Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 616
Chapter 616: Homunculus (3)
A machine that turns monsters into mana stones. What would happen if a human were to go in there?
I hadn’t yet obtained the data point for that, however…
Dash!
When I saw Raven, I kicked off the ground and dashed forward. Just seeing Raven, who had been kidnapped, standing on the conveyor belt was enough. This machine wasn’t just turning monsters into mana stones.
Zzzt.
Thankfully, taking Raven off the moving conveyor belt wasn’t too difficult. There wasn’t anything holding her in the first place. Just grabbing her by the waist and pulling her down was enough.
“Raven! Raven! Wake up!”
But no matter how hard I shook her by her shoulders, she continued to stare into empty space with that blank expression of hers. Since she didn’t wake up from the shaking, I tried lightly slapping her face with my palm, but that—
“Ugh…”
What the, that worked?
After confirming that she made a sound, I put more strength into my slaps.
Slap, slap.
“Ugh…”
Smack! Smack!
“S…top…”
She seemed to come back to her senses as she began to speak complete words. Maybe a certain amount of damage was needed for them to wake up from this trance state.
With that in mind, I smacked her even harder.
“Raven! Raven! Wake up!”
Smack! Smack!
“S-stop…”
Smack! Bam!
“I…told you…to stop…!”
“…You’re awake!”
Thanks to my efforts, the intelligent light that Raven always had returned to her eyes.
“Are you alright? What about your body? Can you move? Do you feel anything weird? Where are the others? Ah, do you want water?”
“…Water.”
“Ah, here. I’ll hold it for you, so drink slowly.”
As if putting a bottle in a baby’s mouth, I grabbed the water bottle and tilted it for Raven. She fully regained her senses after drinking a bit of water. “…Thank you. For saving me.”
“No mind, of course I would.”
“My jaw feels a little stiff, but I feel like I’m back now.”
“Sometimes, a good beating is medicine enough.”
“Quite a bitter medicine, though.”
Alright, she seemed fine since she could joke around now.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“…It’s something in the vein of mind control. After you entered that place, we all lost consciousness not long after.”
“Then you don’t remember anything?”
“Well, not nothing. It’s not like I was completely unconscious…” Raven then began to slowly explain everything she saw, though it was through a faint lens that made her feel like she had dreamt them. “It felt like I was completely drunk and something else was controlling my body.”
When I touched that weird stone and lost consciousness, Raven and my other allies fell unconscious too at the same time and were left standing in a daze. Then at some point, flying creatures arrived from the sky, and they carried my allies over the river to the temple.
“Then it felt like I was just waiting for something. While we were gathered in one place, we started to be taken somewhere one by one. And finally, it was my turn…”
“One by one.”
“…Pardon?”
“You were taken somewhere one by one…?”
My heart sank. However, Raven didn’t seem to understand why my expression had turned so serious.
I sighed. “It might be faster if I go and show you.”
I headed in the direction that Raven would have gone down on the conveyor belt, toward the machine that turned monsters into mana stones.
Flash!
With each flash of light, the monsters turned into mana stones the size of fists.
“Wh-what is this…?” Raven’s face paled as she realized her would-be fate in this situation if I had come even a beat too late. She also realized why my expression had hardened. “Then all those people taken before me are…” She stopped herself from finishing that sentence.
I also readied my heart and confirmed something that I needed to know. “Raven. Before, how many people…were taken?”
“I don’t know the exact amount…but at least a dozen.”
“Who were they…?”
She furrowed her brow as she tried to squeeze each name out of her memories. But at some point, she suddenly stopped talking.
Ba-dump!
My heart threatened to sink away. After having experienced so many tragedies in my life, my unconscious mind had noticed.
I knew the reason Raven went silent.
“…Speak. Who was it?”
At that, Raven’s small lips opened and my omen became reality. “Ms. Emily Raines…”
Damn it.
My heart beat faster.
Ba-dump!
Even though the heart was an organ that was supposed to supply blood evenly to all parts of the body, for some reason, it felt that all the blood in my body was gathering in my head.
“She was the one called right before me…”
In other words, I was too late.
I tried to calm myself as much as possible and checked everything I could. Yeah, it wasn’t even confirmed that something bad had happened to Amelia. “The other members…where are they?”
“I don’t know. My memory is spotty… I only remember that it was a wide, rectangular area…”
Although I concluded that I needed to save the other members first, Raven unfortunately didn’t know how to get there.
It means I’ll have to look through the entire building in the end…
The problem was this conveyor belt. If this continued to operate, other people would get hurt as I tried to go around looking for them.
I smashed down on it with my hammer. The conveyor belt made a creaking sound, destroyed by the physical strike, before coming to a halt.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Drones began to approach the area with wailing sirens. I thought I would have to stop being in invisible barbarian mode and would have to fight them, but for some reason, the drones ignored me and went directly to the damaged conveyor belt.
“It looks like…they’re trying to repair it? What do you want to do?”
“We’ll leave them for now.” I got a feeling that destroying the drones here would only be a waste of time. Some other drone would probably fly in here to fix the mess.
Rather, it’s more effective to learn how long this repair will take.
“Raven, follow me for a moment.”
“Uh, where are you going?”
“I need to learn what kind of place this is.”
I moved with Raven, following down the conveyor belt. Not long after, another working conveyor belt appeared, and this conveyor belt was moving boxes filled with mana stones somewhere.
