About This Publication

This is a collection of the short stories that were included as bonuses with the release of each volume of the mainline D-Genesis novels. As we continued to release new volumes, at one point readers began to ask me if there was any way they could read the previous short stories. I filed that info away as something I’d like to make happen in the future—then things got super busy, and time just flew on by.

Flash forward to the fateful release of volume 8. A short while after finishing “Black Cat,” I started getting more requests for the stories, and I came to the realization that these people were absolutely right. The stories were only available for a limited time, so there was no way for new readers to experience them anymore. Unfortunately, we had already wrapped up the volume by that point, so anyone who hadn’t read the previous short stories would be left wondering who the heck people like Ai and Megumi were...

Treating that as a perfect opportunity, I reached out to my editor N and we put our heads together to mull things over. We wanted to give the readers what they were asking for, but we also couldn’t just throw all the stories into a release without keeping in mind that they were supposed to have been limited-time bonuses for each volume...sigh.

In the end, we decided to go ahead and put them into a collection anyway. The readers who got the limited editions would still have gotten the privilege of reading the stories early, which would hopefully mitigate some of their potential dissatisfaction. Also, a mere reprint might’ve left longtime readers wanting, so we thought it would be nice to give the release some added value. I ended up rewriting a few bits here and there to better align things with the main story, and added some DVD-commentary-style blabber from me about when I was initially writing them for the volumes.

My hope is that all readers of the series can find something to enjoy in this collection—whether they’ve experienced these stories before or not.

Chapter 1: The Island Where God Resides

Commentary

Volume 1 actually didn’t contain a bonus short story. Instead, a story that explains why Iori joined the JSDF was inserted in the middle of the book. Obviously that chunk can’t be reprinted here, so I encourage anyone who has volume 1 to pick it up and take a look.

Once upon a time, due to certain circumstances I ended up staying in the remote islands of Okinawa for a year and a half. During that time, I wrote a fantasy story based on the idea of the last miko of Kudaka Island, and I ended up borrowing a bit of the essence from that tale when I wrote this particular story.

Now, the Okinawan dialect I used was based on how they speak on the main island, and I agonized over that a fair bit. The smaller islands of Okinawa barely use any of the same words you hear on the main island, and that’s especially true for the Yaeyama Islands. The first time I went there I had absolutely no idea what anyone was saying—the older men and women sounded like they were speaking complete gibberish, and all I could make out was the typical Okinawan “sa” at the end. Even the local middle schoolers said that while they could understand what the older folks were saying, they couldn’t speak it themselves, so I suppose it wasn’t exactly surprising that such a brief visit got me nowhere in terms of comprehension.

I am a huge fan of the modern horror genre, which was all the rage at the time, so I had a fantastic time writing this particular story. Unfortunately, it had to be cut from the manga version to maintain the flow of the overarching story, but both this and the volume’s epilogue are bits of writing I’m quite fond of as an author.

By the way, I’ve been thinking that Iori and Hagane may as well become a couple—what do you think? Hagane is rather concerned about their age difference (eleven years), and their workplace dynamic is a problem as well, so he hasn’t been able to convince himself to commit to anything. Every time the two of them show up, though, I find myself thinking, Just get together already, ya big dummies! while I’m writing.

Oh, and Iori’s feelings for the Phantom are more like a form of admiration, I’d wager.

Chapter 2: Ashes to Ashes

Foreword

This story takes place over three days, from August 8 through 10, 2019. The final day is Yoshimura’s birthday, on which he turns twenty-nine.

The 2019 G20 Osaka summit plays a pivotal role in D-Genesis. Or at least it’s supposed to—the story is subtitled “Three Years after the Dungeons Appeared,” after all. Fun fact: The Japanese word for “appeared,” which can be romanized to “dekite,” was originally supposed to be written in hiragana. I wrote it that way in the webnovel version, and I still don’t quite understand how it magically changed to being in kanji for the official releases. It’s almost definitely my fault, though. Getting back on track, this story takes place after things have calmed down from the G20 summit a bit.

Since the events here take place in the future after everything has been wrapped up, it includes bits and pieces of info from the “golden bough” segment of volume 8. If these had been normal novels, that would’ve definitely been a huge no-no (because the readers wouldn’t have had any idea what was going on), but this is the fast and loose world of webnovels, so yeah...

By the way, that particular “tradition” of referring to events in future volumes is kept alive and well into the rest of the short stories. Ah well, can’t do anything about it now!

Anyway, since this was my first short story, I didn’t have a good sense of how long it should be, so I ended up just writing and writing until it was pretty much the size of a novella, with no sign of nearing the end. Time went on, the release date began to loom, and the pressure was so great I thought I might expire—which is another terrible tradition that has continued into the later stories...

For D-Genesis, there’s a roughly three-to-five-month gap between the draft being finalized and the book being published (new novels need to go through proofreading, artwork creation, etc.)—which may seem like enough time to write not only a short story, but the entire next volume. However, I’m not sure if I’m just cursed with chronic laziness, or if a so-called “holiday novelist” can only handle so much, but the best-case scenarios just never seem to happen, and the release date always manages to sneak up on me. It makes no sense...

Prologue

It’s sooooo hot...

We were under the dark shadow of an umbrella planted in the burning white sand, melting like a couple of slimes. Next to me lay Miyoshi’s corpse—er, body, limbs splayed out lazily, with a straw hat pulled down over her eyes.

“Hey...” I mumbled.

“What is it?” Miyoshi murmured back.

“Why are we at the beach, exactly?”

“Well, the main volumes are stuck in perpetual winter, and this book is coming out in summer. We’ve got to give people something summer-ish as a treat at some point, right?”

It was a bit meta for my tastes, but I could smell what she was cooking. Still—

“Don’t you think jumping straight to the beach as an emblem for summer is about the most trite thing we could’ve done?”

“Well, how about fireworks, then?”

“Ah yes, bright flowers bursting across the night sky. What a lovely idea!” I groaned in a mocking voice. “Is that what you wanted me to say? Big fireworks displays in Tokyo are hot, stuffy, and crowded as hell. Summer barely even comes to mind with fireworks; I just think of the massive throngs of people.”

“Yup, that sounds like our lovely capital to me!”

At the busiest summer times, anyone who decided to head over to the Edo River, Sumida River, or even Odaiba might well end up in a living hell.

“Okay, then how about wind chimes?” Miyoshi suggested.

“Chimes made out of Nambu iron sound so refreshing when they ring! Yeah, I feel myself cooling off just by thinking about it!” My words dripped with sarcasm. “Like hell! The wind never stops blowing, and the chimes never stop chiming! The ones made out of resin or glass may look refreshing, but I swear I’d rather rip my ears off than be subjected to the obnoxious sounds they make!”

Ah, the summer heat really brings out my inner rage.

“Hmm, what about sprinkling water on the streets?”

“That’s actually nice and cool when it’s done in the morning or evening,” I replied. “When I see people sprinkling water in the afternoon, though, I kind of want to scream at them to stop making the street into a damn sauna.”

The scorching midsummer sun above was already trying its absolute hardest to cook us to death. Meanwhile, the young women around us were all oiled up, as if they were purposefully frying themselves to a delicious golden brown.

“What is this, some kind of restaurant? Next thing you know, they’ll be rubbing salt all over themselves too. Oh, I guess they’re already brining in the ocean, huh...”

“You’re awfully grumpy today, Kei. We may as well just stick with the beach theme, huh?”

“What, are you gonna be the resident swimsuit babe or something, then?”

“H-H-How dare you look at me like someone just gave you socks for Christmas!” Miyoshi roared indignantly. “Fine, if you’re gonna call me out like that, I’ll just have to rise to the challenge, then!”

“Huh? Sure, I guess...”

Suddenly full of energy, Miyoshi leaped to her feet, threw off her hoodie, and struck a proud pose with her hands on her hips.

“How about this?” It was a tankini with a crossed front, a style that had been quite popular of late. Despite her slovenly lifestyle, her waist was still rather slender, and the outfit looked pretty good on her. Yet—

“Hmmm. I’d say the curves are a bit...understated?”

I heard a growl escape her throat.

“Kei, that was super-duper rude!”

“Now, now. We can leave the swimsuit babe role to the other ladies.” I took a look around, but all I saw was either families out on summer vacation or couples enjoying themselves. And everyone in our immediate area was being all super lovey-dovey... “I think I’m gonna be sick,” I grumbled.

“Come on, it’s no big deal! It’s right there in the title of the series!” Miyoshi declared.

“The hell are you talking about?”

“See, there’s a couple right there! And one over there too!”

I stared blankly.

“What’s your point?”

“It’s ‘Three Years After the Dames and Gents Appeared’!”

My entire body went limp from the sheer ridiculousness of her attempted pun.

“We really need to find you a husband.”

And thus we bring you a summer horror special! This story documents three days and two nights of terror and madness that befell our heroes one summer.

Annotations

Three Years After the Dames and Gents Appeared: A typo the author made in a Twitter post (“danjou” instead of “dungeon”). It was so ridiculous he couldn’t help but chuckle.

Day 1

“Nnggh...”

I let out a funny noise as I stretched my back, having finally gotten out of the car. We had made it to the Shizugatake Service Area on the Hokuriku Expressway, and the blue summer sky stretched out as far as we could see.

As they got out of the back seat, Saito and Mitsurugi each murmured their respective thoughts.

“So we’re a little over four hours out from Tokyo, huh...”

“Wow, so this is the Shizugatake SA?”

Saito was wearing a summery sleeveless high-neck mini top with a high-waisted activewear skort, while Mitsurugi wore a long-sleeved blouse, a pair of black skinny jeans, and a straw capeline hat.

“You were pushing for this service area really hard—but you’ve never even been here before?” I asked Mitsurugi.

“Heh. Nope!” she replied, looking around as if she had some kind of objective to accomplish and was ready to head out to explore the area as soon as possible.

“Saito really isn’t worried about getting sunburnt, is she?” Miyoshi observed. Mitsurugi’s outfit was quite clearly aimed at warding off potential sunburns, but Saito’s practically gleamed with a sense of liberation.

“She said the SPF 50 sunscreen she put on wasn’t just for show,” I responded.

“Oh, that’s right—they even protect their hair with UV spray. Actresses and models really take care of themselves, don’t they?”

“And you don’t?”

“I mean, I’ve got my own strategy, but compared to them it’s more like I’m just dangling my arms in front of me in a No Guard Stance.”

“You and your references... I swear you’ve got to be lying about your age or something.”

“Oh, stop Joe-king around, silly.”

“Agh...”

We had left Tokyo early in the morning, so it wasn’t even noon yet. The sun was only going to beat down on us harder as the day progressed.

There was a reason the four of us had come out here together. Saito had shown up at our office the day before and offered to take us on a summer vacation with her. Apparently a friend of hers had invited her to stay at a villa resort ahead of its actual opening date.

So this is what it’s like to be a celebrity! About the closest we ever usually came to that was buying Hana Celeb nasal tissues. Speaking of which, I thought the animal faces on the sides of those boxes looked kinda creepy. If you stacked a bunch of boxes in a cupboard, every time you opened it, you’re greeted by a line of cold, dead stares. But I digress.

We weren’t sure how to respond at first, but for some reason Miyoshi ended up getting super interested in the idea. The moment she suggested we take a car because of how much luggage there would be between the three of them, that was that. Naturally, I wound up as the driver.

“We made a pretty decent pace getting here,” I commented.

Miyoshi snickered.

“It’s all thanks to my brilliant navigating!”

“What was there to even navigate? Once we got from Ohashi Junction onto Route 3, it was a straight highway the entire time. You don’t think I noticed you completely passed out with your mouth wide open?” I didn’t blame her for being tired—we had gotten up really early, and there wasn’t anything to do on the car ride besides stare at the same dull scenery for hours. Still, as the driver, I couldn’t help but get a bit irked with a passenger falling asleep on me.

“You know, if you’d wanted to be a safe driver, you really should have kept your eyes on the road,” Miyoshi retorted, a pout on her face as she deflected my complaint with one of her own. “Besides, if I’d left it up to you, Kei, you would’ve just suggested we take the Tomei Expressway the entire way there, right?”

Since our final destination was somewhere over toward Tsuruga Junction, we’d probably end up getting onto the Meishin Expressway at Komaki. Getting from the Tokyo Interchange to Komaki would put us on the Tomei the whole way, just as Miyoshi said. The Tomei was constructed specifically as a highway between Tokyo and Komaki, after all.

“Probably, yeah.”

“Listen, Kei.” Miyoshi raised her index finger as if she were admonishing a student. “If we take the Tomei Expressway all the way from Tokyo to Komaki, that would be a total of 346.7 kilometers. However, if we use the Shin-Tomei and the Isewangan Expressway as bypasses, it ends up only being 335.7 kilometers. That’s an eleven kilometer difference!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Throwing out a perfunctory response, I stepped away from the car and over to an Ito En vending machine toward the back of the rest area, where I bought myself an Evian. The bottle fell to the bottom with a thump, and I picked it up, twisted off the cap, and took a sip—which suddenly reminded me that we still had plenty of food and drink tucked away in Storage and Vault. As I was making a mental note that we should probably work on organizing all that stuff pretty soon, I heard a cheerful, excited voice coming from somewhere off to my left.

“Hey, Coach! Take a look at this!”

When I turned to look, Saito had her face stuck through a photo stand-in panel that depicted the Three Azai Sisters, grinning merrily as she waved her hand at me from above the top of the board. It looked like it was based on an NHK Taiga drama from nearly ten years prior. There was no need to analyze any reports from the Development Bank of Japan to know that Taiga dramas were being used in an effort to revitalize tourism across the country.

“Don’t tell me this is the reason you wanted to stop here?” I murmured as I took some pictures at her request, but Saito merely stuck out her tongue briefly in response. I sighed. “You might well be among the most popular actresses out there right now. What are you even doing?”

“What do you mean, ‘might well be’? There’s no question about it!”

“Right you are. So what’s the deal with this thing?”

“This is a pretty old Taiga drama, right? I’m trying to pull in some of those ‘star’ vibes!”

“So why are you sticking your face in the one on the left, then?” The stand-in panel had what looked like the three sisters lined up next to each other. The one in the center was standing a bit in front of the other two, who were both pulled slightly back.

“What? Wasn’t Princess Go the heroine of this series? The sister in the middle is Chacha, right?” The woman on the right side had short hair, meaning she was mostly likely Hatsu, who became a Buddhist nun after her husband’s death and took the name Joko-in. Via the process of elimination, Saito had apparently concluded that the woman on the left was Go.

“I mean, you can even look at the chibi version of Princess Go. She’s wearing a red headband!” She held up a pamphlet she’d received inside a nearby building with a picture of the princess on it, then pointed back to the stand-in panel.

“But, uh...” Sure enough, there were three chibi figures drawn in at the bottom of the board, and the one on the left did look quite similar to Saito’s picture of Princess Go—yet I wasn’t convinced. “I still think the heroine would normally stand in the middle.”

“Really? Did I get it wrong? Was I in the supporting actor’s spot?!”

Then, suddenly, another voice piped up.

“It’s written right here, Ryoko.” Mitsurugi was there in front of the panel, crouching and pointing. The names of the sisters were indeed written there in tiny characters next to each chibi portrait.

“Oh nooo! Am I suffering from the supporting actor’s curse?”

It’s nothing of the sort. It’s called being a ditz.

“You were pretty much a heroine in your movie, weren’t you?” I pointed out.

“Not really. It had a male lead, honestly.”

“Hmm? What’s up with the face-in-the-hole board?” Miyoshi asked, having finally come out of the washroom to see what all the hubbub was about.

“Face-in-the-hole?” I replied, blinking.

“Isn’t that what they’re usually called? A face-in-the-hole board, or just a face-in-hole?” Miyoshi did a quick search and pulled up the Wikipedia entry to show me.

“Sheesh, so there are actually proper names for these things? Though, uh...”

“What is it?”

“I mean... I’m just saying, any name that talks about ‘faces in holes’ sounds kinda”—I hesitated for a moment—“well, you know, awkward, right?”

Saito gave me a look.

“Wow. I never thought I’d hear something like that come out of your mouth, Yoshimura.”

“Oh, believe me, Kei’s chock-full of lewd jokes,” Miyoshi said, eyeing me. “He’s already reaching that ‘dirty old man’ age, after all.”

Saito gasped.

“Really?!”

Doing my best to ignore Miyoshi’s unhelpful commentary, I finished my thought.

“Anyway, that’s why they’ll always be ‘photo stand-in’ panels to me, okay?”

“You do you, Kei. Though as childish as they may be, I’m honestly surprised at how much everyone seems to love these things.”

“Yeah, and they’re not always pictures of people and animals either—there’s even one out there that lets you pretend you’re a giant pudding.”

Miyoshi blinked. “Why would anyone want to be a pudding?”

“Well, so you can tell people how delicious you are, and ask them to eat you right u— Oof!”

As she retracted the elbow that she had embedded into my side, Miyoshi looked over to Saito and Mitsurugi and gave them her best I-told-you-so grin.

“Ugh. You really need to learn to pull your punches a bit...” I said between coughs.

As midday drew closer, the intensity of summer continued to increase, further fanning the flames of freedom within us all.

***

After departing the service area, we made our way from the Tsuruga Junction onto the Maizuru-Wakasa Expressway, then got off at the Obama Interchange. From there, we hopped onto National Route 162, which was a seaside road. Miyoshi and the others took in the scenery without a word, transfixed for a while.

“Check it out, Kei! That police substation looks like someone’s house!”

I glanced to the left side of the road and saw the Fukutani Police Substation. Just as she said, it looked like a regular house, through and through. The roof tiles had what seemed to be an array of strange stud-looking things arranged across them in a mostly regular pattern.

“I wonder if those things on the roof are to keep people from slipping when they run across it?” Miyoshi mused.

“I seriously doubt they get many roof-runners out here.”

“They kind of look like scales too,” Mitsurugi added, glancing at the building.

“Scales?”

“Oh yeah! Wakasa is famous for its tilefish, after all. Freshly flame-cooked tilefish scales are so crispy and delicious!” Miyoshi interjected, using her hand to wipe away the drool she had conjured up by thinking about food on an empty stomach.

Tilefish prepared in the Matsukasa style was a classic dish. In Japanese cuisine it was deep-fried, but in French cuisine they pan-fried it. First you heated up a large amount of olive oil to an extremely high temperature and started cooking the fish skin-side down, meaning you were basically deep-frying the skin. The trick to getting the scales to stand up so beautifully was to let the scale-side retain some moisture as you started cooking it.

“There’s no way they’re supposed to be tilefish scales,” I responded in a deadpan voice.

Mitsurugi laughed as she listened to our exchange.

“Actually, I hear Obama is famous for some kind of mermaid folklore,” she revealed.

“Really? I thought all it had going for it was its moment in the spotlight while Obama was the US President,” Saito said, flipping rapidly through the guidebook Mitsurugi had pulled out.

“Well, I only read a tiny bit about it before we got here,” Mitsurugi admitted.

“Whoa! We just passed the Wakasa Chopstick Museum! Apparently they have the world’s largest pair of chopsticks there!” Saito squealed.

“The world’s largest...pair of chopsticks?”

“Yup! Let’s see, it says here they’re 8.4 meters in length... Huh?”

“I wonder how anyone is supposed to use chopsticks that big?” Miyoshi asked incredulously. “At that point, they’re just pieces of lumber made into Wakasa lacquerware.”

“They were probably made for Daidarabotchi to use,” I suggested.

“Daidarabotchi? The giants?”

“Yeah. According to one legend, a Daidarabotchi monk who crossed the Sea of Japan ended up being an instructor to Rennyo and his monks at the temple Hongan-ji. Supposedly they spread his teachings across the country via boats sent out from Wakasa Bay and the Kohoku area of Shiga. Extrapolating from that, it wouldn’t be too odd for there to be some leftover signs of that in the Wakasa area.”

“Why are you trying to make it sound plausible? Besides, that’s implying they’ve even been around five hundred years— Oh, take a left here after Uchitomi Elementary!”

The entrance to that rather narrow street had a sign indicating we were headed toward the Angel Line. It also had a warning written in red letters: “Road closed during nighttime hours.”

“No entry between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.?” I would’ve understood roads being closed seasonally due to excessive snowfall or something, but what reason could they possibly have had for closing it all night long?

“I wonder if it’s haunted by evil spirits or something? We’re getting into Professor Hieda territory, here!” Miyoshi clenched her fist in excitement as she referenced the manga Yokai Hunter.

A lonely, remote village...mysterious rules...all we need now are some locals who don’t take kindly to strangers, and all the spooky elements will be in place.

“Nah, it’s a lot more likely the road just doesn’t have any streetlights or guardrails or something.”

“What? But there are roads like that all across Japan! And you can take those at night!”

At your own risk, sure.

“Whoa! The ocean!”

Saito’s sudden exclamation was an accurate representation of the extraordinary sight on the road in front of us. Rice paddies extended far out to our right, the ocean stretched out to the horizon on our left, and both of them appeared to be at roughly the same elevation as the road. The waters looked as though they were ready to overtake us at any moment. Our car was quite literally riding the border between land and sea.

After enjoying that view for a while, we saw a sign for a store along the side of the road. On this lonely placard next to a rice paddy in the middle of nowhere, a strange phrase was written: Turn left 500 meters back.

“Back...?” I took a quick peek in the rearview mirror, and saw Saito and Mitsurugi turned around looking out the back window.

“I don’t see anything but rice paddies!” Saito whined.

“Do they want us to just stop right here and back up five hundred meters?” Miyoshi pondered.

I see signs about things that are however many meters ahead all the time. Why the hell would anything say five hundred meters back, though?

“It’s almost like they don’t want us going past this point...” Mitsurugi spoke in a murmur, but it resonated strangely loudly within the car.

After continuing on for a while longer, the white dotted center stripe changed to a solid yellow line, and it felt like the road narrowed ever so slightly. That line began to fade almost immediately, the guardrail on the ocean side suddenly vanished, and the only separating marker down the center of the road was a split in the asphalt.

“I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have a left lane.” The grass was growing into the shoulder of the road, making the line for the lane’s edge almost impossible to see.

Feeling more and more on edge, we proceeded further still, until suddenly, we saw a huge wire mesh cage on the shoulder of the road ahead of us. It was roughly the size of a twenty-foot shipping container, and it almost looked like it was meant to hold some kind of animal.

“What is that...?”

“The local roadside falconer?” I quipped.

When we got closer, it turned out to be a trash disposal area. Yet there were no signs of life within a hundred meters, nor signs of anything at all besides rice paddies and ocean. Who the hell would want to bring their trash way the heck out here?

“Maybe this is where the mermaids of Wakasa Bay throw away their garbage?”

I chuckled loudly in an effort to counter the rather unsettling mental image I got from Miyoshi’s joke, but the laughter came out a bit forced.

Once we had passed a few more tiny communities, the road narrowed even further, to the point where we weren’t even sure whether two vehicles could pass each other.

“To think we could get this far off the beaten path just a few hours out from Tokyo...” I said, slowing down to survey the area.

“This is just too weird, Kei.”

“I guess, but it’s exactly where the GPS is telling us to go. You’re sure you have the correct address, right?” I asked.

“This is the address they gave me...but maybe we should ask someone around here anyway.”

I took us back to a slightly better section of road and stopped on the shoulder by the seaside, then got out of the car and took a look around. Nearby, I spotted a strange, small building in the shape of a boat. A sign beneath a huge gate had the words “Tomari Disposal Facility” written on it, and nothing else. Next to that stood a utility pole with a yellow warning light flashing at the top of it, as if something were about to happen. What on earth is this place?

“I wonder what they dispose of here?” Miyoshi asked, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at the yellow light dubiously.

“The hell if I know... What I do know is there’s not a single shop around here to ask directions.” No matter where we looked, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

“There is a Shinto shrine really close by, apparently,” Miyoshi said, poring over the map on her phone. Our signal, while far from rock solid, still seemed to be up and running.

“Maybe we’ll find someone at the shrine office. Wait here for a sec.” Following the directions I had seen on the map, I headed toward the shrine.

As I approached the path, there was a sign at about ankle height with a red arrow pointing in one direction. I had no idea what the arrow was supposed to signify, but I followed it onto the narrow pathway nonetheless. I continued on, passing by several dilapidated buildings surrounded by fig trees. The entire place was enveloped in a strange stillness, as if humanity had gone extinct. A longhorn beetle crawled along a fig branch, and as its squeaky chirps echoed out into the void, I felt like I could almost hear its voice bemoaning its status as the Earth’s sole survivor.

After walking maybe another thirty or forty meters, I finally saw the shrine on the left side of the path. There were no signs of any people on the shrine grounds, nor on the surrounding paths. The entryway to the tiny building that was apparently used as a shrine office had a layer of dust on it, as if nobody had stopped by in quite a while.

“Well, so much for that. Guess I’ll try calling.”

I went to the Association of Shinto Shrines website, but even though the shrine was listed, both the email address and the phone number entries were blank, and nothing was written in the Shrine History section either.

“What the hell?” I reluctantly put away my cell phone and decided to take another look around the area. “Man, what a pain in the ass.”

As I was wandering the grounds, I came across some sort of flowerbed with three smooth, round stones lined up in a row on the ground. The deities enshrined here were apparently Hikohohodemi-no-Mikoto (also known as Yamasachihiko), and Toyotamahime-no-Mikoto (Yamasachihiko’s wife), so perhaps two of the stones were supposed to be the magical tide-flowing jewel and tide-ebbing jewel? In the illustrations I had seen at the upper Wakasahiko Shrine, they had looked less like jewels and more like poisonous cone snail shells stood up on end, though. At the time, I had thought, I guess every rose has its thorns, huh? but people did generally associate jewels with a more spherical shape.

Still, there were three stones on the ground, not two. Wondering what on earth the last one was supposed to symbolize, I reached out to touch it, when suddenly...

“Whatchyalldointhere, feller?”

“Wha—?” I turned around and was greeted by what seemed to be a local man who was roughly in his forties. With deep wrinkles covering his copper-colored skin that had been weathered by the salty ocean breeze, he looked like a true man of the sea.

“Ah, excuse me. I’m a bit lost, and I was looking for someone to ask for directions.”

Once he realized I was a tourist, he switched from full Wakasa dialect to mostly standard Japanese. “Oh, you’re city folk. Here for the fishin’?”

“Not exactly... Oh, do you happen to know a place called ‘Sukusu’?”

As soon as I asked that, the atmosphere took a drastic turn.

“S-Suku—” He started to repeat, but stopped before finishing the full word. It was as if he couldn’t believe I had actually said it—like it was taboo merely to speak the name.

“Yeah. There’s supposed to be a place by that name somewhere around here—”

I cut myself off mid-thought. The man’s face had gone pale, and he started backing away, eyes wide with shock, as if he had just encountered a ghost on some dark street at night.

“Um, sir?” I took a small step forward, and the man matched it with a step backward of his own, as if I were some kind of plague-ridden rat that he was trying to keep his distance from.

“J-Just keep goin’ straight down that there road, and you’ll get to the gate eventually,” he said, pointing quickly in the direction I had just come from. That was exactly where Miyoshi’s GPS had been pointing us—right down the narrow road we were feeling so uneasy about. But something was odd...

“Gate?”

Hearing that single word, the man somehow went even more pale. Is he having some kind of medical episode?

“Excuse me, are you okay?”

“F-Fitasafiddle!” the man blurted out, then turned and ran off.

“What on earth was his problem...?” Tilting my head in confusion, I headed back toward the car.

Miyoshi greeted me upon my return.

“Oh, there you are, Kei! How’d it go?”

I thought about the man’s bizarre reaction; it seemed like he had been frightened of something.

“Question.” I turned to Saito, knowing full well she probably wouldn’t know the answer. “Is Sukusu some kind of forbidden zone or something?”

“I know a lot of people come to this area to fish,” she said. “I don’t think forbidden zones are even a thing nowadays. And if it was something along those lines, how could they have built a hotel there in the first place?”

She had a point. The tiny community we were in didn’t even have a single general store, yet there were apparently three different places that offered ferry rides. One had to assume most tourists that visited were coming to reel in a few catches.

“I just Goggled ‘Sukusu’ and didn’t get any hits,” Miyoshi added.

“None at all?”

“It did bring up a place on the Nakasendo called Suharajuku...but Goggle has this thing where even if you ask for an exact match, it still shows hits even when there are symbols between the characters. It picked up ‘Agematsujuku→Suharajuku’ because the kanji for ‘juku’ in the first word and the kanji for ‘su’ in the second word read ‘Sukusu’ when they’re put together. It just completely ignored the fact that there is an arrow between the two.”

“Sheesh. Sure would be nice if an ‘exact match’ were actually exact, huh?”

“I’m with you on that one! Anyway, I found exactly zero hits relevant to our interests.”

A location name with no internet footprint whatsoever? In this day and age? Something feels kinda wrong about all this...

I cleared my throat. “Well, at least we had the right directions, apparently. Let’s get back on track. I’m starting to get hungry.”

Upon proceeding further down the narrow road, all we found were ruins, ruins, and more ruins. There were a number of shipping containers strewn about the grass and the shoulders, some labeled as being from Yamazaki Baking, and others from Daiei with the Fukuoka Hawks logo printed on them. It almost seemed as though people had been living in them at some point in the past. If they had, I couldn’t imagine what kind of life it would’ve been, cooped up inside a windowless container like that all the time. Not to mention some of the containers even had massive dents and deformations in them, as if some giant thing had tried to smash them in.

“Well, we found a gate, but there sure aren’t any houses. How could a hotel possibly stay in business at the end of a road like this?” I muttered, staring bleakly at the crushed shipping container that lay beyond a battered gate, where our destination should’ve been.

“Maybe people come in by boat?” Miyoshi theorized. “They’ve got boat tours and whatnot, where people can check out the caves and interesting rock formations along the seaside.”

“Huh. I guess that might explain why the roads aren’t being maintained.”

The route we came in on would probably make the infamous list of the worst roads in Japan. No doubt it would’ve cost a fortune to fix it up all the way back to Obama, and no private company in their right mind would’ve been willing to fund it. Given that fact, it made perfect sense to secure a sea route instead. The place was “cut off from the world” in a fairly literal sense, after all. It was the same concept as staying at a hotel on a remote island, and they could’ve even made that their selling point. Places that were way off the beaten path could hold a special charm for some people—though once they finally made the trip, many of those people ended up regretting it.

At least, that had been my experience when I visited a remote island back in my college days. Common sense had dictated that I could look forward to indulging myself with seafood all day long in such a location, but what I’d ended up getting were things like sautéed fish sausage, fried spam, and stir-fried bean sprouts. In hindsight, it made sense—it had been a simple inn on an island with no distribution system in place. The surrounding ocean no doubt held plenty of raw ingredients, but there’d been nobody to catch or sell them. Sure, dedicated fishermen might’ve been able to handle that, but the elderly men and women of the island sure hadn’t been up to the task.

“Or maybe they want to preserve that nice, rustic feeling of an unmaintained road,” I suggested.

“Supposedly there’s a port a bit further down that’s actually quite well maintained,” Saito said.

“Oh yeah?”

According to her, the port in question used to be a flourishing center of international trade.

“Well, Tsuruga was a thriving port of trade for a long time as well, from the days of the envoys from Balhae until the railroad system was built.” It wasn’t all that far-fetched to think there would be a port nearby that was still reaping the benefits from those days.

“What is that?” Miyoshi asked suddenly, sounding rather surprised.

When I took my focus away from the road and looked up, my eyes went wide. There, enclosed by the trees that had grown across the road into an arch and were blocking out the sunlight above, was an amazing sight.

“Maybe this is the aforementioned gate?”

The gate, which looked just large enough for two cars to pass by each other, was made of a sturdy bronze or iron, and at its top was some kind of crest in the shape of a circle with a cross inside it.

“What gate are you talking about?” Miyoshi asked.

“Oh, the guy I asked for directions earlier said we would get to a gate eventually.”

Stopping the car, I got out and looked up at the gate.

“The gateposts look like they’ve been around a while, but the gate itself doesn’t look all that old, if you ask me.” The two components definitely looked like they were from different eras, if nothing else.

Miyoshi furrowed her brow in thought.

“Is it beyond here? If so, how exactly are we supposed to get through the closed ga—”

Before she could finish speaking, the gate suddenly let out a tiny creak and opened inward ever so slightly.

“Whoa! It’s like a horror movie! This place would make an awesome filming location!” Saito’s happy-go-lucky voice rang out from behind us as we stood there in front of the gate, frozen by the bizarre atmosphere.

“Kei, I just got flashbacks of a certain Manor.”

“Well, what do you know? So did I.” Though there’s absolutely no possible way it could show up here.

One of the gateposts had some weathered characters carved into it that read “Sukusu-guchi.” Apparently it was the entrance to Sukusu after all. That means we’ve been on the right road all along. But why would anyone build a gate right over the main road?

“Do you think everything beyond the gate is private property?” Miyoshi wondered.

“Maybe. But you know, this kind of reminds me of an ancient European ghetto,” I murmured, noticing the locking bars on both the inside and outside of the gate.

Ghettos were emblematic of the religious persecution of Jewish people in Europe during the late medieval period into the early modern era. Jews within the ghettos built walls from the inside to protect themselves from persecution, while the other inhabitants of the city built walls from the outside to prevent those inside from coming out on important holy days.

“So what do you think is inside?” Miyoshi asked.

“I’m guessing it’s a place where the influence of the deities of the Wakasahiko and Wakasahime shrines back there can no longer reach us.”

“Ooh! The mercury’s rising on the Hieda-meter!”

“Could you not?” I groaned, but stopped there. It was approaching the hottest part of a midsummer day, yet the canopy of trees above was keeping the area around us oddly cool, and due to that, it felt absurdly humid.

“That symbol is the emblem of the Shimazu clan, isn’t it?” Mitsurugi said, tilting her head as she stared up at the gate. “What’s it doing all the way out here?”

Saito gasped.

“Oh my god, Haru, when did you become a historian?”

“Oh, Ryoko, don’t be silly. You realize this emblem is really famous, right?”

“Hey Kei! The Cross of Shimazu is a seal that destroys evil!”

“What, you mean like making the sign of the cross on your chest?” The act of doing that was believed by some to ward off disaster and bring good fortune.

“Well, there are theories that say it’s related to the Christian cross, at least.”

“I seriously doubt that... The Cross of Shimazu has been in use since way before Christianity was introduced here,” I pointed out.

“Maybe it’s one of history’s mysteries!” Miyoshi shot back.

“Yeah, super mysterious. Anyway, as long as this isn’t a private road, we may as well head on in. Could you open the gate while I bring the car through?”

“You got it!”

After passing through the gate, we traveled down the snaking road for a while until the gloom of the forest vanished suddenly, as if something had sliced away all the trees, and we entered an open area illuminated by the bright summer sun.

“Wow! It’s almost like one of those little villages built on the cliffs of the Mediterranean coast!”

In the distance was a village that had been built on a small plateau in the back of a cove. The bright white sandy beach on the opposite side of the cove almost looked like it was made out of coral, giving the ocean an emerald green hue.

“Are there actually any coral reefs in this area?” Mitsurugi said in disbelief, gawking at the color of the sand.

I rubbed my chin in thought before responding.

“I think coral reefs in Japan only go about as far north as Tateyama in Chiba on the Pacific side. On the Sea of Japan side, hmm... I believe Tsushima Island was the limit, maybe?”

Saito suddenly poked her head out the window.

“So...does that mean the owner of the hotel above the beach brought all that white sand in from somewhere else?” she asked innocently.

“Nobody in their wildest dreams could hope to do that,” Mitsurugi replied, shaking her head.

“Well, if it’s natural”—I pointed to the rocky area at the bottom of the hill on which the building stood—“it could just be unusually white granite sand.”

“A quartz beach, then?”

“Probably.”

The quartz sand at Shirarahama Beach in the Wakayama prefecture was extremely white, making the ocean look rather green, but the waters we were looking at seemed even greener still.

The town wasn’t built out of stone like ones you’d see in Italy or southern France, but the rows of quaint country houses lined up across the back of the cove, with their mix of Japanese and Western styles, were quite beautiful from a distance. And then there was the building on the other side of the cove, perched atop a small hill that seemed to jut right out into the water.

“So is that the place we’re looking for?” I asked.

“You know, it totally could be,” Saito replied.

“It’s bigger than I thought it’d be. And it’s a Western-style building too! Way out here in the boondocks!” Miyoshi exclaimed.

“She did say it had just been built, didn’t she...?”

Saito shook her head.

“Nope! My friend said they renovated an existing building.”

“If this area prospered through trade, then maybe some rich person from the West built it back then?” I suggested.

“Though we didn’t start building anything in the Western style until the Bakumatsu,” Miyoshi pointed out. “I wonder when and how the place was built...?”

The source of the bricks was certainly something I was curious about—Japan’s first brick factory wasn’t even built until the Meiji era.

The road circled around the perimeter of the town, then headed up the hill. We didn’t see a single person on the way there—maybe they were all out at work. The only sign of actual life in the town was the occasional drying laundry we saw outside, fluttering in the wind.

My phone had lost signal shortly after we passed the Tomari Disposal Facility, but as we got closer to the hotel, I started picking up reception from a different network. Apparently the place was equipped with Wi-Fi, if nothing else.

Once we had made it to the top of the hill and through the hotel gate, I parked next to the entrance, and a man came out immediately. He looked like—well, I wouldn’t quite say a bellboy or doorman, but perhaps the word “butler” was an appropriate fit.

“Welcome, Miss Saito.”

“Hi there! We appreciate your hospitality!”

Two bellboys soon came out from somewhere behind the man, pulled our luggage out from the trunk of our car, then led Saito and Mitsurugi to their rooms.

“This building looks like it could have a lot of history behind it,” Miyoshi remarked.

Looking at it from up close, I saw that it wasn’t made from brick at all, but a combination of wood and stone.

“According to the records, it was built by a Western woman who drifted ashore here in the sixth year of the Keicho period.”

“Any idea when exactly that was?”

“The Battle of Sekigahara was in the year 1600, which was the fifth year of Keicho, so the sixth year would’ve been 1601,” Miyoshi added informatively.

“So a year after Sekigahara, then?”

“March of 1601 was when the Dutch ships first showed up in Japan after setting sail two years prior. I imagine the Holy Roman Empire was sending ships all over the place around that time.”

“Like the Liefde?”

“A whole bunch of Portuguese ships came here from Macau in the late 1500s too.”

“I’ve never heard about any ships drifting ashore in this area though.” If the Dutch ship Liefde had gone down in the annals of Japanese history, it would seem like any ship that landed here would’ve as well. In fact, it would have been awfully strange if it hadn’t.

“Well, apparently the woman drifted ashore at Kuotogahama on some kind of small container-like vessel.”

“Kuotogahama?”

“That’s the name of the white beach at the bottom of the cliff. It was just some nameless beach before that, and the woman gave it a name sometime after she arrived. Now it’s a private beach for the guests staying at this hotel.”

“Wait, a small container-like vessel...? You mean like an utsubo-bune?”

“The Hieda-meter just went up another notch, Kei!”

“Oh, come on. Utsubo-bune tales are folk legends, through and through. Besides, those all happened in the 1800s.”

“Did they?” Miyoshi brought up a quick search on her phone, then showed me the results. “I didn’t do a deep dive, but it looks like the earliest records are from the Genroku period.”

“When was Genroku again?”

“Around 1700, roughly.”

“Huh. So you’re saying this could be the oldest utsubo-bune on record in Japan?”

The man, who had been listening to us, flashed a mysterious smile and shook his head.

“I wouldn’t call them official records, unfortunately, but we do have some personal documents.”

“Personal documents...? Whose?”

“The shrine priest who took said woman into his care.”

“Really?!”

Apparently there was a small, ancient shrine in the forest nearby that wasn’t even registered with the Association of Shinto Shrines.

The headquarters of the Association of Shinto Shrines was a slightly questionable-looking black building hidden among the trees of the Meiji Shrine grounds. It was nestled up against the Yamanote Line at the Kita-sando entrance, and it also happened to be right next to our office. With its security cameras out in plain sight, from afar it kind of looked like a hideout for some secret society, but in actuality it was a highly respected religious organization overseeing Shinto shrines across the nation.

Of course, there were a fair number of shrines that were not a part of the Association. Many shrines had withdrawn from the organization in recent years, including the Nikko Tosho-gu in 1985, and the Tomioka Hachiman, which recently had gotten embroiled in a murder case.

There was a huge stir in 2005 when the Meiji Shrine itself left the Association of Shinto Shrines. It rejoined again after a few years, but the intervening time introduced a rather comical situation: The Shrine Association Headquarters was situated right on the doorstep of a huge shrine that was no longer a part of said Association. The story just went to show, though, that shrines choosing to depart wasn’t that rare of an occurrence.

“Which deity is enshrined there?”

“It’s said to be dedicated to a kotoamatsukami—one of the earliest Shinto gods of creation.”

“Sort of like the Mitake Shrine, then? What’s it doing all the way out here?”

“We do have a few documents on display in the hotel with further details on that. If you’re curious enough, though, why not take a walk over to the shrine itself?”

“Ah, good point. We’ll try to stop by if we get the chance.”

Hearing that, the man bowed, then disappeared into the lobby.

“A mansion built by a woman who washed up in Japan over four hundred years ago, huh...” I mused, turning my gaze back up to the fancy ceiling in the lobby. The interior had been heavily remodeled since those days, no doubt.

“I wonder if the woman might’ve been English, and she drifted here on some kind of lifeboat?” Miyoshi asked.

“Why do you say that?”

“She was the one who named the nearby beach, wasn’t she?”

“Kuotogahama, was it? I know ‘otogahama’ means ‘maiden of the beach,’ but you think ‘ku’ would’ve originally used the kanji for ‘pain,’ representing the woman’s painful sea voyage that ended with her washing up on the beach? Honestly I’m not too keen on the actual kanji for ‘ku’ they use either—why would she be an ‘eternal’ maiden?”

“I guess it would make sense if the priest who found her named the beach instead—especially if he ended up marrying her. But honestly, a Western woman from the 1600s wouldn’t have known the first thing about kanji. However, what if the ‘oto’ kanji was originally pronounced as ‘otsu’ instead?”

“‘Kuotsu’? Oh! Quartz!”

The white beach was most likely made of quartz. It would’ve made perfect sense for someone from England to call it “Quartz Beach.”

“But weren’t all the ships coming in at the time Dutch or Portuguese?”

“You realize that the Dutch Liefde had Anjin Miura on it, right? His real name was William Adams—a bona fide Englishman!” Miyoshi stated, looking out at the ocean through a window on the stair landing as we headed to our room on the second floor. “There was a man in England around that time, a favorite of Elizabeth I, named John Dee, who created the Enochian language after supposedly communing with the archangel Uriel through a crystal ball. I wouldn’t be surprised if ending up on a beach made from crystal fragments had some kind of special significance to her.”

Speaking of which, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1600 was Rudolf II. While he might have been rather questionable as a statesman, he had been quite the intellectual, and had been apparently well-versed in things like sorcery and alchemy. If the woman in question happened to be aboard a ship that was part of the Holy Roman Empire, things like that certainly could have had an influence on her.

“I wonder what exactly they traded here that made it thrive so much, though?” Miyoshi wondered.

That was a good question. Tsuruga was just a short trip to the east, and it probably would’ve been a lot more profitable for them to have sold their goods over there. No doubt there would’ve been a lot more options for goods to take home too.

“What was our main export at the time? Silver?” I asked.

“Yup. Also Japanese swords and mother-of-pearl. Oh, and slaves, I suppose...”

It was a historical fact that Portuguese ships collected slaves from all over the world—a common practice at the time. Even here in Japan, they enslaved the people of Nagasaki during the Kyushu campaign, and a number of Koreans were supposedly brought back after the Imjin War—though all that ended up being outlawed by the year 1600.

“Of course in 1587, Hideyoshi sent that letter to Coelho, the vice provincial of the Jesuit Order at the time, which basically said, ‘Fuck off with your slave-trading bullshit!’ And even Portugal enacted a law in 1595 that banned putting Chinese and Japanese nationals on the slave trade market...” Miyoshi trailed off.

“So you’re implying this location would’ve been the perfect place to gather a bunch of women from a poor farming village to sell on the down-low?”

“Maybe... But maybe it’s just my imagination running wild. Besides, do you even remember what we came here to do, Kei?”

“Huh? Did we actually have something we were supposed to do on this trip?”

“We’re on summer vacation! You’re supposed to get out there and enjoy yourself, jeez!”

“Whah...?”

“You’ve got ten minutes to get ready and meet us down in the lobby!”

And so, against my will, I was dragged out onto the white sandy beach in the scorching summer sun.

Annotations

A photo stand-in panel that depicted the Three Azai Sisters: This panel was in that location a good while back, but I have no idea whether it still is. Maybe so?

A photo stand-in panel that lets you pretend you’re a giant pudding: This panel was at the Marlowe pudding shop in front of Hayama Elementary School. The shop closed on July 25, 2019 after relocating elsewhere. The pudding panel...was not relocated with them. (It has since been moved, apparently.)

Implying they’ve even been around five hundred years: Rennyo lived in the 1400s. The world’s largest pair of chopsticks, however, were created in 2009.

Sign that says “Turn left 500 meters back”: This sign actually exists. What in tarnation?!

Tomari Disposal Facility: This place really is standing there on the outskirts of a deserted village. At first I thought it was just a really funky-shaped building, but upon closer inspection, I realized it was modeled after a small fishing boat. As for the warning lights, at first I wondered if they signified some kind of nuclear activity, but considering how shoddy the place looked, that was highly unlikely. It would’ve been really scary if so! In actuality, it appears to be a rural fishery wastewater facility—a term that calls forth some pretty wild mental images in itself. Good job!

***

“For crying out loud...”

I changed into my swimsuit, threw on my hoodie, and was about to head back down to the lobby when a thought stopped in my tracks at the top of the stairs. Should I really be hanging around out there in an outfit like this? Just then, I heard a few of the hotel staff come out of a door next to the stairwell, chatting with each other.

“That sure came out of the blue. Tomorrow night, right?”

“Yeah. I sure hope we’ll be ready in time.”

“What really matters is that we finish all our prep work by the day after tomorrow...”

The men’s voices gradually faded away into the distance.

“I wonder what’s going on the day after tomorrow?” I murmured to myself. And what came out of the blue? The four of us barging in suddenly, maybe?

Feeling a bit guilty for causing them somewhat of an inconvenience by taking advantage of the invite to stay there before they were officially open, I went to meet up with Miyoshi in the lobby. From there, we were told we could get to the beach by heading down a white stone stairway along the cliffside.

“Wow. These stairs would be a nightmare for older people and small children.”

The narrow stairway was carved out of the cliffside rock, and there was a token white rope to use as a handrail, but considering how dizzyingly high up we were and how steep the angle of descent was, it was of small comfort.

“Sounds like you’re already giving this place their very first guest feedback, Kei!”

“I’m doing nothing of the sort! I’m just worried about Saito and Mitsurugi—”

Just as I was trying to explain, I saw two figures waving at us from down on the beach.

I blinked. “Huh? Weren’t they still in the hotel when we came out here?”

“Apparently there’s also an elevator that comes down to the bottom.”

It took me a moment to find my words.

“Tell me, Miyoshi. Why exactly are we risking our lives taking the stairs?”

“I mean, the view’s so amazing! It’s just like the hotels in Taormina!”

“You’ve never even been to Sicily! Sure, a stairway made of white stone might bring images like that to mind, but I doubt the ones over there are quite this high up...” I grumbled weakly, my shoulders drooping in defeat.

Carefully inching our way down the cliffside, we eventually managed to make it to the bottom, where the butler-ish man from before was waiting for us.

“Not many of our guests choose to use the stairs. How did you fare?” he asked courteously.

“Well enough to make it down, I guess...”

“Excellent. I do hope you enjoy yourselves thoroughly at our private beach. Note that dinner will be served at 4:30, so please make sure to return to the hotel a bit ahead of time.”

“At 4:30?” I couldn’t help but repeat back. Unless I had misheard, that was ridiculously early. It was like a return to olden times when daylight was precious and people had no choice but to go to bed when the sun set.

“Correct. We invite our guests to enjoy the stunning sunset from the terrace as they partake of their meals.”

Okay, that makes sense enough. What doesn’t, though, is the fact that sunset for this time of year is after 6:30 p.m. Even if they make a huge production out of dinner, I’m pretty sure starting at six would be perfectly adequate...

“I do recommend using the elevator on your return trip.”

Glancing up at the stairway, I suppressed a sigh, wondering who on this earth would have the brass balls to choose that route on purpose.

“Duly noted.”

I happened to glance up at the hotel right after that, and saw what looked like someone with shining golden hair and a red dress suddenly slip out of sight. Are there other people besides us staying here?

“Excuse me, are there other guests at the hotel right now?” I asked the butler.

“Nobody at all. Miss Saito has the facility booked for private use for your entire stay.”

“What? But I just saw someone up there...”

Hearing that, the butler looked up at the building, then back to us. “Part of our staff, I’d presume,” he responded rather quickly. “Oh, before I forget, all hotel employees depart at 6:30, so feel free to spend your evenings at your own leisure.”

“Huh? There’s no staff at night? I thought this was a full-service condo hotel?”

“We’re terribly sorry for any inconvenience that might cause. Please enjoy your stay.” Before we could say anything more, the man departed and headed over to the elevator, leaving behind just one maid who was under a beach umbrella next to the reclining chairs preparing some beverages.

“The sun doesn’t set until between 6:40 and 6:50 around here, Kei. Don’t sunset dinners normally last until the sun actually sets and the outdoor lights start coming on?”

“I always thought that was the whole point,” I concurred.

“It’s almost like they don’t want to be here at night.”

“You’ve been acting a little weird today, Miyoshi. I think you’ve got a case of Hieda-itis.”

“Hieda-itis? Come on, all kinds of weird stuff has been happening, don’t you agree?”

“So you seriously think the ghost of some four-hundred-year-old shipwrecked woman is living in the mansion up there?”

“Ghosts and apparitions aren’t real.”

“We’ve actually seen ghosts before.”

“Monsters in a dungeon don’t count,” Miyoshi insisted.

“Hmm? What’s the deal, you two?”

When I turned around to see who was talking, I found myself instantly captivated by the two beautiful flowers standing there. Saito had on a bold, large-patterned bikini, putting her healthy body freely on display, while Mitsurugi was wearing a white bikini covered by a long sarong. One of her pale legs was peeking out from the side opening of the sarong. It was truly a dazzling sight.

“Whuh? O-Oh, hey...”

“So how do I look, Coach?” Saito asked, turning around and striking a catwalk pose.

“Um, well, quite nice, I suppose.”

“What do you mean you suppose?” She let out a chipper chuckle.

Ignoring her, I turned to Mitsurugi.

“But, uh, aren’t you worried about getting sunburned?”

Coming right up behind me, Saito peeked her head out from my side and gave me an amused sidelong glance. “Oh my. Are you offering to rub sunscreen oil all over Haru’s body?”

“Whoa! Er—I mean, why’d you have to make it sound so racy? Of course I’m not offering!”

“Of course you’re not,” she shot back.

“I mean, you’re welcome to do my back, if you really want...” Mitsurugi murmured in a shy tone.

“Cut it out!” I exclaimed, to both of their amusement. They teased me mercilessly for the rest of the afternoon.

***

The dinner we had on the terrace was made using local ingredients, and it was honestly quite exquisite, despite the fact that it was served absurdly early. We hadn’t done much of anything for lunch either, so the timing ended up working out in our favor. Once it got past 6:30, our server brought us some after-dinner tea and sake, then gave us a polite bow.

“Please, talk among yourselves until sunset.”

Soon after, the butler fellow came over and took the server’s place.

“We will be taking our leave now. Feel free to use the hotel facilities and supplies as you please, but once the sun has set, we recommend staying inside your rooms at all times.”

“I’m sorry, did you say we shouldn’t leave our rooms? Is there some special reason for that?” I asked, incredulous.

“Oh, no, nothing at all. Housekeeping will take care of any tidying up in the morning, so you’re welcome to leave any messes as is.”

“What? What do you mean—”

“Now, I shall see you in the morning.”

“Wait—”

The man hurried away from the terrace as if he hadn’t heard our protests, then disappeared back into the hotel.

“So what do you think about all this?” I asked Miyoshi.

“Some foreign companies have very limited business hours. Maybe it’s something along those lines?”

“Doesn’t this feel a little extreme, though?”

“Yeah, it really does. To me it felt like they were trying to hightail it out of here before the ghosts started roaming around.”

“What?! Don’t even joke around about that, Miyoshi!” Saito whimpered.

I’m with Saito. Summertime or not, I have no interest in hanging out with actual ghosts.

From our viewing location on the terrace, the sunset was a deep bloodred. There was no denying it was absolutely beautiful—but when the afterglow began to fade, a mass of dark clouds suddenly started rolling in from the south. Seeing that it was liable to start pouring soon, we hurriedly put all our tableware on the cart, moved it under the roof, and headed back to the lobby.

When we arrived, the place was already deserted, and the darkness of night filled the windows. The shrill chirping of the cicadas ceased entirely, and silence descended upon us, accentuated only by the faint sounds of the waves lapping against the cliffside and the occasional rumble of distant thunder.

“Do you think everyone really left?” I wondered out loud.

I started walking around the lobby area, which was lit only by emergency lights. Finding a few light switches next to one of the couches, I went ahead and flipped them on. A soft, warm glow banished the darkness around the seating area.

“Well, we all have toilets and baths in our rooms, so it shouldn’t be that big a deal,” Miyoshi said with a shrug.

“I mean, I guess...” I murmured. Usually people staying at a hotel wouldn’t try to get in touch with the staff in the middle of the night. At most, people might occasionally want to make use of room service after hours. Still, emergencies did sometimes happen. Who was supposed to be in charge if a fire broke out or something? “Shouldn’t they at least have one full-time staff member...?” It was just too weird.

Perplexed, I happened to look up, and noticed there was a side room connected to a part of the lobby. Above the open entryway were the words “Local History Archives.” Apparently some of the documents stored at the shrine were on display there, and people could even physically look through a portion of them.

“Whoa. I wonder if they’re replicas?” It would be way too risky from a preservation standpoint to let just anyone thumb through original papers from over four hundred years ago. If anyone got them dirty or damaged them, that was it—there was no fixing them.

“I dunno, they look pretty old to me!” Miyoshi observed, flipping through the pages of a book she had already picked up. “It’s a perfect way to stave off the boredom!”

There were no TVs in the hotel yet, apparently. Not counting certain places where their entire selling point was a lack of any modern frills, every hotel should’ve at least been equipped with some kind of monitors to watch movies or other kinds of entertainment. Naturally we couldn’t pick up any 1seg mobile broadcasts either.

“Hey Miyoshi!” Saito called out. “They have a wine cellar!”

“Ooh, really?” Miyoshi perked up instantly.

“Hold it right there,” I interrupted. “We really shouldn’t just go opening their wines willy-nilly.”

“What? But they said to use the hotel facilities and supplies as we please!”

“I mean, they did... But if you end up opening something historically significant, you can’t exactly un-open it. Try to resist the urge.”

“I seriously doubt they’d keep a bottle like that in the hotel cellar, but I promise I’ll give due consideration before opening anything—unless it’s, like, some amazingly unique bottle that I’d never get the chance to see again in my life. Anyway, be right back!”

“Hold it! That’s exactly the type of bottle you should give the most due consideration to! Get back here!!!” As I watched Miyoshi dash off toward the kitchen with her arms stretched out behind her—tappity-tap sound effects practically visible—I put a hand to my face in frustration, wondering where she learned to run like a ninja.

Giving up on her as a lost cause, I picked up what appeared to be the first volume of the shrine priest’s personal notes mentioned earlier by the butler fellow, and took it back to the lobby with me. When I got there, I saw Mitsurugi sitting alone on a couch.

“Oh, you didn’t go down there with them?”

“I didn’t want to get in the way of the pirates pillaging Treasure Island,” she said with a chuckle. I agreed wholeheartedly.

It had been a while since the two of us had had a chance to chat. We rambled on for a while about things like her job, progress in the dungeon, and other various recent events. Then, after a while, our two pirate pals finally returned, looking particularly pleased.

“Woo-hoo! We reeled in some big ones!” Miyoshi announced proudly.

“Reeled in...?”

“C’mon, we’re right next to the ocean, what else am I gonna say? There’s all kinds of Italian wine down there!”

“Maybe it’s meant to be paired with the Italian-style food they were serving?”

“They had Costa Russi, some Ceretto San Lorenzo... They were rather young vintages, though, so it feels like a bit of a waste to crack them open right now.”

“You say that, but what exactly do you have in your hands there, Lupin?” Miyoshi was merrily holding up a bottle of wine in each hand, one red and one white.

“What, these? Oh, well, Costa Russi is celebrated for its elegance, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to drink one little bottle...”

“I see. What’s the other one with the blue ‘X’ mark?”

