Reconnaissance (3)
"Why not? My database indicates that men prefer that form of address, with a 95% confidence level."
"Why does your database even contain that information?? Anyway, stop calling me that."
Master. Seriously?
Coming from a slender beauty, maybe—but from a palm-sized fairy, it was a word that simply couldn't be taken out of one's mouth with a straight face.
If I ever ran into other survivors and Arwen introduced me as her master...
Yeah. Not a thought I wanted to entertain.
"Demons dwell in the beholder's heart. Those who entertain strange thoughts tend to see strangeness in everything, Master."
"I don't need to hear that from an AI! ...Just call me Hajun."
I rummaged through my memories and pulled out a name that felt deeply familiar.
Probably my name from my past life.
The family name, though, was gone.
"Understood, Hajun-nim."
"Haa... good. Now, let's really get out of here. We've wasted enough time."
Why was I breaking into a cold sweat over this?
"Please set your desired destination."
Arwen clapped her palms together with a pop, and a massive holographic map bloomed into the empty air.
A map that looked somehow familiar.
It bore a striking resemblance to the facility guide I'd glanced at before searching the dining area.
"Hmm... here."
I traced my finger to a corner of the holographic map.
"Confirmed. Location matches the android's position. Correct?"
"The android? Ah—yeah. That's the place."
"Route calculated. Beginning guidance."
Is she basically a GPS?
Screeeeech—!
Before Arwen had even finished speaking, the wall where the enormous monitor hung split cleanly in half—and out of it emerged a door.
"It's kind of... small?"
Grand entrance aside, the opening was barely large enough for me to crawl through on hands and knees.
Great. Just what my claustrophobia ordered.
"Shall I open the main gate instead?"
"Ugh... no. Screw it. I'll crawl."
As much as I'd gained a new ability, taking on thirty-plus goblins all at once was a hard pass for now.
Once I got better at handling psychic energy, I'd give it a shot.
"Hnngh... why is this passage so cramped?"
"It was originally built for supplying materials via robots in emergencies. It was designed just wide enough for a human to pass through, as a contingency."
"Damn it. Would a few extra inches have killed them?"
Chattering away with Arwen, I crawled through the cramped, ventilation-duct of a passage.
"About ten more minutes and you'll reach the exit. From there you can use the regular corridors, so it'll be more comfortable."
"Got it."
I shut my mouth and worked my arms and legs harder, picking up speed.
There was no reason for lighting down here, and the darkness was absolute—nothing to see at all.
But thanks to Arwen's faint blue glow, at least I wasn't lonely.
After several minutes of focusing purely on crawling, Arwen suddenly spoke up.
"...There is something on my mind."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Have you been living with the android, Hajun-nim?"
"Yeah. Ever since I was born, basically. Roughly a year now? Why, is there a problem?"
I kept moving as I answered, like it was nothing.
"Not a problem, exactly. I'm simply curious what manner of android has managed to survive this long."
"Hmm... well. I don't really know much about my nanny either. It's not like I'm a technician or anything. Oh! Could you read her data for me?"
"...Nanny?"
"She took good care of me. From right after I was born, all the way until now."
"There are no childcare androids within the institute?"
"!"
At Arwen's chilling words, my industriously crawling body went rigid.
"...Could you maybe not say creepy things like that? It's dark enough in here as it is."
"Hmhm. That was not my intention. You're more of a scaredy-cat than I expected."
Arwen's tone had shed its careful formality, carrying the faint lilt of a smile.
"Hey—it's pitch black, anyone would be jumpy. Anyway, you're saying there's no android that fills a nanny role?"
"Correct. There would be no reason for the institute to house an android for such a purpose, would there? Of course, I was deactivated for a period, so one could have been added in the meantime."
"I'm an Enhanced Human, aren't I? So surely a nanny wouldn't be necessary anyway?"
With dozens of cradles lined up, I'd assumed the project was operating on a fairly massive scale.
But Arwen shook her head.
"There'd be no need to raise you here. Enhanced Humans are notoriously difficult to manufacture, so they're only made in facilities like this one—but I imagine you would have received only basic health checks before being transferred to an auxiliary facility."
"Ah, I see... So you count me as part of humanity, then?"
Truthfully, this was a question I'd been putting off for a while, out of some vague unease.
Did an AI recognize a human grown in a laboratory as human?
Arwen had treated me warmly enough that I felt I could ask.
"All sentient beings are recognized. Even an AI, if it can prove its own sentience, is acknowledged as a citizen. And Enhanced Humans, given the enormous resources invested in them, received excellent treatment on top of that."
"Phew..."
Arwen's answer came without a shred of hesitation, and something in my chest finally loosened.
A more open society than I expected. Not quite the dystopia I'd been picturing.
Arwen's prediction proved dead-on, and a few minutes later I was crawling out of the cramped passage and walking an honest-to-god corridor again.
Of course, I had no earthly idea where was where—but with a navigator named Arwen leading the way, all I had to do was follow along in peace.
Then, without warning, Arwen—until now flitting about with a cheerful little bzz bzz—froze dead in the air.
"Goblins detected ahead. Continue on this path and you will make contact."
Simultaneously, she unfurled a hologram, marking the goblins' positions with red dots.
Two corners to round, roughly, before we'd run right into them.
> Contact: 5 units [GOBLIN]
> Range: 2 corridors | Threat assessment pending
"How many?"
"Five."
"Five... an awkward number."
Could I handle that many?
Numbers were brutally decisive in a fight, sure—but the size gap was obvious, and with my body pumped full of Body Reinforcement, I figured I'd manage.
"Arwen, what's your read? Can I take them?"
