Light seeped in through the small window and faded away again, about twice over.
[The Mana Core within your body is activating.]
[The mana circuits within your body are activating.]
[Recovering lost body parts.]
"Huu......."
Every time I breathed in and out, I felt vivid sensation all over my body.
Even though this body was half doll, it was proving to me that I was alive, like a real body, through the mana circuits spread all through it.
'It feels like I've moved my consciousness from the body of two days ago into a completely different one.'
I'd already moved my mind once before, but this was nothing like that time.
My previous body had been so powerless and dull that I could barely feel any sensation or nerves in it.
It hadn't been so bad I couldn't move, but it hadn't been what it used to be either.
'It's so foreign, like it isn't my own body.'
My body's senses still felt awkward, but there was nothing at all inconvenient or unnatural about moving.
No, it had become much lighter and suppler than the body I'd left behind.
It felt like if I jumped right now, I'd hit the ceiling with room to spare.
No, it looked like I could do even more than that.
[Due to the activation of your physical abilities, your base Agility stat increases by 5.]
With my current body, it felt like I could easily beat that Mun-whatever doll I'd faced two days ago.
In a way, I owed it to the thing that I'd stayed in the factory a few more days and awakened my ability.
'Not that I plan on seeing it again.'
When I slowly opened my closed eyes, I felt the cold temperature of the floor against my backside.
I'd thought I'd been cut off from outside sensations, but it turned out my body had been floating.
I'd figured my mana circulation was pretty outstanding, but I hadn't known it'd be this outstanding.
'At this level, it's on par with a Mana Affinity trait.'
There weren't many traits that could circulate mana through your whole body and even boost your physical abilities in a mere two days.
I understood that mana absorption would be fast, since the Doll trait made my body different from a human's.
But the process of simply circulating mana through your whole body wasn't that easy.
First you needed a core that could absorb the surrounding mana, plus enough strength and adaptability to draw that mana into the core.
Not only that, the mana had to go through a purification process in the core before purified mana could circulate inside the body.
Because if you just recklessly poured unpurified mana into your body, impurities would clog the mana circuits and cause a mana backflow.
The lore said it normally took several years, or as many as several decades, to build a core with full capabilities.
And a core organ with that kind of top-tier performance was located in my heart right now.
'Who on earth put something like that in this body?'
However I thought about it, there was no way I'd been born with a core organ like this.
Honestly, it was a relief for someone whose physical abilities were so severely lacking, but I couldn't help feeling uneasy.
As long as I didn't know the purpose of whoever had built this body with so much care, I'd remain trapped in the fear of ignorance.
I didn't know the details of what had happened, but there was a good chance I'd dropped into this factory because some kind of plan had gone wrong.
Which meant they might come to this factory to retrieve me.
'I have to escape before then.'
Even looking at it hopefully, the odds that they'd quietly drag me off and then nicely move my mind into another body or let me live well and eat well were close to zero.
They'd probably already grasped the situation by now and then some.
So I couldn't just sit around here either.
[Attaching the Scorched Doll's Cutter Arm.]
[Durability – 19%]
The guard dolls hadn't bothered searching me, apparently never imagining I'd break out of my cell anyway.
They were firmly convinced that even if I broke out of the cell, I'd die the moment I went outside, so they'd taken such sloppy measures.
Or maybe they'd figured I couldn't possibly escape with a rusty cutter like this.
The steel door of the narrow cell used a simple mechanism, with a thick steel bar laid across it.
I figured I'd first check whether it opened by force.
[Attaching the Old Hauling Doll's Right Arm.]
[Durability – 8%]
Wait, the Durability had already gotten this low?
Well, it wasn't a combat part to begin with, and I'd used it that roughly, so I guess that made sense.
Since the Mana Core had activated and my arm had come back, I detached the part and set it down on the floor.
'Thanks for your hard work.'
My Strength was back to normal now, but I could still try putting the cutter into the gap in the door and cutting the bar.
Although if I did, it was obvious the rusty cutter would snap in two instead.
But right now my body was full of mana.
I'd never done it before, but wrapping magic around a rusty blade was bound to be far easier than creating a sharp shape of magic out of formless empty air.
I soon wrapped the cutter's blade in magic and pushed it into the gap in the door.
Once the cutter touched the bar, I switched it on, and red fragments and a racket burst through the gap in the door.
Except late at night, the factory was always full of noise anyway.
Disguising it as one of those noises, I cut the bar, and before long I heard the sound of iron snapping.
Bang!
There was no doll magic in sight around me anyway, so I kicked the cell door open and started running for it.
Thanks to my increased Agility stat, my body was much nimbler and lighter than before, and in an instant it was out of the detention area.
While passing through the corridor above the factory area, my eyes met those of the carpenter doll, who'd spotted me from below.
It had a blank look, as if it didn't understand what was going on.