“Oh, they had a 2009 Vistamare. A 2009! That’s a first-year vintage white wine from Ca’Marcanda! Ahhh, I wonder how different this one is compared to the current year variety?”

“That’s not particularly old. Shouldn’t you have had plenty of opportunities to drink that one by now?”

“Kei, Kei, Kei... Do you realize how many first-year vintages are issued per year? If you take all the different varietals and makers into account, you’d be out of fingers and toes to count in no time flat. If someone tried to drink every first-year vintage, they wouldn’t have room in their stomach to drink anything else! Look, even drinking an entire bottle of wine per day, you can only drink 365 bottles a year. That’s a max of 3,653 bottles in ten years, I’ll have you know! Oh, what am I gonna do...”

“All right, take it easy...” It felt highly unnecessary for her to have taken leap years into account.

“At any rate, these were wines I would’ve happily partaken of if I had come across them any other time, so it worked out in the end!”

“Does that rule out anything? I seem to recall you buying a bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet or whatever it was called using my card.”

“I came across it! I had to partake!”

“You sure did, didn’t you.” Though I’m pretty sure chugging a bottle of wine a day for ten years straight is a recipe for instant alcoholism. Still, you might be able to get by using something like Super Recovery—and if you added in Status Ailment Resistance, you might be able to up your numbers to ten bottles a day... Crap. I’d better keep my mouth shut.

“Those kinds of wines don’t necessarily always taste that great anyway.”

“Oh, come on...” That was an awfully hot take, considering her own expensive tastes.

“At any rate, what better place is there to have a bottle of Vistamare than right here?” Miyoshi concluded, pointing smugly out the window. All I could see outside was black, though. “Ah, the vast starry sky stretching out above the ocean at night. Truly a ‘vista mare’!”

“Vista mare” was Italian for “ocean view.” I understood her logic, but we were faced with a harsh, stormy reality. And of course, right on cue, raindrops began to batter the window she had just pointed at—as if nature were trying to break her spirit.

“What the—?”

“Unfortunately, it appears we’ve been rained out,” I told her, pointing out the obvious.

“Oh nooo...!”

“Aw, try not to get too discouraged yet,” I said in an effort to console her. “Remember, Ca’Marcanda means ‘house of endless negotiations,’ right?”

Miyoshi puffed out her cheeks in a pouty manner.

“You’ve got a pretty good grasp of Piedmontese, Kei.”

“I just looked it up,” I said, putting my cell phone down on the table and picking up the bottle of Vistamare. Reaching into my pocket, I made a show of pulling out my Laguiole sommelier corkscrew knife, then removed the cork and poured the wine into her glass. As the lemony yellow liquid went in, an aroma of white flowers and citrus wafted up.

“Smells a lot like a Vermentino, doesn’t it?” Miyoshi commented.

I poured three more glasses, handed one glass each to Saito and Mitsurugi, then picked up my own.

“We might have been rained out this evening, but I’d like to make a toast. To our summer vacation, and to the beautiful ocean view that’s hiding out there somewhere.”

“Cheers!” we all said in unison.

With the wine Miyoshi had swiped, and the various cheeses and charcuteries Saito managed to procure from somewhere, we proceeded to have ourselves a nice little banquet.

***

“So...a nice little banquet, huh...”

Some time had passed, and I found myself regretting my life choices. A drunk Saito was haphazardly chopping up charcuterie on the cutting board while shouting “affettato misto!” in a sing-song voice, to which Miyoshi responded “have it with Lambrusco!” in the same manner, then dashed off to the cellar. It was like some kind of wild witches’ sabbath.

“That’s the poorest excuse for affettato misto I’ve ever seen!” I scolded.

“Huuuh?” Saito said in a drawn-out voice. “Doesn’t it just mean ‘sliced cured meats’?”

“No! Well...yeah, sorta.”

“I’m confused...”

“Listen! ‘Affettato’ means ‘thinly sliced’! It’s a meal consisting of cured meats sliced extremely thin!”

“You’re sooo picky, Coach!”

“It’s not being picky! Who the hell’s gonna take a bite out of a three-centimeter-thick slice of salami?!”

“I will! Rawr!”

As Saito stabbed the meat with her fork and pulled it up to her mouth for a big bite, I calmly fired back at her.

“You know, that thing’s probably got a whole mess of calories in it.”

The moment I cast that terrifying spell, a silence took hold of the room. The tiny fork Saito had been holding fell out of her hand, hitting the table with a surprisingly loud clank.

“D-Don’t worry!” Miyoshi said hurriedly, having returned from the cellar. “Lambruscos actually promote weight loss!”

I glared at her utterly nonsensical factoid.

“No, they absolutely do not.” In fact, they probably have a decent amount of sugar—a lot of them are semisweet.

“Really?” Miyoshi replied. “I know one time I got a terrible stomachache after drinking some and ended up losing weight.”

“That’s only because you also ate too much!”

“Ooooh! So that means if I overeat, I can lose weight!” Saito exclaimed, her absurd conclusion resonating with renewed vigor.

“What is wrong with you?!” That’s it. I give up.

Mitsurugi, who had taken up the part of an uninvolved spectator, was practically dying of laughter, doubled over with her hand on her stomach.

How are we supposed to explain this train wreck to the hotel staff when they come back in the morning...?

***

After a wild night of partying, the last person standing was always the one who got the short end of the stick.

I carried Saito and Miyoshi back to their respective rooms, worrying a bit about how defenseless they seemed.

“Man, these two. They’re lucky I’m not a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“That’s just how much they trust you,” stated Mitsurugi, who had been accompanying me. “Though you know, you’re stronger than I thought you’d be, Yoshimura,” she added in a tone of admiration, having seen me carry each of the others like princesses and place them down in their beds. Of course, I’d had my STR set to 100 at the time, so it had been a rather light workout, all things considered.

She looked up in thought.

“Maybe I should have you carry me too...”

“What? Are you also drunk?”

“I mean, maybe a tiny bit.”

“In that case, you should probably go to bed. I’ll walk you to your room.”

“Oh, okay,” she responded, a hint of disappointment in her voice, then promptly opened the door right next to Saito’s. “I had fun tonight,” she murmured, then paused for a while, until a devilish grin formed on her face. “Wanna stop in for a bit?”

Summoning every ounce of reason I had left, I pulled my face tight, stammered something about seeing her in the morning, and retreated while I still could. Apparently she had been more drunk than she let on.

Once I had made my way back to the lobby, I plopped down on the couch and let out a heavy sigh. Pouring myself the last remaining bit of Costa Russi, I surveyed the disaster scene around me.

“They’re gonna be so angry at us tomorrow...” We hadn’t spilled the alcohol or anything, but the table was packed with enough wine glasses of various shapes and sizes to make it seem like a small army had been drinking. Miyoshi, in her infinite wisdom, had kept bringing out different glasses to match each wine type and vintage. “Sheesh. Yeah, I know they told us to use whatever we want, but that girl needs to learn some restraint.”

Lambrusco in a ballerina champagne tulip? Moron. What if the stem broke? Any white wine glass with a somewhat narrow mouth would’ve been fine. Yeah, more like this one—

I took a closer look at the glass Miyoshi had been using. It was a Riedel Sommeliers that was meant for Zinfandel. Another loud sigh escaped my throat. Those must’ve been the only kinds of glasses they had available.

Outside, the rain started to pick up, and the streams of water running down the windows started turning into rivers. As I mulled over how I would get the throng of wine glasses back to the kitchen, I finished off the remaining wine, and before I knew what hit me, I was on my way to dreamland.

***

“Mmh?”

When I came to, I wasn’t quite sure what had woken me up at first. As soon as I heard the sound echo down from the second floor again, though, I sprang to my feet. That sounded like Mitsurugi screaming!

Immediately setting my stats to max, I sprinted up to her room as fast as I could.

“Mitsurugi?! Are you okay?! I’m coming in!” Something seemed to be exerting pressure on the door from the inside. Using my stat-imbued strength, I forced the door open. The window facing the front of the hotel was wide open, and the wind and rain were pouring in, causing the curtains to flap wildly like the cape of some madman.

I dashed over to the window and looked down...but there was nothing there. Using an arm to stave off the piercing wind as it picked up in intensity, I leaned out and looked in both directions, then spotted what looked like someone in a red dress at the far end of the courtyard.

“Mitsurugi!”

Leaping out the window, I hit the ground and took off after the figure. I have the highest stats of anyone on the planet—there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to catch up.

I could only pray I was right about that.

***

“What’s this...?”

I hadn’t managed to catch up to the figure I had seen, despite running fast enough to cover a hundred meters in a single second. The downpour was torrential, which had limited my visibility, but the path I had taken into the forest was narrow and had no branching paths, so I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I never caught up.

I had ended up at an ancient-looking shrine, standing all by itself in the middle of the forest.

“Maybe it’s the shrine the butler mentioned?”

The area was pretty much pitch-black, but I just so happened to have the Night Vision skill. Despite how muddy the ground was, though, I didn’t see any obvious footprints. Just in case, I took a quick look around the perimeter of the building, but found nothing out of the ordinary—apart from the lonely shrine itself, which seemed to be built in the taisha-zukuri style.

The main halls of Shinto shrines were usually built in one of two architectural styles: shinmei-zukuri or taisha-zukuri, with the former usually being used in places where amatsukami, the gods of heaven, were enshrined, and the latter where kunitsukami, the gods of earth, were enshrined. The deity enshrined in this particular shrine was supposedly one of the kotoamatsukami, the gods of creation, which were closely related to the amatsukami, meaning it typically would’ve been in the shinmei-zukuri style.

“It’s like the textbook definition of a shrine...”

I approached the entrance to the main hall and tried to gently open the door, but it was locked from the outside with a sturdy-looking traditional boat-shaped shrine padlock. There’s no way anybody could’ve hidden inside here.

“Dammit,” I spat out. Having lost sight of the suspicious shadow I’d been so certain I’d be able to easily catch up to, there was nothing to do but head back to the hotel. I paid careful attention to the muddy ground and nearby underbrush as I made my way along the path, but found nothing but my own footprints from when I had first run through. The downpour was getting somehow even worse than before, so even if someone had left traces behind, they would’ve been completely washed away soon enough.

When I got back, Miyoshi was waiting for me in the lobby. “What on earth just happened, Kei?!” she asked anxiously, handing me a large towel.

Accepting her offering, I ran the towel briskly over my head a few times to dry off.

“No idea,” I grumbled brusquely.

Miyoshi’s brow furrowed.

“I saw what happened to Mitsurugi’s room, so I searched around the hotel for her just in case, then contacted the relevant parties.”

“All right.”

“Kei, you should take a shower and change, then we can—”

“No, I’ve got to go back out there and find her.”

“Calm down and think for a minute. There are only three of us, we have no lay of the land, it’s nighttime, and the weather is awful. Wandering around out there is only going to get us nowhere fast,” she said. She quickly added that she hadn’t picked up anything with her Danger Sense or Life Detection skills either.

When she told me that, I realized for the first time that my own Life Detection skill hadn’t reacted to anything out there either. If Mitsurugi had been alive and in the area, there definitely should’ve been some kind of reaction...

“Look, we can at least send the Arthurs out there,” Miyoshi offered.

“Y-Yeah... That’d be the most surefire way, huh...”

“We’ve got to wait for people to contact us back anyway, so please, change into some dry clothes. Unless you want to catch your first cold?”

Both of us were blessed with the Super Recovery skill, so it was highly unlikely we’d ever catch colds...but her comment made it feel like she managed to catch me in an “idiots don’t catch colds” joke, and I couldn’t help but chuckle ever so slightly. People still being able to laugh even at the absolute worst of times is kind of an amazing thing.

***

Once I had taken a shower and changed clothes, I went back down to the lobby and sat on another couch, facing Miyoshi as we chatted.

“But Mitsurugi’s room is on the second floor! You dashed up there within maybe ten, fifteen seconds of hearing that loud sound. Nobody could’ve possibly kidnapped her in that short a time. What would they have done, draped her over a shoulder and jumped out the window?”

“It isn’t exactly impossible.”

“The only person it’s possible for is you, Kei.”

“So the kidnapper is someone with abilities like mine, then?”

Miyoshi groaned in exasperation.

“Keeeiii...”

My mind was all over the place, I was on edge, and I couldn’t stop bouncing my knee.

“Look, the problem is there’s no motive,” she continued.

“Motive?”

“If someone ran off with Mitsurugi, they had to have done it this way for a reason, right?”

“A reason, huh...” If someone had just wanted to kidnap her, it would’ve been way easier to do it while she was walking around at night. Also, if they had been after Mitsurugi specifically, they would’ve just gone after her in Tokyo. Nobody in their right mind would’ve trailed her all the way out here.

“Is there any chance this could be some group that’s trying to force us under their thumb?” I suggested.

“There aren’t many people who knew we were coming to this specific place. Besides, if that were the case, it would’ve been easier for them to make a move when the two of us weren’t together,” Miyoshi pointed out. “I don’t think we’re the cause of this...”

“You think it’s something about this place itself, then?”

“That would be the natural assumption, yes. Think about it: employees who never stay here at night...a building that’s practically dripping with history...”

“And then there’s whatever was wearing that red dress,” I added.

“Red dress?”

“Yeah. Earlier this afternoon when we were at the beach, I thought I saw a woman in a red dress at the top of the cliff.”

“And?”

“I’m pretty sure I saw the exact same outfit when I looked out the window in Mitsurugi’s room just earlier.”

“Out in the pouring rain?”

Rain, huh... She was right. Anyone wearing a dress out in the rain like that would’ve gotten absolutely soaked, and the fabric would’ve bunched up and clung to their body. However, I distinctly remembered it as a dress, not some unidentifiable red object. Maybe it was because I had seen it earlier in the day...

“Now that you mention it, that is pretty strange,” I admitted.

“Anyway, we can ask the staff for more info about that tomorrow. For now, how about we look up more info about the property and the building here in the archives?” Miyoshi suggested.

“Not like I’m gonna get any sleep while we’re waiting on the Arthurs anyway. May as well try to make myself useful.” I figured she had called the police as well, so it was always possible they might show up at some point too.

“Let’s do what we can, then!”

“Where’s Saito, by the way?” I asked.

“Apparently after she finished cleaning up here, she went to the kitchen to make us some midnight snacks.”

Taking a closer look, I saw that the mountain of wine glasses had indeed disappeared. Her BFF vanished into thin air, yet she’s still completely on top of things. Talk about working well under pressure.

“Wait a sec. Isn’t it a terrible idea for us to split up in a situation like this?” I automatically started to rise from my seat.

“We’ve got Life Detection—we can keep track of her using that. Right now we’re the only three people in the building,” Miyoshi reminded me. “Though the skill won’t do much good for anything inanimate, of course,” she added with a shrug.

Soon after that, Saito came safely back out of the kitchen, pushing a cart stacked with little sandwiches and a pot of coffee, and the three of us started thumbing through the dozen or so books we had taken out of the archives and stacked on the table.

“But what would Haru’s abduction in the present day have to do with all these old documents?” Saito wondered aloud, confused.

That sure is the question of the day.

“I really don’t know. But if this really doesn’t have anything to do with Miyoshi and me, then I can’t help but think it potentially has something to do with the history of this land.”

“Could it have been a random crime?”

“You don’t ‘randomly’ kidnap someone out of the second-story window of a hotel that isn’t even officially open yet.”

“Hmm...”

At that point, all we were really doing was trying to get some peace of mind. Our only course of action was to wait for others to contact us—whether it ended up being the Arthurs, the police, or the perpetrator.

People said investigators for kidnapping cases should always get eight hours of sleep, but we were civilians, and sleeping was the last thing on our minds. I did want to make sure that at least Saito could get a nap in, though, since she didn’t have Super Recovery like we did.

“At least one of us has to be awake in case someone contacts us, so let’s sleep in shifts. Why don’t you go first, Saito?”

“Me? I’m kind of worried about going back upstairs...” She glanced upward uneasily.

“I would be too,” I agreed. “You can just lie down on the long couch in the back, there.” I reached under the chair behind me and pulled out a cotton blanket, which I handed to her.

“All right. Wake me up as soon as you hear anything, okay.”

“You got it. Thanks for the midnight snacks.”

Giving a little wave in response, Saito made her way over to the couch, which was in a slightly darker part of the room. The rain continued to beat loudly against the building, showing no signs of letting up, and we still heard the occasional distant rumble of thunder.

“Hmm, so these are the priest’s personal notes?” The book I held up was rather thick, and it was apparently one of seven volumes. On a cursory glance, the contents seemed less like a diary and more like a collection of thoughts that had suddenly sprung to mind and been scribbled down. The earlier entries were all dated, but the further along I skimmed, the fewer dates were marked down.

“It doesn’t look quite as old as I thought it would,” I said, scrutinizing one of the pages.

“That’s Echizen washi for you! I hear it can last up to a thousand years.”

“Wow, you know your stuff.”

“Well, Echizen washi is the only paper from around here I could think of,” Miyoshi responded with a grin.

“Oh boy...” I put a palm to my forehead. That’s an awfully flimsy analytical basis. Though kudos to Miyoshi for knowing anything whatsoever about where Japanese paper is produced.

“Back in 2010, Suntory and Domaines Barons de Rothschild celebrated one hundred years of growing grapes at the Tomi no Oka Winery by releasing a special commemorative wine, and the label was made from Echizen washi.”

“Ugh, of course it always comes back to wine!” I groaned, then picked up the proper first volume of the priest’s notes and started glancing through the pages. Worried at first that it was going to be written in horribly messy archaic chicken scratch, I thumbed through the pages and soon breathed a sigh of relief. The handwriting was much better than I had expected.

“So the woman drifted ashore here during the sixth year of the Keicho period, meaning in 1601,” Miyoshi stated, repeating what we had determined earlier.

Apparently, a fair-skinned woman with radiant hair and clad in red clothing showed up there inside a boxlike container. When the villagers saw her, they started calling her Lady Tsubaki—maybe because her red dress combined with her blonde hair reminded them of the tsubaki, a flower also known as a camellia.

“It says here she called herself...Camulia?”

“That’s an odd way to spell it,” Miyoshi said as she picked up the seventh volume.

The end of the last volume had a section written by “Camulia” herself—something must have happened to the priest. It was written in English in elegant cursive, most likely using a bamboo pen. At the end, it was even signed—

“Camrllia?” I said, blinking.

“Nothing in English is spelled with the letters ‘mrll’ together like that, I’m pretty sure.”

“Huh. Maybe the ‘r’ is actually an ‘e’?” In cursive English handwriting, ‘r’ and ‘e’ could look similar when casually written out. If it was an ‘e,’ then her name was Camellia, which could’ve easily been misheard as Camulia. Either way, the name was clearly referencing the tsubaki flower.

At that point, though, something started to feel off to me—but I wasn’t exactly sure what.

Miyoshi rubbed her chin as she read over my shoulder.

“It sounds like the priest was fixated on her like a man possessed.”

The entries for the dates after the woman was found described her in excessive detail. At first she could only speak the language of the West, but once they arranged for an interpreter, she learned to speak Japanese in nearly no time at all. She had a frail constitution and a skittish personality, and she had a lock set up on her bedroom door so nobody could come inside while she was asleep. Also, she was an extremely light eater, possibly due to her having been adrift at sea for so long. Apparently the only thing she consumed in a day was a single cup of ‘xocolatl’ after she got out of bed in the early afternoon.

“Xocolatl?”

“They have to mean ‘chocolate,’ right? Back then it was more similar to a cup of cocoa.”

“No, no, no, Miyoshi. Chocolate didn’t make its way to Japan until the very, very end of the 1700s. If she was actually drinking chocolate, that would mean it came into the country almost two hundred years before history teaches us it did.”

“The Jesuits brought it back to Spain from Mexico in the early part of the 1500s, didn’t they? It wouldn’t be that odd for it to show up here.”

“Maybe in tiny, tiny quantities. According to this, though, she was drinking it every day!”

“Hm, what else is bitter and sweet like that... Maybe it was dandelion coffee with sugar?”

“That wasn’t a thing until the 1830s, and it was in America,” I pointed out.

“In that case, maybe someone went out of their way to bring chocolate over here from Latin America for whatever reason?”

“Like as a trade good? Hmm... Maybe she just wanted it that much...”

As I mulled over the huge discrepancies between dates, I suddenly realized what had been bothering me earlier.

“That’s it! Camellias are native to Japan!”

“Wh-What? Where did that come from? Besides, they have camellias in Europe too, don’t they? What about The Lady of the Camellias?”

“Listen, it was the middle of the 1800s when the lovely Marguerite was strutting her stuff around the demimonde wearing either a white camellia to mark her availability, or a red camellia during her menstrual cycle.” In fact, it was also the same general time period during which Alexandre Dumas fils wrote the story itself.

“Think about it,” I went on. “The camellia was given its name in the West by Carl von Linné, who named it after Georg Joseph Kamel. Meaning—”

“—it wasn’t named that until the 1700s!” Miyoshi said, looking up. Even she knew during what century the famed von Linné was active.

The camellia flower was first introduced to Europe by botanist Engelbert Kaempfer, but it was Georg Joseph Kamel who brought back the first seeds. Both of these events happened during or after the 1690s. In tribute to those contributions, von Linné, a renowned biologist known as Carl Linnaeus before becoming a noble, immortalized Kamel’s name by making it a part of the flower’s scientific nomenclature. Von Linné, though, lived during the 1700s.

Either way, the English name for the flower, camellia, was one of the few examples of a proper name being turned into a regular noun. And we’re supposed to believe that the English name was somehow being used in Japan in 1601? Yeah, right.

“So what about the weird spelling we saw earlier?” Miyoshi asked.

“Maybe we didn’t misread it after all,” I mused.

After the woman’s arrival, ships from Europe began to visit occasionally. With those visits came prosperity for the village, but at the same time, strange teachings began to spread among the fishermen, which apparently caused the priest a great deal of distress.

“Strange teachings...?”

“The first thing that comes to mind is Christianity, of course.”

Hideyoshi Toyotomi issued the Bateren Edict in 1587. However, he also aggressively promoted trade with the West, so he didn’t ban the religion itself, only missionary activities. The edict banning Christianity as a whole wasn’t issued until after the San Felipe incident in 1596.

However, Ieyasu Tokugawa, who took over after Hideyoshi, was indifferent toward Christian missionary work, and even promoted trade with Holland after the Liefde drifted ashore. Under him, Christianity was mostly unregulated until the whole Okamoto Daihachi incident in 1612. Due to that, by some estimates there were up to 750,000 Christians in Japan by 1605.

“From a Shinto standpoint, it must have been a really unusual religion,” I pointed out. “After all, it only has one God.”

The original building for the hotel was supposedly built by a craftsman who had been visiting from overseas at the time. Even after that, the shrine priest apparently continued to pretty much worship Camulia.

“Look at this. ‘Just as heaven is eternal and the earth endures, her beauty is unfading as the years go by and the ages sail on.’ Get a life, dude!” Miyoshi exclaimed.

Quoting Lao Tzu and Xunxi, huh. This priest was a bona fide erudite.

“It’s almost like she was immortal or something.”

“C-Cut it out, Kei. How can you even say that with a straight face?”

During that time, apparently some epidemics had occasionally ravaged the village.

“There is that whole story about how people like Francisco Pizarro wiped out the Incas by unknowingly introducing smallpox. If there was trading in the area, it’s always possible they ended up importing a few diseases.”

It seemed that the priest struggled greatly, stuck between those who believed in the new religion and adherents to the traditional Shinto faith. In his writings, he likened it to the fight between Hikohohodemi-no-Mikoto and Hosuseri-no-Mikoto.

“You mean the whole Umisachihiko versus Yamasachihiko story?”

“The new religion spreading among the fishermen was Umisachihiko, representing the Hayato people, and the current religion of the farmers was Yamasachihiko, representing the Tenson people.”

Perhaps overburdened by so many worries, the priest apparently grew weaker by the day, and the frequency of his entries decreased. He wrote that the epidemics, which seemed to strike the villagers in periodic bursts, caused people to gradually grow sicker and paler, sapping their strength bit by bit until they either went missing or wasted away and died.

“Went missing?” Miyoshi asked, perplexed by the wording.

“It sounds like they lost a lot of people. Still, I feel like I’ve heard this somewhere before...” I mused.

“Apparently the disease got to the priest in the end too. It says his coffin was so light, it felt like it only had a few twigs inside it.”

“So he just up and withered away, huh?”

“Whoa, Kei! Look at this!” Miyoshi showed me a rather small, thin book, titled The Origin of Tsubaki Shrine.

In addition to the standard writing, there were two alternate ways to write “tsubaki” in kanji. The version written on the thin book used the characters for “ocean pomegranate,” while the other, sometimes pronounced “sancha” instead, uses the characters for “mountain tea.” The fact that all of them somehow referred to the same plant, the camellia, was kind of incredible if you thought about it.

“This thing was crammed into the bigger book like some kind of bookmark. But look, look here!” Miyoshi pointed to a section that discussed how the shrine came into existence.

“‘There was a sea hag oni on the hill that deceived the people’?”

“I wonder what a sea hag oni is?”

“Who knows? Sounds like some demonic old lady who comes up out of the ocean.”

In the house on top of the hill lived an oni from the ocean who loved to deceive the villagers. The oni was very beautiful, so the villagers didn’t realize what it was at first. However, as the years passed and they noticed her walking around the hill looking as beautiful as ever, rumors began to spread among the people.

Even after the oni’s caretaker vanished from the people’s sight, she continued to wander the hill alone, and eventually began to snatch the villagers away.

“Snatch?”

Overcome by fear, the villagers hired some skilled soldiers, and used their superior numbers to “xx” her. Yes, that was exactly how it was written.

I could only stare.

“What the hell?”

“What do you think ‘xx’ was supposed to mean?” Miyoshi asked.

“Probably some kind of taboo word. They must’ve done something pretty unspeakable.”

After the deed was done, the villagers were afraid the oni would come back to life and curse them, so they erected a shrine to try and appease her soul. Instead of the typical sakaki trees around the main hall, they planted camellia flowers, which were her symbol. And that was the origin of Tsubaki Shrine.

“So,” Miyoshi began, “does that mean it’s actually a tutelary shrine, and the deity enshrined there is Camulia herself?”

“If what’s written in this book is true, then I guess so, yeah.”

“But I didn’t see anything remotely close to that story in any of these volumes of the priest’s personal notes!” she exclaimed, flipping through volume seven again. “And anyway, the hotel employee we talked to said there was a kotoamatsukami enshrined there, didn’t he?”

He had indeed. For some reason, a shrine built in the taisha-zukuri style housed a kotoamatsukami. And Camulia was enshrined there.

“You know, Miyoshi, in this absolute mess of mismatched clues, there’s actually one thing that feels rather familiar.”

“What’s that?”

“The spirit messenger for the kotoamatsukami was a wolf.”

“And...?”

I proceeded to say something that sounded so ridiculous, I was almost concerned for my own sanity.

“I can think of another immortal with wolves for servants.”

Just then, we saw a bright white flash pierce through the darkness outside the lobby windows. A few moments later, it was followed by a thunderous boom—which happened to be accompanied by a notification sound from someone’s cell phone.

“Wha—?!”

Startled by the noise, Saito shot up from her sleeping position, then pulled out her cell phone. A garbled message appeared on her phone—and when she saw who had sent it, her face went white.

“This... This is from Haru...”

“What?!”

So she still had her phone with her? If so, we should be able to track down her location using GPS.

We ran over next to Saito and tried to take a peek at the message. Just as we did, though, a particularly huge burst of lightning struck, causing the ground to rumble beneath us and the entire building to lose power.

Panicked by the sudden darkness, Saito let out a shriek and grabbed on to me. Miyoshi immediately started scanning the area to see what the problem was. Glas had popped out from Miyoshi’s shadow and stood at her feet in a protective stance.

After a while, the emergency lights came back on, giving us a vague glimmer of hope among the dark shadows.

“It looks like there’s some kind of issue with the power lines, probably,” Miyoshi said as she peered down toward the village at the bottom of the hill. “It’s pitch-black in town too.”

“What about us?”

“Seems like we have some kind of emergency generator here.”

“Wait, we need to do something about Mitsurugi!” I shouted. “If she has her phone, we can call—”

“We don’t get any signal out here,” Miyoshi reminded me.

“Then how did we get a message from her? Wait... Wi-Fi!”

The only way she could’ve sent us a message was if she were still in range to connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi. That meant she had to be somewhere within a few hundred meters’ radius. I whipped out my phone and tried to send her a message, but the moment I hit send, I was greeted with a cruel, cold “cannot connect” error.

“What the hell’s wrong?!”

“If there’s an issue with the power lines, then the phone lines could also be acting weird. We might be able to connect to the hotel’s modem, but if there’s nothing for it to connect to, then we still won’t get any signal,” Miyoshi reminded me.

“But if we’re all connected to the same access point, that’s pretty much the same as being on a LAN together, isn’t it?”

“Wi-Fi routers nowadays come equipped with network isolation functionality, to prevent the devices on the network from connecting to each other.”

“Then we can access the router and turn that feature off—”

“We don’t know the password!”

“If we do a factory reset on the router, it should go back to the default password, shouldn’t it?” I pointed out.

“Some models might still have reset buttons, but every router has a different initialization method. Not only is that an unknown, we also don’t know what the default password will be. Same with the username—sometimes it’s root, sometimes it’s user, sometimes it’s neither, and we have no way to look it up...”

“Because we can’t connect to the internet... Lovely,” I grumbled.

“Forget about that for now. We actually got a message from Mitsurugi already, remember?”

That’s right. What if she was asking for help? What am I supposed to do?!

“About that...” Saito murmured.

Maybe Mitsurugi had been pressed for time, because the message she sent was quite short and strangely garbled. Thankfully, we were still able to get the gist of what it said. It was something along the lines of “I’m not sure exactly where I am, but I should be fine until the day after tomorrow at least.” Nothing in the text indicated she needed any help.

“The day after tomorrow?” I read out loud, furrowing my brow.

Miyoshi blinked.

“Does that mean something to you?”

“Well, I’m not sure if it’s even related, but when I was heading down to the lobby earlier this afternoon, I heard the staff mention the day after tomorrow. Something about whether they’d be able to get things ready by that day, I think.” They were talking about needing to take care of something. I just hope that “something” wasn’t a person...

“Anyway, Kei, who was that immortal with wolf servants you were talking about earlier?”

Hearing that brought up again, I gave a tiny, pained smile.

“Well, it’s nothing major, really, but you remember that weird spelling for Camulia we saw earlier, right?”

“Oh yeah, ‘Camrllia,’ right? That was bizarre!”

“Well, it happens to be an anagram for ‘Carmilla.’”

Carmilla was a novella written by Sheridan Le Fanu and published in 1872. In the story, there were women named Mircalla and Millarca, who both actually ended up being the titular Carmilla, who was bound by some kind of mysterious rule stating she could never change the letters in her name, only the order.

Having said that, I think everyone would’ve agreed it was far more realistic to assume that one or more of the hotel employees had hatched some kind of nefarious scheme to kidnap Mitsurugi and use her for whatever they were planning to do the day after tomorrow. Suggesting that some creature drifted ashore here four hundred years ago, and it just so happened to be a vampire, was pushing squarely into the realm of the absurd. I must be suffering from a case of dungeon-itis.

“Kei... Le Fanu wrote Carmilla in the 1800s.”

“I know. Strictly speaking, it’s even more unlikely than the Camellia theory. But you’ve got to admit, the descriptions we read of Camulia have an awful lot of overlap with Carmilla’s behavior in the novella.”

The way vampires acted in ancient folklore had always typically been completely different from the way they acted in literature since the 1800s, anyway. This case would be leaning way too hard in the literary direction.

“Speaking of which, isn’t it speculated that Le Fanu used Elizabeth Báthory as a model for Carmilla?” Miyoshi asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Elizabeth Báthory was actually alive during the exact time frame of the historical events here.”

“So?”

“So what if someone took these papers back to Europe...?”

“You’re saying the literary Carmilla might actually be based on this, instead of the other way around?”

“I mean, it’s possible!”

“That would be pretty amazing...” I admitted, “but we’ve got more important things to do than speculating right now.”

Miyoshi sighed.

“Oh, I suppose...”

Day 2

The three of us spent the entire night wide awake in the hotel lobby. However, even after the sun had risen well into the sky, the hotel staff still hadn’t shown up, nor had the police.

“The hotel employees just got a whole lot higher on my suspect list,” I muttered.

“But Kei, why would they make it so obvious?” Miyoshi countered. “They’d never be able to get away with it.”

“Unless the rest of us go missing too.”

“Are we gonna get rubbed out?” Saito—who seemed to have gotten at least a little sleep—suggested jokingly. She scooped up a forkful of breakfast—a preprepared meal which I had pulled out of Vault and disguised as my own cooking—and brought it up to her mouth. “I had heard rumors, but you really are a good cook, Coach.”

I had gotten the meal from the basement food court of a department store, so naturally it was pretty tasty stuff. Of course I couldn’t just say that, so I simply shrugged.

“So what’s the plan today?” Miyoshi asked.

The Arthurs were acting strange. They had come back without finding any sign of Mitsurugi whatsoever, and they wouldn’t look me in the eye, perhaps out of guilt. Where did their typical unconcerned attitude run off to?

“We know she was in Wi-Fi range, so all I can think of is to do another search within that radius. That, and since the hotel staff never came back, they probably have some kind of hideout somewhere in the village. Once I’ve checked out the manager’s office, I’m gonna try to hunt that place down.”

“It’s always possible she’s already been taken away to some place that’s nowhere near here, isn’t it?” Miyoshi pointed out.

“If that’s the case, the culprit will probably reach out to contact us at some point. There wouldn’t be much we could do until that happens.” At least that’s how it would probably play out if this were a kidnapping for ransom. If the kidnappers had some kind of specific business with her instead, though, that would be an issue. However, I had decided to temporarily put that possibility aside; not only did I not want to think about it, but there wasn’t really any point in doing so.

“Got it. In that case, I’ll try and get a head start interviewing the townspeople.”

“Sure, but are you gonna be all right?” I asked.

“I mean there’s no way everyone in the whole village is in on this. If anyone tells me ‘This is Destiny,’ though, I’ll make sure to watch my back,” she responded with a grin.

That was a mysterious line said to detective Hercule Poirot by the Russian princess in Murder on the Orient Express, in which it turned out everyone on the eponymous train had committed the crime together.

“Besides,” she continued, “the Arthurs have my back. Your average human wouldn’t stand a chance against them.”

“True enough,” I admitted, then turned back to Saito. “Are you going with her, Saito?”

“I think I’ll head outside of town,” she responded. “It’s weird that the police haven’t shown up yet, so I’ll try to find a way to get in touch with them.”

“Without a car...?” The car we had arrived in had somehow vanished into thin air.

“They have some bikes here for guests who are cyclists. Believe it or not, I’ve actually got some decent stamina.”

I was aware she had some pretty appreciable VIT and AGI stats, but her STR was by no means superhuman, which meant she would still be at some risk out there by herself.

“Don’t worry,” Miyoshi chimed in. “I’ll send Aethlem with her just in case.”

“Ah, okay, that works.” We weren’t in a dungeon, and Aethlem could almost definitely handle anything the real world had to offer. “In that case, let’s split up and meet back here around lunchtime.”

“Roger that!”

“See you later!”

With that, the two of them departed the lobby.

I stood up and headed over to scour the rooms used by the hotel staff, searching for clues. Most of the rooms and lockers were sealed tight, but I had the excuse that we were dealing with an emergency, so I forced them open—I did have 200 STR, after all.

In the back of a locked desk drawer inside the manager’s office, I located a series of bound documents that appeared to be quite old. The volumes furthest back in the drawer had faded appreciably.

“‘Six Mon Ships: Perpetual Trading Log’?”

I pulled out a volume at random and flipped through it; my eye caught a glimpse of the date “Kanbun 11.”

“When was the Kanbun era, again?” Unlike Miyoshi, I unfortunately had precious little knowledge of Japanese eras. I had a basic enough grasp to have gotten through high school history class, meaning I knew the eras like Tenpo and Ansei when major events took place, but anything outside of that was beyond me. I couldn’t just look it up on the internet either, since I had no connection.

“Man, we really do rely on the internet for everything nowadays, don’t we...”

I pulled out the newest-looking volume and opened it to the last page. It contained what appeared to be some sort of transaction records, with something being logged once every twelve years. The item itself seemed to be written in code, so I couldn’t tell what exactly was being traded, but the entries were all pretty much identical, and the quantities weren’t particularly large either.

Tracing things further back, I found that the same entry appeared in August—twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six years ago. The entry from twenty-four years ago had a strange mark next to it. I got the feeling that the trading had taken place every twelve years without any issues all the way up to that point, but evidently something unusual had happened that year.

Then there was the entry from only twelve years ago, dated August 17, 2007. The quantity for that date was marked with a zero. I could only suppose that meant nothing was traded.

“Were they dealing drugs or something? No, it’s way too infrequent for that...”

If the village could prosper through trade with such long intervals in between transactions, whatever they were trading had to be both rare and special. The quantity traded seemed too low to be something like jewelry, though. Maybe it was antiques, or possibly some kind of artwork, like paintings...?

Then, on the page after that entry, one last date was written down: August 10, 2019. The same coded word was listed as the item to be traded. Judging by how far back the transaction history went, it made no sense for the current hotel staff to be the only ones involved.

“A village that prospered through international trade, huh...”

When I checked the time, I saw that it had just hit eleven a.m., and I suddenly started to get worried about Miyoshi, whose first stop had been to check out the village. I gathered up the documents that were scattered about, put them all into Vault, and headed out after her.

I stopped for a moment on the road from the hotel and gazed at the desolate village below. It somehow felt even more deserted than it had yesterday when we’d arrived.

Just as I had made my way close to the entrance of the village and was about to shout for Miyoshi, the faint sound of singing reached my ears. Cautiously, I began to make my way in the direction of the voice.

From a distance, most of the houses looked like Japanese-style homes, but when I examined them up close I could see that they incorporated features from both Western and Japanese styles, forming sort of their own unique architectural blend.

“This bizarre atmosphere could be a tourist attraction in its own right...”

The air was permeated with the scent of fish, as one might expect from a fishing village. However, there was this slight note of sludgy pollution mixed in, which strangely upset my senses.

As I walked down the narrow cobblestone path, every once in a while I heard sounds coming from the closed windows of some of the homes. Suppressing the urge to start knocking on doors and interrogating the people inside, I continued searching for the source of the singing.

The trail led me to a building that looked like a very old stone church. Considering the number of massive earthquakes that must’ve struck the Wakasa area from the Sengoku period through the Edo period, starting with the great Tensho Earthquake of 1586, it was a mystery how a building made of stone could’ve survived for such a long time. Did they rebuild the church after every earthquake? If so, it must’ve had a good number of followers—and it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if its influence was a part of the struggle mentioned in the priest’s personal notes.

Despite all that, though, the music didn’t sound much like a church hymn at all. It was something more primitive, using peculiar words and intonations that were oddly unsettling.

“Kei?”

The sudden voice made me jump, and I turned to look behind me.

“Oh, it’s you, Miyoshi. Don’t scare me like that.”

“Were you lured here by the siren song too?”

“I guess you could say that. What is this song, though?”

Miyoshi put a hand to her chin.

“Well, it’s not a Catholic or Protestant hymn, that much is for sure.”

“It sounds almost like a more refined version of the chanting you’d hear in some early Southeast Asian religions...”

“It’s got an air of mysticism about it, like when Pietism first started to become a distinct movement in Christianity,” Miyoshi noted.

Paying careful attention to our surroundings, we approached the church entrance. That was when I noticed something absolutely astounding.

“No way...” I murmured.

Miyoshi blinked.

“Kei?”

A symbol was engraved into the entryway—a triangle with an eyelike shape drawn inside it, with the words “ESOTERICA ORDE DE DAGON” written around it.

I looked up at the symbol in utter disbelief.

“Either this is some kind of movie set, or someone’s messing with us.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I mean, look for yourself!” I pointed at the age-worn metal panel above the door. “Even if certain lunatic occultists out there happen to be right and Lovecraft actually was writing about real-life occult phenomena, the Esoteric Order of Dagon still wouldn’t have been around until 1840!”

An organization created in 1840 facing off against people who lived in the early 1600s? Of course, it wasn’t too far-fetched for a Western church to change hands and get repurposed over the course of history—

Hold it. Stop right there, brain. Sure, the world may have dungeons and magic, but that’s no excuse to start confusing fiction with reality. I need to derail this train of thought right now.

I looked up at the panel again. As best I could tell, the words around the symbol were written in Galician. If the panel had been made in the 1600s, I would’ve expected it to be in Spanish or Portuguese, but Galician wasn’t completely out of the question either. If the building was repurposed by other groups sometime after it was constructed, the panel would’ve been from 1840 or later, and the words probably would’ve been written in English.

“It seems almost plausible, then immediately starts getting super fishy—”

Suddenly, the song stopped, and I caught a glimpse of someone inside rising shakily to their feet.

“Shit!” I grabbed Miyoshi’s arm, picked her up, and bounded up the wall of the neighboring building before leaping onto the roof of the church and landing lightly.

Miyoshi gave a little shriek of surprise, which I immediately shushed. I pressed myself flat against the roof, then pushed her down to match.

“W-Wow... Back to being stuntmen, are we?” she stammered.

“Quiet! Just keep your head down!”

As a light rain began to fall yet again, the door directly below us creaked open, and a bunch of people wearing some kind of black raincoats came filing out, walking with strange gaits.

“Ugh... They’re even walking like they’re straight out of the story,” I muttered.

Miyoshi squinted.

“Care to explain?”

“Look at them. A bunch of them look like they barely know how to use their legs.”

“Huh. Now that you mention it...”

“That means they’re probably on the verge of becoming Deep Ones.” The Deep Ones sacrificed their ability to walk properly on land in order to transform into immortal beings that lived in the ocean.

“Deep Ones?”

“Humanoid denizens of the deep ocean. The eldest of their race is known as Dagon.”

“Kei... You’re talking about horror novels, right?” Miyoshi asked, her brow furrowed. It was difficult to tell which she was more concerned about: the situation we were in, or my mental health. “You realize it would make more sense to assume they’re worshipping the god of the Philistines from the Old Testament, right?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You mean like in the story about Samson and Delilah?”

“I watched the Plácido Domingo version on DVD, with James Levine conducting the Met.”

“I’m pretty sure the Philistines in the Bible didn’t walk all weird though,” I pointed out.

“Maybe it’s just complications from one of the diseases that ravaged the area...? Possibly?”

“I get where you’re trying to go with that, but it doesn’t explain the symbol and name on the church entrance.” The Esoteric Order of Dagon did not show up in the Old Testament or other stories about the ancient Philistines. Though that should’ve gone without saying.

Miyoshi let out a sigh.

“We’re definitely not in a dungeon, right?”

“Definitely not. Which means these guys are either cosplayers who got way too into the part and lost their minds, or...”

“Or what?”

“Or they’re the real thing.”

I told Miyoshi about the accounting ledgers I’d found back at the hotel.

“So you think they record some kind of trading transactions?”

“Sure seems like it. They even mentioned something called the ‘Six Mon Ships,’ so they had to be dealing with some kind of underworld figures.” According to Buddhist tradition, it cost six coins called “mon” to cross the Sanzu River and reach the afterlife.

“Y-You don’t think they could’ve just been trading with the Sanada clan?” She was talking about the Sanada clan’s family crest, which famously featured six mon coins. Nobushige (aka Yukimura) Sanada was one of the clan’s most well-known historical figures.

“They were based in the Shinano province, which was landlocked,” I reminded her.

Sighing in resignation, Miyoshi flopped over onto her back and looked up.

“So what kind of benefits could devotees to Dagon expect, anyway?”

“In the story, they were blessed with prosperity. The fishing village always ended up with large hauls of fish, and sometimes they found bits of precious jewelry along with the fish.”

“And in exchange, they needed to provide human sacrifices?”

“That, and produce offspring.”

When Miyoshi heard that, she rolled onto her side and stared at me while I continued to focus on the ground below us.

“Excuse me?”

“In other words, adherents were supposed to produce mixed-blood offspring with the creatures to perpetuate their species.”

“Ewww.” Miyoshi’s face scrunched up in disgust for a moment, but then fell back into a serious expression. “I just had a thought, Kei...”

“Should I be worried?”

“If Wakasa supposedly has some kind of mermaid legends, you don’t think—”

“Stop right there. I’d rather not think.” The rural spiritualism and local legend aspects lent a bizarre feeling of realism to the absurd ideas facing us. However, there was absolutely zero scientific merit to any of them—even if they somehow ended up being true. I felt myself losing patience. “You know what, maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re real or fake. Maybe I should just blast them all with Inferno, and send them straight back to the infernos of hell—”

“Wh-Wh-Whoa there, Kei! You can’t use magic outside the dungeons without a good reason—and forget about actually attacking people with it! Not only would your license get revoked; they’d throw you in jail!”

“If our lives are in danger, it’d be justified self-defense, wouldn’t it?”

“We don’t have any evidence yet! Plus, if you did that and it turns out you were wrong, an ‘Oopsie!’ isn’t going to cut it! We need to investigate more first!”

“Mitsurugi’s life is at stake here!” If things continued to play out as they had in the book, she would end up being a sacrifice to Dagon, without a doubt.

“That’s exactly why we need evidence!” Miyoshi insisted.

Sighing, I focused my senses and activated my Life Detection skill.

“I’m detecting six people still inside the church. But, well...” I couldn’t detect if any of them were Mitsurugi. People with incredibly high stats, like Team Simon or other top rankers on the WDARL, stood out on Life Detection. Mitsurugi’s stats were relatively high, but not quite on that level. “Can we send out the Arthurs to see who these people are?”

“We can, but no tossing people randomly into shadow pits, okay?” Miyoshi warned. “Size-wise, it’d probably have to be Glas or Gleisad, but Gleisad is over at Cathy’s, so we can only rely on Glas this time, which will limit how quickly we can gather info.”

“Not a big deal. Let’s just focus on the people inside the church, then—ASAP, preferably.”

“Got it.” With that, Miyoshi called forth Glas.

Apparently pleased that I was conceding the spotlight for a change, he stood proudly up from his haunches and struck an imposing stance. With a cocky attitude like that, you’d better not screw up, got it?

“What the hell are the police doing, anyway?” The police would’ve been able to perform a proper investigation of all this. Though a lot of the time, police in TV shows either vanished mysteriously after seeing something they shouldn’t have, or ended up having been on the bad guys’ payroll from the very start.

“I hope Saito is okay,” Miyoshi mused. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

“Did we pass any police stations on the way here...?”

“The only one I saw was the Fukutani Police Substation—the building with the fish scale roof.”

“Oh yeah, that. How far away was that, maybe ten kilometers and some change?” I estimated.

“If she didn’t run into any trouble, she would’ve made it there a long time ago. And if she got as far as the area where you stopped by that shrine, she’d have reception on her phone, wouldn’t she?”

“I guess so, yeah. Anyway, as soon as Glas gets back, let’s return to the hotel.”

“Roger that.”

A few minutes later, Glas returned, shaking his head. Mitsurugi hadn’t been inside the church after all.

***

When we got back to the hotel on the hill, Saito was already there in the lobby, putting some things in order while she waited for us.

“A landslide just in front of the gate...?”

“Yup,” Saito confirmed. “There was no way I was gonna get past it, so I turned back.”

“It must’ve been all that rain last night...” I grumbled.

“That would explain why the police haven’t shown up too,” Miyoshi added.

“Don’t they have police boats or something?”

“Well, I doubt the police substation we passed had one, at least.”

Why does everything seem to be going wrong for us? If nothing else, as long as we keep our eyes on the harbor, it’s highly unlikely they’d be able to take Mitsurugi out of the village. Though if Dagon ends up being real, they won’t exactly need to...

“Hey, Earth to Coach!” Saito waved at me. “I’m not done with my report yet!”

“Hm? What else happened?”

“Well...”

According to her, she had encountered another person standing on the other side of the gate while she was turning back.

“Someone was out there?”

“Yeah. We had a brief chat, and she told me there was a tiny farming village beyond the gate with only a few houses left in it.”

We had gone through the gate on our way in, but there had been another path nearby that bypassed the gate entirely, which we hadn’t taken. I thought I had heard something about an abandoned mine in the area at one point, but nothing about a village.

“A farming village, huh?”

“Mm-hmm. So I went ahead and checked it out.”

The old woman said that the normally bustling village of Sukusu had seemed awfully quiet for the past few days. Then, the night prior, she had heard some suspicious noises coming from the area. Fearing that Tsubaki’s descendants had come out to roam once again, she’d cautiously come out to take a look.

I nodded.

“But it turned out to just be a landslide, huh?”

“Um, excuse me, but who are ‘Tsubaki’s descendants’?” Miyoshi asked, her expression making it clear that she had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Well of course you have no idea. And neither do I, for that matter.

“Beats me,” Saito replied.

“What?” Miyoshi blinked. “You didn’t ask her?”

“No, I asked! But I didn’t really get it.”

Based on what Saito had heard, some sort of incident had occurred twenty-four years ago. There had been a small group of people living in a shrine nearby—one that had since been abandoned. They’d gotten into a quarrel with the villagers, ended up getting kicked out, and that was that, apparently.

“So they were squatters, then?” I asked. “The locals should’ve just asked the local police to evict them, right? Isn’t it illegal for citizens to do that on their own?”

It turned out that hadn’t been the end of the incident, though. The people who had been kicked out brought in a bunch of shipping containers, seeking refuge along the path between the gate they had left through and the community of Tomari. This time, however, the people outside the village had ended up chasing them off.

“Oh! That explains the shipping containers we saw here and there on the way in!” Daiei owned the Fukuoka Hawks from 1989 to 2004. Obviously something had happened during that interval, but I had no idea it had been something so drastic. What kind of life must it have been for those people, being cooped up inside giant metal boxes with no windows?

Miyoshi furrowed her brow.

“I was also curious about why the containers were all smashed up like that... Wouldn’t this have been considered some kind of riot, though? I wonder why it wasn’t all over the news?”

If a major act of violence like that had happened, it would’ve easily made nationwide news. Yet we had never heard anything about it whatsoever.

That reminded me of something: The man I had met back at the Wakasahiko and Wakasahime shrines had seemed awfully perturbed when I had mentioned Sukusu. If the incident had taken place back when he was a kid, he might’ve had a good reason to be averse to the name.

“So what happened? Did they take a lynch mob out there, kill everyone, then swear a solemn oath together to never speak of it again?”

“If they had done that, Miyoshi, the old lady wouldn’t have said a word about it to Saito.”

“Huh. Fair point.”

“Also, Saito, this is all about some local community drama. How does the part about Tsubaki’s descendants fit in?”

“Um, about that...”

I shot Saito a puzzled look. She hesitated for a few moments, as if trying to work up the courage to say something, then finally spoke.

“Coach, do you believe in immortality?”

As distanced from reality as it was, when that word of power suddenly struck my ears, I could only squeak out a ridiculous-sounding response.

“Heh. I knew it was gonna be something like that...”

Saito let out a sigh, as if she had known exactly how I was going to react. It was like a young preacher realizing for the first time that it was impossible to make others believe something that you didn’t believe yourself.

“Anyway,” she continued, “there were rumors that the people who had been expelled from the area were members of a local clan of immortals, and apparently everyone was super afraid of them.”

Dumbstruck by the unexpected twist to the story, Miyoshi and I could only stare in astonishment.

“Is that what it meant...?”

Not quite following Miyoshi’s puzzling question, Saito cocked her head to the side.

“What what meant?”

“Oh, um, well, there’s that one saying: Old camellias turn into terrible things!”

“I’m pretty sure that’s specifically talking about yokai,” I pointed out.

“Clans of the undying are definitely yokai material!” Miyoshi countered.

I shrugged in defeat.

“Can’t really argue with that, I guess...”

Apparently the old woman Saito talked to hadn’t directly referred to the clan as “immortals.” Instead, she’d mentioned things like how she had encountered them both as a child and as an adult, and they looked exactly the same both times. Supposedly her grandmother had told her a similar story, as had many others, leading her to an unspoken but obvious conclusion.

“So we’re assuming they actually were descendants of Camulia, who was also said to have remained forever young...” The problem was, there was no mention in any records of her having any children.

“Apparently some of them were also rather, um, horrific-looking...” Saito murmured vaguely, turning her gaze downward. There had been plenty of awful cases of discrimination and persecution across the world up through the present day.

“Considering the historical context...maybe it was leprosy?” I theorized.

“If it was, would that mean the shrine was being used as some kind of isolation facility? Meaning they weren’t illegally squatting after all?” Saito knitted her brow. “I wonder why they kicked them out all of a sudden, then...”

“Good question.”

“Hey, Kei,” Miyoshi chimed in. “I’d understand if it had happened in the same time period as Castle of Sand was set in, but this was supposedly only twenty-four years ago. Could that even have happened so recently?”

“Japan didn’t repeal its Leprosy Prevention Law until maybe a year after the supposed incident. It wouldn’t surprise me if there had been lingering problems in certain regions. Though it would strike me as more than a little odd for that to be the driving reason behind all this.”

The place where Tsubaki’s descendants lived, huh...

“I think I’ll check out that abandoned shrine after we’re done here.”

“Huh?”

“It’s pretty close by, nobody goes near it, and it was used for isolation. It might even have some kind of special setup for locking people inside.”

“So a perfect place to hide Mitsurugi?” Miyoshi asked.

“Potentially.”

“In that case, we’ll come with—”

“I’d rather go alone. We have no idea what might end up happening there.” Isolated or otherwise special places seemed rather risky to visit, as we’d ended up learning at the church earlier. The last thing I wanted was for us to go out searching for Mitsurugi and end up with more victims instead. I was pretty confident I could handle things on my own, but it would’ve been pretty rough protecting two other people against multiple aggressors.

Miyoshi seemed to pick up on that and nodded quickly in response.

“So what do you want us to do?”

“I’m not sure, really. All I’m sure of is that something strange is going on. Do whatever you want, just make sure the two of you stay together at all times. And if you run into any trouble, get the hell out of there right away.”

The line between reality and fiction was getting blurrier by the moment. It felt as though it would only take one more slight push to be able to move between the two unimpeded.

“Oh, that reminds me. Saito,” I began.

“Hm? What’s up?”

“What was the name of the person who invited you to stay at this place?”

“Huh? You mean Mr. Marsh?”

“Marsh?”

“The name on the invitation was B. Marsh, if I remember right...”

It was so on-the-nose, I started to develop a headache.

According to the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Shadow over Innsmouth, a trader in the early 1800s by the name of Obed Marsh brought back mystic practices from the Kanak people of the western Pacific and started a pagan cult called the Esoteric Order of Dagon. If the initial B on the invitation happened to stand for Barnabas, that would make him the elder Marsh’s grandson. It was all way too perfectly set up. Even the word “marsh” itself brought up imagery of swamps and bogs.

“You know, he actually said he’d stop by and say hi at some point, but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, does it...”

Marsh himself is going to stop by? We’re staying for three days and two nights. If he doesn’t show up today, that only leaves tomorrow. Maybe he is supposed to be tomorrow’s special guest...?

Saito eyed me.

“Why do you ask, anyway?”

“Oh, um... With the landslide blocking the road and all, I guess he won’t be able to make it, huh.”

“Probably not. Unless he has a boat or something.”

A boat... Maybe I should find one and have it ready just in case we need to make an escape at some point... Though heading out into the ocean in a tiny boat in these circumstances would almost feel suicidal. For now, we just need to keep moving.

Reminding the two of them to be careful, I started walking over to the abandoned shrine Saito had been told about.

***

The cicadas chittered happily as the bright afternoon sun cast dark shadows across the path. As I hurried toward the shrine in question, the smell of scorched earth filling my nose as it does all across rural Japan on some summer afternoons, I thought about everything that had happened so far.

Putting together the objective facts we had learned, my initial thought was that the owner, one Mr. Marsh, had set his sights on either Mitsurugi or Saito and approached their agency. Once he had secured a significant business position, he’d invited them to his hotel, then kidnapped Mitsurugi to use as a sacrifice to Dagon.

However, this was real life, not fantasy. If I were to seriously entertain the possibility of a story like this happening in twenty-first-century Japan, people would think I was absolutely out of my mind, to put it lightly. In fact, if the dungeons hadn’t already appeared, they’d have sent me straight to an institution.

The dungeons had appeared, though—and the inside of them could almost be thought of as a reflection of all the cultures of humanity. If we took that fact into account, the incident we were faced with started feeling a lot more plausible.

Still, that came with a big asterisk reminding us that it would only explain the existence of the phenomena themselves. It didn’t explain any actual reasoning. Would some kind of Ms. Maker-like entity actually go out of their way to get in with a talent agency just so they could kidnap someone?

“No way in hell,” I muttered to myself as I kicked away the wild grass that was running rampant along the sides of the narrow path.

