CH 154

After hearing Merlin’s response, Cruze frowned.

“You’ve changed your occupation? A martial artist switched to using only magic… Does DIO have such a system?”

Obviously, this did not exist. DIO had an occupation category, but it pertained to obtaining and developing a trade rather than changing one. Usually, the occupation category would change from Commoner to some specified field.

“The use and application of spiritual power are infinite, so it differs for each user.”

“Is that so? Well, I guess I’m a prime example.”

Cruze nodded. Since DIO users practiced numerous ways to utilize spiritual power, which strayed from any set occupation path, the type of force a user could conjure would also differ greatly. Of course, everything followed similar overarching principles and structure, but unless a user were in the same school or division of a certain practice as another, there would always be differences, unique abilities, and varying skill sets.

Beep! Beep!

“Oh, it’s an emergency alarm. We should hurry,” Arthur said.

“Wait, I want to interrogate the pilot.”

“Then I’ll be taking off first.”

Seeing Arthur turn without hesitation, Cruze felt a bit guilty, so she started loading her rocket launcher.

“Shall I at least take down the door for you?”

Ting!

However, while Cruze was speaking, the door opened, and in its shadow, half of Ilyia’s body poked out. She made a V-shape with her fingers. Ilyia had used Shadow Jump to shift through space to the other side of the door and open it from within.

“Don’t take too long.”

Once he finished speaking, Arthur utilized his lightness skill to move forward quickly, with Ilyia following close behind. Cruze, Merlin, and Arc remained behind, but they weren’t concerned. Since Arthur was the one advancing, they felt assured that nothing would stop him.

“Hmm, a robot….”

Cruze manipulated her aura power into the shape of a giant hand. With it, she gathered the now-limbless robot and the one that fell after being struck by Arthur’s Penetration Power. The remaining robot was completely destroyed; its various parts were strewn across the ground.

Ting!

When Merlin took off his glasses, his eyes changed. His left eye looked like a Jeweled Eye, a white marble with a red jewel placed in the center, while his other gave off a divine golden light.

“Interesting. A weaponized robot of this caliber is operated by electricity… no, it’s not just that. It seems to use a special type of battery.”

As his interest grew, Merlin observed one of the robots. Its outer armor restricted his Enhanced Eyesight from looking into the robot’s internal workings, but it seemed that only the outermost armor had magic resistance. So, once he tore off a portion of this shell, Merlin understood how the robot operated.

“Ah, darn it. I was hoping it ran on nuclear energy. Also, it’s difficult to understand the overall structure and operation just by looking at it.”

While poking around the innards of a robot, Cruze started mumbling complaints. Since her Enhanced Eyesight skill wasn’t at a high level, she couldn’t easily comprehend the inner workings and operation of the advanced robot. Unless she took the mech apart and put it back together several times or had its blueprint, it didn’t seem like she would garner anything from the robot.

“So, you… you’ll need to answer some of my questions.”

“Ack… ugh…! Ack! You monsters!”

The pilot had been forcefully pulled out from the robot’s cockpit, and he stared menacingly at Cruze. However, after seeing how Cruze took out the robot, the pilot knew that he couldn’t put up a fight in his natural form. Even if he shot a gun point blank, he doubted it would injure Cruze.

“Alright, first off, what’s the name of this robot?”

“Such a dumb question… this is a Gigas.”

This was the first time Cruze had heard of such a name, but she accepted it in stride. Advanced users fought a variety of monsters and completed quests in an unimaginable world, and as such, they subsequently possessed incredible adaptability.

“Okay, so where’s the blueprint?”

“Crazy. Do you really think I’d tell you?”

Though squirming under the influence of the oppressive gravity, the pilot scoffed at Cruze’s question. The blueprint for Gigas was a tightly held secret, so he wouldn’t easily give it up, but Cruze continued pushing.

“If you’re not willing to tell me, then there are other methods at my disposal.”

Cruze’s aura power elongated and sharpened into a military-grade sword while she formed a stun gun in her free hand.

Crackle!

“Ack!”

With an unnerving resolve, the pilot had withstood the interrogation up to now, but he soon screamed in pain. However, he still didn’t crack.

“Tell me.”

“Hahaha! If you strip down and beg me, I may- ack!”

Crackle!

Sparks flew as the pilot cried out, but he kept his eyes fixed on Cruze. He was an elite soldier who had received interrogation training. The pilot was initially shocked that an innocent-looking girl could do such horrendous things, but he soon gathered his bearing and strengthened his will.

“Fufufu, your body isn’t permanently injured, so you think you can withstand my interrogation, huh? Fine.”

Cruze, a beautiful young girl with blue eyes, a small frame, and brownish-red hair, smiled viciously.

“I’ll start with your pinky finger.”

Crack!

“Argh!”

Agonized screams rang out. The pilot wasn’t one to easily succumb to physical torture, but Cruze had broken his bone and twisted his nerve ending, causing excruciating pain.

However, his unnerving stare seemed more malicious than anything else. It was implying that he was tough enough to take her torture, and when she saw this, Cruze’s smile grew more malevolent.

“Oh, this isn’t anything to you, huh?”

The military-grade sword in her hand started sparking. The materialized weapon wasn’t just a physical sword but a mechanical item that could output electric shocks. Yet, before she could do what she had planned, Merlin’s hand landed on her shoulder.

“Wait, a sweet girl like you torturing someone doesn’t seem suitable… even if modern society is considered cutthroat, such actions-”

Merlin spoke frankly to Cruze, but she didn’t seem to care. The important point for her was that Merlin had gotten in her way.

