Chapter 21
SURPRISINGLY, the hundredth floor—the facility’s bottom level—wasn’t dark and dreary; it was pretty much the same as the floors above. All the fixtures and equipment still worked fine, and it was full of artificial light.
However, there were differences. Perhaps because this was the very bottom floor, it wasn’t just a cylinder; the space was part of the facility. There was a floor around the elevator, as well as a transparent ceiling.
“Goodness. Just looking up gives you a totally different impression.” Doing so, Mira saw the cylindrical space with facilities lining the outer walls. Compared to looking down from above, it had a very different impact that added to the sci-fi vibe.
How many researchers had worked here? Looking around the elevator bay, Mira imagined seeing it bustling with activity. The remnants of shops and rest areas remained here too. As she gazed up at them, she wondered how to begin her investigation. Then, what she was looking for happened to catch her eye.
“Ooh. I thought there might be one of these, and there is!” It was a facility map. In such a huge space, researchers were sure to get lost at points, necessitating these maps in the central elevator bays. “Oh ho ho! And what a simple structure.”
Despite its size, the hundredth underground floor had a simple design split neatly into zones. There were even details like First Lab, Director’s Office, and Storage written on the map, giving Mira clear goals regarding where to investigate.
Hrmm… This place must be connected to modern Earth. As she gazed at the map, Mira became even more certain of that, for the words written on it were all in Japanese. Traces of Japanese influence existed all over the research facility hidden beneath the Ancient Underground City.
What was this place? Why had it been built, and why had it been abandoned? Most of all, what kind of people had lived here?
Wondering about those questions, Mira surveyed her surroundings again. It was clear that research of some kind had gone on here. Soul Howl was probably right that the Ancient Underground City above was some type of playground created in the course of that research. That sounded very sci-fi indeed.
“This place might have greater implications than we ever imagined…”
Though Mira sensed that she was approaching a mystery of this world, she did her best to shake the thought out of her mind. This wasn’t her field of expertise; moreover, her priority was to find the cause of Fenrir’s corruption so he could leave again.
“All right. This way, then.” She could simply report this find to Solomon and leave the world’s mysteries to the experts. Checking the map once more, Mira began walking toward the room labeled Director’s Office.
***
“It’s…inexplicably eerie…”
The state of this research facility was suspicious, including the fact that the elevator still worked. One would expect it to be quite old, but it was still perfectly intact.
There wasn’t much damage to be seen, although the transparent ceiling had gathered some dust, making the glass look foggy. But nothing was broken, and there was suspiciously little degradation.
There was also something indescribable about the corridors. They had little to no dust, but odd black, fist-sized blobs were stuck to the walls and the ceiling here and there. Chairs, flowerpots, carts, and the like also lay on the ground, broken or otherwise damaged.
Furthermore, there were claw marks on the walls, ceilings, handrails, and lights, seemingly caused by a stray animal. In some places, there was greater damage, but the facility lights shone brightly on all that. The place was ruined and decrepit, yet still functioning.
Mira proceeded carefully, worried that security systems might still be running, as they had been on the seventh level. Without much incident, she arrived at a door labeled Director’s Office.
A nameplate beside the door read Isurugi Touko. That same name had been on the airtight door leading in here. In other words, this was the office of the most important person in the research facility.
“What information lies in here?”
There was a reason Mira came here first: a big shot’s office was sure to have materials on the research being conducted here. Locating that would be faster than searching haphazardly. Mira complimented herself on her quick thinking and put her authentication key on the door scanner.
It beeped, but shortly after, the scanner light turned red and buzzed.
“What…?” Mira tried again—after all, it had worked above—but that led to the same result. No matter what she tried, the door wouldn’t unlock. “How dare you…?! I never…”
On closer inspection, there were words on the scanner. When Mira read them, the reason the key wasn’t working became clear. To her shock, she needed a security-level-eight key to open the door. Her and Soul Howl’s keys were only level five. At this rate, she’d never get into the director’s office.
This had cruelly dashed Mira’s plan to easily obtain the information she desired.
“I wonder if it’s just lying around somewhere unexpected…”
She couldn’t simply destroy the door when she didn’t know whether there was a security system, so she abandoned it and searched the places she could. She hoped that, if all went well, she’d find a high-level key lying somewhere.
After an hour of walking around the hundredth floor, it became clear how secure it was. She wasn’t sure whether it was just this floor or the whole facility, but every laboratory she tried required at least security level seven.
Therefore, Mira had yet to find useful information. There were rooms she could enter with her current key, but they were all places like break rooms, rec rooms, and showers.
