-From here, I could surely get out of this hell. But not with this body.
At the voice echoing in my head, I steadied my staggering body.
'Is this the doll's memory?'
When I followed the welder in my hand upward, my eyes met those of a half-broken automaton.
It was already buried in a corner of the factory with no life left in it, but its will faintly remained and flowed into me.
-I wanted to go back to that happy place where I lived before coming here. Why on earth am I here?
At the vivid voice, it felt as if my emotions were being stirred by the doll's.
-I could break through that iron gate and get outside right now... but whenever I get close to it, my body simply won't move.
I quietly listened to the doll's voice.
-It pulls me back, as if my instincts are telling me not to leave this place. I felt something similar back home. Only then did I understand. The nest my master chose for me is right here.
Gradually, the doll's voice began to tremble.
-I was thrown away here. So were all the other dolls. What's even more hopeless is that I'm the only one who knows it. Ahh... Master. Why have you handed down such a punishment on us?
With those last words, the automaton's voice faded as if sinking under water.
It only kept repeating "why," over and over.
After that, I didn't hear the automaton's voice again.
'I didn't know I could hear a doll's memories.'
The Mysticism stat was mainly tied to spiritual abilities and willpower.
If my Potential was linked in that direction, it wasn't impossible.
Maybe I'd awaken a soul-communion ability or a mental-type ability.
'There are plenty of powerful skills among mental-type abilities, so that's not bad at all.'
Besides, a mental-type tech tree could land you some very rare classes in the game.
A mentalist who hypnotized enemies, or a necromancer who commanded souls. There was even a Spirit Descent skill that let you channel a powerful soul from the past into your body and flaunt its martial might.
But all those various abilities, skills, and traits always depended on the region, the environment, and your base stats in the game.
So there had to be a clear trigger and background for me to have ended up with an ability like this.
And right now, one thing came to mind.
"It's similar to the Authority the dolls' master has."
The only one able to commune and communicate with dolls was their creator.
Beyond that, the creator could rebuild the dolls' bodies, restrict their range of movement, and so on.
In practice, that meant being able to do just about anything at will.
The reason that doll couldn't escape this place was that their permitted space was limited to the inside of the factory.
On top of that, it had been set up so that the moment they left that range, they'd lose all their power and become soulless junk like that.
A truly cruel and powerful Authority.
And I had an ability close to that kind of Authority.
Why on earth did I have an ability like that?
More importantly, if I escaped the factory, would I just die too?
'But my character info said my race was human.'
Doll trait or not, and even if I'd received that trait in full, half of me was human.
The odds that an Authority that only worked on dolls would work on a human like me weren't high.
'Grab the parts first.'
I took the cutter and was about to get up.
"Hey! What are you?"
It was a wooden doll with a menacing face and a huge build.
I gathered up the cutter and a few parts that looked usable.
Maybe it got angry seeing me ignore it, because the wooden doll strode right up to me and grabbed me by the collar.
"Door was open so I came in, and look, some rat snuck in? What were you thinking, coming into my turf?"
"As far as I know, the guards' area is the only part of the factory that's off-limits."
Everyone had their own assigned work area, but this was a place where work areas changed all the time because they were short on hands.
At least, that's what I'd understood, but apparently it wasn't so among the dolls.
"You're mouthing off without knowing who I am? Not knowing me, Mungram, in this factory? This time I'll teach you properly who I am."
Maybe because this was a game, even its lines sounded exactly like an extra's.
Hearing it introduce itself in the third person felt awkward beyond words.
But unlike that way of talking, the wooden doll's heavy fist had a firm grip on my collar.
As I dangled from its hand, my legs kicked at empty air.
I tried hammering on the hand that held my collar and prying its fingers open, but with a measly 5 Strength, I didn't stand a chance.
It was because of a gap in Strength that already went beyond early-game base stats.
The wooden doll's Strength level was probably in the double digits.
In stats, a difference in the leading digit was an overwhelming difference.
"A worthless bastard like you getting cocky. I was bored anyway, so I'll play with you properly."
Even if my Strength stat was lacking, that didn't mean I couldn't beat the thing.