“You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you? Are you planning on fighting me… hmm?”

While raising her killing intent, Cruze abruptly stopped speaking as she noticed that Merlin had removed his glasses. Although this wasn’t something that would have surprised her, Merlin’s gold eye and his red jeweled one caught her attention.

“Oh, what’s with your eyes? They’re so pretty!”

Merlin had something called heterochromiaOdd-Eye, which was the possession of two different colored eyes.

Heterochromia iridum, or odd-eye, was a phenomenon caused by a different concentration of melanin over the DNA of the iris cells, resulting in hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation. This usually occurred congenitally at birth, but in Merlin’s case, Miho’s eyeball, which had become a jeweled magic eye, was transplanted into his eye socket. Thus, this was the source of his heterochromia.

After this transplantation, Merlin’s Magic Eye skill reached another level. Others would have needed some time to get used to the new eye, but Merlin synchronized with it seamlessly. The only shortfall was that the jeweled magic eye was specialized for Magic Eye use, so it wasn’t too effective when operating Enhanced Eyesight.

“Man, you’re so easily distracted.”

Merlin couldn’t help but scoff after seeing Cruze looking back at him with shining eyes. Although heterochromia wasodd-eyes were an interesting sight to behold, Cruze had just released her killing intent a moment ago. So, when she instantly scattered it and looked at Merlin with an adoring gaze, it was amusing. Moreover, Merlin was still a bit uncomfortable with his heterochromiaodd-eyes. It was too eye-catching. He felt like he was a middle schooler who wanted to stand out amongst the crowd and had used an eye color-changing spell to do so.

“Hmm. Your eyes are definitely pretty and interesting, but I really do need to obtain the blueprints for the Gigas.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Merlin’s jeweled magic eye glowed clearer and brighter. He focused his eyes on the pilot.

“Where do we need to go to find the Gigas blueprints?”

“The blueprints are at….”

Despite the pilot’s magic resistance, he was no match for the allure of the completed jeweled magic eye and started offering information without hesitation. Then, after witnessing such an odd sight, Cruze whistled.

“Oh, that looks useful. Can I learn that too?”

“You need magic power to do this.”

“Oh, right. Darn.”

With their new intel, Cruze started collecting the Gigas parts. First, Cruze used her aura power to make a bunker, and within it, she opened up her inventory and placed an entire Gigas into it.

Ting!

“Ugh! I have enough space, but… gosh darn it! I had enough EXP points to increase the weight capacity of my inventory. Why didn’t I expand it!”

“Why don’t you just remove the outer armor and take the Gigas’ internal frame? I’m sure that’ll help lighten the load.”

“Although Arthur has run ahead, I can’t waste more time dismantling a Gigas. If we don’t complete this quest within the allotted time, we’ll be forfeiting all the rewards.”

While Cruze was contemplating what to do, Arc spoke, having been silent up to now.

“Can’t you just take the other Gigas?”

“Ah!”

The Gigas that Arc was referring to was the one that had its arms and legs cut off. Cruze hurriedly reopened the bunker, removed her current Gigas, and placed the limbless one into her inventory. It was a success.

“Nice! You’re a genius!”

“… It wasn’t anything special.”

After giving a monotone reply, Arc opened her inventory.

She then placed the relatively whole Gigas into it.

“Huh?”

When she saw Cruze’s surprised expression, Arc shrugged.

“My inventory’s weight capacity is sufficient.”

“Ugh… why do I feel like I’ve been duped.”

Cruze trembled in anger, but there wasn’t any more time to waste, so the three party members quickly moved. The blueprints were held on one of the main computers at a repair center on the fifth subbasement floor.

“The test subject that we need to rescue is on the eighth subbasement floor, right?”

“Right. We have 15 minutes left.”

“We took too much time with that pilot.”

The three started running. However, while it was called running, they were moving faster than 50 kilometers per hour. All the doors and obstacles had been cleared away, so the three traveled without resistance.

‘Well, I don’t have to obtain everything. I already got my hands on a battery, electroconductive fibers, the mainframe system, and the outer armor.’

Merlin had already understood the inner workings of the Gigas through his Enhanced Eyesight, giving him a working image of how they operated. Though he lacked information on the Giga’s operating software and energy recharge system, Merlin knew enough to [Produce] a Gigas.

“Damn it! They’ve already broken through to the fourth floor!”

“What? Who the hell are they?”

“How did the reinforced barrier go down so easily? What the hell are these people?”

Suddenly, humans wearing reinforced outer suits started rushing in from every direction. Arthur had cleared away the barriers and obstacles so quickly that they were only now belatedly reacting to the situation. It appeared they’d received some information and orders beforehand since the human guards didn’t go after Arthur and Ilyia but stood their ground to prevent Merlin and the others from progressing further.

“Don’t be careless! They felled a Gigas with their bare hands!”

“Kill them!”

Retta-tata-tat!

Tens of guns started blasting and sparking their flames. Amidst the gunfire, there were also some soldiers with unique uniforms who fired laser beams from their laser rifles. While the laser beams weren’t at the Gigas’ level, they were still quite formidable.

“Go, my shield.”

“Who are you calling a shield?”

Cruze mumbled her dissatisfaction as she created a wide aura-powered barrier in front of the party and blocked all the incoming attacks. The armor-piercing bullets and laser beams that could melt nearly anything were unable to break through the shield.

“Flame Buster. Maximum.”

Arc jumped over the barrier as her two fists burst into menacing flames.

“Explosion.”