The archived stream played footage taken from the body camera issued to Hayasaka.

After Kawai Sakiho had once lodged what amounted to harassment-level accusations against him, Hayasaka had submitted paperwork directly to the city, stating that the equipment was necessary for his duties. As a result, a dungeon-streaming body camera had been purchased for the Sugai Dungeon branch.

It had been deeply irritating for Sakiho, but once the application had been approved and the camera issued, she had had no choice but to loan it to Hayasaka—and she had continued doing so for over two years.

Even at the time, it had not been cutting-edge equipment, but it still came with fairly robust image stabilization, and the strength of its magic communication signal was decent. Its selling point had been that anyone could easily stream by linking it to a mobile terminal, though by modern standards that was an entirely ordinary feature.

“Uh… four hours and thirty-two minutes. I think I’m hearing a strange noise… maybe. A kind of keeen… like tinnitus. It could honestly just be actual ringing in my ears because of my condition. Still, it feels off, so I’ll report it. I’ll leave a comment too.”

A listless voice echoed as the image shook slightly. In the replay of the stream chat, a message reading simply “4:32:00” appeared, and the operation continued for a little longer. He had probably added the same timestamp to the stream description as well.

The image stopped moving for a while, and silence followed.

Then—

“…Is this getting picked up by the mic…?”

Hayasaka muttered.

At that point, Sadoyama paused the video, tapped the keyboard a few times, rewound it by about a minute, and cranked the volume all the way up.

When he resumed playback… there really was something like a high-pitched kiiinn—a sound reminiscent of tinnitus—that could be heard… or so it seemed.

But it might simply have been equipment noise made noticeable by the increased volume. To be honest, Sakiho couldn’t really tell.

“…Is this getting picked up by the mic…?”

Hayasaka’s mutter came again, now at roughly three times the volume from before.

Sadoyama stopped the video there and turned to face Sakiho.

“So—on that day, Hayasaka wrapped up his work early because he noticed something abnormal, reported it to you, Kawai-chan, and went home. You thought his report was just his imagination and decided to sit on it. That’s what happened, right?”

His tone wasn’t angry or raised—if anything, it was gentle.

That was precisely why Sakiho could only nod honestly.

Sadoyama probably didn’t expect anything from Kawai Sakiho to begin with. He likely didn’t believe that scolding her would improve anything, not even in the slightest.

And since that was, in fact, true, she had no rebuttal—but even so, a sense of shame and humiliation welled up from somewhere inside her. Not enough to boil over.

But just a little… it stung. It was embarrassing.

If only that idiot Hayasaka hadn’t made such a weird report—

The thought surfaced reflexively, and her gaze drifted toward the mobile terminal on her desk. The audio was muted, but Anthem’s stream was still going. All Sakiho wanted was for this dull stretch of time to end as soon as possible so she could go back to watching their broadcast.

“So, Hayasaka-kun streamed again the next day. And today there’s no stream at all… that’s strange. Around this time, he should be live.”

Muttering to himself, Sadoyama ignored Sakiho entirely.

That was when it finally came back to her.

“Um—uh… Section Chief. About Hayasaka-san…”

“What is it? Remember something?”

“He didn’t come in today. I mean… he didn’t clock out yesterday. I don’t think he returned the body camera either…”

“—Huh?”

Just barely, but unmistakably, anger leaked into his voice, and Sakiho felt like she might pass out.

Having a former A-rank explorer standing right in front of you was more dangerous than having a brown bear there. If Sadoyama felt like it, Sakiho’s head and torso could part ways in an instant. Normally, he made a point of never letting her be conscious of that fact.

As she was thinking that, she realized she had somehow collapsed onto the floor—and when Sadoyama saw her there, he slipped the mask of a sloppy middle-aged man back into place and broke into a loose grin.

“Ah, haha, sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. But tell me more.”

“I-I don’t know what else to say… That’s really all there is. Yesterday, like always, he came to borrow the body camera, reported the start of his shift… and then he never came back.”

“Why didn’t you report that right away?”

“I—I thought he was just slacking off. I mean, he doesn’t have to dive into the dungeon every single day and keep killing trash mobs on the upper floors… so I figured he’d finally realized that himself. And anyway, every day I have to hand him the camera and get it back… I thought, why should I have to deal with that? He’s a contractor—he should handle it himself…!”

As her true feelings spilled out of her mouth on their own, Sadoyama showed not the slightest interest. Instead, he let out a deep sigh and held up an open palm toward Sakiho.

Enough.

That was what it meant.

Naturally, Sakiho shut her mouth.

