Daigo carried me into one of the goblin's partially destroyed, smoky shelters.
He made me rest carefully against the rough, earthen wall, then slumped down beside me, breathing hard.
After unknown hours of tense, uneasy silence, Daigo finally stood up and said he wanted to go and check if they were still fighting outside, if the coast was clear.
Before he left, he made sure to find something heavy, a large chunk of fallen debris, to block the narrow entrance into the shelter, just in case some stray goblins happened to show up while he was gone.
I just sat there, slumped against the wall, with a complete, utter lack of energy, my limbs feeling like lead.
And before I even knew it, I must have dozed off, slipping into an exhausted unconsciousness.
"Shitsubo…. Shitsubo, wake up, man…" I could vaguely hear someone say, their voice distant and muffled.
At the same time, I also felt someone's palm mild aggressively, insistently, tapping my shoulder.
I wanted to just ignore all that, to sink back into and continue this blissful, empty resting, when I suddenly, with a jolt, remembered where the hell I was.
"Easy now…easy, man. You're alright," Daigo said calmly, his voice reassuring, as I quickly forced my eyes to widen and turning my head around to figure out what was happening, my heart pounding.
"Chill, dude. You were just asleep, and I think they have diced all the Aggressors in here. It looks safe enough for us to move out," Daigo said calmly to me, his face showing relief.
"How long… how long was I asleep?" I asked, my voice a very weak, raspy croak, as I tried to push myself to stand up but found I still couldn't quite manage it.
"Man, you were out cold for a good while. Immediately after I returned from my first scouting run outside, I met you completely passed out, and that was already hours ago," Daigo said, shaking his head.
"Shit," I commented weakly, a fresh wave of unease washing over me.
Because sleeping this deeply, this vulnerably, here in a fucking Gate, is more than just stupidly dropping my guard.
I could have been easily killed without even knowin' what the fuck was killing me.
Just imagine getting your throat slit, or being beaten or stabbed to death, all while you peacefully sleep.
That's a truly fuckin' whack way of dying, if you ask me.
"Well, at least you can talk now, so that's something. Do you have any idea what those goblins actually did to you back there?" he asked, his brow furrowed with concern.
"I don't fuckin' know, man… but please, can we just get out of here first? I really hate being like this, especially inside a Gate," I pleaded to Daigo, my voice still weak.
We will definitely have to talk about this more later, outside, where it is considerably less fuckin' dangerous.
Daigo, without another word, carefully maneuvered me onto his back, carrying me like a damn baby, and then started to trek with grim determination back through the dense, alien jungle, retracing our steps until we finally reached the shimmering, welcome exit of the Gate.
When we reached there, we saw a flurry of organized activity.
Some people, dressed head-to-toe in white biohazard suits, were already busy dissecting the various Aggressors' bodies that littered the area, carefully pulling out their valuable arcane-cores.
While others, who looked like the Tower's private security contractor for earlier, were efficiently carrying heavy trunks of equipment, and also hauling away numerous dead Zipper-Spine, Goblin and other Aggressor bodies.
The people in the biohazard suits were even carefully putting some of the more intact dead Aggressors into large, transparent tube-containers that were already filled with either a strange pink or an equally weird green liquid.
"Hey, you two! How the hell did you get back here?" a private contractor, his face obscured by a bulky gas mask, suddenly popped out of nowhere and asked us, his voice muffled.
"We never actually left this shithole. Or, to be more exact, we were fuckin' left behind by some fuck-face called Taiko, and his crew" Daigo said indifferently to the contractor, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his tone.
"What do you mean, left behind…" the contractor started to ask, but he was then cut short by another fucker that also seemed to pop out of nowhere, this one in a full biohazard suit.
"What is all this then? Who let these two through…? I thought this entire raid was officially over and cleared since 1 AM this goddamn morning?!" a guy in a pristine biohazard suit asked, his voice sharp with irritation and suspicion.
"Doctor, please go back to your work. I will handle this situation here," the contractor said, shifting his gaze pointedly from us to the guy in the biohazard suit.
"Handle it? Does this look like you can adequately handle anything right now?" the biohazard suit guy retorted, rudely pointing a gloved finger directly at us, at our sorry state.
"Hey, ass-wipe! You keep fuckin' pointing that finger at me like that, and you will find it fuckin' broken and jammed in your ass" Daigo snarled with sudden irritation at the guy in the biohazard suit, his own temper flaring.
