'How did they recognize that I'm a doll?'
The body I'd seen reflected back at the factory had definitely looked completely human.
I wondered if that person had some ability to tell races apart, but that seemed unlikely.
Puzzled, I lowered my head and looked down, and I saw the reason.
Faint white lines had been drawn at the joints all over my body.
Lines that definitely hadn't been there when I'd first looked.
It didn't take me long to realize why.
'Must be because the Mana Core in my heart activated so strongly.'
Just as skin flushes with life when blood flows, the doll body showed itself when the mana circuits spun fast.
It seemed I normally looked human, but the seams showed like this whenever I used my ability.
Click-clack.
Leaving that small realization behind, I looked at the hooded person, and the end of a gun barrel was pointed at me.
"Don't get distracted. Answer me. What are you?"
From the sound of it, the voice was high-pitched but calm at the same time.
If I kept my mouth shut, I was clearly going to get shot, so I opened my mouth first.
"Let me say up front that I'm a person. At least in spirit."
"Cut the crap and answer honestly."
I'd answered pretty honestly, though. So they didn't believe me after all.
Though it'd be weirder if they took my answer at face value.
First, I pushed myself up off the tree I'd been leaning against.
"More importantly, when you ask someone who they are, isn't it polite to show who you are first?"
"You want me to show my face?"
"I'm saying we should at least get acquainted."
If you want to find out what the other person has, you have to show what you have too.
Luckily, the other party was someone who followed that logic.
I soon got to see the face hidden inside the hood.
'That face.'
A smile bloomed on my face all on its own.
Because I'd seen that face dozens of times before.
It was one of the NPCs in the game Akris.
She was also the mechanic who'd fix my body.
Maybe she didn't take that smile well, because the brown-haired woman's face scrunched up slightly.
"This probably isn't the time to be grinning like an idiot."
"Why, because now you have one more reason not to spare me?"
"If you know that much, start giving me proper answers."
Her voice was firm, as if she had no intention of playing along with my games anymore.
I was simply glad to see a familiar face, but I decided to take this seriously now.
"Sorry, but nothing I just said was a lie. Actually, I'd like to ask you something instead. How do you know that dolls die when they leave the factory?"
"Because doll corpses are scattered all over around here, and I've seen them turn into monsters like that."
"That's pretty thin evidence to be sure of a fact. I answered you honestly first, so please answer me honestly too."
I slowly took a step toward the woman.
There was a subtle threat in it, but she didn't waver.
"You seem to have forgotten your situation. Your life is in my hands. You're in no position to run your mouth."
The sound of her rifle being chambered reached me.
Now all she had to do was pull the trigger and a bullet would go straight through my chest.
The thought that I might actually get shot put every sense in my body on edge.
I knew she wasn't the type to fire recklessly, but she wasn't someone who put off a decision either.
"Wait a moment, Miss Edith. Calm down for a second and—"
Oops. A slip of the tongue.
Edith had never met me or heard of me.
"How do you know my name? Don't tell me you've been following me?"
Mistakes always come with consequences.
Edith put her eye to the sight and took her stance.
"I knew it. This won't do."
"Wait, hear me out—"
There was no talking her down anymore.
It was a situation where I had to do something, whether dodge the bullet or counterattack.
'But what am I supposed to do here?'
I reflexively thrust my hand forward.
Clack.
"...Was that just magic?"
Edith's trigger wouldn't budge, as if it had caught on something.
When she examined the trigger area of her rifle, faint magic behind the trigger was holding it in place.
I was just as flustered.
I'd only instinctively put out my hand, and the magic had blocked the trigger on its own.
I didn't even have time to marvel at my own amazing handling of magic.
"You. You're one of the ones that bastard Victor put on me."
Edith, who had completely turned, now pulled a revolver from her waist and aimed it at me.
This time the trigger was pulled right away, without even a chance for me to lock it with magic.
BANG! TING!
But this time, the magic spread around me deflected the bullet.
