Unlike the first time I stepped foot inside the department store, it was completely deserted.
No rats, no insects, and no zombies.
Considering that Sona's people already went through this place, it made sense. She was thorough. She wouldn't half-ass this place after one of her people was injured.
That's why the fact that she couldn't find that monster with Blood Manipulation felt so strange to me.
She would've torn this place down brick by brick just to find that thing and make it pay.
—I kept on walking, taking care not to trip on the debris and rubble scattered across the ground.
There were quite a lot of those after last night.
New batches of concrete and dust, mixing in with the bits of trash already on the floor, suggesting the precarity of the place's structural stability.
This place was falling apart, with cracks forming spiderwebs now creeping up bit by bit in the walls and the pillars of the department store; broken glass littering the floors amidst ancient graffiti. Used hypodermic needles, rusty spoons, crumpled cans, small toys, all these covered the grimy concrete of the place like some dragon's hoard; just with trash instead of treasure.
I kept on walking until I reached the fire exits, finding myself back in the seemingly-endless labyrinthine hallways of the Rokuonji Department Store.
I've heard from Sona about the specifics of this case. The disappearances, more specifically, and the people that were caught up in it.
I didn't really care. At least, not at first. People disappeared all the time, and for different reasons. What made this different from that?
But it wasn't some small number. More than a hundred people, from different economic backgrounds and walks of life, disappeared in quick succession. Man, woman, child, whatever was in this place did not give a single fuck. It took them, and even after the Sitri Peerage went over this place, they didn't know what happened to these people and where they ended up.
I was here to figure that out.
I stood in front of the same door I didn't even dare open the last time I was here. Flecked with rust and blood, and bent in certain places, it seemed a portal to hell; a way of entry into a domain of torment that I wasn't sure I was ready to hop into.
System Alert!
You stand in front of [Shinkawa's Hidden Laboratory].
Will you enter? Y/N?
But fuck it.
I was going in anyway.
Kukri in hand, I grabbed onto the door handle and twisted it open, revealing a set of stairs that led downward, allowing me to take my first step inside the Dungeon.
The Dungeon was different.
Unlike the dim and bloodied halls of the Rokuonji Department Store's fire exits, the dungeon was well-lit and almost-pristine; the all-concrete finish of the hallways seeming new and fresh to the touch as I walked down the narrow corridor, following the yellow strip on the ground that served as navigation.
It didn't seem like a dungeon. It seemed like some pharmaceutical office or some shit.
The office on the left, the floor said, in all black script alongside the yellow line.
So, I went left.
I kept on walking, taking care not to make as much noise as possible. Which was difficult, considering how quiet the place was.
Despite how I rolled the heel of my foot into the ball, silencing my footfalls, the rubber soles of my shoes slightly squeaked as it slid across the cement, seeming deafening amidst the silence.
Like an ever-expanding splotch of black ink on a white canvas, I was the only one here. Every move I made, everything I did, served to signify my presence and enlarge my proverbial footprint. Every step I took was louder than usual, every breath seeming like the heave of some great giant in this dead labyrinth.
I didn't like it.
The harsh fluorescent light made the shadows in the halls darker than they should, like shadowy tendrils about to jump at me. Perfect for hiding a guy with a gun, or maybe even some asshole with a knife.
As the path began to branch into two, I went left, keeping myself close to the wall and behind cover.
I peeked.
There was nothing in the next section; just rows of tall glass windows covered by curtains. And at the end of it all, a glass door right beside the wall.
But there was a dead body on the floor. A single corpse dressed in black, with a garish red shirt peeking out of the man's collar as he lay face down on the cold concrete, blood pooling with him at the center.
The guy got shot from the looks of it. Three entry wounds on his back, and from the gunpowder residue on the coat that I saw as I started rummaging through his stuff, it seemed to have been point-blank.
What interested me though was what was in his hands.
A semi-automatic pistol. A Beretta M9, to be exact, and by the looks of it, it was the A3 model too; the gun still tan and with a few scratches here and there on the barrel.
Probably military contraband that was stolen by the Yakuza.
While it wasn't my preference, I could use it just fine.
I pried it from the man's cold hands, pulling the slide back and finding it still fully-loaded. From the looks of it, there was someone in the dungeon that had a gun. And I don't wanna get caught with my pants down and get shot because I don't got one.
