Chapter 33: Unwanted Overnight Stay (4)

The place the monster brought me was the place in my memory.

However, the only difference was that the barbed wire surrounding the building had collapsed, and the main gate was torn like a piece of paper.

So in a word, yes.

‘This is the first shelter I’ve ever been to.’

It was a shelter built above ground, and the 5th floor was the strongest.

It was a structure that didn’t seem like it had a structure.

I slowly looked around as the monster carried me into the shelter.

It was a building that, to anyone who saw it, had no way down to the basement.

Why did this monster come here?

Squeak, squeak-

“You mean here?”

A corner of the first floor of the shelter.

The floor was empty, but the monster was pointing to it.

There’s a passage here?

I tilted my head and asked, and the monster nodded.

“Hmm…”

Thump, thump-

I rolled my feet slightly, and it definitely sounded like there was a little empty space underneath.

It was probably big enough for a human to pass through.

As I lifted my foot, thinking that it would open if I just put a little more force, the monster’s hand slightly reached out beneath my foot.

“? Why?”

Squeak, squeak-

What? Don’t do something stupid and use that?

I slowly lowered my leg at the monster’s words while pointing to my neck.

Ah, I guess I can just use the card key.

‘So this is why the child’s mother was separated from her child…’

It was the same when she disappeared from the shelter, and it was the same when she disappeared from the mart.

She left the child alone and went into the underground lab, so of course she had to be separated.

It would have been impossible for her to show the child the monsters there.

Beep-

“Got it…!”

Even if I took out the card key, the door didn’t open right away.

I had to find a place that recognized the card key I took out, so I started walking around here and there, and after walking around for about 10 minutes, I was finally able to find it.

Still, wasn’t it a quick find?

“Thank you for guiding me.”

Squeak, squeak, squeak!

Before entering the passage, I thanked the monster, and it bounced and waved its arms left and right.

Was it seeing me off?

I don’t know if I’ll see it again, but I decided to remember it because it was a favor that brought me here.

‘Okay, then let’s continue the exploration that I couldn’t do last time.

Although the starting point was different, it was likely that the city buildings would be connected as one because they didn’t have an entrance to the underground.

Well, it didn’t really matter if they weren’t connected.

I especially liked the underground research lab because it was different from the aboveground and I could do whatever I wanted without any problems.

There’s a reason why most villains build their bases underground.

If they had done such experiments on the surface, they would have been heavily criticized for violating human rights and inhumanity.

In this sense, humans were much more vicious than monsters.

Monsters would at least kill humans cleanly, but the humans here were treated worse than dead, so they were not worthy of comparison.

“Oh, the atmosphere here is different from last time…”

It was the same in that there were a lot of machines whose functions I couldn’t figure out, but unlike last time where there were half monsters and half humans, this time there were only pure monsters.

No, they weren’t pure monsters from the moment they touched a human’s hand.

“Then what should I call them… cult monsters?”

Yeah, right. That would be good.

By the way, what kind of wealth and honor would they enjoy by researching monsters and secretly building a laboratory of this scale?

Why, did they want to become a monster themselves?

I burst out laughing at the incomprehensible sight.

“Knock knock, are you inside?”

Gulp – Oh, they’re responding.

There was a warning sign saying not to touch the test tube, but it didn’t concern me.

“Shall I take it out?”

I didn’t feel any sympathy when I saw humans, but when I saw monsters, I felt a little sorry for them.

Even though they look different, we’re all friends!

It felt the same.

No matter how different they look, they were all the same monsters.

Anyway.

“I’ll take it out, so do your best.”

Jeezjeez-I thought it might be possible to break it from the inside, but it didn’t seem like that since I couldn’t get out.

Maybe it was just more vulnerable to external impact.

I hummed while looking at the test tube that was cracked like a spider web.

For now, this is it.

‘It feels like I’ve been given a quest to rescue civilians kidnapped to a research facility.

Although they looked quite a bit like civilians, their appearance was quite a bit too much.

The liquid inside the test tube poured out for a moment.

