Sasamori Takeshi was savoring what could be called his first true sense of defeat in life.

He had been bound in the basement of some unknown building and subjected to interrogation—no, torture—by a young punk called an S-rank explorer. The moment he uttered anything that did not align with their expectations, hellish torment awaited him. Experiencing such physical pain was an extremely rare occurrence in Sasamori’s life.

He did not even remember ever being struck by his parents.

At most, back in high school, he had slipped on the stairs and broken a bone. Or perhaps the time, just the other day, when the head of the Dungeon Affairs Division had assaulted him during a meeting—though that had been so sudden that the shock outweighed the pain. It had certainly hurt, but it had done little more than slightly bruise Sasamori’s pride.

And yet—

Just a small complaint had earned him a merciless kick.

It had been powerful enough to knock the breath out of him and force a groan from his lips.

If that brat named Souma had been enjoying the cruelty, then perhaps Sasamori could have accepted it as the actions of a deranged sadist. He might have convinced himself he had simply been captured by an incomprehensible madman and escaped into the comfort of thinking none of it was his fault.

However—that man had looked utterly bored.

Even as he kicked Sasamori in the stomach, struck his shins, and slapped his cheek, he had maintained a flat, indifferent demeanor. Sasamori knew that expression well. It was the face of someone who had taken on a task no one wanted to do simply because “it was their job.” As a politician, Sasamori had always made a point of generously praising such people. If they quit, it would be troublesome.

By that logic, he should have treated explorers the same way… but they were different. No matter how much the state artificially suppressed the prices of magic cores and dungeon materials, fools happily kept selling them off one after another.

He had lost count of how many times supporters had come to him with concerns like, “My child wants to become an explorer.” It had happened far more than ten or twenty times.

Why anyone would want to become such “worker ants” was completely beyond Sasamori’s understanding.

At the end of the previous century, when the world had merged with another, and at the beginning of this century, when the Chain Stampedes had occurred—those standing on the front lines of the devastation had always been those idiots called explorers, who had gained incomprehensible powers.

Back then, Sasamori had been young. Many of his friends had died, one after another.

He had thought them utter fools. Why would anyone risk their life for the sake of others?

Life was something to be risked by other people.

There were countless jobs in this world that were harsh, dangerous, and unpleasant.

Sasamori did pay a minimum level of respect to jobs people did not want to do. After all, society would suffer if no one took them on. Sewage treatment, specialized construction, certain factory work, agriculture and livestock farming—all of these often involved his supporters. And from Sasamori’s perspective, they were jobs he would never want to do himself, jobs few others wanted either. Showing appreciation to such people had excellent cost performance. That was something he had learned from experience.

Even without putting any real feeling into it, simply offering words of appreciation made them look happy.

People were weak to gratitude.

That, too, was something he had learned from experience. Especially when gratitude came from the strong, the weak were overjoyed. Perhaps they were never thanked in their daily lives, or perhaps they were ignored by those in positions of power. From a politician’s standpoint, they were ideal targets. A few compliments were all it took to gain their support.

And so—whether that was the reason or not—Sasamori Takeshi still did not believe his way of thinking was wrong.

Even as he was bound with his hands tied behind him around a pipe running along the wall, even as he was tortured in that state, even as he was left there beaten and battered—his thoughts did not change in the slightest.

Time had passed, and the mortality rate of explorers had reportedly dropped significantly. Even so, Sasamori’s mindset remained exactly the same.

Those idiots called explorers were nothing more than society’s “worker ants.”

However—he did recognize one thing.

He had failed.

◇◇◇

Everyone who had gathered in the basement gradually left, until only Hamamatsu Nanami—the manager of that idol explorer group—remained behind.

Even so, just as no one bothers to greet the furniture in a room, they all left the basement treating Sasamori as though he didn’t exist. Hamamatsu was no different. After confirming that everyone else had gone, she let out a small sigh, then, still treating Sasamori as nonexistent, sat down on a folding chair by the wall and began looking at her mobile terminal.

She was probably just killing time.

Sasamori couldn’t really understand the mindset of staring at a tiny screen to pass the time, but since magic comms allowed it to connect to a network, it was likely an ideal tool for wasting time.

“…Hamamatsu, was it? Do you even understand what’s going to happen after doing something like this…?”

He hadn’t really expected a response, but perhaps out of relief that that violent man called Souma was gone, the words slipped out of his mouth.

However, Hamamatsu didn’t shift her gaze from her terminal even for a moment, and simply treated his words as if they had never been spoken. It wasn’t even worth the effort to ignore him—that was the kind of attitude she showed.

Heh… finding it absurd, a faint laugh slipped out from the depths of his stomach.

Just a few days ago, he had been the one evaluating and deciding the worth of others. Now, he was being deemed “worthless” and ignored by a woman barely in her mid-twenties.

“What are you laughing at? You’re the one who doesn’t understand what’s coming.”

Hamamatsu spoke in a cold voice.

