Repair (1)
"Huh? What is it?"
Curious what could be so surprising, I turned to the screen — and there was a photo of an elegant, strikingly beautiful woman with a gentle smile.
Tall and slender, with long, straight black hair.
Even in a simple dress, the fullness of her figure seemed to embody every man's fantasy in a single image.
"Who is she?"
"That is the Nursemaid's original appearance. The data was already registered, so it seems she has been here before. Her name is Nova."
"That was the Nursemaid? Wow... so this is what she used to look like."
It was a world of difference from her current, ruined state — the kind of thing that would make you flinch if you saw it in the dark.
The woman in the photograph practically seemed to glow.
"Nova..."
Such a pretty name.
And I only learned it at the very end.
If only I could have called her by it while she was still alive.
"Then restore her using this data."
"Hmm... is this type your preference, sir?"
"Yeah, yeah."
I brushed off Arwen's teasing without much fuss.
Besides, wouldn't Nova herself rest easier falling asleep with the appearance of her prime?
"Under normal circumstances the repairs would run automatically, but with facilities this degraded, I can't take any chances — I'll perform the procedure myself."
"Ooh... Arwen, my teacher. How long do you expect it to take?"
"Roughly three hours, I'd say. I have the knowledge, but this would be my first time actually performing a professional repair."
Three hours was an awkward amount of time.
I wasn't particularly tired, so... might as well tidy up the surroundings.
"Then I'll go hunt down some goblins and chimeras. It can't hurt to thin out the numbers."
"Very well. One moment..."
Boop!
With a cute sound effect, Arwen suddenly became two!
From her palm-sized main body, a smaller Arwen popped right out.
A Mini Arwen.
"It's a kind of clone made from surplus resources. It can perform functions similar to mine."
"Nice to have you."
"...You're talking down to me?"
"Only essential functions were installed."
Mini Arwen settled onto the top of my head, gripping my hair like handles to keep her balance.
It felt like wearing a cotton ball as a hat.
...
The short speech was suspicious in more ways than one, but...
Mini Arwen proved faithfully diligent in her duties.
"We going to the botanical garden?"
"Yeah. Plenty of cover, easy to hide, and plenty of targets to hunt."
"Departing from the perimeter is the strategic move. Setting route to nearest point."
We checked for life signs at regular intervals as we slowly worked our way in from the outer edge.
The dead forest was full of cover — but that applied just as much to me.
One careless moment and I could miss an enemy creeping up on me and get ambushed instead.
"$@#!!!"
"^@^!"
After entering the botanical garden, I headed toward the cluster of red dots on the holographic map.
Sure enough, a pack of goblins and chimeras immediately came into view.
They were already mid-battle.
Even a rough count put them at several dozen strong.
I hid myself among the wreckage of a gnarled, withered tree.
So that's a chimera...
Up close, the chimeras were quite a horrific sight.
Whatever creature had served as their base was apparently an insect — chitinous plating covered their bodies here and there.
Only a rare few wore their carapaces neatly; on most of them, the armor had grown wild and unruly.
Where no shell grew, there was nothing but coarse, bristly fur — not a patch of skin to be seen.
They walked on two legs, but their faces were closer to an insect's than anything else.
They fight surprisingly well. It's like watching a medieval army.
The goblins outnumbered the chimeras nearly three to one.
Yet the chimeras were overwhelming them.
For one thing, the chimeras had fairly robust builds — and unlike the goblins, who charged in a chaotic mob, they maintained a proper battle line.
They fought in coordination, covering their comrades at their flanks, and the goblins, thrown into confusion, couldn't keep up.
Uwook!
But the moment a muscular Goblin Warrior, who had been observing the situation calmly, barged into the fray, the tide slowly began to turn.
The Warrior swung his blunt sword with tremendous force, and the chimera raised its forearm plates to block.
A single blow was enough to crack the carapace wide open — and the second blow split it clean apart.
"Krraaaak!"
The chimera panicked, flailing its arms wildly.
But the Goblin Warrior dodged the disorderly attack with ease and brought his sword down.
Kwajik! Kwajik!
The arm with its shattered carapace went flying.
