Ch.227Outside. The Faceless Fixer’s Closing Ceremony (5)

After Aktion left upon seeing Polyphemus’s corpse, the other two fixers also managed to reach their destination. They observed Polyphemus’s melted chest and the “warning” left by Ortes.

After dismantling and analyzing each defensive mechanism in the laboratory—though they couldn’t identify its exact nature, interpreting it as anything other than an attack directed at intruders from specific facilities would have been strange—they left a brief message.

That besides these attacks, there were also “unpredictable attacks fired irregularly.”

One incomprehensible statement calmly delivered after completely dismantling and analyzing all the defensive mechanisms’ operations. What could this mean other than Ortes’s own ambush?

The two fixers examined Polyphemus’s corpse again. If Polyphemus had died in some fierce battle, there should have been signs of resistance.

No matter how many times they checked, there were no separate external wounds on Polyphemus’s body. Well, there were numerous minor injuries all over his body—the kind one typically sustains when breaking through an extradimensional border zone—but no traces of “combat.”

This evidenced that Polyphemus had died with all his defenses neutralized by a single attack.

“That crazy bastard…”

It was Ortes’s warning. Don’t dare approach this laboratory.

What shocked the two fixers wasn’t Ortes’s skill. Whether that cryptic man who claimed to know nothing about magic was actually a magician rivaling the Ten Towers’ top disciples or had secretly obtained some terrifying artifact, it was clear that the madman could easily kill someone if he wanted to.

But the problem was who was behind this request.

‘Is he trying to steal the Ten Towers’ research?’

Ortes. Such an act was possible for that crazy doomsday believer. The fixers quietly discussed how to save their own lives.

If research was leaked, the Ten Towers would undoubtedly send a pursuit team. They would try to silence everyone involved in this request.

“Could the two of us possibly kill Ortes?”

“You should ask something else. Whether we can not only kill Ortes but also complete the Ten Towers’ request. Do you think they’ll pay us properly if we fail to complete the mission?”

“What about old man Aktion?”

“There were traces of someone lingering near Polyphemus. He clearly decided to bail after seeing that state.”

If the three fixers, including Aktion, were to face Ortes in combat, they might have had some chance of winning. That is, the possibility of limiting casualties to one person and completing the Ten Towers’ request.

But old man Aktion had very promptly withdrawn.

“…This won’t work.”

The two fixers clicked their tongues. Ortes was ahead, and the Ten Towers behind. Fortunately, they had prepared equipment that would allow them to survive for quite a long time in anticipation of a long expedition.

“Let’s create fake corpses and escape. The old man probably left some evidence of his own death too.”

They probably wouldn’t be able to return to the frontier city for several years. But that was better than being found as victims of Ortes’s sadistic murder or being silenced by the Ten Towers and disappearing forever.

The two fixers prepared fake corpses so that when the Ten Towers later investigated the scene, they would conclude that the fixers had failed. Then they prepared to escape to another city by widely bypassing the extradimensional border zone.

Around that time, Ortes was focused on exploring the inside of the laboratory.

“The attacks don’t stop even inside the facility. No. Rather, they’re becoming more frequent than outside…”

Ortes wrote down analyses of new patterns at every noticeable location. No matter how he looked at it, the difficulty of this request was not something he could handle alone.

He had parted with Polyphemus due to an unfortunate accident, but fortunately, there were three others left.

It was clear that among the remaining fixers, he was the first to enter the laboratory. If he left such clear clues for those coming after him, it would give the other fixers a sense of trust.

‘I don’t even expect active cooperation.’

The interior of this laboratory was quite vast. Not simply that the facility and its grounds were large, but that the space was expanded beyond physical limitations. Whether this was due to the influence of extradimensional magical power or because the barriers installed inside the laboratory had gone berserk, he couldn’t distinguish even with his eyes.

‘If we could just divide the exploration areas, we could cut the time in half.’

Ortes left markers while waiting for those coming after him to join up.

But ironically, those followers never came inside and instead fled, making this a silent tragedy.

***

“Damn it!”

Ortes cursed without restraint. The interior of the laboratory was gradually becoming more grotesquely distorted.

What had originally been sporadic beam attacks were now transforming into forms that could hardly be called beams anymore.

For instance, the door in front of him. Opening it revealed what appeared to be an ordinary room. Except for papers scattered in a mess and a considerable amount of bloodstains making it somewhat chaotic.

