“……Unfortunately, I do not have any left. I used them all on those things, swarming us like insects. I have the ingredients, but they do not seem inclined to give me the time to make more.”
Ravenwood spoke while casting a wary sidelong glance at the dark ceiling above my shoulder.
She must have noticed the stench rising from the floor and the murky slime coating it. Perhaps that was why her hands had begun to tremble almost imperceptibly.
What fell from the ceiling was no mere dripping water. The murky, blackened slime crawled across the surrounding floor as though it possessed a will of its own, gradually contaminating the sewage.
“Ex-Executor, sir. That…… feels ominous. We have to get out of here, quickly――!”
Lyn was about to raise her voice and urge us to flee.
Perhaps her Kersling instincts had awakened, because she hurriedly scooped Kariya into her arms and began backing away.
However, I carefully raised an index finger to my lips and whispered.
“Both of you, be quiet. Do not make a sound or move. If possible, silence even your breathing.”
It was not as though I knew nothing about the University’s test subjects. The first surprise was that they had actually been part of the game’s lore.
When all was said and done, the Leaden Waterway was merely an area roamed by a boss and used as a shortcut within the game.
At best, that was all anyone could call it.
It was occasionally the site of certain events, but still.
‘Damn it.’
The situation could hardly have been worse. One disaster had piled upon another until this had gone far beyond mere unfairness.
The reason I had managed to defeat the Toller of Execution with relative ease?
That was solely because I had been ‘thoroughly prepared.’
‘This is so absurd that I do not even know what to say.’
The test subjects had never given up on us. More precisely, they had deliberately led us to believe that they had.
This encounter was not a coincidence. It was an inevitability disguised as one.
They had driven us into a dining hall where a predator lay in wait. The situation was too unreasonable to endure unless I thought of it that way.
‘It’s coming.’
BOOOOM――!!
A massive hunk of flesh, reeking of machinery, raw meat, and chemicals, crashed down from the darkness blanketing the ceiling.
Pipes and gears from the waterway had fused with every part of its body as though they had been branded into its flesh. The deep hollows carved into its form testified to the terrible things it had endured.
One glance was enough to inspire a single impression.
It was grotesque.
[Boss: Waterway Administrator Vargas]
That flavor text naturally surfaced in my mind.
I had seen him whenever I used the Leaden Waterway as a shortcut. Yes, he was an aberrant creature for whom the word ‘immortal’ seemed particularly fitting.
It was not impossible to kill him, but doing so was effectively beyond us at present. Even if he was killed, he would eventually regenerate.
In other words, picking a fight with him in our current situation was a terrible idea.
However, it was already too late to avoid him. He had detected us and descended from the ceiling.
‘If there is one small mercy…….’
His field of vision was extremely narrow. He was practically blind.
He had no fixed attack pattern. He simply thrashed his body at random, charged forward, and crushed his opponents beneath him.
Human eyeballs and lens-like objects constantly shifted around his body, surveying his surroundings, but those were merely decoys.
He hunted his prey by relying upon sensations such as sound and movement.
‘Of all places, we had to encounter him here.’
A massive steam pipe embedded in Vargas’s torso periodically released a HSSSS as it spewed scalding vapor.
He moved as though trying to capture even the faintest ripple in the air, while the dozens of false eyes plastered across his immense body swept unpleasantly in every direction.
However, I knew the truth.
What served as his eyes and ears was his ability to detect vibrations, the movement of the air, and sound.
“…….”
A brief silence followed.
Ravenwood covered her mouth and held her breath. Lyn did the same.
However, this could not last for long. Vargas had revealed himself because he had already sensed the presence of our group.
The situation was painfully simple.
The instant Kariya coughed, we would be pounded into meatballs.
‘We cannot kill Vargas right now. But we can incapacitate him.’
I carefully picked up a glass bottle lying nearby. It was the bottle of lubricant Ravenwood had thrown to me earlier.
In the game, the standard method of getting past Vargas was to ‘lure him with noise.’
However, this was not the game.
He was far more sensitive, and the space was cramped.
