Chapter 40: Downloading...
Grey wasn’t exactly the sort of person one might claim to be... patient. But by so miracle, he found so today.
Maybe it was because he was so tired of fighting that the monotony of checking every nook and cranny of the cabin was more cathartic than anything else. But whatever it was, he didn’t give up.
After not finding the to in any of the obvious areas, he checked what was left of the witch’s corpse, even opening up panels in the quasi-ch suit she was wearing.
Grey didn’t know what else you could possibly call it. Though it took the form of a cabin instead of one of those Gundam-style badass giants he had seen in ani before, it functionally worked in the sa ways.
He didn’t find anything there either.
There was nothing on the witch’s corpse, nothing in the bookcases and armchairs of the cabin, no obvious hidden compartnts anywhere.
But Grey didn’t even show any frustration. Sowhere deep inside, he seed sure it had to be sowhere.
So many tis now, this new world he was thrust into had screwed him over. But he had learned if he just controlled what he could control, everything would fall into place just like it should.
No. More like he would force it to, even if he had to bend iron with his own hands.
That was when Grey started peeling off a piece of tal from the witch’s encasent and began to use it as a crowbar. He pulled the trim off from around the walls of the cabin and then started to peel back the wooden flooring one by one.
Grey had no idea that his actions had a certain octopus creature sweating bullets. But it was already too late.
When Grey was about 20% of the way through peeling the flooring up from the floor joists, he found it.
Grey blinked for a mont and then sank down to his knees. There, between a pair of floor joists and partially obscured by the remaining subfloor, there was a to.
It had a tal spine and corners that looked welded onto the worn black leather that ford the rest of it. At the center of the front cover of the to was a tallic jaw, bearing its canines.
For so reason, looking at it, Grey felt hints of danger, as though it might leap out and rip his throat out at any mont. Yet, that fear felt so very far away.
For a mont, Grey just sat on his knees, his body depleted, his mind blank.
Then he started to laugh.
Grey could feel a lump forming in his throat. It was just a mont away, a brief hint of weakness from overwhelming him. The tears seed right there.
But he refused.
Grey couldn’t rember the last ti he cried. Maybe he was too young to form mories back then. He liked to tell his grandpa that he wasn’t even sentient when his parents died, so that grief was all the old man’s own to deal with.
He really didn’t like being around grieving or crying people. So whenever the anniversary of his parents’ death ca around, he found whatever excuse he could to not be around his gramps.
What Grey realized in that mont, though, was that he had only kept looking not because he was too tired, and not because he had suddenly beco patient.
It was because it was the only thing he had left.
Everywhere he turned, there was a new obstacle, so new bullshit just waiting to knock him back down.
As defiant as he was, he was tired of it. He had never dealt with such frustration in his life, such lack of control.
Seeing the to just sitting there—just the fact it was really there, that it really existed—filled him with such an overwhelming sense of relief that he almost broke.
He almost showed weakness.
BANG.
Grey slamd a fist into the flooring. The skin at his knuckles split and his blood flowed.
After a deep breath, he slapped his face with both palms hard, his eyes radiating with a nacing bloody light.
This was all he needed. He could succeed here. So long as there were so guardrails, so rules that were actually followed and not bent on a careless whim...
He could do this.
He didn’t need it to be completely fair.
Just give him a 10% chance. No, 5%.
’Just 1% is enough.’
Grey reached down and gripped the to, pulling it up.
—
Operation: Second Wind of the chanical Jaw Lineage
Quest Rank: Rare
Mission Type: Retrieval
Objective: Completed
Reward: Path of the chanical Jaw
—
Grey’s hair blew back as he heard a roar echo through his ears. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the eye or not, but the tallic jaw on the to’s cover unhinged, lunging at him.
Grey only had the ti to blink, but when he could finally see once more, the to had gone back to normal and the light it was radiating earlier was likewise gone.
The to rested in his palms, heavy and feeling... substantial. It was hard to describe it as anything else. It was like it had a presence and refused to be forgotten.
Unable to contain himself, Grey opened the front cover.
He wasn’t 100% sure what he was going to find, but if he was correct, this was so sort of ch-related lineage. Logically, this to might teach him exactly what he had been hoping to learn from the gno technician in the first place.
In that case, he wouldn’t have to peg all his hopes on the city’s rules cooperating with him.
Grey felt a tingling sensation when he touched the first page, and he found the next pages stuck together, as though it refused to allow him to go any further.
’This sensation is...’
Grey understood imdiately and shifted the Nexis Suit on his forearm until it slid into just the right place.
After squinting hard, Grey just barely made out the first words that popped onto his notification screen.
—
[Welco, descendant of the chanical Jaw]
—
[Downloading Path of the chanical Jaw...]
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