Chapter 157
Chapter 157
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 157
Chapter Title: Silver Star Conduit (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fortunately, by that point, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that I could navigate it fairly well, even if not quite as adeptly as Judith or Shirley.
The musty mold smell unique to basements and the corrupted sea breeze in the enclosed space were unpleasant.
‘Can Shirley pick up the scent of chemicals amid this air…’
It was impossible for me to detect any other foreign smells through the rotten stench.
Shirley sniffed around for a moment, then covered her nose with her sleeve to reset her accustomed sense of smell before sniffing again to find the way.
“It’d be easier to just smash this down.”
Shirley pretended to tap her fist against the moldy brick wall.
If Shirley’s goal was mutual destruction… that could be a method too.
“We’re close now.”
“Yeah, I can feel it too.”
The layout of this underground passage was truly bizarre.
It wasn’t a straight path leading directly to a specific destination; it was structured like a maze garden made for amusement, looping around similar spots.
“This doesn’t even feel like a proper passage—more like something built to hide in.”
Dillon tapped his finger on the wall sconce where a torch should have been and looked around.
“There’s a door over there.”
Dillon’s pupils contracted small like a beast’s.
I naturally drew my gun from the holster and cocked the hammer.
Taking every precaution, the four of us—including me—slowly approached the door where the ‘chemical smell was leaking out.’
We all pressed our bodies flat against the wall beside the door, bracing for the possibility of it bursting open or an attack flying out from inside.
“There’s no presence at all, but let’s enter carefully.”
If this group of four were ordinary people, someone would have opened the door and I’d have entered with my gun, but ironically, I was the weakest one here despite holding the gun.
-Clunk!
Shirley kicked the door open, Judith rushed in first, followed by Dillon and me, entering the room in that order.
But contrary to our tension, there were no ambushes inside the room.
“Block the door seams and light it up.”
“There’s a blackout curtain right here, conveniently.”
Shirley deftly kicked the blackout curtain lying on the floor up with her toe and tossed it to Dillon.
“…You want me to hold this and block the door?”
“Ugh, you’re tall and perfect for it.”
“You’re tall too, Arma Cruise.”
“Don’t provoke the one with the gun and get in quick.”
Dillon seemed unexpectedly weak to pushy people.
Dillon, holding the blackout curtain in front of the door half-heartedly, glanced back with a look that questioned if this was really right.
“I’m lighting it up, so tell him not to move.”
“He says don’t move.”
“This is weird… I feel like I’m being picked on…”
While Dillon grumbled and wrestled with the blackout curtain, Shirley pulled a long iron shard-like object from her pocket and threw it twice.
-Tak.
“Hey, if you had something like that, you should’ve pulled it out sooner!”
“Hahaha.”
What Shirley threw were the daggers she always carried for self-defense.
The two daggers pinned the blackout curtain like nails, securing it over the door.
Now there was no worry about light leaking out.
Judith pulled a match from her pocket, created a small light source, found an overturned candlestick in the corner, and transferred the flame to it.
“There’s an alcohol lamp here too.”
Shirley tilted the lamp skillfully to avoid spilling the alcohol and lit it.
With two light sources, we could now make out our surroundings.
“…”
The first things visible in the now-illuminated basement interior were torn wallpaper and scorch marks.
A familiar sight.
“They lit a fire in here? No, this place to begin with—”
Judith stood rooted in place with her arms crossed.
And rightly so, because the basement interior was in such a state that one wouldn’t know where to start.
Countless empty glass tubes, overturned alcohol lamps (the alcohol smell was coming from here), scorch marks here and there, and discarded papers covered in scribbled notes deemed inedible after checking.
But the crowning horror was the specimens that were clearly denatured.
A familiar sight.
“We should call Theodor.”
“I’ve memorized the way, so should I go get him now?”
“No, don’t. All of you stay here.”
I grabbed Shirley’s arm as she tried to head out the door.
Of course, Shirley could have shaken me off easily if she wanted, but she obediently let herself be pulled back.
“Don’t go out.”
“Arma-senpai?”
“What’s wrong?”
Dillon, who had been seriously rummaging through the basement—no, the ‘laboratory’—stood up late and approached me with a grave expression.
Through the gap, I saw a device with a pulley-like nozzle from which two long, transparent rubber tubes extended like tentacles.
In the unventilated darkness, nameless devices and rows of slumped specimens…
A familiar sight indeed.
“You, all of you. Recently, have you… had any blood transfusions? Or taken suspicious drugs?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t we get questions every dawn, morning, lunch, evening, and late night? About your condition, mood, any special ‘symptoms’—”
“Senpai, it hurts.”
I quietly apologized and loosened my grip on Shirley’s arm.
