Collapse
"Then we need to move fast... Ah!"
Arwen climbed down from the bed, but she still wasn't used to handling her new body, and her legs wobbled beneath her.
I quickly caught her as she pitched forward.
"Ugh."
A groan escaped me at her heavy weight. That's going to throw out my back!
"You're way too heavy, you know?"
"...How considerate of you. I didn't exactly design this body with its own weight in mind. If I'd known it would come to this, I would have balanced things properly..."
Arwen turned her face away and grumbled under her breath. Well, fair enough — she'd never imagined she'd end up using a body herself.
"Can't you just fix it yourself? Aren't there spare parts?"
"I'm not in a situation where I can remotely operate machinery anymore. Ah, and one more thing — I can no longer detect living beings like I used to. Being confined to a body like this is rather suffocating."
"Great. That's a bit of a problem."
Until now, her map-hack had made fighting easy. From here on out, a surprise attack was no longer guaranteed.
"Hehe. You wouldn't throw me away just because I've become useless, would you?"
"Don't be ridiculous. Hurry up and practice controlling that body. We have a food problem, so I don't think we can afford to wait long."
"Two hours will be enough."
Just as Arwen had promised, two hours later we were able to set out.
Our destination was, of course, the Central Staircase. It was where the fierce battle between goblins and chimeras had erupted — but it was also the closest option, and after this much time had passed, I figured the fight had to have been decided one way or another.
"Master Ha Jun, take a look at this."
Whoosh!
Arwen leapt high into the air without even a running start, then flipped into a somersault. Her body spun through nearly three full rotations with a heavy rush of wind, and when she landed lightly with both feet together, the neatly laid paving stones cracked slightly — probably from the weight.
Not bad. Though how many times has she done that now? Is she that happy to have a body?
From the moment Arwen first started practicing walking to the point where she could run, only thirty minutes had passed. After that, her ambitions grew, and she began practicing high-difficulty maneuvers.
Since she could move her body up to the limits of her joints' mechanical drives, even poses demanding extreme flexibility gave her no trouble. Fortunately, the artificial muscles were high quality, providing more than enough strength to move her heavy frame.
Of course, the body is fundamentally too heavy, so she's on the slow side. But against goblins, that shouldn't matter.
And let's not mention the heavy part again. She seemed to be shooting me some nasty looks about it.
I swallowed the tactless thought that kept trying to escape my mouth.
Arwen's endless practice of exotic maneuvers slowed us down a little, but once we got moving in earnest, we soon arrived at the botanical garden.
KWAAAAAANG—!
"...Good lord. The staircase is coming down."
Barely a few hours had passed, and the staircase section was already standing tilted in the center of the botanical garden like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The cylindrical structure's flank had been blown open in a gruesome wreck — who knew what had happened inside. Even the finest engineering can't survive losing its side, and the whole thing was slowly collapsing.
CRUMBLEEE—
As the colossal structure gave way, the weight of it pressed down on the ground like an entire skyscraper being demolished at once. A tremor swept over us as if an earthquake had struck, making even our footing shudder.
"In a way, arriving late saved our lives. You have me to thank for that."
"How very kind of you."
While we carried on this absurdly casual conversation, debris from the staircase came flying our way. I jerked my head aside to dodge a boulder-sized rock hurtling at us with terrifying momentum, then retreated further back.
After some time, the entire area within the structure's collapse radius had been laid to waste. When the dust settled, the trees — long dead already — had all been shattered to splinters, leaving only small fragments scattered across the ground.
"We'll have to use a different staircase. No guarantee it's still intact, though."
"Again?"
"It's a nuisance, but we have no choice. The real problem is something else, however... The Central Staircase was the only one that reached all the way to the surface. We'll have to use the elevator shafts from now on. It's going to be an enormous hassle."
Oh, wonderful.
Only three staircases remained now. Of course, there was no guarantee even those were still standing, but we headed north first, toward the nearest one.
"By the way, don't you think there are way too few emergency staircases for a facility this size? Is this place safety-blind or something?"
Even a decent department store has at least two or three staircases. Five for a research complex nearly the size of a city was far too few. And only one of them led to the surface, at that.
"It's a security matter. That's why everything below sublevel six is separated entirely — the deeper you go, the fewer passages are available."
"That's a bit extreme..."
"Even if the staff couldn't escape in an emergency, they'd have decided that was better than having their research stolen. Probably."
"Can't argue with the logic. Cruel, though."
Even while chatting, I never let go of the thin thread of tension. An enemy could ambush us at any moment, anywhere. With Arwen no longer able to use her wide-area detection, there was no helping it.
"You know, Master... the more I think about it, the more certain I am that the Central Staircase's collapse was no accident."
"Obviously. There'd been loud noises coming from above for ages. Maybe some colossal monster was rampaging up there?"
