Chapter 61
#061
1.
We crawled through the hole into a small back room.
Ever been to the basement boiler room of an old apartment complex?
It's exactly that kind of place.
The floor is moldy, and some unidentified rusty water keeps dripping down from the ceiling.
Glowing mushrooms taken from a mushroom farm are serving as lamps to light the room.
Looks like the fixer couple from earlier used this place as their treasure stash.
“Those guys....”
I thought they were stingy bastards who didn't even drop loot and just vanished in a splash....
But to think they'd hide a honey pot like this and leave it behind....
My chest feels warm.
See? There are no bad fixers after all.
This city just made them that way.
“Thank you. I'll make good use of the inheritance you left behind. Hey, Boksoon. Go see if there's anything useful for you too.”
“I am already doing so!”
“Aww, good girl!”
I started farming with Sion.
Three minutes later.
“Fuck, refund my moment of silence!!!!”
I was secretly looking forward to it because they'd stashed something away so carefully....
Forget Cedric's slush fund—there was basically nothing there.
A can of food, a gas mask and gas mask filter, and 20,000 Bios tucked away in a leather pouch. That was it.
“Their household finances were really tight, huh.”
Looks like the good gear all went down into that cesspool earlier.
Hah, what a life.
Yeah, Cedric was never going to have a fortunate fate, was he?
Still, having a place where we could rest for a moment without worry was a real plus.
It even smelled a little less foul.
Just being in an enclosed space gives you a sense of psychological safety.
“Boksoon, should we take a short break?”
“I heard nothing better!”
Jjapjo fumbled off her gas mask and wiped the sweat beading on her face against the hem of her clothes.
I took a can of food, leaned against the wall, and sat down.
If we're going to make a living, we have to eat.
“Ta-da~ today's chow is...!!!”
<Aden Food - Original Baked Beans>
A plain label and an unremarkable ark-shaped logo.
A bean can that's hugely popular in the Necropolis.
“Oh! So that was it?”
-tack
As I cut the lid off with my knife, a thick, sweet tomato aroma burst out.
I scooped up the contents with the tip of the knife and put them in my mouth.
A cold, sticky texture spreading through my mouth.
The saltiness of the beans, sharp enough to sting the tongue, and the tart taste of tomato seeped into my tired body with a tingle.
This salty, dry spoonful of beans is a pretty expensive luxury in the Necropolis.
It's a manufactured good that flowed in from Aden, after all—one can of the decent stuff costs as much as 2,000 Bios.
For low-rank fixers, this is Dubai chocolate and apple mango bingsu.
“Hm....”
It was my first time trying it, but to me it just tasted so-so.
Just a fashionable tomato-flavored bean stew, really.
I hate myself for feeling this little burst of happiness from something like this.
This city's disgusting. I want out....
“You want some too?”
I asked Sion, who was sitting beside me and sipping at a blood pack.
“I dislike beans. How about you buy me mochi instead?”
“You sure do love things that are just like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re soft and squishy too.”
“……?”
After I casually made a lewd remark, Sion tilted their head, not understanding a thing.
I snorted and enjoyed the brief rest.
Last run, Sion was bad luck, but this time Sion was at least useful.
Rather than just a tool for clearing the premium route....
A companion?
Yeah, that embarrassing word.
Ever since Arkit and Areung stabbed me in the back, I hadn't made any companions.
So it had become routine to do all the dirty work alone in this dreary city.
Having Sion around makes it feel like I can breathe a little easier.
“Let's move.”
“Already?”
“Boksoon's strong and spirited, so why don't you rest here by yourself?”
“Don't say that! I-I'll go with you!”
Rest as briefly as possible.
If I rested any longer, I'd just not want to get up again.
Just as I was about to gather my gear and stand up again.
“Huh?”
Something caught my eye.
A dark corner I had overlooked even during the earlier farming.
There was an object covered with an old blanket.
-flap
When I lifted the dust-covered blanket, what appeared was.
“A diving suit?”
Literally a diving suit.
But now it looked like something that would show up in a steampunk deep-sea exploration scene.
“That's ridiculously out of nowhere.”
The helmet part looked like a huge bronze helm that covered the neck and shoulders.
There were thick iron-bar viewing windows on the front and both sides.
Beneath that was a waterproof suit thick and stiff like elephant hide.
Heavy lead-lined boots.
And a thick oxygen hose for attaching to the suit and helmet, coiled there like a snake.
When I lifted it, it was incredibly heavy, like it was my own stuff.
“Boksoon, do you know what this is?”
“Who do you take me for? Of course I do.”
“What is it?”
“Isn't it clothing you wear when you go into deep water?”
