There were about twenty of them.
'You all need to feel some pain too.'
Lightning Step
Crunch—!
"Ugh!!"
I took down the man in charge first—the one who had been carefully packaging the Evolution Jewel. By the time he collapsed to the floor, I had already moved on to the others.
"Gack!"
"Urk!"
The hunters who saw their colleagues fall with dying gasps reacted too late and tried to run, but they were far too slow. In the end, every single 'DOH' operative fell by my hand, becoming one with the floor.
If I'd been in my human form, I would've spat a thick glob of phlegm on their faces. Damn it.
'I can't kill them too easily.'
That's why I'd only knocked them out instead of killing them.
'What the hell is this...'
I picked up the small, bead-shaped jewel they had handled so preciously with my fingers. It was the eyeball of a horrific hybrid, but it had still been a living being mixed with human blood. With a somewhat solemn feeling, I read the unusually long message that appeared.
The leader of 'DOH (Defenders Of Humanity)' has seen the future of this world every single day since the moment she was born. At the age of fifteen, she accepted her fate and has been walking the best path she could choose ever since.
The atrocities committed by the organization she created are too horrific to put into words. Paradoxically, however, her activities led to the discovery of an unexpected possibility—the Evolution Jewel.
Glimmerkin. A tragic hybrid born from the crossbreeding of a human and a goblin. The mother who carried this pitiful creature clung to a single faint light of survival even as her mind crumbled. Even though she carried an unwanted life, she held onto one single wish—that the child she conceived would be happy. The Evolution Jewel, born from that terrible environment and filled with astonishing benevolence and love, holds possibilities so profound that no god could predict them.
Consuming an Evolution Jewel temporarily imbues equipment with incredible power. The extent of that power is impossible for anyone to predict.
Evolution Jewels possess an attractive force that draws them toward one another when brought close.
'...... What the hell? The leader of the organization is a woman? A woman did all this? Wow...'
It felt like I'd been slapped in the back of the head again.
'She saw the future of this world from the moment she was born...'
What kind of future had she seen that made her commit such horrific acts? 'Well, if she grew up seeing that every day, it'd be strange if she hadn't gone mad.'
From the perspective of one person's life story, it was tragic. I wanted to ask her what she ultimately desired.
'Haa...'
I shook my head vigorously and began to move. The power to temporarily strengthen equipment. But since it was a consumable, I couldn't use it recklessly. I'd have to keep it safe for now.
'If they're going to play this dirty... I can't afford to stay lost in human sentimentality either.'
Both the Contaminated Elixir of Life Fragments and this jewel. It seemed like the right move to start looking for ways to actively utilize them.
As I stored the hunters in my subspace, I continued thinking. 'Come to think of it, is the Elixir of Life different from an elixir?'
The Elixir of Life that could even revive the dead. Of course, no one had ever actually seen it, but with such a heavy price attached to its power, it was certainly possible.
People had always assumed it had the same effect as an elixir, but recalling the description of the elixir-seeking quest, the Elixir of Life seemed to be a lower-tier concept compared to an elixir.
'An elixir can revive someone who's been dead for a long time, so there's no comparison there. Hmm...'
For now, I stored the jewel in my subspace and gathered all the collapsed mothers. Their bodies were in terrible condition. Even if I took them outside, I wasn't sure they could live proper lives. Still, it would be far more humane than dying in a place like this.
'The babies...'
I hesitated the moment I saw the creatures called Glimmerkin, but eventually I raised my sword and granted them peace.
'I'm sorry.'
For some reason, those words came to mind. After that, I finished installing every last bomb and was about to leave the area when—
"Th-there's something over there!!"
"The exit!! Close the exit!!"
'You sons of bitches.'
I wanted to tear them apart right then and there. I detonated the remaining bombs I'd planted one after another, then slipped past the hunters whose attention had been drawn back to the explosions and burrowed up through the ceiling.
The moment I reached the surface, I detonated every last remaining bomb and hurled a condensed fireball into the hole I'd emerged from.
— KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG───!!!
I also released the Contaminated Breath that had been active since I'd rescued the people trapped in the prison. Then I gathered nearly all of my remaining mana and slammed Wall of Fire into the underground space.
Fwoooooosh—!
"Aaaaaaaaagh——!!"
"Hiiiiiik!! It's hooooooot!!"
The 'paralysis' effect of the Contaminated Breath piled up in the sealed space would restrict their movements. The combination of skeleton bombs, fireballs, and Wall of Fire would bring them unimaginable agony.
Boom-boom-boom—!!Kwa-kwa-kwang!!
The explosion I caused triggered a chain reaction among the machines and experimental equipment inside. Then the flood of messages began appearing in my mind.
As the 'DOH' members inside died, the fragment count shot up rapidly. However, there were no deaths among the B-rank or higher hunters, and I only obtained one or two fragments from each C-rank or lower hunter.
100 Contaminated Elixir of Life Fragments have been collected.
Purifying them will yield an Elixir of Life Fragment.
'Purification... that's expensive...'
Purifiers demanded a hefty sum to use their ability. 'It's worth paying the price, but expensive is still expensive.'
This attack had netted me over eighty fragments. The count quickly began stacking again past one hundred. Since I needed a thousand fragments to obtain the Elixir of Life, it was still a long journey. But somehow, it didn't feel that far away anymore.
I stared for a moment at the violently shaking underground factory. It was a shame I couldn't finish off all those pieces of trash, but I didn't want to waste time hesitating like I had yesterday and end up suffering for it. I shook off my lingering feelings and ran straight to Yeonhee.
Perhaps because my combo had worked better than expected, not a single one of them had managed to reach the surface. They were all flailing helplessly beneath the collapsed ceiling debris and the explosions.
Yeonhee, who had been waiting, had already summoned her Fallen Shadow Drake.
...... The black dragon noticed me and narrowed its vertically slit pupils even sharper, but for some reason it let me ride without much resistance.
"I asked him nicely in advance!"
'Good thing he listens to Yeonhee at least.'
I'd been sure he would never let me ride him.
"Actually, he wasn't listening at all. So I raised my domination stat a bit..."
'...... You used your stat points on domination again? What a waste. Tsk...'
In two days, the moment we enter the dungeon, I'm going to have to teach this guy a lesson first.