With his next strike, so did the head.
The headless chimera collapsed, yellow fluid streaming from its neck, and breathed its last.
Pshoo-!
The chimeras weren't simply being slaughtered, though.
When one of them spread its grotesque maw, something like spiderweb shot out with tremendous force.
The web splattered straight across the face of a Goblin Warrior who had let his guard down.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
In an instant, seventy percent of the Warrior's face was smothered under white webbing.
He clawed frantically at it, trying to peel it away, but the stuff was stickier than it looked, and it came off only in slow, reluctant shreds.
Given enough time, he could have torn free easily enough...
But the chimeras were not about to wait on him like gentlemen.
Puk.
The sharp tip of a chimera's carapace punched through his throat.
The Goblin Warrior crumbled into powder a moment later.
The chimera tried to let out a triumphant roar — only to moan in pain as a small goblin swarmed up its body in one climb and jabbed at its eyes.
It was a chaotic melee.
...
Still, on the whole, the chimeras are losing. Keep this up and they'll be wiped out.
As time passed, the chimeras' disadvantage became unmistakable.
Only three chimeras remained alive.
Against them stood ten goblins — including as many as three Goblin Warriors.
Once the goblins realized they had won, they began pressing the chimeras with leisurely confidence.
Some goblins, already empty-handed, could be seen hacking up the chimera corpses and gathering the pieces.
"Might be a good time to start attacking."
"I know. If I strike now, their attention will scatter. Perfect opportunity."
I drew my sword, taking care not to make a sound.
The nearest goblin was a mere five meters away.
Deep breath.
Hwoo-
The aura I had honed over several battles wrapped naturally around my brain.
My head grew hot, and the dust motes floating in the air seemed to hang frozen in place, drifting in slow motion.
Pat!
I ran through a world where everything had slowed.
My consciousness spun sharp and quick, but my body lagged behind it all the same.
Still — faster than any goblin!
"Ke... hip... hah...!"
The giggling of the small goblins looting the chimera corpses stretched out long and slow.
They hadn't grasped what was happening yet.
Swish!
I slipped past the first goblin, cutting lightly through its bowed head as I went.
But these things were mere riffraff.
The real threats were the Goblin Warriors.
Tak...
Before the goblin I'd cut could even spurt blood, I took another step.
I struck at the neck of a Warrior who was stupidly showing me the back of his head.
"Keke... kuhk!"
The force of the mighty blow sent the Warrior's head spinning through the air to the ground.
But my turn wasn't over yet.
I let the momentum of my surging, power-packed body carry me upward.
My body was airborne before I knew it.
I twisted my waist to the point of breaking, and the right angle presented itself.
Swish.
"Kiyaaaaak!"
I swung my sword in a horizontal arc and gently bisected the eyeballs of another Warrior who was staring at me in sheer disbelief.
The assault ended there.
Slashing down the small goblins one by one as they lunged at me in reckless suicide attacks, I fell back.
"This much is more than enough. Right?"
"Kkak?"
Watching me retreat outright, the goblins wore bewildered expressions.
The goblin count now... three small ones, two Goblin Warriors.
And one of the Warriors was blind now.
They'd make fine opponents for the surviving chimeras.
No need for me to burn any more strength.
...Even if they form some temporary alliance, this number is manageable enough. Or I could just run for a while.
...
The fight between goblins and chimeras, balanced so neatly, found its final victor in the chimeras.
Though only a single chimera — already bearing wounds that would kill it soon enough even if I left it alone — remained standing.
"Dumber than I expected."
"Ke... eek."
Puk.
I drove my blade through the skull of the chimera crawling along the ground.
It had a small carapace plate on its forehead, but my blade, sharpest at its tip, slid smoothly into its brain without needing much force at all.
The truth was, I had tried talking to the chimera first.
From my perspective, there was no reason to kill creatures that couldn't even yield me points.
If we could communicate, some loose form of cooperation might have been possible...
But unfortunately, the only thing in the chimera's eyes was hostility.
Hwiik!
Unlike the goblins, chimeras were proper living creatures — and left proper byproducts behind.
I flicked my sword through the air, shaking off the fluids and blood clinging to it.
