107 The Single Worst Room Ever

Eden and I move to the very last room of the facility, which happens to be the office of the mysterious doctor. The Brutes are… well, I don't know what they're doing, but I occasionally see one running amok somewhere, so I know they're still here. I'll likely start gathering them soon, although I'm not totally sure how I will go about doing it. Still, from what I've seen, the guards have completely abandoned the researchers and have all gathered where Aponi and Sam are instead. Finding that the researchers might be useful in some way, and to avoid the Brutes leaving, I barricaded the door out as well as left Dolt and Goliath there. I'm sure some of the researchers escaped beforehand, but the majority seems to be in hiding.

Approaching the office door, it seems unusually untouched, and the doorknob looks to have a thin layer of dust on it. Other than that, there is a simple plaque on the front of the door that reads, "Dr. Falenoz."

"This is the person that wrote all those logs, right?" Eden asks.

I give Eden a small nod while checking for anything suspicious. "Mhm, this is him, and he is also apparently missing, but no one seems to care. So let's find out why that is, shall we?"

Piercing the lock with my nail, I rip the internals apart and slowly push the door open. The room I observed on the cameras earlier becomes clear quickly. Everything is normal, well, if you ignore the giant gaping hole in one corner of the room and the disturbing eyeless old woman at the desk.

The old woman, clearly a Palm, seems to either wish to creep me out or speak to me, but to be honest, I'm not interested in talking to these things. They just repeat incoherent sentences while looking disturbing.

"I-I-I knew you would come," it stammers.

With a roll of my eyes, I say to Eden, "Help me kill the woman, so we can actually get on with gathering real information."

So immediately, Eden and I engage the Palm. It seems to be surprised by our prompt attacks, as I quickly remove both of its hands from its body. Eden hastily stomps the palms popping the eyeballs embedded within. With the eyeballs popped, its body turns into a gray slush upon the floor.

['Lv.2 Palm' Slain - 50% Contribution - 12 Essence Acquired]

Opening a drawer nearby, I begin searching for information. "That was much less painful than listening to it babble on. Also, it seems their strength varies depending on who they're imitating because it was much less difficult to kill than the ones we fought previously. Anyway, we should ignore the giant hole, for now, and search for any useful information first."

"Y-yeah, but are you sure we shouldn't have tried to talk to it?" Eden asks.

"I'm completely uninterested in humoring whatever it was attempting. The thing tried to intimidate me once already, on the camera feed, and that's probably what it would have attempted to do again."

"Hmm, maybe, I guess it doesn't matter since there's a room full of stuff we can search through anyway."

"Right! Now, as I said, take a maximum of fifteen minutes to find the important stuff."

"Fifteen minutes maximum?" She looks around the extensive office doubtfully. "...Okay."

The two of us toss documents to and fro, looking for anything relevant to the Palms and the current situation. Removing a file with Dr. Falenoz's picture on it, I note that the doctor is, in fact, not an older woman, which means whoever that Palm was imitating was seemingly some random person. Which is important because it means it was here of its own volition and not because of some attachment from the one it was imitating.

The fifteen-minute time limit passes by.

"Anything, Eden?" I ask her.

She holds up a sheet of paper full of numbers. "Just what we already knew for the most part except these reports contain a lot more data. They're hard to read, to be honest."

"Then we'll come back if time permits, but for now, let's see where this giant hole leads."

"Shouldn't we be more careful?" she says, staring at the hole, nervously, "It just seems incredibly suspicious and ominous."

"Yeah, that's true… Actually, I've got an idea."

Approaching the office door, I thrust it open as noisily as possible. Once out, I shout as loud as I can, "Everyone, I've found an escape tunnel! A hole in Doctor Falenoz's office!"

Immediately I see some office doors swing open, and some researchers jumping from out of hiding. They sprint toward the office with looks of pure fear glued onto their faces.

I hide behind Eden. "Tell them to go through the hole. We'll know if anything is wrong with it rather quickly."

"..." Eden goes quiet.

A dozen or so, researchers come storming into the officer. "Where!? Where's the escape tunnel!"

Eden points at the hole with her mouth opening and closing. "It… i-it's obviously right there," she stutters dubiously.

"That's the escape tunnel? That doesn't look like one!" a young researcher shouts.

"Who the fuck cares what it looks like!" a woman says hysterically, "Those giants! I saw them literally playing catch with Dr. Peter as the ball! I'm getting the fuck out of here!"

An overweight man breathes heavily, forcing his words out, "You're right! We need to tell the Security Office what's going on!"

The overweight man pushes Eden out of the way and promptly sprints… or more presciently jogs into the tunnel. All the rest follow him as I grab Eden's hand to make sure we stay together. I pull her into the tunnel, keeping some distance from the researchers.

The tunnel is muddy, much like the areas the worms have already dug throughout the facility. None of that deters the bait, I mean researchers, though, as they continue running undaunted. However, I take note that there are dozens of worm eggs here, perhaps hundreds. Some of the eggs are sunk into the floor, but everyone seems to avoid them, to my relief.

'Each of those eggs probably has dozens of worms backing them as well. At least if it is like the one, we pulled from the wall days ago. I'm sure they'd attack if they damaged any of them.'

Yet all of this cannot prepare me for what I discover as the overweight man completely loses his footing in his frenzy to escape and trips, falling into what looks to be a crater. All the researchers stare downward as Eden, and I approach. We gaze into what we initially thought was a crater, but it is more accurate to say it is a giant domed room. However, rather than the room's shape, it is the thousands of monstrous worms squirming within it that actually leaves us all speechless. The walls, ceilings, and floor all look to be moving of their own volition, but in actuality, it is just more worms. Almost instantly, the overweight man who fell in disappears into the wiggling mass below.