Above all, there was nothing here that could be used to incapacitate him.
‘This will not be enough!’
At best, it would buy us one or two seconds.
Had a single bottle been enough to draw his attention and let us escape, I would already have thrown it.
I needed to be fast.
I needed to find a way through immediately.
‘Wait…….’
This situation was not a game.
I stared at the University emblem embedded in Vargas’s chest and the nameplate attached to his administrator’s uniform.
[Waterway Administrator Vargas].
That designation began to resonate with the Code of Law engraved within my mind.
It provided the ‘grounds’ I needed to incapacitate him with certainty.
‘Of course. The answer was there from the beginning.’
The key was not a class from Gray Judgment.
It was the fact that I had been chosen as ‘The Absolved.’
At last, the method came to me.
I carefully threw the glass bottle toward the iron door behind us—the one we had barely managed to close during the chase.
CRASH―!!
The sharp sound of shattering glass broke the silence.
Ravenwood and Lyn both turned toward me, but at that very moment, Vargas hurled his massive body toward the source of the noise with explosive speed.
‘You sly one! What are you doing? Have you gone mad?’
‘Wh-What are you doing?!’
Had the two of them been able to speak, they would probably have shouted something along those lines.
BOOM, CRUNCH.
A deafening crash erupted from the sturdy steel floodgate.
It had been no more than a single body slam, yet the steel crumpled like a sheet of paper, revealing the test subjects beyond the gap.
《Intru, der…… law, vio…… lation……!!》
《It hurts, it…… hurts?》
Vargas’s mechanically distorted voice overlapped with the test subjects’ words as the two sides stared at one another.
‘First gambit: set one enemy against another!’
As expected, Vargas and the test subjects recognized one another and immediately began to fight.
However, the test subjects merely possessed an advantage in ‘numbers.’ Physically, they could never overpower Vargas.
Their struggle bought us time, but even that had its limits.
The test subjects’ movements gradually faltered, and then they all began to flee at once.
Whatever their instincts told them, they could not overcome the terror that physical violence had seared into them.
Even the test subjects clinging to Vargas’s body slowly began to be grafted into him like lumps of minced flesh.
‘As expected, this was never going to be enough.’
I knew that.
It had only been intended to buy us a little time, but I had not expected the test subjects to hold out so poorly.
Pathetic creatures.
Vargas did not take long to dispose of them, leaving me no opportunity to give the others further instructions.
Naturally, the moment we started moving in the opposite direction, he would notice and pursue us.
‘Even so, I still have another method.’
In truth, I did not know whether it would work.
However, the Code of Law within my mind clearly whispered that it would.
That was the privilege granted to The Absolved.
I straightened my collar, pointed an accusing finger at Vargas, and shouted.
“Objection!!”
The moment Vargas turned his attention toward me in response to my shout, a world unfolded around us.
A golden vision of the Code of Law, manifested through Objection, filled the surroundings.
“Wh-What in the world is happening?!”
“Just watch, little one. This is the authority possessed by our esteemed Executor.”
Ravenwood excitedly explained the situation to the bewildered Lyn beside her.
‘Good. The conditions have definitely been met.’
As proof, information confirming that the requirements had been fulfilled seeped into my mind.
Now it was time to state the answer.
“Waterway Administrator Vargas, halt! Your actions are in direct violation of Article 6 of the Salus Municipal Administrative Code, ‘Prohibition of Dereliction of Duty by Administrators and Destruction of Public Facilities’!”
The crimson mechanical glow in Vargas’s eyes flickered for an instant, and his movements stopped.
I knew that pause would only be temporary.
Unless I forced him into a corner and brought his actions to a complete halt, we would be the ones to suffer.
“Waterway Administrator Vargas, under the pretext of stopping intruders, you have severely damaged the facilities of the Leaden Waterway, which are public assets belonging to Salus! An administrator’s foremost duty is the preservation and maintenance of those facilities! One who repeatedly destroys them cannot be permitted to retain an administrator’s authority!”
I had pointed out an undeniable contradiction.
Vargas’s movements began to slow dramatically.