The whole secret-cult-of-Dagon thing was just so perfectly lined up with Lovecraft’s novella that it reeked to high heaven of being fake. I’m sure if someone did a survey asking people if they thought Dagon actually existed, they’d be hard-pressed to find anything but negative responses. I would’ve answered no as well, for sure. Even if the dungeon had somehow caused him to come into existence, it’d be a tough sell to think he’d be out waltzing around the real world by land and by sea.

Ages ago, Miyoshi once remarked, “What the heck is a ‘wild goblin’? If goblins were walking around alleyways, that would be terrifying!” That’s exactly how I felt about this. If you thought wild goblins were terrifying, nothing is gonna prepare you for when a wild Dagon appears!

Speaking of reeking to high heaven, the writing on the panel at the church was just as suspicious. Sure, if it had been made in the 1600s, it would’ve made perfect sense for it to be in Spanish or Portuguese, meaning there was no problem with it being in Galician, since the language was used in the northwestern part of the same Iberian peninsula. In fact, it would’ve felt quite out of place if it had been written in English instead.

However, the cult itself didn’t even come into being until the 1800s, and it supposedly happened in the United States. Even ignoring the fact that it was taken from a novella, if they had come here and put up the panel in that time frame, it would’ve made the most sense for it to have been written in English. The only way to rationalize it being in Galician was if they had first traveled from America to the Galicia region of Spain, then come here to Japan afterward. But that whole sequence of events was as puzzling as it was unlikely. It was much more realistic to believe that this was just someone’s elaborate scheme.

“Is some organization or government trying to bait us into something?”

It sounded like something out of a spy novel, even to me. But thinking about it, we’d taken sniper fire before—and for a while there, it had felt like we were handing mystery men over to Secret Agent Tanaka on a daily basis. Someone hatching a plot to abduct us would definitely not be all that far-fetched.

“I guess that’s why we’re banned from traveling abroad...”

If this is what happens when we travel domestically, maybe traveling to other countries isn’t such a good idea anyway.

The problem, though, was the woman in the red dress. She was like a piece to a completely different puzzle—I couldn’t figure out where she fit into this whole thing. In terms of what was actually happening, the woman’s presence contributed absolutely nothing to the story, no matter who the culprit ended up being. Even if she was just thrown in to complicate things and give us information overload, what was the point of going through that much effort in the first place?

The info we had heard and documents we had seen all had a sense of realism to them, from the squatter incident twenty-four years ago all the way back to the historical info from the 1600s. The secret cult of Dagon, though, was highly questionable. Even if it was supposed to foreshadow the current incident, it made absolutely no sense for the foreshadowing to have happened before Mitsurugi had even been born. Even the trading log felt way too well-made to be a forgery, and it didn’t make much sense to put together something so elaborate for this particular scenario in the first place.

However, at the moment, fantasy was bleeding into reality. Nobody could say with certainty that something like the Golden Bough incident that happened in Tsukuba wasn’t happening again in the ocean at Wakasa—no matter how impossible it seemed.

The mermaid legends of Wakasa, the secret cult of Dagon, the woman in the red dress, and a mysterious trading partner from who-knows-where. Are they all links in the same chain? Or maybe—

As I turned the corner of the path, lost in thought, my destination finally came into view. The shrine was located at the far corner of a dead-end valley. There were weeds growing all over what presumably used to be the shrine grounds, but the building itself was oddly well-preserved.

There were no signs of the undergrowth in the area having been trampled, so it appeared nobody had been there in a good while. Still, I had come all the way out here, so I approached the building to check it out just in case.

All of my detection skills had been turned up to full blast, but nobody seemed to be around, at least in the immediate vicinity of the shrine. The inside of the building was caked in dust, with a flipped-over table and some unidentifiable stains on the ground. Whatever terrible final events happened there had left indelible marks, though there weren’t exactly corpses strewn about or anything. However, there were a few newspapers left behind, with the most recent being from August 8, 1995.

I looked around the entire room, but apart from the tatami mats being completely rotted through, nothing in particular struck my eye.

There was a picture hanging inside the main hall with a traditional thirty-one syllable tanka poem inscribed on it:

With their purest hearts

Steadfast as the ages pass

All who walk the earth

Blessed by the of gods of gods

Shall be gods of gods themselves

I stood for a moment in silence.

“Looks like Wakasahiko is the deity enshrined here.”

Wakasahiko was often worshipped among fishermen as a guardian of safe sea passage and abundant catches, and the highest-ranked shrine in the area was actually called the Wakasahiko Shrine. This place being dedicated to him as well wasn’t exactly a huge shock.

The poem I had seen was said to be an oracle conveyed to Imperial Prince Atsumi by Wakasahiko himself. It was titled “Poem of the Four Gods,” no doubt due to the fact that the word “gods” is used four times, but I didn’t fully understand what it was supposed to be about.

If the records I had seen were genuine, Tsubaki Shrine was clearly not the same shrine where the priest had supposedly sheltered Camulia. Which meant there was a possibility that this shrine was the one from the priest’s records.

Without having found Mitsurugi or any definitive connection to the people from twenty-four years ago, in the end I decided to turn back and cut across to the main hall.

Then, suddenly, my Life Detection skill started registering something. The signal had appeared in the room with the dilapidated tatami mat floor, but Life Detection didn’t give a very good sense of where something was in a three-dimensional space, so it was hard to tell how high up it was. That meant I wasn’t immediately sure whether the signal was coming from on top of the roof, inside the room, or beneath the floor.

Judging by how quickly it had appeared, my first thought was that something had flown in and landed on the roof. However, I had already adjusted the signal to exclude small animals. If something had flown in, it would have to have been a huge bird, way bigger than a Steller’s sea eagle. Or maybe something else entirely...

“A flying monster, maybe?” Something like a harpy would’ve fit the bill. Though it was always possible a human had dropped in from somewhere too...

Stepping very lightly, I exited the building and took a look up on the roof, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Quietly making my way over to the front of the room, I checked my skill, and the signal was still in the exact same spot.

“Well, if it’s not up high...” I lowered my gaze. It has to be down low.

That was when I thought I caught a glimpse of something beneath the floor. I wasn’t sure what it was—but I steeled myself, then dashed into the room and started ripping out the rotten tatami mats.

“Imagine if there was an undiscovered dungeon hidden beneath the floor of an abandoned shrine... Hah. Yeah, right.”

When I finished pulling out the last of the tatami, the only sight I was met with was plain old ground.

It was a good thing my Life Detection skill was still going off—otherwise I definitely would’ve missed the cleverly hidden door beneath the dirt. If it had stopped, I would’ve been forced to conclude it had detected some kind of giant mole or something.

When I pulled on the handle, which looked like your average fieldstone, a section of earth lifted up slightly. It turned out to be a lifting door—the type that you’d see in some kind of underground storage facility.

It felt like the signal from Life Detection was starting to get a bit jumpy, so I slowly heaved the trapdoor open. A horrific grating sound filled my ears, but once the door was fully open, I saw a gaping hole leading into the darkness below. Using my Night Vision skill, I could see that there was a narrow set of stairs, terminating at a crude wooden door. Even though it was summer, a cool breeze was blowing lightly past me from beyond the door, suggesting that it was connected to some other location.

“Well, let’s roll the dice and see where things go.”

I slapped on my dungeon gear, pulled out a shield, and headed down the stairs. About halfway down, though, the Life Detection signal suddenly disappeared.

“What the...?”

Focusing harder, I searched for any hint of a remaining signal—but it was gone.

“What is this, Carmilla Returns?” Vampires could get into and out of locked rooms by turning into mist. At least, if this had been a dungeon and I was up against the world’s firstborn vampire, I could probably have expected that kind of thing to happen. However, this place really didn’t seem like a dungeon to me—it just didn’t feel the same.

I hurried over to the door, checked for signs of life one last time, then gave it a quick, firm push open. Inside was a room about six tatami mats in size, surrounded by stone walls. It had a desk, a crude wooden bed, and shelves filled with rows of strange tools. It seemed like some kind of makeshift laboratory or secret hideout—or perhaps even a room to lock someone or something away in.

The breeze was coming from the back of the room, next to the shelves with the tools on them. When I took a closer look, I saw a hole in the wall that looked just about big enough for a dog, along with some marks in the dust on the floor, giving the impression that something had been dragged through.

If something had been in the room, it had definitely left already. And if a human had escaped through that hole, it had to have been someone who could dislocate their joints at will.

I was curious about where the hole led, but I was unlikely to find Mitsurugi on the other end of a passageway that no adult human could fit through, and I didn’t want to risk stirring up the hornet’s nest by using force to smash my way in.

Making the decision to investigate the room and leave as quickly as possible, I pulled out two LED lanterns, placing one on top of the desk and the other on a lantern hook near the entrance.

A lot of the tools on the shelf looked like parts for some kind of restraints.

“Please, let this not be a torture chamber...” It didn’t make any sense to have a torture chamber in a Shinto shrine, and all I really saw were the restraints and some objects that looked like heavily rusted-over kitchen knives, so I figured that probably wasn’t the case after all.

I picked up a few scattered pieces of paper off the floor and noticed some faded writing on them in English. They seemed to be some kind of patient observation records.

“Was this a sickroom...?” Come to think of it, Saito did suggest that people might’ve been in isolation here...

Judging by the fact that the writings went back and forth between using “you” and “thou,” though, they had to have been written quite a long time ago. For writing like that to be the natural style, I imagined the author must’ve been someone from around the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Not only that—the handwriting was actually familiar to me.

“This is awfully similar to the English writing in the seventh volume of the shrine priest’s personal notes...” The flowing cursive script, drawn out with lines as thin as threads from a spider’s web, looked like a near perfect match to what I had seen in the book.

I didn’t have time to just sit there poring over the hard-to-read cursive papers, though, so I gathered them all together and started snapping pictures of them. As I was picking up the last page from under what I assumed to be a bed, I noticed a container that had been hidden in a recess on the floor.

It turned out to be a gorgeous five-colored porcelain piece. If it had belonged to Camulia, then it was probably a large jewel box that had been fired at Jingdezhen in China for the European market during the Ming dynasty. I kind of wanted to take the whole thing, but it was far too valuable to just sneak away with.

I placed the box on the desk and carefully opened the lid. Inside was...absolutely nothing! Wait, no—at the very bottom, on top of some minor staining, there was a tiny white piece of...something.

“The heck is this thing?”

Picking up the object, which wasn’t even as big as a fingernail, I shined my LED lantern on it to get a better look. It felt moderately elastic, like a piece of gummy candy. If I had to compare it to something, the first thing that came to mind was a slice of cuttlefish, but nothing along those lines could’ve been in there for so long without starting to stink or shrivel up.

Intrigued by this mysterious unidentified substance, I put it into a polypropylene container left over from the ones I had bought during the whole entrance exam kerfuffle, then put the container into Vault. As for the no doubt highly valuable five-color porcelain container, I replaced the lid and put it back exactly where I had found it.

Finally, once I had placed the stack of papers I had gathered on top of the desk, I gave the place one last visual sweep, then exited the underground chamber.

I got back to the surface and was immediately greeted by the oppressive summer air. The temperature underground must’ve been a lot lower than I’d realized. Shutting the door embedded in the ground, I put back as many of the tatami mat scraps as I could. Then, bombarded by the rain-like sounds of the cicadas, I took a seat on the shrine grounds, pulled out my phone, and brought up the pictures I had just taken of the papers underground.

“Wait... ‘To whosoever reads this, please pay heed to my horrific deeds’? What the hell?”

Someone had written out a series of lamentations and confessions.

I rearranged the photos based on the dates written on the pages and started reading them in order. The flowing, threadlike wisps of cursive handwriting, written in Early Modern English, were more difficult to read than anything I had ever encountered, but if I took my time, I could actually manage to get through it.

***

The first entry read as follows:

We originally set off from our homeland with a fleet of five ships, boasting the most advanced galleon of our day as our flagship, in search of the so-called Land of Gold that lies far to the east.

The subsequent journey, though, was fraught with constant misfortune, as if God were forcing us to endure some manner of trial. By the time we departed Macau, our flagship was the only vessel that remained. Yet even the fleet captained by the great Sir Francis Drake was reduced to a single ship by the time it returned to England. Glory is yet within our grasp.

Then, the next entry:

We felt a series of violent shocks in the night, and the ship let out a sudden groan. As best we could surmise, we had struck something. Perhaps we had encountered land without realizing it? It would have been a godsend if so, yet despite their best efforts, none of our seamen could locate anything of the sort. Eventually, dawn broke, yet we found ourselves surrounded by nothing but the vast ocean. What could we possibly have collided with in open waters? Rumors spread among our men that it might have been a kraken.

After some time, it became apparent how much damage we had suffered. Alas, our rudder was broken, and the ship was drifting at the mercy of the tides. The crew were at their wits’ end trying to maneuver the ship using only the sails. We spotted a faint shore-like outline on the eastern horizon, but we could do nothing about it.

Then, the entry after that:

Days upon days have passed since our incident at sea. We had exhausted our food supplies, and some had already begun to perish from starvation, when something strange happened to drift against the ship—or perhaps a more accurate description would be that it got caught in our damaged rudder. When the crewmen found the object floating there and pulled it out, at first it appeared to be some sort of large fish carcass. However, they were shocked to see that it had what seemed to be an arm growing out of it. If one compared the carcass to a human body, the head portion and the other arm were missing. At first we wondered if it had been caught in the rudder when the accident occurred, but that had been many, many days ago, and there was no telltale smell of decay.

Grotesque though it might have been, by all appearances it was still a giant fish. With its flesh still fresh, what else could our surviving crew do but consume it? Before long, I was served a plate with some sort of white fish meat atop it. That evening, though, my body felt as if it were aflame, and I could scarcely breathe. I thought for a moment that the sweet cross had come for me at last, and I prayed for God to show me mercy.

Eventually, I sensed a queer, distorted noise, and I awakened with a start. I felt no pain whatsoever, and thought perhaps I had reached heaven’s gates, but soon observed that I still seemed to be in my quarters. The groaning of the ship brought me back to my senses, confirming that I was still in the realm of mortals. I realized that once again, it had not yet been time for the Lord to call me to His side.

How much time had elapsed? It could not have been overlong, as I felt no particular pangs of hunger.

I calmly rose to my feet, changed into my favorite red dress, then opened the door of my cabin and walked out onto the deck. My body, which had been horribly weakened previously, felt mystifyingly light.

Not another soul was present on the deck. No one manned the crude fishing instruments fashioned from whatever materials had been on hand, nor did I see any lookout searching for land, despite the fact that said post was supposed to be manned at all hours, day and night. My only company was the ship itself, still creaking noisily, its mast seeming ready to topple over at any moment.

Turning around, I peered into every room I could find, searching for the others. As I did so, I noticed black stains scattered here and there within various compartments—but saw no people whatsoever. It was as though some horrific event had occurred, sweeping away the living and the dead alike. What could possibly have happened during my slumber?

A faint, unpleasant scent of decaying earth permeated the inside of the vessel, and the deeper I ventured inside, the more potent it became. The room it seemed to be coming from, well protected from any stray sunlight, was supposed to contain a cache of silk and porcelain from the Ming Dynasty, procured in Macau and destined for the Land of the Rising Sun.

With a creak, I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and some sort of grotesque altar appeared in the darkness, illuminated by the candle I carried. Covered in putrid sludge, it seemed to be constructed from an amalgamation of mummified arms and legs—human ones.

A queer noise escaped my lips. My breath quickening and growing more labored, I staggered closer, until I saw the nightmare wriggling beyond the altar. O Lord, take me into thy presence! For I may not approach thee of mine own accord.

I shall never again willfully recall that horrible spectacle until the day I die, for it would be akin to inviting death upon myself.

After fleeing the scene like a madwoman, the next thing I knew I was on a small boat. For some reason, in my arms I held a five-color porcelain piece that had been offered on the altar.

I still do not know what befell our ship after that. The vessel had seemed ready to fall to pieces at any moment, so it may well have sunk and vanished into a watery grave—or perhaps it still wanders the ocean aimlessly even now, the hideous altar still festering in the ship’s hold.

***

“Which pulp magazine did they pull this from...?”

I stared blankly at the image on my phone, feeling like a kid who had just finished reading an issue of Weird Tales. It was almost four p.m. already. If the papers were real, they obviously had to be telling the story of how Camulia ended up drifting ashore. That meant the porcelain container hidden in the underground room would’ve been the same one mentioned in the diary.

“So would that make the weird thing inside it—”

—a piece of meat off the weird giant fish thing, I guess?

“No, no, wait. There’s absolutely no way a chunk of protein from four hundred years ago could still be in a pristine state like that.” I had zero intention of even pulling it out again until I could get it appraised by Miyoshi.

The ongoing chorus of the afternoon cicadas had dwindled to a faint buzz, and the evening cicadas were gradually starting to ramp up their own tunes. Figuring I might as well read through to the end at that point, I swiped over to the next image.

The writer spent a while counting the nights she spent on the small vessel, but at some point she apparently gave up on keeping track of the date. It was doubtful the tiny boat had enough food and water to keep her going for long, but none of the subsequent entries had any complaints about being hungry or thirsty.

Then, after who knows how many days, she finally drifted ashore at the place she herself ended up naming “Kuotogahama.”

***

The man who took me in is apparently this country’s version of a priest. Our inability to understand each other’s languages proved a problem at first, but he brought in an interpreter—a missionary who had fled the persecution of his Franciscan order some years prior. Thus I slowly began to make sense of the native tongue. The days passed by peacefully; it was as if those horrible events out on the ocean had never occurred.

My appetite had remained rather meager since the incident, which must have worried the priest. One morning he brought me a cup of plain water, and when I saw it, I murmured that a cup of xocolatl sounded good to me. He must have misunderstood, as every morning after that, he brought me another cup of plain water, calling it “xocolatl,” which I found to be a bit strange.

And just like that, twenty years passed by. My benefactor grew frail and sickly, yet for some reason, my appearance remained as it had been the day I arrived. The others in the village seemed to find that greatly disconcerting. Yet the priest did not take their suspicions to heart, and he continued to show me the same kindness and concern he always had. Around that time, though, I began to believe that the object in the five-color ceramic vessel might be flesh from one of the legendary mermaids of Wakasa.

Strangely, the contents of the vessel had not decayed in the slightest over the past twenty years. It was as if time itself had stopped for the object.

However, I knew what had happened on our last ship. If I made any mistakes, something terrible would certainly occur again. I struggled with what to do for quite some time, and when the priest could no longer get out of bed, I made the decision: I had to play the part of the devil.

I loved that priest dearly.

***

The descriptions beyond that point were horrific. It was a detailed account of how she had kidnapped people from outside her village and forced them to eat small amounts of the mystery meat to observe what effects it had on them. For some, their bodies began to slowly dissolve, while others turned into forms too hideous to even look at. About one in ten retained forms just recognizable enough to be called human, and about the same percentage died instantly upon ingestion. The amount of meat given varied from subject to subject, albeit only slightly.

“Did she actually go through with that...?” I muttered, covering my mouth out of reflex. A chill ran down my spine; I half expected to hear a response like I did indeed call out to me from the main hall.

The noise of the evening cicadas had been gradually growing louder, and by that time had crescendoed into a full chorus. There was probably less than two hours remaining until sundown.

She had continued her experiments for a while, but it wasn’t easy to procure subjects, and eventually the priest was on his deathbed. After that, she most likely fed him the meat, praying that it would work and the man she loved would become whatever she had become.

Unfortunately, the priest apparently did not survive; she wrote that a funeral service for him was held afterward. However, her writings on the matter didn’t really convey a sense of sadness after his loss. “With his death, so too die my experiments,” she had written.

Some time after that, a large fleet of ships had shown up, though it wasn’t clear whether they were European or Chinese. They’d been hoping to meet with Happyakubikuni, the eight-hundred-year-old Buddhist priestess. They had been hired by someone very powerful who was searching for the secret to eternal life.

“Come to think of it, Niizaki Shrine right across Wakasa Bay from here has a legend about the Chinese explorer Xu Fu, doesn’t it?”

There was a monument at Niizaki Shrine that claimed to be from Xu Fu’s landing there, but his supposed journey happened over two thousand years ago, while the shrine was only rebuilt in 1671. I only remembered that because the name of the town where Xu Fu supposedly landed was “Ine.” Some say that Xu Fu might have actually brought the cultivation of rice to Japan, and one way to say “rice plant” in Japanese was also “ine.” Claiming the guy who introduced “ine” to us also landed at a town called “Ine” was kind of a hilarious idea to me.

I highly doubt people somehow conflated the ancient legend of Xu Fu’s search for the secret to eternal life with the group who supposedly showed up in the seventeenth century. Though the age of the shrine and the dates mentioned in the papers seem to match up fairly well...

Regardless, Camulia apparently traded the group roughly four ounces of meat, her so-called elixir of eternal life, for vast quantities of treasure. It must have been effective, because they continued to perform the same trade once every twelve years from then on.

“That makes a total of thirty-five trades in about 420 years, then.” At four ounces per trade, they’d ended up trading ten pounds after forty trades. Adding in the amount used for experiments and fed to the priest, it was possible they had run out twenty-four years ago—

“Wait, would that mean the incident here twenty-four years ago was related...?” If they couldn’t make good on their trade because they had run out of product, maybe that was why they were attacked...?

“To whosoever reads this, I ask not that you understand my horrific deeds. I ask only that if you encounter any who were subject to my experiments, to please leave them in peace. They have done nothing wrong. We have brought prosperity to this village for many long years. I can only pray that is en**h for y** to f***ive us.”

The last portion was partially illegible, smudged by some sort of small droplets of liquid.

“Elixir of eternal life, huh...”

That left the question of who had wanted it, and who had ended up using it. It makes me sick to my stomach to imagine there might be a monster like Ro Shiragaki out there, or maybe even more than one, but they might end up being the final boss of this whole scenario. I’m not sure whether that’d be better or worse than Dagon.

If someone like that had come here twelve years ago, they would’ve left empty-handed. And if they hadn’t managed to trade successfully in thirty-six years, they’d be all the more desperate for it.

“If whatever’s behind this can take a few punches without dying, then all the better.” I don’t care if they’re some mysterious immortal or an actual Deep One. Anyone who dares lay a hand on a friend of mine is gonna be in for one hell of a beating.

Letting out an imperious snort, I headed back to the hotel.

***

When I returned to the hotel, nobody else was there, even though it was nearly sunset. Instead, I was greeted by scattered shards of broken glass from the front door.

“No way...! What happened to the Arthurs?!”

I tried to call Drudwyn out of my shadow, but there was no response. Panicking, I searched all over the hotel, and found two things that had been left on top of my bed. First, there was a single camellia branch, and second, a handwritten note from Miyoshi: “It’s said that Umisachihiko’s soldiers fear the sacred branch of the tsubaki.”

I picked up the branch and waved it around a bit.

“Is this branch supposed to actually help, somehow...?” It seemed pretty useless as a weapon, but information like that often turned out to be surprisingly effective. The mythology about Ngai’s forehead being a weak spot certainly had been.

After that, I checked every remaining corner of the hotel, branch in hand, but I found no sign of Miyoshi or Saito whatsoever.

“There’s no way they could’ve been captured too...” Would that even be remotely possible, considering they have the Arthurs with them?

Just as I was considering that, I heard a deep whistling sound coming from outside. I stuck my head out the window of the room I was in and looked over toward the harbor. There, beyond the mist hanging above the ocean’s surface, I saw an enormous oceangoing megayacht entering the harbor.

***

“Y’ha-nthlei, huh. Even their ship name is on point.”

My lips twisted into a frown at the irony of the name plastered across the bow of the docked 240-foot megayacht I was glaring up at.

There was no definitive proof whatsoever that the yacht had anything to do with the kidnappings. But the circumstantial evidence pointed directly at it—and I was already at my breaking point. I didn’t care about breaking any laws anymore. If my missing friends weren’t anywhere on that ship, I was ready to start busting down every building in town until I found them. And if anyone had already been hurt or worse, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from wiping the entire place off the map. And after that, I’d make a certain Mr. Marsh regret he ever lived.

The camellia branch Miyoshi had left behind seemed to actually have an effect. When I brandished it before the figures that started to pour out in front of me, they scattered in fear of it. It made things easy for me, but also left me with no outlet for my anger, leaving me rather pent up.

I glanced up at the rear deck of the ship as I bounded onto the gangway; a sign stating “Private—No Boarding” got jarred and fell down.

With all my detection skills going full tilt, I picked up a large number of signals immediately beneath me. As I slowly descended belowdecks, people I could only assume were crew members occasionally stepped out into my path, but when they saw the branch in my hand, their eyes widened and they fled. I felt like some kind of silent movie star, waltzing through an empty field right into the enemy base.

There were no filthy, horrid spectacles inside the ship; everything was actually quite modern and sophisticated.

“Followers of Dagon these days sure do lead cultured lifestyles.”

I checked the top and bottom of the spiral staircase on the central deck, then headed down and stopped in front of the first door I came to. I detected two signals in the room directly in front of me, presumably humans, and sensed numerous others moving around in the back, matching what I had detected beneath me earlier.

Carefully, I cracked open the door and brandished the camellia branch through the opening. After getting no real reaction, I peeked inside, then immediately froze.

“Mitsurugi?!”

Forgetting everything else, I dashed into the dim room. There were two figures visible low to the ground, and the one lying on the floor a bit to the left of the door was, without a doubt, Mitsurugi.

I ran over to her and picked her up. She let out a soft groan, and I saw three long scratches across her face, as if she had been attacked by some clawed monster. Not even bothering to make sure it was safe to do so, I pulled out a Super Recovery orb and shoved it into her hands.

“Use this!”

“H-Huh?”

She seemed to be hesitating for some reason, so I grabbed her hand, pressed the orb against her, and declared fiercely: “Just use it!”

Flinching from the forcefulness of it all, she ended up using it—apparently accidentally.

“Ah...!”

As usual, the orb transformed into a glowing light, disappearing into her body. However, the other effect I expected to see from it didn’t happen; the scars on her face remained in place.

“Dammit! Is it because we’re not in a dungeon?!” Or maybe there’s something else blocking its effects?

“Nnngh...!”

Perhaps having seen what just happened, the other figure let out a grunt of urgency and pointed toward the door in the back.

“Saito?! You’re okay?!”

I hurriedly transferred the two of them over to one corner of the room, then glared at the door Saito had been pointing at. Miyoshi isn’t here. Knowing that moron, I’m sure she tried to taunt whoever did this into focusing on her instead.

“Miyoshi... She’s...” Saito trailed off.

Just as I thought. “Agh! Stupid girl!” I groaned, then dashed over to the door.

The massive signal I’m picking up inside the room ahead must be the final boss of this whole scenario! It shouldn’t even take me two seconds to smash his damn head in!

I burst in with an explosive crash, sending the door flying off its hinges. A second later, I was ready to slam my fist down onto the mastermind’s head, when—

“Kei! Wait!!!”

Miyoshi’s unexpected desperate shout brought me back to my senses.

“Ngah?!”

“Wh-Whoa there, easy now, big guy.” The man who had just about been on the receiving end of my punch had broken out into a cold sweat.

“S-Simon...?”

There, pressed up against the wall with a look of contrition on his face, stood Simon.

“H-Hey there, Yoshimura. Think you could put that big scary fist down?”

At that moment, the lights suddenly all turned on, and I heard a bunch of party poppers start going off.

“Huh...?”

Approaching me in my state of utter confusion, Miyoshi gave a respectful bow.

“Happy birthday, Kei!”

“Wh—” Taken completely aback, I couldn’t help but shout at the top of my lungs. “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!”

***

“So what did you think, Kei? This was the most superextravagant birthday experience you can get—your own midsummer horror show! Did you have fun?”

“Are you out of your mind?! This went way past extravagant and into insane! Do the words ‘going too far’ even compute for you?! If by ‘have fun’ you mean ‘have years shaved off my lifespan,’ then yeah, I had a goddamn blast!”

As I finished shouting, Saito and Mitsurugi came in together from the other room. Apparently the scars on Mitsurugi’s face had been some kind of special makeup. No wonder the orb didn’t heal them.

“I’m very sorry for making you worry,” Mitsurugi said, bowing deeply in apology.

“No, no, you aren’t the one who should be apologizing, Mitsurugi. Miyoshi dragged you into this, didn’t she?”

“Huh?” Miyoshi blinked. “She was actually really into it, though.”

“Well, I might’ve enjoyed it just a little.”

“Really?” Saito chimed in. “I thought it was super fun! I got to apply my acting chops!”

Oh yeah, they are actresses, aren’t they...

“W-Well, I’m just glad you’re both all right,” I stammered.

“Kei, I’m sensing slightly different reactions to them than you had to me!”

“That’s because it’s an obvious fact that you are the one guilty of pushing this too far!”

“Whaaat?”

I gave Miyoshi a gentle but meaningful bop on the head, and she put on a dissatisfied pout, rubbing the affected area. “At first it was just supposed to be a birthday celebration at the villa,” she explained.

“So the hotel is actually a private villa?”

“Yup. Asha’s Papa Bear bought it, apparently.”

“So Ahmed was the mysterious Mr. Marsh...?”

Apparently Asha had been planning to come visit all along, and this little event was just something tacked onto that. Hence the massive megayacht they’d shown up in. It had to have cost them at least ten billion yen.

“When I asked Asha where the villa was, she said it was in a place called Sukusu-guchi. Then, when I checked out the kanji for it, I knew immediately that I had to set this whole thing up!”

When I heard that, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Of course. It pretty much literally means “inn’s mouth,” huh.

“Well, I guess it’s a little better than something like ‘Insumasu’ at least,” I said.

“Ah, there’s no getting around that kind of silly simplicity in TV shows, is there?” Miyoshi agreed, handing me a glass of champagne.

I took a sip.

“So, where did this whole setup start?”

“With the person you saw back at the shrine. He’s right over there.”

The man Miyoshi pointed to was indeed familiar. He waved at us, his mouth full of banquet delicacies.

Wow, that was some seriously good acting! Sheesh. Now that I think about it, Miyoshi was the one who said things were getting weird and suggested that we stop the car. They really were just leading me around by the nose, weren’t they...

“Thinking back on it now, our exchanges after Mitsurugi went missing seemed kind of unnatural. I guess that was you trying to maintain control of the situation so I wouldn’t spoil myself, then?”

“I kind of panicked after you jumped out the second floor window like that.”

“So where exactly was Mitsurugi then?”

“I was hiding in the building,” Mitsurugi responded.

“We had things set up so she couldn’t be detected using Life Detection, but you just ignored all context and dove right out the window,” Miyoshi muttered.

“How on earth did you arrange that?”

“Using the latest technology from the USDSF, of course!” Simon explained with a grin, coming over to us with a champagne bottle and a glass. Apparently Natalie had been interpreting our conversation for him.

From what he told us, they had developed some kind of container that Life Detection couldn’t see through. Supposedly they had come up with it after paying attention to how undead creatures stopped giving off signals when they went back into the ground.

“That’s not considered a military secret?”

“Nah, people already know about it. Besides, it’s not like I’m giving away the blueprints or anything.”

“Ah, that makes sense...” It was good to know that if someone got overreliant on Life Detecting inside a dungeon, they might be in for a rude awakening. I’d better watch my back.

“Sure does,” Simon said, then turned his head. “Oops, here comes the big boss man. I’d better go say hi.”

It seemed Ahmed had arrived. I wonder why Simon wants to talk to him? Does he have something to do with the DSF? Nothing wrong with saying hi, but you should probably put down the champagne bottle there, champ...

Saito and Mitsurugi left to get rid of their extra makeup and change. Meanwhile, all the extras in the play were off in their own groups, enjoying their meals.

“I thought this was supposed to be a party?” I mused.

“Well, it’s a day early, so I guess this is more of a birthday event than a party,” Miyoshi responded.

“And tomorrow, I’ll be just a stone’s throw away from my thirties...”

“You seriously need to just relax about that.”

“Hey, you’re the one who went off the deep end putting this whole insane event together!”

“Oh, it took so much work! I had to plan things out extra carefully, considering you easily could’ve started exploding people if you got too worked up, Kei.”

“So that’s why you left that camellia branch for the very end...” During the final stretch, I had really started to lose control. I honestly had had every intention of tearing through anyone who got in my way.

“Every good adventure needs the ultimate hero’s sword at the end, right?”

“It made it a lot easier to get onto the ship, that’s for sure.”

“I also had a really tough time figuring out how to keep you from giving away your ability to use Vault.”

Fair enough. It would’ve been a huge mess if I’d ended up revealing Vault.

“And things got really sketchy there at the very end too!” Miyoshi was probably talking about when I forced Mitsurugi to use the Super Recovery orb.

“Did anyone see that happen?”

“I had no idea what you’d do with that much pent-up rage in you, so I made sure there weren’t any cameras in that room. If anyone saw anything, it was just Mitsurugi and Saito.”

“I guess that’s fine, then.”

“For a second there, Mitsurugi looked like she was gonna pass out.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

Miyoshi squinted back at me.

“That was a five-billion-yen orb, duh!”

Ah. I guess that’s why Saito freaked out and started pointing frantically at the door—to keep me from using any more orbs.

“Well, I guess that means we should go ahead and let Saito use Super Recovery too, then.”

Miyoshi shot me a weak smile that practically screamed Fine, whatever.

“So where’s our other mastermind, Asha?”

“She was super excited about getting to play an extra, so she’s changing in her cabin. I’m sure her young maiden’s heart won’t let her come out to say hi in a shabby outfit.”

Something about the way she said things with that weird grin on her face made Miyoshi seem like some creepy middle-aged guy. You should try to learn a bit about the “young maiden’s heart” thing yourself.

“So I guess Asha was the woman in the red dress?”

“Wait, that again? There was no woman in a red dress, Kei.”

I was suddenly at a loss for words. No woman in a red dress? Then who was— No, no, no. I have to be careful. This kind of last-minute twist is totally something Miyoshi would try to sneak in...

If I could trust her at her word, the only plotline they set up was the whole thing about the secret cult of Dagon, with the sacrifices and the trading. Supposedly the local legend about the mermaids had been unexpected, and she had worried for a while that I was going to veer off course toward thinking the whole thing was about vampires.

“Can I talk to you alone for a second, Miyoshi?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

I pulled her aside and we went up to the open deck, where nobody else was around. The bustle of the party faded gradually into the distance, soon replaced by the soft sloshing of the ocean waves. I looked up at the villa on the hill, its silhouette blotting out some of the starlight, then pulled out the Six Mon Ships trading list I had found there.

“Are these real?”

“The very last page is a spillover from the page before it, right?”

“Yeah, the one with the entry for this year’s date on it.”

“Exactly. We added on that last page ourselves,” Miyoshi admitted.

“What about the rest?”

“The rest are bonafide historical documents, I’d say.”

I fell silent for a moment, resting my back against the railing.

“So do you think the people they were trading with will be coming back this year?”

“It read to me like something happened twenty-four years ago, and all trading came to a halt at that point. I doubt they’ll be back.”

I guess that means we’ll never know who exactly the locals were trading with.

“So were you able to figure out what they were trading?” I asked.

“Well, it only happened once every twelve years. I figured it might be nothing but a ritual of some kind, or maybe they were just trying to mess with people,” she replied.

Without a word, I pulled out a polypropylene container with what looked like a slice of squid inside it—the substance I had found in the underground chamber of the abandoned shrine.

“Could you Appraise this for me?”

Miyoshi took the container, which had seemed empty at first, peered into it, then looked back to me, her expression tightening.

“You’re taking this really seriously, aren’t you,” she stated plainly.

“I’d love to be able to chalk this up to being a joke, if at all possible.”

Tilting her head at my odd choice of words, Miyoshi opened the container and checked the contents. She raised her eyebrows for a brief moment, then immediately closed it and shoved it back into my hands, like she wanted to get it out of hers as soon as possible.

“Where did you get that...?”

“I’d rather not introduce any bias,” I insisted.

Hearing my response, Miyoshi let out a sigh, then leaned against the railing.

“This village sure has been a strange place...” she murmured. After standing there for a while in silence, she abruptly turned to face me again. “Do you really want to know, Kei?”

“Do I really want to know?” she asks... Knowing Miyoshi and the others came up with this whole thing, if she’s trying to keep it up a bit longer, then I need to keep playing along with them until the game’s over. And on the off chance this thing really is what the evidence suggests—

I slowly shook my head.

“You know, it seems like I’m always foisting these problems on you, Miyoshi.”

She let out a soft giggle.

I opened the container, pulled out the last piece of whatever the substance was, and stared at it for a moment.

“Ashes to ashes, I guess.”

With that, I flicked it into the ocean. It traced a gentle curve as it disappeared into the darkness, eventually hitting the water with a tiny sploosh. And thus, the legend was returned to the sea whence it came.

The sound of the waves rising and falling kept cycling over and over, like some sort of endless requiem for those who had been given eternal life.

“Hey, Kei.”

“What?”

“What do you think would happen if one of the fish around here ended up eating that thing?”

“What...?” You know, if we compare body weight versus quantity consumed, I feel like that could end up pretty frightening. But still— “Maybe that would be the start of a brand-new legend for Wakasa,” I offered.

***

After that, we returned to the site of the party and focused on sharing drinks with all of the people who had come all the way out there to celebrate. Then, after it had gotten well into the night and it was almost time to wind things down, I went over to ask Asha a favor.

“Hey, Asha.”

“What is it, Kaygo? Are you excited to have seen me again?”

“Absolutely. All this craziness excited me so much, I almost want to start handing out spankings.”

“Wow! That could be a valuable experience!”

You’re not supposed to respond to that with a “Wow!” You’re supposed to be a rich girl from a good family. It’s definitely a great thing you’re fully recovered now, but if your father is letting you get involved in madness like this, he might be spoiling you a bit too much... Er, I guess it’s kinda late to be concerned about that though.

“Well, I’m just glad you’re still feeling well. On that note, there’s actually something I was hoping to get from you.”

“Oh? You want Asha?”

“That’s not where I was going with that...” If I were, I knew exactly what the future would hold for me: Ahmed wearing a devilish grin as he stomps me out of existence. I’m too young to die.

“Are you truly an adult male, Kaygo? Where are your guts?”

They’ll be spilled out all over the floor if I asked you something like that!

“So what is it you would like?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d be willing to give me a red dress.”

Hearing that, Asha’s eyes went wide for a moment.

“What?! Kaygo, I didn’t realize you had such a hobby!” she replied in a strangely delighted voice, eyebrows raised with interest.

“I have nothing of the sort!”

“But I fear my dresses will not be an appropriate size for you,” she continued.

“For the last time, I don’t plan on wearing it!”

“Oh? Then who will?” she asked, her eyes probing me.

“Who...? Uh, well... The legendary Princess Tsubaki, I guess?”

“Kaygo, you are a rich man, so it makes sense for you to give gifts to a courtesan, but would it not be rather cheap to present her with a stranger’s dress?”

Courtesans were the elegant flowers of the demimonde in France. The Japanese equivalent would probably have been the famous high-class hostesses of Ginza. No, there was absolutely no way I’d be gifting anything to someone like that.

“Again, you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Very well. So what sort of dress would you like?”

What sort, indeed? Hmmm. Well, she was likely a first-class lady back in her day, so if I was going for a matching modern design, I’d want something rather elegant. Those were not the days of plain-looking dresses.

“I’d like something gaudy. Maybe you have one you don’t think you’d ever wear?” With that Papa Bear of hers, I guarantee she has gorgeous dresses ordered for her by the dozen.

“I certainly do. I have many red dresses to match the rubies you gave me. How many shall I give you? Ten?”

“Ten is definitely way more than necessary.”

After that, Asha brought out a still-unworn bright red dress that was both gorgeous and had an air of nobility to it.

“Say hello to Violetta!” she chirped as she handed it to me.

***

Later that night—actually, just before dawn—I disembarked from the ship and walked over to Tsubaki Shrine by myself.

The shrine stood there enveloped in starlight and the sounds of insects, giving off the aura of a true sanctuary.

This shrine has no torii gate. That means it lies entirely within the world of the mundane.

Since there was no water basin for purification, I washed my hands with water from a plastic bottle I had brought with me instead. The shrine had no box to place offerings in either, so I placed the container with the dress in it by the entrance to the main hall.

“I don’t know whether you’re still around, but considering over four hundred years have passed, if you are, I imagine you’re pretty exhausted, right?”

I put down a bottle of red wine and some chocolate next to the dress, took a step back, bowed twice, and clapped twice.

“Take care of yourself,” I whispered, then gave one final bow.

If having someone believe in you could make you a god in this mundane world, I honestly didn’t hate that concept.

Annotations

Samson and Delilah: A grand opera based on the story and characters from chapter 16 of the book of Judges in the Old Testament.

The tale is about a colossal nitwit of a hero named Samson who falls in love with a duplicitous woman named Delilah. She asks him three times to tell her what his weakness is, but despite the fact that he openly questions her intentions, she nags him daily, calls him a liar, and insists that he doesn’t truly love her, which causes him enough anguish to break his spirit and make him spill the beans in the end. Naturally, it ends up being a trap, just as he had initially suspected. Way to go, dude.

“The Met” referred to by Miyoshi is, in this case, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, whose conductor at the time was James Levine. Plácido Domingo was a part of the famed operatic singing trio called the Three Tenors, alongside Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras. On August 13, 2019, just four days after this story takes place, Domingo was accused of sexual harassment by multiple female colleagues.

Castle of Sand: A full-length novel written by Seicho Matsumoto. (Also released in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates.) The culprit’s father contracting leprosy was the spark that lit the story’s fuse.

Ro Shigaraki: A character who appears in Sukeban Deka, a work by Shinji Wada. He’s an old man who’s been alive for at least two hundred years, and is basically the final boss of the series.

Y’ha-nthlei: Have fun pronouncing this. Y’ha-nthlei is the name of the underwater city of the Deep Ones. It’s located in the waters beneath Devil Reef, about a mile and a half off the coast of Innsmouth.

Day 3

The next morning, our ship departed from the port of Sukusu.

Miyoshi and I stood out on the open deck, watching the village recede into the distance. The cliff where the hotel was situated jutted out into the ocean and had a very distinctive shape, due to the granite being eroded by the waves. In short, it looked a bit like some grotesque, toppled giant, with a bunch of tentacles growing out of its mouth and a building on the back of its head.

“You sure paid a lot of attention to detail,” I said, staring at the monstrosity.

“That part was a total coincidence,” Miyoshi replied.

Beyond the contrasting, interweaving blacks and whites of the rock formations and the bright blue summer sky, for a moment I thought I saw red camellia flowers moving amid the green of the forest near where the shrine was supposed to be. To me it almost looked like a woman with blonde hair, waving at me in her brand-new red dress.

Epilogue

“Will the day ever come when that indescribable creature once again crawls out from the deep crack in the earth beneath that long-abandoned shrine? How long will it be until the passion of that woman, whose love has burned strong for over four hundred years, plunges the world into madness? Will it be tomorrow? In a month? In a year? Or perhaps hundreds of years in the future?”

“Aaand done.”

I pressed Alt+F, followed by the S key, to save my file, compressed that file into a zip archive, then dropped it into my messaging program in a window labeled “Mayuzumi.”

—Hi there, Mayuzumi. I just sent you the data.

—Right. Thank you for that.

—Okay, it’s time for me to go eat.

—Oh? Going to Nonjaka again?

I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment. Do I really go there that often?

—Yeah, actually.

—Would you mind if I join you, then?

—What? I’m going right now, though.

—That’s fine. I just happen to be in Shinjuku at the moment.

“Seriously?”

—Okay, then I’ll meet you in thirty minutes at Mina’s table on Yanagi-dori.

—Can do!

I closed the chat window and got up out of my seat to take a quick shower.

“She’s always so peppy...”

Mayuzumi was a self-proclaimed fan of mine as well as my editor, and we had been working together for over ten years. That was why it would probably be time for me to say goodbye pretty soon.

About thirty minutes later, I walked through the entry curtains of the restaurant called Nonjaka.

Nonjaka was an izakaya-style restaurant with several locations in my part of Shinjuku. They’re open until 7 a.m., so it was especially convenient when you wanted to be able to eat something no matter when the urge hit you. It was a laid-back joint, and the meals were perfectly adequate in flavor, size, and value. In the early morning hours, many other restaurant owners in the area gathered there. It was an ideal place to sit back and relax with some food and drink.

When I entered the restaurant, Mayuzumi was seated at a table in the back, waving at me.

“May I take your order?” Our waitress, Mina, swayed her elegant body as she spoke.

“I’ll have a draft beer,” Mayuzumi said.

“For me, let’s go with agedashi tofu, some salmon belly, and a plate of rice.”

“Wow, you’re actually having a meal!”

“Huh? That’s the whole reason I came here...”

Hearing my response to Mayuzumi, Mina smiled and started laying on the pressure.

“Maybe I should start banning anyone who doesn’t order a drink...”

“Whoa! I guess I’ll have a draft beer as well, then.”

Wiping my hands with a wet towel, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Mayuzumi put in an order for a few appetizers of her own.

“Great job getting everything taken care of!”

“Thank you. Same to you.”

Clinking our beers together, we started eating our food, making casual small talk about what had been going on in each other’s lives.

A while later, Mayuzumi suddenly asked me a question.

“Speaking of which, do you remember what your very first story was about?”

My very first story...?

“I really don’t have the faintest clue,” I responded with a laugh, though in reality, that wasn’t true at all.

It feels like ages ago, but I remember that story quite clearly. It was about the history of a certain shrine. Even now, I’m still not entirely sure whether it was fact or fiction. It’s tough enough for people to remember details about things that happened ten years ago, so things even older than that will inevitably start to fade and disappear—except, of course, for the things that leave the biggest impressions.

As those idle thoughts were running through my mind, I happened to catch what she was saying as well.

“Really? Something came to mind when I was reading this latest story, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Is love really sustainable for hundreds of years?”

So she’s asking if love has an expiration date?

“I guess if there were only two people in the world, maybe that would facilitate eternal love.”

“Ah, so a man and a woman living in the depths of the dark world below could nurture their very own sad, eternal love,” she explained cheerily.

I was a bit concerned to hear my editor talking about things like that—but as a fan, she got a pass.

“Love, huh...”

What if someone else had shown up? Someone other than her original beloved, but who would look at her in the same way? Would she have been able to resist the urge to go out into the surface world to see that person?

When I first wrote about the origin of Tsubaki Shrine, she was definitely in love with him. She was fully prepared to accept whatever consequences there would be for her actions, no matter what the outcome might have been.

What about now, though?

If someone had shown up who had the ability to free her from that place, IT would have followed her out onto the surface. I’m not sure if that would’ve been the end of something or the beginning; I haven’t been involved with all that for a very long time, after all.

I doubt I’d be surprised if her feelings had changed in some ways over time, just like how I began to experience the joy of eating again, despite the fact that it doesn’t really matter whether I eat anything at all.

“Seriously, though, you look as young as ever,” Mayuzumi observed.

I chuckled.

“Well, I am eternally twenty-one, you know.”

We shared a laugh and parted ways, but I knew the day she would disappear from my life forever wouldn’t be too far off.

Commentary

How did you like this crossover between dungeon fantasy and the legends from Wakasa?

The title, “Ashes to Ashes,” is from a famous passage that appears in a Christian prayer book. The passage states that “from dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” suggesting that people should place their trust in God “in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” Yoshimura also name-dropped the chapter title near the end, as I’m sure you saw.

Due to how memorable the phrase is, it’s frequently used in song and album titles. The most famous one is probably the track by David Bowie, but another artist that comes to mind is Joe Sample.

“Dust to dust” is another commonly quoted phrase from the same passage, though it’s perhaps not quite as ubiquitous as “ashes to ashes.” On the other hand, the ill-fated first phrase in the trio, “earth to earth,” is hardly ever quoted.

If you’re wondering why the name on the church in the story was written in Galician, it’s simply because Miyoshi was influenced by the Spanish horror film Dagon, released in 2001. (Apparently the 2007 American film Cthulhu and the 1994 Japanese novel Insumasu o Oou Kage didn’t do her much good.) The church that appears in Dagon just so happens to be “Esoterica Orde de Dagon.” Interestingly, all the actors in the movie pronounced it “deegon” or “daygon” rather than “daggon.” All it took for Miyoshi to go overboard and throw Yoshimura into a state of complete chaos was a simple, “Hey, this seems kinda neat!” Fear her.

By the way, these may just be short stories, but this is still D-Genesis. That means just about everything that shows up actually exists, including but not limited to: the strange sign, the round stones on shrine grounds (these were actually “lifting stones”—a nearby sign explained that the young people of the village would pick them up to use in strength contests), the Tomari Disposal Facility, the strange gate with the Shimazu family crest on it, the shipping containers scattered along the side of the road, and the shipping containers that had been smashed in. The first time I visited this area, it felt like I had slipped into the Twilight Zone.

(Of course, keep in mind that this is a work of fiction, so whatever appears in the book has no actual relation to the real versions of these things, no matter how similar they may seem.)

Naturally, the whole area is actually Tomari, and there is no “Sukusu” beyond the gate, nor are there any farmhouses further down the other path mentioned when Ryoko visited the gate. The road I saw there was barely even a road; it was so overgrown by the surrounding vegetation, I seriously wondered if it was usable whatsoever.

When I’m wandering around strange locations across Japan that aren’t considered your typical tourist destinations, I run into a lot of mysterious places like this. Examples include Kudaka Island, a tiny abandoned shrine deep in the mountains of Okuizumo, and a set of stairs in an alley in the back streets of Shibuya that leads to a bizarre space. Oh, the keystone shrine on the west side of Kashima Jingu Shrine was pretty wild too!

Going to a city you’ve never been to before, turning down a narrow alley, following it to the end, and seeing that it suddenly opens up into a mysterious wide-open area... Stuff like that really gets me fired up! Those places always manage to stimulate my imagination, and I’d love to write another story like this if I ever get the chance.

By the way, regarding the eight-hundred-year-old Buddhist priestess mentioned once in the story, I used to confidently pronounce it “Yaobikuni,” but they apparently pronounce it “Happyakubikuni” in Obama. Hoo boy. I guess they would call that a “big oof...”

However, as they say: What happens in Obama, stays in Obama. If you embarrass yourself once on a trip, there’s no way you’ll ever make the same mistake again, so no worries! Yep, no worries at all. Sniffle.

Chapter 3: The Queen’s Coronation

Foreword

While I’m in the process of writing D-Genesis, a lot of the time I’ll look up and realize that my character count has kind of exploded. (And by “a lot of the time,” I mean “basically every time,” much to the chagrin of my editor...)

Now, understand that modern-day Japanese consists of a bit under 59,000 characters, roughly. If you exclude English letters and numbers and stick to the list of kanji for common use, that leaves about 2,300 characters. If you write just ten characters from that list, the number of possible combinations you could make with them would be 2,300^10. And by that logic, if you write a whopping 200,000 characters, that would be 2,300^200,000 possible combinations! The more you write, the more explosive things get. This phenomenon is known as a “combinatorial explosion.” (Not really though.) It makes me wonder how that teacher from Miraikan’s animated short The Art of 10^64: Understanding Vastness is doing these days...

Since exploding character counts happen to me so often, I ended up making the decision to deal with them in the most aggressively counterproductive way possible: I just write as much as I feel like writing, then worry about trimming things down at the end. My billowing character count cannot be contained! It’s not even on my radar before I reach 140k characters, but by the time I break the 160k barrier, I start to get a bit concerned. After 180k, I find myself surrounded by a nasty puddle of sweat, and at 200k, my soul is actively trying to escape my body. Needless to say, by the 250k mark, I have no choice but to resign myself to my fate.

When that happens, if perchance there’s an event in the plotline that’s just the right length, sometimes I end up having to bite the bullet, hold back my tears, and put the whole segment on the chopping block. It’s a clear-cut case of reaping what I sow. Argh! Who the hell can pull together all their plot threads within a specific number of characters, anyway?! (The answer: anyone who writes novels.) If someone finishes writing their story and happens to randomly end within an acceptable character count, they just managed to get stupid lucky! (It’s very rarely luck.)

The short story for volume 3 was born as a manifestation of that suffering, and was originally prefaced by the following statement: “It’s highly recommended that you read this short story after reading volume 3.” Of course, that makes perfect sense when you realize it’s just a cut portion of the volume that was reworked and touched up...

And, of course, in volume 3, something awakened inside Asha. There’s no denying that Miyoshi committed a grievous sin indeed by facilitating this. We can only pray that Asha’s Papa Bear never learns what “topping all the bottoms” actually means.

Preface

This story features a fictional version of Akihabara that is incredibly similar to the real one, and contains fictional versions of several curry restaurants that are incredibly similar to real places. However, it makes no judgments on the quality of each restaurant’s food. Every customer has a unique palate and their own unique opinions; that fact is part of the essence of curry itself.

Naturally, the names of all restaurants and their dishes used here are fictitious ones, and I will reiterate that they have no relation whatsoever to the real ones they happen to sound incredibly similar to. They do have slight differences as well, which was unavoidable—it was, to put it succinctly, a requirement.

The story that follows is a chronicle of the wisdom, courage, and trust between three specific individuals who end up being tested by the gods.

Annotations

The gods: Or the author, if you prefer.

December 27, 2018 (Thursday)

Akihabara

“Wow, so this is Akihabara!”

With a blithe “Riding the train is a huge part of sightseeing in Japan!” from Miyoshi, the three of us had hopped on the Sobu Line and headed out through the Electric Town ticket gate into Akihabara.

“Though I admit, it’s not quite the same as I’d envisioned,” Asha added, turning her head every which way to take in the sights.

Asha’s knowledge of Akiba had apparently come from hardcore American nerds she had met online in the modern age of shut-ins, and no doubt it was biased by their perspective. Whether that meant in favor of electronics or moe culture, I couldn’t be sure.

She was right, though: The area in front of the station didn’t have nearly the same sense of depth it had back in the day. When you went out via the Electric Town exit on the UDX side (the one on your right), there would be giant banners hanging off buildings on the right side depicting anime and video game characters. Lately, though, a lot of video game characters were drawn in Western-style art, so the view no longer really blasted people in the face with anime vibes. At most there were occasional advertising campaigns in the open spaces around the streetlights along Chuo-dori. Alternatively, you could check out Denpa Kaikan, which retained some of that same flavor from before moe culture began dominating everything.

If you were specifically looking to immerse yourself in moe, you’d go out the Electric Town South exit (the one on your left) and walk around the Radio Kaikan area. That’s where the main Gamers location was, after all—you couldn’t go wrong with that.

Across Chuo-dori stood the Sega and Sofmap buildings, which also preserved some of the atmosphere of the old days, but it was nothing like the bygone era when huge posters for adult-only games had been plastered on every other building; the area had become much more normal, comparatively.

“Hey, Miyoshi, is it just me, or are people staring at us?”

Maybe it was because the three of us were wearing T-shirts with weirdly cheap-looking logos on them, and hooded jackets with the words “My Prayer: Akiba Curry Pilgrimage” printed on their backs.

“Whoa, look at those three weirdos!”

“‘Akiba Curry Pilgrimage’?”

“Who are these Gyoshin wannabes?”

“Why would they reference such an ancient manga...?”

“It just had a new series start up, actually.”

“Huh? It did?”

“That’s not the point. Do they realize how many curry shops there are in Akiba nowadays? There’s no way anyone could hit them all up in one day. Besides, how many bowls do they even think they can eat?”

“No joke. They’ve got some pretty hefty portion sizes around here.”

“And look how skinny that girl is!”

“Y’know, now that I look at her, she’s kinda hot. Maybe we should tag along...”

And so the voices from the peanut gallery reached my ears. We were drawing a fair amount of attention, and the passersby kept shooting us amused glances.

“So far, everything’s going ‘just according to keikaku,’” Miyoshi joked, referencing an infamous meme from an anime about a lethal notebook. “That being said...” She brought up her phone and showed us the route for the day’s curry crawl.

“Oh!” Asha exclaimed.

I stared in disbelief.

“What the hell? Are there really that many curry shops just around the station here?!” Incredibly, there were over twenty locations pinned on Miyoshi’s map.

“Yup, there sure are!”

“Kaygo, Kaygo! We’re going to visit all of them, right?”

“All of them...? Even with the three of us sharing a plate every time, that’s still roughly seven plates per person.”

“That’s what you might think, at least,” Miyoshi stated.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Uh, is there something wrong with my math...?”

“No, there are just some places she probably won’t be able to eat.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the type of meat served. As lax as the Jain household may be, beef is still sacred, and pork is still unclean, you know?”

“If it’s just a few bites, I’m sure God would look the other way,” I shot back matter-of-factly.

From what I had been told, some city-dwelling Indian people ate beef on occasion. And when practicing Hindus stayed in Japan, a fair number would eat tonkatsu or drink beer. It all depended on the person, apparently. Faith is a contract between an individual and God, after all, and interfering with others’ eating norms is like interfering with their faith, so I doubt anyone would get after her for it...

