Close call

[Warning warning the Dumo tower has been breached. Code red. deploying maximum defense.]

"What happened?"

[A swarm of ruintrackers broke in.]

"What!?"

The white room that Vero was in suddenly flashed red and a blue screen appeared showing a swarm of ruined trackers pouring into the Dumo tower. The tower defense, which consists of the laser cutter, machine gun turrets, and battle robots, has slowed the swarm down, but their overwhelming number pushes through and destroys the defense.

Vero is horrified by the sight of hundreds of ruin trackers flowing from outside. Even one could easily tear him apart, let alone a hundred of them. They sweep through every room looking for something until one of them spots the elevator.

EEEEEECHHHHHHHH

The big one that alerts their fellow ruin trackers to push through the elevator door and down the shaft. The turrets and robots try their best to hold the swarm, but even if they kill one of them, another will take its place in no time.

{It is recommended to reset this run.]

"Don't the power go down when I do that?"

[Do you want to be chewed by that thing again?] The A.I. throws a question at him in a calm manner while Vero is in full panic. He thought that if he reset, he would waste something precious.

"Don't you have a weapon? like the one in the training room? "

[Sorry, but all of the weapons were summoned to the ringworld 2699 years ago.]

"What the ring..."

The A.I. cut in to hurry up his decision [Please save the question for later...]

BOOM!!!

The training room door got breached and a swarm of ruin trackers flooded in. The A.I. fails to calculate how much time it takes for the ruin tracker to reach them. In response, it operated the training room to simulate the maze to buy time until Vero could reset.

The simulation is mixed with a white tile of the room, so it can create an artificial wall or simulate a gun to make it feel real. The downside to this flexibility is that the construct is incredibly weak for an old-world standard.

[Say "System restart" QUICK!!!]

"System restart!" This is the first time the A.I. metallic voice felt like a living person. The panic he can feel from its voice prompts him to say it quickly. A blue window pops up again, but this time it's a rectangular bar that says it's restarting 1%. IT but in with the explanation before he could ask the A.I.

[The system takes 1 minute to restart. Instead of dying, this sequence allows us to save half of the energy. So please hold out until then.]

The maze shifts around, making a blue light path for Vero to follow. He followed it out of instinct while the bar was filling up. The blue line led him into a closed room.

"Are you alright?" Seeing nothing to do while waiting, he asked the A.I. even if he knew that it wouldn't be hurt by this.

[Yes, our main database isn't here, and we've created many different decoys through the maze to mislead them, giving us more time.]

He was about to ask another question but decided to shut up for now. Waiting for the bar to fill up, Vero thought that this one minute was longer than normal. Vero attempts to simulate his shooting while sitting there with nothing to do.

[Dodge!]

The A.I. interrupted him midway through his training. He quickly rolled away when he heard the command. A second later, the maze wall broke down and a ruintracker rushed in. Vero was terrified by it and quickly ran to the opposite side of the room.

The ruin tracker follows him closely, trying to eat him up, but the wall of the maze keeps blocking it. The A.I. shifts the layout of the maze and guides Vero through the path where they don't meet another ruin tracker.

This event put Vero on maximum alert. Trying to be as ready as he could be for another ruin tracker. As his focus reaches its maximum, time seems to slow down. Vero follows the blue line till he reaches another safe room.

But this time, he felt different. A jolt of electricity flowed through his body, making him search for its source. He turns to look at a ruin tracker. Somehow, he could see it through the wall.

Right at that moment, it also gazes back at him. The moment he made eye contact, Vero got a chill down his spine. It screams and charges through the walls. Not expecting this event, Vero dodges it by a hair length. It crashes into another wall behind Vero.

[What have you done?!]

The A.I. voice appears in a panic. While it was managing the swarm of monsters by placing convincing decoys. Its subject has somehow led one to his hiding place. Vero doesn't know how to respond to that question. His only objective now is to survive.

The A.I. creates more walls for him to hide behind, but this ruin tracker seems to not care about it at all. The creature charges through all the obstacles. Vero can feel that this is the end. He would be losing more than he should, all because of his own mistake.

However, when the creature's mouth was about to reach Vero, the scenery changed back to the same white wall.

He manages to survive by a millisecond.

[Congratulations on surviving the swarm. You manage to save half the power.]

"Hah...." he breathed a sigh of relief. But this time he also has a question on his mind.

[You don't feel any pain because you haven't died.]

".... How did you know I would ask?"

[Your speech pattern]

"You can even do that? But more importantly, didn't you say that it would reset everything? How can you remember? " Vero was now a little scared.

[They needed confirmation when the subject was not in good condition. This project would be a monumental failure if we didn't have this measure.]

"Like what? Each time I came back here, I didn't encounter any trouble. "

[The pain that you receive upon death.]

"OH..."

[In your case, you got really lucky.]

The A.I. brings out footage of one of the subjects that have undergone this program before. It depicted a man being ripped apart until his body can't be recognized anymore and the Chonus project was activated.

The man was sent back to the pill pod and the A.I. was checking his condition, but a second later, his body got ripped apart by an invisible force, killing him instantly. The Chronus project was then activated again to bring that man back. This process of death is repeated until the power runs out.

"What the....?" Vero is now horrified by what could have happened to him.

[We don't have time to cancel the program and this man got stuck in a time loop of himself dying and dying again from the aftereffect. So if you detect that you are in danger, please restart the program.]

Vero nodded obediently. There's no way in hell that he would not listen after what he just witnessed.