“Hrmm… If only some lazy fool left out their notes or something…”
So Mira hoped, but she found nothing of the sort in any location she was able to search; the personnel had seemingly handled research-related information quite diligently. Anything she found was simply a note unrelated to research. The notes’ contents were varied indeed. One mentioned borrowing a book called Good Morning Sunshine; another asked where someone put the prism analyzer.
Others were typical messages:
Meeting @ 8:00 today.
Make sure you clean up after Love goes potty, please…
Celebrate! Curry tonight!
You need to shower more.
The notes had been left in different rooms, on the floor, and so on. Mira read them all and realized something.
“This was surprisingly…analog communication.”
From the equipment used in the labs, it was clear their society had developed Internet-like technology. They could’ve sent such messages easily using handheld devices, surely. Instead, they’d left real paper notes.
Although Mira wondered why, she felt an odd warmth in the notes left here and there. They were all simply personal messages. They didn’t lead to the information she needed, but they gave glimpses of daily life on a human scale, which made them fun to read.
As she continued to look at the vestiges of these past lives, she noticed a difference between the men’s and women’s messages.
“Hrmm. A woman wrote this one.”
The specific difference was the use of envelopes. The notes seemingly written by women were in varied envelopes. They were worn out from age but had probably been much cuter long ago. There was a wealth of shapes and designs. Among them were extremely uninteresting notes no doubt sent just for the sake of using those envelopes.
The staff had sent a few business communications through notes as well. Mira thought they really ought just to have emailed such things, but she found a note in a locker room that very gently informed someone that they owed a fine.
It was a simple document, but it bore the signature of Director Isurugi Touko. Apparently, the fine was for a lost item. What in the world had the recipient lost? Mira couldn’t help being a little curious about this person named Fuwa Mariko.
***
Glimpsing life in the past through the notes, Mira continued down the corridor in search of another room she could enter.
As she continued through the undistinguishable hallway, she heard a distinct noise. “Hm? What’s that? There shouldn’t be anyone here but me and him…”
Confused, Mira hurriedly used Biometric Scan to search her surroundings. No response.
One might assume the security system had gone off for some reason, but if it was the same system as above, an alarm would still be sounding. Yet the place was silent, apart from the previous sound.
Undead monsters were another possibility, but it was hard to imagine them here. This place didn’t have the atmosphere of one where monsters appeared. Those places had a particular aura that Mira had learned to sense after much training.
Shuddering at the eeriness of the noise, she sought its source. “Hrmm…here, perhaps? I feel like it came from this direction.” Returning to the entrance of a lab she’d passed about ten steps back, she approached the door warily. She couldn’t open it; it had high security. However, it also had a small window that let her peek through.
The lab lights seemed to be broken. It was dim inside, with only a small emergency lamp on.
“I can’t see well…” She strained her eyes but only saw dark silhouettes with no detail.
The mysterious sound in the lab had piqued the Spirit King’s interest; he could no longer just be a spectator. Pointing out a suspicious figure, he urged Mira to look. “Miss Mira, what’s that to the left?” However, she only saw a bunch of tools for experiments lying around—hardly worth his excitement.
Martel was fascinated as well. “There! There, Mira. That’s suspicious!” she squealed at the machinery in the dim room. In fact, there was what looked like a medical table with a monster lying on it.
However, it only looked like that. It was just equipment, rather than a monster.
“I’m not seeing anything special…” The size of the window limited Mira’s range of vision. By changing her angle, she got a decent view, but still saw nothing notable.
Perhaps they just imagined it? she wondered. “Hm?!”
“Oh!”
“Goodness me!”
It looked as if something had moved behind the table in the middle of the dim room. Mira had jumped in surprise; it happened right when she let her guard down. She feigned calm and focused on the movement’s location.
As far as she could see, there wasn’t movement anymore. She double-checked with Biometric Scan; yet again, there was no response.
“Well, you know how it is,” she mused. “I suppose a Wanderer or two is left down here.”
The seventh level did contain robotic foes, including things like the Machina Guardian and Mechanized Wanderer. Perhaps some still operated down here. In that case, it would make sense that Mira’s Biometric Scan got no response.
“That’s possible too.”
“You might just be right!”
Traces of technology more advanced than the seventh level’s were visible in this facility. The laboratory in front of them was one of the most secure rooms, so it wouldn’t be odd if it contained a security robot. Mira, the Spirit King, and Martel decided to leave it at that.
Immediately, though, there was a loud noise unlike the odd one before. A banging followed as something with bloodshot eyes filled Mira’s view through the window.
“Ngrah!”
“Whoa!”
“Eek!”
The three screamed in unison. Mira fell backward, hit her head on the wall behind her, and curled up in fear. She couldn’t stay that way forever, so she tearfully looked at the window again.
It was no longer there.
It hadn’t been alive, but it had a real physical presence—it was no machine nor hologram. The only other option was that an undead monster was locked inside, despite the fact that they couldn’t spawn here. Mira was confused; she hadn’t seen a monster with such eyes before.
