7. TS

When I first laid eyes on Rhea, only one thought had crossed my mind.

Her sanity is completely blown to bits.

Killing people was no great task for Rhea. She wasn't human, after all — she was a vampire.

The reason we swat mosquitoes or crush cockroaches is simply that they annoy us. That's the entire reason. Nobody feels a shred of guilt afterward.

But a corpse sitting in Elysia's workshop was a different matter entirely. At least this one looked human.

"So you're telling me this place can't be fixed?"

Elysia asked, puffing out her cheeks in a sulk.

How was I supposed to broach the subject?

The moment I asked, "Hey, is there anything like a corpse in here?", I had a feeling I'd become one myself.

Even if I had confirmed that Rhea wouldn't kill me, until very recently I'd been an ordinary man who could die just getting hit by a car. My points were nearly spent, too — which meant one thing, at least, hadn't changed: death was always right there beside me.

"How about we all take our time and think this through? Elysia, do you mind if I look around your workshop?"

I said it breezily, but my real plan was to hunt down the corpse. If I found it before any of the girls did, I figured things might be at least somewhat manageable.

"Of course you can! This place, you know, holds the results of my life's research, all gathered—"

I let her words wash over me and headed deeper into the workshop, Elysia trotting at my heels the entire way, rattling on without pause about her alchemy research.

I said I'm not curious! I wouldn't understand a word of it anyway.

Right up until now, Elysia's chatter had almost seemed cute — but knowing a corpse was in here had cold sweat running down my back. To her, I suspected, a corpse was just another piece of research material.

And yet, no matter how thoroughly I combed the workshop, there wasn't a body to be found.

"…it is! That's how my marionettes can wipe out everything from the 1st Floor on up! You'd love that, wouldn't you, Rowun!"

"I'm told the Administrator doesn't care for killing people, actually?"

"Then what's the tower even for! Isn't it there to kill people?"

What is even going on with these girls.

While I was busy searching, Elysia had seated Sierra, Rhea, and Vivi in a row and was holding a full-blown research symposium.

Is my skill glitching? I was sure I'd checked everywhere by now.

Muttering to myself, I glanced to the side — and my own face stared back at me from a mirror on the desk.

Oh. So I get to see this thing too?

There were three skills I actually used day to day.

Inspection, Detailed Inspection, and Thought Reading.

Though Thought Reading did strike me as a somewhat dangerous skill to have…

Thinking that, I stole a glance at Rhea.

Wh… what.

One glance was all it took for our eyes to meet.

How long had she been watching me?

Dodging her gaze, I ran through my skill list one more time.

It wasn't exactly a life-saving ability. All it did was pull up a facility's usage history.

But none of my other skills could locate a corpse.

Inquiry.

With the skill invoked, I swept my gaze across the workshop.

Uuurgh.

Purple haze billowed up so thick it turned my stomach. Every last trace of mana Elysia had ever burned on her research in this workshop — over the desk, across the floor, all of it — unspooled before my eyes in vivid detail.

I should just turn it off. I could barely see what was in front of me.

Just as I was about to shut it down, however, I caught it: an unusually dense current of mana flowing into the gap between two books on the left-hand shelf.

Why was that one spot so much thicker than everywhere else?

As if in a trance, I walked up to the bookshelf.

And just as I reached to pull out the one book glowing thickest of all—

"Anyway… wait!! Not there!!!!"

Elysia, still in the middle of her lecture, spotted me and shrieked in desperation — but it was too late.

Clunk-

The book had already been pulled.

THOOM— SCREEEECH-

The two bookshelves swung apart. The space between them was packed with fog so dense I couldn't see a hand's breadth inside.

Just what kind of experiments had she run in here, to pour out this much mana?

Elysia sprinted over in a panic and planted herself behind me.

"So you saw it?"

Nope. Couldn't see a thing, so no, I didn't.

A line straight out of a horror movie. I half expected her to follow it up with, "If you've seen this, I suppose you'll have to die?"

My hands clenched tight. Do I have hyperhidrosis or something? Why am I sweating?

Back in my school days, when my monthly allowance was five thousand won, I used to calculate how long I could stretch things every time I bought so much as a snack. Apparently, growing up changed nothing.

Can I even afford to stay alive?

"Oh my. That's a corpse… isn't it."

"It's groooss! Why won't it disappear even though it's deeead?"

Sierra, Rhea, and Vivi must have been curious as well, because at some point they had gathered around and were peering into the shelf.

A corpse?

I switched off Inquiry.

The fog that had been clouding my vision melted away — and there, lying inside, was a body soaked head to toe in chemicals.

Ah… for fuck's sake.

Dizziness hit me all at once. Whether it was the skill's doing, or simply the fact that this was the first dead body I'd ever seen, I couldn't say.

Just as I swayed on my feet, a status window popped up before my eyes.

