Nothing on the First Basement Floor
Once he had confirmed there was nothing on the first basement floor, Yujun drew out the video orb.
"Should I call the Doctor?"
"Not exactly a call. Closer to a video chat."
He let mana spill from his hand.
Vmmm.
A white light kindled inside the orb, then slowly deepened to blue. The connection opened at once. Doctor Sammington must have found the video orb some time ago; there was no need to shout. His face appeared within it.
"Dad, I need some allowance, so I called—— oh, wait. That's not it. Doctor. It's been a while."
"A cute little stunt you pulled," the Doctor said.
"Cute? Hearing that from you gives me goosebumps head to toe."
"I'm curious about the intent. Why did you do it?"
"I thought I might need your help. And as it happens, I do."
"My help, is it..."
"Where's that 3080, or whatever it was?"
"You mean the RTZ-3080?"
"Is there another one?"
"I don't know where it is, either."
"Damn it. This guy's useless."
"Do you not want the Stone of Omnipotence? I should have corrected that mouth of yours first."
"Break the promise and you're the one who loses, old man. Forget you're bound by a soul contract?"
"...You won't yield a single word, will you."
"You don't know at all? Where it is?"
"There is a place I predicted from the data I've gathered. It isn't certain, however."
"Tell me that much, then. I'll find the rest by feel."
Doctor Sammington rummaged through a drawer, drew out a sheet of paper, and read.
"Hm. According to five months of investigation... it should lie somewhere between the eighth basement floor and the sixty-second."
"...Old man— no, Doctor. That's far too broad. And you're telling me even this isn't certain? What in the world did you do for five months? Be honest. You were loafing, weren't you?"
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is? This much was already a great deal to learn. Don't be so hard on me."
"Fine. Nothing else, then?"
"Ah. I told you only to wreck the base, and you went and brought the whole building down."
"Then you should have been specific. And it wasn't me."
"Hm?"
"The one next to me did it."
Yujun pointed at Heminine.
"M-me? It wasn't me!"
She denied it, but Yujun's acting had hit its stride — enough to throw even Doctor Sammington, who knew the truth, for a brief moment.
"Enough of the jokes. Give your all to the task you've been given."
With that, the video link went dead.
Doctor Sammington had been less help than expected. The eighth basement floor and the sixty-second — all Yujun had learned was that the thing lay very deep. He would have to find the base by moving himself.
He dropped in a single stretch to the fifth basement floor, closed his eyes, and pushed the range of his senses outward. Then he used Super Concentration as well. Perhaps because there were too many obstacles, that range refused to spread very far. His senses combed as far as the eleventh basement floor, and Yujun cocked his head.
A supercomputer was not a living thing. Finding it by sense was all but impossible. In the end, he had no choice but to ransack every floor. There was no time limit, so there was no need to grow anxious.
The problem is the robots.
From the tenth basement floor down, they were deployed in force, and the energy they carried was on an entirely different scale from the machines on the surface. One bad hit, and even Yujun's life could hang by a thread — that was the density of it. The tenth floor was packed with them. There was a reason Doctor Sammington, whose strength rivaled Balrog's, had been afraid.
Right. Balrog. What if I use him as bait?
But treating the demon like a summon came with two problems. First, he would not obey. Painful Strike and the Absolute Sealing Orb might make him listen for a moment, but there was no telling when he would bolt. Second, unlike a summon, death was the end for him. One life. This was the Illusion Queen's world, so he might not die completely — yet if he died here, there was no predicting where he would return.
For those two reasons, Yujun could not bring himself to use Balrog lightly.
I'll have to take the time and train him properly later. It was not a judgment Yujun, who had put him down so easily, was eager to make — but Balrog was truly strong. Aside from Doctor Sammington, it was hard to find his equal. Even the two apostles who had come before were nothing beside a Balrog who had grown stronger still. Handle him properly, and there was no subordinate as useful.
"Heminine. From the tenth basement floor on, it's very dangerous. You could die. Are you coming with me?"
He asked it in earnest. Heminine nodded as if the answer were obvious.
"Wouldn't being separated from you be more dangerous?"
"Clever."
There was no telling when Sorsin's faction would come crashing in. Leave Heminine alone then, and he didn't need to see the footage to know what would become of her.
"Let's move fast. Before they get here."
Yujun and Heminine entered the tenth floor. They had to break the elevator doors, so of course the noise was enormous — more than enough to draw every robot's eye. Unlike the machines they had faced on the surface, these opened fire at once, no warning at all.
BOOOOM!
Yujun moved fast. Lasers poured after him without pause as the robots tried to land a hit, and the interior — some kind of laboratory — was reduced to wreckage.
I need to find the supercomputer... If I just smash everything as I go, that should do it, right?
Come to think of it, there was no particular object he was meant to retrieve. Smash it all, and that was the end of it. He planted his feet and spread a Sword Barrier. Heminine slipped inside as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Fwoosh! BOOOOM! KRASH!
Every laser was stopped cold.
