Chapter One Hundred and Fifty - Pillars

  I was a little confused when I Reloaded and found myself not just a day back, suddenly not tired, but also right next to my bike.

  Right, this was just after the operation.

  I started to stretch, then stopped when I felt a faint pull in my armpit. Best to not play with that too much, I didn't want to rip open a suture or anything.

  The meds were still running through my body, and overall, I felt... nice? Nicer than I had for a while.

  Sighing, I looked at the time and winced. I was a ways from the industrial area, but also hours away from the start of the breach... probably.

  So, second loop, and I hadn't yet called Fran or Becky, nor was I going to. This was going to be another scouting loop, this time with a lot more information available to me. I was also not going to stay at the cheapest motel in the area. Screw that. I wanted a proper bed and a parking lot that wouldn't let some two-bit thugs steal my ride.

  I pulled up the interface on my new eyes, a little annoyed that things that I'd moved had reset, then I went onto one of those godawful hotel booking sites and found a place to stay. There were a few nice hotels in the city centre, but I settled for a four-star just a ways to the west. It was far, far from cheap, but it was also money that I didn't care about. I booked a nicer room, then hopped on my bike and rode off.

  In the meantime, I looked up a map. It was dangerous, splitting my attention, but I didn't care too much, and I did make it to the hotel, checked in, got increasingly annoyed as the lady behind the counter asked me for ID, then if I was member of this club, that group, if I had this points card, or if I wanted to sign into some other, unrelated white woman scam.

  I think she was starting to catch on that I wasn't in a mood when I pointedly asked if weapons were allowed on site. They weren't. I didn't care.

  I got into the hotel room, discovered that it was just a small space with a bathroom to one side (glass walls... why?) and a decently large, plush bed. Not the most comfortable thing, but it sure as shit beat that flea infested slab.

  I kicked my shoes off, hesitated for a bit, then decided that a shower couldn't hurt, even if I didn't think I'd have anyone smelling me any time soon.

  The shower helped. I slumped out of it, then flopped into bed, covered up, and almost forgot to set an alarm for 0500 in the morning, which was way too soon.

  I slept like a babe, and almost opted to ignore the alarm, but... no, that wasn't wise.

  I was a bit groggy, and sore, but the bed had been nice enough to make the post-OP situation somewhat bearable. I rubbed the salve I was given, took my meds, then gave myself a hefty dose of Sooth Minor Pain. Then I remembered that I'd been carving Restore Stamina for a while, and I cast that as well.

  The second spell wasn't a massive boost, but it was probably better than a coffee for waking me up.

  I went downstairs, grabbed a coffee and ate right out of the complimentary breakfast thing. After filling in on fake eggs and synth bacon and disgusting the one worker awake at this hour, I headed out, got on my bike, then rode like mad out of the city. The one major positive of being awake at this hour was the lack of traffic.

  I made it to the industrial zone at around six. Early enough that the place wasn't filled yet. There was still movement, though. A lot of the trucking here was automated, and judging by the smoke coming from some of the stacks, a few of the factories either started operating early, or ran through the night.

  Parking my bike in an alley, I took off through the industrial sector and started to walk a circuit around it. The area was larger than I expected it to be, so I didn't get too far before giving up on that. The sector had probably hundreds of buildings, some with large parking lots around them, or open-air storage areas, but there were parts of the sector where older buildings were squeezed in so closely together that their rooftops almost rubbed together.

  Some areas had bridges that ran over the road, connecting two buildings together. I wasn't sure what that was called, architecturally... but I kinda liked them. They were a cool feature.

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  Just wandering around and getting a feel for the place was nice and all, but it wasn't that helpful.

  So, I returned to the main road and started towards the area where I'd first seen some of the slimes. From overhearing a few people talking, I had a decent idea of which companies were nearby and who had sighted the slimes first, but that didn't give me a pin-point accurate location.

  It did give me something like five possible factories, and they all happened to be relatively close to one another.

  I didn't want to just sit around and wait, though...

  My eyes moved upwards. The roofs were pretty close together, weren't they? Like, real close. So close someone could, probably, jump from one to the other, and they were all mostly flat, and there were bridges across almost every road.

  "Dammit," I muttered.

  It was going to be a decent vantage, though. I just had to find a way up.

  So I walked over to the nearest of the factories, tugged on the door, and sighed when I discovered that it was locked. The next one over, however, wasn't, and there was someone inside.

  They looked at me a little funny when I asked them if there was roof-access in this building, but said that there wasn't. When they asked 'why' and I said 'parkour' they... just kind of nodded along. "I mean, there's a fire access in that one office building just off to the side. They have offices for a few of the factories here, and IT stuff, but the top floor has a fire escape."

  "Thanks," I replied before heading out. Weird how people would so easily dismiss something strange if it wasn't their problem to deal with.

  I found the fire escape, as promised, and climbed up to the top of it. It didn't quite go up to the roof, but it went up to the topmost floor. I looked down. It was a long drop to the bottom. Some three floors and a bit. Looking up, the roof was right there...

  I climbed onto the railing, balanced myself with a hand against the wall, then reached up and over the edge. I had a metaphorical finger on the Reload button. After grabbing the edge of the roof, I grunted and pulled myself up, feet kicking against the brick wall for purchase. I almost triggered my Reload when the lip of the roof made this faint little protesting rumble, but it didn't collapse, and soon enough I was rolling up onto the roof.

  Nice!

  The view was... alright? It was an industrial area, and I wasn't so high up that things looked impressive or anything. Still, I could see the street for some ways, and if I moved the right way, I might be able to make it pretty deep around this area.

  Now, if I was an unstable slime portal, where would I hide?

  I started to see how far I could go, moving from rooftop to rooftop and generally just jumping across the smaller gaps. It was actually kind of fun.

  Normally I'd be... not afraid of heights, exactly, but I'd have a certain level of respect for them. I mean, that felt like it was just common sense, really. But with a Reload at my fingertips, and feeling like I was a powerful D-ranker, that kind of fear felt less... potent, than usual.

  It took a solid hour, but I eventually discovered the breach. Only it wasn't the one I was looking for.

  There were these four buildings at the back that shared a backyard. It was a relatively large open space, with the rear walls of a few factories leading into it.

  Judging by the old, unmaintained machinery, the older sheds, and the way that the place felt abandoned, I had a suspicion that this was the kind of awkward space that probably belonged to too many people and had too little access to be of any real use. Wasted space, basically.

  And in that space was a portal.

  It was just... sitting there, next to a shed that was between it and one of the only active factories in the area with windows looking out onto the back yard.

  How had no one noticed that?

  The windows back here were grimey as hell, but all of the factories seemed like they might be in use, maybe.

  There were monsters roaming around. Not slimes, and not kobolds. Instead, they were tall, ungainly pillars of what I suspected was either hardened mud, or ice. They had between two and eight legs, and about as many brain cells.

  ***