But none of that mattered next to the big discovery Tailyn made. The laboratory was empty. Both in the corridors and in the open areas, there was nothing but bare stone walls—it was like the previous owners had taken even the paint with them. Of course, it was possible everything had been reduced to dust over the previous three millennia, but then how did the technical bots survive? Something else would presumably have survived, too. But nothing had. The three metal giants were all that Tailyn had come across on that side of the door, and that scared him. What if there was nothing in the control center, too?
The sound of crashing rocks pulled the boy away from his dreary thoughts. He jumped and looked around, clearly not trusting Raptor. While the latter wasn’t showing anything, Tailyn had discovered a major problem with his new attribute setup. He’d missed something. As it turned out, scanner worked closely with his accessory, handing over data for live targets. Finding out what was moving around was no longer possible, not to mention identifying their parameters. That was only an option with perception and visual contact. The boy had made a mental note to correct that problem as soon as possible, unlocking scanner once more for himself, but that was a problem for the next time he found himself at a remote terminal. If he found himself at a remote terminal again...
But what really had the boy going was that the noise hadn’t come from the direction he’d been expecting. Lesser Griala was continuing its pursuit of its runaway quarry, only it had been left far behind. Instead, the crash had come from the corridor Tailyn had just been planning on heading into. It stood between him and the ancient lab’s central area.
Cursing himself yet again for his stupidity, Tailyn grabbed Valrus and flew up to the roof just in case, aiming Valkyrie in the direction of the suspicious corridor. Nothing happened for a few seconds. The boy was starting to think he’d been imagining the whole thing, but that was when his perception began flashing red around the corridor entrance. And Tailyn was in complete agreement—he’d never seen anything like the creature that had appeared.
A ball of dough had oozed into the hall.
Experiment 1 “Cleaner” (monster). No class. No age. No level.
A trap was triggered, sending enormous boulders crashing down from the ceiling to be swept ahead of the monster. Dust kicked up; the boy’s scanner lit up with a bright red splotch. Knowing he couldn’t take a risk, he waited patiently to see what was going to happen next, also not turning on a light to brush back the gloom and reveal what had happened. But the dust settled fairly quickly. The boulders kept moving, somehow toppling into the pile as if there were a hole in the ground.
A few moments later, Tailyn realized it wasn’t a hole. The stones had disappeared into the Cleaner, dissolving like butter in boiling oatmeal. Once it had taken care of the cave-in, the dough moved forward into Tailyn’s hall. Traps lit up again. There was fire, a few sharp spears, and earthen spikes. Once more, the monster was unfazed, happily gobbling everything up and leaving behind nothing but bare walls.
And that was when Tailyn realized why the lab was so empty. The Cleaner, the only experiment to survive after Griala’s power grab, had licked the whole thing clean, leaving, for whatever reason, just the three technical bots.
The dough spread to fill the entire floor of the hall fairly quickly. Tailyn held his breath. Between him and the omnivorous creature, there was just four meters, and neither perception nor Raptor could find weaknesses. Even Lesser Griala had had small communication wires in its stalks that led to its brain. But in that case, there was nothing besides a homogenous mass devouring everything in its path. No internal organs, no communication, no logically interwoven blocks. Still, it was alive.
Everything inside Tailyn went cold. Not happy just covering the entire floor, the Cleaner began growing upward in an attempt to fill the entire space. One after another, the traps went off, but the boy knew the lab would be resetting in five minutes to replenish the strange creature’s food supply. He didn’t have any doubt that was how the experiment fed. There was nothing else in the depths of the mountain for it to eat.
Time slowed down. The Cleaner grew slowly, almost as if savoring the moment and allowing its victim the chance to enjoy his last few moments of life. As Tailyn’s breathing quickened, he put off heading back to Mean Truk for as long as possible—he was going to survive. But he was going to have to leave the reptiloid to the tender mercies of the ravenous monster. It was going to appreciate the change of pace.
It was hard for Tailyn to say what happened next. The Cleaner had almost gotten to the boy when it suddenly dropped back down as if the air had been let out of it. Once more differentiating the monster from the surrounding space, Raptor showed it rushing off in the direction the boy had come from. That was where Lesser Griala was. For a while, the ground under Tailyn was still occupied by the Cleaner’s body, though everything comes to an end sooner or later. The monster was no exception to that rule. The last bit of flesh disappeared, completely emptying the area, and it was at that moment that the laboratory was filled with a shriek of pain Tailyn knew all too well. It was the same shriek he’d heard Lesser Griala make when the boy’s dragon had attacked it. From the sound of it, the first experiment had found its new target, and the dangerous herbal hunter had been turned into a helpless victim.
But that raised a question: what next? On the one hand, the lab was going to modify shortly, and the traps would reappear. That meant the boy needed to stay where he was. On the other hand, what was the Cleaner going to do when the system of passageways changed? Was it going to head back, devouring everything that stood in its path, unconscious reptiloid included? No, Tailyn couldn’t stay and hope for the best. He had to move. Dropping down to the ground and tossing his rope around the dragon, he set off the way they’d been moving before that. There was just three hundred meters to go before the next point.