"What freakish thing did you make this time?"
Before she could fire again, I hurriedly shot up the hand on the side of my uninjured shoulder.
"Please calm down for a moment and listen to me. I swear on my heart I'm absolutely not on this Victor person's side. Please, believe me."
"How am I supposed to believe that?"
As she said it, Edith came up to me and this time pressed the muzzle of her revolver to my forehead.
If she fired a bullet this time, there'd be no way to block it with magic.
Even if I tried to snatch the revolver, she was skilled in close combat too.
With my feeble body, I'd have a bullet hole in my head before I could even counterattack.
"I've never seen a mechanical doll that could handle magic. And there's only one place around here where a mechanical doll could come from."
"That's because I'm not an ordinary doll."
"Then how are you going to prove your origins have nothing to do with Victor?"
"If I were this Victor person's underling, I wouldn't have shown myself so openly. And not every doll in the Iron Factory follows him."
"So you were in the Iron Factory. Then there's even less reason for you to know me."
As expected, she wasn't someone who'd be fooled by clever words.
I'd gone about it the wrong way from the start.
But she didn't know everything either.
"Because I heard your name from another source. Miss Edith, the arms smuggler."
At my words, Edith's expression changed in a different way.
"Where did you hear about me? In the underground city, nothing about sellers gets out except their working names?"
"I won't go into the details. I just happened to come across the information."
I tried to casually push the muzzle aside, but she slapped my hand away and this time put the muzzle against my temple.
"Then you must know my selling principle too? That I never sell for anything that brings harm to the city?"
"I know. That's why I decided to come find you. That you'd understand my situation and agree to deal with me. That's what the person I got the information from told me."
"Should you really believe what people tell you that easily? Or are you just naive because you're a doll?"
"I'm different from other dolls. I understand human circumstances just fine."
I'd pulled up her lore on the spot and managed to answer somehow, but it didn't look like that would change Edith's mind.
She was still pointing a gun at my head, after all.
When I stole a glance at Edith's face, she was glaring at me with her mouth firmly shut.
I'd seen her face often in the game, but in person her eyes were even sharper.
She was still fidgeting with the grip of her gun, as if she couldn't make a decision yet.
'If she doesn't believe me here, it's over.'
I was waiting on her decision, completely stuck, when it happened.
...Kieeeek.
At an excessively unpleasant, ominous voice, Edith and I both froze and turned our heads toward where the sound had come from.
'...What is that?'
A being that had revealed itself, bracing against the ground on several hands and feet, was glaring at me.
***
Whoosh!
I barely dodged the thing as it lunged at me.
'It really looks grotesque.'
A face that made you frown just looking at it.
I didn't even need to look closely to know what that monster was.
No monsters appeared around the Iron Factory map in Akris, but special monsters showed up from time to time.
And the only time those special monsters appeared was at night.
A fiend whose body was crudely assembled from discarded parts clumped together.
It was a Junk Parts Amalgam.
A monster created when the sorrow, rage, and resentment of discarded dolls fused with the mana spread widely across the Akris continent.
All it had left was the instinct to go back to paradise, so it instinctively attacked anything, fellow dolls or otherwise, to steal mana and fill itself up.
I'd hunted them every now and then to get the items they dropped.
Only then did the fragments of parts scattered along the riverbank and all over the forest floor catch my eye.
Every one of those parts had bite marks here and there or wasn't in one piece.
It was obvious who had done that to them.
"Why did it have to show up now of all times...!"
Since Edith often roamed this area, she already knew what that fiend was too.
Without hesitation, she fired the rifle she'd been holding at the Parts Amalgam.
Zip, zip!
But the Parts Amalgam dodged the bullets with astonishing agility.
Even from what I could see, there was already a considerable amount of mana dwelling in the Parts Amalgam's body.
Maybe because of that magic, its basic physical abilities were well beyond ordinary.
In this situation, neither Edith nor I were getting out of here safely.
