The Abandoned Warehouse (4)
‘A person?’
Behind the curtain of spiderwebs, a human shape stood hunched in the darkness.
Not a spider, at least. Small mercies, I guess?
Either way, it was clear this was the last stop in the Backrooms.
“So you’re the one who made these webs.”
The spider silk that formed the white curtain stretched out in long strands, tied to whatever was crouched there.
More precisely, the things swarming over its rotten body were crawling out in lines, mixed with pus and blood.
Was it already dead?
I tapped the curtain with my hammer, and it flinched hard enough to make the whole webbed mass ripple.
“Ah.”
Still alive. Damn it.
Well, after all this, it’d be strange if the final stretch was easy.
Still, I had definitely poked the wrong thing.
The spiderweb curtain trembled in fine, rapid shivers, like I’d jabbed a hornet’s nest.
“Hey, if you’re a person, how about we talk this out?”
The thing had curled up in the corner like it was scared, so I tried talking to it just in case.
In response, it lifted its head, revealing a woman with long, wild hair and empty sockets packed full of maggots.
Ah.
So not a person.
“…Uuuhrrrgh! Guhk, kueeck- gghrrrhk-”
“Ah, fuck... please stop.”
The woman pointed at the door while looking at me, as if she was trying to say something.
I couldn’t tell what she was saying with her mouth full of maggots.
Then she started vomiting on the floor, and the amount of maggots spilling out was obscene.
At this point, maybe her whole body was stuffed with them.
As the endless stream of wriggling maggots spread across the floor, she kept jabbing a finger toward the door.
“You want me to leave? Problem is, I don’t have a way out either.”
Still, it looked like I’d have to take her down to finish this.
The method was the same as always.
Strip away the spiderweb curtain and crack the skull underneath.
The hammer always knew the answer.
It was bigger and denser than it needed to be, but that just meant if it was all bundled together like this, I could probably handle it with one arm.
I swung at the huge curtain and-
“Aaagh, shit, let go!”
My body got yanked forward in an instant, and I hastily severed the arm.
The detached mannequin arm stayed caught in the web curtain, where it was rapidly being gnawed apart as it hung there.
Shit. So it wasn’t just dense for show.
It was sturdy, and strong enough to drag me off balance in a heartbeat.
And the curtain was now starting to surround me, as if it were putting on a curtain call in real time.
You think I’m going to bow out that easily?
“So I’m looking like prey, huh. Pick the wrong meal and you’ll get a stomachache.”
Seriously, please stop.
Having the whole world turn into maggots and come crashing down on me was even more disgusting than I’d imagined.
Worse, the white curtain glittering in the light almost looked warm and beautiful for a second, like a lazy afternoon drifting by.
What the hell is this. Mind control or something?
That alien beauty was what made it all the more revolting.
I have to break through the curtain to get close...
Just waving my arm around wasn’t going to work.
I was basically a fish trapped in a net.
I needed something sharp.
Dodging the curtain as it inched closer, I found a patch of still-safe space and spread out my remaining mannequin arm.
I forged the palm edge into a blade.
I’d rushed it, so the shape was a little crude, but I still managed to make five decent hand swords.
“You’re done.”
I raised one and slashed at the curtain that had come close.
Fortunately, I managed to cut through it this time without getting caught, but in that brief instant the edge was already being gnawed away.
When I swung again, the blade snapped right at the point where it touched the web.
Two swings was the limit for this rough work, huh.
Four hand swords left.
At this rate, if I used up only two before reaching the bastard, I might be able to make it work.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d get an upset stomach?”
Then let’s move fast.
I’d realized that thinking too much about an aberration was no good, so I ran without hesitation.
One layer, then another.
The more I cut away, the clearer its disgusting shape became.
It was scraping maggots out of a body riddled with rot-holes, and I nearly threw up.
Despite having no eyeballs, it stared straight at me and screamed again, flinging more maggots as it did.
“Ghk! Khk! Kheh!”
“Just rest already!”
I cut down the spiderwebs blocking my path.
Only one curtain remained before the body itself.
But maybe I was rushing too hard, because the hand sword sank deeper than I expected.
“Ghk-ghk, ghrraagh!”
“Ah, fuck! Don’t run!”
The bastard, with my blade jammed into its left arm, backed away.
Then it grabbed the surrounding webs, twisted its body, and yanked the entire curtain in toward itself.
In an instant, the webbing wrapped tight, cocooning it whole.
What, was it going to sit there and say “just five more minutes” or something?
I stayed wary, wondering what the hell it planned to do after gathering every last strand of web in the sixth warehouse, but once it turned into a cocoon, it stopped moving.
“I don’t care what you’re doing, just die!”
Honestly, this worked out better for me.
No more annoying curtain, and if it wasn’t moving, that was a win for me.
