Gloren's eye-light glowed orange as she glared at me.
'Beast's Sixth Sense.'
A trait possessed by beastkin born with especially great power, or those who'd received power from their tribe's avatar.
Besides them, it was an ability held by rare individuals born with superhuman strength and bestial nature.
'An ability that detects and reads movement and anomalies around you.'
Thanks to that trait, ordinary surprise attacks never worked on Gloren.
If anything, you'd just get hit by the counterattack and take a critical blow.
As now, it was a trait useful in many areas, able to sense not just combat but even a sense of something off.
If there was one thing to mention, it was that Gloren wasn't human but of the doll race.
In other words, that trait was a power stolen from someone else.
Something like that someone's heart was probably inside Gloren's body.
"Ma'am, is there some business you have with my employee...."
I put out my hand to stop Edith as she tried to step in.
If she got on Gloren's nerves any more here, I couldn't guarantee Edith would be safe either.
"I'm not sure what you mean all of a sudden...."
"I'm asking if you're actually a person. The vibe you give off is way too weird. Like you're not a person. And you match the description of the doll I'm looking for, too."
"Me, not a person? That's the first time in my life I've heard that."
"No, it's faint, but you smell like stitching thread, just like those doll bastards."
"That's because this is a place that fixes dolls too."
What the hell does stitching thread even smell like?
An ordinary doll would've been found out long ago, but my body was half human, so Gloren still seemed only half convinced.
"Then may I go now? I have an appointment."
"An appointment you have to rush off to like that? The way you're trying to slip away just makes you look more suspicious, doesn't it?"
Gloren's heavy mechanical hand grabbed my shoulder.
She was so strong that even though she didn't seem to be putting much force into it, my body wouldn't budge.
"You said you were coming, so why are you still at the shop? I've been waiting forever!"
Right on time, Jayden appeared in front of the shop.
"You said you'd help with the deliveries, and you're hanging out with somebody else?"
"Kiddo. Is this guy your friend?"
Gloren let go of me and crouched down to face Jayden.
Jayden flinched a little at her huge frame but answered boldly.
"Yeah, he is. Why? Are you friends with that uncle too, Auntie?"
"I don't need friends. More importantly, does that guy really work here?"
I looked Jayden straight in the eye as he looked at me.
Please say yes.
"He does. You're not even friends with Uncle, so why do you want to know, Auntie?"
And quit provoking her.
"Haha, what a cheeky kid. Whoever taught you, you've got a real smart mouth."
"My mom does carpentry and my dad works as a miner."
"Hah, your household's a real shitshow. Forget it. I'm off, kiddo. Look after your friend."
"I'm not a baby. I'm all grown up."
Luckily, Gloren gave Jayden's hair a thorough ruffling and left just like that.
'Is she really leaving?'
I hadn't expected her to drop her suspicion so quickly.
No, right now was the time to be grateful for it.
"Uncle, who's that auntie? Is she really your friend?"
"No."
If she became a friend, she'd be that dependable an ally, but that was never going to happen.
I gently stroked Jayden's ruffled hair.
"Stop patting me already. Why do grown-ups love patting heads so much?"
***
After clearing out the whole basement, I arrived at the new secret meeting place.
The Resistance agents who'd gotten there first were already in their seats.
"You're here. I heard a suspicious person came by during the day."
Looks like the informants, apart from the combat agents, are as active as ever.
'That's the Resistance for you.'
Even if they didn't seem to do much normally, keeping an eye on everything happening around them and gathering information was part of their daily life.
They probably already knew that Gloren had been strutting around the city today, too.
She was someone we'd face again anyway, so I decided to tell them.
"That woman's name is Gloren. She's come to the Iron Factory right now. And she'll probably be the biggest variable in our plan."
"The biggest variable. Is she that strong?"
"Very strong. Strong enough that you must never fight her head-on. And she's not a person; she's a mechanical doll like me."
Mechanical doll might be a somewhat unfamiliar term, but my comrades nodded as if they more or less understood.
My body was practically a mechanical doll too, after all.
"Seeing that you even know her name, do you two already know each other? There's a high chance she came here because of you, too."
Paul spun his knife this way and that, showing his curiosity.
It was only natural, since they faced mechanical soldiers every day but had never seen a being like me.
'How much of the truth should I tell them?'
The question suddenly occurred to me.
I'd already told them a lot of it truthfully, so I couldn't claim now that it was all a lie.
Moreover, this was reality inside a game.
I knew most of the information about it, but I couldn't just blurt it all out.
There'd surely be plenty of people who'd wonder how I knew all that.
And I wasn't confident I could answer that question.
So I chose another way.
"Gloren is someone I met not long after my body became like this."
"You met her when you were modified? But you said you woke up in the Iron Factory."
"I don't know the exact reason either, but her face remained vividly in my memory. Maybe I was modified along with her."
