Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 618
Chapter 618: Glorious Return (1)
At the end of the tunnel, which was around ten feet long, a space opened up that looked similar to a control room. Square glass panes lined the wall, and each one of them relayed a view of a part of the building in real-time.
There are a lot of controls here.
There were so many buttons and levers that it reminded me of an airplane cockpit.
“Yandel.”
I turned at Amelia’s call to see the room that our expedition members were trapped in displayed on one of the screens.
…So this is why we weren’t able to find it.
The room they were trapped in didn’t have a door. However, dozens of conveyor belts led in and out of the room, and it seemed there was only one way to access the room.
I got a general idea of how to get to that room now.
To find that place as quickly as possible, I would need to choose the right conveyor belts to run up in the correct order. It was like a puzzle minigame.
…There was something like this on the tenth floor as well.
Thinking about it now, It was honestly such a terrible part of the game. I had to attempt it multiple times, and failure would lead to a party wipe. It would be fine if it was on the third or fourth floors, but seriously, wasn’t it too brutal for something like that to appear on the tenth floor?
“Looks like they were returned without a problem.”
That caught my attention. “Hmm?”
“The ones that were taken before me. You said they were most likely turned into mana stones in the underground factory. From what I can see here, they’re fine.”
“Oh!” When I checked the screen more closely, I could see the members who I thought had gone missing with Amelia were standing there calmly.
“So,” Amelia began, “what are you going to do now?”
I took a moment to think.
Countless buttons and levers. If I could operate these inputs properly, I could probably save all my allies there.
“Stay here for now. And don’t touch anything,” I concluded.
However, since I didn’t know anything about them, trying anything reckless might just lead to more challenges down the road. I would be in big trouble if one of them let out a poisonous gas that killed everyone or something along those lines.
“Do you…think I’m you?”
“I just said it just in case. Just in case,” I denied defensively. “Alright, then let’s start pressing the buttons from that side.”
“…Didn’t you just say not to do that?”
“But we at least need to try something, right?”
Amelia and I began to investigate the control room, taking our time to search every nook and cranny. Then, one by one, we started to press the buttons that were furthest away from the screen displaying our trapped allies, and through this process, we learned something:
The buttons directly affected the room being displayed on the corresponding screen.
Using that newfound knowledge, we were able to press the buttons and pull the levers more daringly, and this allowed us to figure out their general uses.
Pressing the red buttons stops the conveyor belts, the green buttons restart them, and the left lever makes the conveyor belts work in reverse, and the right lever changes what’s on the screen.
The buttons and levers allowed for a lot of control over the area being displayed. The problem was that there were a total of three buttons and levers that we hadn’t been able to figure out yet.
What do those do?
Those buttons and levers weren’t attached directly below the screens but were laid at the very center of the room, so we didn’t try anything reckless with them yet. They were obviously very suspicious. If my guess was correct, those three would probably affect the entire building.
“If we’re looking for a way to go to that room, the fastest method would be to turn someone into a mana stone and follow after it.”
I let out a dry laugh at Amelia’s suggestion. Did she think I hadn’t considered that option? “Rejected. It doesn’t seem like it has any effect on their life, but we don’t know what side effects the process could have.”
“Then we have no way other than to just wait like now.”
Well, it wasn’t too bad of a choice. Sure, we would be stuck waiting a long time for everyone to come out one by one, but that method was guaranteed to let us save everyone. That, however, only worked if the current status quo was maintained.
Thus, I said, “Or we can go looking for them.”
“Look for them?”
“Yeah.”
When I checked the underground factory via one of the screens earlier, I saw that there were over twenty people gathered there already. If I stopped all the conveyor belts in the building and sent everyone into the belt system to expand our search, we would be able to find the holding room much more quickly.
“Most importantly, we need to find that room so we can search it. There might be something hidden there.”
“True… We are here on an expedition,” Amelia agreed.
“Yeah, we haven’t been able to figure anything out yet.”
Escaping the temple was easy. We just needed to leave through the door I used to enter. However, what was the goal of us coming here? It was to escape this damned underground floor and get back to the city. However, we hadn’t even figured out a way to get out of Rainbow Island yet.
“When you say it like that, I can accept it.”
Since our opinions were aligned, there was no need for hesitation. Amelia and I began to press all the buttons to stop the movement of all the conveyor belts in the building.
We then went back down to the underground factory to regroup with the rest of the group, shared our findings, explained our plan, and then put it into action.
One day, two days, three days, four days…
Under the command of Amelia, we continued day after day to explore this anthill of a conveyor belt system.
“Everyone! Take your copy of the map! This is the newly created one based on yesterday’s exploration!”
“We’ve checked the end of this line, but it just connects back to this one. We’ll check the other side today.”
It was heartwarming to see everyone move diligently and work together for a common goal.
Speaking of, I was looking at everyone through the screens in the control room at the top of the building. I had come up here after getting a report that a moving rail had been discovered during the exploration.
What the? I’m pretty sure I remember turning it off…
It wasn’t too difficult to find the buttons needed to stop the conveyor belts.
Bzzt, bzzt.
The issue was that right as I was about to go back down to the rest of the group, all the screens suddenly went black.
[(Could we talk for a moment?)]
Then, an unfamiliar voice spoke to me from beyond, asking for a conversation in the ancient language.
The central screen suddenly turned bright with the colors of the rainbow.
[(Do not worry. I have no intention of harming you.)]
The light stretched like a rubber ball every time he spoke, reflecting the waves of his voice.