Unfazed by his fate, my eyes move to the room's center, where a gigantic gray humanoid creature stands looking all too familiar. Finding the last thing, I expected my eye twitches. The creature I could never forget, with its countless arms jutting from every available space of its body, stands unmoving. Each of its arms comes with palms that have the familiar eyeball embedded with them, but the most conspicuous feature is where its head should be, instead is a giant hand.

'...It's like the creature from my tutorial! Except it is much smaller and looks to be only partially constructed… I really really want to kill this thing!'

Worms are continually eating the creature's body, but it instantly regenerates any and all damage the worms do to it. Not only that, but the worms look to die not long after consuming some of its flesh.

'Let's ignore the what and why of this thing for now, and focus on the worms. What are they attempting to do? Are they trying to kill it? Why are they killing themselves in the process?'

Suddenly, I notice a pair of the creature's arms bend as they attempt to brace themselves against the other arms around it. They push, and a gray human figure pops out from its mass, tumbling into the worms below.

'Wait. Is this some kind of Palm breeding ground? They can actually reproduce?... I'm starting to think this whole place just needs to be nuked from orbit; I hate it all.'

Breaking from their stupor, a few researchers scream as the others turn to run, except for one who continues to stare upon the monstrosity. However, that is only temporary as the last remaining researcher endeavors to join the others, but I grab their legs, sending him face-first into the mud.

"Sorry, but I have questions," I say to him with a casual temperament.

"Let go of me! It's grown way too big; we're all fucked! I need to leave the country! N-no the continent!" he screams.

In their haste to leave, the remaining researchers step on a worm egg and ultimately smash it. Their action causes worms to drop from the ceiling and explode from the floor, attacking them. Reminiscent of a cookie-cutter shark, they latch onto the researchers and only release when they've removed a chunk of flesh approximately the size of a man's fist. The researchers scream in utter terror as they toss the worms from their bodies. Yet where one worm once was two take its place. It isn't long before all that remains is a few fleshy red skeletons.

I motion toward the skeletons. "See, I saved your life! You owe me!"

"Y-you said this was an escape route! Why!?" he cries.

"Well, mostly because I needed guinea pigs to test the safety of this tunnel!" I say, motioning all around the soggy tunnel, "I'm sure as a researcher in this facility, you understand the importance of experimenting on others, correct?"

Raising my foot, I push the researcher's face into the mud, watching as bubbles slowly rise up from the muck.

'Although these guys aren't The Consortium, I feel they are close enough. I'm not the boy who The Consortium did their little "treatments" on, but I still feel I owe Robert a debt for everything I involuntarily stole from him.'

Eden taps my shoulder and points at the man. "Didn't you have some questions for him?"

"Huh?... Oh yeah!" I lift my foot from the man's head, leaving him gasping for air. "Now tell me what you know about the worms and the gray humanoid creature."

He hesitates, staring at the remnants of his coworkers. "Fine! B-but, you have to promise to protect me if I do!"

"...If you mean not drown you in mud sure. If you mean literally protect you, no, I'd sooner drop you in the worms."

"Not being drowned works too!" he shouts while flailing about in the mud.

"Okay, then talk."

"I-I don't know about the worms. There was another department working on something to do with worms, but discussing projects together is frowned upon."

Eden looks toward me, saying, "Eira, the worms might have something to do with the thing the doctor called 'worm man' in the logs we found."

In agreement with Eden, I nod. "Yeah, you're probably right, and I have an inkling what the creature is too."

Hearing us, the researcher quickly speaks. "I think the creature is what we called God's Doppelgänger," he spouts in a panic, "It wasn't like this before, though, I swear! At least not since I saw it last!"

"What did it used to look like?" I ask.

"It wasn't much of anything! It just looked like a halberd made of bone, but Dr. Falenoz said it was 'God's Backbone.' He said it would eventually be God's Doppelgänger!"

I cross my arms and ponder what we read in documents. "Ah, so its core is the living weapon, then. The one they used in the experiments."

His eyes go wide at the mention of the living weapon. "...Y-yeah, probably, I don't honestly know."

I continue the interrogation, "Is this the thing that has been putting off all the Mind Magic?"

"Mind Magic? You mean the gamma scramblings?"

"That's an overcomplicated name for something that already has one. Anyway, is it the thing that has been messing with everyone's minds?"

"Yes, it has always done that. Even before it looked like…" He motions toward the creature with his head. "whatever the fuck that is!"

I glance at the creature in time to see another humanoid figure drop from its body. "What about you? Were you involved with any of the grafting of pieces of the living weapon onto the guinea pigs?"

"I-I mean, yeah, those people were just convicts, though," the man says, obviously lying through his teeth.

Giving the man a cold but innocent smile, I shake my head. "Doubtful, Mister."

"M-mister?" he stutters.

"Anyhow, anything else you think I should know? If I find out more from someone else, I promise I will find you."

"I don't know anything else, I swear!" he yells.

"Alright, then..."

Grabbing the researcher's leg, I cast him into the pit of worms below. He screams horrifically until the worms muffle them beneath their countless bodies.

Clapping my hands together, I look at Eden with a grin. "Ah, that was cathartic, and now we actually know what we are here to kill!"

['Lv.1 Human' Slain - 50% Contribution - 4 Essence Acquired]