Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 614
Chapter 614: Homunculus (1)
Inside those vats filled with a mysterious, green liquid, dozens of Doppelrs were curled up and staring back at me. It wasn’t like I was standing on the spot they just happened to be looking at either. A few of them were blinking, and their pupils moved to track me whenever I took a step forward.
“…You’re alive?”
It was a grotesque scene that would make a modern person also curl up in horror.
“What are you looking at?”
However, after enduring so many hardships in this barbarian body of mine, it was difficult to say I was any regular modern human anymore.
Not to say I wasn’t feeling a little horrified, of course.
“Hey, is this your first time seeing a barbarian?”
Nevertheless, the impact of the shock was closer to something like adding chunks of truffles to truffle oil.
After glancing at my surroundings, I decided to walk forward. Their eyes continued to stay on me as I did, but I didn’t pay them any mind. Honestly, the Corpse Golem was more disgusting than whatever this was. Still, I tried my best to keep my barbarian body upright and confident.
As I continued to stride forward, I ended up reaching the end of the corridor. There was a door that led to another room, and when I carefully opened it to enter, I saw an interior that looked much like a laboratory. A huge central vat was in the room like a pillar, and only green liquid was inside it.
I glanced to the side and found a bookshelf. It covered the entirety of one of the walls and was filled with thick books.
“Looks like this is a dud.”
I checked the books from top to bottom, hoping to find a clue or some information, but the books were all empty. It was as if they were here just for interior decoration.
Well, it’s not completely unheard of…
Honestly, empty books like these were frequent sightings while adventuring through the labyrinth. It was why books with things written inside sometimes sold for an expensive sum in the city, like the Necronomicon of the Bloody Citadel.
But…what’s this?
After pulling my attention away from the bookshelf, I approached the huge test tube in the middle of the room. The vat only had the green cultivation liquid within, and there was a mystery lever in front of it. It looked like a place you’d interact with in-game and cause a pop-up to appear.
Naturally, it was pretty hard to resist.
Creak, clank!
With a yank, the lever moved all the way down, and light flashed from the vat. It wasn’t so bright that it hurt my eyes, but when the light did fade, I noticed that something had formed within the liquid of the test tube.
A Doppelr.
It was another one of the monsters that lined the vats of the corridor behind me.
Seeing a Doppelr be created with just the pull of a lever was amazing, but that was about all there was to it. Maybe it was the world I lived in that led me to be not all that impressed. My attention was instead drawn toward something else.
If the left lever makes it…what does the right lever do?
I looked at the other lever and reached for it. And honestly, how could I hold back against this one?
Creak, clank!
Like a barbarian, I pulled it down in one go.
Light flashed from within the vat once more. However, the result was the complete opposite.
It’s gone.
As the light faded once more, the Doppelr that was inside the test tube disappeared without a trace.
Is this the delete lever?
Hmm, I couldn’t know for sure. It could be a lever to teleport the creature somewhere else. Well, it wasn’t too important to me right now what it did.
…More importantly, what is this place?
That was the question that dominated my mind now that the function of the two levers had been confirmed.
A creation lever and a deletion lever. I could get that much. But what was with this hidden underground space, and how was I able to enter it?
I got a feeling that this place wasn’t here just for me to play with a few levers.
“Hmm.”
Thinking about it, there were hidden secrets like this when I played Dungeon and Stone that didn’t feel like proper hidden secrets at all. It existed in other online RPGs as well. Like a notebook or a piece of paper on the ground at the end of a random street corner that could be picked up and contained the story of some random person. They usually led to the start of a hidden quest, but sometimes, the developers only added them to naturally introduce the world-building of the game. And if this was something like that…
Is this just here to give a clue that the nonhumans were created artificially?
That was all I could think of right now. I had already noticed the secret of the nonhumans a little before I came here, but that was only because I got lucky. If I hadn’t had that conversation with the vampire count back then, I wouldn’t have been able to come to that conclusion.
…Hmm, maybe this place really just exists for that?
There was also another reason this theory seemed plausible to me. Maybe it was just the vibe of the entire underground floor, but the more I explored the floor, the more I felt it. An unseen something was leading me somewhere, and was trying to tell me something.
Anyway, it’s a bit of a disappointment if this is all there is here…
After moving away from the levers, I checked every nook and cranny of the rest of the room. However, I couldn’t find anything special in the end and was left with only one thing I didn’t check.
I let out a sigh and looked at the huge vat filled with green liquid. Though excitement was the middle name of all barbarians, I couldn’t help but fall into deep contemplation.
That test tube vat was the only thing left.
If I break it…will something come out?
If I was playing this as a game, I would have already pressed the attack button. Even if I couldn’t turn back from the resulting consequence, I would be satisfied with obtaining the information and would go on to retry the game again. That was the type of game Dungeon and Stone was.
It also means that you can’t learn anything in this game without trying.
It made me think, but it didn’t take long for me to come to a conclusion.
Ting!
I flicked a one-hundred-stone coin used in the city with my thumb. If it came up heads, I would flip the coin again, and if it came up tails, I would smash the vat with my hammer without hesitation—
The coin warbled, then fell onto its side. It was tails.
Alright, then I don’t need to hesitate anymore.
As if expecting this outcome all along, I quickly swung my hammer and broke the glass. I was worried for a moment that maybe it was indestructible, but fortunately, the vat shattered like ordinary glass with the same crashing sound I was used to.
Splash!
The green liquid poured out through the shattered glass. I was quite cautious of it since I didn’t know what it was, so I got on top of the desk in the room and avoided getting wet. I got a bit on me when I smashed the glass with my hammer, but the place where the liquid touched me didn’t hurt or anything like that.
