A Chance to Escape
"Sia, I'll lend you this."
"...Why this?"
I held out an E-grade Sturdy Hand Axe to Yoo Sia.
"A hand axe makes a lot less noise."
The hammer she fought with hit hard, but it was loud—loud enough to burst a skull like a clay pot. I had Stealth Strike, so it hardly mattered what weapon I used.
"And if you're lucky, you might pick up Stealth Strike yourself."
She stared at it in silence for a while.
"Thank you."
She took the hand axe and held her hammer out to me.
"Appreciate it."
I put the spare hammer I'd been carrying back away. It wasn't only for her sake. If she gained the skill, she could clear zombies more safely—and the safer she was, the safer I'd be.
Hmm. This grip is no joke. It's an item too, obviously.
I didn't scan it with the app. Neither did she. It was a kind of courtesy. Scan someone's gear out in the open and you might as well announce that you coveted it.
Every fight I'd seen from Yoo Sia had been a head-on brawl. Even when she could have taken them one at a time, she fought in a way that woke every zombie around. At first I thought she was just too impatient to waste the time. That didn't explain why she was willing to spend so much of it on me. Or did she simply enjoy the fighting itself? That didn't fit either.
Then why?
This time, though, she went along with me. Before I knew it she had slipped in behind a zombie.
Crunch—!
She put it down without a sound.
Thwack—!
I dropped the one sleeping beside it with a Stealth Strike. This way was definitely safer. She had to know that. So why had she clung to the other way?
I was still lost in one question chasing the next when—
Crack!
—I made a mistake.
"Grk?!"
"Damn it."
A zombie in a hard hat.
"Krrrk!"
"Kraaaagh!"
"Gweeeek!"
Breaths buried in the dark woke all at once and closed in from every side.
"This way!"
"I'm sorry."
"Save it for later."
I beat aside the hands lunging for me and ran after her. Fighting anywhere near here was too dangerous. The noise would aggro every zombie around.
Damn it. A mistake like that.
Arrogance. I'd dropped a few zombies, let my guard down, and gone wandering off in my own head in the middle of a fight. We made it back to the cosmetics shop.
"Stay back."
Once again she meant to take the whole pack alone.
"I'll fight too!"
"You don't have to."
She was right that the second floor was too dangerous for me to stand up front. Even so.
"I'm sorry I messed up. But please trust me. I won't drag you down."
Whack! Crack—!
I could at least cover her blind spots.
"Kwoooaargh!"
"Kehek!"
"Krrk."
Crack! Crunch! Snap—!
Her movement looked like it had slipped free of physics. Zombies came apart wherever the axe passed. Watching her fight left me with a strange sense of wrongness. Hunters had skills and items, but nothing like levels. You couldn't put points into strength or agility.
What kind of Unique Skill does she even have?
Physical amplification, at the very least. Even then—movement like that.
"Just hold on a little longer."
"Don't worry about this side."
I smashed the battered hard hat off a zombie's head.
Whack! Crack!
And drove the blow straight into the skull.
Crunch!
Even with a zombie right in front of me, my eyes kept chasing the way she moved. In a blink she had butchered the whole pack. I couldn't see her face, but with her head bowed like that she looked exhausted.
"I'm sorry."
"...."
An awkward silence. She had to be furious. If that mistake had pulled an add back there...
"I'm sorry."
"...What?"
The apology came from her instead.
"No—why are you apologizing?"
"You told me it was your first time on the second floor, and I didn't explain. That's on me. Zombies spawn up here wearing armor."
Ah. So that was why one of them had been in a hard hat.
"That still doesn't make it your fault. I got careless."
If I hadn't been off in my own head, none of it would have happened. The air was just starting to turn heavy when she flicked her fingers, playful, and loosened it again.
"Let's call this one a draw. Next time you mess up, you get a flick on the forehead."
"People make mistakes, don't they? Let's agree to let each other off once."
"Mmm... yes! I'll be careful from now on."
She was trying to let it go. I couldn't keep beating myself up.
"Heh. I'll be careful too."
She seemed different. Most people look for someone else's fault first. She'd turned the blame on herself—in a situation anyone could see was mine. At this rate I really was going to become a fan.
"This area's clear now, and... ah!"
"What?"
"An exit just popped."
"Oh!"
I hurried to open my map.
"It's not that far."
"We got lucky. We already cleared the way, so fifteen minutes should do it. Let's go."
It was the direction we'd just cleaned out. Were we finally getting out of here? But.
"You don't need to farm?"
I'd come up to escape. She'd come up to farm. Leave now and she'd walk out with nothing.
"Don't worry about that. Hurry."
"Right."
Life came first. This wouldn't be the only chance.
