RE - Chapter 352: Reality Is Always More Absurd Than Fiction (Patreon)

“Maybe we should leave the coffin shut?”

“That doesn’t sound like you... Whoa!”

Leon was pushing the coffin open with Soap when the ground vanished beneath his feet and both of them dropped straight down.

Fortunately, they were both agile enough to adjust their posture in midair and absorb the impact when they landed.

“Cough... Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Alan looked down at the two of them in amusement, as though the whole thing had absolutely nothing to do with him.

“That’s insane, Alan. How did you know there was a trap?”

Soap had barely finished asking when Leon, standing beside him, answered first.

“His intuition is ridiculously good... Damn, why is there a trap here?”

Leon stood up and brushed the dust off himself. When he looked ahead, he realized another enormous chamber stretched out in front of them.

“Calling it a trap might be wrong. This looks more like a hidden passage.”

“Guess Tricell employees don’t use this route for their daily commute.”

Soap stepped out and looked around the altar-like space.

Alan led the others down through the hidden passage one at a time until they joined Leon and Soap.

“Did we forget what we originally came here for?”

Everyone belatedly looked at their bulging backpacks and suddenly felt a little guilty.

“How do I put this? Strategic relaxation?”

In the middle of the awkward silence, a transmission came through Chris’s headset.

“...Chris, this is Jill. We found a hidden sinkhole in the mountains. From the looks of it, there’s something down there.”

Chris glanced at the others, then asked, “Do you have the exact location?”

“No problem. I’m sending it to your terminal now.”

“Okay... Got it. We’re still a fair distance away.”

“In that case, I’ll head down first and take a look. By the way, everything okay on your side? Any trouble?”

Chris looked up at the group.

Everyone immediately shook their heads.

“Everything’s normal.”

“Good. That’s nice to hear. I’ll head down first, then.”

“Contact us if anything happens.”

“Copy. Ending comms.”

Leon looked around the sealed chamber and shrugged.

“We might need a little more time. I have a feeling getting out of here is going to involve a lot of puzzle-solving.”

“Can’t we use explosives?”

“We can, assuming this place can survive them.”

Alan pointed overhead.

“If we bring the whole place down, we’ll be buried with the treasure.”

Roach nodded and reluctantly shoved the explosives back into his pack.

Alan thought about it for a moment.

To be honest, he really did not want to deal with another long string of tedious puzzles.

He looked up at the sinkhole above and pulled out the grappling gun he had not used in ages.

“Anyone have nylon rope? Tie enough together to give me some length.”

“Yeah. Give us a second.”

While he waited, Alan removed his gear and placed it to the side.

“Bring this up for me later, Leon.”

“...That might be difficult.”

Alan rolled his eyes.

“Then hand some of your souvenirs to someone else.”

“Hey, Leon. I’ll take some.”

Soap hooked an arm around Leon’s neck, making it clear he was willing to share the load.

“Fine. Just don’t start whining about the weight later.”

Leon figured he only planned to keep the stuff as collectibles anyway. Giving some away was no big deal.

Alan took the rope, wrapped it securely around himself, then raised the grappling gun.

He moved nimbly across the upper sections of the ruins and quickly climbed all the way to the top of the sinkhole.

“Alan’s basically a monkey. Shame the rest of us are too big to copy him.”

“Asians tend to have leaner builds. Not quite the same as a bunch of muscleheads like us.”

Soap turned toward Ghost, who stood half a head taller than him.

“So what about you? You’re tall and built like a tank. Were they injecting you with steroids at birth?”

“Heh. Maybe.”

Alan’s voice echoed down from the top of the sinkhole.

“Hey! Rope’s coming down!”

“Got it!”

...

“Urgh... This is heavy.”

Soap struggled over the edge at the top, threw his backpack aside, and gasped for air.

“It’s a backpack full of gold coins. Of course it’s heavy. Now you know why we had you come up last, right?”

“You all pulled me up together?”

“...No. We were afraid you’d crush us.”

Alan laughed at the sight.

“You guys are ridiculous.”

Leon folded his arms and agreed.

“Tell me about it.”

As time passed, the sound of helicopter rotors drew closer until the surrounding trees began whipping violently in the downdraft.

“...Eagle calling Alpha Squad. We’ve arrived at the designated location.”

“Copy. We’re directly below you. Drop the rope ladder!”

“Roger.”

The rope ladder came down, and everyone immediately climbed aboard.

The pilot slowly corrected the helicopter’s slight tilt. Glancing at everyone squeezing inside through the mirror, he muttered under his breath.

“What the hell happened?”

With everyone aboard, the puzzled pilot flew the slightly overloaded helicopter toward their destination.

...

The moment Chris got off the helicopter, he ran toward Jill.

“Jill!”

“Chris, you’re here?”

Jill pulled her eyes away from the Stairway to the Sun and looked toward Chris and the others.

Alan glanced at the Stairway to the Sun growing in the flower bed, then at the Tricell tents nearby.

“So it really is here.”

“Yeah. Jill has one hell of an eye. She found Tricell’s base almost immediately.”

Jill shook her head.

“Calling it Tricell’s base is a little too simple.”

“...What do you mean?”

Jill gestured toward the large door in the distance.

“The laboratory is behind that door. I only took a quick look, but I found signs of Umbrella everywhere. And I mean everywhere.”

“Umbrella...”

Leon frowned and looked back at the Stairway to the Sun with a very different expression.

He had an increasingly strong feeling that there was something seriously wrong with this flower.

Why?

Because both Umbrella and Tricell had gone out of their way to research it.

Nobody was going to convince him it was just a decorative flower bed.

Alan nodded to himself.

At this point, Tricell was socially finished. That was one less openly evil organization left in the world.

As for everything still hidden in the shadows... he had no idea when all the loose ends Capcom had never resolved would finally explode at once.

What happened next was almost a foregone conclusion.

With the amount of firepower they had brought, even Wesker would have to think twice before confronting them. And right now, there was not even an obvious enemy left to fight.

The entire facility was quickly brought under control.

They recovered massive amounts of research data, personal notes, encrypted Umbrella records, and Tricell incident files.

“...I never imagined all of this started with a flower.”

Leon had already removed his gear and now stood beside Alan in front of the Stairway to the Sun, sounding genuinely reflective.

Alan folded his arms and gave his own quiet assessment.

“If you call it evil, it never actually did anything itself. But if you say it isn’t evil, it’s still connected to the deaths of countless people...”

The two fell silent for a long time.

In the end, all they could do was sigh at how absurd reality could be.