I pried the Parts Amalgam, drained completely of its magic, off my arm.
It had bitten down so hard that even pulling its teeth out was a struggle.
"Let me help."
In the end, together with Edith, I managed to get the thing off my arm.
"No blood, just as I thought."
"As you saw, it's a doll's body."
"There's no pain? A person would have half passed out by now."
"Well... I don't really feel much of anything."
"Is that so? Then at least you can die without it hurting."
As Edith spoke, the muzzle of her revolver touched the back of my head.
"...Are you serious?"
So pulling the monster's teeth out for me had just been an act?
After I'd shown this much trust, you'd think she'd start believing me by now.
Shk.
"...Does this mean you've decided to trust me?"
Maybe my read hadn't been wrong, because Edith took the revolver away from my head.
"Well, I'd have to hear more to know, but I can't shoot the head of someone who threw himself in to save me at the risk of his own life."
"So I bought my life by betting my life."
No, maybe she really had intended to shoot me right up to the end.
Taking the knife from my hand, Edith put her things back where they belonged.
Finally slinging the rifle strap over her shoulder, Edith looked at me, still slumped on the ground, and asked.
"You can get up on your own, right? Do you need help?"
"No, I can get up."
"Then get up and follow me. Let's go to my turf instead of talking here."
She wanted me to follow her to her turf instead of finishing the conversation here.
There was no need to ask why.
It meant she'd at least stopped thinking of me as an enemy.
I followed behind Edith as she led the way.
'Well, that's one worry off my mind.'
The mechanic the quest mentioned was probably Edith.
Now all I had to do was get my body repaired and I could clear this quest too.
With some room to breathe, I checked the quest-clear reward I hadn't been able to check earlier.
[The quest-clear reward is issued.]
Then a small light appeared in midair, and something like a small glass shard landed on my palm.
'What is this?'
I was disappointed by its ordinary appearance, but once I checked the item's description, I was immediately convinced.
[Memory Fragment Shard]
[Description : A shard containing the memories of someone who seems deeply connected to you. Break the shard to glimpse the memories.]
According to the description, it looked like I could learn what my body really was.
Perfect. I wasn't sure why I'd woken up in the Iron Factory, or what my body really was, anyway.
Without a moment's hesitation, I clenched the shard in my fist.
Crunch.
Along with the sound of the small glass shard breaking, my vision changed to a different place in an instant.
The place before my eyes was pitch-black; I couldn't even tell where it was.
As if I were sharing someone's point of view, the owner of the gaze slowly stepped forward.
Where those haughty, light steps stopped, a pure white mannequin hung demurely from white strings.
'That's....'
It was entirely white, and even its outline was hard to make out, but I instinctively knew what that mannequin was.
'It's me.'
My current body was sleeping with its eyes closed at the very center of the gaze.
Soon the hands of the gaze's owner touched both my cheeks.
Those hands looked like a very small child's hand and an adult's slender hand overlapping each other, translucent.
-Wake up.
A voice I'd heard often at some point.
But this was the first time I'd heard it spoken aloud like this.
At her voice, full of soft color, color began to slowly seep into the mannequin, starting from the cheeks where they touched.
From colorless, slowly, until it was colored.
The way a rough sketch is only brought to life once it's given color and shading.
Soon, as the mannequin's eyes slowly opened, her gaze slowly closed.
After a moment of darkness passed, when my eyes opened again, this time I saw a girl in front of me.
The beautiful girl with bright pink hair also looked, in some ways, like a grown woman.
And that face belonged to the main villain I'd fought to the point of misery in the game: Seren.
'And I'm a being Seren made herself.'
Ever since I'd woken up, I'd wondered what my body really was.
Just one of countless dolls, or a prototype of an enhanced combat doll, or whatever.
I'd even suspected that I might be one of the powerful dolls Seren commanded.
But even if I didn't know the villain's story, I remembered all the boss patterns, so I knew what her subordinates looked like.
Naturally, none of them looked anything like me.
'Maybe a new character got added during the update.'
But then, the update notes hadn't mentioned anything about the story.
If they'd changed the story and patterns of the main story's villain, of all bosses, they'd definitely have put that in.
In the game's story, her power was the power to make fantasies from dreams real.
The beings born of that imagination all appeared in the form of dolls.
Among them, the dolls she made herself gained especially special powers and appeared in the game as mid-bosses facing players.
And since I'd faced those things hundreds, thousands of times myself, there was no way I didn't know their faces.
But none of those subordinates looked like me now.
In the story, Seren is defeated by the protagonist's party, and she herself descends deep into her own unconscious and chooses death in the form of eternal sleep.
An ending where her body and mind are alive, but which is practically no different from death.
If my body had existed in the original story too, why hadn't it appeared?