"You!" the contractor then quickly pointed at Daigo, his voice firm, and continued, "…Just shut the fuck up and follow me, both of you."
Then, he looked back at the other guy in the suit and said, his voice now a low warning, "And Doctor, you go back to your work now, and please don't try to tell me how to do my goddamn job, alright?"
The doctor, surprisingly, left without arguing any further, just gave us one last disgusted look and walked away.
We then followed the contractor silently outside the main Gate area.
The contractor took us directly to the same man in the expensive suit, the recruiter from earlier.
"Sir, I found these two back inside the Gate just now, and they claim that Taiko-san and his team left them behind," the contractor reported dutifully.
"Of course, he fuckin' did. That figures. What the hell happened to him?" the man in the suit asked, his gaze sharp, pointing dismissively at me and my obviously weakened condition.
"Those goblins apparently did something to him, sir. He's out of it," Daigo responded quickly, shouldering the explanation.
"Alright, then. Just take them over to where they will get paid their dues," the man in the suit said curtly to the contractor, showing absolutely no further interest in what might have actually happened to me, or my current well-being.
The contractor then took us over to a young lady who was sitting patiently at the back of an open minivan, one that was hooked up with a lot of sophisticated-looking computers and stacks of neatly organized files.
"Boss said you should give these two their fee. They went in with Taiko's team earlier," the contractor briefly explained to the woman.
She nodded, then opened a small, reinforced safe that was bolted down beside her, and then counted out and handed us our money.
Daigo quickly took the offered money and stuffed it unceremoniously into his pocket.
Then, the contractor briefly told us how to get back to the abandoned Taisho-shopping mall from our current location, and after that, we were both curtly told to leave the secured area immediately.
Since we couldn't possibly afford to pay for any kind of transport all the way back to the mall, especially not in my current state, Daigo once again had to carry me on his tired back for that entire, long journey.
By the time we finally got back there, hours later, Daigo was completely soaked in his own sweat and panting hard from the exertion.
I'd told him to drop me down several times along the way, weakly saying I could probably manage to walk on my own for a bit, but he'd stubbornly, loyally, refused every single time.
He finally took us back to our usual, relatively safe spot deep within the abandoned mall and gently placed me down on the dusty floor.
I then dragged my butt over to rest my aching back against a broken, overturned desk that was lying on its side.
"Man, I checked your body thoroughly back there in the Gate, but I didn't see any obvious new wounds on you. Do you think it's possible that one of those Hobgoblins managed to cast some kinda weird juju or somethin' on you?" Daigo asked, his face still showing concern.
But he didn't even allow me a chance to respond before he quickly added another statement, thinking aloud, "Those fuckers definitely did have some wicked, powerful magic, that's for sure. They are supposedly only E-Grade, yet they could somehow regenerate fucking wounds like nobody's business…"
I'd had a lot of unwelcome time to think on our long, slow way back here.
I, too, had initially thought that maybe the sudden, overwhelming exhaustion I'd felt was due to some kind of unknown goblin superpowers.
But the more I considered it, the less it fuckin' added up.
I have faced plenty of goblins before, and the regular, common ones almost never use any kind of superpowers, with only some very, very few rare exceptions.
While the Hobgoblins we faced today, on the other hand, all seemed to use some form of powerful superpowers, and they could even heal themselves incredibly fast.
But I'm pretty sure I personally killed that last Hobgoblin myself, and it definitely didn't look like it was in any condition to be casting any kind of complex spell on me as it was desperately trying to crawl away, bleeding out.
Then, I started to suspect the System.
It was the only new, truly strange, and powerful thing that is now undeniably a part of my shitty life.
I have fought in Gates for many long, grueling hours, sometimes even for days on end, yet I have never before felt as utterly, profoundly exhausted as I did back there today.
And that last battle was, what, maybe a 30 fuckin' minutes' engagement at most?
I quickly, mentally, summoned my 'Profile' screen again, and I immediately noticed that my 'ArcaneEnergy' value was now only 1, and the number itself was displayed in a stark, warning red color.
It was previously a healthy 6, and displayed in a normal, green color.
Red, in my limited experience, does not usually mean something good.
And if my ArcaneEnergy had somehow dropped all the way from 6 down to just 1 in such a short time, then my sudden, debilitating exhaustion almost certainly had to have been caused by that somehow.
I did not really understand what 'ArcaneEnergy' specifically meant before all this, but I do remember Hoshi once casually saying that the common term 'arcane-weapons' was actually once called 'mana-weapons' or sometimes even 'magic-weapons' a very, very long time ago, back in the early days, and that all those different terms basically meant the same damn thing.