Would it have killed them to hand me something batshit overpowered for once? Instead I got these vague little functions that basically read as do your management properly. Not that I wasn't grateful just now… I'd nearly thrown up.

I had no idea whose body it was, but one thing was certain: it was human.

"Haaah… how on earth did you find this place?"

Elysia groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead.

"Who was it? I thought you'd never even seen a climber."

"My mentor… He was on the 8th Floor."

His mentor?

Bosses had mentors, too?

Elysia pointed at Vivi as she explained.

"If she's one of Mosquito Sis's people on the 3rd Floor, then my mentor's the one who was on the 8th."

Ahh. So an intermediate boss, then.

Which meant the current situation was this: Elysia had been running her research on the corpse of her own mentor, the former boss of the 8th Floor…

Hey, you insane bitch!!!!

Have you no shame?! Has no one ever taught you not to step on your teacher's shadow?!

When I fixed her with a look of pure contempt, Elysia waved her hands frantically, flustered.

"N-no! I didn't kill him! The 8th Floor shut down — that's how my mentor died!"

And so Elysia explained everything that had happened.

In short: the 8th Floor had been the first to drop to a zero percent operation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rate, and while floor bosses were a special case, under normal circumstances they would simply have died. But Elysia had hauled him down to the 10th Floor and thrown every dark spell and desperate trick she had at the problem, all to keep him alive.

Come to think of it, Rhea hadn't known dead bosses could come back ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to life, either.

Elysia was explaining it all with a face on the verge of tears, and yet…

…I could see a status window floating beyond her shoulder.

Th-that's… actually cheap?

Just then, Sierra stepped forward.

"Monsters inside the tower can be revived at any ti—"

I clamped my hand over Sierra's mouth in a panic. I couldn't let an opportunity this golden slip by. From this moment on, this place would be ruled by Administrator Lee Rowun.

"Mmph! Mmph!"

Sierra squirmed against my grip.

KRA-KOOM-

The sudden explosion startled me so badly my hand flew off her mouth.

"Kyaaah! My research data!"

"There was a bug. That's all."

Rhea smiled serenely at me, as if nothing whatsoever had happened. But why are you looking at me like that…?

Her eyes bored into mine, as though trying to drill straight through me.

Some things were better left unknown.

I killed the skill on the spot.

"Ahem. In any case, the devotion Elysia showed in trying to save her mentor is truly a beautiful thing."

"Why is she acting like that all of a sudden?"

"No ideeeea. She gets like that sometimes, y'knooow."

"Another woman… again…"

Something odd had slipped into that little exchange, but I decided to let it go.

"As it happens, I studied a fair bit of alchemy myself, back outside the tower. Might I be permitted to examine your mentor?"

Flowery rhetoric. Empathy that stroked the other person's heartstrings — the hallmark of an F. For the record, my MBTI is INTJ.

Elysia's eyes went sparkle-bright. She clasped her hands together and came hurrying over.

"Huh, never would've guessed. You can actually do alchemy?"

Th… this is overwhelming.

With Elysia looking for all the world like an ordinary high school girl, the whole thing just felt uncomfortable.

"Step away from him."

Rhea yanked Elysia backward.

"Allow me. I will perform the resurrection myself!"

And with that bold declaration, I strode in between the bookshelves and examined the body.

Truthfully, all it would take was one click of the [Revive] button. But this was a moment for presentation.

Even the same action, depending on how it looks, can send waves of emotion of an entirely different magnitude.

I sank down onto one knee.

"Ooooh. Something about it feels so profound! I've never done any of that stuff."

Is… is that so? This is how it's done, right?

"Hooooooh…"

I grabbed every bottle of chemicals within reach and poured the whole lot over the body.

It was a corpse that was about to come back to life anyway — no harm done, right?

"HYAAAAH!!! Pikachu, I choose you!!!!"

Having bellowed a summoning cry whose popularity on Earth had once been truly legendary, I pressed the [Revive] button.

Light began to seep out of the corpse.

The resurrection unfolded exactly the way I'd always pictured it.

Radiance first, then flesh creeping slowly back into place. Hair grew in along with it — a sense of vitality returning to the body, if that made any sense.

"Mmm…"

A short while later, Elysia's mentor — revived down to the last detail — let out a slow groan.

"Where… is this…?"

Von Arnis swept the hair back from her face and rose to her feet, looking at me.

A gorgeous young woman, too, huh. Are there any actual men in this tower?

"This is the tower. Elysia's workshop, to be precise."

"Ah. That's right. I was quite certainly dead, back then."

"Yes. And now you've come back to life."

"Ho ho. My thanks, truly. And is that child faring well?"

"Yes. Right over there."

I pointed toward Elysia.

"Master… HHUURK!!!"

What's gotten into her? Well, the revival worked perfectly, at least.

"Master… why are you a woman…?"

What the hell kind of nonsense is that now.

"Hm? HUUOOOH!!!! Wh… why…?!"

Von Arnis took one look at her own body — and fainted on the spot.