There were a few guard dolls nearby, so I had no time for last goodbyes.
In the end, I reached the sewer without any interference, and without delay I threw myself down into it.
[Attaching the Scorched Doll's Cutter Arm.]
[Durability – 8%]
It was practically a cutter on the verge of breaking, but I immediately started slicing through the sewer's grate with it.
[The Scorched Doll's Cutter Arm's Durability is decreasing.]
[Durability – 8% -> 5%]
[Due to excessive Durability loss, the part's efficiency drops sharply.]
I'd cut through about half of the grate at high speed, but as the message came up, the blade gradually began to go dull.
On top of that, the speed at which the grate was being cut dropped sharply too.
'I can't stop here.'
I poured more of the magic I had left into the cutter.
When I concentrated magic where half the blade had already broken off and replaced the blade with it, it finally started to pick up speed.
But keeping fluid magic in a solid state required me to pour in nothing but willpower.
Still, my Mysticism, in other words my willpower stat, was a whopping 10.
My head started spinning, but I never lost consciousness.
By investing willpower like that, I succeeded in cutting away one side of the grate.
[The Scorched Doll's Cutter Arm's Durability has been fully consumed, and the part is destroyed.]
As the cutter broke, all my strength drained out of me and I slammed straight into the grate.
Along with that, a fierce current crashed over me, and the grate, unable to bear the weight, bent inward.
Whoosh.
I was swallowed by that fierce current too, and as my body was swept straight out through the gap in the bent grate, I lost consciousness.
***
"Keheok. Kuheup."
When my eyes suddenly snapped open, the backflow rising up from my throat made me throw up right onto the ground.
Only after a long while of dry heaving and coughing like that did my blurry vision come back.
"Huu......hah."
The more I learned about this body, the more ridiculous it got.
Given that I'd been under water the whole way from the sewer and was still perfectly alive without drowning, it was a doll.
But then, given that I threw up because water had gotten into my body, it also seemed like a human body.
No, maybe even dolls had to do it like this to get out whatever got inside them.
I'd have to have been a doll before to know.
I rolled over, put my back on the ground, and stared blankly upward.
"...Well, I escaped, anyway."
Here and there in the dark sky, stars caught my eye.
It was a clear night sky without a single cloud.
[You have completed the quest.]
[An item is issued as the quest-clear reward.]
An item? What was it going to give me?
[As the quest-completion reward, you obtain a Memory Fragment Shard.]
When I checked the item's name, I soon knew what it was used for.
"I think this was a story-only item."
As far as I remembered, it was an item you absolutely had to get while progressing through the main villain's story.
It was just that, as time went by, I'd lost interest in the story and always skipped it, so I didn't remember it well.
I had a rough idea of which villain's story item it was.
Soon a small jewel fragment, which had appeared with a twinkle in midair, dropped onto my chest.
Secretly disappointed that there wasn't a separate inventory, I took the shard in my hand.
[A new quest has been issued.]
[Mission – Find the nearby town and complete all of your body restoration with the mechanic.]
Another quest the moment the last one ended.
Even on a grunt construction job, they let you rest about 10 minutes every hour.
I couldn't keep lying down anyway, so when I sat up, I saw a huge waterfall at the end of a large river.
And beyond that waterfall stood the Iron Factory, looking tiny.
I'd drifted all the way here from way over there.
If I'd been a real human, I might already have been dead, a body found under suspicious circumstances.
Where I was now was the lower reaches of the river.
Leaving behind the doll parts I could see here and there, I first made my way toward the surrounding forest.
'I can't put any strength into my body.'
My body, which had been light right up until I escaped, had become heavy as mud again.
Part of it was simply that I was soaked all over, but the reason lay elsewhere.
[Consuming mana to proceed with self-restoration of the body.]
[Current Body Durability – 88%]
My body was in decent shape right now, but the mana inside it was running very low.
With that, I learned one more thing: the fuel that made my body move was mana.
It was thanks to the Mana Core inside my body that I'd survived without being supplied other fuel or the factory's mana.
Even like this, there'd be no limits on moving around, but if some unknown variable popped up, I'd be completely defenseless.
'I don't have any parts left either, so I don't even have a weapon to fight with.'
For now, it was better to hide my body somewhere safe.
In the end, I went into the forest, put my back to a suitable tree, and plopped down.
That was when I was about to check the thing I'd received as a reward.
Tromp, tromp.
From behind me came the sound of someone treading on the grass.
Before I could hastily turn my gaze behind me, someone had already come up right beside me.
"I thought you were a corpse when I saw you from a distance, but you're fine enough to walk around normally. That's a relief."
When I turned my gaze toward the voice, someone wearing a hood was standing there holding a rifle.
"Wait, you...."
I saw the pupils inside the hood tremble slightly.
And then, in an astonished voice, they spoke to me.
"How are you a doll and still perfectly alive?"