Chapter 172: Real Men Go Down... |
"Huff, puff... Ah..."
A young girl ran desperately down a corridor illuminated only by dim lighting. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the agonizing screams of her parents still echoed in her ears.
"Hurry, leave now! Don't worry about us!"
"Even if it's just you..."
"Father, Mother..."
The girl murmured under her breath, calling out for her parents, but her feet never stopped. She had to leave this place—this place consumed by death and evil!
"Aah!"
Turning a corner, the girl slammed face-first into a dark figure ahead, crying out as she tumbled to the ground. When she looked up, she saw several miners dressed in tattered clothes. Normally, they would have greeted her cheerfully or paused to chat. But now, they merely stared down at her in silence, their eyes burning with cruelty and unrestrained, beastly desire.
"No, no, stay back..."
"Aaaaaah!!"
The girl shrieked, thrusting her hands out, but her feeble struggles made no difference. Soon, her frantic thrashing and screams faded into the sickening sounds of tearing flesh and swallowing, until she was gone completely.
"...A plague, an uprising?"
Levi narrowed his eyes as he read the contents of the confidential document. According to the report, a mysterious and bizarre plague had broken out in the Rune Mining Area.
Those infected became violently enraged, highly aggressive, and would actively assault others. Furthermore, these infected individuals gained superhuman physical power, rendering ordinary suppression tactics useless against them.
The entire Rune Mining Area was currently under total lockdown, placed on a level-one state of alert. Levi's mission was to determine whether this plague was a natural phenomenon or a supernatural occurrence.
It was no wonder they had sought out Levi. Based on the description of the infected, he immediately thought of the two ghouls from the Vampire incident. Clearly, the authorities were also worried that a similar monster might be at the root of the trouble. As expected, this was an emergency.
Levi handed the confidential document back to the captain. The captain pulled out a match, struck it, and dropped the paper into a nearby incinerator. Moments later, the document was reduced to a pile of black ash.
"I'm going to rest for a while. Call me when we arrive."
"Understood. I have prepared a room for you. We will arrive at the target location in three hours."
Led by a soldier, Levi arrived at the lounge of the reconnaissance airship. He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and began recalling what he had read about the Rune Mining Area in his mental library.
As everyone knew, the steam machinery of this world was driven by a type of ore called coal essence. Ultimately, coal essence was still a form of coal, naturally extracted from deep underground. The Rune Mining Area was the primary coal essence production zone for the Empire. It could be said that nearly half of the Empire's coal essence originated there.
The Rune Mining Area itself was also quite extraordinary. Mining naturally meant digging downward, but the scale of the Rune Mining Area was far more complex than just a simple deep hole. From the surface, it looked like a colossal, cone-shaped cavern. According to the Empire's records for this year, its excavation depth approached nearly three thousand meters, and its width was roughly equal to that of an entire city.
In fact, the Rune Mining Area itself was a city built inside a mining abyss. Levi had read in the Empire's travelogues that the entire pit was divided into hundreds of layers. The closer one was to the surface, the higher their social status, while those further down occupied the lowest rungs of society. Currently, one-tenth of the population lived in layers 1 through 10 near the surface.
The rest were packed into the lower sections of the abyss. Some people were born in those dark, sunless tunnels, worked there their entire lives, and remained there until they died.
No wonder the captain had confidently stated that the Rune Mining Area was completely locked down. At its core, it was just a super-sized mine shaft. As long as the surface was secured to prevent anyone from escaping, they could easily guarantee that the outbreak wouldn't leak to the outside world. However, this also meant that any trouble occurring inside the Rune Mining Area would be a massive headache.
What exactly could the underlying issue be? Levi couldn't say for certain.
Even in the disaster movies he had watched before his transmigration, a situation like this could stem from many different causes. From a supernatural perspective, perhaps they had unearthed a cursed tomb and contracted an ancient curse. From a scientific perspective, maybe they had dug up something prehistoric and caught an ancient virus. Both were entirely possible.
The only thing that gave Levi peace of mind was that he wasn't afraid of infection. No, it wasn't that he was immune to infection, but rather that his experience of receiving injuries was different from that of regular people.
As noted before, Levi had realized that injuries sustained in this world didn't actually reduce his health point values; instead, they directly deducted his lifespan. A prime example was when Katie had punched away five days of his life force, and the same applied to illnesses.
If he caught what felt like a cold, exhibiting all the symptoms of a cold, his body would instantly heal itself at the cost of a few days of his life force. Similarly, during the battle at the Imperial Bridge, Levi had been grazed by the machine gun. The wound healed instantly, but the price paid was a reduction of several hours from his lifespan.
From this perspective, the amount of life force deducted seemed to correspond to the time required from initial injury to full recovery, directly expending his life force to keep his body in peak condition.
For Levi, he actually preferred it this way. Before transmigrating, he had spent several years confined to a hospital bed, and that agonizing existence was truly miserable. If someone had offered the past Levi the chance to spend all his remaining lifespan just to enjoy one day of perfect health without any pain or illness, doing whatever he pleased, he would have accepted it gladly even if he died the very next day. Being sick was, after all, the ultimate torment.
Looking at it this way, even if Levi caught the plague here, the worst-case scenario would simply be a deduction of life force rather than being left half-dead. He had accumulated a substantial amount of lifespan from completing so many previous missions anyway, so losing a little bit didn't scare him.
Oh, right, speaking of missions...
Levi gave a silent wave of his hand, and a treasure chest materialized before him. Just like before, because the attack on the Central Data Tower fell under ordinary criminal cases rather than supernatural ones, the system hadn't issued a specific mission. It had merely rewarded him with a chest upon the case's resolution, as always.