I drove the hand sword I was holding straight in.
“Ugh.”
But instead of piercing it, all I got was a searing pain in my grip, as if I’d stabbed a solid rock, and the blade itself came away damaged.
Had it gotten stronger by condensing all the webs together?
No matter how many times I stabbed, the cocoon showed no sign of breaking.
Fuck, this is bad.
...What now? This is the only weapon I’ve got.
For the time being, I backed off and left the cocoon alone.
While I gathered the broken pieces and reassembled them, I never took my eyes off it.
Yeah, definitely.
That thing was growing.
It had been human-shaped before, but was it actually undergoing metamorphosis?
Insects go from larva to adult through metamorphosis, or emergence.
Common sense said a human turning into something like an insect made no sense, but then again, this was an aberration that had been moving around by hosting maggots in its body.
Whatever it was becoming, one thing was clear: this was bad news for me.
I was already having enough trouble, and now it was going to get stronger?
Only two repaired so far.
The mannequin’s recovery was slow.
Even if I gathered up every remaining arm, I’d only have three or four hand swords.
I wasn’t confident I could break that hardened cocoon with this.
And if I waited for recovery, there was no telling when the thing would finish hatching.
The best-case scenario was killing it while it was still in the cocoon, but the weapons I had just weren’t enough.
My swords were blocked, and my hammer was all noise.
It felt like staring down a time bomb with no timer.
Armor isn’t nearly as useful against aberrations as I thought.
Weapons were in the same boat, but at least they bought me a little time.
So did I even need armor?
Once something hit me, it was already over anyway.
Come to think of it, why was I even wearing armor?
For safety, sure, but against an aberration it was basically useless.
Then maybe the one-hit-you, one-hit-me meta was the better option.
I stripped off every piece of the puppeteer’s armor I was wearing.
“All right, materials are ready.”
Back in my underwear again, I piled the armor together and started hammering it down.
As I struck it, the mannequin mass heated up, so I was heating and forging it at the same time.
Once I really got to work on the reinforced plastic that had melted into one lump, the clanging rang out sharply.
...Damn, it got huge...
Even so, I kept an eye on the cocoon.
Hammering away next to a cocoon twice as big as before was nerve-racking, but I couldn’t stop now.
This was a race to see who finished first.
I hurried to shape the blade and sharpen its edge.
Clang, clank-
The steady rhythm of forging made the fear fade a little. If I let myself think too much about that thing, I’d probably make a mistake, so I made myself avoid looking at the cocoon.
If I didn’t finish first, I was dead.
I didn’t even have armor to protect my body anymore.
And I still couldn’t fight with that stick that was barely worthy of being called a weapon.
I had to finish first, no matter what.
If I couldn’t forge an edge sharp enough to pierce that cocoon, it was over.
“This isn’t enough. More. Make it harder.”
Compress, compress, compress.
Using the marionette consciousness core embedded in the hilt, I hammered every mannequin part into the blade.
The blade was still thick like a bamboo sword, so I kept hammering it flat without pause.
My hand around the hammer went numb, but the harder it hurt, the more I bared my teeth and kept striking.
“Ghhh...”
There was no fire, and yet it felt hot.
My right arm felt like it might tear off, and my left hand, which I’d been forcing to hold the hilt steady, no longer felt like my own.
Droplets of sweat hit the plastic and hissed away into vapor.
Almost there.
Just a little more and it should be done.
Blood started running from both hands, but I ignored it and kept hammering.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-
The spiderweb bastard didn’t matter anymore.
My body moved as if completion itself were the only thing that mattered in the world.
Every time the blade quivered under the hammer, a shiver ran through me.
Every time the edge glinted coldly under the dim light, gooseflesh rose on my skin.
“Just a little more, just a little more-”
I could probably use it as it was now, but for some reason I felt like I couldn’t stop here.
Make it more perfect.
Make it able to cut through anything.
With that one thought, I hammered the blade again and again.
Crack-
Then came the discordant sound cutting in.
The ugly tear of cloth reached my ears.
It had finished its emergence.
But like I was possessed, I still couldn’t stop hammering.
“Huff, huff-”
I saw a shadow that seemed to touch the ceiling.
Something towered over the cocoon.
It looked half human, half giant wasp, and perhaps the shock of metamorphosis still hadn’t fully settled, because it stood motionless.
There was still time.
Strength surged into my right hand, which had been on the verge of losing the hammer.
Clang, clang!
But every time the hammer rang out, the thing twitched.
It understood.
It knew that once this sound stopped, it would be in danger too.
At last, it moved first.
A massive shadow swallowed me whole in an instant.
Six arms spread wide.
“Keruru, kerek!”
“Aaaagh!”
Thunk-!
With a clear ringing note, I swung the finished blade straight through it.
“Keehaaahhk!”