There was no sign of the door having opened. The window hadn’t cracked either; it must’ve been sturdy.
“Well, doesn’t look like it’ll come out…” Relieved by that fact, but still leery, Mira decided to get away from that lab.
***
“Goodness, that was shocking…”
Sitting a safe distance from the lab where the unidentified thing had startled her, Mira racked her brain over what it might’ve been.
“It blindsided me. How many thousands of years has it been since something got me that good?” The Spirit King had witnessed the creature through Mira’s eyes, and tension was audible in his voice.
It had rattled Martel too. “I can’t take jump scares…” She sounded ready to cry.
It was natural for them to be terrified, confronted with that thing. Mira mentally praised her pelvic floor muscles for keeping her from wetting herself.
“What do you think it was, though?” Mira asked her spirit companions once they had settled down, hoping they might have some idea.
She’d only seen the creature for a split second, but she wondered if it was something simple, like a security robot. If it wasn’t a living thing, monster, or robot, she really had no idea what it could be, beyond some evil spirit.
“Hmmm. It was an odd being.” The Spirit King sank into thought for a while before revealing that he didn’t know. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that before.” Despite his vast and deep wealth of knowledge, he had no idea what it was.
“Same here. It clearly wasn’t normal, though. Jeez!” Martel’s shock had turned into anger, but she couldn’t identify the creature either.
One look at its creepy eyes, and they’d never forget them. If even the wise spirits weren’t familiar with it, it was possible the thing was a new breed. If so, no amount of thinking would provide a clear answer as to what it was.
Either way, it was obviously wisest to steer clear. After coming to that unanimous agreement with her companions, Mira resumed her search—detouring around that lab, of course. It was best to let sleeping dogs lie.
***
A while after she’d encountered the unknown new breed, Mira searched the remaining rooms with an ashen knight guard, just in case. There didn’t seem to be anything like that creature in the other rooms. As for the facility’s research, she ultimately made no discoveries about that.
Instead, she got a sense of why the researchers had left so many notes behind. That was related to the reason this facility had been locked down. After they’d decided to close it, and most of the researchers left, ten had secretly remained until its total closure a year later.
What had they done in this facility during that period? From the notes they left, it seemed like they’d been cleaning up after some kind of research.
Said cleanup was against orders, so they had to work in secret to avoid being noticed. They didn’t send any electronic communications that would leave records, instead using work notebooks for work matters and notes for personal matters.
“Oops. It’s getting to be that time.”
Although it was interesting to learn about the historical researchers and goings-on, it was no help in accomplishing her goal. Only the locked laboratories would contain such useful information.
“I need to do something about the security…”
I’ll have to search with that in mind next, Mira thought as she returned to the arranged meeting spot.
***
At the top floor elevator bay, Soul Howl returned one minute ahead of schedule. The pair sat down and told each other the results of their searches.
Soul Howl took his turn first. “I looked all over the place, but I didn’t find any clues at all.” According to him, he hadn’t gotten so much as a crumb of information on the research.
His investigation of the upper floors had revealed that most of the facilities up there were the foundation of the researchers’ everyday lives. All the chambers were gyms, shower rooms, training rooms, and the like. The researchers here must’ve enjoyed quite a bit of luxury, Soul Howl added.
“One place I found was pretty interesting,” he added. “Wanna guess what it was?” Despite his smirk, he looked serious.
Mira pretended to think for a moment, but quickly gave up. “I don’t know. What was it?”
Soul Howl wasn’t perturbed. When Mira gave up, his smirk widened, and he revealed the answer. “Get this…they have a theater!”
A theater optimized to view movies and other visual creations logically meant that they had things to view. Mira hypothesized they might’ve left behind research-related videos she could view, but Soul Howl’s continued explanation dashed that hope. He’d tried everything he could think of, but all the machines in the theater were broken and inoperable. Even if they found videos remaining, viewing them would be impossible.
“That was a real shame. I’m dying to see Zombie Island Ages again,” he murmured and let out a genuinely disappointed sigh.
“Hm?” Mira had some memory of the series he’d mentioned. “Wait, didn’t that one just have an anime?”
Soul Howl confirmed that, nimbly snatching a DVD out of his Item Box. In fact, it was titled Zombie Island Ages; somehow, he had retrieved a modern anime DVD from the theater. He couldn’t watch it, since the devices were broken. Still, he’d brought it anyway, for the sake of the distant future. It was an odd anime, in which zombie girls within the military aimed to be idols in space, but it was one of Soul Howl’s favorites.
“That…certainly is Zombie Island Ages…” Mira acknowledged.