“But…even without needing to destroy the conveyor belts, wouldn’t other people come down here if we keep waiting?”
I paused. “Well, that is another method.”
“Ah…so you didn’t think of that.’
No matter how calm I tried to be, it wasn’t easy. Anger lived in all people.
“What’s done is done. Check our surroundings. We might be able to find a way to save the people who have already gone down here.”
“Yes…”
As I followed the conveyor belt that carried the boxes, I found the place where the boxes were being gathered. Three unknown machines were stationed there, and a claw was attached to the ceiling that looked like the ones you would see in a claw machine game. It was grabbing the mana stones and putting them into the machines.
After the mana stone rolled down the funnel, something attached to the ceiling flashed, and when the light faded, something was created in the central area beyond the clear glass pane.
It was a monster—a monster that had the characteristics of goblins, orcs, and ghouls. It was a terror that I had never seen before in the labyrinth.
“What is that? I—”
“We’ll know if we follow it,” I said impatiently.
After the monster was created by the machine, it was put onto another conveyor belt and moved elsewhere, and we carefully followed it. By doing so, we learned the exact structure of the factory.
Flash!
The created monster would travel along the conveyor belt to enter the system again, only to turn back into a mana stone. But for some reason, there wasn’t one mana stone, but three this time.
Flash!
After being separated into three, the mana stones arrived at the mysterious machine again before being formed into a goblin, an orc, and a ghoul…
What bullshit is this?
After that process was over, the monsters were herded by drones, pushed into the building above, and placed into a prison cell.
“Is this…just repeating forever?”
“…Looks like it.”
I was even more confused compared to when I knew nothing about this place.
Where were we? Just what reason was this meaningless process being repeated over and over?
However, it gave me a bit of hope. “If that’s what’s going on here…there might be a chance that the others are safe.”
“…Let’s hope so.”
“In any case, it looks like the repair is almost over.”
After traveling back down into the factory, the destroyed belt had been somewhat rebuilt. I did consider destroying it again…
“Let’s try out my plan. We don’t even know where the other people are trapped.”
At Raven’s request, however, I held back.
“I’ll stay here and save the people that come through. Mr. Yandel, you should go around and try to look for them. Isn’t that more effective?”
Honestly, considering what would happen in the future, that was much safer. Even if I couldn’t find where my allies were trapped, we would be able to save more of them.
Well, it wasn’t as if the plan was foolproof.
“It might seem safe now, but something dangerous might happen to you while I’m away,” I argued.
“That’s true…”
“I’ll stay with you. I can feel safe leaving you behind after waking up around ten more people.”
“Ah…that might be better.”
With that settled, we positioned ourselves next to the conveyor belts and waited for more allies to appear.
One hour, two hours, three hours…
As we continued to wait for hours on end, we exchanged information.
“So the moment you held that stone, you lost consciousness as well?”
“Yeah. But when I woke up, that stone was nowhere to be seen, and it had been ten days.”
“Do you feel anything different about your body?”
“Not yet.”
After hearing everything from my side of things, Raven’s expression grew serious, but she wasn’t able to give me much advice.
“So do you know what that stone is?”
“No, I don’t know either. But…”
“But?” I prompted.
Raven paused for a moment before continuing, “Do you know what a homunculus is?”
“I do. It’s that rank 8 monster.” Also, their main habitat was the Witch’s Forest on the third floor, and since they weren’t restricted to that area and appeared all over the place, I had fought them quite often.
However, Raven shook her head at my answer. “What I meant was if you know what a homunculus in alchemy is.”
“If it’s that, I don’t.”
“Homunculi in alchemy is the original artificial creature… To be precise, they are artificially created ‘humans.’”
“I mean…I guess the homunculus you see in the Witch’s Forest do look like humans.”
“If we only look at their appearances, yes. But considering how their skin drips when they walk, they’re probably closer to slimes than humans.”
“Sure, but what are you trying to say?”
“Nothing much. It’s just that I’m beginning to doubt the nature of the ‘mana stone’ itself. We saw how monsters were turned into mana stones and those mana stones were being turned into other monsters.”
“What about it?”
“I just suddenly had a thought. If the legendary Philosopher’s Stone existed, then it might have a very similar nature to mana stones…”
I was wondering what she was going to say, but it was just a wizard’s daydreaming. Though, perhaps, it wasn’t right to just dismiss it as a daydream…?
Mana stones…
It tickled my mind, like a feather that refused to be caught and swiveled in the air just outside of my grasp.
“Huh…?”
But then, Raven’s eyes went wide. I quickly checked what she was looking at only to see an ally coming down the conveyor belt.
It was the loyal knight with whom I had worked in the Ice Rock Expedition.
“It’s Sir Melend Kaislan!”
As soon as I saw him, I quickly ran up and got him down off of the conveyor belt and went to smack his cheeks.
“Wait!”
Raven stopped me before pulling out an item from her sub-space. So, the name of that thing…
“The Flower Crown of Anguish?”
“Yes. I thought that maybe this would help in recovering his mind.”
Hmm, that did seem plausible… “But don’t we already have a proven method?”
“That’s true, but I can still taste blood in my mouth, you know?”
“Ah…”
I did wonder if her cheeks were more pronounced than usual.
As I nodded and let her do what she wanted, Raven carefully put the flower crown on his head, and after some time passed…
“Ugh…”
Kaislan came back to his senses.