The cause of the collapse was clear — the destruction at the very heart of the cylindrical structure. It hadn't been simple aging; the damage pointed to an internal impact. The question was who — or what — had delivered it.
"A monster, you say... It's possible the Original Chimera is still alive."
"The Original Chimera?"
"I mean an un-degraded chimera. According to the data collected through my avatar, the common chimeras all degenerated long ago."
Ah, right — Mini Arwen examined those chimeras.
I recalled the sight of her analyzing the dead chimeras. Apparently the data had transmitted properly.
"Were chimeras originally that strong? Strong enough to wreck the facility's structure?"
"Normally it would have been difficult, but given how degraded everything is now, it's not impossible. That said, a chimera would have no reason to destroy a building without cause..."
"Then does the goblin side have a strong one too? Something comparable to the Original Chimera?"
"Perhaps..."
SHWEEEK—!
A sharp whistle of wind cut off Arwen's words. The sound of something incoming. A long spear abruptly emerged, punching through the curtain of darkness.
Danger!
The spear hurtled toward Arwen at incredible speed — too fast to block even with my aura-reinforced body. Before I could do anything, the blunt spearhead was about to pierce clean through her head—
TUNG!
Fortunately, the spear failed to penetrate Arwen's hardened skin and bounced off. It had been a ferocious attack, but Arwen's body — human only in appearance, built from durable materials within — was unharmed.
The impact, however, was another matter. Staggering backward as if she might fall, Arwen only managed to recover her footing after a few steps.
"You okay?"
"My skin got scraped, but no serious damage. Without my detection ability, this is awfully inconvenient. To think I'd get hit by an attack like this..."
"No, that attack was genuinely fast."
A small gash had opened on Arwen's forehead, but the wound hadn't caved inward, so it seemed her internals were unaffected. I kept my aura raised and stared at the point where the spear had been launched.
That was far too powerful an attack to be a goblin's work. If it had been aimed at me, I honestly wasn't sure I could have dodged it unscathed.
"Kihihik. Kik."
With shuffling footsteps, a pack of goblins emerged. Battle-worn stragglers covered in wounds here and there — roughly twenty of them. They strutted out boldly, then faltered slightly at the sight of Arwen standing there, perfectly alive.
"What, it's just goblins. The one who threw that spear... ah, there he is."
I singled out the Goblin Warrior at the very back. The one who'd apparently sold off his sword somewhere — instead he gripped a bizarre stick with cords dangling from it, and a quiver of crude spears hung at his waist. He'd apparently made a full career change into a ranged attacker.
"That's similar to an atlatl. A kind of spear-thrower."
Arwen identified the warrior's tool at a glance. The word rang a faint bell.
A spear-thrower... I think I saw one in a documentary once?
From what I remembered, it was a primitive device that let you hurl a spear with tremendous force. Simple in structure, but devastatingly effective. Something about the centrifugal launch propelling spears to nearly a hundred kilometers per hour?
"Krrrk..."
The Goblin Warrior was little more than a shadowy silhouette in the dark. He slunk backward, drew a spear from the quiver at his waist, and loaded it onto the atlatl again. His careful yet quick handiwork was unlike anything a goblin should be capable of.
"I'll take this one."
"Huh? You sure?"
Just as I was about to charge in — there was no reason to wait around for a ranged attack — Arwen stepped forward and stopped me. I had no choice but to halt my lunging body and protest.
"Their attacks can't harm me anyway."
"Still, be careful."
I readily granted Arwen permission to fight. I couldn't be fighting alone forever, after all. Every additional fighter would lighten my burden considerably.
SHWEEEEK!
The Goblin Warrior performed a dynamic, full-bodied motion and hurled another spear. The reduced distance made this throw stronger than the last — but this time, the trajectory was off.
It's coming at me.
Clever creature — he'd apparently figured out that a thrown spear couldn't kill Arwen. His accuracy was excellent too; the spear flew straight for the space between my eyes. I braced to duck, just in case.
As it turned out, I needn't have bothered.
SNATCH!
Astoundingly, Arwen caught the incoming spear clean out of the air. It looked simple, but it was a feat requiring utterly absurd precision.
I don't think I could pull that off.
My palm stung just imagining it. If I had aura to spare, I'd be spending it elsewhere — though the same logic didn't apply to Arwen, whose natural durability made armor practically unnecessary.
"It's only surprise attacks that get through to me."
Arwen adjusted her grip on the captured spear and returned it to its original owner at once.
FWOOSH!
CRACK!
The spear flew with a heavy rush of wind — a throw carrying destructive power similar to just moments before, and that without any spear-thrower at all. It struck the Goblin Warrior square in the chest.
The warrior, never dreaming he'd be on the receiving end of his own attack, crumbled to dust and met a pitifully anticlimactic end.
"That went well. This time, I'd like to test close combat."
CLANG! CLANG!
Flushed with confidence after landing her first attack so cleanly, Arwen knocked her fists together roughly and marched forward.