Upward (2)
Dark, and cold.
That was my first impression after opening the iron door of the emergency stairwell and stepping inside.
The interior corridors had at least some lighting still clinging to life, but in here, it seemed, everything had died completely. Not a single point of light remained — only darkness.
"The lights are entirely out. Looks like they cheaped out on the fixtures."
While I hesitated before that pitch-black gloom, Arwen floated ahead of me through the door. Her glow grew stronger inside, and thanks to her, there was just enough light to make out the rough outlines of things.
I followed her in and took stock of our surroundings. It was nothing like the research facility's interiors, where every surface had been finished with meticulous care. This place was littered with food wrappers and drained plastic bottles — the debris of whatever had once been stored here. A fairly enormous cylindrical space rose around us, with a narrow staircase clinging to the wall and spiraling upward. No matter how far I craned my neck, I couldn't see where it ended.
"Why is this place... such a dump?"
I kicked the steps in front of me. The stairs and the surrounding walls appeared to be made of some concrete-like material — a stark contrast to the solid metal that composed every other part of the facility. There was even a large crack carved into the wall.
"This is my first time here in person as well... it deviates from the blueprints. Nothing to be done about it, though. Who would ever have imagined anyone using these stairs? They probably built it just for show."
"Unbelievable. Technology advances and this is still the result?"
"Perhaps the budget ran short."
I climbed the stairs carefully. A flimsy railing that looked like it would snap if you so much as tapped it was the entirety of the safety measures. Having endured three hundred years, the occasional broken step made my heart lurch every time. Even with Arwen's light, the best we could manage was a sightline of two or three meters.
"This seems weirdly tall. Why can't I see the 4th floor yet?"
I had been walking for quite a while when I suddenly stopped. Just how high was a single floor, that I still couldn't see another level's door? By my reckoning I'd climbed the equivalent of ten stories — and even accounting for the pointlessly spiral design of the staircase, something was off. I glanced down, and an abyss of darkness yawned open its mouth below me.
Can goblins see in the dark? How the hell did they climb up here? For all I knew, a few of them might have fallen to their deaths on the way.
"There's a massive aquarium on the 5th floor, so the levels are taller. But we're almost there — hang in there."
"...Why does a research facility have an aquarium?"
"'Research facility' is a bit of a misnomer — it was practically an underground city. If people were going to be cooped up underground all day, they'd need leisure facilities, wouldn't they? For reference, there's a botanical garden on the 2nd floor."
"The benefits package here is unreal."
I couldn't help but marvel at the welfare standards of the future. Nothing like hell-society back home. No — come to think of it, no other country could even compare.
Just as Arwen had said, before long we reached the entrance to the 4th floor. We rested there briefly, then set out again. Fortunately, there was nothing particularly notable between here and the 2nd floor, so apparently we only needed to climb about thirty more meters. Each floor, it turned out, was fifteen meters high.
That's still pretty tall, though??
Rumble...
In the middle of our brisk ascent, I froze in place at a faint sound drifting down from above. Some of the shock had reached even here, and dust sifted down like snow.
"Don't tell me that's an earthquake."
"Our observation equipment is damaged, so I can't say for certain, but it's an odd one for an earthquake. Something may be happening on the upper floors."
"The goblins, of course..."
Earthquake or not, it was the kind of noise that gnawed at your nerves. The stairs were already cracked in a dozen places — if a bigger shock hit...
I forced down my mounting anxiety and quickened my pace. Falling here would be catastrophic.
"Almost ther—"
CRASH—!
Just as the entrance to sublevel 2 finally came into view, a monstrous roar and impact shook me to the core. The stairwell floor trembled violently under an oscillation unlike anything I'd felt before.
"We have to get up there—"
"Danger! Get back!"
The instant the shaking paused, I lunged for the door to the 2nd floor — but Arwen's warning sparked a flash of dread across my mind. I retracted my outstretched foot and threw myself backward.
CRUMBLE!