Sion puffed out their chest, looking rather pleased with themself.
Geez.
“…….”
“Why, why are you looking at me like that?”
Still, Sion is cute.
“Hm....”
At any rate, it didn't look especially expensive, and it didn't seem useful right now.
I have to get to the settling tank in D-13 District, so dragging this thing around would be a hassle.
I'd already covered the hole with plywood, and I roughly remembered the location, so I'll pick it up on the way out.
2.
How much farther did we walk after that?
At last, the wall bore the words D-13.
“Fuck... that was a long walk.”
If I can find the settling tank somewhere in this district and recover the slush fund, this shitty sewer tour will be over.
“Master... something's over there.”
“What?”
As soon as I heard Sion's whisper, I pressed myself against the wall and held my breath.
To me it's just a long, narrow stretch of darkness, but Sion is a vampire, so her eyes work well even in the dark.
Night vision mode, in other words.
-clank, clank, clank
A sound so strange it can hardly be called footsteps slowly drew nearer.
I cautiously peeked my head around the wall.
“Ah.”
I finally understood why there had been a diving suit in the fixer couple's contraband stash out of nowhere.
The thing skulking in the darkness, making its presence known.
Its shape was that of a human fully suited up in a diving suit.
-splash, splash
The hunched-over bastard used an iron rake to push the filth piled along the roadside into the channel.
Very diligently, too.
If that's the level of hint you're giving, there's no way I could miss it.
The resident of this crevice: the Cleaner.
We'd been wandering around for almost four hours and hadn't seen a single one, so I thought they'd all gone on strike.
Turns out they'd been tucked away in the corner working.
I didn't bring an extractor, so I won't be able to collect any gold dust.
But in any case, it's blocking the only path, so it has to go.
The instant I raised my mana, the Cleaner turned its head this way.
“Fuck. Look at that face.”
I didn't expect there to be a person inside.
But this is even more of a visual shock than I expected.
Crushed flesh and red mucous were mixed together like dough, filling the inside of the helmet.
Dozens of eyeballs jammed in at random rolled around and glared at me. Pure horror.
“Boksoon! You stay back!”
“Ah, got it! Don't lose!”
The Cleaner, keeping its gaze fixed on me, slowly turned its body.
It drew out its weapons with mechanical motions that felt utterly devoid of intelligence.
A weighted net in one hand.
A long trident in the other, which I had mistaken for a rake.
The moment I saw its armament, one thing came to mind.
The ancient Roman gladiator retiarius.
A gladiator class that fought by binding opponents with a net and stabbing them with a spear.
“As expected of a dog-food-ass world. They really threw everything together.”
I moved first.
It looked sturdy as hell just by looking at it.
Seems like I need something a bit more destructive.
Then, Falling Death!
The absolute GOAT in raw power among my Death Sentence techniques.
I fired off a round lump of mana packed with the image of Falling Death.
The Cleaner wasn't very agile, true to its appearance.
It didn't even pretend to dodge, and the instant the mana made contact...
-BOOOOM!!!
The diving suit and helmet caved in deeply.
A shock that would instantly kill even a rank-7 fixer who'd undergone level-2 augmentation.
And yet.
“U... uuu...!!!!”
It didn't fall.
Standing there on both feet, it held the net high over its head like a cowboy and started spinning it around.
-swish! Swish! Swish!
A whistling sound sharp enough to tear through the air of the narrow sewer.
Each time the weights at the end of the net scraped the wall, sparks flew along with small chips of stone.
“Damn it.”
Throwing a net in this cramped one-lane path?
There's no way I can dodge that.
Besides, judging by the shape of it, this doesn't look like something that can be shrugged off with just physical impact.
At this rate, I might end up diced Cedric-style.
“Die!!!!”
I dropped the smile and unleashed Death Sentence after Death Sentence—slash, Falling Death, gunshot, burning death, and so on.
I poured out all the death types I had and spammed them.
-BAM! BAM! BAM!!!
The Cleaner sank only after taking the 16th hit exactly.
-KWAANG!
At the last second, the net I narrowly missed swallowed the space beside me and kicked up a cloud of dust.
======
:::Achievement(New!):::
- Hunt the Cleaner. +3pt
======
The Cleaner lay crumpled on the floor, its helmet horribly dented in.
Pink flesh oozed out in a stream through the torn gaps in the diving suit.
“Shi... shit....”
Honestly, I was startled.
At most, it was depth 2.
I had dismissed it as something a rank-7 scrub could hunt without much trouble, but it endured Death Sentence—especially Falling Death—quite a few times.
No.
It wasn't that the bastard was especially strong.