“Furthermore, you arbitrarily judged me, an Executor, to be an unlawful intruder and attempted to impose sanctions upon me! Under the Constitution of Salus, you attempted an act of violent coercion against an Executor! Your crime is by no means a minor one!”
As the golden truth suffusing my entire body filled the surroundings, familiar text appeared within my mind.
[Objection successful!]
[Successfully identified the administrator’s contradiction!]
[Judgment complete: Based on an accurate identification of the contradiction, the actions of ‘Waterway Administrator Vargas’ are restricted!]
With that, the engines driving Vargas’s body slowly shut down.
Backflowing steam burst from the vents embedded across his body, and the enormous arm that had been moments away from crushing us stopped in midair.
The mechanical glow in his eyes changed from red to yellow and flickered weakly before he spoke.
《Warning, warning. Administrator logic conflict detected. Target is not a hostile intruder. Recognized as an Executor of Salus…… Error detected. Entering self-repair and audit mode for facility damage.》
His entire body then began to shudder.
“You did it, you sly one!”
“That was incredible!!”
“We do not have time to stand around! We have to get out of here now!”
“H-Huh? Is the problem…… not solved?”
The two of them looked puzzled by my shout, but we had to move immediately.
“I will explain later! We have to leave now!”
Ravenwood and Lyn seemed to come to their senses and broke into a run.
We rushed past Vargas, who stood creaking and convulsing, and sprinted toward the passage on the opposite side of the waterway.
There was no time to look back.
The test subjects had retreated.
However, they had not fled because of us. They had fled because Vargas was there.
Furthermore, Vargas’s biological functions had not ceased. He had merely been restrained by the logical shackles imposed through my ‘Objection.’
Considering his self-repair capabilities, it was only a matter of time before his logic system resolved the contradiction and he resumed his pursuit.
If we failed to escape in time, Vargas would block us from behind while the test subjects sealed the path ahead, cutting off every possible route of escape.
“Right! We have to turn right here! I can smell the outside!”
Lyn guided us as she ran.
“Speak of the devils, damn it!”
Ravenwood, running beside me, added her own remark.
Sure enough, I could hear something approaching from that direction.
The test subjects.
“They are weak to light! That is why we have to get out!”
The test subjects were already closing in behind us.
There had been no time to create consumables, and we were woefully unprepared.
All that remained uncertain was whether our legs would hold out until we escaped.
Even the sound of our footsteps was drowned beneath the pounding of my heart.
“Once we round the corner ahead, there is a passage leading out of the waterway!!”
Lyn shouted, announcing our final sprint.
It was not the outer passage through which I had entered, but this was hardly the time to concern myself with that.
‘They are going to catch us, they are going to catch us, they are going to catch us……!!’
I could hear them.
Those quadrupedal, dragoon-like creatures were right behind us.
Had they received a speed upgrade?
Even without looking, I could feel them racing toward us like rabid dogs eager to sink their teeth into my shoulder or thigh.
“RUUUN!!”
Perhaps some latent strength that transcended the limits of my species suddenly erupted within me.
I surged ahead of the others and lashed out at the door blocking our path.
“TAE! KWON! DO!!!”
The iron door flew open with a heavy crash, and brilliant sunlight poured toward us.
Screams erupted from the test subjects that had been pursuing us from directly behind.
《SKR, EEEEEEEEK!!》
《GRAAAAAH!! AAGH!!! GROOOOOO!!》
The flesh of the test subjects behind us seemed to melt beneath the light.
They resembled the vampires found in fantasy games.
Their bodies dissolved wherever the sunlight touched them, and in the end, they were unable to follow us outside.
“D-Did we make it? You sly one! We made it, did we not!?”
“Ka-Kariya. You are safe now…… We are outside, so I will make sure you get treatment…….”
Ravenwood let out an incredulous laugh as she questioned me, while Lyn murmured to herself in a choked voice, as though she might burst into tears at any moment.
I looked back into the darkness of the Leaden Waterway and thought to myself.
‘The next time we enter, it probably will not end with just this.’
For now, it was time to return to the slums.