Before the fiend could attack us again, I hurriedly shouted to Edith.
"Miss Edith, let's work together to deal with that monster for now. We can talk again after that."
"...Fine. First, draw that monster's attention. Even better if you can restrict its movements."
"Understood. Then let's move right away."
I stepped between the trees where the Parts Amalgam had hidden from Edith.
Sure enough, the Parts Amalgam showed itself right in front of my eyes.
'I knew it. My Mana Core got it excited.'
Earlier, when the thing had first appeared, it hadn't even paid attention to Edith beside me; it had only been looking at me.
A Parts Amalgam was a monster that prolonged its life by absorbing the magic left in the bodies of dying dolls.
To a monster like that, my Mana Core, which kept giving off mana, would be the most tempting food there was.
Turning my back on it with my body reeking of mana, I started running the other way.
In this situation, all I could rely on was Edith's rifle.
Her marksmanship never missed, so all I had to do was restrict the thing's movements for a moment.
'But that doesn't mean I can throw my body at it by force.'
If I tried to hold it in place by grappling with it, my body would clearly get shredded by the thing's sharp, rough body.
So then what was I supposed to do?
'Let's think. What was its weakness in the game?'
Normal dolls were mostly vulnerable to fire or physical attacks.
Most were made of flammable materials, and in general their Durability wasn't impressive.
As for its other weaknesses, there was one in its personal pattern.
That it couldn't control its own speed.
The Parts Amalgam was hot on my heels with far superior movement.
I was already well aware that I was badly lacking in speed, so I waited until the instant right before the thing pounced on me.
I twisted my body and dodged the attack to the side.
And the Parts Amalgam, which had been charging at where I'd been, slammed right into the tree trunk beyond.
"Now!"
Before my signal had even reached her, Edith pulled her rifle's trigger.
BANG!
But.
"It isn't dead yet!"
The Parts Amalgam, which had seemed to be going down, started to writhe again and began to shriek.
KIEEEEK!
The part the bullet had hit was half caved in, but it hadn't been a fatal wound.
But maybe that had piled up into rage for the thing, because it turned its gaze on Edith, who'd left that mark on it.
"Miss Edith! Get out of the way!"
But paying no heed to my words, Edith aimed her gun at the Parts Amalgam charging at her.
BANG!
Her bullet knocked off a fragment of a part stuck to the thing's body, but it didn't stop; it lunged at Edith.
CRUNCH.
But what the thing managed to sink its teeth into was my wrist.
I'd barely kept Edith from getting hurt, but the thing's teeth were already buried deep in my arm.
[The mana in your body is draining rapidly.]
[Your physical abilities are beginning to drop sharply.]
Just as the message said, I could feel the strength gradually draining out of my body.
"Give me a knife!"
At my words, Edith quickly half tossed a knife over to me.
[Your understanding of a specific race is very high.]
[Activating Weakness Detection.]
Taking the knife, I stabbed it into the red-tinged joint of the thing, which kept twisting its body.
[Body Durability – 84%]
But with my measly 1 Strength, I had no way to pin the thing in place.
And because it kept shaking me around and changing position, Edith couldn't risk taking a shot either.
'I can't put any strength into my body.'
I could vividly feel the mana draining out of my body.
Maybe this was what it felt like to be a person dying as a vampire sucked their blood.
'I can't die this pointlessly.'
It happened the moment I shouted that and forcefully asserted my will.
[The Mana Core has detected a mana shortage.]
[The Mana Core takes control of the mana flow.]
[The Mana Core absorbs the surrounding mana.]
Responding to my will, the Mana Core began to act.
[The Mana Core purifies the impure mana that has entered your body.]
I felt movement in my chest, as if a real heart were beating.
-@%#$&!!!
In that instant, a tearing shriek rang through my head.
I'd connected to the Amalgam's mind and was hearing the voice inside it.
It was the death cry of a monster with no ego left.
And then.
BANG!
Edith's bullet finished the thing off.