Acquiring the PMC

As Sawayanagi Seari stepped into the research facility, a strange sense of déjà vu washed over her. She was certain this was her first time here, yet something about it felt eerily familiar.

“This place…”

“Yeah. It’s built almost exactly like the lab where we were held captive. Gomisawa Renya… to go this far…! What a truly vile man.”

When Sawayanagi Seari muttered in sudden realization, Sawayanagi Tobe nodded firmly, turning her suspicion into certainty.

That’s right. The layout and atmosphere of this facility were nearly identical to the mysterious laboratory where the war orphans of Seryu had once been used as test subjects.

The reason Gomisawa Renya had built a lab like this—whether consciously or not—was obvious. It had to be for researching supernatural abilities. Burning with rage toward Gomisawa Renya, Sawayanagi Tobe began brutally slaughtering everyone he encountered inside the facility.

Of course, they needed to eliminate all witnesses to keep their presence hidden, but he didn’t stop at the guards. He used his steel-enhanced body to beat even the unarmed researchers to death.

Kiyona Hori didn’t say a word, but her fury was clear as she gunned down anyone in sight with her suppressed submachine gun. Meanwhile, Sawayanagi Seari closed her eyes and asked the wind for directions, focusing entirely on locating Sawayanagi Azuma.

Mimata Chieri stayed out of the direct fighting. She plugged a hacking USB into the lab’s computer and began extracting data. Whenever guards tried to sneak up on the Seryu team from behind, she provided covering fire to protect them.

The facility was designed like a game stage. With each floor they descended underground, the number of guards increased and their equipment grew more sophisticated.

But the Seryu agents were elite soldiers. They had no trouble clearing the first three floors. The battle-hardened Seryu operatives and the skilled assassin Mimata Chieri were simply too much for ordinary security. On top of that, with Sawayanagi Tobe unleashing his full esper powers, the guards stood no chance.

Things changed starting on the fourth floor.

From the fourth floor onward, the defenders were clearly Black Tech operatives—or perhaps from somewhere else entirely—but they were seasoned veterans who had seen real combat. They had already received reports of an infiltration and rescue team, so they were fully prepared.

“Three on the left!”

“Got it! I’ll hold the front—you take the rear!”

Even against battle-hardened soldiers, the coordinated efforts of two powerful espers proved nearly impossible to stop. With the non-esper combatants Kiyona Hori and Mimata Chieri also displaying exceptional fighting ability, they managed to break through the fourth floor with relative ease.

“We just got an update on the situation outside. I’ll reply that everything’s going smoothly. The fact that they’re telling us to contact them if anything happens suggests things aren’t too bad up there either.”

Mimata Chieri said as she sent a message through Line on her smartphone.

“If the surface team is doing fine, we don’t have to worry about our backs.”

Kiyona Hori replied with a relieved expression. While Mimata Chieri and Kiyona Hori were swapping out their magazines, Sawayanagi Seari found the path leading down to the fifth floor. But her face was grim.

“What’s wrong, Seari?”

When Kiyona Hori asked, Sawayanagi Seari answered with a slightly terrified look.

“The wind says… something scary is on the fifth floor…”

This was the first time the wind had ever given such a warning, so Sawayanagi Seari was visibly shaken. The others felt uneasy too, wondering what could possibly be on the fifth floor to frighten her so badly. Only Mimata Chieri, who didn’t yet know about Seari’s ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠abilities, stood there with a puzzled expression.

Still, they had to descend if they wanted to rescue Sawayanagi Azuma. The team steeled themselves and opened the door to the passage leading to the fifth underground floor.

The moment the door opened, the thick stench of blood slammed into their noses. Sawayanagi Tobe, who was at the front, frowned deeply as he stepped onto the fifth floor.

“Why are all the researchers dead?”

Most of the researchers on the fifth floor had been killed in a gruesome manner—their abdominal cavities completely torn open and their internal organs devoured, as if by some wild beast.

“Careful…!”