She wasn’t stupid enough to keep talking after being told to stop by someone more terrifying than a brown bear.

“This is a mess. This is… yeah, no. Anyway, let’s check yesterday’s stream. Kawai-chan—if something’s happened to Hayasaka-kun, be ready to take responsibility. I’m not planning to cover for you.”

No longer sparing her even a glance, Sadoyama operated the terminal.

Still half-dazed, Sakiho shakily got to her feet and found herself looking at the stream footage displayed on the monitor. The view of the Sugai Dungeon captured by Hayasaka’s body camera looked the same as always—but if she watched closely, he seemed to be running.

She could hear ragged breathing, too.

The volume settings were probably still cranked all the way up.

“Maybe a little further back.”

Muttering that, Sadoyama rewound the stream a bit.

As the dull work of clearing weak dungeon mobs played by at triple speed, Hayasaka suddenly came to a halt. The playback speed was returned to normal.

“…You’ve got to be kidding.”

Hayasaka muttered. For him, it was an unusually flustered tone.

“Three hours fourteen minutes. I found a human silhouette at the location of the strange noise. I don’t know if it’s a human or a humanoid monster. If it’s a monster, it shouldn’t be in the upper layers of the Sugai Dungeon. There’s a possibility of a dungeon stampede, or some unknown anomaly… maybe. I don’t know.”

It was a perfunctory report, yet at the end of the dungeon corridor shown by the camera, there was nothing there.

No silhouette at all.

“…Just… check it. I’ll just check, then run.”

There was hesitation, then resolve, and the screen began to move.

Hayasaka had started walking.

“Damn it… this is definitely a bad idea. If something happens, it’s going to be my responsibility…”

The irritated muttering carried a tone Sakiho had never heard from him before. The Hayasaka Tooru she usually dealt with spoke in a completely unmotivated, rough, purely obligatory manner.

Combined with his work clothes that looked like something a site laborer would wear, he gave the impression of a bottom-tier worker through and through… which was exactly why Sakiho had felt no hesitation in looking down on him.

“Yeah… if something happens, it’s my responsibility. But I reported it at the Sugai Dungeon branch yesterday. They ignored it, didn’t even pretend to investigate. Maybe I can shift a little responsibility onto the office too…”

Muttering such things, Hayasaka kept walking at a slightly hurried pace. Even though no “silhouette” appeared on the screen, his steps—turning left and right through the corridors—were utterly without hesitation.

“If it’s not showing up on camera… mental interference magic? If so, it should be affecting the magic communications a bit, but there’s no sign of that kind of effect either… Even so, if you’re aware of it, you should’ve turned back properly.”

Grumbling at the screen, Sadoyama sounded exactly like a middle-aged man heckling a sports broadcast—but his expression was far too serious for that.

He was worried… probably.

Even though he had made it clear he didn’t care what happened to Sakiho’s future.

He was worried about a bottom-tier cleaner like that.

“…What?”

Hayasaka suddenly let out a strange voice.

Right around the middle of a long corridor, he abruptly stopped, and the camera swung back and forth several times between the front and the rear of the passage. He was checking his surroundings.

For a brief moment, the way he caught his breath came through the screen clearly… and then the image moved again. He had started walking.

After advancing maybe ten meters from where he had stopped, Hayasaka halted once more and, for some reason, placed his left hand against the wall on his left.

No—he pushed his hand into it.

Hayasaka’s left hand seemed to melt into the wall, as if dissolving.

“Come one, now! No way!”

“Come one, now… seriously?”

Sadoyama’s involuntary shout overlapped perfectly with Hayasaka’s words from the stream.

After a brief pause that looked like hesitation, Hayasaka stepped forward—straight into the wall. From the perspective of those who could only watch the screen, it felt exactly like a scene from a horror movie.

What was something like this doing on the upper floors of a D-rank dungeon?

There was no way Sakiho could know.

“Hey, hey, hey… stop it. Turn back, damn it…!”

Sadoyama hurled his plea at the screen as if praying, but of course, it couldn’t possibly reach the Hayasaka in the archived footage. After passing through the wall, Hayasaka continued along a narrow passage beyond it and entered a room at the end. It was truly tiny.

On the wall directly opposite the entrance of that small room—

something like a framed picture was hanging there.

What was it?

Sakiho wondered. Hayasaka probably thought the same thing, because he took a step forward to check it.

At that instant, the image violently distorted—

and the stream cut out.

That was where the playback of the archive ended.

