“Ugh, being locked up really is boring.”
A boredom so intense it almost made me miss the days when I’d been working came over me.
No, thinking about it, that might be a bit of an exaggeration.
I just hadn’t expected boredom to start tormenting me this quickly.
Of course, I didn’t want to go back to the days when I’d been buried under work.
I’d rather die one more time.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten anything since coming here.
It wasn’t as if I felt hungry in the first place, but my mouth felt strangely empty.
If I had been truly hungry, I would have torn into the Iron Insect’s corpse or something.
Though I don’t know if that corpse could even be torn apart.
“Mm?”
Now that I thought about it, there had been a bat clinging to the facility ceiling since the day I came in.
The people here didn’t seem to pay it much mind.
Were they creatures that had lived here from the beginning?
Maybe it noticed me staring, because it started looking down at me.
“Wait, can bats even see?”
I was sure our eyes had met, but it was probably a coincidence.
Just as I was about to let it pass—
One bat descended toward the entrance of my isolation room.
“Huh?”
I think this was the first time I’d seen a bat this up close.
No, I had seen entities that looked like bats before, so maybe it wasn’t the first time?
The little thing stayed on the floor, staring at me.
“If it were now, I could probably touch you.”
I wanted to reach out and stroke it, but the isolation room wall would not allow it.
“What a shame.”
Had it sensed how I felt?
It slowly began to patter toward me.
“You can’t cross over here anyway. But looking at you again, you kind of look like a sparrow.”
It came close enough that I could have touched it if I just reached out.
For a bat, it was kind of cute.
Huh?
Normally, it should have been blocked by the isolation room wall and unable to cross over.
For some reason, though, the little thing was right in front of me.
“Can you use magic or something?”
As if showing me itself, the bat passed through the isolation room wall.
Wait, wait, how is that possible?
Once I realized it wasn’t an ordinary bat, I tried calling it onto my hand.
“Come here.”
It seemed to understand me.
Probably.
It climbed all the way onto my hand, then tilted its head.
“Shouldn’t you go find your owner? Why are you hanging around here?”
At that moment, it flew into my mouth.
Startled, I ended up swallowing the tiny thing.
“Uh.”
Oh, I really feel like trash.
To think I had eaten as a meal the little guy that came up to me because it liked me.
An enormous sense of guilt came rushing in.
Wait, this feeling of something wriggling in my mouth—
When I opened my mouth, the little thing I thought I had swallowed showed itself again.
“I definitely swallowed you.”
Wait, then does that mean I’m its owner?
I swallowed it, but it came back out perfectly fine.
Was this another ability of the scrap-metal doll?
“Then on the day I came here, you were hanging there because I’d settled in here?”
It slipped out of my mouth, sat on my hand again, and began bouncing up and down.
That probably meant yes, right?
“A pet that can pass through walls and understand what I’m saying.”
Hold on, there’s something I want to have you do.
+++
This is it. This is the stuff.
Thanks to the pet I’d just discovered, things had become very convenient.
“Since there’s nothing to entertain me, I might as well read about what’s going on in the world.”
I roughly explained to the bat what a newspaper was and asked it to bring one.
At first, I was doubtful. But soon, the little thing brought a newspaper all the way to the isolation room in its mouth.
Looking closely, it seemed the object it held in its mouth could pass through as well.
Thanks to that, I obtained a new source of entertainment without much effort.
I should prepare a snack for it later.
Though I’d have to start thinking about what it liked.
‘A newspaper from here should include news about the outside world too.’
Mm, as expected, there wasn’t much in the outside news worth paying attention to.
After all, the information I wanted was all related to the facility.
“Huh?”
It was news that a facility had been destroyed, along with a mosaicked area number.
I had heard that a facility had been attacked, but this was the first time I’d heard of one being destroyed.
That mosaicked number was probably something only those involved would know.
“Hmm, Graver?”
If my memory was right, I had definitely seen it in the records.
Identification name: Graver.
An entity with a roughly fifty-meter-tall humanoid form.
As far as I knew, it absorbed surrounding soil to create its own body.
The problem was that this thing dug up cemeteries.
And that it was extremely hostile toward humans.
It sucked in sections of graveyards to form parts of its body.
But that alone hadn’t been considered the problem.
The real problem was the bones buried in those graves.
Bones absorbed into Graver’s body were reborn as undead.
The exact principle hadn’t been discovered, but according to known information, that was how it worked.
In that way, Graver would draw the bones buried in its body back out and command them as subordinates.
It had once been one of the entities marked for a kill order.
‘All capture attempts failed. There were about three or four of them.’
They had poured in strategic assets, the pride of all sorts of facilities, in order to capture it.