So, after rummaging through the guy's pockets and finding a spare magazine, tossing it into my inventory for safekeeping I walked up to the door; gun in hand and pointed right at it.
Normally, I'd stack up, but there wasn't any point in doing that. Even a .22LR would rip right through glass like this like it was paper. Might as well just stand in front of the door and pray to everything that's holy I get to shoot first.
With the sights lined up on the top half of the door, I swung it open, scanning from left to right with my new pistol.
There was no one there, except for several overturned tables; paper and stationery scattered across the floor alongside what seemed to be the wreck of multiple computers.
"The fuck happened here?" I mumbled out, trying to see if there was something here I could use under the harsh white light.
Looking down, I grabbed one of the sheets on the floor.
It was an experiment log. It seemed important, but I didn't have the time to read all three pages of it. So, folding the piece of paper in half, I kept on looking for more info.
But I couldn't find anything else.
It did seem that whoever was here, they left in a hurry. Probably because the Sitri Peerage came knocking.
But I didn't think this place wasn't dangerous. Not at all.
My instincts were screaming at me to be careful. And how could they not?
Blood stained the floor and the walls. Casings of expended ammunition found their way into the cracked concrete. The mangled corpses, the occasional stray body part, it all pointed to the same conclusion I had the moment I stepped foot into this place.
There was something here.
Something incredibly dangerous.
So, the moment I heard shuffling out of the door, I immediately whirled around, ready to kill whatever was at the doorway from where I came before.
The Beretta barked twice after I pulled the trigger out of reflex, stopping the curious zombie that had come to investigate as it crumpled back into the floor; a bullet in its chest and its forehead.
Pretty damn good shooting if I do say so myself. I would've been even more proud if it didn't attract the attention of even more of these ghouls.
"Man, I suck." I whispered as the animalistic howls of what seemed like a dozen zombies echoed throughout the chambers of the abandoned laboratory.
People who've done a bit of training would always say that when it came to fighting multiple people, martial arts really couldn't help your ass that much.
And on some level, they were right.
What good was your standard one-two when you can get tackled into the floor as soon as you land it? What good was a roundhouse kick when you can get hit by a rabbit punch right in the back of your head as you get hit by a baseball bat right in the fucking face?
It was just basic math. Two was always more than one. Three was always more than two. And against a set of coordinated opponents, this concept of numerical superiority was something impossible to surmount if you look at fighting through this type of lens.
But it wasn't that simple. Fighting wasn't math.
Like most things, fighting was dependent on circumstance. There could be a lot of guys going after you, and normally, you'd either run, or just give up because there was no way you'd beat twelve people in a row like that.
But, what if they were forced to come at you in a straight line because of the narrow corridor?
What if they were all unarmed, but you weren't?
What if they were all dumb as hell?
In this scenario, I held Sen. I held the initiative. And with me having that shit, I can set the conditions as much as I want.
—As soon as the first zombie came around the corner, I pulled the trigger.
I didn't kill it. I didn't hit the head; just the torso.
But it stumbled and fell, tripping all the others that came after it, allowing me to shoot the four stationary targets that were their heads in quick succession.
Before the rest could come and overwhelm me, I was already charging ahead, kukri in hand and ready to hack whatever came my way into pieces.
Swing.
Chop.
Hack.
It didn't really take all that long for me to kill three zombies with my blade, considering they were tripping all over the place.
The feeling of bone cracking like peanut brittle and the strange sensation of brain matter literally being torn asunder traveled even through the rubber handle of the kukri, but this wasn't anything new.
I've done worse. I've dealt worse.
I could still keep going.
Six more to go.
—As the first zombie of the next batch came blundering in, I immediately lashed out with my feet, kicking him right in the solar plexus in order to push him back.
I couldn't stop moving. If I did, I'd get dogpiled, and I'd die.
So, I stepped back, withdrawing my kukri and lining up the sights to my Beretta, catching the thing right in the head with a bullet as it lunged with the fervor of a hunting hound.
The smell of gunpowder. The smell of blood. The feeling of aching joints and muscles set on fire by strenuous exercise.
It was like I never left. The gang, I mean.
