Seongwon City (3)
Time Remaining Until Next Dimensional Intervention: 2 Days 23:58:30
The cooldown on my Authority had stretched to three days. I still couldn't tell whether it was because of everything I'd hauled back or some other factor. Either way, I didn't have the strength to jump dimensions again anytime soon. I'd taken a few hits inside the ship and was bone-tired; the thought of another shift within a single day felt impossible. It looked like I'd need roughly a week to sort out both my body and my immediate surroundings, so I decided to spend a solid three days resting with the equipment and resources I'd brought.
I patched up my injuries with the medicine scavenged from the ship and used a nano-mecha repair pack on Nia's head as well.
"Tsk. If I'd known it would turn out like this, I should've pushed myself to grab one of your bodies after all."
Nia's lens spun briefly while she processed the thought, then stopped.
"Considering the remaining time and situation at the time, the probability of successfully recovering my chassis was extremely low. Negative. That is not a rational suggestion, Master."
"No, I'm just saying it's a shame."
"Furthermore, if the issue concerns my chassis, an alternative exists. With the molecular reconstruction printer we have secured and sufficient raw materials, a route to distributed printing of a new chassis will open in the future."
"Wait, something like that is possible?"
"Affirmative. And furthermore..."
Nia slowed the rotation of her lens for a moment, then added in a voice just slightly softer than her usual mechanical tone.
"More than anything... at the current point in time, this bonded configuration—maintaining close contact with the harness while monitoring your biometric signals and heart rate in real time—is quite satisfactory from the standpoint of this unit's stabilization."
"Uh... yeah. Well, if you're happy with it, that's good."
Ever since we'd escaped the ship, Nia's reactions had grown far more human. Unlike the calculated proposal she'd made aboard the vessel, her responses now carried a noticeable trace of emotion. If I had to describe it, she sounded like a clever talking dog that had learned to speak. For someone who'd been living alone, it was infinitely better, so I didn't mind. It was a little embarrassing, though.
After spending a few more days together, I became thoroughly convinced that bringing Nia along had been the right call. Every piece of equipment we'd stripped from the ship was a finicky product of over-technology, yet Nia—bound to my chest—remotely monitored and managed every device in real time. Without her, even if the operating principles were already in my head, putting them into practice would have been exhausting.
"This is surprisingly good."
I munched on the preserved rations from the ship while considering the first real test of the molecular reconstruction printer. Under normal circumstances, operating the machine properly would have demanded a mountain of work: deciding what to create, locating the optimal blueprint, analyzing the molecular structure of available materials, checking compatibility, and searching for substitutes. All of it would have required manual input on my part.
But I had Nia—an SF supercomputer android who could handle it all with a single command. Thanks to her, a few clicks let me browse the full catalog on the terminal in my hand. Long live super-android beautiful-girl Nia! Long live!
I started by surveying the junk around me. The place I'd holed up in was an old warehouse behind a shopping center. Anything useful had been stripped clean long ago, leaving the space almost empty. Still, plenty of trash remained: shattered fluorescent tubes, piles of broken office chairs, cans of hardened paint, dust-caked old mannequins, mangled umbrella skeletons, detergent long past its expiration and gone bad, a busted old fan. The kind of garbage even looters ignored had become excellent raw material for us.
The printer was only a small-scale unit, so both decomposition and fabrication would take time, but that couldn't be helped. The first things I produced were sensory and data-expansion nodes for Nia. With only her head remaining, her ability to gather environmental data was severely limited. On the ship she'd used its internal sensors, but this was Seongwon City. According to her, she needed a form of sensory amplifier and data collector to accurately receive and analyze the city's information.
"These functions were standard on my original chassis. To compensate for the current deficit, the attachment of external modules is unavoidable."
While the nodes were printing, I began clearing out the zombies around our warehouse.
"Three regular infected approximately forty-five meters ahead."
Since the amplifier wasn't finished yet, I checked the map and relayed the positions to Nia. Then—
Because I was in cover, Nia sent the message to my visor instead of speaking aloud. When I gave a small nod, the firing paths she'd calculated unfolded across the display. I leveled the Nailer, aimed along the lines, and pulled the trigger.
