"Aaaagh!!!!"
The G Corp branch manager's fierce cry slammed into the battlefield.
"Ugh, my ears! Isn't just screaming to deal damage cheating?"
"Instead of complaining, why don't you at least break through the enemy in front of you, Ms. Rodion!"
The battle was dragging on miserably.
The manager's subordinates blocked our path while the manager piled damage onto us through sound from his side.
"This is fucking infuriating!! I'm going alone!"
Mr. Heathcliff, unable to hold back his temper, charged forward.
Would that even work?
"Hup!"
"Aaaagh!!!"
As if the manager had anticipated that too, he quickly inhaled and exhaled, stopping Mr. Heathcliff in his tracks with another blast of sound.
But...
"You're dead too, then."
-Thud
"Haa..."
-Srrrk...
Mr. Gregor pulled the insect arm that had been deeply embedded in the G Corp branch manager's body free.
The moment the manager's cry, which had been obstructing us, vanished, his subordinates began getting cut down by the prisoners without any resistance.
And Mr. Gregor...
"There were once those who admired you, Gregor..."
"...I never asked to be admired."
He was answering the dying man's words with a complicated expression.
"Don't go any farther... that place is hell."
"Sorry, but I don't think I can do that. If I don't work properly, I get fired."
"You sold out... even your honor for money."
"I sold that off with my medal ages ago. My landlord was hounding me for rent."
At that, a bitter smile crossed the manager's face.
"You're... no different from us..."
"In the end, we're all..."
"Just disgusting... vermin..."
The manager, who had been sneering at the plight of G Corp's defeated remnants, soon fell silent.
Mr. Gregor, watching him with a somber expression, looked over at Ms. Ryoshu and said,
"...Hey. Could I borrow a cigarette?"
"...Just this once."
Mr. Gregor took out both his own cigarette and Ms. Ryoshu's, lit hers, and then casually tossed it into the dead man's arms.
"Sorry. Didn't want to share my cigarette with that guy."
"...Hmph."
For a moment, everyone fell silent under that heavy mood.
...Maybe someone was praying for the repose of the dead man's soul.
That was what I thought.
"...Let's go."
At Dante's command, we began moving forward through the oppressive silence.
How long had we walked?
The heavy atmosphere showed no sign of lifting, and silence wrapped around us.
In that grim mood, Ms. Ishmael studied the corridor closely before speaking.
"There aren't even traces left of where the remnants were staying from here on."
The manager's claim that what lay ahead was hell gained credibility.
Maybe they saw something around here and stopped advancing.
"He also warned us not to go any farther..."
Sinclair was so frightened that even the atmosphere felt completely different from before.
Unlike the earlier areas, which had mostly been littered with the corpses of G Corp remnants or random dead bodies, this place was packed with corpses that looked as though they had been dead for a long time.
"These are... L Corp employees' bodies..."
"They were all struck with blunt force. Every one of them."
As Yuri examined the dead bodies, she seemed to find something and picked up an old-looking bundle of documents.
"An Abnormality management record... This is a document that records how to manage an Abnormality."
"Usually, once you're assigned management duty, you memorize everything until you're sick of it before going in... so something like this isn't needed."
"My guess is that the Abnormality escaped, and nobody knew the management method..."
"...Hmm."
Mr. Heathcliff seemed interested in that story.
No... interested wasn't quite the right word.
It was a smile like a child who had found something amusing.
But he didn't say anything.
What had he seen to make Mr. Heathcliff smile like that?
"If they were eggs that hadn't been moved to the containment room yet... then that could be possible."
"There are too many corpses."
"What kind of Abnormality would leave this many employees..."
Wait. Were the wounds on these corpses caused by an Abnormality?
No, that couldn't be right.
They were clearly human...
"Hold on... what is that smell?"
The thread of thought was cut off.
That said, a smell?
"...Our office recently acquired an expensive piece of equipment."
Mr. Hopkins said this while wearing something that looked like a gas mask.
"What the hell is this guy talking about?"
Mr. Hopkins ignored Mr. Heathcliff and kept talking.
"I'd heard rumors that toxic readings get higher from a certain floor onward."
Ah, poison.
"I've been bleeding from my ears for a while now~ Is this okay?"
"How can one fight without hardship... ugh, blegh! Cough!"
Symptoms were already appearing among the prisoners.
Dammit. If I hadn't been too focused on the corpses, I would've noticed sooner.
Was it too late to start trying to survive now?
"Prolonged exposure causes continuous bleeding from the body, apparently."
"If you had such useful information, you could've told us sooner, Mr. Hopkins? You even came prepared in advance... cough!"
Ah, I'm starting to show symptoms too.
By then, Yuri had noticed something and said,
"This... it's one of the toxic gas bombs used to suppress Abnormalities, from back when they were distributed."