“Well, for today, let’s stick with what her Papa Bear told us before: chicken, lamb, or goat, okay? We wouldn’t want anyone to get in trouble,” Miyoshi added in a solemn murmur.

We sure as heck weren’t going to be tracking down any goat curry, so that meant we’d have to go for chicken or lamb when vegetarian wasn’t available.

“Aww...” Asha thought for a moment, then looked up at us. “Can we go to Ugo Ugo Curry?”

“Ugo Ugo Curry?” I repeated, not following.

“It’s a Kanazawa-style curry chain...” Miyoshi explained. “Unfortunately Ugo is a no-go, though.”

“Awww!”

“The same group has a chain called Samrat that serves chicken curry, but there aren’t any locations in Akiba.”

Apparently Asha’s American nerd associates had recommended Ugo Ugo Curry to her. However, even if you nixed the pork cutlet on top, it was still a rich Kanazawa pork curry roux, through and through.

Asha was dejected when she heard that, but we wanted to avoid any potential death glares from her Papa Bear. Miyoshi and I had a sense of self-preservation, after all.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine! How about we put ourselves back on track and head to our first stop? It looks pretty promising to me!”

With that, Miyoshi took us to a curry shop that happened to be right there on the first floor of the Atré building we were already in. For some reason, the place was named after a country that didn’t seem like it had anything to do with curry whatsoever.

“Excuse me! I am the great Curry Daiou—a king who loves curry! May I request a single bowl of curry to split between me and my two loyal subjects?” I asked, gesturing toward the word “Pilgrimage” on Asha’s hoodie. The person taking our order responded with an enthusiastic “OK” hand gesture.

“That’s kind of playing with fire, making a gesture like that in front of someone of Indian descent like Asha,” Miyoshi muttered.

“What are you even talking about?” I asked, confused yet again.

Miyoshi then explained to me that a rumor was going around in the United States that the “OK” gesture had supposedly taken on a new meaning. Allegedly it had been usurped as a white supremacist symbol, with the three fingers sticking up forming a “W” and the thumb and forefinger together plus the arm forming a “P,” which were the initials for “white power.”

“The hell?”

“That’s a perfectly natural reaction for you to have, Kei, but it just goes to show that some people out there are really sensitive to these things.”

I mean, you certainly won’t find any Nazi flags flying in Kyoto, but symbols that look like swastikas are pretty much all over the place. Why? Well, because a lot of wooden architecture there uses the left-facing manji, and when you look at one of those from behind, it becomes the much-maligned right-facing swastika. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to be up in arms about that in this day and age, I’d think.

“If people can just usurp the gestures and symbols we use every day and make them bigoted, we won’t be able to say or do anything at all anymore!”

Miyoshi frowned.

“It’s a pretty complicated issue...”

“Kaygo, what does this say?”

“Let’s see, it says you can choose how spicy you want to make it, up to level 70.”

“Wow!”

“Also, this one right here is beef, so make sure to steer clear,” Miyoshi chimed in, then helped Asha through the menu, assuring her that anything else should be safe to eat.

“Maybe we should go with bean, just to be safe...?” I suggested.

“Okay, let’s do the bean curry, then. That’ll help with the portion sizes too.”

Most of the other curries were typically stacked sky-high with ingredients, making them pretty massive. That would’ve been way too heavy on the stomach if we were going for seven bowls each.

“And for the spice level, let’s go with—”

“Seventy!”

Upon hearing Asha’s energetic contribution to our order, Miyoshi and I both let out a simultaneous “Huh?!”

When the order came out, we let Asha eat first. Supposedly saliva was one vector for uncleanliness. Asha just smiled awkwardly and told us not to worry about it, but yeah, self-preservation and whatnot.

“Spicy, runny curry like this reminds me of the South,” Asha said between bites.

“The South?”

Geographically speaking, India had a roughly triangular shape, with one edge oriented north to south, and its other vertex pointing east. Most of the population was concentrated along the Ganges River across the northeast edge of the triangle, as well as near the vertices. Therefore, the country was largely divided into the North and the South, followed by the East if further separation was needed.

“I always thought Mumbai was in the West, though.” Technically, the city was more or less centrally located on the west coast of India, facing the Arabian Sea.

“Why? Because of how westernized it has become under the influence of British rule?” Asha countered, a grin on her face.

For a moment, I didn’t quite register what she had said, but as soon as I realized she had been making a play on words, I cracked a half smile myself.

“We should give the puns a west for a while.”

According to her, Indian curry had extremely distinct regional flavors, so much so that the versions in North and South India might as well have been completely different dishes. The North often used milk or fresh cream, making it rich, thick, and oily, while the South added things like coconut milk, which gave the curry a smoother, runnier texture.

“I believe the differences are likely influenced by the different staple foods in each area.” Apparently northern India relied mainly on wheat as its main food source, while the southern area largely ate rice instead.

“Does that mean naan is from northern India?” Miyoshi asked.

“Yes, that’s right. So is chapati. Both are easier to eat with a thicker curry.” Conversely, the cooked rice from southern India didn’t mix in easily unless the curry was smooth and liquid.

“You mix them?”

“Of course! Traditionally, Indian food is eaten with the hands.” She went on to tell us that in South India, people would pour runny curry onto relatively dry rice, then mix the two together with their hands as they ate it. If the curry was too thick, not only would it be difficult to mix, but it would take forever to cool off as well.

“Wow, I see...”

***

Wheeze.

Huff.

Pant.

Gasp.

“Kaygo? Azusa? Are you all right?”

“What kind of question is that? Did this stuff”—I wheezed again—“not affect you at all, Asha?” I asked as I pointed at the curry with my spoon, tears streaming down my face.

“It was rather spicy, but I thought it was delicious!”

Miyoshi and I, our lips swollen from the heat, could no longer taste anything at all. By the time we had reached the third bite or so, with its spicy fragrance and the terrifying bursts of sensory shock that followed, our bodies had broken out into sweat, and our taste buds had completely overloaded. Our instincts kicked in and we tried to flush out the aftertaste with water, but the spice simply would not flow.

“At this rate, we’re gonna get full on water before we get through any more curry,” I grumbled while panting.

“Kei, a small part of the heat in curry comes from 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate”—Miyoshi wheezed—“but the bulk is from capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin.”

“I have no idea what the first thing you said was”—I was interrupted by a huff—“but the other two definitely come from chili peppers.”

“Yup-yup,” she gasped. “The first one is from mustard seed. Apparently it’s used as a curry ingredient in southern India.” Huff.

“Ah. Anyway, you were saying?” Another wheeze slipped out.

“Well, cold water doesn’t work very well for washing off capsaicin, so drinking water won’t help us at all.”

My only response was an eloquent wheeze.

“We’d have to drink either alcohol”—she huffed—“or something oily.”

“Huh. Well we can’t just start”—huff—“chugging liquor all of a sudden.”

“And the little nubs of butter that come with the potato sides”—wheeze—“are way too small.” Wheeze.

“Welp, guess I’ll die.” Pant.

“The LD50 of capsaicin is about forty-seven milligrams per kilogram, so you’d probably have to consume about”—pant—“3.1 grams of it for a lethal dose,” she wheezed.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand what you’re saying...” Asha interrupted, tilting her head in confusion.

“Long story short, the curry was too damn karai!” I managed to quip.

Asha merely blinked.

“Excuse me?”

Miyoshi sighed.

“Kei, that pun kinda falls flat unless you know Japanese...”

***

“Whew, that sure was an ordeal right off the bat!” Miyoshi said, exhaling heavily.

“Japanese people’s sense of taste seems rather delicate. Come to think of it, your cuisine is also delicate,” Asha observed.

“It’s not really a matter of delicacy—we just aren’t accustomed to intense levels of spice like that,” I offered in explanation.

Once we had managed to catch our breath, we finished collecting ourselves and stood up.

“All right, from here we start heading counterclockwise around Akiba!”

Asha and I responded to Miyoshi’s plan with a unified, enthusiastic cheer.

“Let’s go!”

Heading back to the ticket gate area, we went out the Electric Town South exit, then turned at the Akihabara Minami intersection, heading away from Manseibashi.

“That reminds me, Miyoshi. When it comes to Indian curry that’s safe for practicing Hindus, I hear Govinda’s in Funabori is supposed to be pretty top-notch, right?”

“For the longest time I thought it was pronounced ‘Gobinda’s,’ you know.”

“Why? Considering it’s spelled with a ‘v’ right there on its sign, it’s almost guaranteed to be pronounced Govinda’s.”

“That’s the thing, Kei. The katakana on the restaurant’s menu actually read ‘Gobinda’s.’”

“Oh, I get it. So you thought it was Govinda’s, then noticed ‘Gobinda’s’ on the menu when you actually went there and figured for a second you learned something new, but in the end it really was Govinda’s all along, huh?”

“The world is indeed full of mysteries,” Miyoshi declared, nodding sagely to herself as we continued on.

You probably shouldn’t close your eyes while you’re walking, girl.

“Besides,” she added, “it may be a straight shot on the Shinjuku Line from Iwamotocho to Funabori, but we can’t forget that the theme for today’s adventure is ‘sightseeing in Akiba.’”

“Aren’t we kind of heading in the opposite direction from Akiba ground zero, though?”

After we had gone under the overpass and walked for a while longer, a distinctive yellow sign came into view. It was Ugo Ugo Curry’s first Akihabara location.

“Awww...”

Asha looked up at the sign dejectedly, but we weren’t going to let her sway us. Self-preservation, et cetera.

“If you really want to try it out, you should take your Papa Bear there next time,” Miyoshi insisted.

“Okay...”

“But seriously, Miyoshi, how far away is this next place, anyhow?”

After crossing under the Metropolitan Expressway, we ended up in front of Ikebe Music, a store on the Kanda riverfront that specialized in drum and percussion instruments. Pointing upward, Miyoshi informed us that our destination was in the building next door to Ikebe.

***

Two men watched as the trio ascended the narrow stairs.

“Whoa, are we gonna follow them right into the Indian restaurant, or what?”

“Man, these three are awesome! They really are on an Akiba Curry Pilgrimage!”

When the men had seen Yoshimura and the others in front of the station, they had suddenly gotten super invested in the whole scenario, even going so far as to create a message board thread titled “A Wild Akiba Curry Pilgrimage Trio Appears!” They had been tracking the pilgrims and posting about their progress to the internet at large.

***

The moment the white entrance doors creaked open, I froze, suddenly feeling very out of place.

“M-Miyoshi...”

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t you think it might be bad to eat here?”

“But you haven’t even tried the food yet!”

“That’s not what I meant. I just get this feeling our ‘Akiba vibe’ isn’t gonna help us much in a place like this...”

We were in a regular Indian restaurant. There wasn’t a single ounce of Akihabara spirit among the restaurant workers either. In fact, we might as well have been across the river in Iwamotocho.

“Let me put it this way: Do you have the mental fortitude to keep up the Curry Daiou schtick and ask if the three of us can split a single plate? In this atmosphere?”

Miyoshi balked.

“Bleh...”

While the two of us stood there awkwardly, sticking out like sore thumbs, Asha was talking to some of the workers in a mysterious language, turning back and forth to show off her shirt and hoodie.

“Rich girls sure have their own way of doing things,” Miyoshi murmured.

“What is she even talking to them about?” I wondered out loud.

“I guess she’s speaking Marathi, but I don’t know a word.”

“Yeah, I know exactly one, myself: ‘pita,’ meaning ‘papa.’”

Strangely, though, things were starting to feel awfully promising.

“They said everything will be fine, Kaygo! They wished us good luck!”

“Rich girls sure have great communication skills too.”

“Maybe your communication skills are just lacking, Kei.”

“And who, pray tell, has been standing awkwardly right here next to me the whole time?”

Miyoshi stuck out her tongue.

“Tee hee.”

We ordered the B set, which came with two small servings of curry, some naan, a small plate of saffron rice, and a small salad. They had another set, named after the restaurant itself, which came with three servings of curry, but it came with tandoori chicken as well, which would’ve been detrimental to the rest of the day’s battles.

For our two servings of curry, we ordered one vegetable and one chicken.

“Hey, so why is vegetable curry always so spicy, anyway?” For some reason it felt to me that out of the different types of Indian curries, bean and vegetable curries tended to be the spiciest.

“Oh, I suppose it is, isn’t it? Perhaps because the spiciness makes it seem more authentic,” Asha suggested.

After the B set came out, Asha had the first taste, and as soon as I picked up my spoon, I heard voices coming from another table across the restaurant.

“Whoa! The Curry Daiou picked up his spoon!”

“What? I thought proper etiquette for maharajas was to only eat with their right hands!”

Miyoshi blinked.

“They’re saying some weird things about you, Kei.”

We were only at our second stop, but apparently we already had some people following us around and reporting on us. Everybody loves a good celebration, I guess.

“What a couple of idiots. Haven’t they ever heard ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’? It’s called cultural accommodation.”

“But we’re in an Indian restaurant...” Miyoshi pointed out.

“We’re in Japan, dammit!” Even Asha is eating her curry and saffron rice mixture with a spoon. Not to mention...

“Besides, it’s not like anyone can tear off a piece of naan using only their right hand—”

Right as I was making that assertion, though, Asha held her naan down with her ring finger and little finger, pinched a portion between her thumb and index finger, then used her middle finger to deftly sever a chunk—all using only her right hand.

Noticing me staring, she looked up.

“Hmm?”

“Okay, maybe there are occasionally some people who can do that. But it’s about as rare as finding a non-Japanese person who knows how to use chop—”

—sticks, I was about to finish, when Asha deftly grabbed a chunk of salad with her chopsticks. I knew she wasn’t going to use her bare hands, considering how slathered in dressing Japanese salad typically is, but I was really banking on her using a fork that time...

“I can feel my Daiou identity drifting away from me...”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, I figured I should warn you, that salad dressing has a lot of sugar in it, so unless you want to get full early, you should probably go easy on it,” I cautioned her.

“Wow, thanks! I’ll be careful.”

***

“Okay, the vegetable curry might’ve been a little spicy...” Miyoshi admitted.

“But it was small potatoes now that we’ve experienced spice level 70,” I added.

Snickering defiantly in our newfound overconfidence, we headed north on Showa-dori. After passing underneath the Sobu Line and walking just a bit further, we soon noticed a yellow sign immediately to our right: the GoGo Ichibanya at JR Akihabara station’s Showa-dori exit.

“GoGoIchi’s curry is typically pork-based, isn’t it?” I looked to Miyoshi for confirmation.

“Sure is,” came her response. “They do have some beef sauce too.”

“Oh no!” Asha exclaimed dejectedly. “GoGoIchi is nearly as famous as UgoUgo! Do we have to skip it as well?”

“We actually don’t,” Miyoshi replied. “I’ve got to hand it to the place—they actually have their own special vegan curry that uses something called ‘GoGoIchi Veggie Sauce.’ Not every location carries it, but this one does.”

“Wooo!” Asha squealed.

“GoGoIchi even has a special halal location right here in Akihabara, which we’ll check out later!”

“I can’t wait!”

When we entered the restaurant, Asha excitedly showed off the back of her hoodie to one of the employees, but it didn’t faze him whatsoever, only eliciting a slight smile. That’s some well-trained staff.

“First off, we need to decide how much rice we want.”

A normal serving of rice at GoGoIchi was three hundred grams. Under their pricing structure, for every hundred grams beyond that, they would charge an extra 110 yen. Why, then, was a two hundred gram serving of rice only 52 yen cheaper? You’d think they’d take off 110 yen—but whatever, no big deal. But wait, it got even stranger! If you went with a beef sauce, the rice was suddenly 137 yen per hundred grams. Maybe it was a different kind of rice? It was a mystery.

“We’ve got to go with the two hundred gram bowl,” I suggested. “That’s almost seventy grams per person.”

“Yay!” Asha cheered.

“A photograph of a dead person,” I said in Japanese without missing a beat.

“Iei!” Miyoshi exuberantly shouted out a similar-sounding Japanese word that matched the definition I’d just given.

I cleared my throat loudly.

“Anyway, next we choose the spice level. There’s no mild version of the Veggie Sauce, so it just goes from plain to ten—”

“Ten!” Asha blurted out instantly with her hand raised, as if it were the obvious choice.

“Slow down there, Asha. GoGoIchi doesn’t use a linear scale for their spice levels. Spice level 2 is twice as spicy as level 1, level 3 is four times as spicy, level 4 is six times as spicy, and weirdly enough, level 5 is twelve times as spicy as level one. I don’t really get the progression pattern, so I have no idea how spicy level 10 is supposed to be.” For whatever reason, the signage didn’t specify any of the multipliers after level 5.

“It looks like the first five values are highly composite numbers,” Miyoshi pointed out.

“Highly what, now?”

“It’s a set of numbers that Srinivasa Ramanujan came up with. It’s made up of positive integers that have more divisors than all positive integers smaller than it.”

“Are you suggesting they referenced the works of an Indian mathematician—because curry?!” I groused.

That would be a bit extra, wouldn’t it? I mused. If whoever decided on this spice scale actually used that as their basis, they’d have to be some kind of scholarly genius.

“Well, if I’m right, the next values in the sequence would be 24, 36, 48, and 60, and then level 10 would be 120 times the spice of level 1.”

I paused for a moment at Miyoshi’s conjecture.

“You know, that’s starting to sound more and more likely.”

“Right?”

“Either way, Asha, didn’t you come here specifically to check out Japanese-style curry?”

“Huh, now that you mention it...”

Slipped your mind, huh?! I grumbled internally.

“Why not try out the standard Japanese curry experience, then? Maybe start with either plain or spice level 1?”

“Okay! We can try that, then.”

Hearing that, Miyoshi and I both breathed sighs of relief. If we had been forced to consume a plate of spice level 10 curry, we probably would’ve been breathing sighs of fire instead.

***

“So this is what Japanese curry tastes like!” Asha said between mouthfuls of vegetable curry. We had gone with spice level 1, without any extra toppings.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I confirmed. “So what do you think?”

“If I compare it to traditional curry, it feels like it’s lacking something. But if I think of it as its own separate dish, it’s quite delicious. What a strange feeling!”

I wonder if it’s anything like the feeling Japanese people get when we eat international variations of our own food, like California rolls? I guess I’ll never be able to compare the experience directly, though, considering I’m not from India.

With that, we headed to our next destination.

***

The two men who had been following the trio were already filled to the brim. If they didn’t do something soon, they were liable to start spewing curry any moment now. Thus, they turned to the message board thread they’d created for assistance.

“Requesting backup! Our wallets are empty and our stomachs are full!”

“We’ve followed the Akiba Curry Pilgrimage Trio to six restaurants so far. Next stop will be the seventh. After GoGoIchi, they went to Cororo, Cobara-Suita, then GoGoIchi Halal. All signs indicate their next stop will be Curry Nante Nomimono. Judging by their recent pattern, we can assume their goal here is red curry with chicken.”

“This is gonna be their seventh bowl of curry! We are tapping out! Will any brave souls take up the cause in our stead...? We’re waiting for you, heroes! The password is ‘Akiba Curry Pilgrimage’!”

“No joke, we are seriously stuffed. Help!”

A large number of people with nothing better to do responded to the duo’s heartfelt plea.

***

“This is Snake. The Curry Pilgrims have successfully completed their mission at Nomimono. Looks like they’ve made it to Kuramaebashi-dori.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.”

“Here ya go.”

The image uploaded was a wide-angle shot that captured the three curry pilgrims walking along Kuramaebashi-dori.

“Huh. That one girl doesn’t look Japanese at all.”

“She was speaking in English.”

“Whoa! Do you think she’s literally a ‘princess who comes from the land of curry’?”

“Gotta be. She looks Indian to me. She’s also a hottie.”

“A hottie?! Pics please!”

Several photographs were then uploaded to the thread by several different users.

“Why are they all taken from behind, though?”

“Well, any time someone tries to take a pic from the front, this happens.”

There was some kind of brown, shadowy blur blocking the next image.

“The hell’s that?”

“Dunno, but whenever her face is in the shot, a hand always manages to come out of nowhere and block the line of fire.”

“‘Line of fire’? Ha ha ha.”

“I totally saw ’em. They were like some kind of Men in Black or Agent Smiths or something.”

“Nah, their tie clips were placed a little too low, in my opinion.”

“Oh yeah, Agent Smith’s clip was pretty high up there, wasn’t it?”

“Still, with guys like that hanging around her, you don’t suppose she’s a real princess, do you?!”

“We’ve got ourselves a Roman Holiday situation here!”

“So when someone asks her which city she enjoyed visiting the most, is she gonna say ‘Akihabara’? Ha ha!”

“Well you could definitely say it leaves some kind of impression.”

“Sounds like the Pilgrims are gonna be invading Prownie next.”

“Prownie? Aren’t they an all-beef place though?”

“So what?”

“I mean, based on the list of the restaurants they’ve visited so far and what they’ve ordered, they’ve gotta be sticking to the rules of Hinduism, right? They haven’t touched a single beef or pork curry so far.”

“Ah! I bet they read about that Vietnamese chicken curry that used to be on the menu up until last spring or so.”

“This is Snake. The three targets have already left the building. The other Snake who stealthed inside beforehand just stood there gawking like an idiot, apparently. He he he.”

“The Princess of Curry looks so cute when she’s all dejected like that!”

“Omigosh! Pics! Pics!”

“Not gonna happen. The Agent Smiths would just block the shot. Man, it is wild being right here on location, though!”

“Ugh. Curse you, Agent Smiths!”

“Can’t believe you guys. Sneaking photos without consent isn’t cool.”

“I mean, the Pilgrims look like they’re wearing some kind of disguise, and they stick out like sore thumbs. Pretty sure they realize that too, so it’s probably not such a big deal, right?”

“Based on their current route, they’ll probably take a left when they get to Tsumakoizaka. Advance teams, Snake your way over to Currygari, Shan Curry, and Bingal!”

“Whoa, the portion size at Shan Curry is gonna be rough at the pace they’re going...”

“Uh, isn’t Shan Curry all pork anyway?”

“Bingal has coconut chicken, so they’ll probably be fine there.”

“If they start heading back toward Akihabara Station, they’d go straight past Joto and Lapore, huh.”

“Y’know, we can handle this because we keep swapping out, but those three must’ve eaten like four or five plates each by now, right? With Akiba-sized servings, that’s downright brutal.”

***

I let out a pained belch.

By the time we left Lapore and its ultratasty yet tear-inducingly spicy offering, we were in a sorry state. If any of us had gotten poked, curry probably would’ve started gushing out from somewhere or other.

“Are you two okay?” I asked.

“I’m very much not okay, but at least we only have three locations left on our itinerary!” Miyoshi responded.

I grunted in agreement.

“I feel super heavy. I must’ve gained like three kilos...”

Miyoshi nodded.

“I mean, we could probably just call it here—”

“No!” Asha exclaimed.

“Uh...?”

“We’ve come this far—we must see it through to the end!”

“Uh, Miyoshi? Do you think eating all that curry might’ve made Asha lose her mind?”

“I mean maybe...” An unceremonious burp erupted from her mouth. “Oh my, how unladylike of me...”

“How could you even suggest stopping?!” Asha shouted in Japanese, then emitted a sudden guttural sound. Contorting her body intensely as if its contents were attempting to break free, she let out a few labored breaths. “When you give up, that’s when the game is over!”

When the people around her heard her say that, they all gasped in astonishment. While Asha stood there striking a defiant pose, the sounds of camera shutters clicking echoed one after the other. That said, it looked like her bodyguards, or whatever they were considered, were blocking any shots from the front.

I dunno, man. If we keep this up, we’re probably gonna end up just as rotund as the coach from the basketball-themed manga who originally said that line.

By the time we barged into Alpaca Curry after that, we were utterly exhausted. Barely even bothering to look at the menu, we just ordered the curry with the smallest portion size. However, when our order came out, we realized we had made a grave mistake.

“K-Kanazawa-style curry...” Miyoshi murmured.

“Miyoshi, is Alpaca Curry—”

“—a Kanazawa curry restaurant? It sure seems that way.” She hung her head in disappointment, then instinctively jerked it back up to prevent her previous meals from escaping.

There were no two ways about it: We had just been served a plate of genuine pork curry.

“W-Well, I guess we’re out of options. I’ll go ahead and take this one for the team.”

“Kaygo...”

“G-Godspeed, Kei.”

If Miyoshi or Asha eats five or so more spoonfuls, they may well start spewing curry out their noses. I’ve got to prevent that—no matter the cost.

“J-Just two more stops to go... I’ll handle things here, so you two go on ahead!”

“Kei, I swear I’ll never forget you!”

A storm of heartfelt emotion swirled around us.

“Y’know, it’s always the people who say that who typically end up getting their happily ever after with another survivor, then completely forgetting about the poor soul who sacrificed themselves.”

“That’s not true!” Miyoshi protested. “They don’t always forget. Sometimes there’s sort of an ‘Oh yeah, remember that one guy?’ moment.”

“What the hell! That’s somehow worse than not being remembered at all!”

Okay, never mind about the “heartfelt” part.

“Kaygo, what are you doing?” Asha asked in Japanese.

“Oh, um, I’ll take care of this location. You and Miyoshi can just head over to the next two. I’ll catch up with you when I finish here.”

“Okay. Come join us as soon as you can, Kaygo.”

“What, so your portion size can go from half a plate to a third?”

Asha averted her eyes playfully.

“Oooh, I do not understand complicated English!”

***

After parting ways with Kei, Miyoshi and Asha crossed Manseibashi and soon arrived at A Soup Curry Shop Named After a God.

“Awesome! They’ve got rice-free curry here, Asha!”

“W-Wow! This must be divine providence!”

Spirits high, they ordered a bowl of chicken curry, but alas—

“L-Look at the size of these pieces!”

The two of them stared at the massive chunks of chicken and vegetables in despair.

“V-Very well. Once you’ve had a taste of this one, Asha, go on ahead to the last stop.”

“What about you, Azusa?!”

Miyoshi responded with a smile and a thumbs-up, as if to say, I’ve got this!

“But if I am alone, how will I know where to go...?”

At that, several men, who had been listening to the conversation, stood up at once and spoke.

“Accompany with us there!”

They were all followers of the “A Wild Akiba Curry Pilgrimage Trio Appears!” social media thread. After having seen her come this far, they all wanted to help usher Asha to a triumphant finale.

Miyoshi let out a hum as she mulled over the situation. As questionable as she knew it was to hand off Asha to a group of strangers, upon further thought, she realized that the girl’s bodyguards would ensure no harm came to her, so it wouldn’t be a big deal.

What might’ve been a problem, though, was the fact that the newcomers’ English was only semicomprehensible. She was pretty sure they had meant to say, “We’ll accompany you there.”

“Can you speak English?” Miyoshi asked.

“Don’t underestimate today’s internet people. We have a powerful ally in Goggle-sama!”

She almost burst out laughing at the awkward phrasing, then gave Asha and her new comrades a theatrical send-off, speaking in Japanese.

“We’re counting on you, then. Please, help her reach the promised land!”

“You got it!”

After watching Asha and the others leave the store in search of said promised land, Miyoshi returned her attention to the fearsome enemy waiting for her on the table and let out a massive sigh. The most pressing issue was how to deal with the colossal pieces of chicken and carrot swimming in the dish in front of her.

“When people are really full, they can’t even swallow the food that’s in their mouths...right?”

Quietly uttering those words, she steeled herself and gripped her spoon tightly, facing her hopeless final battle with a hero’s aplomb.

***

Top Quality Curry. That was the name of their promised land—the final destination for the Akiba Curry Pilgrimage.

The dish she sought out this time was a mild European-style curry, made by cooking down onions in butter and white wine and letting the Maillard reaction do its thing, then adding chicken broth with at least twenty different spices and letting it stew for twelve hours.

Unfortunately, she was the lone surviving member of her party of heroes, the only one who had made it all the way to the end, and she, too, was at death’s door. She was in no condition to slay the looming specter of a full portion.

As the attendants who had led her there watched on with bated breath, she placed her order in a voice as quiet as a whisper: “One European-style chicken curry, please.”

The dish that came out for her fifteen minutes later or so ended up not being the typical curry served with various accoutrements. Instead, it was a kind of miniature curry set served in a small, deep bowl.

A silence fell across the restaurant, and Asha stared quietly up at the chef who had brought out her meal.

“We strive to ensure every bowl of curry we serve meets the needs of our customers,” he said, bowing politely.

***

After crossing Manseibashi from the Akihabara side and taking a right, I found myself at an unnamed intersection that connected to the old Nakasendo. There, I encountered a zombie of a woman trudging in my direction from the Yasukuni-dori side.

“Oh, hey, Miyoshi. You made it out alive.”

“I sure am glad my last stop was soup curry, even if it was only the tiniest of blessings in the end.”

Apparently the meat and veggie pieces had been way larger than she had expected.

“Well, at least soup runs down between the gaps of whatever else is in your stomach. My superdense Kanazawa curry was not fun.”

“My condolences,” she remarked. “A fat lot of good our skills and stats do for us in situations like this, huh?”

“Yup. This stuff brings suffering upon humans and new humans alike.”

After staggering down the street for a while, this time as a pair of zombies, we came upon the once-thriving Kanda Sudacho area. Something about it felt rather...profound. Maybe?

“Hey, this is the street Isegen is on!” Miyoshi said, glancing over at the glowing lights way off to the right of the tiny intersection near the restaurant we were heading toward.

“You’ve actually been to Isegen before?”

Founded in the first year of the Tenpo era, 1830, Isegen started out serving loach, and had since become a long-established restaurant that specialized in monkfish hot pot. After the building burned down in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, it was rebuilt in 1930. It didn’t matter whether you thought their monkfish hot pot was delicious or disgusting—either way, you definitely felt like you were getting a taste of history when you ate it.

“Well, Takemura is right across from it. Consider it sightseeing!”

Located across the street from Isegen, Takemura was a Japanese confectionary shop that, coincidentally enough, opened the same year Isegen was rebuilt, in 1930. Their yaki manju were pretty darn tasty. The restaurant made an appearance in Love Live! as the model used for Honoka’s house, so it was a rather auspicious location for Akiba-goers (or at least a certain subset of them). Another place nearby, Botan, was built in 1929; there must’ve been a construction boom going on around that time as the area recovered from the big quake.

Just then, a chorus of cheers erupted from a group of people gathered inside the building just ahead.

“Looks like something’s afoot in the promised land, Kei.”

“Promised land?”

“You know, as in the place we’re supposed to meet up!”

When we waddled over to the restaurant, we saw that Asha had just completed her curry pilgrimage and was showering the chef’s cheek with kisses in excitement. After getting a rundown of what had happened from the emotional crowd around her, Miyoshi pushed her way through them to Asha. A few people glared at her in annoyance at first, but as soon as they saw what was written on her shirt, they cleared a path for her in deference.

“Congratulations, Asha!” Miyoshi said, then respectfully presented her with a large T-shirt.

Taking the gift carefully in her hands, Asha quietly removed her “My Prayer: Akiba Curry Pilgrimage” hoodie. Her prayer had been fulfilled, after all. Amid the silence that had fallen across the area, we could hear the sound of her clothes rustling, and when the hoodie fell off Asha’s shoulder, I could almost hear the crowd holding its breath.

She took the T-shirt Miyoshi had given her and put it on over her other shirt. At that moment, the words “Princess of Curry” written in a ridiculous Gothic font vanished, and a new title appeared: “Queen of Curry,” written in large text.

And thus her coronation was complete. With her magnificent transformation from Curry Princess to Curry Queen realized, Asha curriedly—uh, hurriedly thrust her fist into the air in victory, eliciting cheers and a thunderous round of applause from everyone around her.

Incidentally, the words written on Miyoshi’s own T-shirt were “Lady’s Maid.”

Annotations

“It just had a new series start up”: The series is called Versus Uoshin-san! with story by Takao Yaguchi and art by Katsumi Tachizawa. It was serialized starting in 2018 in Kodansha’s Evening magazine, Issue 10. There were seven volumes in total.

White supremacist symbol: This story takes place in December 2018. In March 2019 in the real world, an in-costume employee at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida appeared to be making the OK gesture on the shoulder of a young black girl. Her mother sued, and Universal apologized, firing the employee.

Chili peppers: Capsaicinoids are what make peppers so spicy. Capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, and nordihydrocapsaicin make up the bulk of capsaicinoids, and others such as homocapsaicin and homodihydrocapsaicin also exist, though only in very small amounts. Generally speaking, the total capsaicin concentration is determined by adding up the amounts of the three most abundant capsaicin types. Chili powder only has a concentration of somewhere between one and three grams per kilogram, so Yoshimura would have to consume roughly one to three kilograms of chili powder to reach the LD50 of capsaicin. The process of actually doing that could likely have killed him just as easily as the capsaicin content.

LD50: The median lethal dose of a substance. Short for “lethal dose, 50%.” The value is equal to a dose that kills half of all animals it is administered to, normalized per kilogram of body weight. Put simply, if you consume the LD50 of a substance multiplied by your body weight, you might just die.

Epilogue

After everybody had congratulated us, we waved our goodbyes, left Akihabara, and made our way back to the office, rubbing our sore bellies all the while.

Stretching out on her back across our three-seater couch, Asha flashed us a cheerful smile.

“That was so much fun!”

I sat myself down on the chair across from her.

“So, which curry did you end up liking the most?”

Asha froze suddenly mid-stretch. The blood drained from her face, and she turned her head toward me haltingly like some sort of rusty robot.

“A-Asha?”

“Oh no, Kaygo! Whatever will I do?” she whimpered, sitting up and slumping her shoulders. “I don’t remember how any of them tasted!”

“U-Uh, well, you were under a lot of pressure...”

Suddenly, she shot to her feet, leaned forward, and slammed both of her palms down on the table.

“Kaygo, Kaygo! We have to do it again!”

All I could do was roll my eyes and smile half-heartedly in response. I am absolutely curried out.

“I mean, I guess we could. But Asha...”

“Hmm?”

“You’re gonna pack on the pounds.”

She stiffened, her smile freezing onto her face like some kind of mask.

“Maybe the Queen of Curry only needs to grace the world with her presence once every four years or so.”

I nodded in solemn agreement with Miyoshi, taking the glass of water and stomach meds she had brought me.

Commentary

Curry and ramen are two of the most notoriously difficult dishes to judge.

I mean, they may as well be national dishes. Since anyone can easily partake of curry and ramen whenever and wherever they please, pretty much everyone has their own opinions about them too.

On that note, unless something is unequivocally disgusting, I personally have a tough time judging how tasty food is. I honestly feel like pretty much everything tastes delicious in its own way. In other words, I share the same general sentiment and opinions Yoshimura expressed in volume 3.

By the way, when it comes to roux and retort pouches from the major commercial curry brands, I’ve always preferred S&B. I love chicken curry, so a lot of the time I would use Kerala, but when the packaging changed from a box to a pouch, it felt to me like the flavor changed as well. Unfortunately, I preferred how it tasted before the change, so now I don’t buy it nearly as often.

Still, even the fence-sitting “everything tastes delicious in its own way” types like me have certain flavors that induce nostalgia, which is why my preferred ramen (or perhaps chuka soba?) is a bit boring, with a very simple flavor profile of just salt. There was a tiny chuka soba joint called Morris, which was fairly close to my high school, and that flavor always takes me back to my younger days. The place is still alive and kicking, by the way.

I also have this bad(?) habit that any time I see a quaint little restaurant that looks like it’s run single-handedly by some nice old lady, I want to stop there and order some tanmen or chuka soba. Back in the day, ramen that cost over a thousand yen was considered expensive as hell—the kind of thing you’d only find at hotels or high-end Chinese restaurants. Nowadays, though, it’s pretty normal to see. Still, if you swing by one of those little places and order tanmen, there are times you’ll be able to pay with a single five-hundred-yen coin and actually get some change back.

One time, at a restaurant and location I won’t divulge, I went into a similar place and got an order of tanmen. It had a very plain salty flavor, and the tiny bit of minced pork really added something to it (not taste-wise). I just sat there nodding to myself and thinking, Yeah, this is the stuff! There were two condiments on the table: a giant container of McCormick pepper, and a soy sauce bottle with some kind of clear liquid inside it. Normally that would be vinegar, right? Figuring I might as well add a spritz to my bowl, I picked it up and noticed a strange layer of something at the bottom, about one centimeter deep.

What the hell is this? I wondered. Maybe something along the lines of gusu? (By that, I mean a clear chili pepper-infused liquid from Okinawa that most people call koregusu—though it’s always been gusu in my mind ever since I went to Yaeyama and people told me that was what it’s called.)

So anyway, I shook it up a little bit, and...

Those are ants!

Why on earth would there be a bunch of ants at the bottom of a bottle of soy sauce? How’d they even get in there in the first place?!

However, when the Danish restaurant Noma came to the Mandarin Oriental, they had a dish that used ants. Occasionally you’ll see foreign dishes that use ants in vinegar too. Oh, and though it’s long since fallen out of practice, I’ve heard there used to be regions of Japan where people would actually eat ants. Maybe that vinegar was some super-grandma’s awesome special recipe, and she beat René Redzepi to the punch!

Anyway, getting back on topic.

In this short story, initially I had been including commentary about how everything tasted at each restaurant, like you’d see in one of those cooking manga, but soon enough I started to feel like that would be a really bad idea, so I cut all those parts out. (So much for my painstaking research...)

First of all, the first bowl and the fifth bowl would be entirely different experiences from a sensory standpoint, so it would’ve been impossible to evaluate them fairly by comparison. That being said, none of the restaurants that are similar to the ones in the short story were bad, so you can rest easy if you choose to eat at any of them. Just make sure to tailor the spice level to your liking.

Also, please keep in mind that all restaurant info included is as of the year 2018, so some locations may differ by now. In fact, at least two of them have already shut their doors.

Whoops! Almost forgot—all of these places are totally fictional!

Oh, that’s right, I never dreamed this would’ve happened, but in the original afterword for this short story, I had written: “Under the pretense of research for this part of the story, I ate at three to five restaurants per day, so I think I’m gonna swear off curry for a while. Also, when I visited five locations in half a day, I started to understand the pain felt by those poor Akiba Curry Pilgrimage followers. My stomach and my wallet are both in extreme pain.” Amazingly, not too long after I wrote that, I somehow got reimbursed for my expenses. Kadokawa’s generosity knows no bounds!

May you all lead happy curry lives, dear readers.

Chapter 4: If—A Few Midsummer Memories

Foreword

Volume 4 was released on July 5, 2021. Even though the entire volume takes place during the winter, I figured since it was being released in the summer, why not add a little something summery to it? I had two problems with that, though: First, I wasn’t terribly interested in venturing outside of the nice, cool indoors in the middle of the summer heat, and second, I’d been used to the shut-in lifestyle for a long time by that point (not because of the coronavirus pandemic—I just rarely ever venture into the office), so I had no idea what to do out there!

The beach? Fireworks? Summer festivals? Watermelons, shaved ice, and entire legions of cicadas? I had experienced all of those things while in school, of course, but as an adult, I had become rather removed from them.

And so your author came to one of those realizations that nobody should have to come to: Th-Th-This is terrible! Have I become one of those miserable creatures known as adults? I just so happened to be surrounded by other adults, though—and while slipping out for a single-night getaway to the beach might’ve been on the table, people couldn’t just take off work at the drop of a hat if I invited them out of the blue to go with me on a journey to find the true meaning of summer... (Not to mention that most of us were self-isolating due to the coronavirus thing.)

A-Anyway, in the end, I managed to pull myself together and decided to just go ahead with a beach story... Unfortunately, the more I thought of Yoshimura having a grand old time at the beach surrounded by beautiful women, while I was just sitting there in my room clickety-clacking away on my keyboard, surrounded by monitors instead, the more I felt a sense of anger welling up inside me. Ah, I can be so petty sometimes. It’s only a matter of time before those dark clouds over my head open up into a massive downpour.

If someone finds themselves in the midst of a bit of good fortune, it’s only natural to have some bad fortune thrown in along with it, right? At first, I considered tossing our hero into a hair-raising shichinin misaki situation—tales from the southern part of Japan about seven vengeful spirits.

Okay, so someone destroys a Buddhist jizo statue during construction of a hotel, which ends up summoning forth the seven spirits. Then, a hotel employee starts luring people to the pool at night as sacrifices to appease— Ah, crap, that’s a plotline from Makoto Ogino’s Peacock King.

When it comes to tragedies by the ocean, the shark is pretty much the poster child. I’ll just throw in a shark! When I think of sharks, Jaws always comes to mind. Hmm, what rhymes with how we pronounce Jaws in Japanese—“jozu”? Hmm... “Sozu,” the bamboo tiles in mahjong? All green! Nah, hmm... “Bozu,” a Buddhist priest? There we go! Okay, so our heroes run into the yokai head priest of the sea, who asks them to do something about all the sea spirits going wild in his domain— Crappity crap, that one’s from Kazuhiro Fujita’s Ushio & Tora.

Aaagh, I can’t think of a damn thing! Forget it—write first, think later!

And that is the story of how this particular piece came to be (claps hands together in solemn prayer).

The allusion to the National D-Card Distribution Incident, which hadn’t been touched on yet at the time (and still hasn’t been touched on as of volume 9), was just thrown in for stylistic appeal. Yep, totally.

If—A Few Midsummer Memories

This is a what-if story about what would’ve happened if the world had made the choice to coexist with D-Factors.

***

It was the summer of 2021. Strangely, the infectious disease that had wreaked havoc across the world starting around the end of 2019 had barely spread at all in Japan. Although some people had been infected near the onset, once info about those infections started making the rounds, a mysterious phenomenon started taking effect that rendered the virus inert.

As epidemiologists around the world stood baffled, a large number of confirmed viral infections on a cruise ship that made an emergency stop in Japan kicked off a series of miracles. Not long after the ship docked, the infections were neutralized at an abnormally fast rate. It was as if the virus itself were being forced to evolve in a certain way, leaving researchers utterly perplexed.

On the surface level, though, it appeared as if affected passengers had recovered from the vicious infections merely by entering Japanese territory, and rumors to that effect prompted a deluge of people to try to enter the country. However, Japan obviously couldn’t allow infected people inside its borders based only on such a ridiculous premise, and in the end the country was forced into difficult negotiations with other nations where infections were on the rise.

Since infections were somehow being neutralized by merely entering Japan, there was no need to build any massive medical facilities. In order to best physically isolate incoming cases, Japan chose the remote island of Shimojishima, most of which was public land already, as a testing ground. It had a population of under than one hundred, and also boasted a three-thousand-meter airstrip, allowing patients to be brought in from various countries around the world.

The experiment ended up being successful; the virus was quickly neutralized in every single patient. Rigorous testing confirmed this fact, yet the root cause behind the results remained a complete mystery.

It wouldn’t be exaggerating to claim that this as-of-yet unexplained fantastical phenomenon was the result of a single primary factor. The 2019 incident in which D-Cards were suddenly bestowed on everyone in Japan was still fresh on the minds of the populace, and nearly everyone assumed that it was somehow related, but apart from a few darlings of the media, no scientists worth their salt were willing to make their speculations public.

When asked in a media interview for his thoughts about what was causing such miraculous results, the head of a visiting research team simply closed his eyes for a while and stated in a near whisper, “Perhaps it is divine providence.” This led some to believe that the dungeons were providing divine protection, and religions related to dungeons started rising to greater prominence.

It turned out that only a small section of the JDA and a certain troublesome two-person party knew the truth: In service to the collective unconsciousness of the people, all of the wishes for the virus to be neutralized were manifested into reality.

If it was possible for that to happen, theoretically the people of Japan could also eliminate things like cancer or influenza if they so desired. In fact, the same would likely apply to virtually any sickness or disorder.

Put succinctly, if people knew for certain this was the case and rushed to will all diseases out of existence, not only would the vast majority of medical professionals most likely be out of a job, there would be an immeasurable ripple effect. If a guaranteed way to prevent cavities were discovered, you certainly wouldn’t see dentists making the announcement. Humanity couldn’t take a huge step like that without considering how it would affect the economic balance of the world.

Fast-forward to the present. Having chosen to coexist with D-Factors, all we had left to do was go about our trivial daily lives.

When it came to the world of consumption, the Japanese convenience store was king—once people experienced how convenient they truly were, they’d never want anything else. And so humanity grew to rely heavily on their coexistence with the dungeons, while harboring the vague concern that at some point, their newfound blessings could suddenly vanish.

***

“Do you want some too, Kei?”

After looking out at the clear blue sky and thinking about how hot it would probably get later, I had just come down from my room into the office. There, Miyoshi was brewing some pour-over coffee, filling the air with its pleasant aroma.

“That’d be great.” I stifled a yawn and woke up my computer so I could check my email.

“Oh, that reminds me, we got an email from our friend Ambrose,” Miyoshi mentioned.

“Ambrose? You mean the guy who wrote The Devil’s Dictionary?”

“Now that’s a scary thought.”

Ambrose Bierce was a famous American author who had penned a piece called The Devil’s Dictionary—though his heyday was roughly 150 years ago.

“If we’d gotten an email from him, it would’ve probably said, ‘As for me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.’” Miyoshi nodded sagely as she poured the last of the water into the dripper, then put down the coffee pot and brought out a cup for me.

“Oh yeah, Ambrose Bierce did end up going missing, didn’t he,” I recalled.

Shortly before vanishing during a trip to Mexico, Bierce had written a letter to a friend, and the quote Miyoshi had mentioned was an excerpt from that letter. His disappearance was considered one of the greatest mysteries of American literature—one that was never solved.

“Well, our Ambrose says he’s doing quite well,” Miyoshi said. “Busy as always, though.”

Dr. Ambrose Magus was an executive at the AG—that is, the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department—which was part of the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I wasn’t sure exactly what department he was in anymore, but apparently he had been traveling around the world to dungeons located in impoverished areas, where he was working on setting up the Ukemochi System we had come up with. His organization’s motto was “fiat panis”—Latin for “let there be bread”—after all.

“Since he’s basically wandering all over the world making sure the Ukemochi System is in place, I hear people are starting to call him ‘the Tryptolemus of the FAO.’”

“Wow...that sounds like a pretty rough job to handle,” I mused.

Tryptolemus was a prince of Eleusis in ancient Greece who toiled day and night spreading wheat seeds across the world at Demeter’s behest.

“I dunno; he said he couldn’t be happier about it.”

I wasn’t sure if Tryptolemus felt the same way about a goddess giving him a flying chariot and forcing him to work for her, but there were definitely plenty of workaholics out there. Of course, there were also a surprising number of people in the world who enjoyed their jobs so much that it didn’t even feel like work—like our friend Dr. Nathan Argyle. Apparently Ambrose was another one of those lucky individuals.

“So what did he want?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, he said he wants to get their numbers up.”

“Numbers?”

“I’m guessing it has something to do with the locust plague.”

The previous year, East Africa and the Middle East had experienced a large-scale plague of locusts that devastated their crops. The affected areas had seen massive spikes in the number of people who didn’t have enough to eat, so Ambrose seemed to be concentrating his efforts on getting the dungeons in those areas prepared.

“Still... If they set up infinite production without some serious thinking and prep work, won’t they run the risk of ruining the livelihoods of existing producers the moment the plague dies down?”

Nowadays, Japan could produce from three to four hundred kilograms of wheat per thousand square meters. However, according to FAOSTAT, yields in places such as Germany tended to exceed eight hundred kilograms in the same amount of land. As for the Ukemochi System, the yield was solely dependent on the rate of harvest per second and the amount of time operated, provided that each row of wheat was properly sized to match how long it took for the wheat to respawn in that particular dungeon.

Up until recently, the dungeon wheat yield in Japan was calculated to be roughly 31,536 metric tons per year, based on the assumption that the combines moved at one meter per second in crop lanes with a width of two meters. However, under the Ukemochi System’s latest standards, the standard lane width had been expanded to three meters—almost the maximum size of a standard combine. Using a rate of 800 kilograms of wheat per 1,000 square meters, the expected yield would be 2.4 kilograms per second, or 75,686.4 metric tons per year.

“It would only take just over ten combines to equal the wheat production of the entirety of Japan. Isn’t that kind of crazy?” I murmured.

“Well, the FAO is always on the front lines of the fight against starvation,” Miyoshi pointed out.

“Yeah, but still...” It was true that trying to explain the negative effects on food producers wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to the famine-stricken populace. Still, if they ended up using dungeon-grown products to make up for all of the wheat lost to the locusts, the producers who had been supplying all the food in the past might end up completely screwed over the following year. Some wheat farmers might even go so far as to sabotage the dungeon machinery.

“I’m sure the FAO and the WFP (World Food Program) already took all of those things into consideration. Remember, this is literally their field of expertise.”

“It’s easier to get swayed by your emotions when you’re out on the front lines,” I stated.

“I disagree. They consider their work carefully, and they aren’t prone to compromising either. So everything will probably be fine,” Miyoshi countered.

Yeah, I suppose that tracks. When you’re forced to distribute finite resources that you know are insufficient to meet everyone’s needs, careful consideration would be an absolute necessity.

“Not to mention—” she continued.

“Hm?”

“If it looks like they’re going to start producing too much, they can just flip a switch and turn things off.”

“Oh yeah, good point!” Unlike in the real world, dungeon wheat fields wouldn’t wither and die if they were left alone for too long—they were ripe for harvesting year-round. A truly awe-inspiring concept.

“Of course, once people have experienced cheap, abundant wheat harvested by machines they got practically for free, it could be a tough sell to get them to turn off the Ukemochi System combines and go back to paying normal prices for normally grown wheat.”

“Well, crap!”

Even so, there wasn’t much we could do. The relevant international organizations, Sayama’s team, and all others involved would need to hold discussions before deciding whether to increase production numbers.

“Anyway,” I continued, “you said ‘for starters’ earlier, right? What else did Ambrose want?”

“He said he was looking for more variety.”

“Variety?”

“He was hoping they could expand beyond just wheat.”

“Oh boy...”

They do say that man does not live on bread alone, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s talking about. Nor does it sound like he’s simply interested in other varieties of grain, like barley or rye.

“So, like, vegetables or something? If we’re talking staple foods, corn would be pretty tough, and we can forget about potatoes...”

“True enough,” Miyoshi agreed. “Corn harvesters seem like pretty elaborate devices, and even if we managed to dungeonize root vegetables, they’d probably end up respawning somewhere else once they’re harvested.”

“We have the know-how to create harvesting machines for rice and wheat, but I dunno about veggies... Fruit might be a possibility, but is the FAO even willing to fork over a development budget in the first place?”

Because the Ukemochi System allowed for the infinite harvesting of crops, one machine per dungeon was sufficient in most cases, except when large quantities of food were needed in a very short time span. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough demand for specialized Ukemochi machines for them to be worth mass-producing. In fact, if multiple machines were put into use at the same location, they might well obliterate the profits of any existing producers in the area.

Manufacturers didn’t set up production lines for products that weren’t being sold in mass numbers, so every Ukemochi combine was more or less handmade. It wasn’t all that different from one-off or bespoke products, which ended up being rather expensive due to the inclusion of development costs in the price. Wheat and rice combines were relatively cheap, since the manufacturers already had the know-how, but still...

Miyoshi shook her head.

“The UN budget is approved every two years, isn’t it? I seriously doubt they’ll have anything left to allocate to the Ukemochi System. It pretty much came out of nowhere.”

I frowned.

“But there’s no way a multinational organization like that would stoop to relying on privately owned companies to— Uh, you know what? Never mind. I could see it happening.”

The UN had always had some pretty tight coffers. It was a well-known fact that the United States had been cutting back on its contributions under the pretense of wasteful spending, but there were plenty of other countries with deferred or defaulted payments—in fact, a mere seventy percent of member nations had paid in full.

Of course, I’ve got some qualms about a system that uses a set scale of assessments with no way to know in advance what the total budget will end up being. If nothing else, I feel like voting power for approving the General Assembly’s budget should be weighted on the same scale as the assessments.

Many individual agencies within the UN were financed via “voluntary contributions,” which were not included in the regular budget, and the FAO was among them. In fact, the total budget for these agencies was actually 1.5 times greater than the UN’s general budget. Though these voluntary contributions were normally provided by individual nations, there probably wouldn’t be any issue with private companies contributing as well. Money was money, after all.

“Well, Ambrose is pals with Nathan, and they’re ‘birds of a feather,’ according to Silkie,” Miyoshi pointed out, quoting Nathan’s assistant. “They probably just don’t pay much attention to budget stuff.”

“Nathan was a pretty big spender when it came to the whole twenty-first floor incident, though.”

“That was a different level of spending. It fell more along the lines of ‘mildly irresponsible,’ really. Ah, it must be the assistant’s lot to suffer.”

I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Researchers who had never had to worry about budgets before often tended to ignore the money aspect of their work entirely.

“Besides,” she added, “It’d be super annoying if there were strings attached to the funding, wouldn’t it?”

Ah, the ol’ “we provided the funding for development, so we get the rights to the product” school of thinking. I mean, it makes sense on some levels, but it would certainly be a pain in the ass to constantly adjust things every time someone decided to butt in and ask for more tweaks. This isn’t even our main line of work! (Don’t ask what our main line of work is.)

At any rate, there was no way we could develop anything new if we weren’t given a clear target to aim for.

“Well, for starters, can you ask what specifically he’s hoping to grow?”

“Will do.”

Taking my coffee cup from Miyoshi, I sat down on the living room couch, sipping my coffee as I glanced out the window. The clear blue sky outside looked like it was captured in a picture frame. Miyoshi had turned on the TV, and it was playing footage from a camera on the island of Enoshima.

“It sure is summer, huh?” Miyoshi murmured.

“Yeah... Y’know, when was the last time we went to the beach, anyway?”

“I’m pretty sure it was back when we did the pretend Shadow over Innsmouth thing at the beach in Wakasa, right?”

“Oh, yeah... That was one hell of a fiasco...”

With support from Asha, Miyoshi had decided to go absolutely berserk and pulled a massive prank on me in a remote fishing village on Wakasa Bay, under the guise of a “birthday surprise”—though it went far, far beyond that. For some reason it felt like there was still something real lurking in the shadows of it all, but Miyoshi and I had both agreed to pretend it never happened. Otherwise it would just haunt us constantly, like some kind of existential boogeyman.

After all that, I wonder if the Jain family is actually still using that hotel building...

Seeing my vacant yet somehow accusing stare, Miyoshi cleared her throat emphatically.

“So do we wanna go somewhere this year?” I asked.

“For example?”

“I dunno... Hot springs, maybe?”

“Isn’t that more of a winter vacation thing?”

“Hot springs are pretty nice in the summer too.”

“Maybe, but they’re also dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“I mean, you never know—if we hop on a train that takes us through all that hot springs steam, there might end up being a murder on board!”

“Ah, yes. A classic murder mystery trope.” Smiling weakly at Miyoshi’s over-the-top scenario, I glanced casually over at the TV, and a thought suddenly came to me. “Hey, why don’t we check out the Côte d’Azur? That’s a classic summer destination.”

Supposedly there was a song called “Winter Riviera,” but the resorts of the Côte d’Azur, also known as the French Riviera, really seemed more suited for extended summer vacations.

“When did you become a French citizen, Kei? Besides, I’m pretty sure our travel ban is still in full effect...”

I wonder when they’ll finally lift that for us? Not for a good while, I’ll bet.

“Well, we don’t necessarily need to physically travel,” I began.

“Huh? Wait, you don’t mean—”

The appearance of the dungeons had caused dramatic changes to the world. It went without saying that D-Factors were the greatest cause of those changes, and were greatly beneficial to us as well. However, since they could do practically anything, modern-day society wasn’t quite prepared to fully accept them. In the end, we’d decided to gradually expand the use of D-Factors, though it had taken a huge effort on our part to convince Ms. Maker to go along with the plan—which was a story for another time.

However, every rule has its exceptions. And there I was—perhaps the only man in the world that could be considered such an exception.

“Your last attempt to teleport outside of the dungeons was a complete failure, wasn’t it?”

I hadn’t told another soul about this power. Miyoshi and I were the only ones who knew.

At a time when cross-cultural communication had already begun and societal structures were still in disarray, if people knew that a privileged individual like myself existed, they would basically turn him into a walking target—especially for the media.

“I’m not gonna teleport,” I grumbled.

“Oh? What’s the plan, then...?”

Every floor of a dungeon was an environment created in a separate space using D-Factors. In other words, if we put our minds to it, we could create a copy of the Côte d’Azur right here whenever we wanted to. Probably.

“Heh heh heh... Behold, the power of the cornucopia!” I announced with every ounce of drama I could muster, then snapped my fingers. At that moment, the scenery around us—

“H-Huh...?”

—most decidedly did not change into the French Riviera.

Rosary, who had been preening herself on a nearby beam, cocked her head quizzically as if wondering what the hell I was doing, then let out a little chirp and swooped down onto my keyboard.

After a while, I heard a buzz coming from my cell phone.

“Hmm?”

I looked down and saw a text written on the screen: “Insufficient D-Factors.”

“An error message? Really?”