Familiar characters were illustrated on the packaging, which also showed staff names, a barcode, and the like. Those made it clear that it was the very same DVD sold in modern Japan.
The anime had been broadcast about ten years before they were brought into this world. This was such a modern research facility, yet in a place connected to a former video game. What did it mean for a modern item to be in the facility? The ever-deepening mystery confused Mira.
“Well, they must’ve had a way to bring it here,” Soul Howl said matter-of-factly. “Based on that scrap of the diary we saw, this isn’t just a normal video game world. And it’s not like racking our brains over it will change anything.” He added with a chuckle that he’d bring the broken machines he’d recovered to the Hinomoto Committee, to see if they could do anything with them.
One committee department was investigating this world’s biggest mystery: why players had been sucked in. Soul Howl’s plan was to let them figure the objects out.
“Well, you’re not wrong. There’s a limit to our knowledge, no matter how we try.” Mira agreed to simply report this to Solomon and leave the hard work to him. Then she asked whether Soul Howl had found DVDs of Lyrical Survive—a hot-blooded magical-girl survival anime she, Solomon, and Luminaria were all fond of.
“Yeah. Pretty sure they had the whole series.”
“My word… I must salvage them!”
After Soul Howl finished his report, Mira made him take her to the theater, where she prioritized retrieving the entire Lyrical Survive series.
***
They’d leave the remaining DVDs for the Hinomoto Committee, which would come to investigate. Mira claimed the ones she liked and left the theater, reporting her investigation’s results as they returned to the elevator bay.
She’d found many laboratory-like rooms, but all of those were locked; she’d only gotten into rooms unrelated to research. The research subject was still unclear.
Mira’s statement surprised Soul Howl. “There are doors you can’t open?”
“Oh, right. The section you investigated had nothing to do with research,” she recalled.
Looking back, Soul Howl’s floors had been full of rooms related to daily life. Those kinds of rooms unlocked without issue even on Mira’s floors, but the laboratories were set to a high security level that their authentication keys couldn’t handle. Mira explained that to the best of her ability as well.
“I see… There are higher security levels than our keys can access, huh? That’s an annoying problem,” Soul Howl muttered to himself in thought.
Mira grumbled in agreement. What was corrupting Fenrir? They’d likely find out if they investigated the research here, but the information was so carefully protected, it was hard to get a foothold.
They still had yet to search many rooms, but it was unlikely they’d find anything on the research—let alone anything that might help save Fenrir—with the keys they had. Unfortunately, for now, all they could do was bet on that small chance. Their only other hope would be finding a higher-level key or a way to raise their authority and search the other rooms. Either way, it would all come down to luck.
“Shall we scour the next floor as well now?” Mira pressed the elevator button, ready to investigate the other levels for useful information.
When the door opened, Soul Howl—who’d been deep in thought—seemed to remember something. “Hey, wait…” After thinking for another moment, he finally said, “I know. We can use that thing.”
When Mira asked what he meant, he answered that he’d found notes on security-related matters during his investigation.
As it turned out, notes were scattered all over the higher floors too. Most were similar to those Mira had seen—minor work-related and everyday exchanges. Among them, however, Soul Howl had found a single helpful message about a key card that could reset the security system.
“Along with a few notes, I found a researcher’s diary. It was tattered, but I learned a few things about those days. I’d say the researchers here were pretty close friends.” They must’ve trusted each other a lot, he added with a sarcastic chuckle, then told Mira about the security situation he’d learned of in the diary.
According to him, things back during that research period had been the opposite of today. Many rooms were never even locked. However, when the facility and its subpar security were abandoned, a higher security level was initialized—that is, the security system was reset and rebooted. After all, they couldn’t just leave the security like that.
“That probably leads us to now. Anyway, I remembered that the diary had info that might help us get out of this bind—which would be the key card.”
When it was time for the researchers to reset and reboot the security, Soul Howl went on, one issue had come up. They’d lost the key card the director had issued—the one needed to initialize higher security. They’d given the person who lost it a lot of crap in the notes, he added, which surely proved what good friends all the researchers were.
Ultimately, that lost key card was never found, and they were forced to issue a new one. That new key card reset the system successfully, and that was the end of it.
After Soul Howl explained all this in detail, Mira smirked. She’d caught on to what he was implying. “Hrmm, I see. In other words, the key card they lost could very well still be lying around somewhere.”
They might just be able to use it to reset the security system. If all went well, they’d be able to enter previously locked rooms.
“Exactly.” Soul Howl nodded in satisfaction. With a dry grin, he added, “Either way, unless we can magically find out how they lost it, we still have to comb the whole place.”
“Well, I’d say things look more hopeful than before, and that it’s worth betting on,” Mira replied as she boarded the elevator.
Soul Howl boarded as well, though a little timidly, and pressed the button.
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