Kawai Sakiho felt like she was about to die—in two different ways.

First, there was Orochi that had emerged from the Sugai Dungeon and was rampaging about. If an ordinary civilian like Sakiho got even slightly caught up in that chaos, it would mean instant death.

After all, the thing was about the size of a five-car train, thrashing around at high speed in every direction. When it raised its head, it towered high enough to make her feel like she was looking up at a small building.

In short—it was enormous.

And it was moving at a terrifying speed, reducing everything around it to a mess.

Second was the fact that Sakiho herself was being carried on the shoulder of her section chief—former A-rank explorer Sadoyama Kouji—as he continued to evade Orochi’s attacks. Or rather, its movements. Or maybe just its sheer violence.

He leapt and bounded, and somehow—she had no idea how—kicked off something in midair to change his trajectory, all while moving around at a speed that felt like a bad joke.

That speed was more than a mere office worker like Kawai Sakiho could endure much longer.

“Th-this is bad… this is really bad, Section Chief…!”

“Don’t talk! You’ll bite your tongue! And besides, no matter what we do right now, it’s bad!”

Sakiho’s insides churned violently, her sense of balance long since gone. Her face had already turned deathly pale. She no longer had the strength to cling to Sadoyama herself. The moment he released his grip on her, her death would be assured.

She didn’t even have time to feel afraid.

She felt sick. Miserable. None of this made sense.

Why had this happened?

Why, all of a sudden—

“C-can’t we… r-run… away…?”

“You want me to run while dragging that monster with us!? It’d cause damage all over town!”

Ah—that’s why he was playing matador with the monster near the Dungeon entrance. Somewhere in the fading edge of her consciousness, Sakiho realized this far too late.

They probably could have fled immediately, without caring about appearances.

But Sadoyama hadn’t done that.

And—she couldn’t bring herself to resent him for it.

After all, Sadoyama could have abandoned Sakiho and played matador alone. That would probably have been far easier for him. And yet, he was carrying her on his shoulder while buying time against a monster larger than a two-story house.

“You’re… an idiot… aren’t you…”

“That’s how I can live with myself. Well, in this case, I guess it’s more like die with myself. Sorry, Kawai-chan. I doubt we’ve got even five minutes left.”

Thump.

A light landing.

Sakiho had no idea what kind of aerial maneuvering he’d just performed—she couldn’t grasp or understand it—but despite moving at such insane speed, the landing itself had been far too light. Maybe that was just how it was for a former A-rank explorer.

“It feels like we’ve been running around for an hour… but it’s been about eight minutes. Orochi has probably recognized me as a threat by now—or decided I’m too much trouble and chosen to ignore me. If it’s the former, this is where things really start. If it’s the latter, I’ll have to provoke it myself.”

“…R-running… isn’t an option…?”

“Nope.”

The answer came instantly. Yet strangely enough, Sakiho didn’t feel a strong urge to beg him to run. She found that odd herself—but it was probably because she would have died long ago if Sadoyama hadn’t been there. There was no doubt about it.

In that case—

Even if she got dragged into this, it couldn’t be helped.

She hated it, of course.

But unpleasant things arriving without warning and leaving you helpless—that was life. This kind of thing could happen. It was terribly unfair, but having been saved once by Sadoyama made it at least slightly better.

Being crushed by Orochi without ever understanding what was happening would have been far worse.

This was… no, not much better——but at least a little.

“Here it comes!”

Feeling Sadoyama tense his entire body, Sakiho somehow managed to lift her face.

She should have left it alone.

Because she saw it—the absurdly huge serpent, its sense of scale completely broken, charging straight at them while crackling with violent violet lightning across its entire body.

The next instant brought an acceleration that nearly knocked her unconscious.

It felt as though her organs had flipped over. A sharp pain shot through her neck. There must have been an impact like a traffic accident—though in reality, Sadoyama had simply moved.

Then came the roar.

Orochi’s massive body gouged into the ground. Its charge mowed down nearby trees, and the violet lightning cloaking its body struck the clouds of dirt kicked up into the air, producing a shrill zzzz that set her teeth on edge.

“Shit! You’ve gotta be kidding me! It pierced my magic defense in an instant!!”

Sadoyama blurted out his despair, almost involuntarily.