The instant the warning left his mouth, something lunged at Sawayanagi Tobe. It was a hideous creature. This floor must have been a laboratory dedicated to creating combat chimera. It seemed the test subjects had escaped during the chaos caused by the infiltration team above.

The chimera’s gray skin was covered with steel armor plating over critical areas like the chest and abdomen, suggesting fairly serious research had gone into it. With two heads and steel plates forcibly fused to living muscle, pus dripped disgustingly between the armor joints.

Fortunately, the creature’s teeth and claws couldn’t pierce Sawayanagi Tobe’s steel-hardened body. However, the monster possessed incredible toughness that completely ignored his punches.

When neither side could inflict meaningful damage on the other, the chimera gave up on chewing through Tobe and turned its attention toward Sawayanagi Seari and Kiyona Hori behind him.

“Like hell you will…!”

Sawayanagi Tobe grabbed the creature’s torso in a death grip to prevent it from reaching his comrades. The chimera thrashed wildly, screeching “Keeeeh!” as it tried to break free.

Sawayanagi Seari and Kiyona Hori immediately opened fire on the struggling monster. They aimed for the unarmored sections, causing chunks of flesh to explode and bodily fluids to spray everywhere. The sound of gunfire must have attracted more, because several additional chimeras soon appeared.

Meanwhile, Mimata Chieri was messaging Taira Ryuta.

Mimata Chieri slipped her smartphone back into her pocket and joined the other three in firing at the chimeras. She never saw the immediate reply from Taira Ryuta.

“Haa…! Why the hell are they hiding so thoroughly?”

I finished off the last of the five people who had been hiding and let out a long sigh. It had only taken about five minutes to find them, but I had been running at full speed between the third and first floors the entire time.

The final one had cleverly tried to slip out through the first-floor entrance while I was on the third floor, but he couldn’t outrun me. I caught him and snapped his neck.

After sprinting at full power for five straight minutes, I was pretty exhausted. I sat down on the ground to catch my breath when my pocket vibrated. It was a message from Mimata Chieri.

I looked at the photo Mimata Chieri had sent and immediately stood up, shaking off my fatigue.

I replied that I was on my way down and broke into a full sprint. There was an elevator in this building that went straight down. That was how the guards could reinforce each other so quickly.

Those kinds of monsters usually showed up later in the story as “Test Subject β” or something like that. Was their origin Black Tech? I thought it was something else… Maybe Black Tech had received the technology from somewhere.

Despite the complicated thoughts swirling in my head, I ran as fast as I could and reached the elevator. She had said the fourth floor was still manageable, so they were probably on the fifth or sixth.

Since some time had passed since she mentioned the fourth floor, maybe they were already on the sixth?

After a brief moment of thought, I pressed the button for the sixth floor.

The elevator carrying me descended rapidly and opened its doors on the sixth underground level.

“Huh?”

The moment the elevator doors opened, dozens of pairs of eyes met mine. A large group of researchers was staring straight at me inside the elevator. As I stepped out, they all took a cautious step back. Behind them stood a massive glass cylinder, and floating inside the liquid was a blue-haired girl.

It was Sawayanagi Azuma.

So the floor with the monsters was the fifth one. I needed to rescue her quickly and head up there.

“Get that girl out of the glass tube right now.”

When I spoke while radiating killing intent, a few researchers moved to operate the controls, but several middle-aged senior researchers stepped forward and shouted at me.

“How dare you give orders here? This is no place for an ignorant brat like you! Get lost!”

“Yeah, beat it!”

Were these guys insane? How could people conducting clearly forbidden research be so arrogant? If anything, we were the victims here, not the aggressors.

“You kidnapping accomplices…!”

I used my shadow to strangle the senior researcher who had stepped forward and everyone else who had joined in telling me to get lost. After a few moments, several researchers collapsed to the ground with a sickening crunch. The remaining researchers who witnessed their colleagues being choked by shadows let out terrified gasps.