As if there were invisible drains in the ground, the spilled liquid quickly disappeared, and only then did I get off the table and approach the vat.
I grinned as I looked at an unknown stone that was buried under the shards of glass.
Yeah, I thought there would be something here. I mean, how many years did I play the game?
Seeing how it was emitting red light reminiscent of magma through the broken shards, I could tell it wasn’t an ordinary item.
After putting on gloves, I bent down and held up the stone.
“…Huh?”
Then, I lost consciousness.
***
[You have obtained the Philosopher’s Stone. The malignant gene held within your body is removed.]
***
When I opened my eyes, I only had one thought in my mind.
I was hungry.
I felt more hungry than I had ever before, and that prompted a question.
How much time passed?
There was no way I would have gotten this hungry after losing consciousness for a short while.
I first got off the floor and stood to see glass shards all around me, but thanks to my high Physical Resistance, they didn’t even prick me.
Nothing had changed around me. The vat was still destroyed, and-since I pulled out all those books to check them-the bookshelf that covered the length of one of the walls was still in disarray as well. However, if I was to pick out one thing that had changed…
“What the? Where did it go?”
Even after looking around for a while, I couldn’t find the stone. The last thing I remembered before losing consciousness was holding it, yet when I woke up, it disappeared as if it had never existed.
There were two reasons that I could guess as to what happened.
One: While I was unconscious, someone had taken it and ran.
Two: It was a consumable that was immediately used after obtaining it.
I couldn’t know which one was the truth, but I concluded that the second was the more likely of the two. There were items and events like this within Dungeon and Stone that I had seen before.
The problem is that I have no idea what its effect is…
Was it an elixir? A curse? A buff?
As long as I couldn’t check my own status, I couldn’t know anything. It was difficult to assess any changes that had occurred in my body in my current state as well.
By the way, how much time has really passed?
I stopped thinking about the stone and checked my watch to see it had been around seven hours since I last checked the time. It was still too early for me to feel relieved. The premium watch that adventurers used could also tell you how many days had passed, after all.
“…I was wondering why I was so hungry.”
After confirming that it had already been ten days, I let out a sigh. How much was I going to be lectured by my allies when I returned?
Since it had come to this anyway, I slowly chewed on the jerky to fill my belly first, then got up and left the laboratory.
Just like when I first came here, the Doppelrs in the vats continued to look at me as I walked down the corridor. It didn’t piss me off or anything since this was probably just a background element of the area.
But I should probably try and destroy this as well, right?
It was the barbarian way to act out a thought that appeared in his mind.
I destroyed all the test tube vats that lined the corridor, and I destroyed the heads of all the Doppelrs that tried to crawl out. However, other than relieving me of the feeling of frustration, I didn’t obtain anything else significant.
“Right, that was here too.”
As I left the corridor, I saw another hole that seemed to lead further down.
So, what was down there?
Since I’m already late, let’s check it first before going back.
Amelia would probably get pretty angry at me, but I figured she was already angry right now.
I took the ladder down and checked out the lower floor. There, a similar bunker-like room greeted me. It had a straight corridor like before, and a circular metal door was at the end of it. The only difference was that even when I knocked on it, put my hand on it, or even shouted at it, the door didn’t open.
…Looks like I need to fulfill some other condition for this to open. Wait, but how did that first door even open in the first place?
I had no way of knowing, but there was nothing else to do here.
After coming to that conclusion, I climbed back up the ladder and returned to the path I had walked down. It didn’t take long for me to reach the boundary where the dimensional severance phenomenon had been, the place Amelia couldn’t follow after me.
“…What the?”
However, for some reason, there was no one waiting for me there.
I got an ominous feeling. I didn’t try to explain away that feeling as superstition or just a feeling I got. There was a saying that ominous feelings were always omens for something. That feeling meant that the subconscious had noticed something before the conscious mind. Something odd in the information obtained by the eyes and ears.
Ba-dump, ba-dump!
My heart beat faster.
Someone needed to be here, be it Amelia or someone else. If I, a barbarian, disappeared after acting recklessly, the normal reaction would be for my allies to wait for me while worrying for me.
But why was there no one here? Even if they moved somewhere else, it would only be right to leave at least one person nearby.
I have to assume that something happened.
Holding that thought, I quickly used the ladder to get up to the surface. However, in the land filled with grass, I couldn’t see a single person.
“Emily! Ainar! Raven! Missha…!”
Even as I shouted, I received no response.
It was quiet, far too quiet, making me think that maybe I was the only person in the world.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I needed to check on the situation of the main force back at the temple. And do it as soon as possible.
With that thought, I dashed with all my might, and I found the river I had crossed in about a day. It was the biggest obstacle blocking my way back to the temple.
Ignoring the fact that I didn’t know what that river water could do to my body…
One: Barbarians couldn’t swim.
Two: The boat I usually used was destroyed during the rainy season and couldn’t float on water.
Three: I couldn’t see the boat that had been left nearby.
Of course, the situation wasn’t totally hopeless. It just meant I couldn’t swim, but barbarians had a way of crossing a river.
Splash!
After jumping as far as I could, my body quickly sank, and I waited for my body to reach the ground.
Thud!
As soon as my feet touched the ground, I trusted in my lung capacity and ran as fast as I could.
“Puhaaaah!”
Ow, I nearly thought I would die. I couldn’t even tell where I was going because I couldn’t see in front of me.
After barely crossing the river and making it out with rasping breaths, I ran toward the temple without taking even a second to brush the black water off of me.