No, maybe it was one of Seren's subordinates newly created in this update.
But in that case, why had it been dumped in the Iron Factory?
Maybe the body's owner, before I gained consciousness, had run away and come here in the first place.
No, maybe the body hadn't had an owner at all until I entered it.
I'd glimpsed the memory to settle the questions filling my head, and instead my head only hurt worse.
'In the end, all I can do is progress the quests to get more information.'
Getting a grip on my confused, heavy feelings, I pulled out of the memory.
But by the time I came back to my senses, I was already in a different place.
***
"Ngh...."
Instead of a throbbing in my head, dizziness spun through it.
Pain has the effect of neutralizing dizziness, but since I felt practically no pain, my vision swam even worse.
"You're awake? It's the first time I've seen an intact doll, but your body's a lot sturdier than I thought."
It was Edith's voice.
When I checked with my returning vision, my body was bound tightly to a chair with rope.
'Edith must have carried me here while I was glimpsing the memory.'
I was really grateful she'd gone to that trouble herself, but it seemed she still didn't trust me.
Maybe it was because she was a game character that I'd trusted her far too easily, based only on the information I knew.
"...I didn't hear that you treated your customers like this."
"Of course I don't tie customers to chairs or anything. But you're not a proper customer, and we still have things to talk about."
"Bringing me all the way to your storage room means you at least don't think of me as an enemy, doesn't it?"
The place where I was tied up was Edith's basement.
All around were various assembled weapons, parts, and tools scattered about.
In the game, you could only get in here by clearing a hidden quest.
Despite my question, Edith silently went about tidying up the tools around her.
"So, what are you planning to do now? I'm guessing you'll take my body apart and use it for parts."
"What are you talking about? Don't tell me you thought I was going to tie you up and dissect you?"
"Aren't you?"
"Honestly, how bad a person do you think I am? You kept moving around in your sleep, so I just tied you down to keep you still. You must've had a really scary nightmare, huh?"
I guess I'd talked in my sleep that badly.
Well, the nightmare I'd had was pretty shocking, so I guess it made sense.
Me, an alter ego of the main boss.
"Anyway, talk. Why did you come looking for me? I may be a smuggler, but if it's for something bad, there's no deal."
Now that the Edith I'd seen in the game had finally shown up, I was sure she no longer suspected me.
"There's no big reason. I'm thinking of keeping one on hand for self-defense. It's complicated to explain in detail, so to put it simply, I'm on the run right now."
"On the run? Don't tell me you were a criminal?"
"I'm not running because I committed a crime. I'm just running from the bastards who made my body like this."
"The people who made your body like that? What do you mean by that?"
"I told you. I'm not an ordinary doll."
Then Edith's eyes wavered faintly.
"Were you human originally?"
"Yes. Someone converted my body into a doll."
Veins stood out on both of her hands as she leaned against the table.
I'd succeeded in touching her emotions, just as I'd steered.
I'd never actually undergone any such body modification at the Iron Factory, but a little lying was necessary to gain Edith's trust.
"Hah, so now they're short on materials and they're even laying hands on people."
Anger hung over Edith's trembling voice.
Soon, pulling her trembling voice together, Edith untied me from the chair.
"I misjudged you. I apologize."
Either way, I needed her help if I wanted to clear the quest.
The process hadn't been smooth, but in the end, I'd gained even more of her trust.
"No need to apologize. Instead, there's something I'd like to ask of you."
"If it's weapons, I have plenty, so take your time looking."
"Besides that, there's one more thing I'd like to ask."
"One more?"
"Could you fix my body a little? It may look fine on the outside, but it's a bit broken."
"This is my first time with a doll this size... but I'll give it a try."
Accepting my request, Edith led me further into the basement.
"What kind of weapon would you like?"
A weapon. With my current body, I was at an overwhelming disadvantage in close combat or any contest of strength.
So I had to find the kind of weapon that suited me best.
"Do you happen to have anything other than what's here?"
"Well, I do have more, but most of them are hard to handle. Is that okay? And I hate to bring it up, but they'll cost a lot, too."
Even if her attitude toward me had changed, right now we were an arms dealer and a buyer.
When it came to money, she was bound to be firm.
The thing was, right now I had no money on me, or anything at all I could trade for currency.
I'd woken up as a factory slave and escaped without grabbing a thing, so it was only natural.
"Miss Edith, then could I pay with something other than money?"
"That's fine, but do you even have anything worth that?"
"I'll just pay with my body."
"Sorry, but I don't want to give you a bad memory twice over."
She seemed to be talking about the parts in my body.
"No, I mean I'll help you with your work."
"My work? Sorry, but weapon-making isn't something just anyone can do."
Bracing myself for the muzzle to be shoved against my head again, I spoke up.
"No, I mean I'll help you with your Resistance work."