"Maybe there was an explosion among the corpses... cough..."
"Indeed, the miasma gets quite thick from this point onward."
Ms. Rodion pointed at Mr. Hopkins's gas mask.
"What, we don't have anything like that?"
"No separate supplies were provided."
"You bastard, you knew this all along? You filthy piece of trash... ngh..."
Mr. Heathcliff, who said that, was the first to collapse.
...Even if you're about to die, you still have to do what needs doing, right?
"All right, everyone, calm down and breathe as shallowly and slowly as possible. Avoiding excessive physical exertion will help you last longer."
"Cough, if you get worked up like Mr. Heathcliff there, you'll be done for. Your blood flow speeds up."
Ah, I shouldn't have said anything. The symptoms got worse.
"Mr. Hopkins... why... cough, didn't you tell us in advance?"
"I should be asking you that, Yuri."
"Why should I tell a piece of baggage I never expected much from that it was about to waste an already expensive item?"
"..."
Yuri stared at him in disbelief, but his venomous words didn't stop there.
"To be blunt, it's surprising enough that you even set foot in our office."
"Aya may have taken a liking to you and wanted to look after you, but... she's dead now, so what does it matter?"
"Cowardly bastard... you want to live like that...?"
So Mr. Heathcliff wasn't dead yet.
Well, his voice was practically that of a dying man.
"Calling a Fixer cowardly? That's a ridiculous thing to say."
"I only wanted to see who the people being led around by the Red Gaze were..."
"And it turns out you were just a bunch of lunatics crawling in here without proper tools or information."
"To think we'd have to just stand here and watch that bastard..."
Even with Mr. Heathcliff on the verge of death, the killing intent pouring out of him was no joke.
Mr. Hopkins seemed to feel threatened by that killing intent too, and backed toward the entrance.
"Still, thanks to you, I was able to collect a nice amount of Enkephalin."
"I'll report it as missing, not as death by suffocation, so you won't be embarrassed."
...Should I just throw a spear into his forehead as a parting gift?
For a moment I seriously considered hurling one, but he was going to die at the hands of Vergilius on the surface anyway, so it was probably better if he felt a little happiness before then.
Besides, there was no way that man would leave alone the contracted employee who had abandoned us and gone back up.
And we had Dante, the prosthetic user whose body poison couldn't affect.
"Then."
Leaving behind that brief remark, Mr. Hopkins departed.
May he not blame us for his own trouble, brought on by his petty greed.
"..."
Ah, this side can't revive. What do we do now?
When I turned my head, Yuri was sitting on the floor, catching the nosebleed pouring from her face with her hand.
Not only Yuri, but all the remaining prisoners were in pain too.
Myself included.
Hm? What is Mr. Gregor doing?
"Gregor?"
"Tch. I brought it along thinking I'd hand over a keepsake..."
In Mr. Gregor's hand was a gas mask identical to the one Mr. Hopkins had been wearing.
"Why..."
Yuri, taking the gas mask, asked in a puzzled voice.
"Ms. Aya, cough, said she wanted to look after you... so it's yours."
"Don't worry about the lunatics who crawled in here without tools... there's a hole for all of them to survive through."
Yuri, taking it, slowly put on the gas mask while coughing up blood.
"...I know."
"Even if you take on all the dirty work day and night, it's not easy to be acknowledged by an office with no ties to you."
"There were only three minutes left until the branch was shut down..."
[Beginning site burial.]
"The door was closing right in front of my eyes."
[Energy transfer, 85% complete.]
"Yuri, don't leave me behind! Yuri!"
"Then what exactly am I supposed to do?"
"Is it a crime to survive?"
"Should I have been buried with my coworkers?"
"The company is being shut down whole just because the Abnormalities can't be allowed to escape into the City?"
"Tch... yes, it is a crime here."
"Hk, hk. That's a painful thing to say, Mr. Gregor..."
Ms. Ishmael said that just before dying.
Was there something piled up inside her... no, was it strange not to have that in this City?
"Cough, what a fucking place..."
Even as I said that, my mind was growing increasingly hazy.
No, to be precise, my body was losing strength too.
"Guilt..."
"But, haah... so what if it is..."
"You just have to keep shamelessly surviving."
"Cough, if you keep assigning guilt one by one... you won't have any heart left..."
"..."
At last, even Mr. Gregor, who had finished saying that, stopped breathing.
There probably wasn't much time left for me either.
"Hk, but... Ms. Yuri, there's just one thing you should keep in mind."
"There's no such thing as a wholly innocent individual in this City... cough, everyone's just struggling to survive..."
"Ghk, so don't live stupidly..."
I don't know if I had the right to say something like that to her.
...Would it not go well?
"...Khk."
Ah, my consciousness is fading.
Not long after I finished speaking, I too let go of the thread of life I had been clinging to so tenuously.