He was aware that he was dreaming—dreaming of cutting people down while laughing, his body covered in wounds.

It wasn’t a lucid dream, and yet he knew it was a dream.

The reason he couldn’t control the “himself” inside the dream was because that wasn’t actually him. Somehow, he understood that much. He could comprehend that the one cutting people down wasn’t him, and yet the sensation of cutting them was far too real. So real that the boundary blurred—whether the one laughing as he cut them down really wasn’t him, or whether it was him after all, despite knowing it shouldn’t be.

The feeling transmitted through the hand gripping the hilt—the sensation of ending a life. The shock of clumsily receiving an enemy’s blade with his own. The tactile memory of driving the sword in, having it catch in contracting muscle and refuse to come free, then kicking the corpse to forcefully wrench the blade out—every sensation in his limbs.

How he moved, how he applied strength, how he breathed—how he cut.

All of it came through to him.

As if he himself had done the cutting.

It was a dream. He knew it was a dream, and yet it stubbornly refused to end.

Because morning hadn’t come yet. After cutting down ten people, thirty people—maybe it was around four in the morning by now. Sixty, eighty, ninety… just a little longer, and he would wake up.

Like surfacing from the depths of dark water, pushing aside the lingering remnants of the dream, Tooru opened his eyes.

“Ah, you woke up after all.”

There was the face of a foreign woman, literally right in front of his eyes and nose.

Her features were exquisitely well-formed, yet she didn’t give off a sense of distance—if anything, she looked friendly and approachable. Hair the color of near-white gold followed gravity and brushed against Tooru’s face.

She was the spirit bound to the holy sword—Tia.

The night before, Tooru had asked her to release her incarnation before he went to sleep, but at some point she must have incarnated again and been watching him sleep from extremely close range.

“…What do you mean, ‘after all’…?”

With a hoarse, just-woken voice, Tooru voiced the question, then pressed his hand firmly against Tia’s face and pushed it away before sitting up.

It reminded him of a long-ago memory—how the dog he’d had as a child used to sense when he was waking up and position itself near his face like this. The dog had died around the time he entered elementary school, and after that, his parents never kept another one.

“I had a feeling you were about to wake up from your dream, so I manifested and watched. Look, Tooru—when I incarnate again properly, it seems I get some freedom with my outfit.”

Even after having her face pushed aside, Tia didn’t get angry. If anything, she seemed cheerful as she spread her arms and spun lightly in place.

She certainly wasn’t wearing the light armor from yesterday anymore.

Her hair was still casually tied at the nape of her neck, but otherwise… she had changed into something like what a medieval fantasy village girl might wear.

The loose linen garment came down to about three-quarter length, with wide sleeves. Over it, she wore a vest laced up the front like a shoe. Below that was a slightly long skirt. From just below the shins, her skin was exposed, and she wasn’t wearing any socks. Instead, she had on footwear that was somewhere between sandals and zōri, seemingly made by weaving plant fibers together.

Tooru’s impression was that she looked like she was about to start singing yodels.

Given that they were in a run-down Japanese apartment, he wished she’d at least taken her shoes off.

“How is it? What do you think, Tooru? I can wear things other than armor, you know!”

Faced with Tia’s high spirits, Tooru—still groggy from just waking up—nodded for the moment. It was true that Tia, dressed like a village girl or town girl, was surprisingly cute. But the sensation of killing someone still lingered in his hands, and his mood didn’t lift at all.

“Hey… this is probably it. I think you’re being pulled in.”

“…Pulled in by what?”

“You were dreaming, right? Kagetsu, was it? That thing’s basically a mass of combat experience—a cursed tool. It doesn’t seem like something made specifically to curse people to death, but if you touch red-hot iron, of course your flesh is going to blister.”

“Ah… my head’s not working yet, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t use it. Well, I get wanting to check whether it’s usable or not. But you’ve got me, don’t you? Me—and the Holy Sword Lightbringer.”

With both hands planted on her hips, Tia struck a smug pose. This time, Tooru thought she was just plain cute. It seemed his waking mind was finally starting to function.

“Did Mika go home in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah. The walls in this building are thin, so you can clearly hear the door next door opening and closing. Then Mika said, ‘My mom’s home, so I’m going back.’”

“Huh.”

“Do you look after her often?”

“When Mika’s mother has a shift, and when Mika feels like it. She doesn’t really get in the way, so I told her she can come and go as she likes.”

