Chapter 6
A salute to Rubedo's ankle, which valiantly perished standing up to the Federation's number-one robot freak.
The place Task Force 42 headed to treat her ankle, reduced to powder, was...
"……Why? This isn't a hospital?"
"If my memory serves, this place is better than a hospital."
"You seem to come here a lot. Ow……"
"Ahem. Hm."
It was a hotel tucked away in the most remote corner of the Uovo Brothel.
……Anyway, it was a hotel. A hotel.
"……C-come in, hic. Please……"
"Don't order our guests around."
Bang.
Sergeant Kang Chanwoo kicked open the front door and strode straight to the desk.
The woman he assumed was the front desk clerk was slumped over, too drunk to even look at him.
"Hey."
"……A night's stay is thirty thousand credits."
"Hey."
"……Sorry, but all the gynoids are on vacation. You'll have to spend the night alone."
"Madam."
At that, the woman sprang to her feet.
"What the hell, which bastard called me Madam? I told you not to just because I look old—"
Her pupils dilated, then immediately contracted.
"……Kang Chanwoo?"
"Yep. The bastard has arrived."
Crash.
It was the sound of Kang Chanwoo bringing the edge of his hand down on the desk.
The desk couldn't withstand the strength of an elite Federation soldier and split in half
"You've got some Philosopher's Stones stashed away, right? You'd better bring them all out."
"I-I'll get them right away!"
Without even pausing to catch her breath, the woman ran down to the hotel basement, pulled a sealed ampoule from her clothes, and held it up to the security lens.
Inside the ampoule…… an artificial eye that seemed to belong to someone was submerged in an unknown liquid.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
When Kang Chanwoo turned toward the sound, he saw Rubedo clapping in Lieutenant Yangyang's arms.
"So you're not a robot bomber after all, just a bomber."
"That's high praise. That woman deserves to have an orbital bombardment dropped right on her head."
"Yes, yes. So what exactly is a Philosopher's Stone? Does anyone still believe in alchemy or something like the Magnum Opus? That's a bogus field of study older than the Earth Empire."
"I don't think that's something someone named Rubedo ought to say."
"It's still better than Nigredo or Citrinitas."
…….
Hahahaha.
The two of them burst out laughing at the same time, a rare occurrence.
"……Ow."
But one of them soon looked miserable as the pain in her ankle flared up again.
"A Philosopher's Stone is a sort of panacea for ordinary people who haven't undergone military body-modification enhancement surgery or jump-resistance procedures, and so can't heal themselves or receive nanomachines."
"Despite its grandiose name, it's not some occult object. It simply greatly enhances the regenerative ability of an injured area."
Brigadier General Ramirez and Lieutenant Yangyang added their explanations.
Ordinary people who hadn't undergone body modification couldn't heal themselves by consuming low-priority organs or nutrients.
But if they were given military medical nanomachines, they could die from internal bleeding because their organs hadn't been reinforced.
These days, organ reinforcement was as basic a modification as strengthening the musculoskeletal system, but there were purists everywhere.
The Philosopher's Stone was for those people—the vanilla types.
"If something so miraculous exists, why have I never heard of it?"
"Well, you see, there was an incident where a brain cancer patient who received a Philosopher's Stone turned black. After that, all the Philosopher's Stones were destroyed and all information about them erased."
"Calling it black is putting it mildly. It was just a human-shaped mass of cancer cells. It was horrifying. Mm-hmm."
…….
"……This is insane. I have to get out of here."
"Yang! Hold her tight! Stay still, Rubedo. You don't want to end up with three legs, do you?"
"Why can't I just go to a hospital?!"
"Hospital treatment takes too long!"
Rubedo's fit looked just like a little girl throwing a tantrum in her parents' arms to avoid a shot.
Though, in her mind, she was fighting for her life.
"I brought it…… Should I call the sheriff, kid? Are these bad adults bullying you?"
"Hand over the stones, Madam, unless you want a hole in your head."
"Yes, sir."
After taking three Philosopher's Stones from Madam, Kang Chanwoo immediately jabbed one into Rubedo's ankle.
The pain lasted only a moment.
The Philosopher's Stone soon turned into purple vapor and seeped into the area around the fracture.
"It…… doesn't hurt?"
Rubedo climbed down from Yangyang's arms and stood on both feet.
She could walk and even run without feeling any pain.
"It doesn't seem like a strong anesthetic or nerve paralyzer. Did they really heal a fracture with one little pebble?"
Her skin hadn't turned black, and she hadn't grown a third foot.
They were the slender, pale feet she remembered.
Perhaps the tension finally left her, too, because her legs gave out and she sank to the floor.
"See? I told you it was better than a hospital."
"How does it work?"
"Think of it as a less violent military nanomachine."
"If Philosopher's Stones were destroyed, how does a civilian have them?"
"Are you curious?"
So he wasn't going to explain.
There was nothing to be gained by pressing him, so she turned her attention to someone else.
The woman they'd called Madam.
"Who are you, auntie……?"
"Auntie……!"
"……I mean, miss. What kind of person are you, that the sergeant can threaten you so casually? Soldiers aren't supposed to threaten civilians without cause."