I wasn't really some officer or anything like that. I wasn't some super cool assassin either.
I was more like a bodyguard. An enforcer in the early days, sure, but I was more of a bodyguard for the boss's family. Hired me after I did some time fighting amateur matches to make ends meet. I used to drive them around, take the kids to school and to soccer practice, all that shit.
That was the reason why I stayed.
But when the Colombians came into town, that all changed.
I had to kill. I had to kill the people threatening my source of income, especially when I had no other way to pay the bills. I had to keep on killing, and killing, and killing, until one day, I couldn't do it anymore.
I fucked up.
—I pushed on, blade in hand, catching another one right in the crown of his skull and sending bits of blood, bone, and sinew flying into the air in a brief spurt of pink mist.
Instinctively, I tried to pull it back. But it didn't budge.
I clicked my tongue, kicking the dead zombie away and stepping back; taking care not to trip on the corpses of the dead.
I fucked up.
Ideally, in this simple two-step sequence I had going on, I was supposed to keep a continuous flow of attacks. Always moving, always repositioning, and always filling in the gaps for my Beretta with the blade I had on my left.
Was it the most ideal combination? No. Not at all.
It was flashy and inefficient; something only Hollywood would do before the introduction of John Wick made everyone switch over to semi-realistic action.
I wouldn't have done this back in the day. But they were zombies, and I needed to conserve as much ammo as possible.
I had the endurance but not the strength to keep on going with just a fucking kukri. I had a gun, but I didn't have enough bullets to just kill them all.
And now, in my attempt to save my bullets, I've made things harder for myself.
—Glancing around, I saw the four remaining zombies run for me.
I gritted my teeth and took a two-handed grip on the pistol in my hands.
Aligning the sights took me a split second and pulling the trigger in rapid succession took me no time at all.
The first shot struck the lead right between the mouth, the second went right for its forehead, and the third took out an eye; dropping three in an instant.
I fucked up.
I didn't know if it was the nerves or the fear, but the last shot went too high; grazing the top of its head.
It swiped left and right with both arms, making me involuntarily take another step back, and as I did so, I stumbled on one of the fucking corpses lying on the floor. I managed to steady myself, but it fucking caught my hand with one of its animalistic attacks; sending my gun flying out of my hand.
"FUCK!"
At that point, I couldn't think of anything else. Expletives left my lips almost unconsciously as I continued to retreat from the enraged zombie.
This thing was different. It was fast. Strong too. I didn't know how it could see, smell or hear without its eyes, its nose and its ears, but its jaws made it look like the thing I had to deal with before; except more emaciated. It was a blank mask with a jaw, its teeth yellowed and stained with blood.
I had to focus.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Lunge.
All countered by me stepping back with every beat, level-changing and shifting to my right the moment it leapt to avoid its jaws.
Its patterns were simple enough, but the force behind its attacks felt as threatening as baseball bats swung at full force.
Left.
Right.
—I weaved right and left, the thing's claws narrowly missing my eyes.
Left.
—I dodged.
Right.
—I dodged.
Lunge.
—I dodged.
Backfist.
"Huh?" I could barely mutter a curse before I caught the zombie's knuckle right on the nose.
Blood gushed out of my nose as I stumbled back, but I tried to regain my bearings to defend myself.
Only to catch a fucking foot in the solar plexus.
Air rushed out of my lungs as I sputtered and coughed, flying back as I felt the joy of crashing down and sliding across the floor; my vision turning white from the impact as my head hit concrete.
"—You know…"
I opened my eyes, tracing the source of the voice to the thing that just kicked me.
I could see it now. Cursed Energy surrounded it like a cloak of darkness, cyan and black emanations trailing off into wispy forms that resembled tendrils of smoke surrounding it.
I chuckled weakly.
A Cursed Technique then. Something like Puppet Manipulation, but with corpses or something.
"I left behind one of these to catch you, but honestly, I didn't have much hope."
Judging from the voice, whoever was speaking through the zombie's mouth was a woman. Young too. Was it the girl from before? She honestly slipped my mind when she ran away.
"Well, you've caught me." I spoke, hoping to gain some time.
"I did!" The faceless thing I was fighting smiled. "We can celebrate with a ten-pull on DEM later with what I'm getting from you!"