Starting with the hand that popped out, the monster began to pull its entire body out of the test tube.

If I saw it like a bird breaking out of an egg, that would be a little too much.

Gulp.

“Why are you doing that? Do you have something to say?”

I tilted my head at the monster that didn’t leave even after it got out of the test tube, and the monster slowly bent down.

I couldn’t tell what the monster was saying, but I could tell what intention it was making the sound.

It looked like a believer worshiping a god.

…Of course, it was my imagination.

Gulp, gurgle, gurgle

“You want to follow me? Oh, do you want to save your people here or something?”

I didn’t really mind following him—No.

Since I didn’t mind following him, I guess it would be better to just come along.

I didn’t really like killing humans with my own hands, so I thought it would be nice to have a monster that could do the work for me instead.

Alright, let’s just agree to follow him for now.

“I’ll just look around, so you go free the other monsters or something.”

Gulp-

Of course, freeing the monsters wasn’t my main goal.

My primary goal was to tour the underground world, after all.

I let go of the monster that was starting to pound hard and started looking around.

The first thing that caught my eye was a beaker filled with human despair in liquid form.

“Can I drink this?”

It was much lower quality than the magical girl essence in the doctor’s lab, but it seemed okay if it was this much human despair.

It felt like I was in a mart tasting corner.

I looked at the despair of the people here and there, and then brought the beaker in my hand to my mouth.

Gulp, gulp-

“Mmm, it’s delicious.”

I could feel the despair circuit delighting in the dense despair it had encountered for the first time in a long time.

This was heaven, where else could it be?

Even here, even if the despair circuit was open, there was no hope or anything like that, so I could indulge in despair to my heart’s content.

I don’t like this person, but I’ll praise him for this one thing.

Kkeeeeek-Kkeeeeeeek-Growl-

‘The number has increased a lot in the meantime.”

One monster broke a test tube, and two monsters broke two more test tubes, making four.

What on earth were they thinking, concentrating them in one place like this?

There were so many monsters in this small area, so I couldn’t even imagine how many monsters there would be in the other areas.

“The city underground is a monster field, a monster field.”

I wonder if the monsters here can survive on just the humans underground.

I think they’d have to go outside to eat their fill.

Well, there are emeralds in the city, so it shouldn’t matter.

Monsters at this level are nothing to the emeralds.

Grrrrr….

“Okay, let’s go further in.”

I saw everything I could see nearby.

Who knows, if I go deeper inside, they might be researching magical girls.

The monsters next to me were groaning and urging me to hurry.

“Ah, I’ll go. So please don’t whine too much?”

I felt like I was the godmother of the monsters.

In fact, I was one of the youngest when I was actually created.

“Intruders ahead, intruders ahead! Many test subjects have escaped! Please support us! There are too many of them!”

The humans came running as soon as the monsters started making a fuss.

The difference from what happened in the Mart underground lab was that this time, unlike last time, it wasn’t a mixture of humans and monsters, but a group of pure monsters.

There were even more of them.

“Cheer, bullets won’t work!”

“Retreat, retreat, retreat!”

The puny bullets of humans couldn’t harm the monsters.

Unless you were forging hope into bullets or something, it would be like throwing a stone into a river and having no effect.

‘Ah, thinking of hope bullets suddenly reminds me of Sapphire.’

I pictured Sapphire, a cool pretty girl, shooting monsters with a weapon that looked like a sniper rifle.

Now that I think about it, do the other main characters in the original have no memories of the previous world?

I thought about it occasionally, but it was fortunate that only Emerald, who was easy to boil, remembered.

“If Sapphire, Ruby, or Diamond had memories… Ugh, just imagining it is horrible.”

I trembled as I thought about my useless imagination.

Anyway, that’s not what’s important right now.

Gulp?

Gulp, gulp

“Ah, are you asking what we should do now?”

What should I do?

Just do whatever you want.

As I nodded with that meaning, the monsters waiting next to me rushed toward the humans.

The banquet was about to begin.