Origin (20)

"Raaaagh...!"

Nadia's dying scream echoed through the room. This was the result of a scalp massage.

From the moment the massager touched her head, Nadia had been trembling uncontrollably, unable to steady herself, and now, as if she didn't even have the strength to flinch anymore, she just lay facedown on the bed, trembling only with her tail.

Even though she had woken up early and neatly fixed her bed, seeing how much strength Nadia had put into her grasp, the blanket was all bunched up and wrinkled, as if it were screaming in agony.

When the massage finally ended, she couldn't hide her shivers, simply panting quietly, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.

'Hmm.'

I only received comfort from her yesterday, so I'd felt bad—so right after waking up, I brought her into my room while she was still groggy and gave her a massage. Now, though, I wondered if maybe I'd gone too far again.

Still, there was some reaction. When the round part brushed over her downy hair, she'd make that "raaaagh" noise, as if she hadn't been totally drained at all. At least she wasn't completely broken, like last time.

Weirdly enough, that made me proud. She'd loosened up first thing in the morning, so I figured Nadia could start her day feeling good.

【(ᐡ ⩌ ⩌ ᐡ)】

Carry's facial expression caught my attention, but my focus quickly shifted elsewhere.

Knock, knock, knock—someone rapped at the door. It was the brisk, impatient knock of someone with a short temper. I hadn't even told them to come in, but they just threw the door open and burst inside.

'Licorice?'

Only one person walked in and out of my room as if it were her own: Licorice. However, she usually slept in late, so it wasn't her usual time to be up.

That's what I thought, but I soon realized I was wrong. The one who had entered was Licorice.

"Hyun-woo, you're up, right? Since you're up, come with—"

Licorice, looking slightly tired and with a straw in her mouth, froze mid-sentence. She'd seen Nadia sprawled out on the bed, utterly exhausted.

Licorice's mouth hung open slightly. The straw she'd been biting dropped to the floor with a thud. She asked, with eyes wide awake and an embarrassed look, as if she was imagining something scandalous.

"... Did you two sleep together?"

"I was just giving her a massage."

"This early in the morning?"

"Morning massages are good for your health. They help with swelling."

I figured any bruises she had would heal faster if her blood circulation improved, which is why I did it. When I glanced at her as if to ask if anything was wrong with that, Licorice's lips quivered before she spoke.

"... You really only gave her a massage? 'Cause, I mean, isn't that... kinda erotic?"

"Pff, the only thing erotic here is the demon in your head, not the massage."

To be fair, Nadia's clothes had gotten rumpled. It was morning, so her outfit was a bit lighter too. But I could honestly say that I hadn't done anything against my conscience.

Of course, there were... incidents along the way: when her tail kept flapping and I had to grab it firmly to keep it out of the way, Nadia had turned into a statue for a moment; and when her ear fuzz looked so soft that I fiddled with it, only to touch a bit too deeply by accident, leaving Nadia trembling before seemingly about to faint.

But those were, after all, nothing but unintentional accidents.

"Are you really telling the truth? She... she can't move."

"What are you talking about? Can't move? Look at this."

"N-no, wait...!"

I picked up the massager, and feeling my approach, Nadia started swiping with her hand, crawling weakly across the bed, perhaps trying to flee. As soon as the massager touched her head, that feeble movement vanished.

"Kkkeeeek..."

An even stranger sound came out this time. Her tail fur, which had stood on end, drooped limply. Only her feebly opening and closing hands showed that she was still conscious.

"See? She can still move."

"... You insane bastard..."

Licorice was at a loss for words, her expression blank. Just for a moment, though—she slapped her own cheeks to collect herself. As the initial shock wore off, she looked even more exhausted than earlier.

"Haa... Woof-woof's in no shape to move, so just let her be. Or drag her to her room if you must."

"Let's just have her rest here."

She told me to put on the full suit, so I donned the Worker Suit Mark 2 hanging nearby. Apparently, I still hadn't been able to so much as touch the custom suit. It was disappointing, but it looked like I'd be in the worker suit for a while.

"Carry, look after Nadia when she wakes up, okay?"

【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌ )】

I asked Carry to keep an eye on Nadia and then left the room with Licorice. Just before I closed the door, I glanced back at Nadia, who was snoring softly in her sleep. I hoped that, just as I was starting to be, she would also become a little more honest someday.

Finally, the door closed.

"You didn't sleep? It's not like you woke up early."

"You could say I pulled an all-nighter. If you leave the comms equipment running, you burn through energy too quickly, so I had to get everything done at once."

Licorice pulled out a new straw and sipped her coffee, telling me that she had managed to retrieve blueprints and data—including equipment schematics—from her office in the residential area.

Originally, when we were at the residential area last time, we meant to stop by her office, but things got derailed and we'd missed the chance.

She brought up a holographic window. Each file was something I'd requested previously. They were just basic tool blueprints—not particularly sensational—but it was obvious they'd make Kyle's work much smoother.

Reverse engineering to figure out the structure for repairs or upgrades takes a lot of time, but with this, it skips that whole process.

'I'd been at such a loss with how to repair the broken polar impactor.'

Licorice had managed to recover the relevant data before it was too late. It was a relief. She transmitted the files to me, saying I might not use them but should keep them just in case.

"I'm already starting upgrades on the shockwave emitter and your regular gear using these blueprints, so next time you go out, you'll be properly armed."

"Next time... Have you decided when we're heading to the refinery?"

Our plan had been to loot the cargo sector warehouse for upgraded gear and then move out to the refinery, since we needed an engineer for manufacturing the mini-reactor and refining blue crystal.

