A man’s scream fills the entirety of the deep underground.
“Waaaaaaaah?!”
The echoed voice reverberates loudly.
Somehow, the incessant sound feels utterly pitiful.
The source of that sound is currently being forcefully dragged upward with a small hand grasping the back of his neck.
Thud!
The girl forcefully kicks against the concrete wall.
With clear footprints left behind, the girl disappears from sight.
Then, a massive shadow casts over her.
With a powerful explosion sound, a gigantic tentacle lunges forward.
“Is this even okay?! Those things are definitely out to get us!”
“It’s fine. Getting hit by something like that won’t kill you.”
“No, it will! For sure!”
Tentacles keep swooping down upon the girl climbing the silo wall.
Thud, thud, thud as flesh makes a brutal sound against the wall.
However, the girl is dodging those dangerous attacks left and right.
Cooper, caught in her grasp, is feeling like he’s on a roller coaster with the safety mechanisms and speed limit disabled.
Kaboom, kaboom, kaboom!
An acrobatic display of movement.
As the girl climbs the towering silo wall, massive tentacles rise behind her.
Intense tremors, jolts, and debris fall downwards.
The girl’s form rises past the core of that thing toward the ceiling, starting to ascend even higher.
Finally, when she reaches the ceiling,
Even though no passage was visible there,
She rockets upwards toward the dead end without any intention of slowing down—
Crash!
With the sound of something shattering powerfully,
She burst out, scattering debris and dust toward the ground.
“Ugh, urgh…!”
Cooper rolls onto the ground, half-thrown off.
He was just moving at a speed tough for a human body to handle, smashing through thick walls.
As a result, he was dizzy and covered in dust, looking completely ridiculous.
“Okay. We made it out safely.”
“Safely? Can’t you see he’s foaming at the mouth?”
The girl lightly brushes off the dust on her body.
With her attitude now feeling brazen, Cooper pointed to Eleanor next to him, who was still struggling to regain her balance.
While clutching his face, he stumbled as he tried to get up.
“Ah—”
He inadvertently looked up and lost his mind.
“——”
His gaze locks onto the darkness of the night sky.
Not even a tiny star was visible, but what reflected in his eyes was a clear sky.
Realizing he had finally escaped from that hellish place, he found himself simply staring up in shock.
“…Well, I somehow made it out.”
Even though it might sound funny to say that after struggling so hard.
Honestly, he had already half-given up on the hope of surviving this place.
Everyone inside the facility was already dead.
In such a situation, thinking he alone could escape was not optimistic of him.
He had assumed he would complete his mission and die, ending up with some meaningless medal or gravestone.
“…”
Glimpsing over at the girl beside him,
He couldn’t completely deny his part in their escape,
But ultimately, it was entirely thanks to the girl that they got out.
Though he still didn’t know her true identity, he thought at least out of gratitude for saving his life, he should quietly express thanks, when―
Gwoooooooor!
“Whoa…?!”
Suddenly, the ground began to shake.
With a startled groan, he lost his balance.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Once more, that cursed voice echoed.
The ground started to spew out monstrous forms.
The faces attached to those bodies emitted voices that could convey no meaning, only a beastly wail that spread across the ground.
“Damn, I completely forgot that was still around…!”
Tension returned to Cooper’s body.
Having let his guard down for being out for so long, they were still not entirely free from danger.
If they didn’t get far away from that, coming out would mean nothing.
“So, what’s the next plan?”
“Well, there’s no more plan. We have to escape now!”
Thus, he intended to grab the other two who had fainted and flee from this place.
However, unlike him, the girl stood still in her place, merely watching the flesh rising from below.
“Aren’t we in danger if that comes out? Shouldn’t we do something before it does?”
“Sure, but right now, we have no way or time! You don’t want to go back down there, do you?!”
He said in a hurried voice to the girl, who seemed unfazed by the crisis.
Of course, the girl’s words held plenty of truth.
That could be a bomb capable of setting the whole world ablaze.
If they were to abandon that and flee, it would start moving towards what they called a hometown.
Even if the Management Office learned about the situation then, it would be after many people had gotten caught in the blast zone.
Knowing that dying to self-destruct with that was the only way to minimize the damage, he felt severe pangs of conscience as a member of the Management Office.
But what of that?
He had escaped from a place he thought he would never make it out of.
The ground he thought he would never step on again.
Feeling that same sweetness of air like a diver reaching the surface before drowning,
For him, the fact that he was alive felt exceptionally special.
He wasn’t in a state of thinking about dying at all, at least for now.
“Even if we blow it up down below, unless it’s much deeper than before…”
Of course, even if he resolved to make a heroic sacrifice, he wouldn’t really be able to do anything.
After all, he had no means to blow it up.
To minimize the damage from it, ultimately the girl’s sacrifice became inevitable.
However, he wasn’t the type of guy who would ask his savior to sacrifice herself for humanity.
Even if he were somehow shameless enough to say such a thing,
Would the girl even be willing to listen to it?
“Hmm…”
The girl closed her eyes for a moment.
Retreat means disaster, advancing means doom.
The only method he mentioned wasn’t one that could be executed in normal circumstances.
In the middle of the worst situation possible,
The girl sunk into deep thought and finally said,
“So, we should blow it up from deep down.”
Just as she opened her eyes,
Muttering as if what she said was a brilliant solution,
She slowly began to walk toward the flesh rising from the underground.
“…Hey, wait a minute. Where do you think you’re going?”
He shifted his attention to the girl walking ahead.
Her sudden actions.
However, he still didn’t grasp the meaning behind them.
“I told you, I’m going to blow it up.”
“No, are you out of your mind?! Are you going back in there?!”
“Yes.”
“Do you even understand what that means—?”
Finally, as he realized what she was about to do,
He tried to call her back to stop her, but
The girl didn’t even consider turning back, striding directly toward the hole she emerged from—
“——”
Then, with an expression resembling ‘buh-bye,’ without the slightest hesitation,
She thrust herself downward.
