Immortality (2)
Yeah. Bring it on. I just come back anyway.
……Quite some time had passed since I'd started casting that line.
Of all the people who cover their mouths with both hands and yell yahoo like they're having the time of their lives, almost none of them actually are.
And that was me, exactly.
This corridor. A few steps either way and you hit a wall — that kind of cramped, miserable passage, and it stretched on forever.
The dark was still thick. The corridor was still long. And the arrows never stopped coming.
Where had they stuck me so far…… let's see.
Shoulder. Thigh. Side. Gut. Chest. Head. Neck.
Ah. Right. The palm of my hand.
Couldn't forget that one.
I didn't know why, but it was uniquely unpleasant — and it hurt like hell.
I'd given up counting ages ago. If I studied the holes in my training gear carefully enough, I could probably get a number.
Anyway. I'd managed to dodge a few, but I was pretty sure I'd died at least four more times.
And one thing I'd figured out:
Someone was shooting those arrows.
Not a trap. Not some mechanism. Some bastard with free will, sitting out there past the dark, toying with me.
Had I adapted to the pain by now?
Was "adapting to pain" even a phrase that made sense?
Nineteen years old. Barely a few months ago I'd been a high school girl with a delicate body, and I'd lost count of how many times I'd spat curses too filthy for polite company.
Anyway. I snapped my upper body upright again.
Ping—
Thud.
"Kh…!"
The instant I sat up, an arrow buried itself in my left shoulder.
Attacking during the prep time is cheating, you know……
Even dogs don't mess with you mid-transformation. This bastard had no romance at all.
The arrowhead had punched through flesh and snagged somewhere near the bone. When I moved my arm, pain flared like steel scraping bone.
"Ghh……."
The wave of agony hit so hard my vision swam; my eyes almost rolled back. For a second I wore the kind of face someone else might've enjoyed watching — then I shook my head hard, snapped myself back, and bolted straight forward.
That stagger was for momentum, you sons of bitches.
Every stride sent pain slamming through the shoulder — worse with that heavy thing still stuck in the front — but I ran with my eyes wide open.
Hear the ping and dodge, and……
Dodge, my ass.
If I could do that, I wouldn't have needed to come in here in the first place. I could've just gone and been a hunter.
But after running flat-out for a while, no more arrows came.
…What?
"Hah. Hahh. Hah."
I was still gasping, a few more steps in, when—
Clunk.
"Oh my……."
Snap.
CRACK!
The second I felt something off about the floor under my foot, the stone right in front of me heaved up with a roar — vertical, wall-like. Its face was packed solid with sharp iron stakes.
Dozens of them punched through me all at once.
They were so sharp they didn't even drag me with them. The slab that had shot up sank straight back into the ground, the stakes sliding free of my body like they were slipping out of water.
Thud.
I toppled backward, limp.
Splat.
My body hit the pool of blood.
Immortal (S+) has activated.
The pain wasn't as bad as I'd expected. The trap had punched through me so cleanly I'd died almost instantly.
Dwelling on the feeling of something sharp crushing through skin was enough to raise goosebumps. Better not think about that.
So…… what was this, then.
Didn't like the idea of someone like me just charging through and getting lucky with the arrows missing?
What exactly did this Tower want from an Awakened on the first floor?
Could a normal person even clear this?
You had to read the path of every incoming arrow and dodge it, while also finding every trap hidden in the floor — in a corridor this dark.
And if that was the case, what was still waiting further in?
……No idea. I'd have to go and find out.
In the end, that was the only answer.
But my body wouldn't move.
Fine. Be honest.
I was scared.
If I went forward again, those stakes would punch through me again.
Sure, it didn't hurt that much. The window of pain between impact and death was a blink.
But…… I didn't want to. I just didn't want to.
Lying in the middle of a blood puddle, staring blankly at the ceiling—
Ping.
That familiar sound rang from further down the corridor.
Thud.
An arrow flew in and buried itself deep in my left thigh.
"Hhk."
I sucked in a breath through a twisted face. My whole leg convulsed on its own from the pain.
No……
I'd died.
My entire body had been skewered on iron stakes. I'd clearly been dead.
And they were still shooting?
……Was this teabagging?
"Heh…."
A breathy little laugh slipped out between my lips.
"Fine… You want to take this all the way?"
The terror that had locked my limbs a second ago was swallowed whole by rage.
Limping, I forced just my upper body up.
I needed to think.
What the hell had I stepped on? Where did I have to step so the trap wouldn't fire?
Even while I was working that out, the far end of the corridor never stopped loosing bowstrings.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Shoulder. Gut. Arm.
Fine, kill me with arrows then — I locked my eyes on the floor and scoured every single stone.
Still nothing.
Blood ran from the corner of my mouth.
And it was pitch-black on top of everything else. My eyes had adjusted as much as they ever would, and the floor was still just a smeared black mass.
No cracks. Nothing slightly raised or sunken. Color, shape — every slab identical.
…Damn it.
This wasn't a trap you could find with your eyes.
By the time I realized that, the strength had already drained out of me.
Thud.
My knees buckled. I pitched forward onto the floor and lost consciousness.
Immortal (S+) has activated.
I opened my eyes face-down on the floor and just lay there for a while, breathing hard, not moving.
The floor, right up against my face.
I'd stared at it until I died, straining like hell, and found nothing.
……It's the same.
On the slightly rough surface, blood from my body was starting to clot.
Wait.
I'd found something.
The blood had been flowing — and then it stopped.
At a certain line…… the blood wouldn't cross. It just pooled there, shallow.
