"The entrance/exit to Mine Tunnels 1 through 3 will close in 30 minutes. All personnel remaining inside the tunnels must evacuate immediately and proceed to the decontamination chamber."
"Personnel who fail to return to the decontamination chamber by the deadline will be classified as missing. No rescue attempts will be made."
Xiang Yi was startled awake by the sudden, robotic female voice in his ear.
When he opened his eyes, the scene that greeted him was not the familiar breakfast stall, but a long, narrow tunnel of grayish-black rock.
One end led into a disquieting darkness, while the other, though equally dim, had a faint light filtering down the passage.
'Where am I?'
The question had barely formed in his mind when a sharp pain interrupted Xiang Yi's thoughts.
He looked down and saw that he wasn't wearing his usual clothes, but a somewhat flimsy, futuristic protective suit of a style he'd never seen before. A matching helmet lay on the ground in front of him, having rolled away.
The suit he was wearing wasn't intact, either; it was clearly damaged.
But that wasn't the main problem. The real issue was the wounds beneath the torn suit.
Xiang Yi had wounds on all four limbs, and every one of them was steadily bleeding.
The injury on his left leg was particularly severe. The gash had clearly torn into the muscle, and even the slightest movement sent a wave of excruciating pain through him.
Xiang Yi's breathing quickened. He instinctively pressed a hand to the most severe wound on his left leg, forcing himself to calm down as quickly as possible and frowning in thought.
'What the hell is going on?'
As he recalled, he had just been eating at a breakfast stall, and then... he'd seen a truck hurtling toward him...
He should have been dead, but now...
'This...'
Xiang Yi's expression grew solemn. The memory made his situation crystal clear, but for a moment, he didn't know how he was supposed to feel about it.
'Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. After all, I didn't have any family or friends in my old world.'
HISS—
The pain from his limbs once again cut through Xiang Yi's thoughts.
In the brief moment he had been dazed, the blood from his wounds had already formed a small pool on the ground, and his consciousness was beginning to blur from the blood loss.
There was no more time to think. He had to treat his injuries, and fast.
Xiang Yi shifted his half-sitting position and tried to take off the protective suit.
Just then, a piercing pain shot through his brain. Suddenly, as if triggered by something, memories that didn't belong to him flooded his mind.
They were the memories of "him" from this world.
These memories were related to the protective suit he was wearing.
Although the new memories flashed before his eyes like a slideshow, Xiang Yi instantly absorbed their contents. He quickly found the clasps at the neck and side of the suit and took it off.
Of course, there was surely a good reason to wear a protective suit in this kind of underground passage—which, based on the announcement, was probably a mine tunnel.
But since the suit was already damaged and wearing it made it difficult to stop the bleeding, it was better to take it off for now.
As he removed the suit, Xiang Yi stared blankly at the clothes underneath for a second, then noticed a bracelet on his left wrist.
The bracelet seemed to be a set with the protective suit, both some kind of advanced devices. However, some of its indicator lights were off, and he had no idea why.
This time, Xiang Yi didn't dwell on unnecessary details. He took off his shirt, a third of which was already soaked in blood, and tore the seemingly poor-quality fabric into strips.
He selected the strips that weren't stained with blood and turned his attention to the most severe wound on his left leg.
It was clearly a cut wound.
The cause of this type of injury was usually obvious.
In any case, it couldn't possibly have been caused by a sharp rock from the tunnel wall, as there was no grit or dirt in the wound.
This was an injury from something thinner and sharper.
Something... like a dagger.
A dark look crossed Xiang Yi's face. He glanced at the other wounds on his body and then toward the mine tunnel exit, a flicker of worry rising in his heart.
However, the movements of his hands didn't slow in the slightest. With practiced skill, he quickly gave the wounds a simple but thorough dressing.
These were simple survival skills he'd learned as the sole field operative for an independent engineering lab affiliated with a certain university. In his career, he'd been on three field assignments and encountered two major industrial accidents and one especially critical one.
You could say his luck was truly awful, earning him the nickname "Jinx," but the skills born from that bad luck had also saved his life several times, allowing him to outlive the very people who called him that.
'What kind of scene haven't I witnessed? These are just a few measly cuts.'
Soon, Xiang Yi tied another adjustable strip of cloth above the most severe wound on his left leg to stop the blood from gushing out.
It was uncomfortable, but it was necessary to survive.
Xiang Yi had just finished treating his wounds and hadn't made his next move when a new sound suddenly reached his ears.
This time, however, it wasn't the announcement from the lit end of the tunnel, but a sound from the depths of the other side.
A rustling, skittering sound, as if a great number of densely packed "things" were crawling toward him.
Xiang Yi held his breath and listened intently. The sound wasn't traveling through the air, but vibrating through the rock walls.
It was as if some kind of creature, numerous and with countless tiny, sharp, jointed limbs, was scrambling over the rock.
Only limbs that sharp, digging into the rock, could produce such a chilling sound.
'Is that it?'
Another twinge of pain pricked Xiang Yi's mind, but this time, no new memories surfaced.
The strange situation was all the more terrifying for it.
He didn't dare stay put. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his limbs, he pushed himself up, his face contorted in a pained grimace as he leaned on the wall.
Just as he stood up, he suddenly spotted a strange, seemingly handheld device on the ground right behind where he had been sitting, in what had been his blind spot.
The device resembled a handheld chainsaw, though instead of a saw chain, its front end featured some kind of emitter.
Xiang Yi's head throbbed with pain again, but this time, new memories did surface.
They told him the name of the device in front of him.
Mining Laser Gun.
Its purpose was obvious: mining.
It seemed to work by adjusting the laser frequency to break down rock of a specific composition. The calibrated laser had a minimal destructive effect on the target minerals themselves, suggesting it was a very versatile design.
This handheld Mining Laser Gun was typically used by people to exploit veins where resources were more scattered.
If the memories that just appeared in his mind were correct, this Mining Gun had a very important design module.
A Biological Signal Sensing Device.
This prevented it from being fired at humans.
Nevertheless, Xiang Yi's hand reached for the Mining Laser Gun instinctively.
Judging by the design of this Mining Laser Gun and the protective suit, he was clearly in a world with an extremely advanced level of technology.
He really had come to a new world.
His thoughts swirled.
But the pain cut him short.
Xiang Yi glanced at his wounds and then toward the tunnel exit. Enduring the pain, he picked up the slightly heavy Mining Laser Gun.
Regardless, it was the best thing he had for self-defense at the moment.
Even just swinging it as a club was better than having empty hands.
The rustling, skittering sound from the darkness was growing louder.
Xiang Yi quickly got moving, carrying the Mining Gun in one hand and steadying himself against the rock wall with the other as he headed toward the lit side of the tunnel.
The grayish-black rock walls around him felt like a stone coffin, pressing down on him with a heavy weight and making it difficult to ease the anxiety in his heart.
He didn't know how much longer it would take to reach the exit.
But he knew he had to hurry.