Madam had been about to unleash her anger at being called auntie, but froze when Rubedo questioned her relationship with Kang Chanwoo.
Still stiff, she stared at Kang Chanwoo and blinked. Only after he nodded was she able to speak.
"I-I'm the owner of this hotel. He's an old friend of mine…… Haha……"
"And what was that about gynoids earlier……?"
"Ah…… A-actually, I'm a pimp."
It was the second time.
Since becoming a little girl, Rubedo had looked at someone with genuine contempt only twice.
"Don't look at me like that! We don't deal in human prostitutes. They're all robots. Robots."
Her look of contempt grew even stronger.
It wasn't as if she belonged to some doll-rights group advocating for androids.
Kang Chanwoo, who'd just come out as a robot freak, was mostly to blame.
"What's wrong with taking in abandoned robots with nowhere to go, making money, and keeping their joints oiled?"
"That's not all, is it? Robots with nowhere to go. Who made sure they had nowhere to go? Who killed their owners and swallowed up this entire building?"
The artificial eye Madam had taken out when she opened the basement door.
That eyeball she'd used to bypass security……
"……Damn it. So what? That mercenary bastard just rolls around with gynoids like some pathetic loser. You should've seen it. It was so infuriating."
"So what? Let me ask you in return. Did that mercenary ever harm you?"
"No! I knew he hadn't, and that's exactly why I did it. Hahaha…… In the end, I killed an innocent person…… But if I admit that, I won't be me anymore!"
Madam tore at her hair.
She'd already gone mad long ago.
The moment she'd seen the mercenary rolling around with the gynoids and felt her anger surge, she'd already gone mad.
An overwhelming impulse.
An impulsive murder.
The arrival of a noble man.
The discovery of her crime.
"So I'm being punished, aren't I? You witnessed the murder, and now I'm trapped with you, right? Are you finally going to kill me? Huh? Is that it, Kang Chanwoo?!"
Thwack.
Kang Chanwoo kicked Madam, as if he couldn't listen to another word.
It was highly unusual for him, a man who normally valued military law and the chain of command, to use violence against a civilian.
"Gah……! Cough!"
"Artificial intelligence is a person, too. The moment you took other people's lives—many lives, at that—you lost even the right to die. If you really wanted to die, you would've killed yourself long ago. But you didn't. Why? Because you're a coward. You can hurt other people without a second thought, but you don't have the guts to hurt yourself."
He grabbed Madam by the hair and lifted her up.
"I didn't come here today for the Philosopher's Stones, and I certainly didn't come to kill you. You sold that mercenary's gynoids to Smegma, didn't you?"
"How would you know that when you're just a mercenary……"
Kang Chanwoo took off his shirt and showed her his back.
A winged lion was emblazoned on the back of his undershirt.
It was the symbol of the Federation's strike unit, the Strikers.
"Y-you……! You're not a mercenary, you're a soldier?"
"I found some familiar components in the harpoon chain those Smegma bastards left behind."
He took a biomechanical component from his clothes…… one that looked like a woman's finger.
It was a beautiful finger, its nails neatly painted navy blue.
"She was a gynoid I personally took care of. She was a warm-hearted woman, and her smile brought comfort to my weary heart."
"……Whoa."
"Hand over the contact who arranged your deal with them. Otherwise, I'll show you firsthand what there is to fear more than death."
What on earth was this feeling?
Awe?
Disgust?
Or perhaps……
Ah, I see.
This is……
Rubedo stopped thinking.
…….
…….
…….
"Wow, our sergeant is quite the man, isn't he? A real robot freak."
"Excessive physical contact will be considered sexual misconduct enabled by abuse of rank. Release me from the headlock, Lieutenant."
"……Yeah, yeah. You sick robot freak."
Madam gave up the identity of the contact who'd arranged her deal with Sigma without a second thought.
The contact was, to their surprise……
"More importantly, I never thought Fettuccine was this rotten. The Fantasy Tower operator is in cahoots with the chaos faction?"
"Right? Surely Mr. Duncan isn't involved with them, too?"
"Oh, don't worry about Mr. Duncan. He may look young, but he's over 150 and remembers the days of the Earth Empire. He gets furious when he sees lowlifes like Smegma, calling them a disgrace to humanity. He wouldn't join forces with the chaos faction."
The chaos faction was divided into three major groups.
One: the multi-species space pirates, Sigma.
They roamed all over space, building their strength through piracy and terrorism.
Two: the Star Circle.
They carried out planetary-scale terrorism, turning planets into stars. So far, they'd turned two Human Federation colony planets into stars.
Three: the Celestial Sphere groups.
They were a cult that worshiped a fictional monster called the Star Devourer.
"More importantly, the Fantasy Tower operator being in league with Smegma is a serious problem. We can't use this Fantasy Tower anymore."
"Why? Brigadier General Ramirez operated the one in the Sindalot Multistar System earlier. Doesn't the operator only handle maintenance while the user sets the destination?"
Kang Chanwoo smiled at Rubedo, who'd asked the question.
"Because that guy will die at our hands today. When the operator dies, the Fantasy Tower stops working, too."
Wow.
My God.
As expected, everyone in Task Force 42 was crazy.
Rubedo, for her part, didn't think she was one of them.