“Wow, you sure did try, Kei, but that was super anticlimactic.”

“Sh-Shut it!”

Giggling, Miyoshi raised her coffee cup in a mock toast to me.

“Damn. Guess it only works inside a dungeon after all...”

The ability to use D-Factors in the outside world might’ve already started spreading, but apparently there weren’t nearly enough of them to change our entire environment with a snap of the fingers.

“We just don’t have the minimum required quantity of D-Factors to effect significant changes outside of the dungeons,” Miyoshi said with a shrug.

“Well, that works out, honestly. We don’t exactly want things getting too miraculous too fast out here. Okay, let’s hit up Yokohama—nope, that’s not gonna work. Let’s head over to the first floor of Yoyogi, find a quiet corner, and restart our little French Riviera project down there!”

“You’re awfully hung up on that place. Wouldn’t somewhere in the Caribbean give off even more of a tropical resort vibe?”

“Honestly, I’m scared of the sharks down there.”

After all, both the creator’s mental image and some kind of collective unconscious influenced the creation of new environments. If I built the Caribbean, the sharks would come.

“I can’t think of the Caribbean without thinking of Jaws, y’know.”

“Oh, Kei...”

“Wh-What?”

Looking at me like I was some poor pitiful child, Miyoshi adopted the tone of a teacher educating a student.

“Amity Island is supposed to be on the east coast of the United States, and Jaws was filmed at Martha’s Vineyard—that’s the North Atlantic. People go that far north to escape the summer heat, not revel in it.”

“Huh? Really? I thought most shark attacks happened in Florida?” Florida ranked number one in shark attacks in the United States, blowing the second place state, Hawaii, out of the water. The former regularly had about four times as many attacks as the latter.

“Kei... You do know that even Miami is literally on the Atlantic coast, right?”

I blinked in amazement.

“For real? Cuba and the Bahamas are right there, though. And isn’t the tip of Florida in the Caribbean?”

Miyoshi shook her head.

“The Bahamas are in the Atlantic Ocean too. The Caribbean Sea is south of Cuba.”

“Wow... I thought Cuba was smack-dab in the middle...”

I mean, the capital of Cuba, Havana, is on the north coast of Cuba, but they say it’s in the Caribbean, don’t they? Though now that I think about it, The Old Man and the Sea takes place in Cuba, and the titular old man sets off into the Gulf of Mexico from there. Havana is supposed to be the largest city in the Caribbean, but since it’s on Cuba’s northern coast, I guess it technically faces the Gulf?

“Besides, with your stats, you could easily outrun any random sharks that might show up, couldn’t you?”

“What do I look like, some kind of water strider?”

Though really, all you have to do to walk on water is make sure to take a step with your left foot before your right one sinks in, then take another step with your right foot before your left one sinks, and so on and so forth. It’s that simple.

Miyoshi grinned.

“There are quite a few papers out there that analyze the basilisk lizard’s ability to run across water from a fluid dynamics perspective. One of them was even published in Nature magazine back in 1996.”

“Man, I really underestimated how many weirdo researchers are out there...”

“You could at least call them hobbyists. Besides, you of all people have no right to judge them, Kei.” She gave me a pointed stare, then continued. “Anyway, according to the papers, human beings should be able to run across water if they can move at thirty meters per second.”

With an AGI of 200, I get the sense I could dash a hundred meters in two seconds, so thirty meters per second seems doable. Though I bet there are some other tricks to it, like how to lift your legs properly. I rubbed my chin.

“Hmm...”

“Oh, one more thing—the Mediterranean is actually a hot spot for sharks. It has over fifty species living in it.”

“Are you serious?” The European coast never really gave me the impression of being particularly shark-infested...

“The vast majority of them are out in the open ocean, and they tend to stay far away from coastal areas, apparently. According to leading researchers, blue sharks are only sighted occasionally, and only a few specimens of the deadly great white shark are left in the Adriatic.”

“So they’re pretty much on the brink of extinction, then?”

Miyoshi nodded.

“That’s what some people say.”

“That’s...kind of depressing.” My brow furrowed. Is this when a requiem for the dying is supposed to start playing?

“If I think about it too hard, I won’t be able to get it out of my head, which kind of sucks...” She sighed. “At this point, why don’t we just keep it simple and do something like Enoshima?”

“Why go out of our way to generate our own location if it’s just gonna be Enoshima?”

“No, I mean the real Enoshima. The jellyfish at the New Enoshima Aquarium are really cute!”

I had to admit, the jellyfish show they put on using projection mapping was pretty gorgeous. Unfortunately, though, there was a bit of an issue.

“Well, take a gander over yonder,” I said, motioning to the TV with my head.

The screen showed a view of Katase Higashihama Beach, taken from the weather reporting camera on Enoshima—and it didn’t look pretty.

“Ack...”

Forget land, sky, and sea—all we could see was people, people, and more people. Truly the Soylent Green of beaches. (I know that didn’t even make any sense.)

Enoshima would probably be fun to visit with a few classmates as a teenager. It would probably also be great for families with small children to create a few lasting summer memories. However, I’d be highly uncomfortable calling it a good vacation spot for the average adult.

“It’s such a nice, quiet beach during the offseason too...” I muttered.

“I don’t see the point of visiting Enoshima during the offseason,” Miyoshi countered.

“To eat Enoshima-don?”

“I hear they don’t even use Enoshima-sourced turban shells for it anymore...”

“They do say there’s still a major shortage of whitebait too,” I admitted.

“Oh, you know what? You can become a Dragon Knight of Light there!”

“Huh? And what, pray tell, might that be, Lady Miyoshi?”

According to her, there was an immersive role-playing game called “Enoshima Treasure: Dragon Knights of Light and Darkness” in which you collected various hints hidden in various locations around Fujisawa until you finally located the Crest of Light, which served as proof that you were a Dragon Knight of Light. It was sponsored by both the City of Fujisawa and the Tourism Association. They really did think of all kinds of clever offseason events sometimes, like the Hanatouro lantern festival in Kyoto’s Higashiyama Ward.

“Well, leaving the offseason chatter aside, let’s go ahead and pay a visit to Yoyogi. Don’t forget your swimsuit.”

“Ah, the whole ‘tune in next time for more fan service’ bit, right?”

I might’ve been thinking some sort of rude comment about curves or lack thereof, but under no circumstances was I going to say it. Not if I wanted to have any hope of maintaining peace in the world—them’s the rules.

***

“Hey, Haru? What the heck are we doing out here, again?”

“It’s our summer training regimen.”

“Doesn’t the Spring-Summer Fashion Week start next month? Is it really safe for you to be doing this? If you get injured before you go to New York, your life will pretty much be over!”

“I don’t wanna hear it from you, Ryoko—Little Miss My-Schedule-Is-Packed-with-Movie-and-TV-Show-Filming!”

With that, Haruka smashed another slime’s core and started heading back to the dungeon entrance.

Ryoko groaned.

“This sucks. We should’ve stopped by Yoshimura’s place first and borrowed one of the Arthurs...”

No sooner had she said that, though, than all of the slimes crawling around the area suddenly froze in place—then vanished into thin air.

***

Once we had finished getting prepped for our summer vacation, we made our way to an isolated corner of the first floor, with slimes oozing all around us.

“Okay, this spot should be good. Hardly anyone ever wanders way over here.”

“I know you’ve got some skills, Kei, but I honestly wonder whether you can actually create an entire beach...”

“I spent a lot of time looking at pictures online. Considering how many images are crammed into my brain right now, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Okay, coral reefs...coral reefs...coral reefs...” I chanted to myself.

“Actually, the French Riviera has a lot of gravel beaches. There really isn’t much in the way of coral sand...”

“How would I know that? I’ve never been there! The classic beach archetype is just blue water and white sand, isn’t it?” I took a deep breath. “All right, here goes...!”

With my eyes closed and images of the azure(?) waters of the Côte d’Azur in my mind, I snapped my fingers.

However, nothing seemed to happen.

“H-Huh?” Did I screw it up again?!

No sooner had I thought that than all the slimes around us suddenly burst apart and disappeared one after the other. Then it felt like something in the area was rushing toward me, swirling all around my body.

“Wh-Whoa?!”

“Uh, Kei? Is this supposed to happen?!”

“I-I really don’t think so!”

“You’re not instilling a whole lot of confidence here...”

It wasn’t like we had anywhere to run. All we could really do was stand there and brace ourselves for whatever was about to happen.

Suddenly, the world shuddered violently like an earthquake, and when I looked around me—

“Whuh?!”

“No way!”

—white sand and blue ocean stretched as far as the eye could see.

We stood there dumbfounded, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves. The ocean in front of us was calm and peaceful, like the inside of a tropical cove.

When she came to her senses, Miyoshi ran over to the shoreline, dipped her hand into the water, and licked one of her fingertips.

“It’s actually salty, Kei!”

“Ocean water usually is. But, uh...”

I looked around us. The ocean seemed to stretch on forever, and I could see a rocky area just beyond the sandy beach. There was also a green area extending out behind us, but I couldn’t tell what was past that.

“I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything...but this is pretty awesome.”

“It almost feels like the sky out there might just be a big backdrop painting, like in The Truman Show,” Miyoshi murmured, squinting at the ocean horizon in the distance. “But it all looks pretty real to me. If this catches on, it could make for some dramatic improvements to the housing conditions in major metropolitan areas. I wouldn’t envy the real estate agents, though.”

She wasn’t kidding. If everyone could create new spaces around them at will, altering the environment as they saw fit based on a single image in their minds, real estate prices would instantly go into a free fall. Heck, if people could just create whatever they wanted, the entire money economy would collapse before that. Could you imagine—

“Wouldn’t it be surreal to just see rows and rows of doors lined up in front of Shinjuku station—one for every resident?” Mail service and package delivery would be an absolute nightmare, that was for sure.

“That would definitely feel kind of dystopian,” Miyoshi replied. “Though speaking of doors, how do we get in and out of this place, anyway?”

“Oh yeah, good question.” I took another look around, but didn’t see anything that seemed like it could’ve been an entrance.

“If there’s no entrance and no exit, wouldn’t that mean we’re stuck here?”

There wasn’t any particular urgency in Miyoshi’s voice. I had no shortage of food and living necessities tucked away in Vault, and she also had Dolly in her Storage, so we weren’t exactly in dire straits.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a way out around here somewhere. We can look around for it later—for now, we may as well kick back and enjoy a nice, relaxing vacation.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation—there’s no service staff. Maybe more of a camping trip?”

“In that case, allow me to prepare your special vacation package, Princess.”

Miyoshi adopted a regal tone.

“Very well then, servant. I leave things in your capable hands.”

I gave her a polite butler-like bow, found a nice spot, then pulled a beach chair and large umbrella out of storage and set them up.

“Hey, Kei?”

“Yeah?”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to just create any supplies we needed from scratch?”

“For me, it’s easier to just pick things out from all the stuff we already have. Coming up with all the designs myself is a pain.” Nothing would be more annoying than having to consider every last raw material and part that went into everything.

“That makes sense, actually! So the D-Factor method just makes it easier for creators to create original works. Everything else could just stay within the framework of a money economy, like it always has.”

“I sure hope that’s how it turns out,” I mused.

As long as there were people out there who would try to create certain things—deadly weapons, precious metals, stacks of money, things along those lines—there was no way we could allow unrestricted use of an ability like that. Nonetheless, its sheer convenience would no doubt end up propelling humanity up a few rungs on the evolutionary ladder.

***

“Hey! The slimes just disappeared!” Yoshida barked at his cameraman, Jo.

They had seen this happen once before—just prior to a certain event taking place.

“You think it’s the Wandering Manor again?!”

“If so, our show’s future is starting to look a heck of a lot brighter!”

Without its initial cast member Tenko or special guests like Ryoko Saito, Haruki Yoshida’s Dungeon Exploration Squad had been gradually slipping in the ratings due to an increase in competing programming. If they didn’t find a way to give themselves some kind of boost, the possibility that they might end up getting the axe was very real.

With that in mind, Yoshida and Jo had taken advantage of some downtime to head over to the dungeon—and were already faced with what could’ve been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was no surprise they were pumped up and raring to go.

“Damn, where the hell is it, though...?”

There was plenty of time before the date rolled over. Unfortunately, the first floor of Yoyogi was a massive circle five kilometers in diameter. The chances of happening across their target by wandering around at random seemed next to nil—

“Huh? Yoshida?”

“Wha...?”

As soon as they had turned the next corner, the duo found themselves face-to-face with a gift from the heavens: Ryoko Saito.

If nothing else, we’ll definitely have some glamour in our footage, Yoshida thought to himself with an inward chuckle. As long as her production company gives the okay, that is.

“What are you doing here?” Ryoko asked.

“Well...we’re looking for a scoop, what else?” Yoshida replied.

“On the first floor? After going as deep as you have?”

“Well, you know what they always say: Leave no stone unturned, get back to the basics, learn from past mistakes, and all that stuff. What about you, Saito? You’ve already broken into the world of big-time actresses, why would you wanna hang out in a dump like this?”

“No need to be rude. Popularity is a fickle thing in the entertainment biz. If I start slacking off, the rug’s gonna get pulled right out from under me.”

Hearing Ryoko’s cover story, Haruka shot her a glare. The actress had ostensibly just come along for the ride. Not that Haruka wasn’t grateful to have a friend looking out for her, of course.

“Man, it’s a cutthroat world out there, huh...” Yoshida put a hand behind his head and scratched awkwardly. Guess I’m not the only one, he mused, who needs to worry about shows being canceled. “So who’s that behind you there?”

“Hi there. My name is Haruka Mitsurugi.”

“Haruka Mitsurugi...? Wait, the model everyone’s talking about?!”

Ryoko blinked in surprise.

“Well aren’t you on top of things, Yoshida!”

“How could I not be? She’s the hottest news out there right now! Hey, I don’t suppose—”

“Let me stop you right there,” Ryoko interrupted. “No filming us without permission, unless you want to pay fines out the wazoo. Even sanctioned shots of her will cost you big bucks, buddy.”

For professional models, their image was the product they sold. Even the models themselves couldn’t just offer that to people freely without getting permission. And when it came to supermodels, their likeness could fetch pretty staggering prices.

“Bah. Well, no big deal. Anyway, Saito, I don’t suppose you’ve seen the Manor around, have you?”

“Manor?”

“All the slimes on the floor suddenly went away. Obviously that’s gotta mean the Manor showed up again!”

“Whaaat? But I heard that once someone summons the Wandering Manor with a certain type of monster, that type can’t be used again, right? There’s nothing but slimes on the first floor!”

In other words, it should’ve been completely impossible for the Manor to ever appear there again.

“Well, something weird’s definitely going on,” Yoshida muttered, spreading his arms wide as he gestured to the emptiness all around them.

“I mean, sure, maybe...” Ryoko conceded.

“And every rule has its exceptions—”

Suddenly, Haruka, who had been standing in the back, arms crossed, looking around while she waited for the conversation to be over, let out a gasp.

“R-Ryoko!”

“Hm? What?”

“L-Look...” She pointed to the end of the corridor, where something stood that absolutely did not belong.

“Huh?!”

“What? What’s the big d—”

As soon as Yoshida walked over to the corridor, his speech suddenly failed him and his eyes shot wide open. He frantically beckoned Jo over to take a look.

“Come on, Yoshida, why so dramatic?” Jo groaned.

“Ro...”

“Ro?”

“Roll camera! Now!”

“Huh...?”

Hoisting up his camera, Jo peered down the corridor through the viewfinder, then froze on the spot as the out-of-place object came into view.

“A door?”

There was a random door at the end of the tunnel.

“What is it?” Jo murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like that in the dungeon.”

“How the hell would I know?” Yoshida roared. “All I know is I’m gonna open it!”

Ryoko frowned dubiously at the man’s sudden outburst.

“Really? Don’t you think that could be dangerous?”

“Who cares? All I know is if I don’t open this thing, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life!”

While all of them had experienced the Wandering Manor before, Haruka and Ryoko had the added bonus of having been chased by the monster eyeballs that lurked there. The thought that hordes of eyeballs might’ve been lying in wait behind the door gave the two women serious pause.

“Hey, Haru—”

Ryoko gasped involuntarily before she could finish her suggestion that they haul butt out of there. Haruka was standing there staring at the door, a gleam in her eyes.

Remembering that her friend was more of a childlike adventure-seeker than people who didn’t know her that well tended to assume, Ryoko’s shoulders slumped in defeat. After all, Haruka had been the one who first suggested they go into the dungeon without knowing anything about it whatsoever.

“Hm? What?” Haruka blinked.

“Oh, not a gosh darn thing.” Ryoko mused that out of the two of them, Haruka was probably the one who was more Haruki Yoshida’s Dungeon Exploration Squad material. Nonetheless, she stood ready to flee at a moment’s notice, mentally planning an escape route.

Having made it to the door before anyone else, Yoshida put on his best display of nervousness and spoke to the camera. “Here, in the depths of the dungeon, we’ve discovered a door that leads into the abyss.”

Haruka couldn’t help but put on a pained smile.

“We’re on the first floor. And how can you claim it leads into the abyss when you haven’t even checked it yet? Aren’t you laying it on a bit too thick?”

“Don’t worry about it. Variety shows do this kind of thing all the time.”

With that, Yoshida grabbed the handle to the supposed abyss door...and pulled.

“Guh...”

The door didn’t budge. However, there was nothing on it that seemed to be any kind of keyhole either.

“It appears to be set up with some kind of hidden mechanism,” Yoshida said to the camera.

Jo hit the pause button.

“Um, are you sure you’re not just supposed to push?” he asked. “I can’t see any hinges on this side.”

“Bwuh?”

Clearing his throat loudly to try and cover up the ridiculous grunt he had let out, Yoshida collected himself, put on a steely expression, and began filming a second take. After repeating the same lines as before, he pushed on the door instead of pulling. When he did so—

“Ah...”

—it opened.

“Whaaaaat?!”

The viewfinder screen, which had been washed out into a bright glare momentarily, gradually started to regain its colors. Soon, a vast blue ocean and a white sandy beach came into focus, extending far into the distance. Not only that, but the doorway had opened up a good distance above the surface, as if a rectangle had been cut out of the middle of the air. The water was about two meters below them, and the beach was perhaps thirty meters away.

“Wow! Isn’t it gorgeous, Ryoko?”

“I mean, it is...but aren’t we in a dungeon?”

In the bright glare of the sun, a lone figure could be seen out on the sand.

“Wait, what?” Ryoko gasped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Is that...” Squinting and putting a hand to her forehead to block out the sunlight, Ryoko pointed at something sticking out of the sandy beach—apparently some kind of umbrella. With a beach chair underneath it.

“Someone’s actually out here?!”

“We’ve found our first sea dweller!” Jo announced as he increased his zoom to 10x and brought the figure lying on the beach into full focus. “Seems to be a woman,” he murmured.

As soon as they heard that, Haruka and Ryoko looked at each other for a moment, then nodded. If something completely unbelievable was happening in the dungeon, and there was a woman in the vicinity, that could mean only one thing.

“It’s Miyoshi!” Ryoko squealed, then grabbed Haruka’s hand and leaped into the ocean with a jubilant “Woo-hoo!” Haruka could only shriek as she was pulled in alongside her.

***

Hearing a woman screaming followed by the sound of something splashing into the water, Miyoshi propped herself up in her beach chair and turned in the direction of the noise.

“What the heck was that?” she exclaimed.

As I stood next to the umbrella pulling out drinks of various kinds, I looked up at Miyoshi, who was pointing off into the distance.

“Looks like we have visitors!”

“Visitors? Here?” I asked dubiously.

Taking a closer look, I saw a small black portal suspended above the surface of the ocean. Apparently somebody had come in through it.

“You weren’t kidding.”

“It looks like there’s some kind of floating hole out there,” Miyoshi said.

Any given floor of a dungeon typically only had one entrance connecting it to any adjacent floor. If the space I had created followed that same pattern, then that hole was probably an entrance or exit that connected our location to somewhere else.

“If that’s the only entrance into this place, a quick search of the area might not’ve been enough to find it...”

It was hovering in a random, unassuming spot two meters above the ocean, after all.

Miyoshi shrugged.

“Oh well. We have plenty of food.”

“If we go incommunicado for too long, we might end up sparking a nationwide manhunt,” I mused. It wouldn’t have been as big a deal if all we had to worry about was a scolding from Naruse, but alas, our worries were plentiful.

“Yeah, I’d kind of like to avoid that if possible.”

You know, if your average person ended up creating an area like this, then failed to locate the exit, wouldn’t they just die of starvation...? Even with a cell phone signal, they wouldn’t have any idea where they were, meaning nobody could come and rescue them. GPS certainly wouldn’t be any help either. It’s possible they could use D-Factors to create food, but they couldn’t exactly live out their whole lives there either.

“Well, I guess we’ve found a new issue to consider,” I said with a sigh.

“This is why playtesting is so important,” Miyoshi declared.

***

“Jeez, Ryoko! What’d you have to do and do that for?”

“Hey, it’s summer, isn’t it? The beach sounded like a perfect place to visit!”

“How do you expect us to swim in these outfits— Whoa, what?”

“This beginner gear lets you float! You gotta hand it to the Dungeon Association—they even considered the possibility that people might fall into water!”

Each piece of beginner gear had a decent buoyancy, with floatation properties similar to a life jacket’s. Apparently it was pretty easy to move around in the water with them too.

“I still can’t believe you just jumped in all of a sudden.”

“We were once two beauties in our prime—but now we’re all washed up!” Ryoko said with a wide grin.

“Excuse me... Wasn’t it you who said, ‘Dad jokes shorten the lifespans of models’?”

“What do I care? I’m not a model!”

“Oh, please...”

“Anyway, let’s make our way to shore!”

Waving back up at the two men in the doorway, Ryoko started swimming toward the sandy beach.

“Hey, wait for us!”

“Hold on a second, Yoshida! Can our feet even reach the bottom, here?!”

“Why does it matter? Can’t you swim?”

“That’s not the problem! My camera will be toast if it goes underwater!”

“Huh? It’s a professional camera, right? Isn’t it waterproof or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! We get rain covers, not miracles!” Jo groaned indignantly. “These aren’t action cameras! Our company barely has anything in the way of waterproof cameras—much less ocean-proof!”

Not only were professional cameras expensive to begin with, but Jo’s camera was company property. If he ruined it by leaping into the ocean, the higher-ups would have his head.

“If it’s not too deep, we could just lower a rope—”

Jo suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence. He stood there frozen, gazing out across the open ocean.

“Hey, why so quiet? What’s going on?”

Yoshida looked out in the same direction Jo was fixated on. There, he saw a single line of white headed directly for the two girls who were swimming toward the shore.

“N-No way... It couldn’t be...”

As the two men stared at the white streak, the low-pitched echoes of a famous piece of background music started playing in their heads: DUNDUN... DUNDUN... DUNDUN DUNDUN DUNDUN DUNDUN...

Soon, a large triangular shape surfaced at the front of the line of white.

***

“Let’s see here...”

Life Detection was picking up four individuals—and the two swimming toward the shore seemed to know who we were.

I raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Mitsurugi...?”

“Whoa, really? When did you get in touch with her, Kei?”

“I, uh, didn’t,” I insisted, denying the possibility as quickly as I could. “I’ve never created a new environment before—not only could things have gone horribly wrong, but I didn’t know if it would even be possible to begin with. Why would I have gotten anyone else mixed up in something like this?”

“I certainly got mixed up in it, didn’t I?” Miyoshi pointed out, casting a scornful glare my way as she brought her feet down from the beach chair.

Sensing danger emanating from her, I clutched at whatever excuse I could find.

“W-Well, I figured you of all people would be able to handle anything, y’know? I mean, look at everything we’ve already—”

“Kei!”

Noticing her expression had suddenly gotten very serious, I turned to look in the direction she was pointing. There, I saw a line of white approaching the two individuals who were swimming toward the shore. Soon after, a large triangular fin emerged—wait, fin?!

“H-Hey, Miyoshi! You don’t think that’s—”

“No time to think, Kei! What the hell were you imagining when you made this place?!”

“Why does it have to be my imagination’s fault...?” I guess the color of the sand might’ve been influenced by thoughts of Fiji or the Caribbean, but still...

“It’s gonna catch up to them! We need to do something!”

Miyoshi shot to her feet and started firing off iron balls, but the long distance combined with the cushioning layer of seawater meant they had little to no effect. The same probably would’ve gone for any of my long-distance attacks.

“Damn!”

I raised all my stats to max, then dashed off the beach, kicking up a cloud of sand.

***

“Is it just me, Ryoko, or are those two guys kind of freaking out?”

“Hmm?”

Back at the entrance door, Yoshida and Jo were screaming something at the top of their lungs, waving their hands wildly and pointing at the ocean.

“Hmmm?”

When Ryoko turned to look where they were pointing, she saw something rather unnerving poking up from the surface of the water.

“Yikes! Uh, we may be in trouble, Haru! Get to the shore as fast as you can!”

The two of them started rushing toward the shore, but since the water only came up to about their necks, they couldn’t decide whether to swim or run. Instead, they ended up panicking and committing to neither, resulting in minimal progress.

Once Ryoko had made sure Haruka was in the lead, she decided she had to do something. Flipping onto her back to swim like an otter, she turned toward the open ocean behind her. There, she saw that the giant fin sticking out of the water had closed the gap to about fifteen meters.

Ugh... This is bad news, Coach!

Near tears, she was preparing to take on the fin, when she heard a voice cry out in surprise from behind her.

“Ryoko?! What are you— Whaaa?!”

I guess she can’t believe what I’m doing, huh? Ryoko thought to herself, not bothering to turn around as she raised her left hand into a thumbs-up. Right then, though, she heard a bizarre pitter-patter noise coming from that very same side. When she turned to take a look—

“Coach?!”

Yoshimura was running full tilt in her direction. Across the surface of the water.

“What the actual hell?!”

With a splash of water, he slipped between her and the fin, then started to sink down into the water, shouting one final order without so much as glancing behind him.

“Get out! Hurry!”

“Y-Yes, Coach!”

After responding, Ryoko immediately began swimming back toward the shore, stuck in a state of astonishment and relief. With D-Powers on the scene, she knew in her heart that there was pretty much nothing to worry about.

***

I guess you really can run across the water, huh? Miyoshi telepathied to me in wonder. She was in the process of handing Mitsurugi a bath towel after helping her out of the water onto the shore.

I can’t deal with your level of chill right now! I griped at her. What am I supposed to do against this thing?!

If I remember right, you need to make it chomp down on an oxygen tank, then shoot the tank with a gun...

I’m fresh out of both oxygen tanks and guns at the moment!!!

You smashed the god Ngai’s face in with brute force—you should have zero problems plating up a great white shark or two. And if you do have problems, we’ve got potions for that!

Not. Helping.

I didn’t have any weapons I could wield properly underwater—not on me, nor in Vault. Even a sword would’ve likely ended up as nothing but dead weight.

Everything I knew in the Earth Magic and Water Magic families were spells that would end up losing most of their momentum underwater. Ultimate Flame Magic might’ve blown everything out of the water quite literally, but it probably would’ve caused a massive, dangerous steam explosion at the same time.

That left me with only one choice: physical shock waves.

Once I had the timing of the charging fin down, I leaped out of the water high into the air, took aim where its head should’ve been, and brought down a full-force palm strike.

With a loud thoom, a huge splash shot up into the sky as if an artillery shell had hit the water’s surface, exposing the sea floor momentarily. My intention had been to obliterate whatever was beneath me, but—

“What?!”

—the only thing I’d struck was water. It was as if the fin hadn’t been attached to anything at all.

As I stood there dumbfounded, the fin slipped past me and headed toward the water’s edge, finally making landfall on the sand.

“Huh?”

The fin, which had apparently sprouted legs, flopped over into the surf. Soon, a small girl emerged from it, then looked back over her shoulder and raised her hand in a gesture of greeting.

“Ms. Maker?! Really...?” Slumping my shoulders in exhaustion, I walked over to her. “What were you doing out there?”

“I was told this is how the star performer makes their appearance at the beach in the summer.”

“Told by who?”

“Tylor.”

Our good friend Dr. Tylor... I swear, does every single eminent scientist out there have multiple screws loose?

“Was he wrong?” Ms. Maker asked.

“Well, uh, I can’t say it’s the most typical scenario, really.”

“The cultural diversity of Earth is a bit strange.”

I’m sure it would seem quite strange, from the perspective of a society in which the very concept of separate nations is absent, and where each planet is established on the foundation of a single, unified culture. I don’t think differing impressions on impersonating a shark has anything to do with cultural diversity, though.

***

“Hey! Please tell me you were recording that!!!”

It was an epic battle caught during their dungeon exploration: A massive great white shark and a barefisted explorer clashed against the backdrop of a shallow blue ocean by the beach. A pillar of water soared into the air as if the ocean had been struck by artillery fire, showering the area with a storm of brine. The ocean parted as if Moses had paid it a visit, causing the surrounding water to swirl in a massive vortex as it filled the space back in. It was the stuff legends were made of.

“You bet I was! This footage is gonna be amazing!”

“Hell yeah! Looks like Saito and the others are safe and sound—just like our show’s gonna be now! And then there’s that crazy kid! Let’s head over there for some interviews!”

With that, Yoshida jumped down into the water, which was just shallow enough that he could barely poke his head out if he stood on his tiptoes.

“I’m passing the camera down! Pleeeaaase don’t get it wet—it’s company property!”

“R-Right...”

Holding both hands high in the air in the style of a banzai cheer to grab the camera Jo had lowered down by rope, Yoshida began bouncing his way through the water toward the shore.

***

“I was told that the Earth has frightening carnivorous creatures in its oceans, like in Jaws and The Meg. Also sharks that fly through the air.”

“Huh?”

“I was also told that piranhas and tomatoes come flying after people sometimes.”

“Hold on a sec. Where exactly is this information coming fro— Whoa?!”

Just then, the two people who had been standing on the edge of the floating portal dropped down into the water and started heading in our direction. As they did so, the distant ocean’s surface began to rise up dramatically.

“Oh, come on, what movie are we doing now?!” I groaned.

Miyoshi blinked.

“But Ms. Maker is right here!”

“Then what’s that...?”

The surface bulged higher and higher, until it finally burst open, revealing—

“Eugh...”

—massive, squirming octopus tentacles of some kind sticking up out of the water.

***

“Whoa, whoa, Yoshida, behind us!”

“What do you mean behind— Wah!”

Pushed forward by the swell of water, Yoshida stumbled awkwardly and nearly took a full dive into the drink. However, in the true spirit of a pro, he somehow managed to keep both arms above water and defend the camera from submersion.

When he finally poked his head back above the surface, burbling the whole time, what Yoshida saw before him was a cluster of gigantic octopus tentacles wriggling high up in the air.

“J-Jo! The camera! The camera! Start rollin—” Yoshida’s voice devolved into a gurgling yelp. He was trying his best to hand the camera over to Jo, but instead was being tossed around by the waves from the giant tentacles.

“Forget about filming, Yoshida! Look at that thing!”

What looked like a giant shark head suddenly poked out from between the tentacles—then opened its massive maw wide and let loose a silent roar.

“You won’t make it if you’re holding on to the camera! Toss it! Get to the shore ASAP!!!”

“Sh-Shut it, nitwit! Shit like this is the whole reason we— Aaagh!”

Every time the shark head moved its tentacles, it generated huge waves, sending Yoshida bobbing all over the place. It took every ounce of his effort to keep the camera from going under.

***

“What in blue blazes is that?!”

“A shark with octopus tentacles attached. Very strong,” Ms. Maker explained.

“And that’s supposed to exist out there somewhere? Where?!”

“Florida. I was told it was made as a secret military experiment.”

“Are you kidding me...”

“I guess Dr. Tylor was a big fan of B movies, maybe?” Miyoshi suggested casually, unfazed by the madness unfolding in front of us. Her theory seemed entirely too probable.

I glanced toward the monster and the two people near it. Well, the guy getting attacked right now is a member of an active explorer squad, anyway. He doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard to run away—he’s probably got a handle on things. Besides, unlike Saito or Mitsurugi, he’d probably treat an injury like a badge of honor.

“So the original version of that monster was supposed to be a hybrid of an octopus and a Dunkleosteus—a creature that lived during the Paleozoic era.”

Ms. Maker cocked her head at Miyoshi’s explanation.

“What? Not a shark?”

“That’s right, not a shark. It was a shark in the remake, though, so no big deal!”

“Can you two knock it off? Stop conflating fiction with reali—”

Wait a sec. Now that I think about it, Ms. Maker created the dungeons specifically by conflating fiction with reality. Her reaction to religion was also a product of taking a serious statistical look at the human conceptions of it... I let out an involuntary sigh.

Ms. Maker turned to look at me.

“What’s wrong? Cheer up.”

“I hate to say it, but you telling me to cheer up might actually make things worse.”

“Sorry to hear that. I’ll go ahead and frogger off, then. Ribbit ribbit.” As if to hand off the baton, she gave each of the three women on the beach a quick tap—then vanished into thin air.

“I wonder who inspired her to make a ridiculous pun like that?” I mused.

“Well, it was in Japanese, so it couldn’t have been Dr. Tylor,” Miyoshi said with a shrug. “Really, who else could it have been besides you, Kei? I’m pretty sure you’ve even made some kind of ‘gotta vamouse, squeak ya later’ joke before.”

“Me?! I seriously doubt that...” I pursed my lips. “Okay, never mind. Plausible.”

Hearing us having a conversation as if there were nothing weird whatsoever going on, Saito nervously spoke up.

“Um, hey, Coach? Shouldn’t we do something about that...thing out there?” She pointed at the raging monster and the two men it was jostling around like toys, all locked in a repeating pattern that was practically begging for something to go out there and break the status quo.

“Huh? Isn’t he part of that ‘Dungeon Exploration Squad’? They’ve gotta make it look like they’re in danger for the show, don’t they?”

“Yoshida and Jo aren’t any better at exploring than their show’s fan base!”

“The hell? Didn’t they go down to the eighteenth floor for the show?” I was pretty sure they had filmed some fight scenes down there too.

The octopus shark might’ve looked pretty wild, but according to my Life Detection readings, it was more or less on par with a fourteenth-floor monster, strength-wise. Fighting in the water would have put explorers at a disadvantage, but if they could take on eighteenth-floor monsters, they should’ve been able to hold out for a decent while...

“Sure, but it’s only about as real as any of those survival reality shows. All alone in the wilderness—except for the cameramen, the lighting crew, an escort, and a hotel.”

“So even the squad leader’s fight scenes were staged?” I eyed the two men flailing in the water. “Meaning they’re actually—”

“—running for their lives? I honestly think they are, yes.”

Running? Really? I squinted for a closer look to make sure, but the guy with the camera seriously just looked like he was doing his best to maintain his hands-in-the-air cheering posture so his equipment wouldn’t get wet. It didn’t look much like running away to me.

Though I had to admit, his expression of abject fear, combined with the tears streaming down his face and his disheveled appearance, made for some truly convincing acting. Provided it actually was acting.

“I mean, he’s calm enough to be worried about protecting his camera, isn’t he?”

“That comes with being a professional, you know? The footage he caught of you earlier would be pretty valuable, I bet.”

I grimaced.

“You know, suddenly I find myself hoping he drops the damn thing.”

I really didn’t have the time to worry about whether anyone was watching me back there... I’d rather not gift any footage like that to a couple of schlubs who go around filming random people without permission.

“It’s kind of odd that they aren’t getting completely overwhelmed, though, isn’t it?” Miyoshi murmured in amazement, preparing herself to intervene at a moment’s notice if it ended up necessary. “If they’re really that weak, you’d think they would’ve been shark food by now...”

Now that she mentions it...

“Huh... It is just sort of floating there making its tentacles undulate.”

The moment I said that, I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket. Modern cell phones were waterproof, so it still worked just fine—and apparently this place wasn’t out of network either. When I pulled it out and looked at the screen, my shoulders instantly sagged downward. I showed the message to Miyoshi.

“The ones that look the toughest always tend to act all high and mighty right before they git rekt.”

“Wow, she’s really got things down.”

“What things?!”

B movie sets back in the day used to be really cheap, not to mention stationary, so it would’ve been common practice for a monster to just stand there waving its tentacles around. But that was neither here nor there, I figured.

So how are we supposed to rescue them, anyway? I asked Miyoshi telepathically. Long range attacks would be pretty conspicuous.

The cat was probably already out of the bag, but the two guys being assaulted before our very eyes were in the middle of filming a TV show.

I guess we have no choice, Miyoshi responded. Let’s have the ladies put in the work for us.

Excuse me?

“Okay, Mitsurugi, Saito, these are for you!” Miyoshi pulled out two compound bows wrapped in towels and handed one to each of them.

Saito’s eyes widened.

“Whoa! Where did you get these?!”

“Dungeons are a constant battlefield. One must never neglect their preparations,” Miyoshi explained smoothly, a smug look on her face. Mitsurugi and Saito stared at her in awe, falling for her excuse hook, line, and sinker.

I’m sorry, ladies, but you’ve been conned.

“H-Help, please! Someone, anyone! Hel— Argh!”

Gurgling sounds ensued.

“Oops. He finally fell over,” Miyoshi said.

“And he was trying so hard to protect his camera too.” That poor thing is swimming with the fishes now. Score.

“Come on, aren’t you two being kind of mean?” Saito observed.

“They do seem a little...less than concerned,” Mitsurugi agreed.

Uh-oh. I’m in danger of being wrongfully branded a cruel, uncaring man.

“W-Well, a bow should only be tense when you’re using it, right? When it’s not in use, shouldn’t it stay relaxed?” I stammered.

“Don’t you think now of all times would be when you’d want to use it, though?” Miyoshi pointed out. “You’re about as loosey-goosey as they come right now, Kei.”

I squinted across the water at the monster, which was waving its tentacles wildly and doing absolutely nothing else, and the two men in front of it, who were holding their arms up as they sailed up into the air with each massive splash attack.

“I mean, it still really just looks like they’re filming some stupid movie to me...”

“You know, you’re not wrong!”

Sighing loudly at our banter, Saito and Mitsurugi both drew their bows simultaneously.

“Hup!”

The arrows they fired struck perfectly into both of the shark’s eyes. The octopus shark opened its mouth wide, reared its head into the air, then turned to face the direction the arrows had come from.

“Waaauugh!”

With a massive splash, it sent the two hapless, screaming men in front of it hurtling away, then took off like a bullet in our direction.

“Hey Kei! I forgot to mention—I’m pretty sure that movie monster was amphibious.”

“That thing can move on land?!”

Saito and Mitsurugi kept firing a whirlwind of arrows into the shark’s head, but it seemed to pay no heed to its status as a pincushion and kept beelining it for the shore.

“Uh-oh, we’re in trouble, Yoshimura! Do something!”

“I wish you could be a little more specific than that...but no worries. You guys’ve got this.”

“Huh?”

With a loud crunch, the shark’s head suddenly shot upward. No doubt Miyoshi had surreptitiously given it a particularly mean iron ball uppercut to the jaw.

“Whaaa?!”

When she saw its head raised, Mitsurugi fired a barrage of arrows into the shark’s open mouth, until all at once, its tentacles stopped moving and the beast’s entire body turned white. Despite that, inertia kept it going, and the charging octopus shark slid lifelessly across the sandy beach, leaving a long, straight groove behind it.

“Didja get it?” Miyoshi asked.

“Sure seems like it,” Saito responded.

Apparently the barrage of arrows had destroyed its cranial ganglion, causing the same whitening reaction as when fishermen humanely killed octopuses.

Like any other dungeon monster, the defeated octopus shark then dispersed into black light, leaving behind some kind of small, boxlike object.

“Wh-Whoa... Is that a drop item?!” Saito sputtered in shock upon seeing the object.

“C’mon, you don’t need to freak out about it. You’ve seen items drop before, haven’t you?” I pointed out.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen a drop from a monster I defeated!”

GTBs (Goblin Treasure Boxes) aren’t actually considered drops, and she probably had no idea what happened on the tenth floor that one time... Wait, wasn’t it Mitsurugi who landed the finishing blow on this thing?

Saito bounced merrily over to pick up the item—but when she grabbed it, she made a strange face.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong?”

“It says, uh... Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda on it.”

“The hell is that?”

“That’s the second movie in the franchise,” Miyoshi replied, doing her best to keep from bursting into laughter.

“Looks almost like a DVD case...” I murmured.

“Um, a DVD? As a drop item?”

I’ve certainly never heard of it happening before, so by that standard I guess it could be considered rare. On the downside, though, you could probably just buy the damn thing instead of dungeon diving for it... And really, just a plain ol’ DVD? In this day and age?

“Is it some kind of rare software, maybe?”

As Saito examined the item carefully, Miyoshi simply shook her head and responded with a succinct “Nope!”

“Boo... Well, then, do you want it, Haru? As a memento or something?”

Mitsurugi looked at the object questioningly. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about a hybrid pteranodon-barracuda fighting that thing you just took down. The baby sharktopus is actually super adorable!”

Eyeing Mitsurugi’s reaction to Miyoshi’s explanation, I could practically see the giant question mark over the poor model’s head.

“What on earth?” I couldn’t help but blurt out.

“In the third movie, a former baseball player is turned into a hybrid of a killer whale and a wolf, then gets to face off against the sharktopus on a baseball field!”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me. Completely and utterly.”

Mitsurugi, having actually slain the monster, ended up getting the DVD, ostensibly as a memento.

Later on, I watched the movies online. They were exactly as Miyoshi had described them.

***

“Oh, maaaaan, Saito... You really saved our asses out there! Wanna be on our show again?”

“I will respectfully pass.”

Squad Leader Yoshida let out an appreciative whistle.

“That was so cool, though! Woulda been a match made in heaven, if you ask me...” He brazenly stood there trying to smooth-talk Saito into making another appearance on his show.

Meanwhile, his cameraman Jo took the camera from him and started patting it down with a towel Miyoshi had given him, checking to see if it still worked at all.

“Yoshida, this thing is dead in the water... What are we supposed to do? I can’t afford to replace one of these...”

Apparently the camera was completely fubar. Unless they’re waterproof, you really aren’t supposed to turn on waterlogged electronics until after they’ve completely dried out, y’know.

“What matters right now is what’s on the damn thing! Can you check the memory card?”

“Not here, I can’t.”

“Damn! Well, we may as well just take the card out and—”

Before Yoshida could finish his suggestion to at least salvage the memory card and dry it off, we suddenly heard some kind of voice coming from the rocky area beyond the beach.

“—Is that singing?”

“I think it’s coming from her.” Miyoshi pointed to the location in question, where a beautiful woman was seated. She was naked from the waist up, but from the waist down—

I raised an eyebrow.

“So we’re doing Hans Christian Andersen stuff now? Since when was the Côte d’Azur on the Scandinavian coast?”

“I mean, our octopus-shark buddy from earlier was a Florida thing. Though people can find ‘The Little Mermaid’ statues all over the world, nowadays.”

Even just in Japan, there were a number of replicas scattered around, including one at the Umitamago Aquarium in Oita, and others at Osaka Bay and the Port of Nagoya, to name a few.

The one at Osaka Bay used to be off by itself in a rather obscure location, with the verdigris creeping up it providing a certain dreary charm. Unfortunately, it had recently been moved to a much more touristy spot.

There was even one at Sapporo Station, which was about as non-beachy as you could get. Maybe all people really cared about was putting the statues somewhere relatively close to the ocean.

“Speaking of mermaids, we can’t forget about the one back in Obama,” I reminded Miyoshi.

“That one was supposed to be the traditional type—fish from the waist down,” she pointed out.

She was right. The statue in Copenhagen just had normal legs with fins for feet.

When the two moping men in front of us saw the source of the singing, they jumped to their feet in excitement.

“Don’t let her get away! Start rolling!!!” Yoshida shouted.

“But we don’t have a camera!” Jo pointed out.

“Gah, that’s right! Dammit! I’ll use my phone, then!”

“Just because it’s in high resolution doesn’t mean it’ll be suitable for broadcast TV...”

“Who cares? It’ll be like a mockumentary!”

“I thought you hate mockumentaries, don’t you?”

“Listen, there’s a time and place for everything! Ah, shit, she’s gonna look like an ant unless I get up close with this thing. Let’s move!” Yoshida cried.

Apparently it was too far away for a phone cam to get a decent image, even zoomed in. Weapons of choice in hand, the two of them dashed off toward their target. What’s the point in bringing your cameraman along if he doesn’t even have a working camera anymore, though?

“Those network folks just don’t seem to run out of energy, do they?” Miyoshi murmured. I couldn’t tell if she was more impressed or annoyed.

At that point, I noticed Mitsurugi tilting her head, poking her lip with her finger.

“But, um, Yoshimura?”

“Hm?”

“Did the Little Mermaid even sing?”

Oh yeah, now that she mentions it, in the original story, she traded her voice for a pair of legs.

“Huh,” I grunted, rubbing my chin. “Then what is singing out there?”

“C’mon, Kei, you know this one!” Miyoshi chided. “Can you think of any monsters that look like mermaids and sing?”

It only took a moment for it to come to me.

“Ohhh... Sirens!”

In ancient times, sirens were depicted with the lower half of a bird. In the Middle Ages, though, the lower half became a fish instead, and that depiction survived into the present day as the Starbucks logo. Back when they had their original brown logo, it was very obviously a siren with two fish tails in place of her legs.

When I cast my glance in that direction, I saw Yoshida and Jo beelining it toward the mermaid creature with tottering gaits, heading deeper and deeper out into the water.

The phone Yoshida had been holding fell into the ocean with a plop, its light dimming slowly as it sank beneath the waves. Apparently Jo’s camera had already fallen back into the drink as well. Which was the perfect place for it, in my opinion—but something was off.

Miyoshi turned to me.

“Is it just me, or...”

I nodded.

“I’m pretty sure they’ve been charmed.”

“At this rate, they’ll end up waltzing right out into the deep ocean and drowning, won’t they?”

“I mean, maybe, but...” I trailed off. I’m not super excited about the idea of smashing a beautiful woman’s face in with an iron ball either...

Just as I was mulling that over, a shrill sound pierced the air. I heard a horrifying shriek, and the singing suddenly went quiet.

“Nailed her!” I heard Saito call out.

The siren slumped down into the sea, two arrows sticking rudely out of her forehead.

“Uh...?”

“Um, why so surprised...?” Mitsurugi asked. “It was a monster, wasn’t it?”

“O-Oh, uh, yeah, definitely.” Shocked by their complete lack of hesitation, I stammered out a random excuse. “Those were just...really nice shots, considering how far away we are.”

Well, as humanoid as it might have looked, I guess they wouldn’t have sweated the finer details from this distance. A target is a target, after all.

“What, you mean the fruits of our special training?” Saito beamed.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot—she’s an Olympic gold medalist now, huh? Man, she’s really managed to rack up the accomplishments...

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there had been some doubt at first whether or not the Olympic games would even be held last year. However, owing to that whole phenomenon by which the virus was neutralized by merely entering Japan, not only had the Olympics been given a green light, but there had also been a massive influx of tourists from all over the world. In fact, accommodations all over the place had been booked to max capacity—even ones that had nothing to do with the games whatsoever. The Olympics had been basically just an added bonus.

At any rate, Saito, alongside other athletes with explorer backgrounds, had put forth some amazing performances throughout the event. The resulting flurry of world records had even sparked renewed debate about whether explorers should be given their own separate competitive categories apart from the general populace.

Of course, Mitsurugi was no slouch either. She had been right there alongside Saito a moment ago, firing off arrows with roughly the same degree of accuracy...

“You know, there sure are a lot of monsters on this beach,” Mitsurugi pointed out.

Saito nodded in agreement.

“Isn’t it kind of dangerous for a place like this to be on the first floor?”

“You can mostly blame Kei for the plethora of monsters,” Miyoshi said, looking over at me.

“Huh?” Saito turned to me as well. “What’s the big idea, Coach?”

“Whoa, hold on a sec!” I objected. “I don’t know what you think I did here, but you’re wrong! I’m an innocent man!”

The actress continued eyeing me.

“Reeeally?”

Sheesh, all I wanted to do was have a nice bit of summer relaxation at the beach. Instead we’ve got a never-ending parade of monsters to deal with, TV network guys breathing down our necks...and not so much as a moment’s peace.

“Hey Miyoshi. Let’s just pack up and get out of here.”

“What? But we haven’t even...” She trailed off for a moment. “Okay, maybe we have had enough ‘relaxation’ for today.”

“Right?” I agreed.

“Fair enough,” Saito chimed in. “Our clothes may have dried off, but I’m all sticky and salty. We may as well get our showers in and relax with some nice refreshing drinks!”

“Sounds good to me!” Miyoshi replied with a grin.

As the two ladies came to an agreement, Mitsurugi scrunched her brow and turned to us in curiosity.

“So how did the two of you end up here, anyway?”

Miyoshi and I exchanged a brief glance. Then, with a smile, I hastily pointed to the portal the others had come out from.

“The same way you did. How else?”

***

Still, climbing up two meters above the water’s surface in a location where our feet could barely touch the ocean bottom was, quite frankly, not going to be possible.

Miyoshi led us over to a thicket across the way, where she casually happened across an inflatable boat that had been “hidden there the whole time,” according to her. We then hopped on and floated over to the door everyone had come in through. It wasn’t the most stable of surfaces, but the doorway was only two meters up, meaning we could reach the edge of the opening if we stretched our arms out. It would be a cinch for any explorer to pull themselves up and through.

As we watched the four Riviera trespassers climb through one by one, Miyoshi whispered into my ear.

“Hey Kei. Any idea whether this place will keep existing once we’ve all left?”

“Honestly, I was concentrating so hard on making it, I never even thought about what would happen afterward.”

“How very haphazard of you.”

“If I had created the door in our office, we could’ve used this place as a private beach.”

“It’s more like some kind of crazy theme park, if you ask me—with some particularly dangerous performances. Not exactly family-friendly.”

If this place acts the same as a dungeon, the octopus shark and the siren have probably already respawned somewhere. Though I highly doubt the same can be said of Ms. Maker’s fin.

“Aren’t you coming, Coach?”

Looking up, I saw Saito peeking down at me from the doorway. I responded with a quick wave, then decided to send Miyoshi up first. If any more weird monsters popped out, I wanted to be ready for them. By this point, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash even if a flock of flying killer tomatoes came swooping down on us.

“You go ahead, Miyoshi.”

“What about the boat?”

“We’ll just have to leave it for now.”

Miyoshi probably could’ve easily retrieved it from up top, but with the network guys there, we couldn’t afford to take any risks.

Though I get the feeling they’ve probably seen enough action for one day.

“Fine, we can just sneak in and retrieve it later.”

I sighed.

“Penny-pincher.”

“Would it hurt you to just call me ‘economical’?” Miyoshi replied with a pained smile, then springboarded off my clasped hands into the entrance two meters above us as if it were nothing at all.

Giving the area one last visual sweep, I bade farewell to the beautiful, yet highly questionable, beach area, then propelled myself up toward the opening with what was intended to be a light hop.

“Ack!”

Unfortunately, I had forgotten one important fact: My stats were still maxed out. That meant I nearly jumped straight up past the cut-out portal, like a ninja bounding over the walls of a historic samurai residence.

Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed the top of the opening with my fingers, using it as a pivot point to swing my body around so I could dive in. As I did so, I felt a strange resistance—as if I were pushing through some kind of viscous fluid—but my rotational inertia allowed me to break through.

“Did you just, uh, drop in instead of climb through?”

Squad Leader Yoshida was standing there in awe of my over-the-top entrance, when suddenly, the door behind us silently shut itself.

“Ah?!”

Then a slight vibration shook the area, and the portal vanished.

“It’s gone?!”

Pushing past me, Yoshida ran over to where the door had been and started patting the wall all over to try and locate it.

“Well, looks like no boat retrieval for us after all,” I murmured.

“Never mind that, Kei... If the dungeon vanished, do you know what that means?”

“I figure it means we cleared it, right?”

“Yes, but can you define ‘cleared it’?”

“Defeating the boss on the bottom floor, I guess? Wait, boss...?”

It was already a well-known fact that the boss of a dungeon functioned much like its core. Observations of a dungeon that appeared inside an abandoned church in the United States confirmed that a core-like boss monster at the lowest depths created its bottom floor. Also, direct experience from clearing several dungeons had taught humanity the fact that once such a boss was gone and its conquerors had left the area, the entire dungeon would begin to collapse.

“Are you saying I was the boss?!”

Miyoshi nodded solemnly.

“It’s a good thing for the rest of us you’re the type who tends to stick around until everyone else leaves!”

If my exiting the dungeon had the same dimension-destroying effect as a boss being defeated, I wonder what would’ve happened if I had left first? Dungeons don’t usually collapse while the people who defeated the boss are still inside...but if the boss just waltzed out on its own, technically nobody defeated it.

Wait...are bosses even supposed to be able to leave dungeons? I can’t imagine that weird resistance I felt when I went through the entrance was somehow related to me being a boss...

There were theories out there about what might happen to anyone left behind in a cleared dungeon, but with such a small sample size, there was honestly no way anyone could know for sure. God only knows what fate might have befallen any poor souls still inside the area had I exited first.

“If that’s actually how it works, does that mean whoever creates their own pocket space like that would need to stay inside it indefinitely for it to continue existing?” I mused.

“Sure seems that way!” Miyoshi replied.

Though it’s also possible it only vanished because I bade it that mental farewell...

I frowned.

“Hm... Looks like the housing issues in major metropolitan areas won’t be going away anytime soon after all.”

People would have a tough time living in a place that evaporated into nothing every time they left it. They wouldn’t even be able to put any furniture they bought inside it. Even if someone had a powerful enough imagination to create everything from scratch every time, it wouldn’t have an actual address, so they probably wouldn’t even be able to register as a resident.

A salaryman with no permanent address working for a listed company on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange... Sounds kinda cool, actually. Whoa—would that mean they wouldn’t have to pay taxes either?

“Quite the shame,” Miyoshi responded.

“If anything, there might be demand for these types of spaces coming from laboratories that conduct dangerous experiments...”

“I’m not so sure about that, considering we have no idea what happens to whatever’s inside these places when they collapse.”

It would be an absolute catastrophe if pathogens or other hazardous materials inside one of those spaces ended up getting dumped out over a random part of the planet once it collapsed.

Even if things ended up shunted away forever into some other dimension, the Earth was a closed system, and permanently funneling away matter of some kind could have unknown consequences down the line. For all we knew, the dimension we used as a dump might start funneling something back in retaliation.

“Though I admit, I can definitely picture some random unscrupulous industrial waste management company opening up their own pocket dumping space,” Miyoshi added.

“I mean, there have already been certain countries disposing of radioactive waste in dungeons...”

You know, that might have been one of the reasons our plutonium erasure request was ever accepted in the first place.

“At any rate, even though we know it’s possible to create our own personal spaces, we probably shouldn’t release this info to the public until the rules get pinned down a little better.”

“Kei, you do realize you’re literally the only one who can verify anything about said rules at the moment, right?”

“Urk.”

We’ve started seeing active efforts to determine how to best incorporate dungeon technology into modern society. For the sake of humanity at large, I’ll probably have no choice but to help out with those efforts in some small way—but I refuse to sacrifice myself for them completely.

After all, if ten thousand researchers each ask for just a little help, when you add them all together, that little help immediately turns into a big, fat lot. And even though it is physically impossible for a lone Santa Claus to deliver presents to every child in the world, any children who don’t get presents might end up resenting him anyway.

That’s when I heard a voice call out.

“Aaah, maaan...”

Turning to see where the sudden pathetic groan was coming from, I saw Yoshida kneeling on the ground, utterly crestfallen.

“How are we gonna prove the footage we took back there is real if the damn door’s gone...?”

“Doesn’t the TV station that’s airing the show handle that?” Saito asked.

“Are you kidding? There’s no way in hell they’d stake their reputation on our word!”

I nearly burst out laughing at the way he said it, but at least he was properly self-aware. Anyone with two eyes and a brain would’ve thought it was all staged.

“Um, there’s a bigger problem, Yoshida...” Jo nervously cut in. “I think both your phone and my camera are still in the ocean back there somewhere...”

“What?!”

After Jo had been freed from the siren’s spell and had come to his senses, he’d realized he no longer had his camera. Despite searching for a good while, he had been unable to locate it in the vast ocean.

Apparently both men’s memories of the period when they had been charmed by the siren were particularly vague, and they had absolutely no idea where they could have possibly dropped their belongings.

Panicking, Yoshida searched frantically through his pockets, but of course there was no cell phone to be found. He had Jo try to call the phone, but he was only met with the usual recording stating that the number he was trying to reach was not available.

“This can’t be happening... Did we lose all of that amazing footage?” Yoshida muttered to himself.

“Unfortunately...” Jo murmured in response, his shoulders sinking. “You are going to reimburse me for the lost camera, though, right?”

“With no footage? Is this some kinda joke?”

