When I was about to move my feet and head deeper into the room after obtaining N Corp's seal, a familiar sound came from the door leading down the side path.
"―――!"
...Right. A scream.
It was faint, so I couldn't be certain it was truly a scream, but it had the same feel as the screams I'd heard in this underground labyrinth before.
Once again, a trace of fear and anger returned to Sinclair's eyes.
We had to go, then... Just when would this wretched underground ever end?
I was getting tired of it.
We'd killed countless Inquisitors, explored the underground, pushed onward, and kept pushing...
My anger was starting to wear thin... No, I couldn't afford to grow weak.
I remembered the cruel deaths of Mr. Epi and Ms. Sword.
I would avenge them by driving a spear through that bitch's head.
I couldn't break. I couldn't...
When I looked into the room from outside, a person with a prosthetic body was trapped inside something like a cage, making stuttering mechanical noises.
It seemed there was something else restraining them, because they couldn't escape on their own.
...But there were no Inquisitors?
This was the first room I'd seen with not a single Inquisitor in sight.
The room we'd just come from had sounds of movement coming from inside too.
Maybe I just hadn't noticed it yet.
"It sounds like they're asking to be saved..."
Dante said that, then stood still in place and began thinking about something.
Was he trying to interpret it or something?
My body moved on its own to stop him, thinking it was a pointless act, but then the thought that it might actually help us made me hesitate.
The thought that we should stop him and the thought that maybe we should leave him alone kept fighting each other.
And then, at some point, it snapped.
The biggest reason was probably the ominous sound coming from deeper inside.
-Clack, clack.
"It's... the sound of metal hitting metal..."
Sinclair trembled with anxiety.
Of course. Anyone would know that sound meant the Inquisitors were coming.
In that urgent situation, we were given one choice.
Free the people in prosthetic bodies and shoulder the risk of battle, or just leave this place behind.
I doubted I was the only one with that choice floating in my head.
"...Let's save them."
When Dante made his decision, Sinclair's expression brightened.
"...I knew I could trust you."
Leaving those words behind, Sinclair immediately rushed into the room and started cutting the ropes binding them.
I'd thought it strange that they were completely restrained by a single cage, but so that was what had been tied up after all.
"Run, quickly!"
The moment Sinclair cut the ropes, they fled the room without even looking back.
...How cold.
"Not even a thank-you. Bastards."
Prisoners like Heathcliff and Otis looked at them with obvious displeasure, but Sinclair seemed unconcerned and wore a satisfied expression.
The mood turned chaotic in an instant.
That wasn't good in a situation like this...
"Let's get out of here, quickly!"
At Dante's brisk words, we pulled ourselves together and hurried out of the room.
Fortunately, we successfully slipped past the Inquisitors and escaped without fighting.
We headed to the next room.
And if I had to describe that room briefly... yes. Well, it was fire.
-Whoosh.
Literally fire.
More precisely, it was a path that looked extremely, extremely, extremely hot.
"Ugh, my shoes are going to melt!"
Gregor's reaction after briefly testing the heat with his foot said it all.
While I was searching the surroundings for some way through, I found a sign ahead.
[Prove your humanity through weakness and rot. Make a path with your scorched footprints.]
...Doesn't that just mean to cross barefoot?
It sounded like I was supposed to use my burned feet to touch something ahead and make a path, but then where was the switch that should have been there... it wasn't?
Was it something you could only see after going all the way through?
"..."
At the very least, it was clear that one prisoner had to cross this path.
...This is awkward. Should I step up?
When no one volunteered even after some time passed, Dante must have gotten impatient too, because he went looking for a volunteer himself.
And the first person he came to was... me, damn it.
"...Saramago, do you think you can do it?"
I couldn't bring myself to refuse his pitiful-sounding words.
He, well... it was also unfortunate that he was fated to feel pain too.
Still, even if it looked painful, maybe it would somehow work out.
"Yes..."
One thing was certain: I didn't refuse to take the burden.
I took off my shoes and stood before the flames.