My fingertips began trembling from the sudden excitement.
Without time to think, I rolled up the end of Shirley’s shirt sleeve to check the inside of her arm.
The inside of Shirley’s arm was pristine, without a single mark.
‘None.’
Next, I approached Judith, who stood with her arms crossed.
Judith watched my actions with a frown but first unbuttoned her shirt sleeve and extended her arm.
Aside from the faint seam of her Magic Tower prosthetic, Judith’s arm was also clean.
“Why, what’s going on? Did you all make some pact? If something happens, you signal each other?”
Dillon looked clearly flustered but watched my actions in bewilderment before inevitably rolling up his sleeve to show his arm.
Everyone had no marks.
So who was the victim?
“—I haven’t cooperated with anything like that anymore either. Then what the hell is this…”
Just in case, I rolled up my own sleeve to check the inside of my arm.
Since I hadn’t been hospitalized lately, my arm appeared clean without any needle marks.
“Arma, calm down now and tell us what’s going on.”
Judith, having already straightened her sleeve and returned to her arms-crossed stance, gazed at me with eyes sunken like the deep sea.
“That’s…”
My mouth wouldn’t open.
To explain this reflexive action, I’d have to recall that event—the one from my happiest time, now tainted with deep despair—Logan, the garden of St. Martin, and the horrific massacre perpetrated by the [Life and Verdancy Society].
***
“Logan. You’ve been weird lately.”
“Huh? The young master who suddenly vomited after drinking water last night is the weird one. Is your stomach okay now?”
“…Jeez.”
That day, Logan, who had been staring out the window with a dazed expression, turned his head at my scolding.
Logan wore his usual smile—that gentle, warm one where his eyes and mouth corners nearly met.
But anyone seeing the dark circles under his hollow eyes and his sluggish movements would easily tell Logan wasn’t in good shape.
“Come here.”
“Eh— No way.”
“You’re being extra tsundere today!”
Logan had been spending time blankly by my patient bed.
I was already unable to sleep due to intermittent tachycardia anyway.
Moreover, I vaguely sensed it was unfair for Logan, who was just a kid like me back then, to be solely responsible for nursing a boy his age.
“You sleep here. I’m going out for a bit.”
“Then let’s go together.”
“Don’t be annoying.”
Back then, I was a prickly, capricious kid—not acting that way because I wanted to, but because I lacked the leisure to think deeply about anything.
Thinking my sudden change was just another whim as always, Logan nodded and sat back down.
“Young master. There’s a flu going around among the nurses. You can’t stay out late.”
“You be careful.”
Ignoring Logan’s concern, I left the room.
Logan would probably use the auxiliary bed stored under the one I’d offered instead of it.
Knowing that, I deliberately vacated the spot so he could rest more comfortably without me around.
There was no one outside the hospital room.
Don’t such days exist?
Days when rare coincidences chain together one after another.
That day was one of them.
The hallway had not a single medical staff member, a side door was coincidentally left open due to someone’s mistake, and I wanted to let Logan rest.
Thinking there couldn’t be any place in the St. Martin sanatorium garden I couldn’t go, I entered that side path, seized by a strange impulse.
“What’s this?”
In one corner of the staff passage used by medical personnel, a narrow, tall sliding door.
An adult would have had to sidle through, but skinny little me back then passed through confidently.
“No one’s here?”
What courage drove me into that pitch-black darkness?
It could only be called demonic possession.
The deeper I went along the passage, the more the air shifted from the woody, earthy sanatorium smell to something dry, artificial, instinctively repulsive.
“…”
How to describe that scene.
That chilling, grotesque landscape etched intensely into my memory.
Display cases fitted perfectly from floor to ceiling, each compartment holding a glass dome matched to its height.
-Click.
And inside each of those domes—
.
.
.
“Arma!”
Memory is wondrous.
The more you vow never to recall it, the more powerfully it imprints, exploding like gunpowder at the slightest trigger.
In my panic, the fleeting memory fragments that surfaced for a brief moment pulled me back to my ten-year-old past.
“Enough. Let’s get out of here first. What about this weird machine?”
“It’s so tangled up, I don’t know where to start.”
“I’ll do it.”
At Judith and Shirley’s words, I rolled up my sleeves.
The two looked at me curiously.
It was hard to believe someone could fix this outwardly complex machine.
But I… knew how to operate it.
By mimicking the actions I’d seen countless times during those daily experiments disguised as ‘treatment.’
‘Close the main valve, disconnect the circulation pump and the rubber tubes carrying the blood flow…’
Like a machine-made lifeform, I dismantled the [Life and Verdancy Society]’s bizarre blood circulation device, the [Artificial Soul Circulation Apparatus], from the wall.