“Open it. I’m in a hurry—I need to get to the fifth floor.”

“Y-yes sir!”

Having watched their colleague die right in front of them, the researchers worked the controls so fast their hands were a blur. The glass cylinder drained its liquid first, then opened. I stepped inside and lifted Sawayanagi Azuma into a princess carry.

Even while being held in my arms, Sawayanagi Azuma kept her eyes closed. Hmm, she wasn’t waking up immediately.

“Which way to the fifth floor?”

“Y-you can’t go there directly.”

When I asked for clarification, the researcher explained that they had lowered triple-reinforced steel barriers to prevent the chimeras on the fifth floor from escaping. In that case, it was actually lucky I had come to the sixth floor first. If I had kept going down, I would have been blocked by those barriers and unable to rescue Azuma.

“I’ll spare one of you if you open it. Hurry up. I need to go.”

The moment I finished speaking, the remaining ten or so researchers frantically began typing on their keyboards. For a brief moment, the only sounds in the room were the rapid clacking of keys and nervous breathing.

“I-I opened it!”

“No! I was the one who opened it!”

“It was me!”

It instantly turned into complete chaos. I sent all of them to the Daughter of the Abyss without discrimination. Come to think of it, I had sent a few alive earlier and received no reaction. Maybe living sacrifices were less effective than corpses? I pondered the Daughter of the Abyss’s preferences as I headed toward the passage leading to the fifth floor. The triple steel doors were already open. What honest researchers—they hadn’t lied after all.

“Is that them?”

When I reached the fifth floor, I saw shadowy figures shambling toward me. They looked like the monsters from the photo. I decided to hunt them as quickly as possible. I had to finish this fast. The condensed shadow orb only had less than five minutes left. I drove shadow skewers into the creatures’ heads and stirred their brains. That seemed to kill them in one hit. After all, the brain is usually the weak point for most monsters.

I ran through the floor, turning the brains of every monster I saw into mush while searching for Mimata Chieri and the Seryu Military Company team. Eventually I spotted seven of the creatures gathered together. Sawayanagi Tobe was holding off a staggering five of them by himself, while Sawayanagi Seari, Kiyona Hori, and Mimata Chieri were desperately dodging the other two. But they were slowing down. It looked like they would be caught soon.

“Over here, you freaks!”

My shout drew the attention of every human and monster in the area. In that brief window of distraction, I used shadow blades to decapitate the two monsters chasing the women.

I then dealt with the remaining five the same way I had the others—driving shadow skewers into their brains and dropping them effortlessly.

After taking out all seven here, it seemed there were no more monsters left. Even when I focused my Master’s Senses to the limit, I couldn’t detect any other presences besides us.

At ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that moment, the condensed shadow orb’s duration expired. Strength drained from my body. My Abyss stat dropped by 5, and the level of Shadow Domination fell by 5. Still, it wasn’t as if I had gained nothing.

Oh, that’s amazing. Not only did I level up, but Shadow Domination went up by two levels too.

I definitely felt it this time. The Abyss stat was incredibly useful, but it was equally dangerous. Even though my Will and Abyss values were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠equal, I had offered human sacrifices and killed people without the slightest hesitation. It was clearly affecting my personality. But without the increased Abyss, I wouldn’t have been able to resolve this incident.

If I had fought these monsters using all my abilities together with Shinkaihime, I could have won—but not as easily as I just did. There would have been casualties, and I couldn’t guarantee that those casualties wouldn’t have included me or Mimata Chieri.

So the conclusion was simple: I would max out my Will first, then gradually invest in Abyss afterward.

“Mmm…”

While I was lost in thought, Sawayanagi Azuma, who was still in my arms, opened her eyes. She looked extremely startled to find herself in my embrace rather than inside the glass cylinder.

“Th-there were five men…”

“Don’t worry. We all worked together to rescue you…! Mmph!”

Suddenly, Sawayanagi Azuma pulled me into a kiss. What the hell was this situation?