“Did the magic comms get cut…? If there’s no contact from his side, that means he’s not in a state where he can report in. Even if we send out a search party, the explanation will be a mess—and the situation itself is a mess. We can analyze the archive and narrow down the location of that hidden passage, but…”

Staring at the streaming site’s screen—which cheerfully displayed “Recommended Next Videos”—Sadoyama kept muttering to himself.

He was in a position where he had to think of concrete countermeasures, where he had to act. And if it came to it, Sadoyama himself—former A-rank explorer—would probably head out.

And there was nothing Sakiho could do.

She would probably be made to take responsibility for something—but that was unavoidable.

…Was he dead?

She recalled that listless face she had seen every day.

But no particular emotion welled up. Nor was there much in the way of guilt. She couldn’t bring herself to think Hayasaka died because of her. After all, the Hayasaka in the footage had known it was dangerous and moved forward while declaring it was his own responsibility.

…What was going to happen now?

Just as that vague thought drifted through her mind, an electronic chime rang out.

Sadoyama clicked his tongue, stood up, pulled a mobile terminal from his suit’s inner pocket, and answered the call.

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Over here, we’re dealing with—what? This isn’t the time? What do you mean—what did you just say? Seriously? Anthem is being attacked by a Unique Monster? Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me! Got it, I’m heading to the site. We’ll talk about our situation on the way.”

Still connected to the call, Sadoyama turned his gaze toward Sakiho.

She shrank back despite herself. With a former A-rank explorer shifting into combat readiness without a shred of consideration, all Sakiho could do was cower.

“Kawai-chan. We’re putting this matter on hold for now. Go back to your normal duties. Just so you know, I wouldn’t recommend running away. Your priority level is pretty low, so we’ll deal with you after everything else is settled. If things go well, it’ll be a pay cut. At worst, dismissal.”

With that, he lightly hopped out from behind the counter and dashed off, so impatient that he didn’t even wait for the automatic doors to fully open.

After staring for a while at the automatic doors—which probably wouldn’t open again for some time—Sakiho suddenly remembered the mobile terminal she had left on her desk.

“Didn’t he just say… that Anthem was under attack…?”

He definitely had.

The terminal still displayed Anthem’s stream, and the chat was moving at a terrifying speed. When she turned the muted audio back on, girls’ screams burst out.

〈No! Airi! Airi!〉

〈Calm down, Leader! Screaming won’t help! Handling that dragon and the black knight at the same time is impossible with just us! Sanagi-san is unconscious too!〉

〈But Airi—! I know, but—!〉

〈The only option is to somehow land a blow, rescue Midou-san, and escape. Rationally speaking, we should abandon her, but… damn it, I’m still too green. I don’t think I can choose that option. Leader, we’ll probably die here.〉

〈No! But—leaving her is wrong too! Chizuru, please… I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Chizuru. I’m such a terrible leader…〉

〈Because you’re this kind of leader, we made it this far. Hold your head high.〉

Something… something she couldn’t quite grasp was unfolding.

The camera remained fixed on what looked like the ceiling of a vast hall, unmoving. It seemed the cameraman had lost consciousness and the camera had been dropped where it fell.

“Crap, crap, crap.”

“This is seriously wrong. These aren’t B-rank dungeon monsters.”

“Even for Uniques, two at the same time is insane.”

“Run! Please!”

“It’s not your fault, Megu-chan! Run! You’ll all get wiped out!”

The comments that immediately caught her eye were a chorus of panic and despair. She had no idea what kind of people were watching Anthem’s stream in the middle of a weekday, but there were far more viewers than during their usual prime-time broadcasts.

Most likely—the moment news of the girls’ predicament broke, it had spread across the internet, causing the viewership to explode. And it was still climbing.

When Anthem had started streaming that morning, the concurrent viewer count had been around twelve hundred.

The moment she turned the audio back on, it had probably been around twenty-five thousand.

Now—it had passed thirty thousand.

More than thirty thousand people were about to witness their deaths.

“…What… is this…?”

Up until this morning, it had all been just another ordinary day.

How had it come to this—?

Comments continued to flood in, while the image itself remained motionless. The only sign that Anthem’s members were moving came through the audio.

And then—light.

A blinding radiance that washed the screen pure white.

Next came a thunderous roar, like the earth itself shaking.

What had happened…?

〈Whoa, that’s a pretty expensive-looking camera. Is this streaming right now?〉

Suddenly—the familiar, utterly unmotivated voice rang out.

The same voice she had heard so often.

The same voice she had heard in the footage earlier.

The camera was picked up, and on the screen appeared a man in work clothes.

Hayasaka Tooru.