6. First Request - Sewer (2)
“You... you're some kind of being from another world... aren't you?”
What.
Did this guy somehow figure out that I'm a reincarnator from another world? But fortunately, what he said next was different from what I'd feared.
“The empire's higher-ups are trying to purge our company... that entity from beyond the Outer Sea... summoned down to the lower world...”
A sticky, gurgling voice.
“That tentacle magic... no matter how I look at it...”
I cut off his mumbling with a reply.
“Sorry about skewering and killing you back then. I had no choice. I needed to survive too.”
I almost added, but how the hell did you survive? but held back—it'd sound too obvious.
“You...!”
The hazmat suit growled in rage at my words.
“Don't give me that shit...! That arrogant attitude of yours is about to end... Ether Bio Pharma's chairman and his clone soldiers... are out for blood...”
The hazmat suit, who had been fuming, suddenly switched to a completely different tone, as if something was hilarious.
“Right... haha... In the end, I was abandoned in the city... but in return, I received a blessing. A blessing to kill irreverent beings like you...”
Body Reconstruction
Crack! Crackle!
Grotesque sounds began echoing from inside the hazmat suit.
The nauseating melody of bones and flesh being reassembled, piece by piece.
In sync, its limbs started twisting wildly, like a seizure.
“Grrr... Body reconstruction... At first, it was despair... but now I get it... I've surpassed humanity... evolved...”
Squelch!
A disgusting, frog-tongue-like tentacle burst through the hazmat suit's faceplate.
Immediately after, bulges rippled across its entire body, poised to unleash tentacles in every direction.
“Ugh...”
Gross.
I summoned my Grimoire right away.
No point sticking around with this deranged hazmat freak. Better to finish it off before it pulls some weird trick.
The spell I pulled from the Grimoire's endless pages was—
Fire Ball
KABOOOM—!!
A crimson orb flickering like hellfire engulfed the swollen mass of its body.
The explosion lit up even the vast sewer cavern for a split second.
“KEEEAAAK—!”
In an instant, the freak at the blast's center was incinerated and crumbling.
This Fire Ball's formula had been infused with a purification attribute via the Grimoire's power.
And this place—the sewer treatment plant deep underground—was filled with more yin energy than anywhere else in the city. The purifying flames would act like extreme poison.
However.
“Ke... kehk...!”
The utterly mutated hazmat suit attempted to 'escape.'
Before the flames could reach its head, it wildly twisted its neck.
Squelch! Crackle!
And at the end, it outright severed its own head, slamming it against the sewer wall.
With only its head left, it scuttled away, waving crab-leg-like appendages that had sprouted haphazardly.
Tap tap tap—
“Cockroach bastard.”
“See you next time... you crazy bitch...”
“Sorry, but there won't be a next time.”
I muttered, arms crossed.
Right on cue, its body fully burned away in the purifying flames.
But.
“...!”
Whoosh!
Even though the head was far from the body, the flames leaped to it like some kind of LAN infection.
“Karma fire follows you wherever you flee. To the ends of the earth. Until it burns you completely.”
Roar—
“KEEEAAAK!”
The head let out a horrific scream as it tumbled to the ground.
“Bye now.”
The fires of hell, karma flames.
This myth, found worldwide, equates to purification and sanctity—transcending physical pain to face the eternal consequences of one's sins.
Philosophically, hellfire also symbolizes the self-destructive emotions burning within one's painful truths or conflicts.
Thus, the sun-like purifying blaze I'd modified via the Grimoire brings unavoidable death to sinister beings alone.
◈ [Essence of the Ugly Being] 1/3
◈ [Shattered Mirror Fragment Abandoned by Someone] 0/1
◈ [Ancient Memory] 0/1
Oh. This guy counted as an 'ugly being' too, huh.
Ended up collecting materials by accident.
No trace left of the freak, not even ashes.
All that remained where it had been was a single cracked terminal.
“...Hm.”
I picked up the terminal.
No response no matter how many times I pressed it—broken, apparently.
Still, better to take it along for now. Forensics or whatever. Hand it to experts later and pull the data.
Ether Bio Pharma, where I was first born as a clone. Plenty to dig up on that company.
I gazed down at the endlessly flowing sewage.
What the hell was in this black water that it could mutate normal people into monsters?
And where the hell did it all lead?
Mulling over the questions, I pressed on into the darkness.
There's an urban legend in American sewers about alligators living there.
Snip-snap— Snip-snap—
...And in this insane sewer, instead of alligators, there were crayfish bigger than humans.
Disgusting things with human-head-sized claws going snip-snap, bulging eyes swiveling dumbly.
Who the hell flushes lobsters down the toilet? Especially when you could just eat 'em.
...Enough nonsense. According to the library info, these crayfish were originally crustaceans native to the rivers of District 16.
Normally, even the biggest ones didn't exceed coconut crab size, but once they entered the sewers, the sewage mutated them to human scale and made their forms more vicious.
Snip-snap— Snip-snap—
Sensing me as prey, they started crawling out from the sewage, the ceiling, side paths—everywhere.
“...”
Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded by crayfish.
They waved antennae-like feelers, smacking their lips greedily over and over.
Snip-snip-snip-snip...
The crayfish closed in. A desperate situation, about to be torn apart by over a dozen giant ones.