But all of that was an illusion. It was merely disguised as a normal room by magic interfering with the visible light spectrum; in reality, it was a hell of extreme heat that would melt and eliminate anything it touched.

“How is the heat not felt?”

More precisely, the heat of the room made of light only began to materialize the moment the door was opened.

Ortes was looking beyond the closed door with his eyes. What had been an ordinary room like a holographic image until the door opened suddenly rushed in with terrifying heat as soon as the door was opened, attempting to melt Ortes’s body.

Ortes threw himself away without even closing the door. The heat disappeared as the strange door melted away completely along with the wall.

It was bewildering. Without his “eyes,” he would have died dozens of times over. It had been a long time since he felt this emotion after falling into this damned magical power disparity society.

‘After receiving guidance from old man Hector, I haven’t really felt the threat of death for a while…’

This place was different. It was truly dangerous.

Ortes decided to turn back. He wanted to go home. But one needs to be alive to go home.

‘The client said they would reward me somewhat even if I just brought back route data to the interior, not just the complete return of research materials. If I hand over the beam attack pattern data, to some extent—’

It was at that moment, while calculating his negotiation leverage with the client.

Ortes realized that the passage he had entered through had been completely replaced by a different space. Thanks to his “eyes,” he could tell without turning around.

“What the hell…”

Even the most dangerous extradimensional ruins didn’t have spatial replacement phenomena occur so suddenly without warning. At this moment, Ortes set his sole objective as survival.

‘Forget about laboratory internal data; one wrong move and I’ll die without even leaving bones behind.’

He opened his eyes wide. It was to recognize the nature of his surroundings.

And at that very moment, countless branches of death descended upon him.

It was death by crushing, death by burning, and death by thirst. The very space where Ortes was located attacked with murderous intent. It looked like an exhibition of final deaths, collecting all the ways humans could die when reaching the end of their fate.

Fortunately, the space of final death was a branch of magic. Ortes couldn’t even guess what kind of magic could create such a miracle, but he was confident he could survive somehow if the attack against him was magic.

The space transformed into burning heat, into a white dwarf star of ultra-high density generating its own intense gravity, into a sea of man-eating plants that drained moisture—it swirled around to make the intruder experience a variety of deaths.

Ortes grafted man-eating plants with flames, and forced the tidal waves rushing at him to subside by colliding the dwarf star’s gravitational pull with them. However, despite Ortes’s desperate struggle, the survival zone he could secure was just a few steps around him.

Normally, twisting magical formulas to this extent would break the entire spell. But the space of final death, as persistent as if trying to make the intruder experience every possible human death, continuously changed and targeted Ortes.

‘Where on earth should I go?’

The moment he frantically turned his head.

Light, generated faster than perception, grazed past him. His eyes showed the information, but his brain processed it a beat too slow. An attack in a completely defenseless state. Avoiding it was pure luck.

The killing beam pierced through where his face had been just moments before.

‘…I almost died.’

His vision turned red. It was a warning that bombardment of the killing beam would continue toward this position. Ortes sprinted to survive.

A merciless frenzy of light occupied his entire field of vision. If Ortes’s eyes had been ordinary eyeballs, he might have been blinded by the sheer luminosity—a fatal brightness.

The beams of light flew in like meteor showers. Trajectories resembling star trails, one after another. Beautiful to look at, but the results were lethal. Ortes was caught between the space filled with murderous intent and the straightforward killing beams.

“Huh?”

His eyes caught something odd. Ortes had thought the beam fire was aimed at him. A drive hunt—pushing him into a space creating diverse deaths and then confirming the kill with killing beams.

But the result was the opposite of his expectation. The beams of light consumed the exhibition of final death, collapsing its formula.

However, even the barrage of killing beams couldn’t finish off the space of final death. The space that had continuously regenerated despite Ortes’s formula grafting activated once again. Between the kaleidoscope-like shattered void, countless deaths shone through. Ortes swallowed his breath.

‘If I stay in that space any longer, I’ll die.’

This was a plain certainty. Although his eyes could immediately read the changes in the space of final death, his body couldn’t keep up with the information his eyes provided.

He didn’t know who—or what—was firing those killing beams from inside.

But rather than facing a slow but certain death in the space of final death, it was Ortes’s nature to struggle for survival amidst unknown dangers.

He ran toward the source of the light.