Ah—this was it. There was nothing left to be done.

Eight minutes meant four hundred and eighty seconds. Nine minutes, five hundred and forty. If, by some miracle, they had managed a full ten minutes, that would have been six hundred seconds. She had no idea how many people Orochi would kill in that time, how much of the town it would destroy, how much nature it would ruin—but it would have been time worth its weight in gold.

Of course, it might all have been completely pointless.

But considering the damage this Orochi was causing per second, it had to be enormous. It wasn’t Sakiho who had bought that time—but if she was going to be killed alongside the great contributor, Sadoyama Kouji, then perhaps it wasn’t such a terrible way to die.

Because she had—shockingly little regret.

There was nothing like I should have done this or I should have done that. She didn’t want to die, of course—if there were some option where selling her soul would let her live, she would choose it without hesitation. That was how much she didn’t want to die.

But no such option was going to appear.

That was how things usually were.

Watching Orochi twist around with a thunderous roar, preparing to charge again, Sakiho steeled herself deep in her chest. She hadn’t lived a particularly good life. What felt worst was that she hadn’t given anything good to anyone else. It struck her only now, at the very end.

She should have given something—anything—good to someone, like the girls from Anthem. At the very least, she should have tried. She had nursed dissatisfaction with her circumstances and position, yet never changed jobs, spending her days at the Dungeon branch watching streamers endlessly… and on a whim, she had even pinned a false accusation on Hayasaka Tooru. It had been unforgivably foolish.

She had lived without ever trying to earn her own worth.

That alone might count as regret.

Of course—it was far too late now.

And even that thought… was a light one. Just a faint notion drifting up at the brink of death. That was all.

She let out a long breath and squeezed her eyes shut.

If possible, she wanted it to be over in an instant, without much pain. Lingering on after a fatal wound was the one thing she truly hoped wouldn’t happen—but that worry was probably unnecessary.

If that thing charged again, there would be no surviving it.

“Haaaaaahhhh———!”

A voice—something shouted.

A clear, resolute voice that reverberated deep inside her chest.

◇◇◇

“———yaahhhhhh!!”

A voice rang out.

The instant she thought that, an overwhelming, torrential light was unleashed—so intense that even with her eyes shut, Sakiho’s vision turned pure white.

Then came the impact.

A sound like an explosion—no, she couldn’t hear it. Her ears had gone wrong. Still, the shock transmitted through her body told her that something had happened.

Her head swayed, reeling.

She felt as though she’d slammed into something somewhere.

At some point, the sensation of Sadoyama’s suit vanished.

Had the impact blown them both away, making it impossible for Sadoyama to keep carrying her…?

Which meant she’d been flung aside and was now lying on the ground. Her eyes were still dazzled, her head still spinning, but when she groped around, she felt the rough texture of gravel and dirt beneath her fingers.

“—, ——, —!”

Someone seemed to be shouting.

Her hearing hadn’t returned yet. But the dizziness was easing.

Pressing a hand to her forehead as if to endure the headache, she managed to open her eyes.

—A meteor was shattering the serpent.

And then again, an unbearably brilliant light, followed by a shockwave.

The blast of air struck her body like a physical blow, and just when she had finally lifted her face despite the dizziness, she lost all sense of direction and was blown away once more.

What came next was another impact, and a deafening roar.

If something enormous—say, the massive body of Orochi—had been blasted skyward and then slammed back into the ground, this was probably what it would feel like.

And then… sound returned.

Still a little muffled, but no longer gone.

She opened her eyes.

She really was lying on the ground, so she pushed herself upright.

The familiar plaza near the entrance of the Sugai Dungeon was… utterly wrecked. Most of the asphalt had peeled up or cracked apart. The surrounding trees had been mowed down so thoroughly that even a violent tornado wouldn’t have left things this bad. Power poles and lines were gone—completely ruined.

Thick clouds of dust billowed everywhere, enough that she felt like she’d start coughing if she breathed too deeply.

Beyond that devastation lay the corpse of Orochi.

As a monster, once death came, it scattered glowing motes of light and vanished—and in the place where it disappeared stood a swordswoman in light armor.

“D-…Dragonslayer?!”