Yeesh... these are pretty strong.
His wrist tingled. The sword was fine, but the shock traveled straight into his arm. If even he, with his defense, felt a faint smarting pain, that said everything about the power of the lasers these basement robots fired.
Take a hit without the Sword Barrier, and I'd better be ready for my armor to break.
Of course, so long as his head stayed clear, a laser was never going to land.
I can't handle them half-heartedly.
These were opponents that demanded everything he had. It wasn't one or two of them, either. Ringed by more than a hundred robots, even Yujun could not simply slip free. He held the barrier for a long while, and still the machines showed no thought of stopping — proof of just how efficient their use of divine energy was. Whatever the stuff actually was, it was efficient enough that even Yujun, who possessed Chaos, found it tempting.
When the assault showed no sign of ending, he looked for another way.
They do say the best defense is a good offense.
Blocking alone was not going to improve matters. So he threw a rather reckless play.
Sword Unity (EX++)
He meant to try the skill he had newly gained from the skill archive.
In truth, Sword Unity was not a skill with a fixed form or a set method of attack. Depending on how the caster chose to use it, the applications were endless.
"Hoo..."
This was the first time he was using it properly.
No idea if what I'm attempting will even work.
It was his first time, so there was no promise of success, and that left him uneasy — but he stood to lose nothing by using Sword Unity. He decided to make the most of being under Super Concentration. His focus was at its peak.
This is honestly insane.
He meant to cast Sword Unity while the barrier was still up. Two skills at once. These were no ordinary skills. Both were high-rank, and the difficulty of either was no joke. Where growth was concerned, leave out the challenge and all you had left was a corpse. The moment was hardly a leisurely one, but it was time for a new challenge all the same.
Sword Unity. The freedom to wield a sword as he pleased was already an effect of his Swordsmanship trait. The true effect of Sword Unity did not stop at anything so modest.
Mana drained from his body in a flood. An Absolute Sovereign's Sword, identical to the one he was swinging to hold the barrier, took shape in empty air.
Vmmm. Vmmmm.
It began as one, but swords of the same shape multiplied — two, then three. There was a reason he had come to use Sword Unity this way. The pitch-black boss that had guarded the skill archive last time: watching that monster hold a sword identical to his own, then generate yet another, had given him the idea.
If that thing can do it, there's no way I can't.
Join Sword Unity to the Swordsmanship trait, and there was nothing a sword could not do. He went a step further, conjuring still more blades, and even replicated them dozens of meters from his body, setting them adrift in the air.
He could not come through that untouched. The drain on his mental power was severe, and holding Super Concentration for so long sent drowsiness creeping in. Even so, the Equanimity trait held him up, and he endured without losing his mind. The mana cost was enormous as well, but his Magic was not so low as to be emptied by that much.
Mana's fine.
All that remained was steering the swords that hung in the air. Honestly, that was the hardest part of all. Fail here, and everything he had done would be wasted. It did not seem impossible, though. He was confident he would succeed.
The swords moved. At first they shuddered violently, and controlling them was anything but easy, but as time passed the remote control grew smoother. It was not a difficulty that ought to have been solved in so short a span, yet Yujun managed it. In truth, his Genius trait deserved much of the credit.
At last the four swords began to move as his will led them.
Shhk! BOOM! Shhk!
Explosions rolled out one after another, not far off. Four Absolute Sovereign's Swords carved through the robots. Caught in a sudden ambush, the machines milled in confusion. Yujun was still the priority target, but they could not simply ignore swords moving in perfect concert. The weight of that ceaseless concentrated fire dropped, and the drop was plain to see.
Yujun swept Heminine up and kicked off the ground. Lasers chased his back. There, he used Flash.
He brought the flat of his sword down hard on the heads of robots that could no longer find their target, and smashed them apart.
BOOM! CRASH!
In an instant, more than a hundred robots fell. The tenth floor was completely cleared.
"Those swords... how did you do that? A skill?"
"Yes."
"It's not magic, is it?"
"Does it look like magic?"
"No. If you were commanding spirits, I could accept it, but..."
"Not spirits, either. Alley-oop. Let's poke around here, then head to the next floor."
Yujun looked down at his sword with a faint, easy smile. He liked Sword Unity a great deal. It had undone a tight spot in a single stroke. The astonishing part was that he still had not drawn out even a tenth of the power the skill possessed. Pulling all of it free would take grueling work.
He and Heminine broke through to the eighteenth basement floor in one go. From the eleventh floor on, he never clashed with the robots directly — he swept them clean from the entrance, and so avoided a pointless war of attrition. The fortunate thing was that the machines did not grow stronger the deeper he went. It had not turned out as he had feared, and Yujun was relieved.
And then, just as he was about to make for the nineteenth basement floor—
KUUUUNG—!
A roar sounded from above. Yujun's brow furrowed. Eight presences caught in his senses.
"It's them," Heminine said.
Who she meant was plain. Sorsin, and the party that followed him. They had come after Yujun and Heminine.