Helicopters, tanks, and apparently even nuclear weapons in the end.
Naturally, the result was failure.
They had tried to neutralize it using a small nuclear warhead.
The result was irradiation of the struck area.
Ah, and additionally, the struck area was gouged out somewhat.
In the end, they gave up on capturing Graver and decided it was to be neutralized on sight.
“Isn’t this the first time Graver has openly attacked a facility?”
It was hostile to humans, but there had never been a case of it openly destroying a facility.
The facility had merely found it difficult to deal with, that was all.
If damage like this continued, they would eventually track it down and harass it.
“That’s a difficult problem.”
Well, Area 469 would be fine.
Graver couldn’t cross water unless the distance was short in the first place.
For something like that to come all the way to this island, far from land?
The world would end that day.
If the undying giant’s one and only weakness no longer worked.
‘It can’t set foot here anyway, so I should be able to ignore it.’
Just then, I saw the little thing returning after checking inside the facility.
Since I lacked information about the interior of Area 469, I had told it to take a look around.
“How was it, Chongchong? What did you see?”
Since it pattered around on the floor, I had given it the nickname Chongchong.
It seemed to like it quite a bit.
It was hard to understand perfectly what Chongchong wanted to say, but I could get the gist.
“So you’re saying there’s a huge door inside?”
Chongchong began spinning in place and hopping around.
That was probably the behavior it showed when expressing strong affirmation.
‘But I can’t wander around yet, so I’ll just have to keep it in mind.’
If I saw it myself, I’d at least know whether it was an entity I’d heard of before.
However, right now, I was in a situation where escaping the isolation room would be difficult.
There were definitely more entities I hadn’t discovered yet.
Of course, finding those would be Chongchong’s job.
“I think I’ve gotten almost all the information I can.”
There was no more information to get from this newspaper now.
Unless it was a newspaper dated tomorrow.
But if I disposed of this newspaper here, I’d be found out right away.
If that happened, my only source of entertainment from now on would disappear.
Ah, and my chance to explore the inside of the facility by proxy too.
‘I didn’t do anything that would draw too much attention, so they won’t suspect anything, right?’
Of course, it would be even better if Chongchong’s form didn’t get caught on camera.
No, I was expecting too much.
Now that my circumstances had improved, I was wanting even better things.
Tch, it couldn’t be helped.
There was no way someone who knew the taste of freedom could adapt to a confined world.
Hmm, should I just stay quiet and avoid causing trouble?
Maybe, surprisingly, I might be able to communicate with the director.
For now, absolutely not.
It was true that the other side had no basis at all to trust me.
“That’s enough for today. Go on and do what you were doing.”
Chongchong left the isolation room and clung to the facility ceiling, preparing to sleep.
Did that thing need sleep?
My body didn’t seem to particularly need sleep.
How did I know? Because I’d been curious and stayed awake for an entire day.
If I had been human, I would have been groaning and acting like I was dying.
But now, in this body, I didn’t seem to feel fatigue.
Even when I fought the Iron Insect, it hadn’t been to that extent.
Though it might change if I fought a stronger enemy.
“Let’s stop thinking and sleep. Things will work out somehow.”
Lying on the floor, I waited for time to pass.
+++
“Mm?”
“What is it, sir?”
“Did I put the newspaper here?”
“Hey, then what, you think someone took that newspaper?”
“No, I’m saying this because I didn’t put it here.”
“Didn’t you take it with you when you went to the bathroom earlier?”
“No, I didn’t take it then.”
“But it’s right in front of your nose now. What’s the problem?”
“Well, it’s true there isn’t any big problem.”
“You must’ve put it somewhere else for a bit and gotten confused.”
“Is that so?”
He picked up the newspaper again without much concern and began reading it.
“By the way, isn’t it about time for the Second Gate experiment?”
“What do you mean ‘about time’? It’s tomorrow.”
“What? It’s already come to that?”
“If the director were here, you’d be dead. I can’t believe you forgot that.”
“Shh. Anyway, the related kids will come tomorrow, right?”
“Right. The experiment’s scheduled for the afternoon.”
“How are the related kids doing?”
“Don’t even ask. They’re just complete wrecks.”
“It’s that bad?”
The agent signaled for him to be quiet.
“Did you forget the experiment details are top secret? If the director finds out about this—”
At that moment, someone gripped their shoulders tightly.
“What should I do? I just found out.”
“Hahaha, Director. Good afternoon.”
“No, Director. That’s not it. I was just explaining that he shouldn’t—”
“I’ll listen to your excuses later. Both of you, follow me for a moment.”
The director was smiling, but they knew.
They knew what would happen to them afterward.