Novel Full 110 Fortress Core
“Who is this?!”
Mathew heard a familiar voice even before he reached anywhere near the top of the tunnel.
‘My exhaustion is really ramping up,’ the young man thought as he pursed his lips.
In the darkness of the shaft, no one could notice his sour expression.
“It’s us!” Leila called out in response, nearly making Mahtew drop his grasp over the ladder just to smack his own face.
“Fine, come in,” Daniel called out.
‘It’s a wonder how natural it is,’ Mathew thought, shaking his head before climbing up the ladder once again.
“How did it go?” Daniel asked when Mathew’s girls started to climb out of the shaft.
“We caught the bastard,” Leila reported while crawling out of the hole. She then stood up to his feet, only to tap on her knees to dust them out.
“Where is he, then?” Daniel asked right away. He then shook his head. “No, where is Norbert?” he changed his question while trying to move his eyes in Leila’s direction.
The topmost floor, just like the rest of the school, didn’t have any light working. Coupled with near-complete darkness outside caused by the general power outage, one could barely make out the shapes of objects.
“We found him, but he is injured,” Daria replied when it was her turn to crawl out. “We left your friend in the same classroom as the guy we caught,” she then said, only to suddenly cut her words short when she noticed the circumstances of her own words.
“Wait for a second,” Daniel slowly uttered his words. “Did you just say that you left heavily injured Norbert in the same place as the guy that brought us so many problems?” the officer reiterated Daria’s words to show how he understood them.
“Don’t worry,” Mathew finally reached the hole in the wall allowing him to speak clearly. “I took care of Norbert’s wounds, and that bastard is tightly bound. We also deprived him of his system,” Mathew explained while crawling out. Yet, as he attempted to stand up, his face struck something extremely soft.
“Wah!” Leila moaned lightly, only to jump away, taking her plump ass out of the way of Mathew’s face. “Sorry, it’s so dark I didn’t think to move,” she quickly jumped to apologize, even though she wasn’t at fault at all.
‘Is it her tender side?’ Mathew thought, allowing a small smirk to appear on his lips. It was in a moment when one reacted by the instincts that their true self would surface. And with this small interaction, Leila gave Mathew an insight into who hid beneath the mask of her haughtiness.
In the dark interior of the school, he was safe from the prying eyes of the other girls.
“No, I’m sorry,” Mathew said after a short moment of self-gloating. He then rose up to a standing position before throwing a look around the scene. He then turned his eyes to the shape that likely represented Daniel’s position.
“Can you lead me to the merchant?” Mathew requested. “I know neither of us can see shit, but at least you know the layout of all the obstacles on the way.”
“Sure thing?” Daniel replied with slight hesitation. “I’m going to reach out, so if I touch any of your girls, I’m sorry in advance,” the officer then announced.
“Here, it’s me,” Daria reported a moment later. “Mathew?” she then called out, the changing tone of her voice indicating she turned her head around.
“I’m here,” Mathew said out loud, helping the girl locate his position with the sound of his voice.
“Okay, I’ve got you,” Daniel finally announced after Daria helped the two of them join hands. “Follow me.”
Mathew could vaguely remember the outline of the top floor. Save for the very shape of the still-standing floor, he could even recall the location of several obstacles on which he could trip in the dark.
‘Hmm?’ Mathew thought when Daniel led him on a slightly different path that he would walk if guided by nothing but his own memories. ‘Is his space perception faulty, or maybe things changed around here?’
Mathew allowed his curiosity to get better of him, thinking over the different possibilities as the officer led him deeper into the location.
“Careful now,” Daniel warned. “We should be somewhere near the edge,” he explained his worries.
“Figures,” Mathew shortly replied, too focused on containing his own excitement to pay any mind to the danger of falling down all the way to the ground floor.
Sure, establishing a fortress was akin to taking a step out of the young man’s relative comfort zone. It means invasion of the lands, events, and opponents he has yet to encounter in both of his lives.
And for all the worries that this new beginning of sorts brought upon Mathew’s shoulders, he couldn’t help but look forward to seeing what this entire fortress was all about!