“This has nothing to do with the footage! What am I supposed to tell management—that it got swallowed up in an ocean hidden behind some mystery door inside the dungeon? They’ll laugh me out of the office!”

As the two of them went back and forth squabbling over who would pay for the camera, an exasperated smile came to my face. They should just be grateful they’re still alive.

I felt a tug at my sleeve, and saw Mitsurugi holding her phone up.

“Yoshimura, Yoshimura!”

“Hm?”

“Take a look at this...”

She showed me a video of me bringing a massive palm strike down toward a giant shark fin.

“When did you manage to—”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment reaction. That was pretty cool, you know.”

Come to think of it, she had already made it to shore by then, hadn’t she?

If she shows this footage to the two guys arguing over there, they’ll probably do whatever it takes to get a hold of it...

Following my gaze, Mitsurugi flashed me a sweet smile.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of this footage.”

With that, she headed back over to where Saito was. Thankfully, I got the impression she’d be keeping the video to herself.

“She actually thought you looked cool, Kei. Ah, the misattribution of arousal... Never underestimate the power of the suspension bridge effect.”

“You can just shut it.”

I met her brutally honest jab with a light thwap to the top of her head, and the two of us made our way out of the dungeon.

***

“There you are, Miyoshi! Are you okay?!”

As soon as we came out through the dungeon gate, we were greeted by Naruse, who seemed rather panicked.

“Why would I not be? Did something happen?”

“Well, we picked up a dungeon tremor a few hours ago.”

“A dungeon tremor?” Miyoshi and I asked in unison, turning to each other out of reflex.

“It was a rather minuscule one, but it was located—”

“I don’t suppose it was inside Yoyogi, was it?” I interrupted her to ask.

“Well, it was extremely nearby, but it was hard to pinpoint exactly... How did you know that, though?”

As Naruse began to inch nearer to us, we were rescued by the buzzing of her cell phone. Reluctantly, she checked the name of the caller.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” she murmured, then answered the call. Moments later, she was already blurting out a shocked response. “What? A vanishing tremor?!”

“Hey, any thoughts on this?” I whispered to Miyoshi.

“I suppose it really was being treated like a dungeon,” came her reply.

“Think we should submit an honest report?”

“How do I put this? I think the onus for that decision should be on the source of the problem—the one who decided to go around abusing D-Factors like that.”

“‘Abusing’? You’re just trying to casually dump all the work onto me, aren’t you?”

Just as I was about to go off on Miyoshi about how unreasonable she was being, I heard a frosty voice call out from behind me.

“Yoshimura?”

It was summer, but an icy chill ran down my spine nonetheless.

“Y-Yes?”

“You know something about this, don’t you?” Naruse smiled congenially as she asked me, but her eyes conveyed an entirely different emotion.

I froze in place.

“Uh? Ummm, well, I’m not sure if ‘know’ is the right word...”

H-Hey, Miyoshi! I reached out telepathically. Earth to Miyoshi...?!

But she had already made a break for it over to Saito and Mitsurugi, who had just gotten out of the changing rooms, and was inviting them to the YD Café. She gave me a brief little wave, but the tongue sticking out of her mouth did not escape my keen eyes.

Oh, that sonofa—!

I couldn’t tell if it was an actual telepathic response or if I was just hearing things, but the words I am no one’s son seemed to ring in my head.

“Yo-shi-mu-ra?” came Naruse’s chilling voice again.

“Yeek!”

And so that memorable summer came to an end, with a harsh session of questioning and scolding from Naruse. I was beginning to realize that we had a long, long road ahead of us before we could release any info on creating personalized environments using D-Factors.

Annotations

Message from Ambrose Bierce: Regarding Ambrose Bierce’s last letter, “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination,” which Japanese Wikipedia interprets as “I have no idea where I will be heading.” However, your author chooses to believe that whether Bierce committed suicide or was executed, the sentence in question probably just indicates that he was headed to a destination he had never been before. (It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, after all.) However you decide to interpret the letter, though, the fact remains that Bierce went missing after writing it. Where did he disappear to? The answer remains one of the greatest mysteries in the history of American literature.

Fiat panis: The motto of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).

FAOSTAT: The world’s largest comprehensive online database of information relating to food, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, managed by the aforementioned FAO.

Up until recently: Yield numbers as of volume 7.

The pretend Shadow over Innsmouth thing: A reference to “Ashes to Ashes,” a bonus short story for people who purchased volume 2. It also happens to be included in this very collection. The story is about being manipulated by a Wakasa Bay mermaid into infiltrating Y’ha-nthlei and assaulting a gathering of Deep Ones. (That was my personal impression of it, anyway.)

“Winter Riviera”: A hit song by Shinichi Mori—his fifty-sixth single. The lyrics give off pretty much zero in the way of Riviera vibes, and anyone singing it could probably swap the chorus for “Winter (insert coastal town here)” without people batting an eye. It’s kind of impressive, really. By the way, the Côte d’Azur is the French portion of what’s known as the Riviera, a coastal area stretching from Italy to France.

Failed teleportation attempt: This happened in the web version. In the published version, Yoshimura is set to fail this somewhere around volume 11.

Original version: This may be hard to believe, but Sharktopus was actually a remake of an older movie. In the original film, Shark - Rosso nell’oceano (released overseas under titles such as Monster Shark and Devil Fish), the monster wasn’t a shark at all, but a hybrid of an octopus and a creature from the Paleozoic era. Seriously, of all the movies out there, I can’t believe someone decided to remake that one...

What happened on the tenth floor: A reference to the undead escapade from volume 5, which is absent in the web version. Well, hopefully any web-only readers can ignore it and just assume something happened on the tenth floor... Though I guess there probably aren’t too many readers like that out there.

Scandinavian coast: Copenhagen lies in a peculiar location that’s not necessarily on the Baltic Sea or the North Sea. Strictly speaking, the Øresund strait (a redundant term!) isn’t considered part of either sea.

By the way, if you look at the shore opposite the “Little Mermaid” statue, which earned a coveted spot on Japanese “three most disappointing tourist attractions in the world” lists, you’ll see a billboard for Mikkeller (which is a craft brewery—though I don’t know how they get off calling themselves a brewery when they don’t even have their own brewing facilities). A bit south from there, you’ll find the famous restaurant, Noma. The area used to be a bit run-down, and the street behind the restaurant still tends to be littered with trash sometimes, which makes me kind of wonder why they moved there in the first place. Maybe there just weren’t any other places suitable for urban farming.

Speaking of Noma, its ostensible sister restaurant, Inua, which had taken up residence inside the Kadokawa Fujimi building, unfortunately ended up shutting its doors in March of 2021. Apparently this was due to both their yearlong closure during the coronavirus outbreak, and Chef Frebel’s decision to return to his home country due to a family emergency. Unavoidable, but unfortunate.

Siren: The Japanese Wikipedia entry for “Siren” claims that in Greek, the word “πτερνγιον” can mean both feather and scale, which may have been why the lower half of sirens changed from birds to fishes. (Note: As of mid-2025, this claim is no longer present on the entry in question.) This is quoted verbatim all over the internet, but just between you and me, I think it might actually be a typo for “πτερυγιον” instead. I’ll add that your author’s Greek is even more dubious than Yoshimura’s French, so I’ll wait for someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

Commentary

Okay, so I got a little carried away.

As I explained in the foreword, three characters made appearances here that hadn’t yet shown up in the published volumes at the time (though two of them were technically only name-dropped).

Truth be told, I didn’t even realize my mistake until after I had finished writing... I was already in the throes of postvolume celebration, with absolutely no time left to edit anything out—though the story would’ve fallen totally flat without Ms. Maker, honestly. Besides, I had already made the same mistake with the volume 2 short story, so I figured no big deal; it was probably a forgivable offense for a novel originally released online. And so, banking on the generous hearts of my beloved readers, I ended up releasing the story as is.

Now, in the coming age when anyone has the ability to create anything using D-Factors, the very concepts of nations and commerce will no doubt be thrown into a state of cataclysmic change. The production industry and the service industry will merge, and everything except for the service industry and certain infrastructure industries will either be wiped out or reduced on a massive scale. At first, people will try to maintain some diversity of products, but while people will recognize the dangers of becoming so reliant on D-Factors, a counterargument will surface that humans already rely on many different things to live, like air, water, and so on and so forth, so what’s wrong with adding one more thing? That will likely cause a gradual decline in production, largely due to cost.

Paper money and coins will no doubt disappear, but currency as a concept will likely live on as a means of value exchange—at least until people figure out how to manipulate bank account balances using D-Factors.

I’m ever so curious to see what kind of mental gymnastics nations will have to use in coming up with new taxes to make up for the lack of revenue under the old rules. Perhaps minarchism will reach its peak, birthing the ultimate form of small government.

I figure D-Genesis might end up touching on points like these someday, perhaps when we reach the final epilogue at the end of the series. I appreciate your patience on the journey ahead.

However, one thing bears repeating: This is a what-if story. Will a future like this actually come to pass in the main volumes? The answer to that remains hidden behind a misty veil, far across the vast ocean of time.

Chapter 5: It’s Gone

Foreword

This is a story about a gorgeous slime core brought outside the dungeon by Komugi. It’s also another case of reutilizing a plot that was omitted from the main volumes.

When Komugi’s special training began, she knew from the very get-go that she had to bring one of those cores—spheres with jewellike properties—back outside somehow. Naturally that would lead to a huge commotion. Unfortunately, the fracas with our good Phantom and the Haruki Yoshida’s Dungeon Exploration Squad stuff took up way more of the volume’s character count than I thought they would, meaning this segment, which didn’t have any effect on the main storyline, was the only one I could reasonably put on the chopping block... Alas.

Looking at it alongside all the others for the first time, this short story is pretty high on horror factor. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.

Prologue

“Wow, it’s so gorgeous!”

It was rather late on a Sunday afternoon, and everyone was getting ready to wrap up the workday. Yet Komugi had been sitting there messing with something in the exact same spot since just after lunch, prompting a coworker by the name of Hatami to call out to her.

“Oh, Rokujo. Still at it, I see?”

Brought to her senses by the sudden voice, Komugi pried her gaze away from the loupe she had been looking through and turned around.

“Hm? What do you mean, ‘still’?”

“Um, work is pretty much over.”

“What? Really?”

The dungeon exploration business operated 24 hours a day, 365 (occasionally 366) days a year, so organizations with ties to it would often use shift-based work to meet any sudden requests that might come in. However, the Gemological Institute of Japan—or GIJ—rarely received any emergency requests, so while holidays still used a shift system, on most days they operated under regular business hours ending at 6 p.m.

As Komugi looked up at the clock in surprise, Hatami was of two minds about her. One was exasperated, thinking, Has she really been looking at one gem for five hours straight? while the other was rather impressed at her ability to concentrate, musing, Well, they definitely call her “Maniac” for a reason.

“Does the piece you’re looking at really take that much concentration?” Hatami wondered.

At a brief glance, Komugi appeared to have been studying some type of feldspar. If the GIJ had been commissioned to appraise it, that automatically meant the piece wasn’t just rare—there had to be something downright unnatural about it.

Typically, conglomerations of multiple minerals were simply called rocks, and while some gem-quality specimens might exist, it wasn’t a simple task to identify them by name. Doing so would require identifying each of their constituent minerals, which often meant a need for destructive examination.

Gemological examination was, however, fundamentally nondestructive; destroying a sample for the sake of an assay would cause it to lose any value it might have had. In theory, someone could press the matter and have them do so anyway, but no client out there would be willing to pay money to appraise a material they knew had little value to begin with.

“Of course it does! Look at the Schiller effect on it!”

As she held out the gemstone for her coworker to see, a hazy pale blue light shimmered across its surface, as if it had been painted on.

“That’s quite the beautiful... Uh, adularescence?”

The Schiller effect in feldspar was typically caused by the reflection and scattering of light due to its lamellar structure—the presence of alternating layers of two or more different materials. Seen mainly in things such as moonstone, this phenomenon caused rocks to appear to give off a hazy glow. If said layers were thin, the glow would be light blue; otherwise, it would appear white.

The stone in question was glowing faintly, expressing itself in various ways when viewed from different angles. However, the transparency level was completely off for it to be anything in the moonstone family. That was why Hatami had unwittingly ended his previous utterance with such uncertainty.

Scarcely able to believe what he was seeing, he blurted out the only question he could.

“What is this?”

It had a strange iridescence to it that was impossible to find in alkali feldspar.

The word “iridescence” was derived from the name of the goddess of rainbows, Iris—and as its origin implied, it described the effect of rocks shimmering in rainbow colors. It primarily occurred in plagioclase feldspar, but never in the alkali variety.

That being said, what they were looking at had far too few inclusions for it to be something like labradorite. Of course, nearly transparent labradorite—which didn’t have many inclusions either—did exist, but this particular sample had low transparency.

“I know, right? It’s just plain weird!”

“Who commissioned it, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s not a commission. It’s mine.”

Hatami’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion at Komugi’s response. You were looking at your own private stone for five hours? Maybe you should do your damn job! he screamed internally.

But obviously he couldn’t say such a thing to his senior. Besides, not only were he and the rest of the staff plenty used to dealing with the messes she tended to make, they actually had a good amount of respect for her as well.

She had countless rocks and mineral samples scattered in the vicinity of her desk, including some that were dungeon-sourced. Though she had originally been commissioned to appraise them, many were of minimal value, and she had ended up purchasing them for herself instead of returning them. Now that collection was on display all over her office, concentrated especially around her desk.

It was just like people working for video game developers decorating their workstations with figures of pretty girls. Rocks and gems might have given off a bit more of a highbrow aura, but it was the same concept at heart.

Just a few days prior, her coworkers had seen her fawning over the rows and rows of rocks she had amassed. There might have been some eye-rolling involved, but not a single person breathed a word of complaint. After all, her knowledge and accomplishments were unparalleled—and as her collection grew, each piece, alongside its attached documentation regarding where and how it had been obtained, turned into valuable data that had proven quite useful in their studies.

“Just make sure not to take that thing over to the main office and run it through the EDS detector without permission, okay, Rokujo?”

An EDS detector, or energy-dispersive spectroscopy detector, was a device that used X-rays to analyze chemical composition. However, since they were rather expensive, they couldn’t just install one in every single GIJ branch office. Anyone who wanted to use it needed to head back to the main office and submit an application—in theory.

“Really? But filling out an application is such a hassle...”

“Like I said, you can’t just run off willy-nilly and use their things whenever you like. They’ll get mad at you again.”

“Come ooooon. The best part about EDS detectors is how they’re so quick and easy to use! Isn’t it kind of ridiculous to have to apply for it every single time?”

“There’s the overall budget for the lab to consider...not to mention scheduled use time...”

Komugi let out a sigh.

“Well, I suppose there is a certain sense of mystery in not knowing what it actually is.” She held the object up to the light once more.

If it was feldspar, the full details of its chemical composition were already known. And if it happened to be an unknown type of rock instead, generally it could be identified by analyzing it with the EDS detector. However, once the unknown became known, any mystique it held was as good as gone. Of course, making unknown things known was part of her job.

“It sure is beautiful,” she cooed.

“It is amazing how perfect a sphere it is,” Hatami admitted. “And with no imperfections...”

Due to feldspar’s low hardness value and lamellar structure, one would expect feldspar that had been processed into a spherical shape to have flaws here and there. However, the sphere Komugi was looking at appeared to be completely flawless.

“I know, right?”

“Where was it cut?”

“It wasn’t cut at all—it was generated exactly like this.”

“What?!”

In rare instances, dungeons had been known to produce gemstones that appeared to be precut. This must have been one of those—and the precision of the cut was beyond belief.

Hatami couldn’t even begin to imagine what the gem actually might’ve been made of. All he had was the vague notion that dungeon-sourced gemstones might have some sort of unusual properties that didn’t exist in naturally formed rock.

After losing himself in thought for a few moments, he snapped out of his brief reverie and urged Komugi to leave for the day.

“That’s right, I needed to tell you. We’re closing up here, so please, wrap things up and head out as soon as you can, okay?”

“Okaaay.”

Casting Hatami a sideways glance as he put a few things away and started locking up, Komugi held up the shimmering object one last time, staring at it dreamily. Reluctant to leave it behind but having no choice, she gently placed it inside the drawer at her desk where she kept her personal belongings, then locked it tight.

***

It thirsted; it hungered.

Something had always surrounded it, filling it without it even being aware—but now, it could barely even feel that something.

As it greedily gathered what faint ambient residue it could find, it grew frustrated with its inability to move. An impulse, smoldering inside it like a crimson ember, began coursing through its body.

As it ran on raw instinct in its desperate state of hunger, its acute senses picked up the faintest scent of said something in the air nearby. Then, guided by that scent, it tried to reach out toward it, transforming itself into a long, thin, filament-like shape.

At the end of its reach, it felt a hard object. To it, the object was more like a tiny puddle than a full-on oasis—yet it was refreshing nonetheless, like seeing a lone droplet of hope fall on a parched world.

Quivering in joy for a brief moment, it soon became aware of many other similar hard objects nearby.

Annotations

Feldspar: This generally refers to rocks comprising aluminosilicates mixed with alkali metals or alkaline earth metals. Lately I’ve seen it referred to as “felspar” a lot, but since “feldspar” seems to be the more common spelling, that is what I’m using here. Potassium, sodium, and calcium make up the most common types, and various feldspars are made from combining these elements in varying proportions.

Feldspar composition is typically represented as a triangle, with potassium, sodium, and calcium at each of the vertices, and their corresponding terminal feldspars being orthoclase, albite, and anorthite, respectively.

Feldspars between potassium/orthoclase and sodium/albite are called alkali feldspars, which is the category moonstone belongs to. The glassy, highly transparent feldspar commonly known as sanidine is in this category as well.

Next, feldspars between sodium/albite and calcium/anorthite are known as plagioclase. Labradorite belongs to this category.

At this point, you may assume there would be something else between potassium/orthoclase and calcium/anorthite, but apparently no naturally occurring feldspars exist within that span.

There are feldspars with other metals, such as barium or strontium, mixed in as well, but typical specimens can be thought of as combinations of the three aforementioned varieties.

Also, while even gem-quality specimens of feldspar are not particularly valuable, that also means you can get larger pieces for lower prices. Perhaps one could say the joy of being able to easily obtain a specimen you like is one of its main selling points.

Adularescence: This is another word for the Schiller effect.

Iridescence: This is the name used for the effect seen when minerals shimmer in rainbow colors. If a gemstone has a rainbow shimmer, and you say something along the lines of “What lovely iridescence!” you’re typically using the word correctly.

Labradorite: Feldspars that fall between sodium/albite and calcium/anorthite are known as plagioclase, and labradorite belongs to that category. When seen in labradorite specifically, the Schiller-like rainbow shimmering effect is sometimes called “labradorescence,” apparently. How puzzling.

Note that “moonstone” is the name of a gemstone. While plagioclase feldspar is sometimes called moonstone as well, I differentiated things here by only referring to the alkali feldspar variety as moonstone, and the plagioclase feldspar varieties as labradorite and peristerite.

EDS (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy): In some cases this is referred to as “X-ray spectroscopy,” and can also be abbreviated as EDX, among a number of other acronyms.

These devices perform qualitative and quantitative analyses on a substance by exposing it to X-rays and forcing it to emit its own fluorescent X-rays, then measuring the wavelength and intensity of those secondary rays.

There are two main methods for X-ray fluorescence (XRF): WDS, or wavelength dispersive spectrometry, which is for the most part highly efficient, highly expensive, and highly difficult; and EDS, or energy dispersive spectrometry, which sacrifices some efficiency, but is cheap and easy to use. The latter appears to be the type more commonly employed in gemology.

In layman’s terms, if you just think of it as a device that tells you about the chemical compositions of gemstones, you’re not exactly wrong.

BEGIN

“Huh?”

The next day, Komugi noticed that several of the dungeon-sourced stones that had been scattered around her desk area were missing. At that point, though, she merely wondered whether someone had taken them away for research purposes.

The morning after that, however, when she was the first one to arrive at Appraisal Room 2, she realized that a large chunk of her specimens was completely gone.

“What the...?!”

When he noticed Komugi raising her voice, then saw her grimacing and looking all around her desk area, Hatami, who had just arrived at work, called out to her.

“Is something wrong?”

Though he hadn’t been pleased with the idea, one of the responsibilities he had been tasked with was to proactively try and prevent her from causing yet another mess of some kind.

“A bunch of the rocks I left here are missing.”

“Oh? You didn’t take them home with you, then?”

Hatami had noticed some of the rocks missing yesterday as well, but since Komugi hadn’t said anything, he’d just assumed she had done something with them.

“I don’t have nearly enough room for all those at my place,” she replied, oddly proud.

“I’m, uh, not sure that’s something you should be bragging about, Rokujo.”

Putting on an exasperated smile at how little shame Komugi seemed to feel about openly using her workplace as a storage space, Hatami glanced at her heavily picked-over collection. It looked like a smile that was missing some teeth. He crossed his arms.

“Isn’t it kind of an odd assortment for someone to have run off with?”

“Odd? How?”

“Well, the monetary values of the missing rocks are all over the place, aren’t they?”

Upon hearing that, Komugi considered their value for the first time ever. To her, they were all the same—part of her lovely little collection of rocks. She had never paid any mind to whatever monetary value they held to the general public.

For that matter, the dungeon-sourced pieces in her collection didn’t really have much value in the typical sense—which was only natural, considering their provenance.

“You’re right,” she murmured.

Judging by which stones were missing, she couldn’t imagine whoever took them had been looking to make a profit—the values were all over the spectrum. And anyone who worked with her would’ve undoubtedly had the ability to cherry-pick the most valuable targets with ease.

“Look, instead of taking the raw Colombian emerald I was using for comparison data, they took the peridotite.”

Gem-quality olivine contained within peridotite was sold on the market as peridot, but the peridotite she’d had was nowhere near gem quality—it was more or less just a plain old greenish rock. Even if some eccentric collector wanted to buy it, it could probably only fetch a few hundred yen at best. No doubt the examination fee alone had been more than the piece was worth, so the original owner had paid for it in kind.

“Hmmm...” Hatami had no idea who would’ve taken them, or for what purpose.

What would anyone have done with that many rocks in the first place? If the culprit was someone who worked there, the danger of getting fired would’ve far outweighed any potential benefits. And it wasn’t as if any of the employees loved rocks so much that they would have risked their entire job to—

Before he could finish, he glanced over at Komugi, who tilted her head in confusion. Okay, maybe there’s one employee like that, he thought.

“Oh, I know! Someone must have fallen in love with these cuties at first sight, and decided to kidnap—”

“Rokujo, you’re the only one here who’d ever consider that.”

“Really?!”

Hatami chuckled a bit when Komugi puffed out her cheeks as if she had taken great offense, but he quickly reminded himself that a theft had occurred.

“I’ll keep an eye on things on my end as well, but luckily our branch manager is in the office today. You should probably report this to him.”

“Thanks! I’ll do that.”

***

“So that’s what seems to have happened.”

Komugi had found the branch manager in the break area and gone with him over to the corner of an unused meeting room to explain the situation to him.

One hand hooked into a pocket of his spotless but thread-worn lab coat as he listened to her story, the slightly hunched-over man ran his other hand through his thinning hair and replied in a tone of frustration.

“Oh, Rokujo. I hate to have to say this, but part of the problem is the fact that you’ve been leaving objects of value strewn all over your desk.”

“Ack...”

Even though it was only a branch office, it was still a facility that handled gemstones, meaning it had more comprehensive security than the average business. Security cameras were set up at the entrance with no blind spots whatsoever, and there was also a gate that prevented any outsiders from getting in. And since their security measures hadn’t detected any anomalous activity, if it was indeed a theft, then the perpetrator had to have been someone on the inside.

“Is it possible someone borrowed them, or perhaps there was some kind of misunderstanding?”

“I honestly don’t think anyone would have borrowed them without asking me first.”

Deeming this a theft might well cause considerable damage to their corporate reputation. After all, who would commission any work from a jewel appraisal company with a thief in their employ?

“Very well. We’ll check the entry logs, then. Come find me in my office half an hour after lunch.”

“Understood, sir.”

***

The smoldering crimson ember inside it had begun to generate a tiny flickering flame. It was an emotion bordering on obsession—like some kind of instinct. Break everything down, then start creating what you’re supposed to, the flames were commanding.

But that didn’t seem possible yet. It had already absorbed some materials that contained the needed substance and had just barely managed to reach the point where it could break things down, but it could hardly even move, much less create anything.

That fact was making it incredibly frustrated.

Last night, it had managed to ingest much more than it had the previous night. And now that its sensory apparatus had been sharpened, it had caught the scent of something downright entrancing.

An irresistible emotion welled up within it, and before it realized, whatever form of consciousness it possessed had been overcome by a singular desire. Must have, must have, must have, must have, must have...

And so it began to take action.

***

“So I went ahead and checked the site entry logs for the dates you thought the thefts might have occurred...”

The branch manager placed a stack of A4 papers down in front of Komugi and began playing footage from the security camera at the entrance to Appraisal Room 2 on the monitor nearby. The camera was mounted near the door, and had a clear view of anyone entering or exiting the room. The stack of papers contained two days of site entry logs and a list of everyone who had been inside the room.

As she scanned over everything, Komugi raised her eyebrows at the conclusion the evidence seemed to lead to.

“You’re kidding...”

“Well, if we consider things logically based on this, it’s rather clear who the culprit must be, yes?”

Turning over the final page, Komugi placed it on the desk, her hand trembling. There had almost always been multiple people in the room. The only person who had spent any time alone was—

“Me?!”

Appraisal Room 2 was just a bit smaller than the size of two school classrooms, with Komugi’s desk taking up one corner. Considering how many pieces had vanished, even if it had just been her and one other person in the room, it felt highly unlikely that anyone could’ve taken them all from around Komugi’s desk, right under her nose, without her noticing anything.

“Incidentally, you were also the only one who brought in a bag large enough to hold so many rocks.”

The branch manager had apparently fast-forwarded through the security footage, checking only the times people had been in the room. Just as he had said, the day the first few stones had gone missing, Komugi had come in carrying a bag she had taken into the dungeon earlier. She had stuffed it into the large drawer at the bottom of her desk and left it there.

The only person who had come inside carrying a bag that could fit multiple rock samples was Komugi. Someone probably could’ve gotten away with shoving one or two into their pockets, but nobody had exhibited any strange behavior like walking in and out of the room repeatedly.

In other words, judging by the entry logs alone, it was highly probable that the rocks were still inside the room, and everything had been staged by Komugi, who was the only one who had brought in a bag large enough to hide them all.

The branch manager merely curled his lips into a frown and shrugged, as if to convey that there was nothing he could do.

“Knowing you, I imagine you have similar specimens back at home, right?”

If he was wondering whether she had more of the same types of rocks at home as the ones that had gone missing, she probably did.

Mentally going through her personal collection, Komugi responded.

“I do...”

The branch manager spread his arms wide to indicate that any further discussion would be useless.

“I presume you understand what would happen if we got the police involved at this point, yes?”

In short, if they decided to report a theft, it would just lead to Komugi being implicated based on the entry logs, followed by a search of her home, where they would find the same types of rocks that had gone missing. It would be difficult to prove that they weren’t the same specimens, and they would likely end up deeming that Komugi had simply staged the whole thing.

If turning this into an official case would land them no results besides dinging the company’s reputation, the branch manager sincerely wanted to avoid pursuing things if possible. All Komugi could do was nod her head reluctantly in understanding.

“So what would you like to do?”

Komugi thought it over for a moment, then asked him to go ahead and keep the incident under wraps, saying that she’d figure something out on her own.

The branch manager gave a vague smile, then brought their meeting to an end.

“Well, make sure to do it discreetly.”

Komugi Rokujo as a person could be explained as follows: When God was handing out talent points, he ended up cramming all of hers into appraiser abilities, making her skills in that area almost supernatural. In exchange, though, she ended up being nothing short of abysmal in just about every other area.

The branch manager hadn’t known Komugi for all that long. He didn’t have any real understanding of what made her tick; all he knew was what was written in her file. He had no idea that she had one other ability—one that nobody else could hope to match.

He didn’t have a clue that she had a sheer inner drive that allowed her not only to travel to both the United Kingdom and the United States multiple times for certifications, but also to casually dive into dangerous dungeons for the mere possibility that she could find a few gorgeous gemstones.

***

“Well, I guess that leaves me no choice!”

As he eyed Komugi suspiciously after noticing how unusually fired up she was, Hatami felt compelled to speak to her.

“You’re not planning on making any trouble, are you, Rokujo?”

“Huh?”

“Well, it’s just that you seem a little more...enthusiastic than usual.”

When he had seen Komugi in a similar state a while back, the following day she had suddenly become an explorer and started diving into dungeons. The gems are waiting for her, so she’s gonna start dungeon diving, I think she said? I don’t know what anything is anymore. The understanding of common people did not extend outside the realm of common sense.

Although it had seemed like a personal matter at first glance, the sudden loss of access to her skills at their workplace had significantly affected everyone around her—mainly in the realm of scheduling and shift work.

“Oh? Really?”

“Before you go and do anything funny, make sure to talk to me first, okay?”

“I-I’m not gonna do anything funny! It’s just a little overtime.”

“Overtime?”

Work was almost over. However, their branch office generally didn’t have any overtime. They didn’t have a whole lot to do at the moment, and even if the new Mining skill started coming into serious play, it could apparently only produce a single kind of drop per floor. On the off chance something did need appraising, it would likely only be the very first drop.

Anything that was extremely difficult to appraise or required submitting a formal certificate of appraisal was sent over to the main office, which was better equipped for such tasks. Their branch office, on the other hand, was just a place where they could quickly perform simple appraisals and calculate rough approximations of value. Nobody would want an official certificate of appraisal for a plain old pebble with no gemological value—especially if it came with the typical price tag.

“Do we even have any work that needs doing?”

“U-Um, I mean, well—”

“Rokujo, don’t tell me...”

“Look, it’ll be fine! I even got the branch manager’s permission!”

Hatami could almost picture the branch manager standing there scowling, hands on his hips, asking when exactly she’d gotten his permission. Then again, knowing him, Hatami thought to himself, if she told him something like “I’ll figure something out on my own,” he probably just replied with “Make sure to do it discreetly.”

Komugi then proceeded to explain that she had indeed gone the “I’ll figure something out on my own” route for permission.

Her coworker let out an audible sigh.

“Fine, I understand.”

“Whew!”

“But listen. Just don’t cause any disasters. Please.”

“Wh-What kind of disaster could I possibly cause by doing overtime?”

“Knowing you, Rokujo, I wouldn’t put it past you to blow out an entire floor of the building or something,” Hatami said, putting on a strained smile.

“I would never do anything like that!” Komugi replied indignantly.

***

Obeying its instincts, it began to move. Pulled in by the scent wafting up from directly below it like a tiny moth drawn to a flame, it crept ever closer to its target.

Something in the intervening space was blocking the way. So it began to break down the obstacle. All of its previous thoughts—like making its body thin and stretching out in search of things—dissolved into a sea of instinct filled with pure desire, leaving not the faintest visible trace behind.

***

Judging by the entry logs, the only person who was likely to have been the culprit was her. Only she wasn’t the culprit.

With that in mind, Komugi jumped to the conclusion that someone had to have taken the rocks out during a period of time that hadn’t been covered by the entry logs. There was always a way to fool computers, but fooling an entire office full of people was more difficult. If she waited around for someone to show up after everyone else left for the day, she was certain that would lead her directly to the culprit.

She began scurrying about, gathering equipment blankets and spreading them out over various surfaces in one corner of the room.

Hatami, who had been about to leave for the day, noticed Komugi acting strange, and figured he might as well ask what was going on.

“When did you become a hamster, Rokujo?”

“Do you see my cheek pouches packed with sunflower seeds or something?” Komugi murmured. “Feel free to ignore me and head home—I’ve got that overtime to do. Have a great night!”

“Right...”

Maybe she’s been shoving gems in there instead of sunflower seeds, Hatami quipped to himself, then responded with his own “Good night,” and left the room.

With everyone else gone, a bizarre feeling of emptiness fell over Appraisal Room 2. At some point, the dark night outside the window seemed almost like it was creeping into the room itself. Starting to feel somewhat ill at ease, Komugi soon realized she had forgotten to bring anything to eat.

“Oh no...”

There was a vending machine with drinks outside the conference room, but there was no way she was going out to the convenience store at this point.

Inside her pocket, she found two pieces of candy that a coworker had given her during lunch. With no better options, she popped one of the candies into her mouth.

No sooner had she done so than the electricity on the empty floor suddenly cut off, and the emergency lighting blinked to life.

“What the—?!”

The building management had set things to switch into power saving mode at a set time every night—and that time had arrived.

With the power in the rooms and hallways suddenly out, Komugi, still hiding in her little corner of Appraisal Room 2, stared up at the ceiling in shock.

“Does it really just switch into power-saving mode even when people are still here?”

Unfortunately, the power-saving mode in her building was just the automatic clock-based kind, and was not integrated with the security system that had been installed on the floor afterward. That meant that access management to the building and the power-saving mode weren’t linked in any way, and the latter function was always executed at the same time, whether employees were present or not.

Of course, Komugi could have gotten around that issue simply by filing an overtime report—but at that moment she had no way of knowing that.

With only a few tiny emergency lights for illumination, the room was incredibly dark, and frankly, she was starting to feel creeped out. The air conditioner seemed to have stopped as well, and it felt as though the cold outside air was starting to seep in through the windows.

She let out a worried groan.

“M-Maybe I should just go home after all...”

Maybe it’s better to just let people call me a chicken than to actually have to deal with scary things, she had just started to think, when suddenly, a loud thump echoed across the room.

“Eek!”

Shrinking back instinctively, Komugi was struck by the sudden realization of just how dangerous her current situation actually was. It didn’t take much thought to remember she was a rather tiny, fragile woman. If the culprit was a big guy, he could probably pin her down in an instant.

When she had been in the dungeon, Eri and Drudwyn had been with her, so she hadn’t felt afraid at all—but this was real life. Wait, technically dungeons are real life too, she reminded herself.

“M-Maybe I’m letting my imagination run away with me here...?”

With the temperature in the room steadily decreasing, and the feeling that something terrible was lurking in a dark corner increasing, Komugi began to tremble. It was a deep, primal fear of the dark. Even though rationally she knew that nobody was there, the feeling was inescapable. And of course, there might actually be something there.

As if on cue, she heard another sound, a clunk, louder than the previous noise. It seemed to be coming from her desk.

“I-Is it just a big ol’ rat or something?”

Cautiously, she began to approach her desk, but found no signs of movement in the vicinity. Her eyes scanned the area, until she suddenly noticed some kind of liquid oozing out of the bottom of one of the drawers.

“Wha...?”

I don’t remember putting anything liquid inside of any drawers, she mused. What the heck is going on?

Her desk was in a dark area where the emergency illumination barely reached. Gathering her courage, she nervously switched on her cell phone flashlight and pointed it at her target.

“Hwaaaaaugh?!”

Letting out an incomprehensible shriek at the sight she saw, she quickly dashed back over to her corner of the room, diving into the little secret hideout she had constructed out of equipment blankets using the narrow space between a small bunk bed and the wall.

DESTROY

“Ngh...”

A short while after midnight, just as I was stretching and popping my neck in preparation for getting a little shut-eye, my phone started buzzing on the table. I took a peek to see whose name came up.

“Rokujo?”

At this time of night? I sure hope she didn’t run into trouble dungeon diving alone or something, I began to think—then remembered that there was no way she could’ve called me from inside the dungeon.

“I wonder what’s going on?”

When I picked up the phone, she sounded as though she was about to burst into tears.

“Y-Yoshimura! Help me!”

“Huh?” The unusually desperate-sounding SOS felt out of character for Rokujo, and I started to get a bit nervous, readjusting my grip on the phone. “What’s wrong? Where are you right now?”

Noticing my serious tone, Miyoshi stopped as she was on her way upstairs and started listening in.

According to Rokujo, she was at the GIJ office, and had ended up face-to-face with something she didn’t understand. If it had been someone trying to rob or murder her, that would’ve been a job for the police, but apparently it was something a lot smaller. The first thing that came to mind was maybe a rat or something.

“That sounds like the kind of thing you should contact a security guard for,” I stated.

“I already did!”

Apparently they had just told her to get in touch with an exterminator.

Not too surprising. As far as security was concerned, Rokujo was the only person present on her floor. Getting called out to investigate every last rat or cockroach she saw would drive the guards up the wall.

“What exactly has you so panicked?”

Going to help her wouldn’t be a big deal if she were in a dungeon, but a third party heading into a private corporation’s office probably isn’t the best idea in the world. And us getting roped into some kind of pest extermination thing at a GIJ branch office is pretty weird in itself.

“There’s— There’s blood!”

“Blood?”

Apparently she had seen some red liquid start oozing out from inside the desk.

Did some carnivorous animal start eating a rat or something? I can’t imagine that would produce enough blood to leak out of a desk drawer, though.

“Um, are you sure you’re all right? If nobody else is there, maybe you should hurry out and get to a safe place... Rokujo? Rokujo?!”

She had suddenly screamed while I was in the middle of talking, and I started calling her name out in a panic. However, the call cut off there, and redialing only took me to her voicemail.

“What the...?”

As I continued trying to call back a few more times, Miyoshi finally stepped off the stairs and approached me.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, Rokujo was apparently running into some kind of strange phenomenon at the GIJ branch office...”

It was a mistake to tell Miyoshi that she had suddenly screamed and hung up, though. With a gleam in her eyes, Miyoshi curled her hand into a tight fist.

“She’s in trouble, Kei! Let’s head out there right now and rescue her!”

“Huh...?” Sure, maybe something happened, but this is where normal people would get the police involved.

“You know as well as I do the police are there to respond after something has already happened. If they mobilized for every report of a phone call not going through, all the officers in the world wouldn’t be enough.”

“I mean, she did scream...” I pointed out.

“If she really is in trouble, she’ll be doomed if she has to wait for the police.”

“Guh...” I forgot how much Miyoshi loves this sort of thing...

“One of our employees is in trouble! Of course we’ve got to go save her!”

“Um, Mishiro may technically be an employee, but Rokujo isn’t.”

“Well, leaving a customer in the lurch is even more rude!”

I honestly can’t see how this is supposed to be work-related... And if it is, who exactly is gonna foot the bill?

I tried to think up various justifications to get her to stop, but once Miyoshi got like that, she was a runaway locomotive—nobody could stop her. No way, no how.

I grimaced and looked up at the clock.

“So are we going right now?” A fair amount of time had passed—it was already after midnight.

“Why not? It’s not every day we get a chance to do a little ghost busting!”

“Ghost busting is out of season. You realize it’s the middle of winter, right?”

Dungeons might’ve had their resident ghosts, but there was no way real ghosts existed in modern-day Japan. They were illusions created in the minds of frightened people—definitely just figments of our overactive imaginations.

“I’ll be ready in a jiffy!”

With that, Miyoshi glanced around her desk and started tossing whatever she thought we might need into Storage.

***

“It may just be a branch office, but the GIJ deals with gemstones, doesn’t it? I seriously doubt they’re just gonna let in a couple of random strangers.”

“We’ll never know unless we give it a shot!”

“And what shot do you think we actually have?”

“Does that mean you’re volunteering to Spider-Man your way into the building?”

“Let’s just hope our shot doesn’t turn into shots fired,” I replied with a scowl.

Our destination was a twelve-story building with rather tight-looking security located fairly close to Yoyogi Dungeon. According to the building directory, the GIJ branch office was on the eighth floor.

When we approached the building’s entrance, unsurprisingly we were stopped by security.

“Um, we have business with the GIJ...”

“Oh yeah, the exterminators, right? Must be rough, having to come out here so late.”

“Huh?”

“Did I mistake you for someone else? Could I see your ID?”

“U-Um, sure...”

Kei, we should use our WDA licenses to pass ourselves off as both explorers and exterminators! Miyoshi suggested via telepathy.

Are you kidding me...? I responded.

I pretended to fish around in my pocket and pulled my WDA card out of Vault, presenting it to the guard.

“Wait, you’re explorers? Don’t tell me there’s some kind of monster...”

“Oh, no, no. Take a look here—they wouldn’t send out a G-rank like me to handle a job like that.”

Hearing that and glancing at my card again, the security guard nodded in evident relief.

“Sending out explorers to exterminate rats, huh... Anyway, they’re expecting you. Here you go.” He handed me what seemed to be a lanyard-style key card, which would no doubt provide limited access to certain, specific areas. Then, he pointed us to the elevator in the back. “Just take that elevator up to the eighth floor.”

We thanked him and made our way over to the elevator. It opened as soon as we pressed the up arrow.

“I’ve never been in this building before. It’s bigger than I realized.”

“It sounds like the GIJ is renting out the entire eighth floor,” Miyoshi stated as she pressed the button for the eighth floor, which was the only one that worked.

“Are there really that many dungeon-produced minerals out there?”

The rent for such a large space must’ve been pretty hefty. It was possible they were using it for some other means of making revenue, but if all they did was appraisals, I couldn’t imagine they had enough business to warrant using the entire floor.

“I get the feeling this may be a JDA building,” Miyoshi said.

“Really?”

“I mean, all the companies in the building are dungeon-related.”

The building directory outside had revealed that, apparently. If that were the case, then it might’ve been a bad idea, in terms of security, to allow more than one business to operate on the same floor, given the value of what the GIJ handled.

“So you don’t think they’re paying that much?”

“Probably not.”

The elevator slowed down and jerked to a stop. We had reached the eighth floor. The doors slid open before us with a low hiss.

“Uh...”

Based on what we could tell from the elevator lights, we had arrived at what appeared to be a small, closed-off lobby area. At the front of it was a key card access door. That made perfect sense, but there was a small problem.

“Why is it pitch-black in here?”

Once the elevator door had closed behind us, we were in nearly complete darkness. All we could see was a glowing number eight hovering in midair by the elevator. Apparently we were on the correct floor, at least.

“Normally you’d think they’d at least leave some emergency lights on,” Miyoshi murmured.

We saw no trace of the “EXIT” sign denoting the emergency exit, nor the smaller guide lights scattered about that were supposed to lead people to it. From our location behind the partition, we couldn’t even see out the windows. The only light source other than the elevator number was a tiny white LED on a machine in front of us.

“Is it possible for emergency lights to just go out like that?” I mused.

“Sure, if the ballast fails, or the breaker connected to them gets tripped...”

“The timing seems awfully convenient.”

“It is kind of like a horror movie, isn’t it?”

“Don’t even start. And again, it’s out of season for horror.”

Struck by a sudden concern for Rokujo, I scanned the area around us.

“Another possible explanation is that it’s already been at least thirty minutes since they first turned on.”

Guide lights were mandated by the Fire Service Act, and emergency lights were mandated by the Building Standards Act. For a building the size of the one we were in, the former were required to stay illuminated for at least twenty minutes, and the latter for at least thirty, supposedly. However, even once that time had elapsed, they didn’t tend to just blink out instantly—they usually dimmed gradually.

We quietly called out to Rokujo, but heard no responses from any direction.

“What about her cell phone?” I asked.

“It rings a couple of times, then goes straight to voicemail,” Miyoshi replied.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t hear the sound of a phone ringing coming from anywhere while we were trying to call. I strained to listen just in case I could hear the sound of it vibrating, but to no avail. Giving up on calling, Miyoshi put her phone away.

“This is the point where most people would start wanting to hightail it out of here, right Kei?” she said with an amused grin.

I’d actually prefer not to end up locked into some terrifying fun-house ride of doom. If we just turn around right now and press the down arrow next to the elevator door, we can go right back to our normal lives. It’s not like the moment the elevator door opens, some horrible creature inside will grab us and spirit us away, or the door will just refuse to open at all...right?

“I guess so. But it’s always possible Rokujo is actually in trouble... I’d rather not hear about someone finding her cold, dead body tomorrow morning, y’know.”

“See, now it’s sounding more like a job for the police.”

“Nothing has changed since before we came out here, though,” I pointed out. “There’s still not a shred of evidence that anything has even happened. What would we call them for this time? The office being empty in the middle of the night?”

“It may as well be a prank call.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned on the flashlight app. I was lucky enough to have the Night Vision skill, but Miyoshi was going to need a light source.

“At any rate, we need to find out what’s going on here,” I stated.

“That sounds exactly like something the next victim would say,” Miyoshi replied with a concerned smile, then pulled a large flashlight out of Storage and switched it on.

Doing my best to ignore her, I continued my thought.

“I can think of at least one possible explanation, so be careful.”

“And what might that be?”

I brought my face right up next to hers, pointing at the flashlight she had just “pulled out.”

“That the JDA is conspiring with the GIJ to figure out exactly what we’re capable of,” I whispered.

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

Rokujo had been more or less forced on us by the Dungeon Management Section—and the conditions surrounding that certainly could’ve been construed as some kind of probe of our abilities. Still, while that whole deal might have been suspicious in its own right, manufacturing a situation like this felt far too complicated.

“I doubt it too. Just throwing it out there.”

Waving my light back and forth across the area, I found something that looked like a light switch and tried pressing it, but nothing happened. Giving Miyoshi a slight shrug, I approached the door in front and swiped my card key in front of the reader. As soon as I did, the LED turned green, accompanied by a faint electronic beep, and the lock opened with a strangely loud clack.

“I guess key cards are still usable, even though the locks seem like they’d run on electricity,” I murmured.

“They’re probably battery-operated—the type that functions stand-alone.”

“Well, something had to go right for us, huh?”

If it had been a motorized lock or an electric lock that required power to unlock, it would’ve been stuck in the locked position when the power went out, and we probably wouldn’t even have been able to get in.

“Let’s just hope and pray it doesn’t lead us right into something going teeeeerribly wrooooong!”

“Can you not?” I grumbled.

“All right, Kei, it’s not much, but I’d like you to have this.” With that, Miyoshi handed me the titanium wok I had used on our first ever dungeon dive.

Chuckling lightly, I swung the pan back and forth a few times like it was a tennis racket, then opened the door.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“It may be a pretty big area, but it’s still just a single floor of a business building. Let’s just check out every last place we can get into. Searching every nook and cranny is a gameplay basic!”

I gave her a stern look.

“You do realize this isn’t a game, right? Shouldn’t we start by checking the places Rokujo is most likely to be?” This wasn’t a situation where we had to search every room in order to find another key to progress further.

“It’s not like it’ll take that much longer to just cover everything!”

The area behind the door was a lobby-type space as well. As best I could tell, the portion of the lobby next to the elevator had been split off by the partition that divided the area. There was a vending machine up against the wall, but it had no power.

To our left was what appeared to be a conference room, and to our right—

“Now there’s a potential hot spot,” Miyoshi declared. Her light was shining up at a restroom sign.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s always someone, or something, lurking in the restroom, right?”

“Cut it out already. This is serious.”

I started heading left, toward the conference room.

“What? But what if Komugi called because she accidentally forgot to put down the toilet seat, then sat down and got her butt stuck in the toilet?”

“That’s quite an overactive imagination you’ve got,” I grumbled. “If that were the case, though, she definitely wouldn’t have called me. She would’ve reached out to someone familiar, like a boyfriend, or failing that, another woman, like you.”

Ignoring Miyoshi, who started going on about there being some particular fetish about that, I opened the conference room door and went inside.

“You’re being awfully careless,” Miyoshi chided, carefully following behind me as she lit the way with her flashlight. “If there had been a monster in here, it could’ve easily had you for dinner already.”

“I’m telling you, there aren’t any monsters in here.”

Not feeling as though we were in any particular danger, I took a quick glance across every shadowy corner, but unsurprisingly, found nothing. I would’ve been concerned had the place been dungeonized somehow, but if the JDA had detected any sort of associated dungeon tremor, they would’ve already been swarming all over the place.

“There could still be a person carrying a deadly weapon,” Miyoshi pointed out.

“Hmm...”

There was no denying Rokujo had called me for help. And with the call ending how it had, and us coming out here but not being able to find her, it was probably safe to assume something had actually happened. If she had gone outside, the security guard probably would’ve told us.

At that point, I raised my stats to levels appropriate for dungeon use. That way I probably wouldn’t get one-shotted unless something really extreme happened. If I managed to stay alive, potions and Super Recovery could take care of the rest. Probably.

“Okay, restroom time?”

“Yeah, yeah...” Putting on a strained half smile at Miyoshi and her toilet agenda, I started heading toward the restroom, but froze in my tracks in front of the entrance. “Wait. Waitwaitwait.”

“What’s the matter?”

“C’mon, it doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. I can’t go in there!” I gestured pointedly at the icon on the restroom door: a stick figure in a pink skirt.

“Nobody’s inside, though!”

“Weren’t you the one who was worried we’d find Rokujo in there with her butt stuck in the toilet?”

I tried flipping the switch at the entrance on and off a few times, but no lights came on.

“Well, I suppose this one’s up to me, then. I’ll be right back!”

“Be careful.”

“Well, like you said, there aren’t any monsters!”

“And like you said, there might be a bloodthirsty killer,” I reminded her.

Miyoshi headed into the restroom, and I heard what sounded like her opening the door to a stall. On the outside, it remained as dark and quiet as ever. It reminded me a bit of the inside of a dungeon, which in turn reminded me of my skills.

“Hey, I have Life Detection!”

Normally the Life Detection skill activated automatically immediately upon descending into a dungeon. That being said, it was still usable outside of dungeons. However, its range was more narrow and its potency lower. Also, it wasn’t very practical or useful when there were tons and tons of people around, so it normally just turned off automatically upon leaving a dungeon. Of additional note is that its decline in range and potency differed depending on where exactly it was used.

“Did you say something?” Miyoshi said, poking her head back out at my murmured exclamation.

“Oh, I was just thinking, we don’t need to bother running around aimlessly like this. We can just search for her with Life Detection.”

“You’re really bringing that up right now, Kei?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been using it since we first got here, and it hasn’t given me any solid signals.”

“For real?” I focused as hard as I could to locate anything. With skills that didn’t have any clear on/off switch, sometimes it was difficult to tell whether failing to pick up a signal meant that there was actually nothing there, or that the skill just hadn’t been activated. “Actually, I think I’m picking up something further up ahead...”

“I didn’t notice anything at all. Maybe it’s because you have double Life Detection?”

“Maybe. You’re right, though; it does feel like the reception gets pretty rough in some places here in the outside world...”

“Seems highly likely it has something to do with the density of D-Factors, doesn’t it?”

“Meaning tall, well-sealed buildings like this might have lower densities?”

“I think that’s a reasonable assumption.”

It was true that when I had used Life Detection back at Shinjuku Gyoen, it felt like I had been able to search in a wider area. Maybe that meant that areas with D-Factor densities beneath a certain threshold effectively became unsearchable. Although admittedly, undead creatures barely showed up on Life Detection to begin with, and certain monsters like lesser salamandoras and chamimiclons could avoid detection completely, so there might be multiple factors to consider.

“It’s a really interesting theory, but we’ll have to think about it later. Our first priority—”

“—is making sure Komugi is safe and sound,” Miyoshi said, finishing my thought.

“Since there actually is a faint signal, if it’s her, that means she’s alive.”

“The fact that it’s faint makes it sound like she might not be for much longer, though,” Miyoshi countered, grimacing.

“I really hope you didn’t just speak that into existence...”

Keeping an eye on our surroundings, I ran as fast as I could toward the apparent source of the signal.

***

“Is this the place?”

“I think so.”

The signal that I had picked up on Life Detection was behind the door in front of us. There was a sign above the door with “Appraisal Room 2” written on it.

I swiped my key card in front of the reader at the entrance, and the door immediately unlocked with a soft beep. Gently opening the door a crack, I cautiously called out our missing acquaintance’s name. We had no way of telling whether it was her inside the room, after all.

“Rokujo?”

Flinging open the door, Miyoshi ran swiftly past me, dodged around the desk, and headed over to the corner of the room where the signal seemed to be coming from. There, she was greeted with a concerning sight.

“Rokujo?!”

A pair of legs were sticking out from under a blanket.

I immediately rushed over, yanked the blanket away, and checked her neck for a pulse.

“Looks like she’s just unconscious.”

“I’ve got some ammonia,” Miyoshi offered.

She really does have something for everything, I thought to myself with a chuckle as I lifted Rokujo’s torso and placed the ammonia under her nose.

HURRY

“In here?”

“That’s right. Then it sounded like something fell, and when I came up for a closer look, I saw blood...”

When she came to, we confirmed that Rokujo was unhurt. After she had seen something that appeared to be blood while we were on the phone, she had heard some kind of loud sound and then fainted. Is someone who’s that much of a scaredy-cat really cut out to be a dungeon explorer?

At any rate, she was fine. Relieved, I was ready to leave the building right away, but Miyoshi suggested that we might as well give the place a quick sweep, just in case.

“So, blood, you say?”

Miyoshi shone her flashlight over the area where it had supposedly been, but we didn’t see anything that looked like bloodstains. I even ran my fingers along the opening of the bottom drawer, but didn’t end up with anything sticky on them.

“No sign of blood that we can see.” Miyoshi murmured. “Hmm...? The drawer’s locked.”

“Oh, just a moment!”

Rokujo pulled a key out of her purse and handed it to Miyoshi, who opened the bottom drawer of the desk and immediately pointed her flightlight inside.

“Hmm, nothing really stands out— Huh?”

“What is it?”

“Ummm... There’s a hole in the bottom. Has it always been like that?”

Miyoshi stuck her hand through the hole and then out around the side of the open drawer, closing and opening her fist a few times. Apparently it was a pretty big opening.

Rokujo merely shook her head, stunned.

Putting my hand inside the drawer, I felt around for the bottom of the drawer just above it and found exactly what I expected to find.

“The next drawer up has a hole in it too.”

“What?”

We unlocked all of the drawers and inspected them. Every single one had a roughly circular hole in it, as if something had melted all the way through from the top to the bottom.

“What is going on?”

“It’s like someone was keeping a xenomorph locked in the top drawer, and it deliberately injured itself so it could escape,” I said.

“If that were the case, Komugi’s hand would’ve gotten messed up pretty badly when she touched it. You did touch that bloodlike stuff, right?” Miyoshi asked.

“I sure did.”

But there was no bloodlike stuff to be seen.

I got down on my stomach to take a look under the desk, then reached my hand in.

“Kei, you probably shouldn’t just shove your hand into random holes. You might end up losing it.”

“No, there’s something under here...”

I had stuck my hand in because I had seen what looked like a darker area, and sure enough...

“It’s a hole.”

“Another one?”

Once I had stood back up, Miyoshi and I lifted the hole-riddled desk and moved it to the side. Underneath it, there was a gaping hole in the floor about thirty centimeters wide—positioned directly beneath where the hole in the bottom drawer would have been when it was closed.

“It looks like this is a raised floor, and there’s an open space underneath it,” Miyoshi observed.

“What could’ve even made a hole like this, anyway— Hmm?”

Noticing something that had apparently fallen out of one of the drawers into the floor hole, I picked the object up.

“Is this...”

It looked like a fragment of something I had seen before.

“That’s a piece of one of the potion cases you made, Kei!”

“Ah!”

Rokujo had apparently put the adventuring kit we had given her in the bottom desk drawer. The set had included a first-rank potion.

Miyoshi eyed the fragment.

“I’m not sure whether to call this broken or melted...”

It was almost as if the middle portion of the cylindrical case had been melted away, causing it to break apart afterward.

“Either way, the potion is probably a goner as well,” I said.

“Maybe that is what Komugi found?”

Potions were red in color; if she had gotten some on her fingers, she could have mistaken it for blood in the dark. Of course, a potion was a lot less viscous than blood, and there wouldn’t have been very much of it. But unlike blood, potion contents just vanished into thin air once they’d taken effect, which could explain why there was no trace of it left now.

The question was, did that mean something wanted the potion and went under the floorboards after it?

Miyoshi pointed her flashlight into the hole in the floor to see how things looked. Inside, several cables had melted, and portions of them appeared to be charred, leaving the faint smell of burnt electronics hanging in the air.

“I suppose the short here must’ve tripped the breaker, then?” she surmised.

“Maybe. How far down does the damage go, anyway?”

She shone the light further down. There, we saw that one portion of the concrete slab was bare, unlike the rest of it.

“It looks like there’s maybe a twelve centimeter hole gouged out of the concrete.”

The area Miyoshi was pointing to was a clean cut through the slab, like a giant scoop taken out of a bulk two-liter ice cream container. Cross sections of rebar gleamed in the flashlight’s beam.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Did this thing just take a chunk right out of the floor, reinforced steel and all?”

“The cuts are so smooth, it’s like something just melted through it and carried it away,” Miyoshi murmured in awe, then reached in and traced a finger across the border of the concrete and metal. “Super smooth cuts.” When she finished her inspection, she stood back up and quipped, “It’s like someone from Marukami Village with a jewel in their forehead stopped by.”

“What is going on here?”

If it could do something like that, whatever this thing was could probably whittle its way through anything in the entire building.

What if the next place it cuts through happens to be something important for maintaining structural integrity? What if it causes the building to no longer be able to support its own weight?