They made it. The Cleaner had completely emptied the corridors, so there were no traps to speak of, and the timer ticked down to zero. The lab walls kicked into action. That time, however, the hall the boy was in changed, too, the walls and floor rustling as though cloaked in lizard scales or green leaves in a strong wind. Barricades replaced gaps and empty spaces; destructive devices appeared behind them.
The boy pulled his map up immediately, and that time his perception traced the route he needed without any hesitation. Once more, there was a way into the lab’s central art. Not only that, but the attribute was able to combine all the changes the lab had made, indicating a thick wall separating Tartila Mine from the location under the mountain. The only difference was that there was an opening in that moment. Tailyn knew where he would be heading shortly—he just needed to avoid the Cleaner.
“Where are you taking me?” the reptiloid grumbled not long after that. “Where are we?”
The ancient had woken up right when he was supposed to. When Tailyn placed him back down on the floor, he collapsed, his armor crashing louder than a hundred stampeding rhinoceroses. At least, it seemed like that to the boy, which was why he shushed the reptiloid.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” The frustration brought on by the phantom pain needed an outlet, and the ancient couldn’t think of anything better than to take it out on the boy. “We’re still under the mountain? I told you not to come down here! There’s no way through, you little idiot.”
“It will show up in nine hours,” Tailyn replied firmly. The passage had closed once more, though his perception had already shown him that the modifications were on a loop. With just ten options replacing each other every hour, one of them would get the pair where they needed to go.
“When are you going to start listening to me?!” Valrus was no longer even attempting to hide his emotions. “There’s no way through! I designed this place myself, and...”
The reptiloid fell silent, his gaze arrested by the three-dimensional projection of the location that had popped up in front of him. Tailyn pulled up one of the map updates, drawing a thick red line straight to the
lab’s control center. Once he was convinced he had Valrus’s attention, he then added a green area to indicate the panel blocking their path.
“This was an hour ago. Right now, there’s no way through this point, though it will reappear in nine hours. If we can get there without being seen, we won’t have a problem getting in.”
“Where did you get that map?” A note of awe had crept into the reptiloid’s voice. He’d only discovered the dynamic location functionality a few releases before, adding it to his arsenal and figuring it was fairly unique. And it had saved his life several times over where others had met their end. But while the lab and the academy arena were his designs, not even he had complete maps. Dynamic locations weren’t supposed to have them. On the other hand, Tailyn, some kid from a backward planet, had just turned his perception of the situation upside down.
“It doesn’t matter where I got the map. What matters is what it shows,” Tailyn said. “We need to get there without coming across the Cleaner. And then—”
“Without coming across what?” Valrus quickly jumped in, having caught a familiar word. A painfully familiar word.
“The Cleaner. Experiment number one. It’s a formless mass that just about ate us.”
The reptiloid’s chest tightened. All he wanted to do was take a deep breath, only his muscles wouldn’t comply, having turned into wooden ropes. It took an effort to force just a little air into his lungs. When his legs began tingling, the green creature had to wedge his tail against the floor to keep from falling—it had just hit him why everything around them was so empty. It wasn’t the passage of time. The machine designed to devour had cleared everything down to the dust... Everything the ancient had been planning over the previous couple minutes crumbled. There was no sense going on. They had to escape.
“You’ve heard of it?” Tailyn correctly understood his partner’s reaction.
“It shouldn’t exist. They promised to destroy it, swore to the game itself,” Valrus said, the words squeezed out. “We have to get out of here right now.”
“Why? The Cleaner is eating Lesser Griala now, and it might not even be in the lab anymore—the door was wedged open. It’ll find its way into the tunnel, meander off until it comes across the main Griala, and eat it, too.”
“The first experiment was linked tightly to this location, so it’s not getting out.” With each new thought, Valrus dove deeper and deeper into unpleasant memories. So much, it turned out, connected him to the old lab. “It goes from target to target, destroying everything in its path, dust included. That’s what it was designed to do.”
“Okay, so it’ll get its fill and calm down. What’s the issue?”
“No, it won’t,” the reptiloid shot back, the boy’s nonchalance getting to him. “It’s going to grow until it fills every nook and cranny of the lab, and it can’t be killed with anything in the game!”
“In the game?” It was Tailyn’s turn to latch on to an interesting word. Also, the reptiloid was wrong—the Cleaner couldn’t eat just anything. Either the technical bots’ armor was too much for it, or there was something keeping it from eating them. That was something they needed to figure out, though it was a problem for later. The boy had more pressing concerns. “So, what can we use? And what do you mean, ‘in the game’?”
“There’s a cube in Mean Truk, and there should be something just like it here in the lab. It can’t be scanned, hacked, or destroyed. Nothing in the whole world can damage it. If we can knock even one particle off that cube, we can... What was that? Did you hear it?”