Cleverly mixing truth and lies together as I told it.
This time, Henriks leaned against the table and asked.
"Then what was this Gloren doing there?"
"Probably a sentinel guarding the one who made me like this. And also a hunter who hunts down those who run away, like me."
"A frightening creature, then."
"And of all places, someone like that came here. Things are going to get messy."
But none of them, Henriks, Paul, Crock, or Edith, blamed me for bringing her here.
"But she's not necessarily an enemy we absolutely have to defeat. Gloren's target is me and me alone."
"So isn't she an enemy we have to take down too? You're part of our fighting strength. We can't just let you get dragged off."
They were treating me as a true comrade.
"I appreciate you looking out for me. But our biggest goal is to bring down the Iron Factory. Gloren is a problem for after that."
"Even so, if we team up and deal with her, won't it be over in no time? Our teamwork is excellent, you know."
"She's not an opponent you can underestimate. She's a doll powerful enough to wipe out dozens, no, hundreds of mechanical soldiers in an instant. The fighting strength of just the five of us is nowhere near enough."
Gloren was an enemy who didn't exist within the bounds of humanity.
She was the kind who fought without bleeding and ignored pain.
Even with one arm blown off, she'd crush and smash her opponent with the other.
She was sure to take at least one person's life.
'I don't want a tragedy like that to happen.'
They might volunteer to fight together, but that couldn't erase the guilt that would fall on me.
"So we need to plan to bring down the Iron Factory while avoiding Gloren as much as possible."
And so, in the basement, we began to plan to bring down the Iron Factory.
"First, the biggest problem is, even if we somehow manage to get inside, where in the Iron Factory do we attack?"
"That's simple. We just have to take out the core in the upper section of the Iron Factory."
"The core?"
"Yes. When I was inside the Iron Factory, I saw an enormous amount of magic gathered up above the ceiling. That magic is what keeps everything in the Iron Factory running."
"No wonder. We checked all around trying to cut the power, thinking they must be drawing current from outside, but nothing was connected."
"If we just disable that core, the mechanical soldiers in the Iron Factory will be disabled too. Then we can finish the Iron Factory off right away."
At a method simpler than he'd expected, a smile spread across Crock's lips on its own.
"So all we have to do is throw a bomb at the core and blow it up. Nice and easy."
"But if it's that important, won't the entrance be completely sealed off and the guard the tightest of all?"
"We just wipe out every mechanical soldier, and smash the reinforced walls with bombs or cutters, and that's that. Right?"
It was a simple, brute-force answer, but it was also the surest method.
"Then what remains is... how we get inside. We have tried countless methods until now, and not once have we succeeded."
"The best we came up with was planting dozens of these tunnel-busting bombs together and setting them off, but last time we got caught and it failed."
"Then if we use those bombs again this time...."
"They've already tightened security on the outer walls for that. It'll probably be hard."
At their conversation, I recalled the first mission I'd carried out.
"Mr. Crock, how many bombs do you have right now?"
"Bombs? Big and small, there are well over a few hundred. The tunnel bombs I just mentioned, about ten."
"Then it won't be hard. Can all of them be detonated remotely?"
"Well, bombs are usually built that way in the first place, so of course."
With that many, the idea I'd come up with wasn't impossible.
The thing was, we were badly short on people to carry out the plan.
'If I do it that way....'
I turned and spoke to Henriks.
"Mr. Henriks, this may be a burdensome request, but could you turn the city's residents into Resistance agents for just one day?"
"What are you thinking, to make such a request?"
"On the day of the operation, we need people to draw as many mechanical soldiers outside as possible. Even for just one hour."
"...In other words, you are telling the city's residents to fight the mechanical soldiers? No. We fight them to liberate the city, but also to keep the residents safe."
"I'm not saying they should fight directly. Just draw their attention. All they have to do is cause a commotion around the city, like small explosions, and split up their forces."
"Even so, I cannot guarantee there will be no casualties."
Henriks still looked unconvinced by my persuasion.
Of course he did. It was no different from dragging the people of the city he'd been born and raised in into a war.
But it's not only soldiers who take part in a war.
The laborers who made the weapons, the women who tailored the soldiers' uniforms.
Even young boy soldiers and old men.
They all did it to protect their country, their land, their city.
However deeply they were involved, everyone's wish to protect their city was the same.
"Just one day. It's fine even if there aren't many. We'll take on the remaining mechanical soldiers ourselves. Please."
This was something I could never do myself.
Unlike me, who'd been in this city for only about a week, Henriks had grown up here and was the leader who'd led them.
He might have lost his position now, but his reputation in the city was still intact.
"I...."
After that, silence filled the room for a long while.
Henriks kept his head bowed as if still agonizing, and Paul and Crock waited for their leader's answer.
The silence was about to drag on even longer when it happened.
A voice slipped out of someone's mouth.