Also, there's the widely known fact that every Arcane-being, Evolved or Aggressor, essentially runs on TheArcane.
It is the energy that gifts us the abilities mortal men can only dream, and a total exhaustion of it somethin' I've never heard of but significant exhaustion of it is known to cause extreme fatigue and exhaustion, as it is somehow, intrinsically, related to our overall stamina and vitality.
There have definitely been times in the past when I was so completely exhausted from a prolonged fight, right after coming out of a tough Gate, that when I tried to immediately get another paying gig, some of the more discerning hirers would run simple test on me and then tell me I was too spent to perform efficiently... But I have never as shaken up as this one.
"I don't think it was any kind of Hobgoblin magic-shit that got me" I finally told him, my voice a bit stronger now.
"What? If not that, then what the hell else would have fuckin' made you weaken up all of a sudden like that?" he asked, his expression clearly showing that he couldn't think of any other plausible explanation.
Before I could answer his perfectly reasonable question, I remembered clearly seeing that Message Box pop up about leveling up again, and the rewards I'd received in Elixir, right as I was ended those goblins.
But I had just mentally cancelled it at the time, too busy trying not to die.
It is still decidedly weird, unnerving even, seeing these translucent, holographic screens superimposed over my normal vision.
But they do not seem to be actually blocking my sight entirely, which is good.
It is almost like I now have two different sets of eyes – one pair that can somehow perceive these strange holograms, while the other pair simultaneously focuses on everything else in the real world, without any discernible overlapping or visual confusion.
I then mentally summoned my 'PowerStatus' screen once more.
*Power Status
Strength: 8 Heart: 1
Speed: 5 Vitality: 1
Stamina: 4 Energy: 2
Construct: 10 Cognition: 2
Available Status Points: 5
I looked closely at 'Stamina' and 'Energy.'
Both of those attributes seem to have a very similar meaning to me, on the surface, but I am pretty sure they are actually two different, distinct things.
I just didn't fuckin' know yet what truly makes them different from each other in practical terms.
I came back here specifically to try and test them out, to see what happens.
So, I mentally placed 3 of my available points into 'Stamina,' and the remaining 2 points into 'Energy.'
Then, I quickly scrolled up to view my main 'Profile' again, to see if there was any immediate, visible difference in my 'ArcaneEnergy' stat.
*Profile
Name: None
Nature: Evolve Human
Level: 4
Title: Ratty
Hit point: 100
Damage per hit: 40
Arcane Energy: 6/11
Arcane Skills (None)
Arcane Physiology (None)
Power Status
Trophy
ArcaneEnergy was previously listed as just 1 (and in red, critically low).
Now, it's back up to 6, but the number was still displayed in that same warning red color.
And now there was a '/11' after it, indicating a new maximum.
It seems that both Stamina and Energy directly contribute to, or perhaps make up all, or at least most, of my total ArcaneEnergy pool.
I think I became so extremely, dangerously exhausted back there in the Gate when my ArcaneEnergy must have hit absolute 0, or very close to it.
And this new realization, this crucial insight, made me look back at everything listed in my PowerStatus with a fresh, more informed perspective.
When I first saw the PowerStatus screen, I had immediately, perhaps foolishly, considered Strength and Speed as the most, or even the only, truly important attributes, the ones that I should be distributing all my points to more often.
But now, with what just fuckin' happened to me in that last Gate, it's become painfully obvious that Stamina and Energy are also very fuckin' important, maybe even more so than raw strength or speed, at least for sheer survivability.
If only 6 points of ArcaneEnergy had managed to sustain me for roughly 30 minutes of intense combat, then it means that my new maximum of 11 points of ArcaneEnergy will probably, roughly, last me for about 55 minutes, maybe a full hour if I'm careful.
This is fucked up, to be honest, because this System basically put a fuckin' time limit on me - who kills for a living, and if I exceed that limit, I fall like a bag of shit.
Imagine that right in the middle of a tense battle. Definitely not a good way to die
Guess I got to avoid getting caught up in another prolonged, desperate fight.... For now
Increasing my Stamina and Energy stats has to take absolute top priority over all the others, at least for the foreseeable future, until my energy pool can reliably last me for several continuous hours of combat.
I finally decided to give Daigo a proper explanation, now that I had a much better, clearer idea of what had actually caused that sudden, terrifying exhaustion back in the Gate.