"DEM?" I questioned weakly.
"Deus Ex Machina!" She responded cheerfully.
"Fuck." I muttered.
"Aww, well, don't hate yourself too much! You were pretty good! Like, what were you even doing back home? Were you some stunt guy? Military? You were like SCHWING, BANG, BANG, BANG!" The zombie grinned as it pantomimed the garbage the woman was saying; picking up the gun I dropped in the process.
There was another player. Were there incentives for PVP?
You know what, it didn't matter.
This was bad.
I wasn't immobilized, but I was pretty banged-up. I lost my gun and I lost my kukri. Even if all this player had was a single zombie for her Cursed Technique, her level of control over this and the maneuvers she attempted suggested she had a considerable amount of skill in hand-to-hand combat.
And with my gun in her hand? I was basically dead already.
I couldn't help but start spiraling. Thoughts of how I died, of how I've left behind my siblings, the things I never got to do, my regrets, it was almost overwhelming.
Again and again, I fuck up, fumbling the ball and causing bad shit to happen to the people I genuinely like.
Instead of leaving my fucking pride in the dirt and asking for help from our shitty relatives so I didn't have to be the breadwinner, I went and joined a gang.
Instead of doing my job as a bodyguard properly, I went and fought the fucking Cartel so they'd promote me and give me more cash and more shit.
Instead of owning up to my mistakes and turning myself in, I went and retired; using blood money to start a business and pay for the kids' tuition.
And even then, I couldn't stay away. I just had to take that phone call and drive that fucker around.
That was me.
That was Finn Tsukigawa.
A useless sack of shit.
—I stood up, ignoring the dull aching in my head.
"Oh? You're getting up for round two? You can always just stay there, y'know?"
"Well, it ain't like you'd be stopping there, would you?" I sighed, brushing the dirt from my clothes before looking at the guy.
"Well, obvs! Spawncamping ain't my style, but girl, I'd rather deal with a newbie like you before you get anything good." The thing pulled the slide back, inspecting the chamber for bullets.
I gulped, sweating as adrenaline coursed through my veins and made my heart beat like a war drum.
Twelve feet of distance separated me from the player.
Twelve feet separated me from life and death.
But, if I was gonna be honest, I've already died way before that.
When those kids died under my care, bombed to shit by an IED in the middle of downtown.
When my own family found out about what I did to pay for what they needed and disowned me.
I was dead already.
"Your name… it's Shinkawa, right?" I asked, subtly assuming the makings of the orthodox stance.
Left foot forward, right foot back. Yet my hands stayed at the sides.
"Well, yeah, I named my dungeon [Shinkawa's Laboratory] and everything! You can call me Mei though!" Shinkawa leveled the gun right at my head.
She went into a one-handed stance. I'd call it a competition shooting form, but she was holding it like a homie; gun tilted sideways with her right like she boutta do a music vid for Worldstar.
She could fight at CQC, but she wasn't familiar with guns.
Not that it mattered. She beat me in the draw, and she wouldn't miss at this range no matter how she held the thing.
I needed more time.
"You can make dungeons? That's crazy. How many pulls did that take you?" I asked.
The 9x19mm Parabellum round could travel from speeds that could range from 1,000 to 1,400 feet per second depending on the load and firearm. But in practicality, it didn't matter. I ain't outrunning bullets.
"OMG, it took forever! I got all sorts of stuff like rice bags, cerveza, watches, it was so annoying to find a place for them all!" Mei, or at least the body she was in, laughed.
There was one silver lining though.
I haven't changed magazines once when I was using it. That fucker's about to go dry. Two shots at most by my estimates. Maybe even one.
"I bet. Best I ever pulled was Italian at A." I responded, desperately hoping to keep the conversation going.
"Really?! Damn. You really do have bad luck!"
"Well, I'd say luck's something you make for yourself, y'know?"
"True! That's why I'm giving you time, y'know? Like, you're just so fascinating! I got you dead to rights, but here you are, still trying to think your way out of this. You got lil' old Mei here all excited!"
Mei smiled, the bloodstained teeth of her faceless vessel almost shining in the dimness of the laboratory.
I chuckled to myself.
She knew. Damn.