"Insufficient data to render a firm judgment, but... an Enhanced Human's physical capabilities, reinforced with Body Reinforcement, are overwhelming. At minimum, I don't believe you would lose to creatures of smaller build than yourself."
Long-winded, but bottom line: Arwen approved too.
"Ah, one point of reference—if you circumvent the goblins, the trip to your destination will take an additional hour. And we may encounter other goblins along the way."
"...Let's do it."
These things were bound to cross my path eventually; I couldn't afford to let them trip me up in a place like this.
Plus, there was a chance I could snag the weapons they were carrying.
I flexed my hands, still feeling oddly empty from losing my weapon.
Killing my presence as much as possible, I crept toward the spot where the goblins were marked.
Arwen, not wanting to interfere, dimmed her own glow down to almost nothing.
Before long, a warm light flickered into view in the distance.
"&^%&^%!"
"@@!#"
And with it, bright, chirping voices.
The goblins, delighted by who-knows-what, were chattering and cackling away in their own little language.
Tak... tak... tak.
Astonishingly, the goblins were huddled in a corner of the corridor, warming themselves by a fire.
A bonfire of splintered wood chunks each as thick as a child's forearm, stacked in utter disarray—who knew where they'd scavenged them from. Wisps of hazy smoke circled the ceiling before slowly thinning away.
Thank god the ventilation system's still running, or... hm? What is that smell?
As I crouched low and inched closer, something unfamiliar brushed against my sensitive nose.
Looking closer, I saw them gripping twigs in their hands, roasting something over the flames.
It smelled savory. Rich and nutty.
Gulp.
Before I knew it, my mouth was flooding with saliva.
How long had it been since I'd smelled anything this greasy and aromatic?
My brain—having detected a food source that wasn't green juice—kicked my stomach into gear, sending ravenous signals down the line.
Lucky break. A smell like this should cover mine, too.
I ignored the belly whining for food and kept my head cold and calculating.
After what I'd witnessed of goblin sense of smell in the cafeteria, I'd all but written off the idea of a sneak attack—this was an absolutely golden setup.
The closer I drew, the more the delicious aroma saturated the vibrating air, drowning out both my stench and the goblins' alike.
The distance between us was down to barely three meters.
Close enough that getting spotted wouldn't have been strange at all—but with their backs to the dark corridor, gazing at the bonfire like men bewitched, they may as well have been blind.
Hooooo...
I steadied my breathing.
Psychic energy poured out of my Inner Heart without restraint, spreading through my entire body.
An omnipotent feeling—that I could do anything—took root in every single muscle fiber.
The contrast of darkness and flame that had blurred my vision sharpened into perfect clarity.
Don't get cocky. At best, my physical abilities have gone up a notch. If I take a clean hit, I'm still in danger.
I fought to smother the savagery surging up alongside that twitching, restless power.
Opportunity, carefully chosen.
And the moment prey is most careless is...
"@$@%!!!!"
Unable to contain its appetite a second longer, one of the goblins raised the twig in its hand toward its mouth.
And the instant it moved to pop something white into its mouth—
Now!
THWANG!
I snapped my coiled legs straight and launched.
Compressed muscle released all at once, and I tore toward the goblins at terrifying speed.
The goblin's dumb face swelled toward me as if through a magnifying glass.
Twisting at the waist—a light hook.
CRACK!
My fist pulped the goblin's skull outright.
The headless body folded to the floor, and then...
it shattered to pieces and vanished from this world.
What?
"What the hell is— hup!"
Even as I staggered at the impossible sight of a living thing crumbling to powder, I threw my body back into motion.
Kill them all first; figure it out later!
The remaining goblins still wore blank, stupid expressions, evidently unaware of what had just happened.
I pivoted instantly and whipped my left leg around in a savage arc.
Small-framed creatures squatting down like that? Easiest targets imaginable.
THWACK-!
The strength of my legs—several times that of my arms—connected squarely beside a goblin's eye.
The follow-through shove of the kick was so brutal that the creature's cervical vertebrae tore clean out of its neck.
Ptak.
And once again, it shattered to fragments and vanished from the world.
Three left.
"KREEEAGH!"
The goblins finally came to their senses and surged up, charging me.
Crunch!
Crunch!
Thud.
The one fool enough to rush in barehanded got its arm swatted aside and its windpipe punched through like a faucet.
For the one sprinting at me with a sharpened spike ground from a steel pipe, I kicked the bonfire into its eyes to blind it, stripped the weapon away, and caved its skull in.
And for the last one reaching for a nearby rock, I hurled the stolen spike and added a little ornament to its head.
...Before I knew it, nothing remained on the floor but the scattered remains of the bonfire.
"Haa... haa..."
Was this raw hunger for violence something baked into an Enhanced Human?
It had been a display of primal brutality I could scarcely believe I'd committed myself.
It had ended up a one-sided rout, sure—but even so, my hands were trembling with the electric thrill of victory.
"Someone got rather worked up. Still, that was impressive work. Though quite a lot of wasted effort in there."
The moment the fight ended, Arwen shimmered back to full brightness and drifted softly down before me.
"...You know about fighting, too?"
"Combat arts are in my database as well, so I do have an eye for it. I'll teach you properly later."
"Appreciate it... hm? Wait, what's this?"
Scanning the floor, I spotted something small and glinting.
A tiny stone, less than half the size of my fingernail.
When I carried it under Arwen's dim glow, it gleamed black like obsidian.
This is...
A warmth pulsed where the stone touched my skin.
An ominous, pitch-black stone through and through—yet buried deep within it existed the faintest trace of pure energy.
And an extremely familiar kind of energy, at that.
...Points?