The energy situation still wasn't solved. In order to keep the shielding generator running and get the communications equipment powerful enough to break through satellite jamming, we desperately needed to solve the energy supply problem.

So naturally, I had assumed we'd be heading to the refinery next. But something seemed off. Licorice didn't look happy.

"Normally, we'd be prepping right now to go to the refinery, but we'll have to put that on hold."

"Huh? How come?"

"Listen for yourself."

Licorice said she'd intercepted a transmission sent from the refinery and forwarded the file to me.

– Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Requesting rescue! Is anyone there?! Damn communications failure...! This is the refinery! We're under attack! The damn pureblood supremacists are leading monsters and are about to breach the blockade! Requesting help! Requesting—skkkhhhhh...!

"..."

A desperate call for help. I checked the timestamp on the transmission, and my expression stiffened. It wasn't a just-arrived message—it had been sent at least three days ago.

"... We're too late."

"Seems so. They said the enemy was about to breach the blockade, so by now, there's probably no one left alive."

"If we'd gone to the refinery instead of the cargo sector, do you think anyone would have survived?"

"No. We'd only have added more corpses. We had nothing that could stand against them. And judging by the date, it's very likely that even if we had gone to the refinery first, it would have been too late. You saw it, didn't you? The graveyard of security robots piled up near the refinery."

She was right. When we'd surveyed the refinery from above, the place had already felt finished. At the time, we'd tried to dismiss the feeling, reassuring ourselves that with all those security robots, it couldn't have been overrun yet.

"So what do we do now?"

The gloom of the situation threatened to bring my anxiety back. Clenching my trembling fists, I calmed myself down by recalling the fluffy comfort of Nadia's tail.

"I told you, for now, we wait. What we needed was an engineer, but the odds are high that they were all killed. By the pureblood supremacists, no less."

"We still have to go, though, right?"

We needed an engineer, yes—but we also needed refined blue crystal. No matter how sinister that mineral was, or no matter how much it might be linked to the current crisis, we had no choice.

It was a mineral already embedded in society. Refined, it lost its negative effects, so it wasn't like we could avoid going to the refinery—we needed it to power our equipment.

We could still buy it from the store, but once the warehouse supply ran out or the store system had any problems, even that would become impossible. There weren't any new shipments coming, after all.

We had to prepare for the worst. Only then could we even have a chance at a less-worst option. The pureblood supremacists—those guys were behind everything. Every problem started with them.

And if those guys targeted this place—our town—then we...

"Licorice, do you think they already know where we are?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Even if they don't, if they wanted to find us, considering their past actions, they'd locate us soon enough. The town is stuck between the ice mountains, but we don't have stealth devices running."

That was exactly why we'd risked so much to get the shield generator. As Licorice said, if we clashed with the pureblood supremacists now, we'd have close to zero chance of responding.

They had firepower that made a joke of calling it 'ancient relics', and we'd found out they could create ghouls artificially as well.

If the pureblood supremacists decided to target the town, there was a very high chance we wouldn't survive even three days before falling.

So everyone was working themselves to the bone around the clock building defenses—but strangely enough, there had been no signs that the supremacists were actively targeting us. We had repeatedly rocked Heaven itself, so they must have known about our existence by now.

'Is it just that they can kill us whenever they want? Or do they not even see us as a threat?'

The pureblood supremacists were only obsessed with finding something in Heaven. I had no idea what it was.

'Should we get to it first?'

If we used it as leverage to ask for our release—

'No, that wouldn't work.'

Those people would just sneer or burst out laughing and then blow us up along with whatever we tried to bargain with. They wouldn't respond to a half-baked threat.

As I swam in these grim thoughts, a good idea suddenly came to me. It was like a lightbulb flicking on above my head.

"There's a reactor in the center of Heaven, right? Can't we just bring that over?"

"What? Have you actually seen it?"

"No. I've never even been to the center."

"Do you know how big it is?"

"No idea."

"The weight?"

"Don't know. But if we finish installing the shuttle expansion module this time, it'll turn into a medium-size shuttle—the output should be enough, right?"

"Sure, let's say that's true. What about the consequences if you forcibly remove the reactor without system authorization? Do you know what'll happen?"

When I shot back that if I knew that, I wouldn't have remained a low-rank worker, Licorice gave me a withering look. Seeing her expression worsen, I hurried to say more.

"That's why you're here, Licorice—you know all that stuff. Have I ever handled things all on my own? It's always been because you were here to support me."

"You're not entirely wrong... But anyway, moving the reactor at the center is a no-go. Impossible."

The reactor chamber at Central Nexus in Heaven was integrated with the whole facility. That place was Archive-level dangerous.

If you didn't follow the proper procedures, it would immediately trigger the self-destruct sequence—and the resulting blast could split Titan in half. Unlike the Archive, even without receiving a self-destruct code from the orbiting satellite, the reactor itself could cause a similar catastrophe with its own energy supply.

After hearing all this, my lightbulb just as quickly fizzled out.

This won't work, that won't work, nothing will work. Every no made me feel drained. The healing effect I'd received from Nadia was already wearing off.

A frustrated voice escaped me.

"Then why'd you bring me out here? At least tell me where we're going."

"It's not the shuttle. We're not going far. But we are going underground—a little deeper."

The place Licorice named was one I knew, too: the town's long-sealed mining site.

But why there, all of a sudden?

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=I thought it would take a long time for Hyun-woo to recover, maybe a week or 2, but apparently not.Maybe in a day or 2 they will go outside again, but Eric will probably be left behind since he's recovering, same for Domestica.What's in the mine?【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】

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