Last man on earth when there is no earth?

Ch 03.7

At the end of the hallway we found another intersection. The plates that seem to show directions had faded long ago and without much to base our decision on we picked the right again.

We arrived at a large gate that was left half open, after walking beyond it we arrived at another room. This one had boxes, many of them stacked on top of each other, and on each of the four walls are…

“… Are those… weapons?” I said as I observed what I could only call a morbidly designed sword.

Is this the armory or something?

Lilia went and opened one of the boxes.

“There are more inside…”

Double edged swords, spears, lances, katanas, great swords, knives, hammers, scythes, axes, shields. They all had a little science fiction touch to them but they still resembled the originals at least.

Some boxes had guns. Big guns, small guns, normal guns, laser guns, lots and lots of guns. As I went through every box to see what kind of expensive toys are stored inside I found something that every man woman and child knows of as a symbol of the most relevant franchise in the sci-fi genre.

A freaking light saber.

“Um… what are you doing?” Asked Lilia as I stare with an open mouth at the dream of every child inside every grown ass man.

“… I feel the force awakening.”

“… what?… is this the first time you see an energy blade?”

“…. Yes ….” I said, staring directly at the glowing stick.

“Well I have to agree it’s a strong weapon. but that type is too hard to use and consume a lot of energy.”

“I will take it.”

“Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m keeping it.”

A magic sword or a legendary cursed artifact would have been preferable, but those like me have a weak resistance to cool shiny objects even from other genres.

Speaking of cool shiny objects there is this small box with a pair of bracers that doesn’t seem to fit alongside the high tech weaponry, having a more fantasy like design and vibe to them. Because of my affection for the worlds of swords and magic, I felt a kind of connection to the strange items so I ended up equipping them without thinking.

“An armory huh…” Lilia murmured. “It’s strange, there are enough weapons to equip a small army, but it doesn’t seem like there is more than one of the same weapon.”

“Hmm… you are right.” Each weapon was different in some way, sometimes the difference is too small to notice, but there are no doubles. This degree of variety shouldn’t be easy on the budget, nor is it a practical choice.

It’s almost as if…

“They were testing them… maybe?” Oh shit, not again “could it be…”

Okay, it may be too quick of a conclusion to pop up right now but trust me, I have all the experience from the games, manga, anime, movies and also novels to backup this assumption.

“They weren’t just trying to return humanity to its original state, they were creating soldiers…”

And not any kind of mass produced run of the mile storm-troopers, but elites with personalized skills. That would explain all the weaponry. It might be just another rushed assumption like before, but humans aren’t strangers to this kind of behaviors.

“Maybe it’s just that the staff aren’t allowed to bring weapons to the upper floors?” Asked Lilia.

“I highly doubt that. What are the chances that a group of a hundred and thirty odd persons owning a completely unique weapon each?” And I find it hard to imagine a scientist swinging around that war hammer.

And if I’m correct, this kind of room is usually followed by…

“… Like I thought …”

Your classic, generic arena.

~◇~

Behind the next door was a clearly overused arena of some sort. There are debris scattered everywhere, a ceiling that threatened to collapse, burn marks here and there, craters in the ground and a hole in the wall that reached all the way outside.

Ah, and let’s not forget about the giant robot at the corner, that’s an important detail you know.

As we went around Lilia was the first to notice a number of burnt down humanoid figures. Surprisingly none of them were actually human, they are all just really damaged androids. Training dummies I assume. Or were they guards?

“Looks like something went wrong here.” Said Lilia as she peeked into the hole reaching outside.

“It was made from the inside, huh… Was there a weapon that could do this in the previous room?”

“I don’t know. Even the strongest hand held weapon would need more than one shot to do it.” Lilia seemed a bit disturbed.

Someone was here, dealt with all the training dummies then escaped by making a new exit. Knowing how places like this are usually structured I gazed around once more.

“There it is.” I said pointing at the upper part of the wall facing the hole where the generic monitoring room should be.

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that place when whatever happened here happened. We went back to the previous hallway. There were a number of rooms in that direction some of which had large screens and a lot of chairs. We also found the stairs leading up.

“It reached this far… what in the world could cause this?” Lilia asked.

“Probably an experiment went wrong. I heard stories of it happening.” at least in fictional works.

We soon arrived at the spectator seats. The room was burnt to a crisp, the walls were completely black. The scorch marks went all the way to the bottom of the stairs and ash covered the floor. Whatever made this mess, it made sure everyone watching was turned into dust.

“It was furious about what they did to it, is that what you mean?” said Lilia.

“And it’s somewhere out there, let’s hope we won’t ever run into each other.”