A cascade of stone chunks came raining down onto the very spot where I'd stood a second before. The force was stronger than I'd expected — it had clearly fallen from the ceiling of the upper level.
"Whoa... I nearly died."
I barely caught my balance, nearly toppling from the abrupt backward leap. Without this body's preternatural reflexes, I would almost certainly have gone down on my back. A brush with sudden death sent a chill racing up my spine.
Creeeeak...
"Slowly... move backward. The staircase is about to collapse. And watch above — there may be more falling debris."
"Damn it. Why is the construction work so shoddy? Everywhere I go, it always comes back to the budget."
The long-neglected stonework had begun to scream. Ideally we would have escaped through to the 2nd floor, but the enormous pile of rubble had sealed the entrance shut. Clearing those rocks would take time — time the stairs might not give us. Muttering complaints to vent the tension, I calmly made my way back the way we'd come.
"This is a problem."
"Tell me about it. A few seconds of faster movement and we'd have been fine."
We retreated to the 3rd floor. The sound of the staircase collapsing reached us shortly after we shut the door — falling back had been the right call.
"A facility this size doesn't have just one emergency stairwell, right?"
"Of course not. There are several more... though there's no guarantee they survived that shock either."
Given the scale of the facility, there were five emergency stairwell zones in total: one in the central section, and four along the outer perimeter. Viewed from above, the research facility was roughly square, so that meant one in the center and one in each corner.
"Therefore, using the central staircase is the fastest route. We'll just need to move about ten kilometers."
"That's unsettling. What if we go all that way and find the stairs collapsed too?"
After seeing the shoddy workmanship on display, I had my doubts about whether the other stairwells had fared any better.
"...Then we'd have to get the elevators moving. That would be quite the ordeal."
"Oh dear. Goblins detected. Ten in total. And one rather unusual specimen mixed in among them."
"Unusual how?"
We had been making our way toward the central staircase for some time when Arwen projected a hologram before my eyes. It wasn't the creature's true form, but a rough 3D rendering of the anomalous entity's shape. And that shape was...
"Ripped as hell."
It was a goblin that looked like it had done some serious training. Its build was roughly three times that of an ordinary goblin — I'd wager a full head taller than me. No matter how I looked at it, this thing was an officer-class leader.
"Let's take it."
I gently set down the stroller and loosened up. The terrain offered no opportunities for ambush. This would have to be a head-on clash.
"You intend to fight? Circumventing them would be—"
"The numbers are intimidating, sure, but it's a good opportunity. We have no idea how many goblins are roaming this facility, so I need to build experience."
"...Mm. That's not unreasonable, but please keep the noise to a minimum. My detection range isn't very wide — if reinforcements arrive, I may not sense them in time."
"Got it."
Arwen, who had initially voiced concerns, came around to my reasoning. We couldn't keep running forever.
Sshing.
I drew the blade I'd acquired on sublevel 5. It slid from its sheath with a silky smoothness that needed no oil. Its cold silver sheen caught Arwen's light and glittered.
'Goblin Warrior' — that's the perfect name for it.
Watching the anomalous entity striding boldly at the head of the pack, an appropriate designation came to me. Unlike the little goblins who roamed half-naked carrying nothing but crude clubs, this one was outfitted head to toe in rough-hewn armor. The blunt sword clutched in its one hand conjured the image of a warrior.
"GRAAAH—!"
Spotting me in the dead-straight corridor, the goblins came sprinting, drool flying from their jaws. At the very front ran the massive Goblin Warrior. It had confidence to match its bulk, charging at me with a ferocious bellow.
Don't flinch!
I had committed to this fight, but the moment those vicious faces and rippling muscles came into view, my body wanted to shrink away. I whipped it into line. The feeble, listless me of my past life is dead and gone!
My fighting spirit surged, and the Inner Heart pounded powerfully in response. Decisive blow from the very first exchange!