Letting out a long yawn, Tooru glanced at his mobile terminal. The time was exactly what it always was. Normally, he would get ready in twenty minutes and head to the Sugai Dungeon to do his work as a “cleaner,” but he didn’t have to do that today.

Maybe—starting today—he wouldn’t be doing it anymore.

In any case, Tooru took a bottled coffee drink out of the refrigerator, poured it into a mug and a glass, added ice, and handed the mug to Tia.

“What’s this? It’s the color of mud.”

Tilting her head in puzzlement, Tia stared into the cup.

There wasn’t a hint of joking in her tone, so it seemed she didn’t know what coffee was.

Granted, it was a mud-like drink with milk and sugar dumped into it.

“Uh… it’s a drink. Sweet and bitter. I make a point of getting some sugar in the morning.”

Saying that, Tooru took a sip from his glass to demonstrate. Tia, still half-dubious, licked the coffee in her mug with her tongue like a dog or cat, then—just like an animal showing delight—lifted the corners of her mouth and began gulping it down.

The way her throat moved with each swallow felt strangely alluring, and he instinctively averted his gaze. Tia, however, didn’t care at all.

“This! This mud is amazing! It’s so good! The only drink this sweet I ever had was tea served at the royal palace! Though back then I was too worried about etiquette to enjoy the taste.”

“…Right.”

Figures, Tooru thought as he drank the mud-colored liquid.

Tia seemed to be having a similar realization. After finishing the mug, she looked down into it regretfully, then hesitated before opening her mouth.

“Hey… I’m probably not a human from this world.”

“Yeah, figured.”

“…You figured!? Did you just say ‘figured,’ Tooru? I went out of my way to swallow all my questions about incomprehensible iron vehicles, perfectly rectangular buildings, those stone pillars sticking up all over the city with lines connecting them, you know!? I even kept Mika company, and after she went home I thought you’d be tired, so I released my manifestation so I wouldn’t disturb your sleep and waited until morning—and when I finally worked up the nerve to tell you, thinking you’d be surprised—‘figured,’ you say!?”

She was more shocked than he’d expected—no, she clearly thought he was being unbelievably insensitive.

Tooru took minor emotional damage from that, but then realized something: Tia didn’t know anything about the World Fusion.

“Uh… calm down. There’s a reason. I’ll explain.”

“Calm down? Oh, very well. I’ll calm down. Is there any life-form more calm than I am? Look, Tooru—observe this calmness of mine! Amazing, isn’t it!?”

“…Did you just say ‘life-form’? You said you were a spirit. You’re dead.”

He also thought, You were loud as hell in my car, but he kept that to himself. In the end, it was pointless consideration anyway.

“Haaah! Hah hah hah! Well played! Even I, in all my composure, have had a tiny slip of the tongue pointed out! I must admit defeat on that one!”

The conversation didn’t seem like it was going anywhere, so after a brief moment of thought, Tooru poured her a refill of the coffee drink into her mug.

Tia went quiet—and seemed to calm down. She demonstrated that calmness by gulping the coffee down in one go, her throat making audible glug glug sounds.

Peace came to the world.

At least, for this brief moment.

◇◇◇

“Huhhh… the World Fusion from over twenty-five years ago, huh… From my perspective, it’s like I came to another world, and from your side, it’s like another world came to you.”

After a rough explanation, Tia showed more understanding than he’d expected.

She was seeing and hearing cultures and civilizations she had never known, and she was talking with Tooru, who lived in that world—there was no real choice but to believe it.

“Well, people like me were born after the World Fusion—what they call the ‘otherworld generation’—so another world was there from the start. In school, they taught us about hypothetical futures, like how things might have turned out if the World Fusion hadn’t happened, but the reality we have now is this one.”

“Yeah. The reality that exists now is something you just have to accept.”

“Right.”

He thought it was a relief that she was such an understanding ghost, but he didn’t say it—he didn’t want to rack up any more insensitivity points. It might already be too late anyway.

“By the way, Tooru. Speaking of the reality right in front of us… you’ve obtained both a holy sword and a cursed sword. What are you planning to do now?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“I used to be the owner of the holy sword, you know? The Holy Sword Lightbringer connects to its owner’s soul. No one but the owner can use it. …Well, I can use it, but since I’m part of the holy sword, you don’t really need to worry about that.”

In short, no one else could use it—that was Tia’s point.

Tooru didn’t quite grasp where she was going with this, but he sensed the seriousness in her expression and settled for nodding for now. Nodding just to get by wasn’t exactly honest, though.

“And it goes without saying that Lightbringer is a powerful weapon. Yesterday, there were people in trouble, so I acted without thinking—but that was a… stream, was it? I’m guessing a lot of people saw it.”

