I sat on the floor for a while, my breathing ragged.
My mind was a complete mess, and the noise from outside only added to the tension.
I need to organize my thoughts.
But honestly, the more I thought about it, the more absurd everything seemed.
Reincarnation.
Maybe reincarnation wasn't the right word, but there was no other term I could think of.
Whatever it was, I had suddenly remembered my past life—and with it, the emotions I had forgotten long ago.
Is it one of its tricks?
My thoughts drifted to the shadowy figure that had bought me… and everything it had done afterward.
"Arghh!"
My head throbbed just thinking about it. But greater than the pain was the anger rising in my chest.
That bastard.
I had never thought much about it before, but my entire life had been spent being treated like an object.
Now that I remembered my past life, anger surged within me at the sheer unfairness of it all.
I shook my head and forced myself to calm down.
I didn't remember much, only the pain I endured every time I was experimented on.
At some point, I had simply stopped feeling anything at all.
Is my reincarnation even real?
Thinking about it, that shadow bastard was perfectly capable of altering memories.
I had been toyed with too many times to believe in something like this so easily.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
Yet my instincts kept telling me that this time… something was different.
I looked around the ruined control room.
Broken panels. Shattered glass. Bent metal frames.
The technology here didn't look very advanced compared to my previous life.
In fact, it resembled the kind of crude laboratory where someone like Frankenstein would conduct his experiments.
But this world clearly had its own rules.
A proverb from my past life surfaced in my mind.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Maybe the people of this world had never developed advanced science because they never needed to.
My gaze fell to my hands.
Faint silver circuits still glowed beneath my skin.
What are these?
I remembered the shadow bastard stitching my body back together after tearing it apart, but it had never glowed like this before.
Looking at the destroyed facility and then at myself, I could only reach one conclusion.
Something had gone horribly wrong.
My heart began to pound.
Maybe… I can finally escape.
The moment that thought formed in my mind, everything else became secondary.
Right now, escaping was the only thing that mattered. Everything else could wait.
I pushed myself to my feet and examined the room.
The control room was simple, a closed chamber enclosed by thick steel walls. Strange circuit-like patterns ran across them.
Monitoring veins, perhaps.
There was no concept of live cameras here, so these might have been used to observe different parts of the facility.
The room itself was divided into two sections.
The first was the control area, filled with those veins and control panels.
It had been completely smashed.
The second section lay behind a large glass partition, resembling a very large laboratory.
Unlike the control room, the lab was entirely covered in veins, walls, and floor.
At the center stood a tall steel pillar, some kind of generator.
Embedded within it was a golden, egg-shaped structure.
I stepped through the shattered glass.
The first thing that hit me was the pungent stench of rotting flesh.
My nose wrinkled instantly.
There was a corpse.
No… not a corpse.
Pieces of flesh were scattered across the floor, as if someone had hollowed a person out and left the skin behind like a discarded mat.
I grimaced.
This place just kept getting creepier.
I moved closer to the metal pillar and peered into the golden oval structure.
All the veins seemed to converge toward it.
A spider?
Inside the golden egg was a hand-sized white spider. Strange runes were carved across its body.
It stared back at me, its legs shifting slightly.
It was definitely alive.
I didn't dare touch it and quickly stepped back.
Confusion only deepened.
Just what the hell happened here?
The monstrous creatures outside were alive.
Yet there was no one left in charge of this place.
Even the scattered flesh on the floor didn't look entirely human.
How do I get out of here?
I glanced around the laboratory again and noticed a small table pushed against the wall.
Something lay on it.
A lab coat.
My eyes lit up immediately.
I hurried over and grabbed it.
After giving it a quick inspection, I slipped it on. It was a little short, but it would do.
Walking around naked had been extremely uncomfortable.
Much better.
Thud!
Something fell from the table.
"Huh?"
I bent down and saw a black notebook lying on the floor.
Carefully, I picked it up.
The cover read:
[Experimental Log of Beast Series]
Judging from the title, it seemed to contain records of experiments.
The language was Solvarin, one I had learned during my childhood, so reading it wasn't difficult.
I opened the notebook.
Inside was a list of different beasts in the table of contents.
I scanned through the pages, searching for anything related to spiders.
After a moment, I found it.
[B-6: Sentinel Spiders]
My eyes narrowed slightly.
I turned the page and began reading.
Flip!
---------------
[Day 344.]
Today I received a strange request from Lady Knox.
She wants me to create a monitoring beast for the entire facility.
Apparently, the previous "security measures" were, in her words, "pathetically incompetent."
Her exact wording, not mine.
Personally, I believe the guards were doing perfectly fine until her ghouls began chewing through them.
Those ghouls are particularly sensitive to dust energy.
I still don't get why we need such a large number of them.
But of course, pointing that out would require a level of courage I unfortunately do not possess.
So instead, I nodded enthusiastically and accepted the assignment.
Fucking Nyxari bastards.
[Day 346]
After careful consideration, I have decided to use spiders as the base organism.
Why spiders?
Simple.
They are small, quiet, and excellent climbers.
Definitely not because I was scared that anything bigger would just rip me apart, but solely for efficiency.
Efficiency is important.
[Day 352]
The first prototype was successful.
Well.
Mostly successful.
The spider survived the rune integration process and successfully transmitted visual information through the monitoring veins.
Unfortunately, it also attempted to bite me.
Several times.
This may have been a design flaw.
Or perhaps the spider simply has a personal grudge against me.
Maybe because I incinerated its whole family and fed them to ghouls.
Who knows?
But if there are complaints, I would surely like to hear them.
I am a kind-hearted person after all.
[Day 355]
The creature has been officially designated:
B-6: Sentinel Spider
Only the slightest mutation occurred. For some reason, after I installed the artificial dust core within it, it grew up to three meter by the next morning.
I ended up losing a few co-workers.
Now, I have to do most of the work myself.
Did I ever mention that I hate spiders?
[Day 368]
Lady Knox visited today.
She seemed very pleased with the results.
Apparently, the Sentinel Spider network now allows complete observation of the entire facility.
She called it a "perfect surveillance organism."
I personally prefer the term "walking nightmare."
She ordered me to integrate the spider network with the central monitoring pillar.
Which is a terrible idea.
But once again, I enjoy being alive, so I will follow the instructions.
If anyone finds this notebook in the future, please remember the following:
I warned them.
[Day 370]
The integration process was successful.
The main Sentinel Spider now resides with the Golden Monitoring Core.
Through the rune-vein network, it can observe every section of the facility simultaneously.
Functionally speaking, it has become the central eye of the entire complex.
Lady Knox is extremely satisfied.
I, however, have come to a troubling realization.
The spider no longer attempts to eat me.
Instead…
It simply watches me.
Constantly.
I do not know which situation is worse.
I miss my mother... of course, I was the one who killed her.
---------------
Flip!
My hand froze.
What does it mean by a few meters?
The spider I saw was only hand-sized.
Unless...
Drip!
Suddenly, something dripped from the ceiling.
My heart thumped loudly.
The notebook said the spider was connected to the Golden Core… not inside it.
Maybe because it was dark... I let my guard down.
Drip! Drip!
The sound of dripping intensified.
I was completely frozen, not even moving a single muscle.
"Damn it! Damn it!"
But unable to bear any longer, I slowly raised my head.