"I was actually scared when you went in here last time, y'know? I may know some stuff, but I don't like fighting directly. Plus, I haven't even set the stage yet, so I had to bail and pull out Shiro-chan before you found me!"
So she was the girl from before. And she was also controlling the monster from before.
It didn't matter. She wasn't here.
"Anyway, let's get on with this. I feel like an unskippable cutscene. Before I shoot you though, what's your name? Who are you?" She asked.
Who was I?
For a brief moment, I couldn't answer her. Every single role I had already died even before that car crash.
I wasn't an amateur fighter anymore.
I wasn't a thug.
I wasn't an older brother.
I wasn't a mechanic.
I wasn't anything.
But, maybe that was fine. In the end, I was still me. The values that led me there, the experiences I went through, the joy, the pain, the hate, the sadness, they were all still there.
I was dead, but I'm alive now.
My feelings towards this new life will always be complicated, but what part of life wasn't? In this second chance I was given, I just had to be me.
And that was enough.
—I moved; taking a step to the left.
"WHOA!"
She fired in response, the Beretta's sharp report briefly deafening me, yet I pushed on; weaving to the right with as much force and speed I could muster while I willed my Inventory into manifesting the weapon I knew most.
The whistle and pop created by the wake of the bullet as it passed right between my eyes meant I was still alive after going all-in on this shitty gamble.
Stage one was complete. Now, all I had to do was to gamble again.
—Click. The gun was empty.
As Mei's jaw hung open in befuddlement, no doubt flabbergasted as to how I threaded the fucking needle twice, I smiled as I drew Onikiri from my hip, pushing the blade out of its scabbard and swinging upwards for her outstretched wrist.
Cold steel sought resistance but found her arm wanting; the demon-slaying sword cutting through her arm and making her drop the weapon as it split open skin and muscle.
Originally devised for countering incoming swords swung from above, this was a revised variation of a common sword-drawing technique from the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū (柳生新陰流, Yagyū New Shadow Style); one of the oldest schools of swordsmanship in Japan.
I didn't finish college. I couldn't go pro doing mixed-martial arts. I was mediocre with a gun. I was mediocre with knives.
But even the boss said I was born in the wrong era with my affinity for the sword.
—Mei tried to step back, but that was dumb.
Contrary to popular belief, the technique didn't stop there. Traditional sword-drawing started with the draw and ended with the follow-up.
So, immediately, I swung down, catching her chest and slicing it open; cutting through from what would be the collarbone to her right set of ribs.
Blood spilled from the zombie's chest immediately as it stumbled back, giving me enough time to hold the weapon in Chudan-no-Kamae, also known as the middle guard; blade held at waist height and the tip pointed straight at the enemy.
"I'm Finn. Finn Tsukigawa." I said, smiling as I looked at the zombie.
"...you. You're absolutely crazy." Shinkawa blurted out.
"It worked, didn't it?"
If her vessel had eyes, I'd imagine her eyes would've been wide open.
Slowly, she began to laugh.
"It did. It fucking did." Mei said, holding her waist as she laughed even harder.
I could see it. The Cursed Energy animating the corpse that was her vessel was quickly dissipating, dwindling into motes of black and cyan.
I didn't cut the thing's head off yet, but was she canceling her technique?
Probably.
"I thought no one would be getting through the tutorial, but it looks like we do have a game after all." She grinned deviously, her smile freakishly wide even as her vessel dropped on its knees.
"If you want answers for why you're here, do the Missions. Get stronger. I wanna come at you with everything I got, and I can't do that if you can't even beat Shiro-chan."
I walked to her side, raising my blade to the heavens and preparing for a swing that would end it all.
"Got it. See ya."
—I swung, decapitating the zombie.
System Alert!
[Shinkawa's Hidden Laboratory] has been cleared!
Rewards
•1x Rare Treasure Box
A/N: Yo, it's been a while bros. Thanks for all the views and the comments while I was gone. Life got in the way for a bit, but I think things have been calming down so far, so I'll be updating a lot more frequently this time. Not gonna lie, this chapter took me a while to write. I couldn't gloss over Finn's feelings towards this whole deal, but at the same time, I really didn't wanna drag this introductory arc for too long.
But yeah! See you guys on the next one!