It wasn’t hard to imagine that turning into an absolute disaster.

“First of all, where did our, um, culprit, even go?” Miyoshi wondered out loud.

The raised floor inside that room was only maybe twelve or so centimeters high. If whatever it was escaped by crawling under the floorboards, it had to be that size or smaller—at least in height.

Suddenly, a desk on the other side of the room tilted downward, making a loud sound.

Rokujo let out a shriek.

“Miyoshi!” I shouted.

Just then, out of nowhere, a signal appeared on my Life Detection.

“There’s something under the floor!”

The signal was there briefly, but by the time we made it over to the desk to check underneath, it had vanished into thin air.

“What the hell is going on?!”

“It looks like one of the supports for the raised floor disappeared, and the floor buckled under the weight of the desk,” Miyoshi explained.

“Can we send in the Arthurs?”

“If they pop out of the shadows while they’re under there, we’ll have an even bigger mess on our hands up here.”

They might’ve been able to chase after it while hiding in the shadows, but they had to come out to affect anything in our world. Even Glas or Gleisad wouldn’t have been able to fit inside that narrow of a space.

“Any chance we can drop it into a good ol’ shadow pit?” I asked.

“We don’t even know what we’re dealing with, much less how big it actually is...”

Whatever it was, it could easily cut through a concrete floor slab. We definitely had no idea what might happen if we tried to dunk it into oblivion—without a clear idea of its size, we could end up causing a huge impact to the surrounding area.

“I guess we’ll have to save that for a last resort,” I mused. “But why did it suddenly show up on Life Detection for a bit?”

“If our hypothesis about Life Detection from earlier was accurate, then maybe there was a sudden increase in D-Factor density in that area?”

“Maybe it came out of hiding to reveal its location to us?”

“What would be the point of that, though?”

“Fair enough... I guess if we just consider the phenomenon itself, it would make more sense to assume that the D-Factor density in the area increases when it cuts something away.”

Miyoshi blinked.

“Would that mean that when it cuts things away, it releases D-Factors?”

“Maybe.” It was possible that it used the D-Factors in the process of breaking down matter.

“Anyway, we may not know where it came from originally, but if we think about the series of events so far, it must have started out in the top drawer of Komugi’s desk. From there, for some reason it deliberately melted through the floors of multiple drawers until it reached the bottom one, then proceeded further down to the floor.” Miyoshi pointed to each drawer in order as she spoke, ending at the hole in the floor. “Almost as if it were chasing after something.”

Hearing that, Rokujo finally spoke up in a quiet voice.

“The top drawer...?”

Suddenly, an idea came to me.

“Was it after the potion?”

Based on Rokujo’s testimony, the contents of the potion had definitely leaked out onto the floor. If the culprit had dissolved the bottoms of the drawers in search of that, then further dissolved the raised floor and even part of the slab beneath it, where some of the liquid might have fallen down to...

“You know, I wonder if we could lure it out with another one?”

I made a show of reaching into my pocket and ostensibly produced a first-rank potion from within, though as per usual, it really came out of Vault.

“Possibly,” Miyoshi said, eyeing me. “That’s a million-yen piece of bait you’re using, though.”

Just then, Rokujo sheepishly interrupted our conversation.

“Um, excuse me...”

“Is something wrong?” Miyoshi asked.

“I’m, uh, pretty sure it’s a slime doing all this.”

“A slime?!” Miyoshi and I shouted in unison.

Rokujo went on to confess to us how, entranced by its beauty, she had ended up smuggling a slime core out of the dungeon and adding it to her collection.

I was almost at a loss for words.

“Can slime cores even regenerate outside a dungeon?”

“What if there were some magic crystals nearby?” Rokujo asked.

“Magic crystals? In a GIJ office?”

As we scratched our heads, confused, Rokujo started explaining the incident to us from the very beginning.

“So here’s what happened—”

Apparently, it had all started with various dungeon-produced stones disappearing from around her desk.

“I guess stones from the dungeon have D-Factors in them?” I wondered.

“Probably,” Miyoshi replied.

“So presumably it used those to regenerate its body.”

“I doubt the other stones provide D-Factors in quantities nearly as large as magic crystals do, though.”

I rubbed my chin.

“So while it was desperately attempting to regenerate, there just so happened to be a first-rank potion in the same desk.”

I figured potions were chock-full of D-Factors. Absorbing one would probably have brought it back into tip-top shape or even better...

Suddenly, another loud crash reverberated from across the empty room. Apparently several desks a short distance away had fallen into the floor.

“Uh, is it just me, or is it caving in wider areas than it was before?”

“Maybe it’s still growing?” Miyoshi suggested.

“At this rate of growth, we’re gonna be in big trouble—”

I barely had time to finish my thought before a powerful signal appeared underneath us and started moving, sending desk after desk crashing through the bottom of the floor in its wake.

“Eeeeek!!!”

“What’s with the horror movie schtick?!”

Once the entire row of desks by the window had fallen down, the signal disappeared again, and the room fell silent. The only sound we could hear drifting across the room was Rokujo breathing heavily.

“It can actually break things down while moving at that speed?” Miyoshi murmured incredulously.

It certainly seemed like an entirely different beast from the slimes on the first floor of Yoyogi.

“This thing was left in an environment with an extremely low density of D-Factors, and still managed to regenerate.”

“The little guy’s got spunk,” Miyoshi admitted.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it even adapted to its environment somehow during that whole process.”

“Hey, do you think it’s possible for slimes to even have spunk?”

“How the hell would I know?”

There were lots and lots of slimes inside the dungeons. Whenever someone brought in an object from the outside, it was as if they all came out of the woodwork at once. But there was only one single slime in the building we were in.

With so many objects around it that needed to be broken down, was it even possible for one slime to do that on its own? What if, through some kind of instinct, it acquired the power to make that possible when it regenerated from its core in a location mostly devoid of D-Factors?

“Wh-Why isn’t it breaking everything down at once?” Rokujo asked, looking around the room that had quieted down again. All the desks by the window were in rough shape, with most of their legs having sunk into the floor.

“Maybe it’s taking a postmeal nap?”

The reason it only shows up on Life Detection when it’s breaking things down is probably because that’s when the D-Factors are doing their job. Then it would make sense to assume that the reason it disappears instantly afterward is that as soon as it finishes absorbing everything, it assimilates into its environment. It’s like a form of camouflage.

After that, it probably uses whatever it broke down to reconstruct itself. One might even say it’s evolving to adapt to its environment—though it might be too sudden a change for that to be an accurate description.

“It’s called ‘expanded reproduction,’ right?” Miyoshi said.

“With an extremely high rate of accumulation,” I added.

At any rate, we can’t afford to let it out of this room. We don’t know exactly how much of the blame can even be placed on Rokujo—and never in my worst nightmares would I want to see a massive monster that can swallow entire buildings show up in the middle of Tokyo and face off against the JSDF.

“Anyway, we need to do something about this before it turns into a kaiju movie,” I muttered.

“Well, we’re only up against one slime. We have a guaranteed method of taking it down in one shot.”

I squinted in thought.

“Hmmmmm...”

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t think pieces of it would just start falling off before the surfactant could spread across its entire surface, do you?” That wasn’t an issue with ordinary little slimes, but would we really be able to destroy a giant one instantaneously?

“I couldn’t tell you... We’re not even sure how the mechanism behind it works to begin with,” Miyoshi reminded me.

“I really don’t even want to imagine facing off against a giant tentacle thing with our Benzetho-Blasts...” That’s the kind of thing you see all over the place in low-budget monster horror flicks.

“We should probably just lure it out and finish it off before it makes another move.”

I nodded.

“Agreed.”

May as well take this opportunity to have Rokujo hide out in the hallway. At this point, we’ve got no choice but to give up on this disaster scene of a room.

“Rokujo, is there anything in this room that we really shouldn’t destroy?” I asked.

“What? You shouldn’t destroy any of it!”

I mean, yeah, I suppose we shouldn’t.

“Let me put it another way. Is there anything in this room that would be absolutely irreplaceable if it got destroyed?”

“Well I definitely didn’t leave anything in there that was entrusted to us by clients... But what about my collection?”

“Can you gather it all up?”

I glanced over at the desk that had kicked this whole incident off. It looked like that would prove quite a difficult task, given the darkness and the unusual circumstances we were in.

“Anything truly irreplaceable is back at my house, so if worse comes to worst...” Rokujo conceded quietly, choking back tears.

I gave her a small nod and took her over in front of the door. Meanwhile, Miyoshi cleared out a space in the middle of the room, then placed the potion I had brought out on a desk.

There were openings in various locations throughout the building based on its original construction plans. Although there probably wasn’t any duct space in the floor, there were almost definitely holes for running electrical wiring, LAN cables, phone lines, and the like.

It was highly unlikely, though, that those holes would be located smack-dab in the center of the room. Without knowing exactly where any of those openings were, the best place to lure our target was precisely that location.

Ushering Rokujo out of the room, I gave her some final instructions.

“We’ll get this over with quickly, so please, just wait out there until things quiet down.”

“O-Okay. Please don’t be too rough on the place.”

I smiled faintly in response, then shut the door.

“All right, Kei, I’m gonna break the potion.”

After placing several containers of benzethonium chloride solution nearby, I raised my stats to max, then fired off a wisecrack in response.

“And I’m gonna pray this plan actually works.”

There was a tiny cracking sound as something shattered, and a liquid started spilling out across the desk. Miyoshi, who had moved to the other side of the room, pulled a Benzetho-Blast spray bottle out of Storage.

“One way or another, we’re gonna finish this in a single shot.”

“If it breaks down the floor and escapes into the lower floors, we won’t be able to chase after it.”

I nodded.

“If that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole building collapsed before we could even arrange to be let inside.”

“This reminds me of when we were up against Ngai,” Miyoshi said.

“Oh, come on, he wasn’t that bad a Ngai...”

I heard a tiny snerk escape from her sinuses. Control yourself, Miyoshi! This is not the time to start cracking up.

“Though really, who would’ve thought that bringing a core out of the dungeon could cause a situation like this, depending on the environment it was stored in?” I mused.

It was possible someone had brought a slime outside before, but without benzethonium chloride, it would’ve been extremely difficult to reduce it to a core first. Rokujo was most likely the first person ever to do that.

Miyoshi shrugged.

“Yet another topic for our next report to the JDA.”

With an abrupt earthshaking thud, the entire floor near the window seemed to undulate, and the portion of it that was bulging out started making a beeline for the center of the room.

“Here it comes!”

The words had scarcely left my mouth when the entire raised floor was suddenly blasted away.

“How big is this thing?!”

“Something’s off about its dimensions! It’s just spread out across a wide area, and doesn’t seem to be particularly thick—”

Paying us no heed whatsoever, the wide, flat mass of a slime reared up like a tsunami and crashed down toward the desk in the center of the room.

“Now’s our chance, Miyoshi!”

The two of us fired off simultaneous Benzetho Blasts. The parts of the creature we struck were blasted to bits with loud popping sounds, but just as we’d feared, it wasn’t enough to destroy the main body.

“It’s just too damn huge!”

“Less saying, more spraying, Kei!”

Writhing wildly as if it were screaming in agony while being burned at the stake, the creature started making its way toward the corner of the room in an attempt to get away from us.

Each time our shots hit it, more parts of it were blasted off, and it was gradually getting smaller. Despite that, though, it kept moving toward the desk it had originally been in, as if it were searching for something...

“It’s headed for that hole, Kei!”

“That hole? Which hole is that hole?!” With maxed AGI, I managed to dash ahead of the slime in the direction it was going, but with the room a complete shambles, there was no way I could find a specific hole in the floor. “Dammit! Forget it, then!”

I pulled every gallon-sized container of benzethonium chloride solution I had out of Vault and slammed them all into the ground. The glass shattered with a violent crash, flooding the entire area with fluid. As soon as the slime came in contact, it exploded instantly.

“The core, Kei! Get the core!”

The core had been sent flying, and it sailed through the air as if guided by something.

“Why is there a hole in that exact direction?!”

Ignoring everything else, I dove toward the hole the core was headed for.

Which is going to reach the hole first—the core or my hand?

Everything suddenly went silent, and it felt like the world was moving in slow motion. Thrusting my hand forward with all my might, I thought I felt my fingertips graze the core, but it slipped past them and continued on its hole-bound trajectory.

“NNNGAAAAAH!!!”

As my momentum carried me past the core, I swung my leg out in a last-ditch effort to try and punt it away, but just barely missed. I grunted as my back slammed hard into the wall, causing me to bounce off and face-plant on the debris-strewn floor.

The core struck the edge of the hole and bounced straight upward, like a golf ball that had just barely missed its mark, then started circling around the rim.

“Please, God!”

Just as I was getting ready to stand back up, I saw it make another loop around the rim, then pop right back up onto the floor. I watched it roll toward me and finally come to a stop right in front of my face—and the moment it did, sound finally returned to the world around me.

“Kei!”

“Owww...”

After seeing me dive headlong onto the floor that was littered with shattered fragments of gallon-sized jars, Miyoshi ran over to me, her expression frantic.

I stood there in silence, cuts all over my body, covered in blood—

“Huh. You look fine.”

—or so I had thought at first. The broken glass had sliced up my clothes pretty good, and the benzethonium chloride solution had turned me into a sticky mess, but there was no blood on me whatsoever.

Once she had patted me down here and there to make sure everything was kosher, Miyoshi finally relaxed, letting out a sigh of relief.

“What are your stats set to, anyway?”

“They’re maxed out.”

“Aha. That VIT’s really putting in some work!”

“No kidding.” Maybe it isn’t complete baloney to think that I might be able to take a bullet.

“Um, uhhh...?!” Rokujo, perhaps noticing that the commotion had died down, had opened the door and poked her face in. The state of the room had left her at a loss for words.

“Oh, we’re finished now!”

Rokujo swallowed.

“So is the room, apparently.”

Taking another look at the room around her, which was a complete mess—or perhaps “utterly demolished” would’ve been a more accurate description—Miyoshi offered a strained smile.

Leaving Rokujo be as she surveyed the devastation around her and sighed in despair, Miyoshi went over and picked the core up off the floor, placing it in her palm.

“Whew, what a night! But one thing’s for sure, at least—”

As she struck a stupidly smug pose, making me wonder how on earth she planned on finishing that sentence, I saw her raise the core high above her head.

“—this mystery has been dissolved!”

Hearing that, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me, and I hung my head in silence.

Rokujo didn’t seem to get it, though, and merely stood there with a metaphorical question mark floating over her head.

“So, um, about the core...”

“Huh? No reaction at all?!”

Of course not, stupid, I implied by shooting Miyoshi a cold glare, then took the core from her and placed it next to Rokujo.

“You should be the one to do this, Rokujo,” I said, then retrieved her usual hammer and held it out to her.

She stared at the spherical object for a while with a tearful expression, until finally, she looked up again and took the hammer from me, eyes full of resolve.

“You were...really beautiful,” she murmured softly.

After gazing at the core for a bit longer, she slowly raised the hammer above her head—then brought it down in one swift motion.

In the dim predawn illumination of the room, the core dissolved into a puff of black light, shimmering like shards of obsidian before scattering into nothingness—just as Rokujo’s tears scattered to the ground beneath her.

“It’s almost dawn,” Miyoshi whispered, glancing at the time.

Soon, we began to hear the faint sound of sirens. Looking out the window, we saw some police cars and what appeared to be a number of security company vehicles gathering below. Perhaps one of the security lines had been cut, or maybe one of the guards had heard the commotion and reported it.

“Well, the police will probably be up here soon. Do you think they’ll believe us if we tell them that a single slime did all this?” Miyoshi frowned as she eyed the devastated room.

Common sense dictated that would’ve been impossible, and the slime “culprit” had already vanished into particles of light. All that was left was a room that had been ripped to shreds, me in my torn-up clothes, and the two of them.

“You didn’t happen to record this, did you?” I asked Miyoshi, just in case.

“I don’t record things when we’re not inside dungeons, Kei.”

“Yeah, I pretty much figured...”

Hopefully Rokujo’s testimony and the scooped-out floor cross section will be enough evidence to convince them...

“There’s one other thing, though.”

Miyoshi suddenly turned to look at me, a serious look in her eyes. The light coming in through the glass from outside gave her a bright white outline.

“Wh-What?”

“I...”

“You what?”

“I can’t believe...that slime...was the only surviving member of its species. But...if benzethonium chloride...is ever made public...it’s possible...that another slime...might appear...somewhere in the world again.”

I let out a groan.

“I don’t remember you being a paleontologist, Miyoshi.”

She stuck out her tongue with a “Tee-hee.”

That was almost certainly going to happen, though. Someday, benzethonium chloride would go public—and when it did, there would absolutely be parents taking their children on trips to the first floor of Yoyogi to get their D-Cards.

Some of them might even try to take home slimes like they were stray dogs, secretly raising them inside their sheds—

Just then, the elevator let out a beep as it stopped on our floor. As I gazed again at the state of the room we were in, I let out a sigh, knowing that we were probably in for a long session of questioning.

I have no idea whether they’ll believe us when we tell them a slime caused this entire mess—the only solid evidence dissipated into a puff of light, after all.

At least this night of terror has finally come to an end. For now, we may as well just be happy about that.

Annotations

A xenomorph injuring itself so it could escape: In Alien: Resurrection, some of the alien xenomorphs escape a containment room by killing one of their brethren and using its blood to melt through the floor.

Someone from Marukami Village: A reference to Land of Tanabata by Hitoshi Iwaaki. Marukami Village is the birthplace of certain people with the ability to carve out spherical holes in space. Speaking of which, supposedly a live action adaptation is going to air on Disney+ this year (in July of 2024).

Paleontologist: A reference to Kyohei Yamane, a character appearing in the original Godzilla film. Miyoshi was riffing off his famous speech. The strange pauses in her lines are because she was mimicking exactly how Kyohei Yamane (played by Takashi Shimura) delivered them in the movie.

Commentary

Any time Komugi shows up, the stories she’s in tend to include a ton of specialized info. I guess when you’re writing a so-called maniac, you can’t help but channel a bit of your own inner maniac at the same time. Probably.

This story was originally crammed into the “January 14, 2019” section. There are a few traces of it leftover in volume 5, such as Miyoshi being really tired on the morning of January 15.

When it was being published as a short story, I had written it with the intent of placing it after the Yokohama incident from volume 6. However, since the discussion about slimes was rendered rather redundant by the events in the volume itself, I edited it to make it seem like the incident happened on January 13 before publishing it. Unfortunately, it was not a Friday, but a Sunday.

Consequently, that means Komugi smuggled the core out during boot camp. She’s been causing trouble from day one, in true Komugi fashion!

Note that while the hypothesis that slimes might be D-Factor generators appeared in volume 6, the incident in this short story is set chronologically before that hypothesis is made. To line up with that, I rewrote things from the perspective that they might be using D-Factors when they cut things away.

I went a similar route regarding the observation of slime cores regenerating outside of the dungeons. By treating the events in this story as a special set of circumstances, in which the slime regenerated by absorbing a first-rank potion in an area with a low D-Factor density, the experiments in volume 6 don’t need to take that incident into account, since it was an exception.

At any rate, I hope you manage to enjoy this author’s futile attempts to retroactively pull things into some semblance of continuity.

Finally, regarding all the technical content: While I did my fair share of research on these topics, if I happened to get anything wrong, I’d highly appreciate it if you let me know!

Chapter 6: AB Night

Foreword

Heh, heh, heh. This is a tale from a time when I was truly backed into a corner. (Honestly I feel like I’m backed into a corner on a daily basis, but that’s more of a psychological thing.)

The story takes place at the end of volume 6, after our two heroes had left Yoyogi Dungeon and gone home.

Now, without further ado, please enjoy the lamest, most bog-standard short story of all time.

AB Night

“Whew, home at last.”

Once our feet had managed to carry our exhausted bodies back from Yoyogi, I opened the door to our dark office, took off my shoes, and headed straight for the couches.

“Dhaaaugh.”

Miyoshi let out a decidedly unfeminine sound as she flopped face down onto a couch.

“Sheesh, what’s with the zombie grunt?”

As I sat down on the couch across from Miyoshi, Rosary, who had been nestled on my head, fluttered up and landed on a ceiling beam, letting out a tiny chirp. I really need to put together a proper perch for the girl.

“Look, these past couple days have really taken a lot out of me. There’s a point where it gets to be too much. I am sick to death of having event after event shoveled down my throat.”

As if on cue, a small groan erupted from Miyoshi’s stomach.

“Sounds like you’ve got at least a little room left down there. Want me to make something?”

Before the whole Dr. Tylor visit, we had barely started eating when Cavall had suddenly shown up. Then, right as we had been about to get back to our meal, the whole Rosary thing had happened.

“Hmmm, not a bad idea... I do have a few things I’d like to discuss and try to get straight in my mind.”

“Things like our conversation with Dr. Tylor?” I can’t really think of what else it could possibly be...

Since we hadn’t actually managed to capture the discussion at the secret garden, the two of us had kept busy on the way back by recording ourselves going over what we could remember about it.

“That’s a huge amount of stuff to think about all on its own, but even if we focus solely on what to report to the JDA, I doubt we’d be able to come to any conclusions anytime soon.”

“Yeah, probably not...” I trailed off.

Can’t believe he gave us that “I hate to see scientific progress bound up by politics” line. Does he think anyone would actually enjoy getting caught up in political gamesmanship?

We’ll probably have to transcribe the recordings we made earlier, but it’s no big deal to save any big discussion until later. It’s not exactly a problem that the two of us can do anything about on our own, and we’ll need to be extra careful about who we bring into the fold. Though Naruse is definitely a safe bet.

“So what’s on the menu?” Miyoshi asked.

“Meh. I’d say we could take the lazy route and do delivery, but that’s not really an option, considering what time it is. We could do some of the premade dishes I’ve always got on hand, or I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have cup noodles every now and then.”

“We’ve got some langoustine in the fridge, fresh from Suruga Bay!”

“Huh?”

Langoustine was a French word, and in this case she was using it to refer to the Japanese lobster, Metanephrops japonicus, also known as akazaebi. In France, they typically used “langoustine” to refer to various lobsters from Europe, New Zealand, and Japan, though they’re all technically different species.

“It’s about that time of year, and lo and behold I saw them at the store, so I bought a few.”

Japanese lobster from Suruga Bay was a high-end seafood that started showing up for sale in the early part of January.

“You bought them just because you saw them...?” I let out a sigh. “Do we have to make them now? Can’t we just do the instant noodle thing instead?”

“Uh-uh, no way. I need some real yum-yums if I want to stay motivated!”

From her position face down on the couch, Miyoshi started flailing her legs back and forth. What’s with the spoiled kid routine? And what do you need motivation for, anyway? We’re just gonna go right to bed after this!

“Donbei noodles are actually pretty yummy, if you ask me.”

“Come on, Kei. You just like their fox girl mascot.”

“She is pretty cute.”

I went on to explain to Miyoshi that I had first seen the Nissin Donbei noodle mascot, Don-gitsune, three years ago at a Cine Drive film festival that a coworker had tricked me into going to. The only reason I had bothered to go all the way out to Koenji in the first place was because the title of one of the movies was Inherit the Stars.

“I still can’t believe that. There I was, expecting to see a movie about finding Charlie on the moon, but it wasn’t even remotely related to that story.”

“The slight character differences in the Japanese title should’ve been your first clue. Besides, how would anyone from Japan be able to get the movie rights for a story like that?”

“Come on. The English title was exactly the same as the James P. Hogan novel! They had to have done it on purpose. Nobody could’ve guessed it’d end up being some super-low-budget indie flick...”

“Yeah, they were at least nice enough to add an ellipsis at the end when they aped the same phrase for the title of the final episode of Nadia. I guess when a show is that famous, it has to be a little more mindful about copyright law.” Miyoshi nodded sagely as she said this, stretching her arms backward and grabbing onto her raised ankles in some kind of yoga pose.

She can be awfully bendy sometimes.

“What are you even talking about?”

Admittedly, the last word of the Japanese title, Hoshi o Tsugu Mono, being in kanji instead of kana did seem kind of odd. But I’d figured that kind of thing happened all the time when they made movies based on novels, so I’d put it to the back of my mind. Then, twenty seconds after the movie started, I knew I had been bamboozled. I immediately whirled around to shoot a glare at my colleague, but since we were at a movie, I couldn’t exactly gripe or stand up. All I could do was stare at the screen.

When I saw the fox girl mascot in the Donbei commercial, though, with her messy and utterly graceless way of eating curry, I couldn’t help but think she was pretty cute.

The movie itself was rather subdued throughout, and I had unfortunately pulled an all-nighter the previous night, so I ended up dozing off, leaving me with no memory of what happened beyond the first few scenes...

“Besides, Cine Drive was literally an independent film festival,” Miyoshi pointed out.

“Weren’t the three Star Wars prequels considered independent films?”

“The United States and Japan have very different definitions of ‘independent film,’ you know.”

Sighing again, I glanced at the time and noticed it was already past midnight.

“Well, if Don-gitsune is out, I guess we can make do with the premade stuff we have, or put together some bentos...”

“Listen, Kei, that stuff in the fridge isn’t getting any fresher!”

Yeah, there really hasn’t been any time to do anything with it over the past couple days...

“Ugh, fine, fine,” I grumbled, then stood up and headed over to the fridge.

“You’re welcome to make it into an etouffée with some champagne, top it with a little sabayon and broil it, then add a side of truffles, and some port sauce with langoustine cream whipped into it.”

“You’re welcome to make your own damn dinner.”

Does she even care what time it is? I wondered with a bitter smile, opening the fridge to take out a few—

“Huh? How many of these things did you buy...?”

“Four dozen.”

“Who the hell do you expect to eat four dozen langoustines?!”

Placing a hand on my hip in exasperation, I looked across the counter at Miyoshi. Without moving from her position face-planted on the couch, she pointed down at the floor. A tail was sticking out of it, wagging in exuberant anticipation.

“Our dogs sure do live in the lap of luxury,” I muttered.

Incredulous, I pulled the tray out of the fridge and started prepping the langoustines, splitting them down the middle and placing them next to each other on a grill pan.

Finally deciding to get up, Miyoshi came into the dining room and peered over at the work I was doing.

“So how are you gonna make them, anyway?”

“Add a little salt, mix them up with some olive oil, sprinkle on some Italian parsley, and voilà!” I explained, sliding the grill pan into the oven. “Read my lips, Miyoshi. From this moment on, these things are scampi, not langoustines.” In French cuisine, they were called langoustines, but in Italian cuisine they were known as scampi.

“These are from Suruga Bay, so technically they’re akazaebi.”

“You were the one who called them langoustines to begin with!”

It was true that the lobsters known as langoustines or scampi in Europe, sometimes called Norway lobsters, were not the same species as the ones in Japan. Looking at them side by side, they had quite different claw shapes and overall appearances. The ones in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea were the species called Nephrops norvegicus, while the ones found in Suruga Bay were known as Metanephrops japonicus. The “japonicus” portion of the scientific name was a dead giveaway.

Even among the lobsters usually sold in Japan as akazaebi, sometimes they mixed in a few specimens of a related species called Sagami akazaebi, or Metanephrops sagamiensis, which were a little smaller and had claws with thick, white tips. It was easy enough to tell the difference, but they were just tossed in together at random anyway.

“When I saw all those akazaebi lined up at the seafood counter, I just couldn’t stop myself from buying four dozen.”

“I don’t get it... Why that specific number?”

“Seeing so many of them all in a row made me think of a certain idol group!”

I could practically hear my eyes rolling.

“So you bought A-Kazae-Bi 48?!”

Did she really shell out for four dozen of these things just so she could make a throwaway reference to the forty-eight girl idol group AKB48?

“Don’t worry, Kei. We’ll be able to down four dozen of these in two shakes of a hellhound’s tail!”

We did have six Arthurs to feed, and the individual scampi weren’t that big, so they really might be able to gulp them down in an instant. Still, that didn’t change the fact that she had gone majorly overboard on quantity.

With nothing left to do but wait for the meal to finish cooking, I checked the timer on the grill and took a seat at the dining table.

“So what’s your take, anyway?” I asked.

Miyoshi, who had hurried over to the cellar area in the back to pick out a wine as soon as I mentioned what I was making, responded without even looking back at me.

“For a simple scampi dish like this, how about something nice and fresh, like a Friuli Pinot Grigio? A Ramato, for example, can work with a really wide range of foods.”

“Not about that...”

Look, I understand going with a Friuli, since the Mediterranean langoustines used in scampi do inhabit the northern Adriatic, but did you seriously think I was asking about wine? I let out a light groan.

“Since the Tylor incident is off-limits for discussion, what else would I be asking about besides the slime observations?”

Pulling out a small bottle of wine from the cellar area, Miyoshi nodded slightly.

“Assuming the actual rule of thumb is that observing man-made objects inside a dungeon prevents them from being targeted for breakdown, this last time I wanted to test the limits of what exactly was considered ‘observing.’” She placed two glasses down on the table, then deftly tore off the seal on top of the wine bottle and inserted the corkscrew into the cork before continuing. “Every last piece of equipment we set up at Yokohama was going strong until the very end.”

All the cameras we were using for surveillance, as well as the cables that connected the second floor door to the first floor, which we were particularly concerned about, remained in place and fully intact up until right before the final charge. And that was despite the fact that enough time had passed to where they would’ve normally been completely consumed.

“If the results of the observation experiment were valid, then all we’d need to do to keep things running and intact is set up surveillance cameras,” Miyoshi concluded. “Though we still don’t know whether the act of recording is a part of the equation.”

The reason we weren’t sure was that every single one of our security feeds at Yokohama had been set to record.

“Isn’t it also possible that the portion of the stairs that extends above the first floor of the dungeon just had too low a concentration of D-Factors for slimes to spawn at all?” I asked.

“Everything between the entrance to the first floor and the second floor was fine too, though. Besides, what about the exponential growth of slimes that was already happening on the second floor itself? If slimes really are D-Factor generators, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that a fairly decent quantity of particles had made their way up from down there.”

After popping out the cork and removing it from the sommelier knife, Miyoshi casually brought the end of the stopper that had been touching the liquid up to her nose and sniffed it. Though it was basically a stylistic wine-drinking ritual, even younger wines could sometimes end up with unpleasant reductive notes, so you couldn’t be too careful.

She poured the wine into two glasses, then placed one in front of me.

“It’s kind of strange, though. You’d think the researchers who first discovered the bit about observation would’ve at least considered the effect video cameras might have.”

Yet no results related to that had been published.

“It’s always possible that the government or military wanted to keep it under wraps as some kind of secret technology,” Miyoshi suggested.

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Being able to permanently place man-made objects inside dungeons would provide a huge advantage over other countries. Still...

“But,” she continued, “My guess is that their attempts to experiment didn’t fare too well.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

If they had really been conducting top secret research and employing tactics like that, Team Simon’s progression through Yoyogi would’ve been going a lot more smoothly. Not to mention, if they had employed anything along those lines in Evans, they wouldn’t have flaunted their capture of the dungeon so openly. There might have been a detached unit helping out, but one thing was for sure: They didn’t have any hidden forces stronger than Team Simon. There was no escaping the all-seeing eye of the World Ranking List, after all.

There could’ve potentially been some secret laboratory hidden away in a dungeon somewhere out there, but if there was, it probably would’ve generated a lot more significant technologies by now. I mean, people were still trying to raise plants and animals in outer space; there was no way they wouldn’t have tried the same thing inside dungeons. And if they had, they likely would’ve discovered dungeonizing before we did.

Anyway, no researcher worth their salt would’ve failed to consider the camera thing. I had zero doubt that experiments involving camera surveillance were conducted all over the world the moment the observation hypothesis was announced. Yet for some reason, no results of such experiments had been made public.

“If the researchers had remained in the area of the experiment, then the cameras wouldn’t have been the only things making observations. But if they had left, they could’ve been damaged by monsters,” I elaborated.

Slimes and cleaners were the main things that directly wiped out man-made objects in dungeons. When it came to destruction in general, though, there were all sorts of monsters to consider, such as the ibex-like creatures on the eighteenth floor that we were worried would start ramming into Dolly. If, based on that, a research team then made the decision to deploy personnel to guard the experiment, that would instantly cause them to no longer meet the observation requirements.

Miyoshi nodded.

“Even if someone managed to get hold of a dungeon that had a suitable location on the first floor, not only would they have to set up the equipment for their experiment, they’d also need to bring in a bunch of people for round-the-clock protection. Those two things alone would cost a pretty penny. And even then, if they did manage to pull everyone out at once afterward and start the observation experiment—”

“Let me guess. If the whole thing failed due to some blind spot they failed to take into account, they wouldn’t know if it was due to a mistake in the camera placement or if observing things with cameras just didn’t have any effect in the first place.”

“On the other hand, even if they did end up with any successes, if they also had failures using the exact same method, it would be impossible to put together any papers about it.”

“Yeah, without reproducible results, their methods wouldn’t be worth the paper they’re written on...”

Experiments conducted under those conditions wouldn’t have produced much of anything in the way of proper results. And investing massive amounts of money into constructing a dungeon facility based on such a flimsy hypothesis would’ve been out of the question.

I picked up my glass of reddish-tinged golden liquid and took a sip. It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t really get what had Miyoshi so enamored with the stuff.

“So is this wine rare or something?” I asked.

“Nope! You can get it pretty much anywhere, and it’s quite affordable too.”

The label identified it as Jesera from Venica & Venica. Apparently it was a pinot grigio from Collio, which was located in the Friuli region.

She said it was an affordable Italian wine, but wine doesn’t make its way into Miyoshi’s exclusive cellar simply by being a good bang for the buck. This particular bottle probably managed to catch her interest in some completely arbitrary way.

“Huh. That’s a rarity,” I blurted out.

“Heh heh heh. You think so?”

Ack. I really hope I didn’t just step on a land mine...

“Actually, this particular series was bottled on the full moon in March and the full moon in May!” Miyoshi exclaimed, puffing her chest out smugly.

I just sat there with three or four metaphorical question marks floating over my head.

“Full moon...? Is there some kind of significance to that?”

“What are you talking about? There’s an inseparable connection between the phases of the moon and agriculture! Uh...isn’t there?”

Why are you suddenly so unsure?!

“Let me guess. Maybe the winemaker is a werewolf, and he bottled it on the days he was most powerful?”

“I guess that would mean that the poor importer is gonna get gobbled right up someday soon, huh?”

“Now this is a long shot, but what if drinking it gives you the ability to determine the exact moon phase when any wine was bottled?”

“What kind of superpower is that? I liked your bottled-by-a-werewolf idea way better.”

Just then, the oven beeped, signaling that the food was done.

“Anyway,” Miyoshi said, changing the subject, “if we play our cards right, we might be able to set up some kind of facility inside of a dungeon.”

“A dungeon facility, huh...” I murmured as I opened the oven and took out the grill pan.

The very concept could be considered kind of a holy grail for people who explored dungeons. If it was possible to set up a base of operations, people could explore dungeons more safely. And if they had a secure place to rest once they had reached their destination, they could start exploring deeper floors. Not to mention, if it ever became possible to use communication devices inside dungeons, everything would suddenly become a whole lot more convenient.

On the one hand, the monitoring technique might end up unnecessary if the pre-dungeonizing process could be applied to man-made objects, but on the other hand, it would be a much easier goal to realize than dungeonization, which required a whole lot of blind guessing and didn’t even have a clear starting point.

“At first we thought we might be able to get by using benzethonium chloride, but our simple slime defense setup was a bust,” Miyoshi recalled. “And honestly, it’s probably a terrible idea to be spritzing chemicals like that around electronic equipment that isn’t waterproof.”

It had been less than two weeks since the very first Benzetho-Blast system we’d set up at our mini-farm had been obliterated by slimes. Besides, a liquid-based defense system wasn’t exactly user-friendly—and it would be especially difficult to use inside of buildings.

I suppose if we manage to find a way to keep slime movement and spawning under control, that would be another potential way to allow structures to be built inside dungeons...

“Though if you think about it from a paper-writing perspective, even if we had a good hypothesis in our case, it wouldn’t have anything in it that’d let us claim intellectual property rights inside a dungeon,” I pointed out.

The hypotheses that one could prevent slimes from spawning or actively consuming things by constantly monitoring the target you wanted to keep intact, and that recording via a camera was enough to constitute said monitoring, still couldn’t be definitively proven. Though considering what had happened in Yokohama, they couldn’t exactly be dismissed either.

“It’d never pass scrutiny. In the meantime, we can use the knowledge we’ve obtained to build our own base,” Miyoshi said, picking up one of her scampi. “After all, our company has some of the most dependable employees out there.”

With that, she tossed the seafood into one of several mouths lined up next to her.

Even Dolly had her blind spots; we were just lucky enough to have the Arthurs to delegate the detailed observation duties to. Their surveillance network had been perfect thus far.

“We can repeat our experiments as many times as we want, and eventually we’ll get an ideal setup where the Arthurs don’t encounter any slimes at all. And once we do—”

“—We sell it?” I asked.

“It’s sounding like Igloo 1 is pretty close to being finished too.”

“Oh yeah, that whole thing...”

Igloo 1 was something we had put in an order for after Dolly. In a nutshell, it was more or less a mobile base for use in dungeons.

“They cobbled it together pretty fast, huh.”

“Design aspects aside, on the inside it’s basically just a spruced-up motor home. It doesn’t need any special shielding like a spaceship, and it doesn’t need spaceship-level precision in its construction either. And it didn’t even have to use a single custom screw!”

“Making good use of civilian products, I see. I can see the huge grin on Urushibara’s face already.”

“I wonder if good ol’ Kiyomi would want to make something like this for us himself?”

“Hey now, don’t start poaching from the JSDF all of a sudden. We don’t want to mess up our relationshi—” I put a hand to my chin. “Would it mess up our relationship, though?”

“From what I’ve heard, the Future Capabilities Development Center’s D-Cap division is in a pretty awkward position right now.” It had only been two months since the dungeons appeared when their organization was first established, and apparently a lot of things had ended up being rushed.

“From a publicity and efficiency standpoint, developing equipment for dungeons might end up being completely outsourced to civilians... Wait, what would they do about military equipment research?”

“The arms industries in capitalist nations are pretty much all civilian-owned, Kei.”

“Hm. Yeah, I guess they are.”

“Besides, there’s this little thing here in Japan called ‘free choice of employment.’”

“All right, calm down. Just try not to stir up too much trouble.”

Offering me a small nod of assurance, Miyoshi scooped up another one of the scampi with her fork and popped it in her mouth.

Not particularly reassured by her display, I picked up a scampi of my own and took a bite. When I sank my teeth into the tender flesh, sweet juices oozed out into my mouth. It had a rich umami flavor that truly evoked the essence of seafood from Suruga Bay.

“Wow, this is really good,” I stated in awe.

“The kind from Suruga Bay has a much more pronounced flavor than the European kind, if you ask me.”

“Maybe. Though we might also be tasting the difference between frozen and fresh.”

At risk of stating the obvious, European and New Zealand scampi always came to us frozen. The latest freezing technology was definitely top-notch, with no appreciable flaws, but one could still usually tell the difference between frozen and fresh—and depending on the product, that difference could be quite pronounced. Shellfish in particular had always seemed way tastier to me when they were sourced locally, so I couldn’t rule out that past experience was coloring my judgment.

“The pinot grigio isn’t bad either, but with something like this that’s basically just salty grilled shrimp, I would’ve probably gone with a beer.”

“Oh, hello, typical Japanese dad.”

“Cut me some slack. Brand-name Japanese pilsners are the best in the world.”

They did use what were probably some of the highest development budgets in the world in an attempt to suit the average Japanese palate, after all. They were bound to be tasty after all that effort. You couldn’t really expect that sharp craft beer flavor from them, but they were the perfect choice for a relaxing late-night beverage.

“Dolly has been really useful so far, but I’m kind of worried she’s not really suited for the lower floors,” I said. “And considering the JDA knows about Storage already, I imagine Igloo 1 will be making its debut pretty soon.”

We still needed to take Rokujo and the others down to the lower floors, after all. Tents were pretty scary at our experience level, and while we might have already divulged the existence of Dolly, it would be a pretty tight fit for so many people.

As I was pulling a small bottle out of the fridge, Miyoshi suddenly shot up out of her seat, looking incredibly panicked.

“Oh, no! Kei!”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s a huge relief we managed to get out of the dungeon, but what do you think happened to the cleaner we left on the first floor of Yokohama?!”

“Hmmm...”

If it’s actually still there, we could be in for a repeat of the division nightmare we just had to deal with...

“As much as everyone was probably running around the place like crazy, I’m sure they would’ve at least checked on it, right?” I murmured.

First of all, the JSDF and Falcon had apparently secured a cleaner of their own. Second, there was no way Naruse hadn’t gone in to take a look around Shinshinan after Miyoshi and I had gone missing. Finally, if there had indeed been a cleaner left after all that, I was positive they would’ve disposed of it properly.

Miyoshi furrowed her brow.

“We should get in touch with Naruse just in case—but I honestly don’t know how to explain why we’re already back here...”

We had ended up being teleported from the thirty-first floor to the first floor. The speed of our return didn’t make a whole lot of sense, at least by normal standards. Though if they checked our exit time at the gate, the jig would be up anyway.

“In that case, how about I contact her? As far as she knows, I wasn’t whisked away to Yoyogi like everyone else was.”

Naruse knew that Miyoshi had a means to contact people from the thirty-first floor, so even if the timing of my information might’ve seemed a little off, I could use Miyoshi as an excuse.

“If the stray cleaner really is still around, we’ll be catching a cab to Yokohama after this.” Miyoshi said, staring at the wine in her glass. “Your dream from the other day will finally come true.” Her shoulders slumped as she cast me a reproachful eye.

Ah yeah, the whole Yokohama thing. I did say I’d like to ride there in a taxi once, but it goes without saying that I have zero interest in traveling there just to clean up.

“Let’s just hope that’s not the case, then.”

Placing the beer I had taken out on the counter, I wrote up a quick email to Naruse and pressed the “send” button.

“If we don’t hear from her for a while, I’ll just have to call her instead,” I said, eyeing the time. “Not only does she have today’s incident to worry about, she also needs to figure out the safe area business ASAP. I’m pretty sure she’s still awake.”

Between the missing people being located and the first safe area being found, the Dungeon Management Section was no doubt a whirlwind of activity as it began contacting all the relevant agencies.

“What an exploitative work environment,” Miyoshi quipped.

“Don’t act like you had nothing to do with it,” I muttered.

“But we really didn’t have anything to do with this whole mess, did we?”

In all actuality, we held no blame whatsoever when it came to the nuke in Yokohama, nor were we responsible for being teleported to Yoyogi. Though the latter might have a little room for doubt, I suppose... And incidentally, it was the JSDF that had discovered the safe area. With some caveats there too...

“I kinda feel like we did contribute a bit, considering we were the ones who found the key and sussed out the location of the keyhole. And the fact that today is the first day of the National Center Exams—or I guess the second, now that it’s after midnight—is probably only making them even more swamped than they already were, right?”

“It was...an unfortunate series of coincidences,” Miyoshi concluded succinctly, closing her eyes and nodding. She then quickly moved on to a different topic, as if to tell me not to push the matter any further. “Speaking of the safe area, they’ll probably have trouble transporting cargo all the way down there, won’t they? What do you think the JDA will do with that Storage orb?”

“Changing the subject, huh... Well, it did kind of seem like they were just running on vibes at the time, didn’t it?”

They had no time, and they didn’t want to let the orb slip away into the hands of any shady buyers. They weren’t sure exactly how to deal with it, but since they had the funds for it, I’m guessing they decided they might as well lock it down.

“Miyoshi, if you were working for the JDA, and the company itself told you to use a forty-five-billion-yen orb, what would you do?”

“I’d absolutely refuse! And if they wouldn’t let me, I’d run away.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

It was like a real-life version of The Six Million Dollar Man. In February of the same year that TV series was made, the dollar-yen exchange rate transitioned to a floating system. After the Smithsonian Agreement devalued the dollar, the fixed exchange rate was 308 yen to the dollar, so six million dollars at the time was equivalent to 1.848 billion yen.

If, say, Naruse ended up using the orb, it would still be worth 140 million dollars at the even at the exchange rate back then. The present-day rate was just under 110 yen to the dollar—which would make her “the Four Hundred Million Dollar Woman.” It was literally a different order of magnitude.

“You would lose every last ounce of freedom in your life. You’d never be able to travel overseas, and you’d probably never be able to experience real romance or get married.”

You could probably make the money back if you earned enough, but a skill orb wasn’t something you could regenerate through artificial means. Once it was gone, you could never get it back.

“We’re pretty much already in the ‘can’t travel overseas’ boat ourselves, you know,” I pointed out.

“Oh, that’s right!”

“Anyway, that’s why I doubt they’ll have an easy time finding any takers to use the orb.”

“Maybe someone like good ol’ Executive Director Mizuho might end up tricking some random staff member into using it?”

“As much as I wouldn’t put it past him, thankfully the Dungeon Management Section isn’t under his jurisdiction, I hear.”

“Some particularly twisted explorer out there might be willing...”

“I seriously doubt the JDA would put such a huge investment into someone like that.”

Even if they used it on a respectable explorer instead, there would be no guarantee that person wouldn’t have a change of heart sometime afterward. And even if that didn’t happen, their family could end up getting kidnapped by some evil organization to use as hostages. Then they might force the user into getting plastic surgery, give them a new identity, and use them for a smuggling operation. That kind of crazy fiction plot could well become a reality.

“Is reselling the orb really their only option?”

“Without really knowing what it’s capable of, even that might be tough to pull off, don’t you think? The price would be way too high for anyone to take a gamble on it.” I turned my gaze to Miyoshi. “Why don’t you fill them in a bit?”

“I mean, I could try to give them precise measurements... But if its efficiency depends on the user’s INT, they’re gonna feel like they got scammed.”

“Ah yeah, that was a possibility, wasn’t it... Hey, hold on a sec!” I recalled back when she had done some testing on Storage. “Remember back when you were using those buses as Legos?”

“I-I did nothing of the sort!”

“Fine, whatever. Wasn’t your INT at a normal level when you stored twenty of them? You hadn’t really done much dungeon diving before Dolly showed up, right?”

Dolly had been delivered on December 21—I was positive because I remembered that the incident with Mishiro happened the next day.

“I did go into the dungeon with you and Asha.”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t kill any monsters that time.”

“Yeah, that’s also true.”

“In that case, you were still at the minimum—”

Wait. I’m pretty sure she already had a crazy INT of 16 or so starting out... If the skill happens to work on a system by which certain people instantly turn into superhumans, that’d be a scam on a whole different level.

“Kei?”

“Ah, why not just offer them a baseline example of what the skill could do from back when your INT was 16?”

“Aha! Then they would automatically assume I still had an INT of 16!”

I mean, that’s not really where I was going with that... That reminds me, though, her INT right now is at least somewhere in the lower 90s, I think... If Storage really does rely on INT, I wonder what it can do at her current level? Maybe we could order a second Igloo 1.

Shaking my head in exasperation, I popped the cap off my bottle of beer. When I turned back to the table, though—

“Huh?! Where’d my scampi go?!”

Seated quietly nearby, with a proud, satisfied look on his face and a scampi tail sticking out of his mouth, was Glas. Not even a lone fragment of shell was left on my plate.

Miyoshi stretched.

“Ahhh, that was a truly delicious feast. My compliments to the chef!”

“I can’t believe you guys... I only had two...”

“Kei, two scampi is actually considered a pretty normal serving.”

“Miss Miyoshi. Are you mocking me with the same mouth you just used to—”

With a furious grin plastered across my face, I was just about to enact my revenge when my phone suddenly started to vibrate.

“Oh, hey, I bet that’s Naruse!”

I clicked my tongue in disappointment. It was indeed Naruse calling.

Apparently the Yokohama incident and the accompanying discovery of the safe area had occurred at a time when the JDA had already been trying to round people up to help with the National Center Exams, which they were also shorthanded for. There weren’t even enough people to send incident reports to all the relevant agencies, so Naruse was struggling to put together said documents for submission first thing in the morning. We appreciate all your hard work, supervisor.

According to her, the problem cleaner in Yokohama had disappeared along with the rest during the aforementioned incident.

The fact that the consumption of D-Factors ended up affecting areas outside the dungeon, despite the fact that it should typically only occur inside of them, reinforced the idea that D-Factors had indeed been spread into the outside world from within the dungeons, and could be transferred back and forth between the two.

I thought about trying to come up with good cover stories for where I had been and how Miyoshi had suddenly vanished from the thirty-first floor, but it didn’t take much thought to figure out that our dungeon exit times would’ve been a dead giveaway—not to mention that we didn’t have any entry times either. And it would’ve been a major stretch to claim we had been outside. The most productive option was to just tell her the truth, then ask her to find a way to sort out the records for us.

Naruse was shocked when I provided a summary of what had happened, but it was far too late in the day to try and sort things out. After saying we could chat in more detail tomorrow, and emphasizing heavily that she would be stopping by our place, even if it was a bit later than usual, she hung up.

The second day of the National Center Exams would start bright and early. She might’ve been our full-time supervisor, but there was no way she’d be busting down our door first thing in the morning.

Miyoshi sighed. “There was no fooling her after all, I guess?”

“It’s those damn entry records... I guess we couldn’t just ignore the gate when we go in or out, huh?”

“If they found out we were doing that, it would be an even bigger deal than it is now.”

Standing up, Miyoshi took the plate and glass she had been using over to the sink and started washing them.

As I stared ruefully back and forth between my plate and Glas (the dog), I took some karaage out of Vault, popped one in my mouth, and chugged the rest of the beer in my hand.

“Ugh. It’s not even that cold...”

Fortune and misfortune come in turns. Like the A- and B-sides of a record. I only got to eat two scampi and ended up with a lukewarm beer, so I guess all that misfortune means I’m due for something good to happen tomorrow—though honestly, the only future I see in store for me is Naruse putting me through the wringer...

As I sat there with slumped shoulders, Glas looked down at me from his position on top of the table, wagging his tail triumphantly.

Annotations

Conversation with Dr. Tylor: On the off chance anyone hasn’t yet (as doubtful as that is), I suggest reading volume 6 of the mainline series before this.

Conclusions: Since this short story was in volume 6, I couldn’t delve too deeply into any conclusions for fear of spoiling volume 7.

Don-gitsune: Played by Riho Yoshioka. Her contract ended just before I started writing this particular short story, and she was removed from Nissin’s official website entirely. I didn’t work in a mention of her because of that, though—it was just an incredibly timely coincidence. I swear!

The final episode of Nadia: A reference to episode 39 of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, its final episode, titled “Hoshi o Tsugu Mono...” in Japanese (or “Successor to the Stars...” in the English release). They may be older anime, but Nadia and Future Boy Conan are (apparently) the big two NHK entertainment must-sees. Shout-out to Miyoshi’s circle pals.

Ramato: Sometimes referred to as “orange wine.” It is made with the same production method as a red wine, only using white grapes. However, since the pinot grigio white grapes it uses have a tiny bit of color to them, the wine takes on a gorgeous shade. (Note that there are various methods to produce it, from skin contact to a process known as “macération finale à chaud,” and each vintner can get creative in deciding how much color to imbue or how much tannin to impart. Pale, elegant colors seem to be more common lately.)

The word “ramato” is Italian for a copper color, and this term is commonly used in the Friuli region. On a related note, they say that a winemaker from that very region, Gravner, brought orange wine back into the modern market.

Methods: The traditional structure used for scientific and technical papers is called IMRAD. It stands for the following steps:

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusion

The second step is generally shortened to “methods.” Third parties follow this step when trying to replicate a paper’s results.

Using communication devices inside dungeons: People actually ended up gaining this ability in volume 9.

Catching a cab to Yokohama: A reference to volume 5, January 9, 2019. Yoshimura said, “Just once, I’d like to hail a cab and tell them to go all the way to Yokohama.”

Commentary

Ummm...so what exactly am I supposed to explain about this story?! (heartfelt shout)

The character count on this one was surprisingly up there though. Quite strange. Also, akazaebi is delicious, in my opinion.

Don-gitsune is long gone, of course, but she sure was cute, wasn’t she?

Releasing a photo book for the character was a bit over the top, though. (lol)

Yoshimura and the others have been continuing to experiment in various ways when it comes to constructing facilities inside of dungeons. It started with the Benzetho-Blast system a while back, and since then they’ve attempted to make things out of materials from inside the dungeon, and even tried to eliminate the slime problem via constant surveillance. Unfortunately, for the time being they have to rely on the Arthurs for that, which isn’t exactly a solution the general public can employ.

However, the next volume (which is volume 10, since this collection was released between volumes 9 and 10) will have more about fantasy metals, which sound pretty promising! Will things go well...or to hell?

Chapter 7: Birds of a Feather

Foreword

Both the English phrase used in the title, “birds of a feather,” and the Japanese equivalent “onaji ana no mujina,” meaning “badgers of the same hole,” are often used with an overall negative connotation. My intent was to incorporate a touch of exasperation and hypocrisy into the title.

The reason I used English was simply because all the rest of the short stories except for the one in volume 3 had English titles as well. Maybe I’ve just been making a half-hearted effort to do that...or maybe it was a subconscious decision because I had originally written the short stories in a horizontal orientation. Either way, some of those titles, especially for volumes 5 through 7, have nuances to them that would’ve been harder to express in Japanese.

Anyway, since the previous short story had turned out how it had—a product of me being under a ridiculous amount of pressure at the time—I distinctly remember having a renewed desire to make sure I wrote a proper story this time around. Of course, we all know what can happen to the best-laid plans...

Birds of a Feather

“Please?”

When I showed up at the entrance to Yoyogi Dungeon that day, there was a young girl wandering around among the explorers. Running up to people here and there, she seemed to be asking in a desperate tone for them to do something for her.

“I wonder if she’s waiting for her father to come back from a dive or something?”

It was always possible she had been separated from her parents, but if so, the Dungeon Management Section was supposed to handle those types of issues—it was probably best for ordinary dungeon-goers to stay out of it. That was how things had played out back when Naruse had first come up and talked to me, after all.

Although I was somewhat concerned about the girl, I went ahead and proceeded down to the first floor to get in my daily orb hunt.

***

Two hours later, having successfully procured what I was after, I passed through the gate again and headed back to the entrance area. I saw no sign of the girl from earlier in the morning.

Breathing a small sigh of relief, I had just started making my way toward the main entrance when I saw her there just to the left of it, seated by the connecting stone wall. She seemed rather exhausted.

If the JDA hadn’t taken any action, that meant she wasn’t a missing child, and her issue was probably unrelated to the dungeon after all. Something about the whole situation didn’t sit right with me, but randomly going over to a young girl and chatting her up could instantly lead people to believe I was the problem.

After wrestling for a while with what to do, I decided to go ahead and approach her anyway. I walked up to her and crouched down a short distance away.

“What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

The girl looked up at me in surprise.

“Mister, do you go inside the dungeon?” she managed to squeak out imploringly.

“I-I suppose I do. No need for the ‘mister,’ though; my name’s Keigo.”

“Keggy?”

Keggy? What am I, some kind of beer mascot?

“Keggy, can you help me?”

“With what?”

“It’s Mama. She’s... She’s...” The girl’s eyes gradually filled up with moisture until she suddenly burst into tears, as if something awful had befallen her.

“Wh-What’s wrong?!”

This is definitely going to give people the wrong impression! Someone could easily decide to call this in. Considering it’s right in front of Yoyogi Dungeon, there are a ton of people hanging around too.

It felt as though at any moment the people walking by would start murmuring to each other in suspicion and pulling out their cell phones.

“She’s...gonna die...”

“What?!”

Her declaration seemed to silence the noise of the street around us. I was once again in shock.

After that, I handed her a small towel and did my best to calm her down. As best I could tell from what she managed to tell me, it sounded like her mother had been badly hurt. The girl had apparently heard that dungeon explorers could bring her medicine that could fix anything, so she had pulled together all the money she had saved up and came to Yoyogi to buy some.

I asked about her family, but it sounded like she didn’t have a father, and she had no idea about any other relatives either.

Choking back tears, she held a hand out to me. “Here...”

Clenched tightly inside her tiny fist were seven ten-yen coins.

“Sorry it’s not much money,” she added quietly, turning her gaze downward, her lips pursed and quivering.

Apparently various explorers had been ignoring her all morning, and a few had probably said some rather unkind things to her. It was unlikely that anyone out there wanted to deal with a small child trying to buy a potion for a fistful of pocket change, after all.

“No, this is plenty,” I assured her. It was probably the poor girl’s life savings.

Even I like to show a bit of a humanitarian side every once in a while. And helping out a little girl’s sick mother, even if it’s for my own selfish sense of satisfaction, probably isn’t going to count as bad karma or anything.

I wasn’t exactly sure who I was trying to explain myself to, but at any rate, I took out my cell phone and called up Miyoshi. Items dropped in the dungeon belonged to the entire party, so obviously I needed to get her permission first, but I knew there was no way she would refuse at this point.