“This is a bad matchup.”
That diving suit itself seemed to interfere with my ability to picture the details.
It just makes me feel like it'll somehow hold out.
It just makes me feel like it'll somehow be tougher.
Since Death Sentence is a spell that projects the image I imagine onto the enemy, these little stray thoughts definitely get in the way.
“M-Master! Are you all right?”
Jjapjo, who had been hiding well, came hurrying over in a fluster.
“Aw, you were worried about your master?”
The brat's grown attached to me, huh.
“Of course! If the master is hurt, won't I be left alone here?”
“Boksoon, you just dropped your mochi on the floor.”
“...M-mochi? Where?”
Leaving the flustered, utterly oblivious Jjapjo alone, I fell into thought for a moment.
Hiss....
Should I keep going?
So far we hadn't met a single Cleaner....
But if we run into several of them, that could be a bit of a headache.
They're sturdy, and their weaponry feels tailored to this terrain.
If they're wrapped in a net and dumped into that wastewater drop zone, it's an instant kill.
“Whatever, fuck it. We'll make it work somehow.”
We've come this far through hell, so it'd be a shame to go back empty-handed.
If worst comes to worst, there's always Plan B, right?
I could burn away my lifespan, or use the Joker to summon a goat.
“Let's go, Boksoon.”
“Where did my mochi fall, I ask you!”
That'd be way too un-Cedric-like.
3.
Fortunately, we didn't run into a single Cleaner the whole way.
I was worried that finding the settling tank in this maze would be a problem too.
Turns out that one was unexpectedly easy as well.
I just heard a ridiculously loud noise and thought, 'Maybe that's it?' so I walked toward it.
-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!!!!
With a roar that seemed to tear my eardrums, the view opened up.
A massive underground cavern of a scale I couldn't have imagined existing beneath this place.
“...Whoa.”
With several ventilation shafts connecting to the surface, this sewer was clearly much brighter than the others.
Under the vertical beams of light pouring down in several columns,
From the ceiling, so high it was impossible to see the top, dozens of drains were spewing colorful wastewater like waterfalls.
Dark green, purple, brown, and fluorescent shades.
A riot of colors like the hair of a harem heroine.
What those waterfalls gathered into was a lake of black sludge.
======
:::Achievement(New!):::
- Discover the 'settling tank' of the old sewer.
======
So the slush fund's hidden somewhere in here, huh?
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't seem like any fixer would've crawled into a disgusting place like this!
“Boksoon! We're set for life now!”
“M-Master....”
“Come here! Let's have a kiss!”
“Master! Look around you!”
I grinned, then looked around at Sion's suddenly pale reaction.
“What?”
Only then did I notice it, having been too distracted by that grand scenery.
There are remains.
Sprawled on the floor like trash.
Embedded in the wall like decorative objects.
The remains of Cleaners.
Like a figurine display case after some brat who won't listen to a single word has rampaged through it.
Not a single one of them had kept a proper shape.
“Holy shit.”
A chill ran down my spine.
We just fought one, didn't we?
Cleaners are insanely tough bastards.
And you say those guys got smashed to pieces like this?
“Boksoon, let's get out of here.”
I don't know the full circumstances.
But my survival instinct is sounding the alarm.
A tip I saw in the new area entrance notice comes to mind.
- Be careful of the Cleaners. To their eyes, you're just organic matter clogging the pipes.
Cleaners aren't stationary monsters.
They're the sewer's white blood cells, busily moving around to remove foreign matter.
During the six-hour trek to get here, we only ran into one Cleaner.
And the remains of Cleaners mass-slaughtered while bunched up in one place.
That leaves only one conclusion.
Namely, here.
There is something here that was 'impossible to clean.'
-squelch
A chilling presence tore through the booming sound and reached us.
-squelch
Wet footsteps.
-Grrrrr
A metallic scrape, heavy, dragged along the floor.
From the dark passage, a massive silhouette approaches one step at a time.
Then a single shaft of light came down from the ceiling.
Like a spotlight on stage, it illuminated the predator's form.
A tattered blue changpao.
Skin glowing a deep neon green with a poisonous sheen.
Half of its head exposed down to the bone, as if it had been doused in hydrochloric acid.
And.
-Sssssssss!!!
A rocket hammer dragged along in its hand, spewing steam.
“…….”
It spotted me.
“Kha... kha-ha... kha-ha-ha-ha!!!”
A furious laugh rang thunderously through the cavern.
The monster behind this carnage was.
The former strongest 7th-rank fixer.
That cowardly junkie I had shoved into the sewer and turned into poison-crab stew.
“I... found you...”
It was Shien Sunming.
....