The Specimen Vault
Just because he had climbed up onto the ceiling did not mean he was safe.
From below it had been the ceiling; from up here it was the floor. And that floor was cracking open in real time, the fissures spreading wide enough to see with the naked eye.
No time to waste.
Collapsing the armory had already set the Company’s building on its path to ruin. The entire structure might not come down in one piece, but it was going to tilt and buckle, and Do-yun meant to be as high as possible before that happened.
"Where are you headed?"
"Can't we just go our separate ways now?"
Do-yun could only sigh at the girl who clung to him like a burr. He was sprinting at full power, yet Angelina kept pace despite his high agility stat, trailing stubbornly behind.
Rumble-rattle.
He glanced down to see how she was managing it and spotted roller skates strapped to her feet.
"Want a pair? I can give you one."
"Not interested."
Do-yun had already learned that Angelina was not simply a good person. He had no intention of accepting anything she offered at face value.
"Don't be so stiff. Even someone like me remembers a life debt, you know?"
He looked away from her casual shrug. The moment she had hidden the fact that she still had mana left, she had already betrayed his trust once. Any thought of recruiting her as a companion had long since evaporated. He planned to keep a careful distance and maintain nothing more than a business relationship.
The instant Do-yun decided to treat Angelina like empty air, a notification flared in front of his eyes.
Charlotte has used Void Thrust (F).
He threw himself sideways just as a spear burst up through the floor.
Crack.
Do-yun stared at the protruding spear tip, thoughts racing. Had someone below predicted he was here and thrust upward on purpose? Should he seize the weapon and strike first?
Slick.
But his worries proved unnecessary. The spear withdrew as quickly as it had appeared. At the same moment, shouts and a cascade of additional skill notifications rose from below.
A blind attack, then.
Do-yun rubbed the goosebumps from his arms and forced himself calm. It looked more like a random thrust that had happened to come his way than a deliberate strike aimed at him. The people below probably had no idea he was even up here.
Boom. Thud.
That did not make this place safe. He could not tell how fierce the battle below had become, but the floor was shaking as if it might collapse at any second.
I need to get off the second floor as fast as possible.
It was dangerous, and there was little worth scavenging anyway. The important facilities—the armory, the laboratories—were all concentrated on the first floor. They had reinforced the lower levels more heavily, so of course the most valuable things sat there. That the first floor had been cleaned out so easily was less the Company’s fault than the simple fact that almost no low-floor security could stop someone who held as many clear strategies as Do-yun.
"So you're heading for the top after all?"
Angelina grinned as she watched him hurry. Do-yun gave her no reaction at all, determined to offer zero information, yet she nodded to herself as if she had already reached a conclusion.
"Of course you are. The chairman's office up there is packed with things worth taking."
"You're aiming for the top too?"
Do-yun snapped the question at her, voice sharp. If she was after the same prize, they might have to fight right here.
"Please. I wouldn't be so shameless as to go after my benefactor's loot."
Angelina raised both hands and took a step back. Her face showed not the slightest regret; she had simply never been interested.
Even now she was trying to make it look like she was yielding so she could put him in her debt. Do-yun's wariness sharpened as he stared her down.
"You're really too much. Is trying to save a little mana such a terrible crime?"
He did not trust the pout she put on either. People like her required every word to be taken with ruthless suspicion, or gaslighting would do its work.
"Obviously it is."
Do-yun cut her off with open disdain. Holding back mana was fine. The problem was that she had done so while lying to him that her mana was completely spent.
If she had just said from the start that she wanted to conserve mana, that would have been different.
Not knowing her intent made it thoroughly impure. When Do-yun showed no sign of being swayed, Angelina's mouth only grew busier.
"Even so, skipping the second floor entirely without even looking around is a waste. Who knows what's here?"
She was right that the second floor likely hid all sorts of treasures. But time was short; he needed focus and selection. Worse, other challengers would not find it especially hard to reach this floor. Bad luck could mean running into them midway.
Still… maybe a quick sweep.
What he saw immediately were scattered documents, chemical bottles, and shattered display units littering the floor. This place had clearly served as a laboratory, just like the first floor.
A laboratory, huh.
Nothing specific surfaced in his memory, which meant this was another location that existed only inside the Tower of Ascension.
As he scanned the surroundings without much thought, something unusual caught his eye.
Bubble. Bubble.
A glass pillar filled with ominous green liquid. Bubbles rose through it in a steady stream, and the whole thing reeked of suspicion at a glance.
"Oh-ho, that!"
Do-yun could not yet tell what it meant, but Angelina clearly had a different opinion. Her eyes lit up and she dashed forward.
Should I just leave her and go?
He considered abandoning her and continuing toward his original destination, but in the end he chose to follow and examine the glass tubes. Every instinct wanted him to walk away, yet too many details felt wrong.
For Angelina to show that much interest…
The same girl who had been trying so hard to stick to him had bolted the moment she saw the tubes. That meant whatever she had found held high value. At the very least he needed to know what was inside before he left.
Pat-pat-pat.
Angelina hammered at the control panel in front of the nearest tube. Behind her stretched not just one glass cylinder but an entire row of them.
"Indeed, indeed. Preservation this good is quite impressive."
"What is it that's got you like this?"
He was about to demand a clearer explanation when—
Thud.
The shape suspended inside the tube twisted with a grotesque sound. Do-yun narrowed his eyes, peered closer, and finally recognized it.
A goblin?
It was the corpse of a goblin—the same kind he had slaughtered by the hundreds on the sixth floor. Shocked, he looked around and understood at once.
Goblins, orcs, slimes… every tube held a monster that emerged from gates.
"The Company really is something. They had the leeway to secure this many monster corpses."
Listening to Angelina's mutter, Do-yun recalled one more fact. The reason not a single monster corpse could be found on the streets outside was because the Company had collected every last one. The glass tubes arrayed before him were the vault for those collected remains.
"Good grief."
He fell silent as the realization settled. Researching monsters was nothing strange. Even on Earth there had been scientists who worked day and night trying to uncover their origins.
"But this… the scale is completely different."
The scene before him was so overwhelming it made those efforts look like child's play. The number of monsters submerged in the green solution easily surpassed the hundreds. He could not begin to guess how many lives had been spent building a system this thorough.
"What exactly are you doing right now?"
The sense of awe lasted only a moment. Do-yun frowned at Angelina, who had been hammering buttons without pause. He could not even guess what she intended.
"Just watch and you'll see!"
Angelina grinned and slammed her palm down on a button.
Hisssss.
Every glass tube in front of them let out a mechanical whine and expelled its contents at once. Green liquid sprayed everywhere, filling the air with a foul chemical stench, but Do-yun had no attention to spare for the smell.
The shapes that had been flung out were beginning to twitch and move.
"Wait a second. Those were already dead corpses, weren't they?"
"They are corpses."
"Then why the hell are the corpses moving?!"
Even as he spoke the words, he could guess the answer. This was the Company that could capture returnees by force and brainwash them. Would a company with that level of technology lack the ability to control mindless monsters?
Twitch.
One by one the monsters opened their eyes. Many of them were weak enough that Do-yun could cut them down in a single stroke, but mixed among them were creatures like ogres—monsters whose appearance meant you had to be ready to abandon an entire city.
"All right! Let's make a real mess of this place!"
Behind Angelina, who was laughing with pure mania, the monsters' eyes began to glow red one after another.