Shoosh-shoosh-shoosh—
The bolts screamed out of the Nailer and streaked toward the zombies. A heartbeat later came the heavy, wet impacts. The fire-control chipset guided every round with surgical precision, detonating the heads of all three infected in an instant.
"Whoa. Is this even fair?"
The words slipped out before I could stop them. The efficiency was on an entirely different level from the days I'd spent sneaking around with nothing but a pistol and a dagger, barely daring to breathe.
Of course, not every fight was solved by the Nailer alone.
The survivors of Seongwon City spoke of Tin Can Zombies with genuine dread, and for good reason. These variants were different. They were nightmarish creatures that had mutated by fusing store shutters, car doors, construction rebar—anything metallic—directly into their bodies to form crude but effective armor. Ordinary bullets simply couldn't penetrate the scrap. Unless you were an Awakened with prior Hunter experience or part of a heavily armed group, taking one down was brutally difficult. You had to pray for a lucky gap in the metal plating.
But the laser rifle I'd brought from the ship didn't care about any of that.
I lined up the shot on the targeting reticle Nia had painted across my visor and fired.
Ziiiing—
The beam punched straight through the tin can's iron plating as if it were paper. The weapon had been designed to drop heavy armored drones aboard the ship; a scrap-heap zombie was nothing. With a heavy thud, the creature toppled backward, a gaping hole burned through its chest.
A rush of vengeful satisfaction flooded me, followed immediately by a quiet, aching sadness.
"Aaah... aaah..."
A low groan escaped my lips before I realized it. How many people had died to that monster? Colleagues I'd shared meals and sleeping spaces with, people who'd promised each other they'd survive another day, had been torn apart because they couldn't bring down a single lump of walking scrap. If I'd had this rifle back then...
They wouldn't have had to die.
I dropped to one knee, head bowed. Tears spilled over and pattered against the concrete.
"...Master. Are you all right?"
Nia's voice rose from my chest harness.
"A sudden spike in heart rate and activation of the lacrimal glands has been detected. No physical trauma is present, however... I assess that mental fatigue has reached a critical threshold. I recommend immediate rest."
"It's nothing. Just feels empty, that's all. I'm fine."
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and stood. I'd only found the first thread of revenge; the real work was still ahead. After clearing the area and using my Authority to harvest every usable resource from the zombies, I returned to the warehouse.
A few days later the printer finished producing the sensory and data-expansion nodes that would attach to Nia's face and head. From now on she would be able to support me in this city the same way she had aboard the ship.
I began fitting the mechanical pieces and antennas across her head. The nodes looked a little ridiculous on their own, but because Nia's base frame was such a high-spec android, the overall effect came across as sleek, cybernetic elegance rather than clutter.
"Not bad at all. You look like a pretty, super-intelligent android."
My offhand but sincere compliment made Nia's lens freeze for half a second. Then a faint, high-speed whirring of cooling fans came from inside her head.
"This unit's computational logic finds it difficult to process Master’s subjective aesthetic criteria."
Her tone stayed perfectly flat, yet the sensor lights ringing her ocular lenses flashed red for a moment—like a human face flushing with embarrassment.
"Internal calculation-circuit temperature has risen by approximately 1.2 degrees. Running diagnostic... No anomalies detected. Presumed temporary error. Diagnostic complete."
Nia gave the antenna mounted on her head a quick, fluttering shake. She claimed it was a routine reception check. Adorable. A machine acting shy.
"Please exercise caution while moving so these antennas do not snag on your chest harness and suffer damage. My sensory nodes are precious."
"Yeah, yeah, your majesty."
At my teasing she made her lens flare brightly.
"Negative. My only master has always been you alone, Master."
While we traded silly banter, my mind was already on the next item I wanted to print: a cart or small vehicle to carry the power core. The core itself was far too heavy to haul around on foot. If an emergency arose, moving it would be a nightmare. I needed to build some kind of motorized platform—maybe even a makeshift motorcycle—so I could relocate it quickly. If I could take the whole setup to another dimension for farming, the benefits would be enormous.
First, though, I had to gather more scrap metal and any discarded appliances that still contained usable circuitry. It was time to go scavenging through Seongwon City once again.