【KYAAAAAA―】
I stared straight at the monster, which screamed despite taking no damage at all, and dodged its next attack.
It was a simple attack, swinging bunches of its glittering silver hair.
It looked like the tinsel on a Christmas tree, but a graze meant amputation at the least.
The monster was extremely angry.
【I, I told you not to talk. I said it was a secret.】
The ends of the bastard's eight arms were each transformed into a different weapon.
The fortunate part was that they were blades rather than the gun or bomb variety.
Batting away its blade fingers, splayed like scissor hands, with my dagger, I dodged its flashy movements reflected in the flashlight's beam and opened the cap of my water bottle.
I blocked most of the opening with my index finger and swung wide, and the water scattered nicely.
Still at beginner level, I could not handle the ability like my own body.
But with a medium, it is a different story.
Is control the problem? Just pour it on by sheer volume and that is that.
Something from nothing is hard, but slightly increasing what already exists I had already done.
I feel the clamor of the water droplets churning as though delighted.
However I looked at it, it felt like watching something alive churn, which produced a sense of dissonance, but I ignored it.
At once the thin, transparent film of water veiling my vision swelled in an instant and fell over the monster.
The wall of water holding the flashlight's beam was rather pretty, and the corners of my mouth curled up on their own.
What follows is nothing special.
There was a limit to the damage water that had yet to acquire speed or destructive force could do to machines.
That is why I extorted the dagger from Ichi.
'Whoa......, the frost attribute is sweet.'
The chill flowing from the dagger was not my imagination.
This was an expensive weapon onto which an imbuement ability user had personally slathered the frost attribute, stitch by stitch.
It had the drawback of activating only on direct contact, but that was no problem.
Made in Styx is the best.
【Loose-lipped little shits should go d-die, die, di―ie, ie―, i―】
Its very joints froze, and the nimble monster's speed dropped noticeably.
Its creaking mouth played back only the final syllable, over and over.
Only its hair, swaying and sweeping, twitched like a sea anemone.
By this point the red necktie stuck to the floor was nothing but a nuisance.
'It's a bit quieter now.'
The way to get rid of the stairwell monster is simply not to be beguiled by the words it spouts.
Most people were charmed by the monster's ranting, spilled their secrets, ended up in the same state, and had their lower bodies cut away.
The protagonist too came within a hair of being cut and only got through it with Seo Mok's help.
I gazed quietly at the monster, frozen and blinking nothing but its pitch-black eye sockets.
Between the monster that could no longer speak and me, unable to answer with the flashlight in my mouth, only silence settled.
And in the space of a few breaths, the monster shed pitch-black tears and vanished without lingering.
All that remained was a melted lump of ice and a soaking trace of water on the floor.
It was a simple gimmick.
Being a monster born of talking behind people's backs, the structure was such that if both parties kept their mouths shut it was dealt with naturally.
For reference, this monster was the sort that kept talking even with its neck cut off.
"The respawn time was an hour, was it?"
I looked at the locked third-floor door with regret and continued down the stairs.
First I had to catch the guard doing his rounds.
***
The monsters here all showed the peculiarity of the company as a place.
Just as the monster haunting the stairwell was made from people venting grudges and spreading rumors, the guard monster was similar.
All day long, he watches the people coming and going from the building.
Block the strange ones, block those who are not employees, block those who make a scene, block as the higher-ups order, block when in a bad mood.......
In the original work, the protagonist's party, entering through the first-floor lobby, met the guard first of all.
It was to block obvious outsiders.
The protagonist, who had an aversion to the Other Side and to abilities themselves, threw a fist the moment he met the grotesque-looking guard.
And what happened?
The company's security system activated and he was forcibly confined.
The confinement location was randomly selected, and you ended up wasting twenty-four hours in a sealed space.
That was why, even with Seo Mok in the party, they only found Smith after a long while.
The protagonist's outrageous Other Side antics, acting without thought of consequence, sickened Seo Mok and got Smith killed as well.
So the reason I went looking for that guard was―
【No entry here except authorized personnel.】
A cracked tone that irritated the ear rang through the empty underground parking garage.
The guard, wearing a dark navy uniform, shone his flashlight at me with his cap pulled low.
The strong light kept me from seeing the guard properly, but even dimly he traced an uncanny valley deep enough to turn the stomach.
Excessively bright eyes that did not move, a jaw that opened and closed up and down like a doll's, a ring of keys dripping blood.
Above all, it looked like human skin draped straight over a machine, and the skin that had bunched and lifted where it did not fit was especially unpleasant.
【Return to your place.】
In the original work the guard roamed the entire building except the seventh floor.
He prowled meticulously through the first-floor lobby, the rooftop garden, the basement maintenance room, the emergency stairwell, and the offices on every floor.
The stairwell showed traces of him having already passed through once, so I chose the nearby basement maintenance room.
I was lucky.
【Sales team. Fourth floor?】
The guard tilted his head, then came right up close and shoved his face at me.
The employee badge around my neck served me well.
Looking as unbothered as possible, I equipped my professional smile and scratched the back of my head.
"The elevator isn't moving. I came down because I had something to get from my car and ended up stuck, is what happened."
The guard stared at me with his still-fixed, unfocused eyes, then stepped back.
【The elevator. Very well, I will guide you.】
Only then did the guard put away his flashlight and leave the spot.