Unlike Souma, who had been utterly devoid of emotion, her tone carried contempt, anger, and a mocking edge meant to provoke Sasamori.

“What else is there to understand? At this point, the worst case is execution. If not, then you plan to use me as bait to lure out that man from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. Or perhaps now is already the time to cast the line? Honestly, this is why I hate explorers.”

“Thanks to the people you look down on as ‘worker ants,’ most of the world’s energy problems have been practically solved, and advances in magical technology have made life more convenient. What have you done besides squeeze money out of others?”

“You people don’t grow rice or raise livestock. Did you know? A retired explorer once took a job as a farmer, but he kept saying, ‘Work like this is beneath me,’ and quit in less than half a year. Despite having more than enough physical strength to easily handle the kind of labor that men and women in their sixties perform while wrecking their bodies, he still quit—because it was ‘boring.’”

“That’s just a textbook case of missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of examples of retired explorers contributing to society. You’re just looking down on things you don’t understand. You know what they call that? An out-of-touch old fossil.”

At her deliberate condescension, Sasamori could only let out a trembling laugh from the back of his throat.

Just as he thought—this woman held a personal grudge.

All the others—the elf from another world, the idol explorers, the dispatched S-rank explorer, that gloomy woman, the head of the Dungeon Affairs Division, his female subordinate… every single one of them had simply refused to acknowledge Sasamori Takeshi’s existence.

Only Hamamatsu Nanami had been making a conscious effort to keep him out of her sight.

“You’re the only one here who reeks of the gutter.”

He said it with a low chuckle.

Sasamori had no real political ideology. In truth, he didn’t even particularly crave excessive wealth. All he wanted was a stable position among the powerful, and for that, he had gone along with the nonsense of his supporters, assuring them he would handle things. After all, he was never the one who had to do the actual work.

At the same time, he had never felt even the slightest pang of conscience about crushing those who threatened that security. He had a certain knack for identifying the weaknesses people most didn’t want exposed. He couldn’t fight—but he excelled at dragging others down.

Now, even he understood that such a position was gone.

Falling for the sweet words of that gloomy man had been the turning point. Without that, he might have lost his position and trust, but he could at least have taken his money and retired somewhere far away. Though, he had no idea what he would have done in such a place.

It was too late.

And since it was too late, he could no longer drag anyone down.

All Sasamori could do now—was hold others back.

“…What did you just say?”

Just as expected, Nanami took the cheap bait. She slipped her mobile terminal back into the inner pocket of her suit and turned to face Sasamori.

Clack. The sharp sound of her heels echoed against the concrete floor of the basement as she approached step by step. As a former B-rank explorer, strangling an ordinary person to death would be effortless for her.

“I said you reek of the gutter. I know that smell well. The stench of a loser who blames everything on something else and does nothing themselves. I’ve watched people like that scream from afar for years. They’ve got the energy to curse others, but no will to stand up and act. They shout that they’re right, yet keep running from any real debate.”

“…You live in a place like a sludge pit, and you can still recognize the smell of the gutter? Give me a break. Why don’t you stop opening that filthy mouth of yours?”

Clack, clack.

Now she was close enough to reach out and touch him.

Recognizing that the “monster” before him was, in the end, just a young woman her age, Sasamori laughed again.

“I couldn’t tell back in that conference room, but I can now. That man in the hat didn’t have that smell. He does it as a job. The little girl leading the explorer team didn’t have it either. You said she was gathered by the state back in middle school and trained as an explorer, didn’t you? How pitiful. Never able to walk hand in hand with a boy she liked, never able to waste time chatting about nonsense with close friends—just another ‘worker ant.’”

“Don’t you dare speak about humanity’s hope with that gutter-stinking mouth.”

Her eyes narrowed.

The air grew so thin it felt suffocating. The tension was like a steel wire pulled taut to its limit, creaking under strain.

He had made her angry.

And that fact made Sasamori laugh again.

“Hamamatsu Nanami. Former B-rank explorer, was it? You probably enjoyed your youth to the fullest, chose to become a ‘worker ant’ called an explorer of your own free will, failed by your own doing, and retired—something like that, right? You must’ve reached B-rank when you were younger. And yet now you’re working as the manager of a state-backed idol explorer project. Shouldn’t you have something you ought to accomplish? You should have power, shouldn’t you? And yet—”

—why don’t you do it yourself?

Even to himself, it felt like the perfect sneer. He was just spouting baseless assumptions at someone he knew nothing about… and yet it provoked this much anger.

CRACK.

The sound of something breaking rang out.

At first, he didn’t understand what had happened. After all, Hamamatsu Nanami hadn’t seemed to move even a single step from where she stood.

It took more than a full second before he realized—his left shoulder had been crushed.

“—Gah…! Agh…!”

It felt as though a massive vise had pulverized the bones in his shoulder. With his hands cuffed behind him through the pipe, he couldn’t even shift into a position that might ease the pain. Straining his neck, he managed to glance at his left shoulder—and saw that it was truly caved in.