Zombies weren't the only difference between the second floor and the first. For one thing, you had to vault barricades of furniture and steel plate. For another, you had to crawl through a gap torn in the corner of a chain-link roadblock. At least there was a gap. Otherwise we would have had to loop the long way around.
This is insane.
Shadows packed the road from end to end.
If a fight starts here... we're dead.
There was no other way through if we wanted out. All we could do was move, careful even of our breathing. The alley we'd come from had been manageable. This was beyond attempting.
Still. Just a little farther.
Past this road, the exit was right there in the alley. We hadn't gone far before the alley mouth came into view—and with it, a green light leaking out.
What? Somebody's in there?
A human shadow fell across the green glow. Hunters. The one who met my eyes beckoned us in.
The open exit was a building entrance. Hunters who'd arrived ahead of us had already cleared the alley.
"Hurry, get in! It's about to close!"
At least we weren't late.
"Huh? There's two of them?"
"Well. That's a problem."
The hunters traded a look that said more than the words. As we approached the exit, a hologram rose.
Time remaining until the exit seals
Yoo Sia and I could only stand there, frozen.
"Th-then somebody hurry and get in. Shame about whoever gets left behind."
Damn it. We'd have to find another one. I was already checking the map, just in case, when the silence broke.
"You go first."
"Come on, how am I supposed to leave by myself? Let's just find another exit."
"No. Get in. From the start, I meant to get you out, Jaeha, and then go farm."
She'd planned to send only me out? She hadn't said anything like that earlier.
"Hey, you're not going? I told you it's about to close."
"We'll take a different exit."
"Suit yourselves. Be careful out there."
"What are you saying? Who knows when it'll open again! Go, now!"
Whenever it opened, I could hold out if she was with me.
"Truth is, I'm not done farming either."
"What are you—"
"If we're farming, two is safer than one, isn't it?"
This place was dangerous enough that two still wasn't enough—dangerous enough that you wanted to link up with other hunters. I couldn't leave her here alone. While we were still talking, the exit sealed.
Maybe the absurdity of it stole her words for a moment. Then she let out a breath.
"Haah."
"Next time, you leave. Understood?"
"Yes. Of course."
She turned away, and I pretended not to hear what she let slip.
"Idiot...."
I switched Echo Sonar off for a moment. We cleared the building that had served as the exit and caught our breath.
"Sia, can I ask you one thing?"
"No."
"Shot down on the spot. That's harsh."
She paused, as if trying to read what I was after.
"What is it?"
"Did you really stay because you still had farming to do?"
"Yes."
Was that true? She'd talked like she meant to leave right away, back at the start.
"Is there something specific you need?"
"You said one question."
"Come on. One more, on the house."
I'd put off my own escape for her. She could tell me this much.
She hesitated, then spoke.
"The truth is... I stayed because I need medicine."
Ask what medicine and I had a feeling the questions would end, so I waited for the rest.
"My mom. She's very sick."
I'd heard something like that before.
"Sick with what..."
"...Stage three stomach cancer."
Ah. Cancer. I understood at once why she'd climbed all the way to the second floor. And why she'd helped me.
I could have escaped, but I ended up giving my spot to a beginner who'd come looking for medicine for their mother...
The beginner I'd talked about must have overlapped with her.
"You came up here looking for anticancer medicine."
"That's right."
What the Tower held was a strengthened version of what existed outside. That applied to medicine too. Nothing like a cure-all had ever been found. But you could get drugs that worked better than the old ones, and without the side effects.
"It's why I entered the Tower in the first place."
"Right."
Walking into the Tower didn't make everyone superhuman. It depended on what Unique Skill you awakened. You could end up like Yoo Sia. Or you could end up with something that might as well not be a skill at all.
"People get weaker as they age. I thought the fading stamina, the body giving out, was just something you couldn't help."
Regret sat in her voice.
"They said food brought back from the Tower was good for getting your strength up, so I bought it for her now and then. And she really did get better. You could see it."
Ah. It was because she'd seemed better, if only for a while. They'd missed the window.
"But the test results came back stage three stomach cancer."
"There's still hope, though, right?!"
"Yes! She's having surgery in two weeks. But."
She needed the anticancer medicine.
"She's gotten too weak for the drugs they have outside. That's why I need the Tower's."
A veteran like Yoo Sia could find it. And if I helped?
"Let me help you get the anticancer medicine."
"That... I'll have to refuse."
"What?"
Wasn't this the moment for Thank you! You're the only one I can count on, Jaeha!
"Why?"
Turn over enough pharmacies together and we'd find it, wouldn't we? It wasn't even that hard.
"The anticancer medicine my mom needs... you can only get it at a large hospital."
A large hospital. A den of monsters, worse than a department store or a police station.