If stats alone decided who won and lost, it wouldn't even deserve to be called a game.
In the end, what decided victory was skills and traits.
It all came down to how you used those abilities.
So if I could just find another way to pull this off....
"What are you going to do with an arm that feeble? I'll just rip that shabby thing off for you."
Snap.
With the sound spreading in my ears, I lost all feeling in my right arm.
When I looked down, a familiar arm part had dropped to the floor.
[Severe physical damage detected.]
Thanks to my trait, there was no pain, but this was the first time I'd ever had a piece of my body come off.
"Suddenly zoning out like you've lost the will to fight back? Want me to just tear off all your limbs?"
Saying that, the wooden doll flung me straight to the floor.
Then this time it raised its foot to crush my left arm.
Thud!
But having barely come to my senses, I rolled my body and dodged its foot.
I immediately pulled my thoughts together.
No matter how important skills and traits were in the end, at the very start of the game, base stats decided most of the outcome.
'What do I do?'
I'd already lost one arm, and I didn't have any real weapon to speak of either.
All I had were parts meant for factory work.
But then, holding a part, I put my fingers to where my arm had come off.
[You can attach the part to the corresponding body part.]
[It can replace a differing part of your current body.]
The meaning of the message in front of me was very simple.
[Old Hauling Doll's Right Arm.]
I had no time to care whether it was worn to hell or meant for hauling.
[Attaching the Old Hauling Doll's Right Arm.]
[Strength stat increased by 5.]
Once attached, it was an oversized arm that didn't suit my body at all.
And for all that, the difference was a measly 1 point of Strength.
But that alone was enough.
When you lacked strength, you could just hit with weight instead.
BANG!
"Keuk, you little rat!"
Maybe thanks to the weight, the thing fell back a step, and in the meantime I opened up a few steps of distance.
"You were just standing there begging to be killed, so why run all of a sudden? Just die quietly!"
As if it never got tired, the wooden doll charged at me again, and another message appeared.
[Your understanding of a specific race is very high.]
[Trait effect, Weakness Detection, activates.]
Then I saw spots marked in bright red all over the wooden doll's body.
I'd seen similar skills plenty of times, so I didn't even need to read the description.
I immediately dodged its sluggish incoming fist, got inside its guard, and threw an uppercut with my newly acquired doll part into its reddened jaw.
"Keuk!"
But maybe it hadn't done much damage to Mungram, because it didn't stop attacking.
After barely opening some distance, I studied the weak points visible on its body.
'Just hitting them isn't enough, then.'
If this were a game, hitting a weak point would definitely have stunned it or dealt heavy damage, but this was reality inside a game.
Things weren't going to play out like a game just because I'd landed one hit.
Just like a boxer doesn't go down from a single punch in a boxing match.
But I didn't lose heart.
I just had to relentlessly go after its weak points and I'd win in no time, right?
[Attaching the Old Doll's Broken Face Guard.]
[Attaching the Aged Doll's Hook Hand.]
[The attached parts' shapes change to suit your current physical state.]
As expected, my trait was flexible enough to let me use parts even when my body wasn't damaged.
Whoosh!
When I flung the hook attached to my left hand at Mungram's face, the thing raised its arm to block its face.
"What cheap trick are you trying to pull!"
I hadn't been aiming for its eyes in the first place.
When I pulled on the hook's line, along with the sound of a wire winding in, I flew at the thing at high speed.
Then, when I brought my fist down on its shoulder with everything I had this time, the joint gaped wide open.
It seemed that for all its Strength, its defense wasn't anything special.
For a human, that'd be a dislocated arm.
Just then, the thing's other arm came flying at my face.
With a measly 1 Agility, I couldn't dodge it, so naturally I took one to the face and went tumbling across the floor.
[The Old Doll's Broken Face Guard has been destroyed.]
Even though the face guard had absorbed the impact as it broke, my head was spinning.
This body really was pathetically weak.
The one saving grace was that Mungram had broken an arm too.
'Other parts can break too if I keep using them, so I'd better be careful.'
Meanwhile, Mungram, apparently still seething, kept yelling at the top of its lungs.