I pushed my aura to its absolute limit. Muscles on the verge of bursting. I swung the blade over my shoulder, resolved to end everything in a single stroke, and met the onrushing Goblin Warrior's sword head-on.
Shhk!
All that resolve, and yet the silver blade parted the Goblin Warrior's blunt sword as smoothly as if it were butter. In its wake, the warrior's cleaved head floated up into the air. If this had truly cut through steel, bone, and muscle, the resistance should have been terrifying — instead, there was almost nothing.
"...What the heck. That was easy?"
The moment I cleaved the Goblin Warrior in one stroke, the morale of the rest of the pack buckled hard. I stared at the warrior as it dissolved into powder, unable to hide my bewilderment.
Tat!
I threw myself at the goblins, thrown into chaos by the loss of their leader. My aura, roaring to a fever pitch at the prospect of real combat, granted me strength that startled even its owner. Seven meters closed in just two strides.
I carved through the body of a goblin standing frozen in bewilderment, cutting diagonally.
"Khek?"
One goblin, belatedly reacting as its comrade's blood splattered across it, hefted its club and lunged — but its whole body was riddled with openings. I slashed through the exposed upper half it had left undefended by raising its arms. One relatively clever goblin tried to block my blade with its club, but at this point, no mere club was stopping this edge.
Finishing off the remaining goblins took only a few seconds.
"...I guess I've got some serious gear carry going on. This sword is no joke."
"Please, you mustn't compare it to those cheap iron swords."
After the battle, I examined the still-glowing silver blade carefully. It had sheared through the warrior's crude metal armor, however sloppy the forging — and yet the edge hadn't chipped in the slightest. In appearance it was merely a medieval sword, but forged with future technology, it was extraordinarily sturdy and keen.
"By the way, how exactly do you detect the goblins? I thought you said all the surveillance cameras were destroyed."
I picked up the stones the goblins had dropped one by one, absorbing them, and asked the question that had been nagging at me.
"Ha — I have my own capabilities, you know. Even if this body has its limits."
"Huh? Wasn't that body just a kind of hologram?"
"It is a body crafted from processed psychic energy. Thanks to that, it can exert a measure of power on its own — though only a high-performance AI such as myself can manage the technique. Those other dim-witted auxiliary AIs couldn't so much as imitate it."
Weren't YOU an auxiliary AI too? Arwen declared this all with her chest puffed out proudly. I wanted to interject — but well, it was true that she was good at her job, so I'd let it slide.
...Though hearing that, it seems psychic energy isn't something only humans can use. Made sense, really — psychic energy was the power of the mind, and humans weren't the only beings with minds. Still, seeing an AI handle this power made me wonder: perhaps the Phantasms could wield psychic energy as well.
My points went up!
When I absorbed the [stones] and checked my status window, there was finally a change in my point total. I'd spent 1,000 points buying the Inner Heart talent, so I should have had 12 remaining — but the number now read 13. All that diligent absorption of the goblins' dropped stones had paid off.
Is hunting for points too slow, though? At this rate, I had no idea when I'd ever unlock a new talent, and the future looked grim — but come to think of it, I didn't strictly need to grind points through hunting. What mattered were the stones they dropped. Wouldn't it be great to raid some warehouse stuffed to the brim with those things...
After confirming my points, I sat down on the floor for a short rest. It was a luxury I could afford because Arwen had activated the emergency barricades, creating a makeshift safe zone around us.
"No cleanup duty — that sure is convenient."
"Everything has at least one advantage, you know."
I had reaped ten lives, yet the blade remained immaculately clean. I gave it a cursory wipe with a cloth and slid it back into its sheath. If I'd cut down a normal living creature, blood and gore would have been caked all over it. But because everything the original owner spawned vanished upon death, not even the faintest scent of blood lingered in this space.
Would the blood vanish if I bled something and killed it a while later, too? I idled on that pointless thought for a moment, catching my breath. But with no injuries to speak of, the rest was brief.
Onward — toward the central staircase!