“Here he is,” Daniel reported a second before Mathew noticed the merchant with his own two eyes.
The top floor of the compound was fully dark, darker than humanity’s future in this new world, darker even than Mathew’s thoughts right before he sacrificed his life back in his first run.
And yet, right in the middle of this darkness, Mathew could easily make out the coiling shape of the shadows that he always grasped to enter the merchant’s domain.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Mathew muttered, unable to contain his expectations any longer.
Whoosh!
The shadows surged all around the young man like usual, cutting him off from the real world.
[Registering the fortress master]
[Checking for the ownership conditions]
[Conditions confirmed positive]
[Activating the fortress management]
[Fortress management complete]
A string of system communication flashed before Mathew’s eyes, only to burn right through their short lifespan before fading away into the darkness.
[Welcome to the fortress core]
A new pop-up window appeared, shedding some light on Mathew’s shadowy surroundings.
‘It seems that the darker it is in the real world, the darker it gets in those shadowy realms,’ Mathew thought when the welcoming message appeared to be the only source of light. And for how dim it was, it only allowed the young man to make out the general shapes of the objects around him.
‘Huh?’ One of the new elements of the shadowy domain caught Mathew’s attention. He stepped forward, pushing the light of the welcoming message a bit further…
And there it was. A massive map of the entire compound.
‘Just how big is it?’ Mathew thought, his eyes opening wide as he attempted to judge the map’s size.
The young man approached the displayed map, only to realize that his head reached barely above the middle-point of the map’s height.
‘Given its square shape, it should have somewhere around ten square meters of surface,’ Mathew thought, raising his hand to the map.
The map itself was split into a diagonal side-view, allowing him to inspect the situation on every last floor of the compound at once. And with just a single look, Mathew managed to find one of the last pieces of information to finally close up the former phase of his survival.
“So that’s where you are hiding,” Mathew muttered as he brought his finger to a small, blue dot hidden in one of the classrooms in the same school’s wing as the one where his group defeated Stephan.
Just a single level below the blue dot, Mathew could see green and red dots, both several meters to scale apart.
“That’s Norbert and Stephen, aren’t they?” Mathew whispered as he continued to play with the map.
It took a considerable amount of time before the young man finally peeled his eyes away from the only object he had inspected so far. Yet, as he removed himself from in front of the map, he finally realized what the bonus he picked was all about.
“What a swarm,” Mathew said before whistling in shock.
Within the compound, every dot represented a person. And outside of two congested places, Mathew could make out the borders of every marker.
Outside of the compound, though, was different. On the other side of the compound’s walls, the black dots turned into a single block of dark color, something that Mathew would fail to see in the darkness if not for a mere chance.
‘I guess this is all just a beginning,’ he thought before gritting his teeth and turning his head to the left.
There were three pillars erected roughly to the heigh of Mathew’s hips there. Each of them bore a striking resemblance to the sacrificial altar Mathew encountered at the evolving merchant before. And each of them had a number ’10’ written right on top of their altar.
“A pipe, a coiling wire, and what, a gas bottle?” Mathew muttered as he attempted to make out the decals painted on the side of those columns. He then leaned back before stretching his back. “It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what those are,” he muttered.
Mathen took a deep breath before waving his hand.
“I want out,” he said, only for the space around him to collapse.
“How did it go?” Daria was the first one to ask when Mathew returned to reality.
“How do you know I’m back?” the young man asked, puzzled by how instant Daria’s question was.
“You never took longer than a second at the merchant,” she revealed only for a vague shape of her body to shrug its arms. “I figured it wouldn’t be any different now.”
“That makes sense,” Mathew admitted before shaking his head for yet another time. “I know that might sound weird, but do we have any cores left on us?” he asked.
“Did you fail to raise the fortress or something?” Daria asked, her voice slowly filling with tones of panic.
“No, it all works as it should,” Mathew quickly fixed the girl’s misunderstanding. “I asked because I might’ve just found a way to get electricity back!”