Before she realized it, Sadoyama—who had gotten up near her just like she had—shouted toward the swordswoman. Even amid the darkness and dust, her platinum-blonde hair was unmistakable, as was the sacred, pale-blue glow enveloping her Western-style sword—the Holy Sword Lightbringer.

“Sadoyama, right? Were you on site, buying time?”

“…Y-Yeah. I was. But why are you here…?”

“Sorry, I’m in a hurry. We’ll talk later. Tooru! Over here, over here!”

As if her exchange with Sadoyama were trivial, the dragonslaying swordswoman—Tia—repositioned the holy sword behind her waist and called out Tooru’s name.

Tooru… Hayasaka Tooru?

Startled, Sakiho turned toward where Tia was calling—and there it was: a familiar kei car, looking like it had just been through a traffic accident, its engine barely still running.

Stepping out from the driver’s seat—was none other than Hayasaka Tooru.

“You said you’d protect me too, didn’t you?! You totally left me hanging! I got to experience an airbag for the first time in my life!”

“That can wait! For now, it looks like this Dungeon Stampede was the single–big-target type. I used the holy sword at more than fifty percent for the first time in a while. If a monster that huge showed up, it shouldn’t turn into a flood of lesser monsters spilling out.”

“You took down that gigantic bastard in two hits and you’re still saying that was only fifty percent?”

“It’s big, so even a full-power swing is guaranteed to connect. That doesn’t work against human-sized targets. Against Demon Long–class enemies it turns into a brutal war of attrition… anyway, that’s not the point!”

Hurry, hurry, Tia urged Hayasaka Tooru on.

She clearly wasn’t even registering Sadoyama or Sakiho as part of the situation.

“Uh—Sadoyama-san, and… Kawai-san, right? You got caught up in this? Are you okay?”

Hayasaka spoke to Sadoyama and Sakiho in a perfectly normal tone, but they didn’t have time to respond.

“That can wait too! They survived, so we can talk as much as we want later! We have to head to the Noumi Dungeon! Come on, hurry!”

“Hurry or not… the car’s wrecked. I tried to reverse and the gear wouldn’t engage, the airbags deployed, and you tore the passenger-side door clean off. How are we supposed to get to the Noumi Dungeon?”

“The Noumi Dungeon is on the opposite side from here, past the Kamioka Dungeon, right? Cars are convenient, sure, but with the roads twisted up like this, speed doesn’t really matter. I’ll be faster if I run.”

As she said that, Tia deliberately displayed the holy sword she was holding horizontally behind her waist. The way she wiggled it was oddly reminiscent of a dog wagging its tail, giving off a completely out-of-place cuteness.

“…Are you being serious?”

“Best seat in the house. Sitting on a holy sword and being carried by a hero—there wasn’t anything like that even in the other world. Come on, hop on!”

“…Ah… well, I guess it can’t be helped.”

His hesitation lasted only a moment.

With surprisingly little reluctance, Hayasaka mounted the holy sword Tia was holding behind her waist, committing to a decidedly unconventional piggyback ride. After Tia gave him a series of instructions and adjusted his posture and position, everything moved astonishingly fast.

“Alright, I’ve got you secured on my end, so you shouldn’t fall—but Tooru, make sure you’re holding on tight too! If you let your guard down, we could flip over.”

“Hey, don’t suddenly sprint at full speed! This is the first time I’ve ever been carried by a gho—”

—st.

Before he could finish, Tia took off.

Dust kicked up behind her like something out of a comic book, and in the time it took to take a single breath, she had already gone impossibly far… probably moving faster than any car could.

“……”

“……”

For more than ten seconds, Sakiho and Sadoyama stayed silent.

Tia was right—there really wasn’t any time to talk. The Dungeon Stampede had started; Sadoyama had bought precious time, and the miraculously arriving dragonslaying swordswoman had quickly dealt with Orochi. But now, with that problem solved, there was still cleanup to do, and the Noumi Dungeon was also experiencing its own Dungeon Stampede.

Still, there wasn’t anything for Sakiho to do.

For now, all she could do was savor the simple fact that she was alive.

Or, if her superior gave instructions… well, it was past regular hours, but it was an emergency, so working overtime wouldn’t be so bad, she thought.

Though, well… her workplace was basically in ruins.