"―――!"
After passing through the room packed with boxes and reaching a fork in the road, we heard the sound of something being crushed from one of the paths, followed by what sounded like someone screaming.
"······."
Sinclair glared in that direction as if he wanted to kill it.
Apparently Dante felt that anger too, because we decided to head toward the source of the noise.
*
-Creak, crunch.
The savage sound of flesh being torn apart through machinery rang out.
"Aaaagh!"
...There weren't many possibilities for someone screaming in a place like this.
Roughly speaking, there were two. One was that the N Corp Inquisitors were being torn apart by sinners...
"······."
Or, as Sinclair had guessed, they were horrifically torturing the bodies.
Unfortunately, the latter was happening right in front of us in real time.
He was breathing in ragged, uneven gasps, staring at them with eyes thick with rage and fear.
Dante seemed to be caught in a bit of a dilemma.
If we fought them, there was a chance we'd all be wiped out if things went badly.
But if we just let this pass, it would leave a deep wound in Sinclair, who was still so young.
And it was a matter tied to trust in more ways than one.
The slim possibility of our annihilation, and the certain possibility of Sinclair's collapse.
Was Dante weighing those two against each other?
Personally, I wanted him to encourage Sinclair to charge in as he was.
The chance of us all being wiped out only existed if a large number of Inquisitors suddenly poured in from somewhere else.
Considering how many Inquisitors we'd already killed on the way here, unless more were coming up from below, it was a truly threadbare probability.
Even after laying out all those thoughts, I still didn't actually think Dante would stop Sinclair.
The Dante I'd seen so far wasn't that cruel a person.
And my prediction wasn't wrong.
"···Can you do it?"
It was a short sentence, but no one could mistake the meaning behind it.
Sinclair could no longer hold himself back either, and with a loud shout he charged at the Inquisitors.
"Aaaah!!"
-Clang! Swish—
Sinclair managed a miraculous move, sliding his halberd along the hammer's handle as it came down to torture someone and knocking it aside. He didn't stop there, either; he struck the hammer hard to the side, successfully wrenching it from the Inquisitor's hand.
...That was impressive.
It really was an admirable feat, but there was no time to stand there dumbly admiring it.
"Sweep them away!"
Now was the perfect moment to ambush them while they were still staring at us in confusion.
Identities were overlaid onto all the Sinners at once, and I immediately charged the enemy in front of me.
-Whoosh, clang!
He seemed to be trying to raise his nail to block the attack, but maybe he still hadn't fully collected himself, because the way he was holding it was awkward and unstable.
If I played this right... I might be able to put him out of the fight in one blow.
-Swish.
Just before the enemy could swing the hammer, I slid the heavily loaded nail aside along with my spear.
"···!"
The stance wasn't ideal for keeping hold of the spear, so I let go without hesitation.
In that split second, before he could account for that too, I threw my body into him and tackled him hard while he was off-balance, hammer still in one hand.
-Thud—!
My body ached, but I'd once managed to brawl with that Guido bastard in close quarters too. Since both of us were under the same condition of being caught off guard, there was no reason I couldn't knock him down.
Then I pulled out the spare one-handed sword from my chest and drove it in.
-Thunk—
Without hesitation, I stabbed it into the eye socket of the man who had fallen.
...Come to think of it, lately I've been using the one-handed sword more than the spear, haven't I?
Maybe I should spend some personal time during missions training with the one-handed sword.
And while I'm at it, I should train myself to use my left hand more skillfully too.
-Rustle—
Once he had completely stopped moving, I pulled the one-handed sword out of the eye socket.
Ugh, that brain and those scraps of flesh coming out with it are pretty disgusting.
I should be taking better care of my personal equipment, but seeing a weapon in this state makes me not want to do it at all.
Cleaning a weapon after it's been rummaging through someone else's brain... there's no worse taste than that.
-Whoosh—!
For now, I shook off the chunks of flesh stuck to the weapon and took a quick look at the battle.
"Ha!"
-Clang—!
Hmm, looks like there's no problem. Seeing that Mr. Heathcliff didn't even look particularly injured, it probably wasn't that fierce a fight.
In most battles, the vanguard is the one in the greatest danger.
Not feeling much need to join in, I retrieved my spear, leaned against one side of the wall, and carefully wiped my blade with the cloth I took out from my chest.
Ah, I suddenly want coffee. Should I buy a cup on the way back after the mission?
Or maybe I should just drink it at the Association? The cafe run by the Seven Association itself is pretty high quality, so that might be better.
-Snip
Ah, I cut my hand.
Hah. That stings.
It'd be pointless to ask Dante to turn the clock back over a wound this small.