However, Levi didn't open it immediately this time. Who knew what would be inside? Should he save it for later, or open it now?
Levi stared at the chest. It gave him the sensation of a single-pull gacha in a mobile game; nobody could predict what would drop. The Punisher revolver he had pulled previously was quite excellent, but the set of clothes before that... actually, that outfit wasn't too bad either. Well, it would be better to wait until he arrived at the location and assess the situation first.
With that thought, Levi dismissed the chest, closed his eyes, and began to rest. Given the current circumstances, the situation in the Rune Mining Area could not be ignored. Once he arrived, there might not be any time left for sleep.
After a brief nap, Levi was woken up again and escorted to the command bridge. The sky outside was still dark, but the scene unfolding before him nonetheless left Levi utterly astonished.
"Well, well. This is truly impressive."
Standing on the bridge and looking out through the porthole, Levi couldn't help but marvel. Although he had read descriptions in the Empire's travelogues, only by seeing it with his own eyes could he comprehend just how exaggerated it was. Looking down from the sky, a gargantuan abyss marked the landscape. Countless searchlights illuminated the cavity from all directions, rendering it as bright as day and allowing Levi to clearly see its intricate structure.
Under the brilliant light, the pathways running along the edges of the cavern walls were clearly visible. To use an analogy, it looked like an ice cream cone buried in the earth without the ice cream scoops, except magnified tens of millions of times. Massive steel frameworks and elevators lined both sides, and near the surface, clusters of chimneys were actively venting thick plumes of white steam.
In a way, this was a completely different kind of spectacular compared to the Steel City. This was especially true when one realized that this monumental pit had been excavated by human hands from scratch. How should he put it? No wonder humanity in this era was so obsessed with constructing grand wonders.
Levi could perfectly understand why the people of this age possessed such boundless confidence. Steam machinery was typically massive, particularly when greater power output was required. Whether it was the Central Data Tower he had seen in the Steel City, the Arctic Star, the aerial battleships, or the Rune Mining Area before him, looking at them inspired a surge of heroic pride.
If humanity could construct things of this scale, what could possibly stop them? There was no denying that this kind of visual impact left the deepest impression.
Quantity is quality, and bigger is better. Simple and direct—how marvelous.
By contrast, things like the CPUs from Levi's previous era were certainly important, but concepts like two-nanometer or five-nanometer technology were generally beyond the average person's comprehension. Besides, a chip the size of a fingernail could hardly convey any sense of visual impact. A device whose performance had to be announced through official press releases simply couldn't compare to something that could be fully appreciated at a single glance.
Shortly after, the reconnaissance airship touched down on the landing pad at the edge of the mining area. However, the vessel didn't fully dock. Just like before, the hatch opened while hovering close to the ground, and Levi was lowered down via a rope. Seeing this, it was likely part of the strict quarantine protocols. One had to admit the Empire was remarkably efficient in this regard.
Standing alone on the deserted landing pad, Levi glanced left and right. Perhaps because the searchlights were excessively piercing, the surrounding shadows felt extraordinarily deep. Dozens of fully armed, tense-faced soldiers stood guard on both sides of the pad. Judging by the tight grips on their weapons, the situation here was clearly severe.
"Mr. Levi... long time no see..."
Right then, Levi saw a figure approaching. She wore a nun's habit, looking exactly the same as before.
"Long time no see, Miss Elizabeth."
Levi nodded to Elizabeth, and she lowered her head in return.
"The situation is urgent. Let us talk as we walk."
As she spoke, Elizabeth turned and walked toward the exit, with Levi falling into step beside her.
"A few days ago, we learned that an infectious disease had begun spreading through the Rune Mining Area. Initially, the authorities believed it to be a common ailment, but its contagiousness and mortality rate proved unexpectedly high. The infected develop a high fever within forty-eight hours, lose consciousness, and then perish."
Elizabeth's voice remained as calm as ever, but it carried a hint of sorrow.
"Furthermore, after death is confirmed, these deceased individuals reanimate. They then launch indiscriminate attacks on others like wild beasts, and anyone attacked by them turns into one of them as well..."
Well, well, a full-blown zombie apocalypse. Levi's lip twitched. He wanted to mock the situation but didn't know where to start.
"What's the current status?"
"The entire Rune Mining Area has been completely sealed off. All mine carts and elevators have ceased operations, and transportation between individual shafts has been entirely cut. Communication below the 80th layer is completely severed, cases have begun appearing starting from the 10th layer, and layers 1 through 9 are currently relatively stable."
Saying this, Elizabeth turned her head to look at Levi.
"We requested your presence this time, Mr. Levi, hoping to utilize your strength."
"What do you need me to do?"
"Based on our investigation, we believe the initial outbreak originated from the bottom layers and spread upward. The problem is that we currently cannot determine the source of the plague or the patient zero. We previously dispatched a Special Mobile Team deep into the bottom of the shafts, but... we lost contact with them."
"We suspect this might not be a simple case of a viral outbreak."
"Meaning you suspect supernatural forces are involved?"
"The dead returning to life should qualify as a highly supernatural event, wouldn't you say?"
"Well, when you put it that way..."
To the people of this era, that might be true, but for Levi, a biohazard contamination triggering a zombie apocalypse was a standard trope. Still, this meant... a real man had to go down a hundred layers? Forget it, this kind of development was standard fare anyway.
"I understand."
Levi pondered for a moment and nodded.
"First, let me get prepared."