Chapter Thirty-One: The Sudden Attack

"Boom!!"

Before Corona could finish speaking, a thunderous crash exploded through the air. The tightly locked iron door began to bulge inward. Accompanied by an ear-splitting creak, deep cracks tore through the heavy metal. Whatever was on the other side was clearly hostile.

"Prepare to engage."

Ferrin shoved the last piece of steak into his mouth. With the leisure of a gentleman at afternoon tea, he accepted a cup from Derin and took a sip, even as he calmly issued his command. Unlike his relaxed demeanor, the three sisters were visibly tense. Chris, ever taciturn, set her food aside, grabbed the shotgun at her side, and moved swiftly into position. Corona hesitated, casting a regretful look at her steak before carefully wrapping it up and clutching her pistol as she moved closer.

Eluca, however, was racked with indecision. She’d barely touched her meal—her appetite spoiled by witnessing Ferrin’s dissection earlier. Now, with her stomach growling in protest, she was the only one who hadn’t eaten a bite. Torn, Eluca finally darted over to her plate, snatched up a piece of steak as though it were poisoned, stuffed it into her mouth, and then raised her laser rifle, peering toward the door from behind cover.

At that moment, Ferrin and his companions were holed up in a corner storeroom on the fifth floor—originally used to house seldom-needed office supplies, now converted to their temporary camp. The only exit was a reinforced security door facing the corridor. When Ferrin had chosen this spot, the sisters protested: if monsters cornered them here, there would be no escape…

And now, it seemed, their fears had come true.

"Boom!!"

Another crash shook the air. The security door shattered, the impact so violent that the makeshift barricade of furniture behind it screeched across the floor, sliding backward. Ferrin put aside his teacup and, like a conductor cueing an orchestra, traced a graceful gesture in the air.

"Open fire."

Bang bang bang bang—!

At his command, Eluca’s "Fierce Firepower" erupted. With a storm of gunfire, a relentless barrage sealed off the corridor. The monsters surging in barely had time to react before being shredded by the hail of bullets.

"Die, die, die!!"

Eluca squeezed the trigger, screaming in abandon. The pressure from earlier now found release in this desperate carnage. Under her control, the laser rifle unleashed a torrent of firepower on par with a Vulcan cannon. The monsters outside, for the moment, could not break through. Fortunately, these attackers seemed to be simple zombies—not the more troublesome mutant types. Otherwise, things would be far worse.

Not that the situation was exactly good as it was.

"Yuri."

"Ah, yes, Commander," Corona stammered, her body trembling as she clutched her energy pistol, startled by Ferrin’s voice. She turned quickly to look at him, not far away.

"Can you sense where these things are coming from?"

"Yes, Commander… um… these creatures just appeared at the end of the corridor. I swear, I didn’t sense anything unusual before—they seemed to materialize out of thin air. Commander, I—"

"I understand. It seems our mysterious foe finally lost patience," Ferrin interrupted, unconcerned by her anxious explanation. Though he hadn’t seen exactly what happened, it took little deduction to guess: if the boss could manipulate the building’s spaces, it would make sense to summon monsters from other floors as reinforcements. What’s more, Ferrin suspected the boss wasn’t actually that powerful. If it could control these creatures—energy leeches, zombies, mutants—and coordinate them, Ferrin’s group would have been forced to retreat long ago.

But the enemy hadn’t done so. Against Ferrin and his team, it had always acted passively—limiting itself to leading them around, never acting directly. This was not the behavior of some omnipotent being capable of warping space at will.

All this was conjecture, of course. Yet the sudden zombie assault confirmed Ferrin’s suspicions. He and Derin had already swept the fourth and fifth floors clean; no enemies remained. The monsters had to have come from elsewhere. With the floors sealed off from each other, their sudden appearance spoke volumes about the mastermind’s methods.

"Well then, I’ll leave this to you. Do your best to survive."

"Huh?"

Eluca, still firing furiously, and Chris, supporting her, both froze and turned instinctively to glance at Ferrin. This was a storeroom at the end of the fifth floor—the only door now blocked by zombies. If Ferrin meant to leave, where could he possibly go?

Ferrin simply smiled, picking up his wide-brimmed hat and adjusting it atop his head. His left hand, fully healed under Derin’s care, was still a little stiff, but otherwise fine. He glanced at the system time glowing at the edge of his vision.

It was now eleven fifty-five and thirty seconds.

"Now, I have my own mission to complete. Good luck—don’t die here."

As he spoke, Ferrin pressed down the brim of his hat, nodding to the three sisters. Then, raising his hand, a flash of surgical steel sliced a rectangular hole in the ceiling above.

Before Chris and Eluca could react, Ferrin leaped up like a ghost, vanishing through the opening. Derin lifted her skirts, offered a polite curtsey to the three, and followed after.

…

Only after the two vanished did Eluca come to her senses. She stared blankly at the hole, then turned to look at Chris and Corona.

"Um… did the Commander just abandon us?"

"Commander said… we’re to hold this position…" Corona murmured anxiously, clutching her pistol.

"That’s the same thing!" Eluca exploded.

Bang bang bang bang—!

Fueled by frustration, her gunfire intensified, tearing the zombies apart with reckless abandon. The corpses were blasted back, shattered, pulverized into dust beneath the onslaught. Eluca poured all her fury into the horde before her—as if they were the Commander himself.

"I finally understand—our Commander is a complete maniac!!"