There was an unpleasant scraping sound coming from the direction the Cleaner had disappeared in. And it was getting much closer with each passing second.
“Portal, fast!” Valrus said anxiously. “We have to get out of here!”
“Here, take the card—I can’t use it.”
“Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do with it? Open a portal! That thing knows we’re here.”
It was hard to argue with the ancient—the crossed swords were flashing red at the upper-left corner of Tailyn’s field of vision. The Cleaner was on the warpath. Either Lesser Griala had met its end, or the experiment decided the other pair was much more interesting. Either way, though the formless mass wasn’t yet visible on Raptor, the onrushing sound couldn’t have been made by anything else.
“I can’t.” Tailyn looked around, trying to find a way out of the situation. “I screwed up my mana since I’m not using cards anymore.”
The boy was starting to suspect that Forian and Valanil had been right about what he’d pulled with his parameters, though he wasn’t about to back down. Taking a few deep breaths, he fought back the fear. His thoughts leaned toward his cards, shuffling through them chaotically, though the boy was finally able to get himself under control. Cards were no longer for him. He was a real mage, whatever that meant, and he was following in the footsteps of the ancients rather than modern card-breathers.
“Let’s see what it does with this,” Tailyn muttered angrily as he held his arms out in the direction of the entrance. Valrus could only gasp when a thick layer of ice blocked off the passageway.
“Wait, you didn’t use cards?” the reptiloid asked in shock. “But magic was taken out back in my day!”
“And it was returned in mine,” Tailyn replied, in no mood to go into details. “There’s a bit more than a meter of ice there, and it’s going to disappear in two minutes. We have to go, get lost in the labyrinth. Jump on my back!”
Once more, it was time for the dragon to prove its worth. The traps had regenerated, threatening to stop stray guests for good, and so the boy’s companion gave him time to think by moving slowly forward. Valrus was sure there was no killing the monster. But the god had never given the boy anything he couldn’t handle, and that meant there had to be a way to take out the experiments. The dough included. For example, there was the technical bots. Was there a way for the pair to turn around and get back to one of them? They could risk it all, go against the god, take control of the machine, and—
“Stop!” Valrus shouted, pulling Tailyn away from his pondering. In so doing, unpleasant as it was to admit, he saved the boy’s life—Tailyn had been about to fly right into the Cleaner. Not only that, but the entire hall was packed with thin layers of “dough,” not to mention slender strands hanging down from the ceiling. The monster had integrated itself so well into the space that Raptor hadn’t even recognized the enemy at first. It was only in that moment, with the visual aid from perception, that the accessory flashed red. Life without scanner wasn’t easy.
Tailyn managed to stop just a few steps away from the monster. Throwing his arms out wide to avoid toppling forward, he flew up to the ceiling just in case. Valrus leaped off and ran back a safe distance to see what was going to happen. He didn’t like being that close to the idiot child who’d just about run into a simple trap.
“There are two of them? Two experiments?” Tailyn asked in surprise.
“Only one, though it can split itself up. I wasn’t the one who designed the brain, so I can’t say how it thinks. Somehow, the different parts are able to communicate with each other, telling each other about food, enemies, and obstacles. Why didn’t you see it? Didn’t it show up on your scanners?”
Tailyn didn’t have time to respond. Of course, he also didn’t want to, though that didn’t really matter when his worst fears were realized. The Cleaner heard them. It wasn’t their conversation—they’d been talking over their group communication system which both the reptiloid’s armor and Tailyn’s Vargot completely muted to outside ears. But even named items couldn’t create perfect silence. As the reptiloid dashed off, he made noise that echoed, it felt like, around the entire laboratory, and the Cleaner couldn’t help but hear him. It closed in for the kill. The only problem was that its prey had somehow disappeared, and that puzzled the hungry creature. Deciding to check the passageway itself, it didn’t take the time to completely fill the space. Apparently, it didn’t have en
ough mass for that. Instead, a thin layer of dough made its way forward, covering all of the floor, walls, and ceiling. It was a smart move—given the fact that its prey had made its way there on its own limbs, it had to be touching some surface. Almost immediately, Tailyn realized that Valrus wasn’t going to be able to get away. The monster was too fast. Not only that, but the ancient was going to become the monster’s priority target as soon as he took a single step, having only gone invisible to the creature when he stopped moving. Suspecting that he was making a mistake, the boy held a hand out in the direction of his partner and activated his telekinesis card, spending thirty-two mana—almost everything he had left. Vargot immediately stuck a straw into his mouth, suggesting that he refill his blue bar, and the boy went along with the recommendation as he kept an eye on Valrus. Everything worked the way it was supposed to. The Cleaner got to where the reptiloid had been standing, only the latter was already hovering a couple dozen centimeters above the ground. The dough slipped by without coming across anything.
“Even with your magic, you’re still using cards.” While there was panic in Valrus’s voice, and his glance kept falling on the mass below him, he was doing his best to stay calm.
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 14