There was no bleeding.

But the damage was catastrophically beyond repair.

“—Hah… hahahaha! Ah—hihihihi!”

He laughed.

He laughed right at her.

No matter what noble ideals she tried to uphold, this woman was, in the end, no different from the powerless masses. She believed in something she called “good,” yet decided it was beyond her reach and pushed it onto someone else. Worse, she convinced herself that simply helping those she had forced into that role meant she, too, was accomplishing something—a coward through and through.

“Shut up. What could you possibly understand? Trash like you, who just looked down on others from a safe place, shouldn’t talk like you know anything. Do you have any idea how many people almost died because of your self-preservation? No… of course you don’t. That’s why you can say things like that. A mouth like yours… isn’t necessary, is it?”

With a grin twisting her lips, Hamamatsu spoke—and Sasamori answered her with another “hihihi” laugh.

Either way, his life had no future left. If that was the case, being killed by this gutter-reeking woman was preferable. Far better than being judged by something pure and righteous.

His right toes were crushed.

Then his left knee.

He couldn’t stand, yet the handcuffs prevented him from collapsing to the floor. His shattered left shoulder screamed in agony, but even so—Sasamori kept laughing.

If one called it desperation, then so be it.

There was nothing left to be done. At the very end, instead of acting for the sake of safety, he wanted to drag someone down for his own satisfaction. And if his target was this girl who had caused his downfall, then all the better.

Fall.

Sink.

Crumble.

All the way down with him.

“—I was wondering what things looked like, but this is quite the dreadful sight.”

A clear, resonant baritone voice cut through the air.

In the basement, thick with killing intent and negative emotion, it was a voice utterly out of place—like that of a detached observer. He hadn’t even noticed the sound of the door opening, yet there was no ignoring that voice.

“Y-you… you’re…”

“It seems things have become rather… entertaining in the short time I’ve been away, Sasamori-san.”

The man who had claimed to be from the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office.

The shadowy man who had handed Sasamori Takeshi the stone that could erase dungeons.

“…How did you find this place?”

In a voice far colder than when she had been torturing Sasamori, Hamamatsu turned toward the basement entrance. She lowered her stance slightly, her loosely opened hands swaying faintly—perhaps a combat posture befitting an explorer.

But the man in the dark gray suit simply wore a faint smile, as if unaware of the tension filling the room. He leisurely removed his bowler hat—and then, as if by magic, it vanished.

The cane he tapped lightly against the ground gave a soft tok.

Just as before… his face was strangely unmemorable. It was well-formed, yet trying to describe exactly how it was well-formed proved oddly difficult.

“How, you ask? That should be obvious. I’ve been watching the entire time. From the moment you captured Sasamori-san at the entrance of the Kamioka Dungeon, to returning to the hotel, escorting him from there, and all the way to this building… why would you think you weren’t being observed?”

A soft chuckle echoed—and yet, it was impossible to tell whether he was truly laughing.

Perhaps that eerie quality stirred her instincts, because Hamamatsu shifted back ever so slightly—not even half a step.

“Hamamatsu Nanami-san. An employee of the Dungeon Agency. Manager of the A-rank explorer clan Anthem, and a former B-rank explorer. Ten years ago, the clan you belonged to disbanded. Ah yes, that was before regulations on underage explorers were introduced. The cause of the disbandment was the loss of your clan leader in a certain incident.”

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The cane struck the floor.

Despite clearly not needing it to walk, the man deliberately tapped it as he approached… and his figure began to waver, just slightly.

No—it was the opposite.

Whatever had been obscuring him was fading away.

Like a mosaic being lifted.

The face that had been so hard to remember—no, his very skin—was an unnaturally pale shade of purple.

Not… human?

“You still haven’t realized? I am the ‘culprit.’ It was because of me that your precious, precious clan leader died. Ah, no… explorers operate under self-responsibility, don’t they? My apologies. Your dear clan leader died simply because he was weak.”

The next instant—Nanami launched herself at him like a projectile fired from a catapult. Before a single moment could pass, she was struck back and slammed into the far wall of the basement.

Despite hitting with enough force to shatter concrete, she burst out of the crater immediately, glaring at the pale purple man while releasing a killing intent so intense it made Sasamori feel sick just watching.

Jzzzz—

The air around her seemed to warp.

In her hands—where there had been nothing before—now gleamed short blades.

No… not blades.

They were masses of light, shaped like daggers.

“I’ll kill you. I will kill you. No matter what.”

Like a beast that had learned to speak, she declared it—and the pale purple man responded with a clear smile.

“Oh my, if that’s your intention, shouldn’t there be something you ought to do before spewing gutter-stained words? That’s precisely why you ended up letting your comrades die, Nanami-chan.”

Sasamori understood one thing—He had struck her where it hurt most.

Beyond that, he understood nothing at all.