Chapter 49
Part 48
"..."
"If you don't answer, I'll start cutting off your fingers."
"N-No! The Emperor Guild only provided the money!"
"Then who owns this place?"
"Th-That's..."
The man's eyes darted nervously.
But Yugeon had already received his answer.
No.
He had seen it for himself.
"Genocide."
There was an employee identification card hanging around the man's neck.
And at the bottom of the card was a small Genocide emblem.
CRACK!
Yugeon snapped the man's neck, killing him on the spot.
His eyes turned cold.
He had suspected something like this.
Ever since he discovered that the Emperor Guild had been conducting business with Genocide, it had been difficult not to notice the connection.
"..."
After descending for some time, Yugeon stopped in front of a room.
A thick wall of reinforced glass stood before him.
And beyond it...
"A Goblin?"
A small corpse lay on a bed.
It was a Goblin.
There was an Orc in the room beside it.
And in the next room...
Yugeon's expression stiffened.
"A Dwarf...?"
A snow-white beard.
Short legs.
Thick hands.
It was unmistakably a Dwarf.
The problem was that they weren't inside the Tower.
When he first saw the Goblin and Orc, Yugeon had assumed that they were simply monster corpses brought out of the Tower.
But a Dwarf was another matter entirely.
This is impossible.
Travel between the worlds of different races wasn't possible yet.
The only place where humans could meet other races was inside the Tower.
As he had explained before, even if someone kidnapped a member of another race and left the Tower with them, each individual would return to their own world.
Humans would return to Earth.
Members of other races would return to the worlds they came from.
Then how did a Dwarf end up here...?
The same rule even applied to the corpses of other races.
Even if a member of another race died inside the Tower, their body would return to its original world.
Only items could be brought back.
CRUNCH!
Yugeon tore the door off its hinges and entered the room.
There was something strange about the corpse.
Its right arm was missing.
It hadn't simply been cut off.
The entire arm had disappeared cleanly from the shoulder.
The leg on the opposite side was in a similar condition.
The missing limbs looked as though they had never existed in the first place.
These aren't wounds from combat.
Yugeon moved to another room.
The Goblin's torso was horribly twisted.
Its bones protruded through its flesh, and its face was frozen in an expression of terror.
The Orc, on the other hand, still had all four limbs.
Instead, there were marks showing that its eyes had been gouged out.
"This is insane."
Step. Step.
Yugeon headed toward the laboratory at the end of the corridor.
One of the computers was still running.
Someone must have abandoned the room in a hurry when the alarm sounded, because they had even left their documents open.
Click.
Yugeon examined the screen.
[Dimensional Transfer Experiment No. 183]
[Subject: Adult Orc]
[Result: Failure]
[Left upper limb and lower body lost during transfer. Subject died thirteen seconds after arrival.]
[Dimensional Transfer Experiment No. 201]
[Subject: Human Awakener]
[Result: Failure]
[Coordinate deviation. Recovery unsuccessful.]
[Dimensional Transfer Experiment No. 229]
[Subject: Adult Dwarf]
[Result: Partial Success]
[Biological transfer succeeded, but mental collapse occurred. Communication impossible.]
Click.
Click.
Yugeon's hand stopped as he continued scrolling through the documents.
The more he read, the more the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place.
Was Genocide the organization that discovered how to travel between the worlds of different races?
Yugeon's eyes widened.
Memories of the world before his regression suddenly resurfaced.
At some point, it had become possible to travel to the worlds inhabited by other races.
Members of those races had also begun visiting Earth.
Once travel between their worlds became possible, they could exchange supplies and provide one another with manpower and other assistance.
That cooperation had helped Earth, which was already on the brink of destruction, cling to life for a little longer.
I only knew that some event eventually made travel between different races possible.
But to think that Genocide had been responsible for that development...
Of course, Yugeon himself knew how to travel between dimensions.
What he hadn't known was that Genocide had been the first to discover the method.
"..."
He scrolled farther down.
The early experiments had been horrific.
Parts of the subjects' bodies had disappeared while they were passing between dimensions.
Even those who survived had suffered damage to their minds.
Some subjects had been found in completely different locations.
Others had arrived with only half their bodies intact.
Yet the organization hadn't stopped its experiments.
When members of other races were no longer sufficient, they began using kidnapped humans as experimental subjects too.
They would send people from Earth to the other side.
Then they would try to bring them back.
Whenever one person died, they used another.
Whenever a member of another race died, they found another victim.
They had repeated the process hundreds of times.
So all these corpses were...
They had been nothing more than experimental materials for crossing dimensions.
Just as Yugeon was scrolling down the screen, another document caught his eye.
[Dimensional Transfer Experiment No. 271]
[Subject: Female Elf]
[Result: Success]
[No physical loss.]
[No mental contamination.]
[Normal vital signs.]
[Some experimental results and related materials are scheduled for transfer to Metropolitan Facility No. 2.]
"Success?"
At that very moment...
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Applause came from behind him.
"Impressive."
Yugeon turned his head.
A man stood at the laboratory's entrance.
Gray hair.