It'll work out... right?
My body was already trembling at the pain that was about to come, but I couldn't exactly turn back after coming this far.
-Ssssshh...
I ran while watching sweat hit the path and evaporate in a savage hiss.
-Ssssssssshh!!
Ghh!
Damn... I could feel my feet slowly roasting with every step.
At this rate, would my legs stop moving halfway through and collapse?
That would be the absolute worst.
Fortunately, even as my feet were dying in real time, they showed no sign of stopping.
"Aaaagh!!"
Though the pain showed no sign of stopping either.
As I was screaming my lungs out, one thought flashed through my head.
Ah, come to think of it, couldn't I have used N Corp's seal to pass through this safely?
...
Let's pretend I never thought of that.
I was already more than halfway there, and if I went back now and said I'd rather pass with the seal, how ridiculous would that look?
-Ssssshh...
Enduring the horrific agony of my flesh burning away, I finally reached the door.
And at that moment, an altar appeared ahead, and a lever rose up from it.
So this was it!
-Click.
The moment I pulled the lever, I could feel the path below rapidly cooling.
Was it over?
My body was certain this situation had ended, but my mind was still tense, remaining in a state of alertness.
And soon, even that tightly wound mind loosened, and the pain that adrenaline had been suppressing came crashing over me.
Damn it, if this was how it was going to be...
What greeted me at the end of the pain was not rest, but a deep darkness.
No, maybe dying was a kind of rest too...
When I opened my eyes, I was in what looked like the next room.
Apparently the clock had been turned back, because my feet were clean, with no burn marks left on them.
Tch. It still stings.
"Here, your shoes."
"Ah, thank you."
After putting my shoes back on and looking around, I saw something unusual: there were three paths leading forward.
Which meant the amount of searching we'd have to do in case of an unforeseen situation had tripled.
...Maybe not exactly three times as much, but damn, this place was wide.
No, were the first and second rooms this wide too?
Then I suppose it would be more accurate to say there were a lot of paths.
The branches we'd gone through in the previous two missions didn't have much to explore.
Strictly speaking, this place wasn't packed with things either... but it felt like important things were distributed across multiple locations.
There was that subtle sensation that couldn't quite be put into words.
Ah, I've gone off on a tangent.
In the end, we were standing before a three-way fork, wondering where to go.
"Hmm..."
"...How about we go left?"
"Huh?"
At my cautious suggestion, Dante asked back.
"Just a hunch. I feel like we should go left."
"..."
He looked at me as if he found it absurd, but the others weren't really any different from me.
This was our first exploration, and we didn't even have a proper map. Everyone was just making blind guesses by instinct.
In fact, making a logical deduction would only be possible if you actually knew this entire branch inside and out.
...I wonder if Faust knows? Not that she'd ever tell us.
If I had to explain further, I'd say my intuition was frighteningly accurate.
In the previous two missions, and in this one too, my intuition had never been wrong once.
Whether it was a bad feeling or not, it always hit the mark.
Though "intuition" might not even be the right word. It was closer to something I couldn't quite feel, something like a visual sixth sense.
No, maybe it wasn't intuition at all.
It felt more like some possibility being visually converted and slammed straight into my brain.
And my brain, after reading it, sent feelings of foreboding and hope through my body.
Maybe it was similar to the ability Yi Sang developed with the Mirror, since that too was said to reflect some kind of possibility.
...What the hell am I even saying?
After wandering through this dreary underground for hours, taking only brief rests along the way, I think my mind was starting to fray.
Otherwise I wouldn't be spouting such nonsense.
What kind of lunatic would think of shoving Singularity-grade technology into a person's eyes?
I shook my head to clear away the stray thoughts and kept walking forward.
Hoping I could make it to the end before my mind completely snapped.
Hoping I could meet her before I completely lost sight of my purpose.
Even then, I kept hypnotizing myself over and over.
Because if I got lost halfway, I didn't think I'd even be able to fight properly.
I prayed that I could get out of this floor quickly.
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