***

“Kei, she’s way younger than your usual type...”

“Did that really have to be the first thing out of your mouth?!”

Miyoshi had come to join me at Yoyogi immediately after I had called her. I was grateful for her promptness, but I definitely could’ve done without her telling me she was only hurrying because the longer I was there alone, the more likely I was to get carted off by the police.

The girl, whose name was Megumi, peeked her head out from behind my thigh, holding on to it tightly.

“Are you Keggy’s friend?”

“That’s right. You can call me Azusa, okay?”

“Azzy?”

Miyoshi squealed at the nickname.

“Wow, what a little cutie! I totally understand how she reeled you in, Kei!”

“Do you have to make it sound so creepy?”

“Keggy, are you and Azzy gonna help Mama?”

“We sure are,” I replied.

She jumped for joy several times at my response, then started leading us somewhere on foot.

“Kei, are you sure it was okay to make a promise like that without even knowing what she’s sick with?” Miyoshi whispered to me, making sure that Megumi up ahead of us couldn’t hear.

“We’ve got plenty of potions for if she’s injured, and if it’s some kind of horrible disease, worst-case scenario, a seventh-rank cure potion should do the trick.”

“Are you sure we want to go that far?”

I shrugged.

“I’m the type of guy who always ends up hoarding his elixirs until the very end of a game anyway. As long as you’re okay with it—”

“That’s not what I meant. If it’s something so serious that we need to use a really expensive potion, we’re gonna attract attention.”

“Ah, yeah...”

We generally did our best to keep a low profile, but both Miyoshi and D-Powers as a whole had been making a lot of waves lately, to put it mildly. If a terminally ill individual suddenly ends up making a full recovery right after the two of us go into their room, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. And considering some weird cult started skulking around behind the scenes after the whole Asha incident, we probably should be extra careful, huh?

“Maybe we could just sneak in, fix her up under the radar, then sneak out?” I suggested.

“In a strictly controlled environment like a hospital room?”

“Didn’t you do basically the same thing once at the Police Hospital in Nakano?”

I distinctly remembered her heading there to intimidate a certain director named Himuro under the pretense of a hospital visit. Considering he had been involved in a police incident, it was hard to imagine they would’ve admitted anyone who wasn’t a family member to see him. I figured she had to have gone into his room via some covert means.

“That was just a normal hospital room. If she’s in the ICU, there are definitely going to be security cameras. And even if she’s not, a lot of the time there are cameras set up in rooms for people who have serious illnesses too.”

So even if we managed to sneak in, our “treatment” would still get caught on candid camera, huh...

“In that case, we could make our own entrance somewhere in the vicinity of her and her bed, positioned to where it’s hidden from view—”

“We don’t even know what the room layout is like,” Miyoshi pointed out. “There’s no way we could pull off anything that precise on the first try.”

And if we try to open up random holes in the area to get a better lay of the land, those might get caught on camera too, I suppose.

I doubted security cameras in hospital rooms had views of the ceiling, but that was nothing more than conjecture on my part.

“Anyway, we may as well just head there first and see what the situation is,” I said.

“Roger that!”

After about fifteen minutes had passed, which hadn’t really taken us all that far at a child’s walking pace, we found ourselves traversing the winding back alleys of Motoyoyogi.

“Do you remember there being any big hospitals out here?” I asked Miyoshi.

“Well, there’s Keio University Hospital out past Shinjuku Gyoen, then there’s the Red Cross Medical Center just before you get to Nishiazabu, but I can’t really think of any other hospitals in this outer part of Yamanote that would take in critically ill patients...”

If we went further south, there was the Toho University Medical Center and the JSDF Central Hospital, but I had a strong sense that most university hospitals were concentrated in the Yamanote area.

After following Megumi down a number of narrow roads, Miyoshi and I sharing perplexed looks with each other the entire way, we finally arrived at a small, rather old apartment building at the end of an alley.

I raised an eyebrow.

“What? She’s not in a hospital, then?”

Miyoshi blinked.

“So this is where your mom is, Megumi?”

The girl tilted her head at the question.

“Mama isn’t my mom.”

“Huh?”

Gotta hand it to kids—they really do say the darnedest things. Wait, there’s always the possibility it’s her dad’s second wife... Something along the lines of “You’re not my real mom! I’m calling you ‘Mama’ instead!” maybe? Nah, that doesn’t make any sense at all—even to me, and I came up with the idea.

“Right there.”

Megumi was pointing at a dilapidated prefab storage shed next to the apartment building. It had most likely been used to store cleaning supplies at some point in the past, but it no longer appeared to be in use. The rusty sliding door had some small gaps in it, and didn’t seem to be locked either.

“Here?!”

There’s no possible way anyone could be lying down in a place like that.

As Megumi yanked open the stuck door with a heave-ho, we saw a pair of unnaturally short hind legs wrapped clumsily in handkerchiefs.

“A cat?!”

The poor black cat must have been hit by a car. Its hind legs had apparently been completely torn off—it was a miracle it was still alive. There were two tiny black kittens curled up next to its belly, letting out occasional soft mewls.

“Well I certainly did not expect this,” Miyoshi murmured.

Tears began to well up in Megumi’s eyes as she looked up at us.

“You can’t help cats?”

“Er, it’s not that we can’t...”

A potion would’ve done the trick if she had just been injured, but she had clearly lost both of her rear legs entirely. The only hope of recovering those would’ve been a Super Recovery orb—but finding a way to get an immobile cat a D-Card would be even more difficult than it had been for Asha.

If she were well enough to move, maybe we could douse her paws in benzethonium chloride and have her swipe at a slime... Nah, we’d still have to rack our brains to figure out how to get her to break the core. Besides, she can’t even walk properly at this point.

Miyoshi’s gaze moved from Megumi, who was on the verge of tears, to the mother cat, who was hanging on by a thread, to me, who was struggling to come up with a plan.

“Kei. Are you planning on using a Super Recovery orb, by any chance?” she asked, her expression dead serious.

“That’s the only way to fix this, isn’t it?” I replied. “Provided we can figure out how to get her a D-Card, that is.”

“You realize this is a stray cat?”

“I sure do.” It had already been proven that animals could use skill orbs and exhibit observable effects from them.

Miyoshi sighed.

“Sometimes I have a really tough time deciding whether to praise you or chide you for having the set of values that you do.”

I understood her dilemma. Queen of the Merchants though she might have been, she wasn’t about to bring up money at this point in the game. Though according to what Simon and Lance had told us, there were still loads of humans out there champing at the bit for a copy of Super Recovery.

Sorry to say it, Miyoshi, but... Well...

“Honestly, I’d rather help out a child I got to know out of pure happenstance than some random bigshot I’ve never met before.”

Grinning widely at my excuse, Miyoshi gave me two solid pokes to the chest.

“Well, this would definitely be considered ‘doing what you can,’ I’d say.”

Oh, that’s right. Back when we were wandering around in the darkness on the thirty-first floor, she was the one who told me to “get out there and do what you can.”

Putting on a strained smile, I took out a first-rank potion, snapped it open, and poured the contents over the weakened black cat. After being enveloped briefly in a faint glow, the cat’s breathing seemed to become more relaxed.

“Is Mama gonna get better now?” Megumi asked, looking up at me worriedly.

The potion would keep her going for a while, but I still hadn’t been able to figure out the issue of getting her a D-Card, so I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Is she not...?”

“Uh, well, you see—”

“Kei,” Miyoshi interrupted, seeing how deep in a bind I was. “Remember when we were talking to Dr. Argyle not too long ago, and he mentioned a ‘special side effect’?”

“Side effect?” I raised an eyebrow. “What side— Oh!”

That’s right! Eating dungeon-grown wheat has the side effect of granting a D-Card to whoever consumes it!

“But we aren’t even sure if it works for animals besides humans, and we don’t know what quantity needs to be consumed either, do we?”

“We can calculate the amount based on comparative body weights. We know that Silkie ate exactly one pancake.”

“Um, Keggy?”

I knelt down next to the poor anxious girl, looked her in the eye, and smiled.

“It seems like she’s gonna be fine, Megumi.”

“Really?” A smile broke through her tearful expression like a blossoming flower, and she crouched next to the cat and began to gently pet its head. “I’m so happy for you, Mama!”

Relieved by the sight, I began going over the issues we needed to overcome.

“Is wheat even safe for cats to eat, though?”

Cats were prime examples of carnivorous animals, and I had heard that consuming carbohydrates could give them digestion problems.

“Cats are supposedly able to digest and absorb gelatinized starch without any issues.”

“Oh yeah?”

Gelatinization was the process of breaking down starch molecules into a paste-like consistency by adding water and heat. Cats couldn’t digest starch in its natural form because it had such a dense crystalline structure, but if the starch was gelatinized, it became properly digestible. That meant you could likely even feed them cooked rice, in small amounts.

“It’d be bad news if she has a wheat allergy, though...” Miyoshi added. “But we don’t have any way of knowing that.”

“Would Appraisal help with that at all?”

Miyoshi shook her head. I figured that meant it didn’t mention anything about allergies. If Appraisal had listed an allergy, that would’ve been definitive info, but not listing an allergy could’ve just meant it never displayed that kind of info in the first place, leaving us unable to tell one way or the other. The target might’ve still been allergic.

If our understanding that Appraisal displayed results via a direct connection with the collective unconscious was true, there was no way we would’ve been able to tell if a specific stray cat had a wheat allergy in the first place. Nobody would’ve known that info.

“It sounds like our only real option is to keep feeding her small amounts until she either gets a D-Card or starts showing an allergic reaction,” Miyoshi said, her brow furrowed.

“If any cat lovers or feline experts hear about this, we’ll probably get socked in the face,” I muttered.

“I mean, there are times it’s appropriate to use morphine on humans. In the end, anything is better than dying.”

“I guess so.”

“Besides...”

“Hm?”

“If worse comes to worst, we’ve got a seventh-rank cure potion. If she starts showing symptoms, giving her one of those will probably obliterate any allergies she may have.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Did you already forget what you just said to me a few minutes ago?

“You realize this is a stray cat?” I repeated back to her.

“I sure do.”

We stared at each other for a few moments, then burst out laughing.

When it comes down to it, we’ve just got to do whatever we can with what we have.

After that, Miyoshi began looking up the necessary info.

“On average, it takes about fifty grams of flour to make one pancake. If we assume that a person weighs about fifty kilograms, that’s roughly a one to one thousand ratio,” she explained.

“So if a cat weighs four to five kilograms, we would use...four to five grams of flour?”

“That’s right—if we go solely by weight ratio, at least.”

“And this isn’t exactly a medicine,” I agreed.

If it turns out instead that a set volume of D-Factors is required, we might have to up that amount.

“So how will we get her to eat the flour?” Miyoshi asked.

“I wonder if cats like pancakes?”

“The usual go-to is cat food, I’d imagine.”

“Protein, huh... I wonder how well cats handle oils in their food?”

Miyoshi swiped away at her phone.

“Let’s see here. Apparently it’s fine in small amounts, up to one teaspoon.”

“That works out perfectly, then.”

A roux, the base for most sauces in French cuisine, consisted basically of equal parts wheat flour and butter. One teaspoon was more or less five milliliters, so I could add that to five milliliters of wheat flour to make the roux. If I decided to add some milk to that at a ratio of ten times the amount of flour, it would turn into a béchamel—or if I used some kind of fond instead, it would make a velouté...

“If I add some minced fish to a roux, I could roll it up into something like a fish dumpling. I bet she’d eat that.”

There were a lot of soft cat foods out there that cats tended to go after with a passion.

“So would it be kind of like a quenelle that uses a roux instead of a panade?”

A panade was a mixture of flour, water, and fat, and it was often made into something similar to a cream puff shell by adding egg. Traditional quenelle was made by making pike into a mousse, then binding it together by adding a panade.

“I’ll need to chill it—though it’ll end up shrinking down a bit.”

“Apparently it’s not a great idea to feed them butter, even if it’s unsalted.”

“No dairy products, huh... I’ll go ahead and substitute salad oil, then.”

“Fair enough. Nowadays they even make roux with olive oil as a base.”

“Yup. Anyway, at least she’s out of the woods for now, thanks to that potion. Let’s feed her some wheat, get her a D-Card, and grow those hind legs of hers back with Super Recovery!”

“She sure is getting some top-of-the-line medical treatment, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is! It’s the least we can do, considering our client paid us—”

After a short, dramatic pause, I put on a smug grin.

“—every last yen she had to her name!”

“That’s an even bigger rip-off than Dr. Hazama,” Miyoshi quipped.

“Who the hell is that?”

“Speaking of which, Megumi... Your last name doesn’t happen to be Kisaragi, does it?”

Megumi shook her head. “Uh-uh. It’s Mutsuki.”

“Darn, so close! Just one month off—January instead of February.”

“Okay, now you’re really starting to confuse me.”

***

After doing as much research as we could, in the end we decided to make about ten Japanese meatballs out of chicken tenderloin and roux. They were technically fit for human consumption as well, but they hadn’t been flavored with anything, so they probably would’ve tasted iffy at best.

Perhaps thanks to the effects of the first-ranked potion, Mama ate the food without any fuss. Then, after consuming her fourth one—we had our first miracle.

“Wow. Animals really can obtain D-Cards by eating dungeon-grown wheat...” Miyoshi said in an impressed whisper, staring at the card as she picked it up.

“Who knows, maybe getting D-Cards for your pets will be the next big thing,” I replied.

A lot of pet owners treated their animals like family members. If it was that easy to obtain a D-Card, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if they started procuring cards for their pets “just in case.” In fact, I would’ve been way more surprised if they didn’t.

“Take a look at this, Kei!”

I turned my gaze to the D-Card Miyoshi was holding out, and saw the name Mama written on it.

“I guess this is a ‘collective unconscious’ thing as well?” I wondered.

There’s no way Megumi has a D-Card, so if ours ended up manifesting the name, the database they run on must update at an insane speed.

“I’d be really interested to know exactly how names get registered for things that haven’t been named yet. If a D-Card starts out blank, would a name suddenly appear on it as soon as the animal gets named?”

“Well, skills and party members get overwritten pretty easily, so it would make sense if the same thing happened with names,” I suggested.

“But I’ve never heard anything about women’s surnames on their cards changing after they get married.”

“Hmm, me neither... Hey, while we’re in the area, why don’t we go check out the pigeons at Yoyogi Park? We could probably—”

“The rules say no feeding the crows or pigeons in the park, Kei.”

“Damn. Well, we could always test it out on a stray cat somewhere around that area...”

There were no laws that prohibited the actual act of feeding stray animals, but if doing so caused the animals to stay in the area and cause damage to the surrounding environment, the prefectural governor could give those who fed them guidance and recommend corrective action. If the situation did not improve, they could then issue an order stating that all related corrective measures must be performed. All this stuff was stipulated in Article Six of the Animal Welfare Act.

“‘All related corrective measures must be performed,’ huh... They sure like to use scary wording don’t they?” I grumbled.

“Legal documents in general tend to sound needlessly intimidating.”

“No joke.”

There wasn’t much choice in the matter when it came to strictly defined legal language, but for the phrase in question, I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been perfectly fine to say “they could order you to take the recommended action” instead.

“Besides, it’s always possible that someone might’ve already randomly named the stray cats or park pigeons,” Miyoshi added. “A lab mouse would be a much safer option. I’m sure Nathan would test it for us at the DFA.”

***

After that, we loaded Mama up into a cage and took her into Yoyogi Dungeon with us. We had decided to have her use the Super Recovery orb on the first floor, just in case.

When we placed the skill orb inside Mama’s cage, at first she just batted it around with her front paws for a while. After not too long, though, we saw the usage effect go off, and she let out a caterwaul that sounded like something we would’ve heard coming from outside on an early spring evening.

“Whoa!”

“I guess animals can regenerate limbs as well!” Miyoshi murmured in awe.

“What’s her card look like?”

“Just like we expected, ‘Super Recovery’ is listed and grayed out.”

“We need to make sure nobody else sees that,” I stated emphatically.

“People would lose their minds,” Miyoshi agreed. “They’d jump straight into accusing us of inhumane animal experimentation, guaranteed.”

It certainly wasn’t possible to cut up Asha to study how Super Recovery functioned, but no doubt there were a fair number of labs that used cats for experiments. That being said, obtaining a Super Recovery orb and deliberately using it on an animal was an impossibly high hurdle. What if, though, a cat that already had the skill suddenly showed up? I didn’t even want to think about how that might end up.

Miyoshi and I decided we would tuck Mama’s D-Card safely away inside Vault for all eternity. Before we did, though, there was something we absolutely had to try.

“This will be a huge matter of importance for every pet owner in the world!” Miyoshi said, clenching her fists in excitement.

No kidding. This might well turn every single pet out there into another Anubis. And it’s not like it’ll be hard for someone to get their pet a D-Card—all they’ll need to do is feed it a little wheat.

I placed Mama’s D-Card on top of mine and spoke the word “admit” in my mind. That’s right—we made her a member of our party.

If this somehow allows us to speak to each other—no, even if it just lets us convey simple emotions, all the pet owners in the world will start making their way to their local dungeons in droves, crying tears of joy the entire time.

I took a deep breath and started trying to communicate telepathically.

Can you hear me...? Can you hear me...? Mama... Mama... Right now... I’m speaking directly into your mind...

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“That’s how you’re supposed to deliver it when it’s someone’s first time!”

“A cat isn’t going to get your weird references, Kei.” Miyoshi was in the party as well, so she knew exactly what I was going for.

Mama...

“Meow.”

“Huh?”

“Meow.”

The noise Mama let out was the exact same “meow” both telepathically and out loud.

“I guess it wouldn’t be that easy, would it...”

Cats most likely only expressed their feelings via body language, without any concept of actual vocabulary. Telepathic communication couldn’t really convey feelings, much less incorporate body language.

The fact that telepathy made foreign languages sound as if they were in one’s native tongue was no doubt because the process skipped right past converting phonemes into words, and instead relied on the language knowledge of the collective unconscious to swap out vocabulary directly.

I stood up, holding the cage carefully in my hands, and we made our way back out of the dungeon.

***

“Is Mama all better?”

“She sure is. She’s gonna be fine now.”

Megumi and the two kittens had been waiting at the entrance to Yoyogi and were there to greet us when we came out. When she saw Mama resting comfortably, Megumi started jumping up and down again in excitement, sporting a huge smile.

***

For some reason, Mama ended up living in our yard after that.

Apparently they weren’t able to keep her in the old apartment building where Megumi lived. With no other options, we decided to take care of her for a while, and before we knew it, she had made herself comfortable in our office yard, patrolling it as if she owned the place. Sometimes she would sit across from Cavall in our garage in a pose like an Egyptian cat statue, glaring at him like a disapproving grandmother. It was kind of amusing to see Cavall hanging his head helplessly in the face of Mama.

Despite being a supposed stray, she always seemed to eat the food Miyoshi gave her, and she even made a little sleeping spot for herself in the corner of the garage. Not only that, she had no problem using the litter box Miyoshi had set out for her. The latest cat litters contained not only sand, but Powder as well, which made them both easier to use and more hygienic.

Powder, which had been developed for the important but relatively minor field of dealing with human waste inside dungeons, had become a best-selling product worldwide for a number of reasons: Not only could it be used for normal campsites, portable toilets, and motor homes, but there was also a high demand for it in the realm of pet supplies. Though it had started off as a humble bathroom product, Powder had already become the go-to companion for people who walked their pets, replacing plastic bags and scoopers.

“Oh, I guess it’s about time to feed Ai,” Miyoshi said, pulling out her phone.

The latest automatic pet feeders could be checked on and operated using mobile apps. It felt a bit like you were letting it extract all the info it wanted from your phone when you connected directly like that, but convenience would always be king. We’re only human, after all.

The most we could probably do to combat the issue would be to get a dedicated phone solely for connecting to household appliances, basically using it as a glorified remote control. With Storage, it would always be at arm’s reach, making things super convenient—as long as we didn’t rely on any functionality linked to its internal clock.

“Ai?” I tilted my head slightly at the unfamiliar name.

“The mommy cat is named Ai, and the two kittens are now Noir and Nero.”

“What was wrong with Mama? I thought it was pretty cute!”

“Using a common noun as a name can end up kind of problematic sometimes, don’t you think?”

She made a good point. Even the two of us had gotten the wrong impression from her name at first.

“Besides,” she continued, “‘Ai’ supposedly means ‘mother’ in Marathi too!”

Apparently Mama had come up in a conversation Miyoshi had with Asha, who had ended up providing that tidbit of info.

“I figured it was something like that,” I said upon learning that fact, offering a wry smile.

She did the same thing for the kittens’ names: “Noir” is French, and “Nero” is Italian, but they both mean “black.” They’re about as simple as you can get—or maybe I should be nice and call them “easy to understand.”

Since the cats were living with us, sometimes Megumi would stop by to play with them. After spending some time with Ai and the kittens in the garage, she would head into the kitchen with Miyoshi and eat some sweets. Ai, for her part, was always willing to play with whatever cat toy was waved in front of her, despite the perpetually annoyed, lethargic look on her face.

“What are you gonna do, Kei?”

“About what?”

“Megumi thinks you’re some kind of magical doctor.”

“Huh... I’m, uh, honored, I guess?”

“Though you don’t have a license, and you demand exorbitant fees from your patients.”

“I did take every last bit of cash she had to her name. I’m even worse than Black Jack.”

Miyoshi had ended up explaining to me later that “Dr. Hazama” was Kuro Hazama, Black Jack’s real name. Black Jack was an older manga and I didn’t remember many of the details, so I had decided to give it another read. Considering its age, the fact that I was still able to just walk into a store and purchase the revised edition kind of blew my mind. Thanks to that, I was also able to make sense of Miyoshi’s mysterious Kisaragi reference.

After some time had passed, Megumi came back to us to ask one more favor, clutching a whopping 120 yen tightly in her fist. Apparently she had been diligently saving up her allowance. Her new request was as follows: “If anything ever happens to Mama, please save her.” Megumi and her mother lived alone and probably wouldn’t have been able to do much in an emergency.

Obviously I took the job. We ended up getting first-rank potions on the tenth floor fairly often, and we still had our treasured seventh-rank cure potion, so we were certainly good for it.

“I swear, Kei, sometimes you end up doing things that make me question whether you’re all there in the head.”

“I don’t mind. It’s our job as adults to protect the dreams of children like her.”

Miyoshi flashed me a smile—the kind that more or less said You’re hopeless—then, after giving me two firm pats on the back, she headed to the kitchen and started heating up some water, humming a cheery little tune.

***

After that, it would still be a bit of time before Megumi and her mother were forced to move out of their apartment building due to how dilapidated it had become, and Miyoshi would end up arranging for Megumi’s mother to work for D-Powers.

When it came down to it, Miyoshi and I really were birds of a feather.

Annotations

Five milliliters of wheat flour to make the roux: This is a theoretical value. In reality, it would be extremely difficult to make it with such a small amount. Maybe if you used the tiniest pot in the world... Note that roux (a cooked mixture of flour and butter) is generally made using a one-to-one ratio of wheat flour and butter. “Fond” is used to produce soup stock. “Béchamel” and “velouté” are two of the so-called “mother sauces” of French cuisine.

Quenelle: A dish made by mincing meat or fish together with a binder, rolling it into balls, and boiling it.

Mysterious Kisaragi reference: Megumi Kisaragi was a colleague of Black Jack’s during their medical internship, and also his first love. As for the “one month off” joke, “Mutsuki” is the older, traditional Japanese name for the month of January, while “Kisaragi” is the equivalent name for the month of February.

Commentary

Here we have the first appearance of Megumi, whom everyone adores.

I could never publicly admit that I started writing this short story based on the super cliché idea that “Hey, any story with children and small animals in it is sure to be a major crowd-pleaser, right?!”

By the way, I had never realized that a cat seated in the pose mentioned in the story was referred to as “sitting Egyptian-style” in Japanese. Come to think of it, the famous statue of Bastet in the British Museum (also known as the Gayer-Anderson cat) sits in that very same pose. She’s even got a cute little scarab on top of her head. That’s right, she’s a black cat too! The Wadjet Eye adorning her chest isn’t an Eye of Horus, but an Eye of Ra—perhaps a nod to how cats tend to stomp violently all over people’s keyboards and ruin their hard work. (lol)

The “incense box” sitting pose, as it’s known in Japanese, is mentioned in various literary works, but who came up with “sitting Egyptian-style” anyway? When did people start calling it that? Obviously cats have been sitting in that particular pose since time immemorial, and no doubt someone would’ve tried to express the concept in Japanese, but try as I might, I couldn’t find any answers. I even tried searching for the phrase on the Aozora Bunko website, but ended up with zero hits.

Even if I had a massive dictionary in front of me that covered absolutely everything, without at least a vague idea of where to start looking, I’d never be able to locate anything at all. Sadness.

My research seemed to indicate that in English-speaking countries, the same pose is referred to arbitrarily as things like “the statue,” “the pear,” or “the humpback whale.” The first two sort of make sense, but why humpback whale? Why something with a physical condition that gives it a bent back like a certain man from Notre-Dame, the Japanese word for which I can’t print here because it’s considered a discriminatory term? Why a whale at all? I don’t get it.

By the way, the “incense box” sitting pose is apparently sometimes referred to as the “bean” or “meatloaf” pose in English, based on the overall shape, and from there the standard term became “cat loaf.” Strangely enough, there don’t seem to be a lot of names for cat poses in English. In the end, the best results seem to come from using proper descriptive terminology, like “a cat sitting on its behind with its front paws together, a prim and proper expression on its face as it tilts its head to one side,” or “a cat fully seated with its paws sticking straight out in front of it and its head high up in the air, scanning the area nervously.”

When this short story first made its debut, Yoshimura and Miyoshi ended up learning that consuming dungeon-grown wheat gives people D-Cards after reading a report from the WDA. (That was because this short story originally came with volume 7, which discussed said phenomenon in the epilogue.) However, in the mainline story, they don’t actually learn about it until February 5, 2019 (volume 8), in a scene where Nathan blindsides the two of them by sharing that little tidbit in person. It also turns out that Nathan had come to Japan without reporting his discovery at all, just so he could consult them about it. (Annotation 12 in volume 8 is more or less just an apology for this discrepancy.)

For that reason, this story has now been reworked and revised to take place sometime after February 5.

Now that this book has been accepted for publication and I’ve managed to incorporate these stories into the official timeline, who knows, maybe Megumi and her mom will end up making an appearance in the mainline novels? For now, that possibility will have to remain a mystery, hidden behind a veil of countless stacks of pages. (That’s another way of saying I haven’t decided yet.)

Oh, that’s right—in all honesty, I’m also the type of guy who always ends up hoarding his elixirs until the end.

Chapter 8: Black Cat

Foreword

I wanted to write this story from Ai’s point of view, and it somehow ended up being a cross between Natsume Soseki and Edgar Allan Poe.

This short story was also what motivated me to have this entire collection published in the first place. Please see the “About This Publication” section at the beginning of the book for full details.

Black Cat

As I understand it, I am a cat. I have a name: Mama. Sometimes they call me Ai instead.

Of the humans living in this house, I once heard the one with the lower-pitched voice say, “For a black cat, we’ve gotta go with Pluto,” to which the one with the higher-pitched voice responded, “No way, I’d be afraid we’d start hearing howling noises from inside the walls.” I may be a clever cat, but I’m afraid burrowing into walls is beyond my realm of expertise, meow.

Hmmm... For some reason I felt the strange urge to end the previous sentence with a “meow.” Why on earth would I need to do that? It almost feels offensive in a way. I’ll need to choose my words more carefully.

Um, in any case, humans are these unbearable creatures who have a tendency to assign names to us when no one asks them to, in an effort to restrict our very existence. The least they could do is pick a name and stick with it; that would be far less confusing for us as well.

I should add that up until recently, I thought that they were all just loud, screaming, unpleasant creatures. Then I was assaulted by that blasted monster and lost all coherence amid the throes of pain. By the time my head had cleared, I realized I could understand what the humans were saying.

Though I have very little solid recollection of anything that happened prior to all that, for some reason my memories of the small human named Megumi giving me shelter and summoning the two larger humans to save my life are crystal clear.

The location I was taken to after those events is far more sanitary than the cramped little space I had been in previously, and spacious enough to where my two daughters won’t have to fight over territory once they’ve grown up. Not only that, food is provided at regular intervals, and no one complains about our presence as long as we use the proper waste receptacles.

With all those amenities, I’d say it’s a pleasant enough place to live—apart from the large building behind it that I’m glancing up at right now. I’ve always had the unnerving feeling that something awful is keeping a constant eye on us from inside that building.

The humans always seem to be rushing about like crazy, day in and day out. They must be a bit too dim to enjoy the cat life like we do—curling up in a cool spot when it’s warm out, and curling up in a warm spot when it’s cool.

There are several large dogs inside the house, but none of them ever come outside, making them completely useless as guard dogs. Don’t they realize that merely lying down in the yard occasionally would at least provide some intimidation factor? They certainly aren’t the brightest group of canines out there.

Since I can understand what the humans are saying, I imagine I must have evolved from nyanzapithecus. But what is nyanzapithecus, anyway? I’ve had quite a few strange thoughts inexplicably pop into my head lately. I suppose that’s just a side effect of being wise, meow.

A-Ahem.

Anyway, as unbearable as humans can be, they can do laudable things as well on occasion. Today they are running around like busy bees as usual, doing something they call “work,” all in service to me and the maintenance of my high-class idler lifestyle. What choice do I have but to offer them my protection in return?

“Mama—um, I mean, Ai! How are you?”

Hm, that voice—has Megumi come to visit?

“Hee hee hee. Lookie what I’ve got here!”

The small human takes her hand out from behind her back, revealing some sort of soft stick with a fluffy object attached to the end of it.

Sorry to say, but I cannot be swayed by such childish—

“Mrowr!”

“Ha ha!”

Augh! I pounced at the blasted thing despite myself!

I-I, uh... I’m only playing with it as a favor to this human. Yes, that’s right, meow. Sigh.

***

“A new resident?”

“Well, maybe ‘resident’ isn’t quite the right word, but it seems to have settled into the area at some point, and even follows them into the building sometimes.”

The current leader of the British surveillance team, Carter, who had just returned to Japan after being summoned home for a stint, flipped through the report Allen had given him. Allen had been added to the team to replace Adams, who had mysteriously vanished and somehow ended up being deported right under everyone’s noses. The subject of said report was none other than—

“A cat?”

Denver, who had been teaming up with Allen rather often as of late, let out a subdued chuckle when he saw the scowl on Carter’s face.

“A black cat is the perfect fit for a house of horrors like that, isn’t it?” he chimed in.

Allen, paying no heed to the cold glare Denver’s joke had elicited from Carter, followed up with a joke of his own.

“It is a witch’s abode, after all. I’m sure the cat’s got a girlfriend named Lily or something.”

Allen was the team’s slightly eccentric Japanese expert. He was a brilliant man who spoke perfect Japanese, but sometimes the others had no idea what he was talking about.

Carter gave him a puzzled look.

“The report says it’s a female cat, though.”

“What’s wrong with that? ‘Lily’ in Japanese is ‘yuri’—sounds like a perfect fit to me!”

Hearing that, Denver rolled his eyes and shrugged hopelessly.

“I bet you were the guy who burned all of J. M. W. Turner’s nudes, weren’t you?”

John Ruskin was supposedly the one who first used the word “lily” in reference to lesbian relationships, perhaps as a symbol of purity. Ruskin was a patron of Turner, sometimes known as “the painter of light.” However, Ruskin, perhaps due to his inflated, biased sense of aesthetics, or his obsession with the artist’s creations, supposedly ended up burning all of Turner’s nude paintings.

“There’s always the rumor that some of Ruskin’s lovers secretly modeled for those nudes, which royally pissed him off. I wonder if there’s any truth to all that?”

“Hell if I know.”

After skimming through the report and placing it down on his desk, Carter took a seat on the couch and started asking questions.

“So you think we can use this cat to get more intel, huh? If I’m not mistaken, didn’t another country try something along those lines already and fail miserably—at the cost of about twenty million bucks?”

“Technology has come a long way in the past forty or so years.”

With that, Allen pulled out an injector meant for subcutaneously implanting microchip-sized digital listening devices into pets. He had gotten it through the embassy not long after they had come up with the plan.

“It looks pretty small, but if the device stays under the skin, won’t they be able to feel it when they pick the cat up?”

“That’s exactly why we’re aiming for the larger cat, even though the kittens would probably be easier to catch.”

The kittens were handled fairly often, but it was rare to see that happen with the larger cat. Perhaps she wasn’t a fan of being picked up.

“That makes sense.”

“The house may have some kind of sound-blocking technology in place, but we know they’re using cell phones in there, so wireless signals should get through just fine. We should be able to obtain at least a little bit of info before they figure us out.”

“Hmmm.”

“Not only that, but I’m betting our upstairs neighbors have similar plans in mind.”

Their team was on the fourth floor of the Fontaine. It was a bit of an open secret that the United States and Russia both had spaces on the fifth floor—and no doubt those teams both knew about the British team as well. With all the groups stuck together in such tight quarters, conflict might have seemed inevitable, but a strange, unspoken rule had developed between them that prevented them from interfering with each other.

“Early bird gets the worm, eh?”

“The Yanks have been a bit on the namby-pamby side lately, haven’t they?”

The members of Team Simon were on friendly terms with the targets and went inside the house frequently. Perhaps the Americans figured it wasn’t worth putting that relationship at risk by randomly rocking the boat.

It would’ve been great if William had been able to get the same kind of in with the targets, but unfortunately Thomas had already managed to screw things up in that regard...

“All right. If you can do it, do it. What’s the plan to secure the cat?”

“Take a look.”

This time, Allen handed a different document to Carter.

“Operation Pluto?”

“Well, since a black cat is gonna reveal their secrets to us from inside the walls...”

Names can be awfully revealing, thought Carter, smiling bitterly as he flipped through the document. Naming the project something so obvious might well give away our entire mission.

“Anyway, at around the same time every day, the cat takes one lap around the top of the fence surrounding the house. Provided it’s not raining, that is.”

“Like she’s patrolling her territory or something, huh?”

“She claws at the top of the fence sometimes too.”

Carter rubbed his chin. They say cats like to leave claw marks in high places when they’re claiming their territory... What’s the point of doing that in a place so high up that nobody can even see it, though?

“When she comes around to this side of the fence, we’ll shoot her with a fast-acting tranquilizer dart.”

“It’s not easy to snipe a target almost directly below you.”

“Ten meters is child’s play. Besides, it’s not like our lives’ll be in danger if we miss.”

Denver, who was going to be in charge of the sniping, gave a brief nod, confirming that it shouldn’t be a problem.

“Yeah, I suppose not.”

Eckley, who would be waiting on the ground, would quickly use the injector, then carefully toss the target back over the fence, and that would be that. Twenty minutes later, the cat would wake up as if nothing had happened.

The recorded data would then be transmitted back at regular intervals until the device’s battery ran out—and the targets would be none the wiser, as long as they weren’t on constant lookout for those sorts of things.

Once he had finished going over the plan, Carter looked back up at his men.

“All right then. Commence Operation Pluto.”

***

“Hey Miyoshi.”

“What’s up?”

I glanced over toward the garage at the back of the office, where a large outline that appeared to be Drudwyn was hanging its head low in front of a small black mass.

“I see them doing that every once in a while. Any idea what the deal is?”

The tiny black mass pawed furiously at the ground, letting out several plaintive meows.

***

I’m telling you, there’s something awful up there, meow!

Don’t just sit there looking all apologetic and downcast! Get out there and start gnashing your teeth, meow!

“Grrrrr.”

You can’t let yourself be seen? Ridiculous, meow! A massive body like that is made to be put on display, meow! You’re no good to anyone if you stay cooped up inside, meow!

Ugh, I’m doing the blasted meow-meow thing again, meow.

***

Miyoshi peered into the garage from her spot in the dining room and started giggling.

“Looks like Ai is giving Drudwyn a stern talking-to. She already got Cavall pretty good earlier.”

“A talking-to...? Can they even talk to each other in the first place? They’re not even the same species.”

“Good question. It kind of seems like both of them can understand what we’re saying sometimes, though. It wouldn’t really be that odd if they could talk to each other too, would it?”

Hellhounds and cats? Sharing a lingua franca of Japanese?

“No, that would definitely fall under ‘odd’ to me.”

It sure doesn’t seem like they’re using sounds to communicate. And even if they were communicating using telepathy, “meow” was still the only thing Mama could say.

Wait. Telepathy?

A strange thought suddenly came to mind, and I couldn’t help but say it out loud.

“Hey Miyoshi. If Monster A defeated Monster B, would Monster A get a D-Card?”

“You know, I’ve never considered that...”

It was a well-known fact that animals could get D-Cards to drop by defeating monsters. Nobody had ever directly confirmed any cases of monsters fighting with each other, so what might happen was beyond anyone’s guess. However, we did know that monsters could defeat other monsters—thanks to the existence of summoning magic.

“The first time Cavall and the others defeated any monsters was right after we summoned them on the tenth floor, but I’m not sure whether we even would’ve noticed a D-Card drop in the middle of all that commotion.”

“But Kei, we definitely didn’t see anything like that drop back when Glas killed his first skeleton.”

“Oh yeah. He was so busy acting smug about it, he almost got assaulted by a zombie.” I let out a tiny chuckle as I recalled the incident.

Glas, who had been lounging on the couch the entire time, cracked one eye slightly open to express his displeasure—but closed it again in a rare display of tolerance. Huh. I guess even he likes to let sleeping dogs lie every once in a while.

Miyoshi was right. If a D-Card had dropped during that little display, we definitely would’ve noticed.

“Maybe D-Cards won’t drop if a monster kills another monster, then? It would kind of bug me if the rules were inconsistent like that. Though I guess it’s always possible they had already defeated other monsters before they were summoned too...”

It wouldn’t be out of the question to think that if a creature had been summoned from some other location, it might have gone through the monster-slaying experience already.

If that were the case, that would refute the hypothesis that summoned monsters were created out of nowhere by using the relevant summoning skill—which would also mean that if they died, they were gone for good. There was no way we were going to test that idea, though.

“Even when summoned creatures defeat monsters, it’s treated as if the summoner made the kill, isn’t it? Any dropped items always appear in the vicinity of the summoner, anyway,” Miyoshi pointed out.

“Oh yeah!”

It was a proven fact that Miyoshi gained experience every time the Arthurs killed something. It would’ve made sense for it to work like a party that was set to funnel all experience points to the leader, but the Arthurs seemed to get stronger when they killed monsters too. Not to mention...

“Didn’t we ask Cavall about this once, and he said that they might actually get stronger through battle?”

If that was true, then there was no way the owner was getting a full hundred percent share of the experience points.

“He did say ‘might,’ Kei. It’s also possible that their increased performance is more of an indirect reflection of my increased MP, maybe.”

In other words, Miyoshi could’ve still been getting the full share of experience points, and as her MP increased, the Arthurs’ strength increased along with it.

“Something tells me they wouldn’t have powered up so fast if that were the case.”

“Again, these are all ‘mights’ and ‘maybes,’ Kei.”

Thanks to Miyoshi’s Appraisal skill, we already knew beyond a doubt that monsters had stats. Maybe if Appraisal could be leveled up, it might show stats for summoned creatures as well. We would have to save any final conclusions until then.

“So, circling back a bit, what was the whole ‘talking-to’ thing all about, anyway?”

“When I asked Cavall about it earlier, the gist seemed to be that Ai was angry at him and calling him useless.”

“Useless? For what?”

“Who knows?”

I guess it’ll be a while yet before pets and humans can actually understand each other...

***

I swear, that foolish dog has nothing going for it besides its size, meow.

At least I managed to get him to promise to help me out from the shadows. Considering the direness of the situation, I have no choice but to take the lead in protecting this house.

Now it’s time for my daily patrol. The fence surrounding this house has a rounded top and is a bit narrow, which would no doubt cause problems for amateur fence-walkers, but to me it’s a walk in the park.

As I trot across the top of the fence, I get the strong, eerie sense that I’m being watched.

***

“The target is passing Point A,” said Beets. He was monitoring the target from his position next to Denver, who was taking careful aim with his tranquilizer gun.

“It’s headed into the shadows of the trees. Passing it to you, Echo. Over.”

“This is Echo. Taking over monitoring from Bravo.”

The moment Eckley acknowledged the transmission and took over on the ground, the cat stopped in its tracks and glanced up in Beets’s direction. For a brief moment, he felt as though its eyes met his, and a sudden pang of nervousness shot through him. Once he saw it start moving again like nothing had happened, though, he sighed and shook his head in disbelief, figuring it was just his imagination.

“The target is passing Point B— Wha?”

“Echo? Something wrong down there, Echo?”

As Beets quietly requested a response, another sound started to overlap with his voice. At first it sounded like a distant, sobbing child, but it soon escalated into a noise that was absolutely inhuman: a long, high-pitched screech, as if something were scraping continuously against glass.

“What the...?”

The noise gradually increased in volume, as though its source was getting closer. Denver shot a puzzled glance around the area, tranquilizer gun firmly in his grip. When his eyes found Beets, he saw the man frozen in place, hand against his headset, his face as pale as a sheet. His comrade’s gaze was fixed on a single point in space, unmoving.

Carter, noticing that something was off with the balcony team, called out to them from across the room.

“What’s wrong?”

Denver was the one to respond, sounding rather perplexed as he peered outside in an effort to pin down exactly what Beets was staring at. “Uh, we heard some kind of noise...”

“Noise?” Carter raised an eyebrow.

Just then, a response finally came in from Eckley downstairs.

“Echo to base. As soon as the target crossed Point B...it disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“It might’ve jumped down on the other side of the fence...but I can’t confirm. If it’s still walking, it should be showing up at the next location soon. From there I should be able to confirm whether—”

“Yeek!”

Carter, who had been listening to the voices on comms, turned to the balcony where Beets’s frightened yelp had come from. There, both Denver and Beets were completely frozen, staring at something Carter couldn’t make out from his vantage point.

With two of his men bizarrely transfixed, Carter snatched his gun out of his desk drawer and cautiously made his way toward the window.

He had only taken a few steps before he started hearing the noise. It sounded like the souls of the damned crying out in agony plus the sardonic laughter of the demons welcoming them to hell, both rolled into one combined howl.

With each plodding step he took closer to the window, Carter’s legs felt heavier. By the time he was almost there, the voice had transformed into a horrific wailing sound—a half-terrified, half-triumphant shriek.

“Wh-What the hell?!”

The part of the window that was hidden behind the frame finally came into the bewildered man’s field of view, revealing what was on top of the balcony’s handrail.

“Oh Lord, protect me from the fangs of the devil and save my soul!” Beets suddenly blurted out, then dropped to the balcony floor, pressed his head against it, and clasped his hands together in fervent prayer.

Having previously witnessed Adams’s disappearance, Beets already had a strong belief that there was a mysterious force at work around that house. However, he also knew that nobody would take him seriously if he brought it up. In fact, the worst-case scenario was that people would think he had a mental illness, and he’d be taken off the team entirely. In the end, he had put on a tough front, but his bluff had been shattered in an instant.

Out of absolutely nowhere, a pair of glowing golden eyes had appeared, attached to what might well have been the personification of darkness itself.

“Shit!”

It’s the twenty-first century, dammit! Who the hell believes in God or the devil anymore?! Carter thought to himself as he raised his silencer-equipped Luger, pointed it at the balcony handrail, and pulled the trigger twice, not even thinking about the sound of the gunshots.

He saw the bullets sink into the black mass that had suddenly shown up—but the golden eyes merely continued staring at him from the darkness, not affected in the slightest.

“I-Impossible!”

It might have only been a .22 caliber weapon with a silencer, but from this distance, he should’ve seen at least something happen. If the bullets had bounced off, they’d be on the ground somewhere nearby, and if they had hit their mark, they would’ve left tiny holes.

In reality, though, neither of those things had happened. The bullets had simply vanished the moment they reached the thing, as if the rules from some other realm had taken over.

The devil doesn’t exist, and if there’s a hell, we’re already living in it. There are no other realms out there, and I’m firmly grounded right here in reality—

As he vehemently tried to convince himself of that fact, the world around Carter began to sway, and he was assaulted by the sense that even the very floor he stood on was melting away.

Denver, his eyes wide open, knelt on the balcony floor, humming a well-known Bible verse to himself as he pointed his weapon at the darkness and squeezed the trigger over and over again, having apparently forgotten it was just a tranquilizer gun.

In an effort to stave off the impending panic and force himself to calm down, Carter fired off all of his remaining bullets. When they were spent, he saw the monster reveal a set of white fangs, which almost seemed to grin as they opened to reveal a massive red maw. It might as well have been the gate to hell itself.

He shuddered, all but convinced that something absolutely horrible was about to happen to him. And just as that fear seemed about to become a reality...

“Ai! Suppertime!”

“Meow!”

A cheery voice called out from the house below, and the tension in the air instantly evaporated like a distant dream.

The mysterious black entity had transformed into a perfectly normal black cat, which immediately turned around and hopped off the balcony.

“Whaaa?!”

This is the fourth floor. There’s no way it could just jump down without hurting itself—

Having come to his senses, Carter rushed over to the balcony and peered over the edge, but saw nothing at all.

“Did I just dream that...?”

With his world, which had been coming apart at the seams, finally back in order, and his feet once again firmly on the ground, Carter suddenly realized he was drenched in a disgusting layer of sweat. It felt like he had just bolted out of bed after a terrible nightmare.

“Only if we all had the exact same dream.”

When Carter turned to see who had responded, he spotted Allen standing there like some kind of stone-faced doll, drained of all emotion.

“That was a warning.”

“A warning?”

“It’s because we came up with that stupid plan...”

“Allen, get a hold of yourself.”

“How the hell else are we supposed to explain what just happened?! You saw that thing! The devil can show up anywhere he wants, and do whatever he pleases!”

“Cut the crazy talk! The devil doesn’t—”

—exist.

Putting the rhetorical sense aside, there couldn’t be a real devil out there. Yet when Carter tried to say that out loud, the words got caught in his throat, and he fell silent.

Suddenly, the door opened with a loud bang.

Carter pointed his gun toward the door out of reflex, having already forgotten that he had used up all his bullets.

“Whoa, hey! Hold on a sec, it’s just me!”

Eckley, the sole member of the ground team, stood there in the doorway, holding his hands up in a don’t shoot gesture. He had apparently come running back to the room in a panic after the others had stopped answering comms and he had started hearing gunshots.

“Oh, it’s just you, Eckley.”

“Just me? Don’t give me that! What the hell happened up here?”

“What happened...?”

Carter thought for a moment about the events that had just taken place. Considering it felt like his entire team had just stepped over into the Twilight Zone in broad daylight, though, he couldn’t come up with any legitimate explanation.

“You know... That’s a good question. What did happen?”

“Huh?”

Dumbfounded, Eckley took a quick look around the room. Beets was huddled on the balcony floor, quivering in fear, and Denver was sprawled out next to him, a dazed expression on his face. Allen was slumped back at his monitoring station, headset around his neck, face toward the ceiling, eyes closed. Even Carter seemed out of it, his Luger dangling loosely from his hand.

Something had obviously happened—but Eckley had no idea what it possibly could’ve been.

Still, there was one thing he knew they absolutely needed to do.

“Someone might end up reporting those gunshots from earlier. We need to get rid of anything suspicious while we still can.”

“O-Oh, yeah. True enough.”

Eckley took all their guns and other illegal items, put them into an emergency bag, then stuffed the bag into the car they had borrowed from the embassy.

Even after he had finished taking care of everything, the others were still lost in their own little worlds.

***

When the human with the higher-pitched voice calls me, a dish full of dry food will soon follow, along with a side of canned meat or fish. It tends to be rather tasty.

I absolutely loathe having my meals made out to be charity, but today I did them the favor of defending the peace around their home. I will consider this meal a fine reward for services rendered.

The foolish humans probably have no idea that I play the role of defending the peace for them every single day—but I trust they will continue to serve me moving forward. Meow and forever!

“Hm, what’s that? You like your food? Do you want that kind from now on, then?”

“Meow!”

“Do cats even notice a difference between different kinds of cat food? She just eats it right up every time, as far as I can tell.”

“You’d be surprised! Ai is actually a bit of a gourmand.”

When Miyoshi would give her boiled chicken tenderloin, apparently she would always avoid the Brazilian chicken and go straight for the Awaodori. Nero and Noir always ate every last bit of the leftovers though. Unlike Ai, her two daughters were just regular cats, after all.

“Okay, I guess they do smell a little different... Man, she’s awfully picky for a stray cat.”

The human with the lower-pitched voice can be somewhat rude at times. Perhaps next time the small human named Megumi visits, I’ll chase after that tantalizing stick she likes to wave around and end up “accidentally” scratching him.

Still, if being called by a name allows me to enjoy pleasures such as this, I suppose being given a name isn’t quite as awful as I expected.

Pleased, Ai squinted her eyes.

***

The building, which combined elements of present and past architecture and looked almost like some kind of military facility, stood at the foot of an old bridge where a statue, dubbed one of the “Strange Watchers of the Thames” by Penny Illustrated Paper, held a miniature version of St. Paul’s Cathedral in its hand.

A man stood next to a window in that building, staring down at the Thames as he eyed the paper in his hand.

Back when the dungeons had first appeared, they had been considered a domestic matter. To address the issue, a dungeon division had been created under the DIS (aka MI5)—but after Otherworldly Language Comprehension was discovered, information from overseas became essential, and the ball was passed off to the SIS (aka MI6) instead.

That being said, the DIS had been the ones managing the dispatch of personnel to Japan, so the team was composed entirely of their members rather than any SIS personnel. Even so, the man couldn’t help but go over what was written on the paper they had submitted one more time.

A Black Devil has taken up residence inside the Witch’s abode.

“What sort of code is this supposed to be?”

This is London. Specters and spirits may haunt our buildings and cause commotion on a nightly basis, and we may have gotten a dungeon next to the London Eye two years before the actual dungeons started appearing across the world—but that’s still no excuse to submit a report like this.

The report made it seem almost as if the DIS team was trying to play some kind of prank, or perhaps even trying to get back at the SIS for butting in on their territory—but surely there was no way they would do something so childish.

Maybe the rumors are true... Maybe all of the personnel sent over to Japan have actually gone mad, and they’re on their way home.

The man considered that possibility for a while, but eventually just shook his head and tossed the report into the shredder.

Annotations

I am a cat: I heard somewhere that the actual cat that inspired Soseki’s I Am a Cat just so happened to be a black cat.

Understanding what the humans were saying: Who knows, it might already be possible to communicate telepathically with pets!

Nyanzapithecus: A genus of extinct primate that lived in Kenya over thirteen million years ago. Its remains were first discovered in the Nyanza province on the far west edge of Kenya, after which it was named. A shame it wasn’t actually called “Nyan-the-pithecus.”

Slightly eccentric Japanese expert: In other words, he’s a bit of an otaku. Lily, of course, refers to a white cat who appears in Kiki’s Delivery Service. She’s the girlfriend of Jiji, a black cat and constant companion to the titular character Kiki.

Rumors about Ruskin’s lovers: Complete fiction. There is no such rumor. Some believed that he burned the paintings because they ruined his immaculate image of Turner.

Another country: He means the United States. According to documents declassified by the CIA in 2019 (which also happens to be the year this story takes place), it was revealed that there had been spy projects involving dolphins, crows, cats, and more during the latter half of the 1970s. However, that info wasn’t made public until early autumn, which might be slightly after the timeline for this story. Let’s just ignore that potential slipup!

Thomas: This isn’t referencing the tank engine with the creepy face, but the mustachioed man who accompanied Asha and her father during the sale of the Super Recovery orb. Apparently he was more of a military attaché than any kind of intelligence agent.

Telepathic “meow”: This happened in a scene of the volume 7 short story, “Birds of a Feather.” Yoshimura assumed that Mama had no concept of vocabulary, but she had only just gotten her D-Card at that point. Now that she can understand the language, perhaps there actually could be reciprocal communication between pet and human.

That little display: See volume 5, January 16, 2019.

Awaodori: Awaodori is a type of chicken local to the Tokushima prefecture (as hinted by the “Awa” in its name, which is also a historical name for the Tokushima area). Apparently it’s the number one local chicken in Japan in terms of quantity produced, and it can easily be bought at pretty much any grocery store in that area. By the way, the big three in terms of local Japanese chicken are generally Hinaijidori, Nagoya Cochin, and Satsumajidori. Awaodori is an absolute bargain compared to these—you can usually get it for half the price or less!

The building: Why does the SIS Building (headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as the MI6 Building) look so much like a military facility? The DIS Building (Defense Intelligence Staff, whose Security Service is known as MI5), which lies kitty-corner across the Thames, is such a stately and dignified old building, comparatively...

Anyway, the bridge referenced here is Vauxhall Bridge. It’s two bridges upstream from Westminster Bridge, and is home to the statue that holds a miniature St. Paul’s Cathedral, well-known among those who have heard of it. Unfortunately you can’t really see it unless you lean out over the railing.

Dungeon: This refers to the London Dungeon. Let’s just say it’s a haunted house attraction that some would consider in rather poor taste. Before they relocated, though, apparently at least one skeleton they had been using was discovered to contain actual human remains. Between 2012 and 2013, they relocated next to the London Eye (a giant Ferris wheel beside the River Thames). The London Eye would be visible through the windows of the SIS Building.

Commentary

Ai just so happened to be a black cat, so I couldn’t help but do things this way...

If she had been a calico instead (she is a female, after all), I probably would’ve ended up making her a Holmes-style detective cat... Wait, I guess Jiro Akagawa already covered that with his Mike-Neko Holmes series. I have no idea if she’ll ever be able to operate a keyboard, though. (Supposedly one of the initial ideas for Mike-Neko Holmes involved her typing on a typewriter.)

The reason I referenced the possibility (in the Annotations) that Ai might be able to communicate via telepathy now that she can understand language was to foreshadow a related plot point showing up in the future... Nah, it was actually to cover my ass just in case. (lol)

England is a country chock-full of ghosts, but when I’m writing stories like this, it always ends up being the first thing on the chopping block. Sorry, Great Britain!

Note that although several of Ai’s scenes referenced or parodied portions of Natsume Soseki’s I Am a Cat and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat as a form of tribute, the copyrights on the originals and the translations are all long expired, so hopefully there shouldn’t be any problems on that front.

Afterword

Hello, dear readers, how have you all been? It’s me, KONO.

Many of these stories have a bit of a summer theme, despite the fact that it’s been winter for ages in the main volumes. This was a result of me being a bit hyperaware of the typical release time frame.

Gathering all of the short stories together in one book like this makes me realize how many of them have horror nuances. As I understand it, that just happens to be due to the preferences of the author. Horror is a spooky good time! I recently watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe by director André Øvredal, the first half of which was enjoyably creepy. The latter half felt a bit lacking, but I still had fun thinking about what I would’ve done in the same situation.

Now, unlike stories serialized in magazines, original written works are pretty loose with deadlines, to the point that pressure feels pretty rare—or almost like it’s not even there (yeah, right). The short stories, though, always have the same drop-dead due date lying menacingly in wait: the release of the associated volume. That means I can’t use things like writer’s block as an excuse, and I get a little taste of what it’s like to be a serialized author.

The experience begins with a subtle feeling of bitterness getting tacked onto the daily routine I had been enjoying so much, like a lone sauce stain on a clean, white tablecloth. Before long, the acid of panic starts adding its own touch of color, slowly overtaking everything like a cloud of poison spreading across the world. As time passes, the bitterness transforms into pure anguish, and I end up unable to breathe. Heeelp meee.

People who have no problem dealing with that kind of pressure every single month really do deserve to be called the chosen ones. I’d never be able to handle it.

Speaking of tablecloths, it used to be that a determining factor of whether you were at a proper restaurant was the presence or absence of said cloths. It’s definitely cool to see a spotless white tablecloth draped over a table, but it also makes it all the more obvious when you inevitably mess it up by spilling a few drops of sauce on it during your meal.

When that happens at, say, a place like L’Osier, sometimes they’ll discreetly place a white cloth over it for you, but that’s a pretty embarrassing experience in itself. Also, while I doubt it’s related at all, more and more “first-class” restaurants like Sézanne have been forgoing the tablecloths nowadays. I kind of miss them, but it also kind of makes sense.

But I digress. Back to the topic at hand.

So, despite the fact that I had already gone through the same pain and suffering eight times before, naturally I let the same thing happen with the volume 9 short story as well (which I was writing while I was working on this collection). That one unfortunately ended up being the closest shave I’ve ever had to deal with. It’s common knowledge that those who can’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it—and I’m apparently pretty good at blocking things out. (I know I’m not alone in this!)

They say old habits die hard, and that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. In my case, let’s just leave it at this: tomorrow...is another day.

May we all meet again in the next volume!

KONO Tsuranori

Summer 2024