Was the floor raised?
No.
To the eye it was perfectly flat, and yet the blood piled up against that boundary like it had hit an invisible wall.
What the hell.
I shoved my face closer and looked again. Still nothing.
Just the same floor. And still, the blood would not cross that line.
There's something here.
But I didn't know what.
A hairline gap between the stones, maybe.
I carefully reached out.
Past the line where the blood stopped, I brought my palm slowly over the floor on the other side.
Did the air feel different?
……Couldn't tell.
Am I imagining it?
Dying and coming back a few times — had my head finally gone soft?
I chewed my lip and pressed my palm fully flat against the floor. The moment I did, something faint hummed under my hand.
Vmmm.
"…?"
A subtle tremor?
Clack.
I yanked my hand back on instinct and rolled sideways.
BOOM!
The floor shot up vertical.
Iron stakes packed across the stone slab rushed in to within a breath of my face.
A fraction later and they'd have skewered me from face to torso in one go.
The slab hung in the air for a second, then sank back into the ground.
Thud.
"……I saw it."
No — I felt it.
Right before the trap erupted, something under the floor had writhed.
It wasn't quite the vibration of stone moving. More like a flow gathering under the floor……
I pushed myself up and looked at the palm that had just been on the stone, wringing every scrap of sensation out of the memory of that wrongness.
……What the hell was that?
I was about to sink into the thought when—
Thud!
An arrow punched through my right arm.
"Ugh!"
The arm snapped backward. I clenched my teeth and curled in.
Think.
This wasn't working. I shut my eyes entirely.
Then I reached out again — not touching the floor this time, just sweeping my hand through the air.
What was it?
Like waking from a dream: I'd clearly experienced something, and I couldn't explain what it was.
I'm going to lose it, for real……
With my vision cut off, the sensation in my palm seemed to sharpen.
So did the pain.
The ache in my right arm throbbed like a heartbeat — so loud it buried everything else.
I couldn't erase the pain.
There was no other way. I had to shove it aside somehow. Stuff it in a corner of my mind and treat it like it wasn't there.
"Hoo……."
Long, slow breaths. Every nerve I had, poured into one palm.
And then, at some point in the empty air, I felt something change.
I couldn't put it into words.
I brought my palm down right there and set it on the floor.
"…."
Nothing happened.
Step here, and the trap doesn't fire.
"…What."
I lifted my hand again and moved it back and forth across the boundary — where the trap triggered and where it didn't.
Something faint seemed to catch on my palm and then vanish.
It was so thin, so slippery, that the second my focus wavered I lost it entirely.
"Wind……?"
The thought rose and I shook my head at once.
No way there was wind in here.
Then what the hell was this strange current teasing my fingertips?
What is it.
Almost there, almost graspable — and never quite.
What is this.
Thud.
An arrow from up ahead buried itself in my side.
"Kh……!"
My body pitched forward. All the pain I'd forced down came roaring back at once.
But my outstretched hand kept sweeping.
Thud.
Thud.
The arrows kept landing through it all.
Fine. Shoot. Dying barely even registers anymore.
Kill me.
But I'm feeling this first.
I clenched my teeth and held onto that faint current to the end.
And then a single word surfaced in my head.
Heat, vibration, wind, pressure…… after stripping away every other possibility that had crossed my mind, what was left.
Mana.
……On the first floor, sense mana and dodge the traps?
Immortal (S+) has activated.
Maybe because I'd been concentrating so hard, I didn't even properly notice when my consciousness cut out.
Only that strange current — like stirring through dawn mist — stayed sharp until the last moment.
"Hah!"
The second I came back, I shoved myself upright.
Time to move.
Hand out first. When I felt that subtle flow, I set my foot on it.
Step.
Perfect. No trap.
Second foothold, same thing.
Reach with the hand, feel the flow, then step.
I put my foot down and instinctively ducked — but nothing erupted.
"……Got it."
I understood it cleanly now.
Step by step like that, and something felt off.
……They're not shooting?
I slowly lifted my head.
"Right."
A short, dry laugh escaped.
"Saving it for when I think I've made it?"
These were the same bastards who'd teabagged me. Of course they'd try to drop despair on me at the exact moment I felt happiest.
Like hell I was going to give them that.
I fixed my eyes on the floor again and kept putting one foot carefully in front of the other.
A few more plates later, the flow that should have come next simply wasn't there.
……Gone?
No matter how I swept my hand, nothing.
No matter how I searched. So then?
Please.
Holding my breath, I set my foot down anywhere.
Step.
Nothing happened.
I'd cleared the trap section.
"…!"
I kicked off the floor right there and ran full speed.
No arrows, all the way to the end.
Why?
And then, at some point, I felt it on instinct.
The corridor was over.
The air on my skin said so. The echo of my footsteps had changed.
There was even a faint light.
Small lamps set at regular intervals along the walls swayed as if they might go out any second, barely lighting the space.
Unlike the narrow dark corridor, the chamber beyond was fairly wide — a stone hall.
And then.
Shhk!
The instant I broke out of the passage, two goblins on either side of me were already swinging short blades.
Maybe because every nerve had been wound tight waiting for the next arrow, it looked like slow motion.
I twisted my body a little, went loose, and dropped — skidding long across the floor on my front.
Both daggers cut empty air above me.
Still down, I lifted my head. Up close, I finally got a good look at their faces.
Yellowed eyes. Green skin. Definitely goblins.
But both of them looked wrong.
They were clutching their daggers and shaking — like they'd just seen a monster.
……What.
Why are you two wearing the face that should be on me?