"Keuk, this son of a bitch dares to break my arm?"
If it forced that broken arm to work in that state, it'd surely be hard to fix.
I'd thought that would be enough to make it back off quietly, but apparently not.
"I'll make your arm just like mine!"
It was more reckless and heedless of the consequences than I'd thought.
"Sorry, but you're the one who started it."
Seeing Mungram charge as if to kill me on the spot, I flung the hook, but instead its line ended up caught in the thing's hand.
[Detaching the Aged Doll's Hook Hand.]
I tore the part off before it could drag me in and barely dodged its fist.
Thud!
The steel wall its fist had struck was badly dented.
At that rate, I wouldn't break; I'd get crumpled to death.
But I had no time to relax and admire the thing's strength.
'Screw it.'
Even if I ran back toward the cafeteria corridor from here, it was bound to catch me soon anyway.
In the end, I chose to vault the railing.
"Where do you think you're running!"
My body weighed less than I'd thought, so I landed right in front of the sewer grate and got swept along by the current.
Then Mungram jumped down into the sewer after me too, and threw another punch.
BOOM!
"...You really are terrible at hitting things."
Once again the thing had stupidly thrown a punch straight ahead, and its fist lodged right into the grate.
The grate bent badly, so much that if it spread just a little more, a body my size could get through.
"You two, what are you doing there! Get out now!"
But as bad luck would have it, guard dolls, drawn by the loud noise, found the scene.
BANG!
Despite their toylike looks, real bullets came out.
In the end, after a warning shot, Mungram was obediently dragged away by the guards.
I was caught by the guard dolls too, and Mungram and I were sent off to the cells together, nice and friendly.
"I'm definitely killing you later."
It said so, but since we were each in solitary, there was no chance of us meeting.
If it had been one cell together instead of solitary....
Honestly, I didn't even want to imagine it.
Not only was a hulking brute not my type, but a revenge match with the thing all night long?
There was no telling whether I'd lose my life, or end up with a body too wrecked to escape.
"One week of solitary. Don't even think about getting oiled in the meantime."
Oiled, my foot. I'd only eaten the sausage because my mouth was bored anyway.
A small perk of the Doll trait was that I didn't actually need to eat.
And eating food didn't cause my body any problems either.
'More importantly, stuck in here for a whole week.'
I wouldn't starve to death in this cramped cell, but there wasn't much I could do in here, either.
'I don't even know where in the game's timeline we are, so spending a whole week here is a big risk.'
My body was feeble, but I had far more good abilities than I'd thought.
'Growing these abilities and learning more about them matters too.'
The most important thing in Akris, too, was understanding your character and knowing how to use it.
High understanding was useless if you couldn't use it properly, and using it recklessly without understanding it was a problem too.
'Escaping right away looks a little hard anyway.'
For now, there were the footsteps of the guards walking around the solitary cells, and even the faint magic I could dimly see beyond the walls.
Every factory-management doll, aside from the dolls doing forced labor, had a small but distinct flow of magic.
Part of it was that they'd been given more power as managers, but the magic inside their bodies wasn't connected to the factory.
That was why those guards' souls wouldn't wither even if they came out of the factory.
In other words, they hadn't been thrown away; they'd been dispatched here.
It hadn't been long since I'd learned that they had their own independent magic, in other words, life force.
Maybe I'd adapted to this body as time went on.
The magic of the dolls beyond the walls all led toward the upper part of the factory.
Instead of leaking into the air and simply disappearing, that magic stretched toward a single point up in the factory.
It looked like a tree turned upside down.
Whatever was at the point where that magic gathered was what bound the dolls to the factory.
'Though it isn't connected to me at all.'
Besides, it felt like if I reached out my hand, I'd touch the source of that magic in no time.
A strangely intimate and familiar sensation.
I'd never done it before, but it didn't occur to me for a second that I couldn't.
In reality it was a distance I could never reach, but I closed my eyes and reached out my hand toward the place where the magic gathered.
[The surrounding magic begins to resonate with your soul.]
And then, the magic that had been cut off began to come toward me.