“Ah—”

He had forgotten. Completely forgotten.

Stepping on a transfer trap in the Sugai Dungeon, being sent—judging by the outcome—to a hidden layer of the Kamioka Dungeon, and obtaining the Holy Sword Lightbringer and the Cursed Sword Kagetsu—there was no way he could forget that. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten that he’d ended up saving Anthem’s members, either.

What he’d forgotten was the fact that he had probably appeared on Anthem’s stream.

“When I used the holy sword to help people in my world, the royal family found out almost immediately. After that, I was bound by all kinds of obligations. The responsibility of those who hold power, and all that. In my world, magical communication was something only a few mages could do—but in this world, everyone can communicate incredibly easily, right?”

Half-listening to Tia as she spoke, Tooru powered up the communication terminal in his room. It felt like it was taking about ten times longer than usual to boot up—but that was obviously just his imagination.

He quickly opened a web browser and brought up the largest SNS platform.

“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

As expected, Anthem was sitting right there among the trending words, and the related terms lined up neatly: Dungeon Mutation, Dragon-Slaying Swordswoman, and Cursed Sword Kagetsu.

And, just as expected—perhaps it was more accurate to say inevitable—clips of both Tia and Tooru from Anthem’s stream had already been cut into short videos and were being played all over the world.

“Oooh… that’s me. So that’s how I look from the outside.”

When he played one of the highlighted videos under Dragon-Slaying Swordswoman, Tia commented with mild amusement.

〈—The Cursed Sword “Kagetsu,” huh—〉

Unfortunately—or perhaps entirely predictably—there was also a short clip of Tooru cleanly cutting down that black knight with Kagetsu.

What was more, while Tooru had been sleeping soundly without a care in the world, this socially awkward-looking guy had been dubbed “Worksite Bro” on SNS, and the nickname had already spread everywhere.

“Sure… I was wearing work clothes, but still…!”

He wasn’t an explorer, and he didn’t have money, so he’d never worn proper explorer gear. He’d just been doing his job in work clothes bought at a home improvement store.

As long as he stayed on the upper levels of the Sugai Dungeon, that had been more than enough.

“But even so, ‘Worksite Bro’? Come on…! Then what about you, Tia—shouldn’t you be Holy Sword Sis or something? Instead it’s Dragon-Slaying Swordswoman! Dragon-Slaying Swordswoman and Worksite Bro!?”

He let out a low groan.

Of course, it solved nothing, and it didn’t make him feel any better.

Having his actions spread across the internet like this, with completely unrelated third parties saying whatever they liked—this whole going viral thing was an entirely unknown sensation to Tooru.

It felt unreal. The “Worksite Bro” online didn’t quite feel like him. It was like listening to someone else’s story—his own life being talked about as if it belonged to another person.

“…No, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on. This isn’t about me—Anthem should be the real topic here. Going viral is a momentary thing. Before long, people will stop talking about it…”

“Will they, though? Those girls are pretty famous adventurers—explorers, I guess, in this world. They seem like they’re way up near the top tier. And yet you completely overwhelmed a monster they couldn’t even scratch, you know?”

“You’re the one who beat the dragon to a pulp. That was a ridiculous sight. You swung your sword and it was like a shooting star—magical shockwaves slamming into it, pushing that massive body back again and again. That was incredible. You stood out way more than I did.”

“If I stand out, that just means you stand out too. I’m incarnated using your soul, remember? The current owner of Lightbringer is you, Tooru.”

He’d tried to deflect the focus of the viral attention onto Tia for his own peace of mind, but she shut him down with simple logic.

“And besides,” Tia continued, “That footage of you swinging Kagetsu… this whole culture of broadcasting video is fascinating. Ah—no, putting that aside, the video of you using Kagetsu is genuinely scary. You can’t feel any mana or curse through the screen, and yet just looking at it, you can tell it’s dangerous.”

“…It’s just some wimpy guy doing practice swings.”

“That’s a master’s single stroke. If footage like that is circulating, then there’s no question—you’re going to stand out. There’s no way you won’t draw attention.”

There was a strong certainty in her voice, born of her own past as a holy sword wielder who had been the center of attention.

She knew how the masses reacted to things like this.

Which brought them right back to Tia’s earlier question.

What was he going to do?

“…How would I know?” Tooru said.

Yeah, figures, Tia replied, smiling at him with sympathy.

For a moment, he felt a little saved by that smile—

of course, it was just his imagination.