Truly, has there ever been such an obedient Other Side guide?
Hm? Chamel would feel wronged?
No, with that one it is a blessing if he does not cause trouble.
Standing before the elevator with B3 written unusually large, the guard even kindly held the door open and waited for me.
The condition for using the elevator.
Receive the guard's guidance.
It was what I had expected, but confirming it in practice brought home how filthily tangled Seo Mok's situation had been in the original work.
That is what happens when you charge into an Other Side unprepared just because the Other Side loves you.
For one thing, the guard was quite kind to employees.
He amounted to a setting on the level of a tutorial guide, calibrated to the original work's beginner protagonist.
In the original work they only found the guard's usefulness after being knocked around a good deal more, but thanks to that I had it easy, and what is good is good.
I entered the elevator and faithfully followed the gaze of the guard waiting obediently.
【The sales team is.......】
I cut off the guard as he went to press the button for the fourth floor and raised my hand.
"Excuse me! I'd like to go to the seventh floor."
The guard turned his three-hundred-sixty-degree head to look at me and tilted it.
The grotesquely twisted angle was precarious, as though it might fall off at any moment.
Without fixing my eyes on it, I gave a bright smile.
"Is that not allowed?"
Part of it was simply that Smith was on the seventh floor, but I needed confirmation.
The seventh floor was the CEO's domain, and that status blocked out every monster.
Even in the original work, the guard who roamed as if the place were his own home had never gone to the seventh floor.
The protagonist, searching to track Smith, learned that and then acknowledged the CEO's office as the relatively safe place and stayed there.
【No. The CEO has not clocked out yet.】
I had wondered.
Not once in the original work had this so-called CEO appeared, and I stared at the guard as he spoke as though the CEO were inside this building.
And on top of that, the nuance was not that he could not go but that he did not want to.
【Then I will take it as the fourth floor.......】
I curved my eyes and cut the guard off.
"I'd like to go to the sixth floor!"
The stairs leading to the rooftop garden were on the sixth floor, separately.
From that rooftop garden there existed a route, rough though it was, to cross over to the seventh floor from outside.
【You are not planning to go to the rooftop garden, are you?】
"Hardly. I have no wish to die."
【......】
"Really. I have business on the sixth floor."
It was a difficulty level where a misstep could kill me, but what can be done.
I had come in to rescue him, and I could only rib Ichi if I got him out.
***
When the elevator doors opened at the sixth floor, a bleak sight came into view.
A dark red liquid presumed to be blood was splattered here and there, and clumps of glitch, as though the graphics had broken, clung all over.
Get tangled with a glitch wrongly and you must bid reality farewell forever, but leave it alone and it was fine.
"See you again later!"
I waved at the expressionless guard beyond the closing elevator doors.
Once the guard had disappeared entirely, the air on the sixth floor changed.
A thick stench of blood blew in mixed with a foul wind, and from somewhere came the whirring of machinery running.
I checked the emergency stairwell door, half consumed by glitch, and took out the transceiver.
"Executing approach to the rescue subject. Will report if anything of note arises. Over."
I had let slip to the guard that I would be going to the rooftop garden, and the sixth-floor monsters were the somewhat easier sort.
"Let's take it easy, easy."
The fact that the monsters here were only partly machine made my confidence well up.
Gripping the dagger in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I changed direction.
On the way to the stairs leading to the rooftop garden, I met monsters five times in all.
One was a monster whose head was a monitor filled with programming language,
three were normal-looking monsters tearing at glitch and eating it like cotton candy,
and the last was a monster with a large blanket pulled over its head, drifting about like a ghost.
"Should I look into the frost line?"
No, it would have been better to have fire rather than water in the first place.
Fire, which can burn everything regardless of whether it is alive or dead.
In needless regret I recalled the fire-attribute characters from the original work and smacked my lips.
"Still, this is better for dealing with the protagonist."
Climbing the fairly wide, transparent stairs brought you to the rooftop garden.
There Smith met the protagonist's party and was then killed by the guard.
That is right.
The rooftop garden was safe only if you had an employee badge.
Failing that, the guard had better not be around.
When I pushed through the unlocked door, the scene of an arboretum packed with living plants spread out, befitting a rooftop "garden."
The sort of place where the regular shapes of the branches, as though arranged by someone at will, produced discomfort instead.
I checked the floor, punched through with sparse holes, and quietly turned toward the safer side.
RUSTLE.
Wow......, he really showed up.
The monster you must never meet if you have no employee badge.
I had pretended to lose the badge on the way and tossed it to a monster that had already died, but to think he would take the bait this quickly.
It was still that expressionless, grotesquely drawn face, but I could feel anger in it.
【Have you come to die?】
Aha, ha.......
I rubbed my tingling skin and gladly waited for the guard's next words.
To use the route to the seventh floor, the guard had to cooperate.
Mm-hm. Go on, say it quickly.
【You, why is your badge―】
The guard broke off mid-sentence and tipped his head back.
I looked up at the pitch-black sky along with him.
Far off, a yellow light flashed.
CRUNCH!
"Ta-daa, the cute Chamel makes his entrance!"
"......?"
The thing, blended into its surroundings with its hair a deep green, swept it back and stood there pleased with itself, the guard pinned beneath it.
Why are you here?