But I can't exactly stop maintaining my weapon either... guess I'll just chalk it up to bad luck.
As I rested while letting my mind wander, the sound of weapons clashing gradually faded before I knew it.
Was the fight over?
Carefully avoiding the blood and chunks of flesh scattered across the floor, I rejoined the Sinners.
As I'd predicted earlier, the battle hadn't been all that dangerous; there were no dead.
At worst, there were one or two people with enough puncture wounds to count as seriously injured.
Even that would all be erased once the clock turned back, so it didn't really mean much.
It wasn't like this was the first or second time we'd fought while injured to that degree.
Soon, after confirming that all the Sinners had gathered, Dante signaled us to move forward.
*
The next room was one of the safe rooms that used to appear about once per floor in the Lobotomy Corporation branch.
And usually... after a room like this, a boss-class Abnormality would show up.
Enhanced humans, or something like an apocalypse calendar.
But this time, it was better to give up on expecting ordinary Abnormalities as our opponents.
There was no way the N Corp Inquisitors would have left dangerous things like that lying around.
Judging by the ones before the box room, they might even have modified themselves into Abnormality-like beings.
...Was that too far?
After using the 10 to 20 minutes of rest to ease everyone's accumulated physical and mental fatigue, we stood before the door leading to the next room.
Hah, as always, this is pretty unsettling.
Not the kind of unease that feels like disgust, but something closer to pure fear.
It's the kind of feeling that makes you instinctively step back.
Of course, that still didn't mean we could refuse to move forward.
As always, despite the fear and unease, I moved my body and took a step forward under nothing but the company's orders, under a contract I'd been bound to against my will.
"···Don't you hear something crawling around like an animal?"
Just as Mr. Heathcliff said, there was the intermittent sound of something crawling along the floor.
"Ugh... ughhh..."
Soon after I registered it, the thing crawling on the floor appeared right in front of us.
The disgusting thing had bits of armor still clinging to its fur here and there, as if to show that it had once been an Inquisitor.
No, should I describe the basic shape first instead of that distinctive detail? I'm still a little shaken from seeing something so shocking.
It crawled on all fours, or rather, moved like an animal, with a huge body that looked at least twice the size of an average adult man, and the fur covering its entire body was enough to make it impossible not to call it a beast.
"Are those things Abnormalities too?"
"Look closely. They're not Abnormalities. There's a seal stamped on them..."
At Ishmael's words, I scanned its body again.
Literally, the familiar seal the N Corp Inquisitors wore on their bodies was stamped onto this thing too.
"It's [E.G.O] corrosion."
"You mean that disgusting state...?"
"It was like that when their mental state wavered during battle... I suppose you could say it's like being eaten by something."
Was she talking about that thing where they sometimes use [E.G.O] and end up attacking allies too?
Unfortunately, I'd never used [E.G.O] even once, so I couldn't really relate, but I could get the general idea.
"It's not quite the same as being chewed up and eaten, but... if you think of it as something gnawing away at the essence, it's a decent description."
Were those guys with the grotesque muscles grafted onto their arms earlier similar?
Abnormalities and [E.G.O] corrosion... were they somehow different? I didn't have enough information, so I couldn't get a clear sense of it.
Even if I wanted to try it... Dante said I couldn't for some incomprehensible reason, so it didn't seem like something I could solve by just insisting on it.
"···And this place doesn't seem to be just a site for torturing bodies, unlike the floor we saw earlier."
"Then it would be more accurate to call it a place where they forcibly induce corrosion themselves."
...So in other words, they grind people up for real to gain the power of those monster-like things?
Those insane fanatic bastards really have lost their minds.
It's a feeling I never want to understand for the rest of my life.
...Wait, there's a tiny chance, but those bastard's Identities won't come out of extraction, right?
If they do, I'm seriously going to have to consider quitting.
"Ugh... uh... ah..."
The unpleasant, revolting thing approached us.
A sense of revulsion rose from instinct itself and swept over my body.
...What are they even hoping for, to go this far?
It can't be easy to develop that much hostility toward bodies.
Maybe, however slim the chance, they're just like me—bound by a contract with the company, moving without any say in their own will.
······.
My mind really is wandering all over the place.
Whether they were in a similar position or not, I had no reason to spare them.
Even if they were being forced into it, what they'd done had gone too far.
It was too much to excuse with nothing but diminished capacity.
Right now, all I could think about was killing them and getting out of this branch.
...To mourn the deaths of those who had once been able to be called comrades, and who had settled in some corner of my heart.
At the very least, I would take the one in charge of this branch with me as a traveling companion.