These mutated crayfish were tough. Without hitting weak points, their hardened shells made them hard to drop one by one, and their numbers were overwhelming.
That was why the minimum requirement for sewer access was a Class III solver.
But.
I'd been waiting for this.
The Grimoire appeared, glowing ominously, and I chanted.
Aqua Ball
For a moment, the crayfish hesitated, realizing something was wrong. Some tried to dive into the water...
Crunch...
Too late.
I extended my hand forward.
Shwooo...
A massive water orb formed, sloshing atop my palm.
Thin and thick streams of water extended from all directions, gathering to create the Aqua Ball.
Originally a low-rank supply spell that extracted moisture from earth or air to form water droplets, I'd boosted its lethality via the Grimoire by limiting the target to living beings.
A high-efficiency spell that desiccated nearby creatures while forming extra water orbs.
Especially fatal for aquatic crayfish, deprived of their moisture.
Crackle...
As expected, their bodies turned pale and crumbly, collapsing in seconds.
A few had escaped the range just in time, but I planned to deal with them too.
I raised the formed Aqua Ball overhead and chanted.
Water Jet
The water ball compressed into dozens of razor-sharp water blades.
Then.
Pew-pew-pew-pew—
Transparent yet infinitely sharp water trajectories slashed wildly in all directions. Not just shredding crayfish but carving deep gashes into walls and floors.
Ultra-high-pressure water was powerful. Even on Earth, water jets cut through tough metal.
After the storm of slashes passed, I surveyed the surroundings.
A massacre of desiccated, bisected crayfish everywhere.
I crouched and pried out their eyeballs one by one.
Not for show—I slaughtered them for the bounty. These pests were designated hazardous, and the Sewer Management Committee put rewards on them.
Highly dangerous with no natural predators, they infested the place, a huge headache for management.
50,000 credits per pair of eyes. I collected 34 pairs total—not bad.
Even if something went wrong with the tentacle monster bounty and I missed the 10 million credits, I'd still pocket 850,000.
Problem was carrying them all... I stuffed what I could in my pockets and planned to retrieve the rest later.
With cleanup done, I followed the leveling waterway.
The end was nearing. A bit farther, and I'd reach the heart of the 17th District sewers—the zone crawling with the tentacle monster.
The waterway, barely wide enough for three people abreast, widened as it sloped down.
And at some point.
A massive cavern appeared. The downhill path had flattened completely, with side passages expanding outward.
About time.
Standing still, I felt faint vibrations. Proof a massive body was moving somewhere in this space.
The tentacle monster.
Time to face it was near.
I advanced toward the cavern's center along the channel.
Gurgle gurgle...
The water sounds grew, joined by the pulsing of something enormous—like a heartbeat.
Each thump sent tremors through the ground.
Not even the crayfish I'd seen often on the way dared approach. Instinctively sensing the terror here.
Clatter.
Something crunched underfoot—a human bone, weathered from long decay but unmistakably so.
And it wasn't the only one. More bones crunched under my steps the farther I went. Occasionally, shattered weapons, armor, or cyberware littered about.
“Boss room, huh.”
A bit farther, I encountered a full-body cyberware husk amid the bone piles.
Upper body only. Looked like a recent challenger.
Almost smashed to scrap, but...
[...Solver...? You a solver...? Here to... take down that thing...?]
...it could still manage garbled speech through the noise.
“Yes. Here to finish it for good this time.”
I replied, looking down at it.
Its optic even flickered irregularly—on the brink of death.
[...Girl... kid...? How'd you get this far...? Party...?]
“None. Just me.”
[That... that can't be...! All the freaks in the sewers... those vomit-spewing crayfish... how...?]
“Call me a mage.”
[Mage... huh... then I gotta... warn you...]
The cyberware husk spat out words with effort.
[Never... never challenge it...! You can't win... winning's not even possible...! No mere human can stand against it... turn back now... if you're a mage... you're valuable... can't let you die here...]
How impressive was this tentacle monster? But I had no intention of backing off.
“Sorry. The idea of me losing is equally impossible. So we cancel each other out, right?”
Disguise spell materials and 10 million credits ahead—how could I ditch that?
[Right now! Listen to me!]
“...”
[Aaaah...]
I stayed silent, and the cyberware husk despaired.
[If you're dead set on going... grant one last request before I die...]
“What?”
[Pull... my memory chip. Left like this... even weeks from now... I'll just wither... not really alive... so... put me out of my misery here...]
Fair point.
Trapped in a broken body, screaming in this dark, damp hell without even dying—nightmarish.
“...Got it.”
Whirr—
The half-smashed head casing opened.
A single chip was lodged inside.
[Thanks...]
Fizzle!
[...]
I yanked the chip, and the cyberware husk lost its faint glow, entering eternal rest.
And at that moment.
Huh?
◈ [Essence of the Ugly Being] 1/3
◈ [Shattered Mirror Fragment Abandoned by Someone] 0/1
◈ [Ancient Memory] 1/1
A passage in the Grimoire updated somewhere.
This counts as material too, huh.
The memory chip dissolved into purple particles, absorbed into the Grimoire.
I offered a silent prayer of thanks to the now-lifeless cyberware husk.
Thump.
Thump.
The heartbeat's source was right ahead.
The tentacle monster.
Time to challenge it.