Even more confusingly, the thing answered with a perfectly obvious answer, as if it were only natural.
"……You're a talking multi-tool."
"No, what does that even mean? You were an error message. You only ever said stuff like that, so why are you suddenly talking like a person? Where did you pick up a sense of self?"
"No, hey, who puts an AI in a multi-tool?! There was no setting like that!"
"If you're a spirit, then at least make your way of speaking a little more mysterious…… No, more importantly, if that's what you are, why are you so well-versed in the common sense of my world?"
For now, the voice was young and pretty. It did have a mysteriously resonant quality to it, so it wasn't as if it didn't feel like a spirit at all.
I wasn't certain yet, but fine. As if anything made sense right now. Let's just roughly write this thing off as a spirit and move on.
Still, if it was inside a machine, then rather than a spirit…… wasn't it more like a machine spirit from some relentlessly grim setting?
Do I have to start praising some machine god now?
"Haaah……."
I sighed and took a brief moment to collect myself.
"Hey, I came to my senses at that timing. It's a miracle I even picked up the core of what was going on. And wasn't it impressive how boldly I moved first before I started looking suspicious?"
I have a habit of immediately running to the objective point as soon as a quest drops. Apparently, it worked even in this insane situation.
In hindsight, I think that was the right call. If I'd just stood there, I would've looked even more suspicious.
"Ah, enough! You, dig up some of the dirt here."
The thing simply and obediently fired a beam at the ground I pointed to. Watching the white, silently flashing beam, I muttered.
"……What the hell. There's no impact."
"……No, hey, why? You said you were a spirit. And the first sound you make is spitting?!"
"Hey, that's a bit much! And what? Rash? If it's an unknown world, civilized areas are more dangerous, so I ran away quickly…… Tell me the status of the environment suit's visual module."
I hadn't wanted to make excuses to a tool, so I'd kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't hold it in any longer.
Of course, I still had to keep moving along the way. I'd received a quest, so I had to do it.
"No, man, I don't even know the local customs. What if I accidentally kick a statue these people worship as a god while walking down the road and suddenly get hanged on the gallows? Once you're in civilized territory, you can't even run away. Environment suit visual module, switch to biological trace tracking."
"High-tech or whatever, judging by the non-human monsters showing up here, this place feels like some kind of fantasy world. If you mess up in a place like that, even some kid passing by might spit out sword qi."
In fact, the buildings here used extremely well-processed stone. Either they had plasma cutters, or someone had used sword qi.
"You'll get yourself in serious trouble looking down on the locals like that, man. And the people's clothing, too. This isn't some primitive world, you know?"
Their clothes were ornate and clean.
The human who had explained things to me could have been an exception. He seemed like someone important, after all.
But aside from him, basically everyone was dressed in clean, splendid clothes. Even the ones who looked exactly like "villagers."
"On top of that, they were clean. They didn't seem like primitives, did they? I didn't think I could sell them soap and hear people go, Ooh, amazing!"
While arguing with this multi-tool bastard, I followed the red traces displayed on the HUD by the biological trace tracking module.
It was hard to distinguish exactly what kind of creature they belonged to, but these "footprints" that had left the village and gone up into the mountain were definitely human. They seemed to belong to the young lady who was my target.
"In a world with a somewhat advanced civilization like that, try accidentally insulting some guardian deity or noble. You'll be hanging by the neck in no time. That's why you have to get out beyond civilization as quickly as possible."
"Right, if I save the daughter of some high-ranking person, they'll let me off once, won't they…… That boar corpse looks like it died fairly recently. Let's break that down. And stop making those ptooey-ptooey sounds."
"No, make some other sound. What kind of sound is ptooey-ptooey? You said you were a spirit, didn't you?"
Even the whirring was not a mechanical sound but something that sounded like it was imitating one with a human voice.
Haaah……. Fine. Still, this is better.
A moment later, the corpse in question vanished before my eyes as if being sucked into the beam.
Right. Whatever the case, saving a young lady couldn't possibly go wrong.
"Available resources?"
It was exactly the same as when I had been playing the game.
No, the world wasn't the world of the game I had been playing, so why was the equipment the same……
Forget it. At least it was a relief.
In any case, like this thing said, I had come out with resources from storage because I had been about to add two geothermal power rooms to the outer base.
If I'd known this would happen, I would've kept my inventory more filled, damn it.
At any rate, I continued moving, following the traces.
***
The pursuit was not particularly short.
For one thing, I wasn't used to this kind of activity in the first place, and every time I moved from place to place, I ran a few experiments as well. In the process, I also obtained Plant Fiber ×2 and Protein Block ×4.
Thanks to the effects of the environment suit, fatigue wasn't an issue at all, but I was hungry. So I ate one of the unpleasant protein blocks.
It was a little salty, but edible. If things went south, I felt like I could hide away and survive eating nothing but this.
And twenty-four hours later, after following the traces I had been tracking as they changed from footprints into drag marks, I arrived in front of a certain cave.
I had no intention of entering through the front of the cave. I hid at a suitable distance and called the multi-tool toward the ground.
"Hey, analyze the ultrasonic waveform."
"Why, should I give you a name or something?"
"If I tell you my name, are you going to stop with the 'Master' this and that from now on and start calling me, 'Hey, I Han-cheol!'?"
Confucianism doesn't mean you can talk rudely to your elders as long as you use honorifics.
Seeing that there wasn't even the slightest bit of respect in it, I almost wanted to tell it to just speak casually, but if I really did that, it felt like it would outright drop all pretense and start mouthing off, so I held back.
I shook my head and started walking again.
"Dig through this wall, contractor. And don't ptooey-ptooey again."
The thing complained, but it did what it was told well enough.
As expected, the inside of the newly opened cave was dark. It didn't seem like anything was guarding it, either. Perfect.
"Switch vision. Night vision mode. And from here on, change to microphone pickup mode so only you can hear my voice."
Bzzzzzt. I heard the sound of power entering the small auxiliary device attached near the neck of the environment suit, and my vision shifted into a monochrome tone heavy in blue.
It felt a little noisy, but the visibility was more than enough to distinguish objects. Checking my surroundings, I walked steadily through the opened interior of the cave and into a corridor made of bricks.
I didn't know who had kidnapped that young lady, but this cave was far cleaner than I had expected.
Just like the scenery of the village-or-city I had first seen, the stones here had all been worked smooth.
Looking at the floor, there were no scraps of food or corpses, but there was plenty of dried blood and dirt.
In contrast to the neatness of the structure, it was clear that some rather rough-living bastards were here.
Well…… at least I learned this thing wasn't the type to agonize over the meaning of its existence and go berserk. I suppose I should be glad it was easygoing, at least.
As I suddenly turned a corner, something popped out.
"Kiya!"
It sounded less like speech and more like barking. I don't think communication is going to work here.
Even without majoring in biology, I could tell that the thing in front of me was not a creature from the world I knew.
No, this thing was a fantasy monster from the start. One of those damn goblin-like things I'd seen everywhere.
And there were two of them.
As if it didn't already feel like I'd entered a game world, now it felt like I'd run into a JRPG encounter.
"Hey! Hey! Weapon! Weapon!"