Was it an AI or something? How should I respond to this mysterious being who was speaking to me from beyond the screen?
[(Marx, it’s been a while since I saw you. It relieves me to see you living well.)]
The mysterious being spoke as if to greet someone, drawing me from my thoughts.
“(Marx?)” I asked, tilting my head.
Hamsick looked at the screen and spoke in a careful tone. “(Are you…talking about me?)”
[(Ah, now that I think about it, you don’t remember who you are or why you are here, correct? That was your wish.)]
“(What are you saying? Do you know me?)”
[(Of course.)]
Hamsick held tightly onto my hair at the voice’s affirmation. It seemed that Hamsick couldn’t get its bearings due to the sudden situation it found itself in. It was time for a friend to intervene.
“(I get that this is a reunion between you two, but how about you introduce yourself first? Who are you?)”
[(Research Station Overseer. If you wish to call me by a name, you can call me that.)]
“(That’s too long. I’ll just call you Overseer.)”
[(Do as you wish.)]
I said that just to test what his personality was like, but the response I got was weaker than I expected. I didn’t know who this was, but it seemed like he didn’t care what he was called.
“Then Overseer, tell me. There must be a reason you revealed yourself to us.” Rather than figuring out who Overseer was, my priority was to get information about his goal. It was something I always prioritized whenever I interacted with an unfamiliar individual. What was this guy’s goal?
Unfortunately, the answer I received was completely unrelated.
[(Centurion. Is that friend doing well?)]
I paused. “(Centurion?)”
[(I have ways of knowing things even while being stuck in here. You met him not long ago.)]
I could instinctively tell from that question who this “Centurion” was. It was the being I met in the mysterious space after defeating the Lord of Terror, Dreadfear.
“(What are you all?)” I asked slowly.
[(We are pitiful beings who received both a blessing and a curse. You as well, Marx, my friend.)]
“(So you have no intention of telling me.)”
[(Do not be hasty. You, of all people, will certainly be able to learn the truth in the future.)]
I didn’t know how or why, but the way this guy spoke was the same as how Centurion spoke. The only difference was that Centurion’s words were less certain—saying that I might be able to learn the truth—while Overseer was certain that I would.
[(However, I can give you a clue. And quite conveniently, Marx is right next to you as well.)]
“(A clue?)”
[(Before I begin the story, I will ask you first. Marx, do you wish to know of your past? I will tell you, the reason you lost all your memories was because you requested it.)]
I could feel Hamsick shiver from my shoulder. However, it didn’t take long to answer. “(I want to know.)”
The lights on the screens began to move.
[(The place you are in currently is a research station by the name of Panthelion. It was an underground institution that operated secretly under the empire of old.)]
He said he would start talking about Hamsick, so why was the research station being mentioned first? I found it a little odd, but I didn’t interrupt and continued to listen since Hamsick had also told me that it had been here at some point in the past.
[(This research station was constructed by the empire for one purpose: to create living weapons that were stronger and more loyal than any soldier. For that, countless wizards, researchers, and alchemists were gathered here to devour all the knowledge of the world and research them. However, the results of these experiments were always unsatisfactory. What changed the situation was when the Witch revealed herself to the world.)]
[(As a war of unprecedented scale erupted, the empire put much more effort into progressing its research. All the talented individuals of the empire were gathered at the research station, and they were given more funds and resources, incomparable to any project of this scale before. And most importantly, they were able to experiment with many new things.)]
[(The monsters that previously could only be obtained through a treaty began to flood in by the thousands every day. Among them were monsters created by the Witch. The research of Panthelion developed at an incredible pace in a short time.)]
Then, as if to open a closed eye, the display of light inside the screen rippled.
[(And you were among the test subjects they researched, Marx.)]
“(I…was a test subject?)”
[(That’s right. You were captured, brought to this research station, and experimented upon in all sorts of ways. That was until the Witch who had been indebted to you in the past came in with her army.)]
“(…Then I was freed thanks to the Witch?)”
[(No, you weren’t able to be freed. Because you died in the process.)]
“(I died? Then why am I here?)”
[(Your death was just that impactful to the Witch. So much so that it was stuck deep in her psyche and wasn’t erased.)]
“(No, I don’t care or know about any of that! What does that have to do with me?!)”
Despite Hamsick’s shouts, Overseer still spoke in his detached, mechanical voice.
[(You died in the arms of the Witch. You said that if the Land of Dawn that she spoke of truly existed, you would wish to be reborn there without your memories and spend your life peacefully reading books.)]
That was the entirety of Hamsick’s story that Overseer told us.
[(I am in a similar situation to you. Although I committed quite a number of mistakes during my life as a human…I obtained an opportunity to be forgiven by the Witch in the end.)]
His mechanized, calm voice remained the same.
[(However, time changes all.)]
And yet, assuming it wasn’t a trick of my mind, I could sense that the voice had changed.
[(Wasn’t it the same for you as well? In the end, you weren’t able to endure the length of time and ended up leaving that place.)]
“(I only came out because this guy forced—)”
Before Hamsick got swept up in this guy’s tempo, I quickly intervened. “(That’s enough. So what are you trying to say?)”
From what I knew in the Big Database called my mind, someone who was so verbose was never normal. Also, this guy revealed himself to us first. I’d even wager to say this guy was the reason that all my allies were kidnapped in the first place, which was exactly why I found it difficult to trust him.
[(I wish to make a deal with you.)]
“(A deal…?)” I questioned. “(Go on.)”
[(I will allow you to leave this place.)]
Well, I could at least hear him out first.
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