But chimera blood was stickier than I'd imagined, and it took a long while of wiping with a cloth before it finally came clean.
"..."
The battlefield where dozens of lives had clashed in a desperate struggle mere moments ago was now filled with silence.
All that remained were the chimeras' gruesome corpses.
The goblins had vanished entirely, leaving nothing but [Stones].
"The chimeras are more belligerent than I thought. An alliance with the goblins is out of the question."
"Agreed. Chimera intelligence level extremely low. Inconsistent with stored data. Conducting examination."
Mini Arwen tilted her head and floated off toward the chimera corpses.
I seized the opening to diligently gather up the [Stones] and absorb them.
It had been a large pack — thirty to forty goblins alone, plus as many as five Warriors.
If I'd faced them head-on, I would have had a genuinely hard time of it.
+18P
I gained three whole points...
Exactly the same amount I'd earned clearing the entire third floor.
An absurd efficiency compared to the effort involved.
This place, where goblins and chimeras waged their endless war, was as good as a gold mine to me.
"Analysis complete."
Mini Arwen floated back to me.
"What's the verdict?"
"Chimeras have degraded considerably. Muscular strength, intelligence, endurance — performance reduced to a fraction across all categories. Cause appears to be genetic code deterioration from uncontrolled self-reproduction."
"I see. That explains it..."
It had been hard to believe that the bioweapons of the future could fight on par with mere goblins like these — but now it made sense.
Even their original creators never predicted the chimeras would breed unchecked for three hundred years.
And unlike an Enhanced Human, chimeras were low-cost biological weapons; their lifespans couldn't have been long.
It was entirely possible that dozens of generations had already come and gone.
"Alright, let's try somewhere else."
I had a feeling today was going to be a lucky day.
...
We wound our way around the perimeter of the botanical garden, slowly burrowing inward.
Even without me doing much of anything, the number of creatures in the garden — nearly a thousand of them — dwindled rapidly.
Unlike humans, these were beings of pure ferocity, and the moment their eyes met, they were too busy fighting each other to bother with anything else.
Backstabbing the exhausted survivors of a brutal battle was laughably easy work.
Thanks to that, I racked up combat experience and points in generous supply.
Jackpot~
+50P
Grinning to myself, I picked up the [Stones] scattered across a battlefield strewn with chimera corpses.
This spot, not far from the stairwell at the heart of the forest, had apparently seen a large-scale battle.
Yellow blood from the chimera corpses had pooled into actual puddles.
In the end, the only real victims of this war are the chimeras.
I gained [Stones] from the goblins.
The goblins killed the chimeras and took their food — but the chimeras got nothing out of it at all.
A war of nothing but wounds, you might call it.
"The second floor's more or less cleaned up. This place never seemed like the main battlefield in the first place."
"Affirmative."
"Which leaves the first floor as the problem..."
No more life signs were registering on Mini Arwen's senses.
Well, a few might turn up if I went looking, but there was no need to scrub the place spotless.
All I needed was to thin them out enough that my escape route wouldn't get cut off later.
"I'm curious about the first floor. Think you could go scout it out on your own?"
"Extremely inadvisable."
"What, why??"
"This body. Zero defensive capability. Getting hit by even a rock means breaking. Regeneration consumes resources too."
"Ah, right. Your body isn't a hologram, is it..."
That made sense — if she could have, Arwen would have gone scouting alone ages ago.
"Then how about we go together and just take a quick look?"
"Not a bad id...ea? Huh? Ah. Anomaly detected in main body. Requesting return..."
"Wha—?"
The image of Mini Arwen, still mid-nod, abruptly flickered.
She buzzed and crackled like a broken television screen, her form warping and shaking.
Before I could take any action at all, she dissolved into wisps of smoke and vanished.
"...What was that? Did something happen to Arwen? I need to get back, and fast—"
I hurried to move — and froze dead in my tracks.
I looked around in every direction and saw nothing but identical trees stretching away into the distance.
Because I'd been leaning on Mini Arwen's map this whole time, I had no idea which way I needed to go.
"...Where even am I?"
My main body's age was one year old.
Exactly the right age to get lost.