Ms. Rodion answered the question from Mr. Gregor—whether she knew the person named Sonya, who had been sizing us up—with an openly reluctant voice, as if the question itself had rubbed her the wrong way.
"...A hometown friend."
"That's what reunions are like. Our Greg didn't exactly exchange warm greetings with his old comrades last time, either, did he?"
At Ms. Rodion's words, Mr. Gregor replied as if he'd been dealt a blow.
"...If you put it that way, I've got nothing to say."
While the rest of us were doing whatever, Mr. Hong Lu, who had been staring intently at the iron bars by himself, seemed to notice something and spoke up in an intrigued tone.
"Something's moving inside the bars."
"Ah~ maybe they're keeping pets?"
...No matter how I looked at it, that did not seem to be the case, Mr. Hong Lu.
"...In your house, do you call something that shakes the bars like it's trying to break them 'a pet'?"
Ms. Ishmael snapped at Mr. Hong Lu irritably.
Normally I would have stopped this, but... looking at it now, it was just another part of the prisoners' daily routine.
...I hate that I'm getting used to this sort of thing.
"They're Sin.
"
Sin... was that something like the Abnormality we saw at the L Corp branch last time?
"That's the kind of thing Yuri would've snorted at and blown three people away with a single laugh."
No, Mr. Gregor, why would you bring that up all of a sudden...
"Ms. Yuri..."
Some of the prisoners looked a little down.
And, in turn, so did I.
Faust, who had not been affected at all by that remark, calmly added an explanation to Mr. Gregor's words.
"Theoretically, it is possible."
"If they possess intelligence comparable to humans, and there is a verified handling method that has undergone repeated experimentation."
"Well... if it succeeds, it could have made a fine guard dog."
Ms. Ishmael emphasized the words "if it succeeds" as if she didn't want to admit her own statement was wrong.
She has a surprisingly childish side.
"Huh? Looking closer, these people have fingers or parts of their bodies bitten off."
Mr. Hong Lu was pointing at the gaunt-looking people who seemed to be miners.
...Normally, when Mr. Hong Lu says something like that, there should be a follow-up line to make it sound natural, shouldn't there?
"...Is that some kind of trend?"
Right. That's more like Mr. Hong Lu.
What a consistently strange person.
And no, that is absolutely not a compliment.
"Tch... guards and Sin too... this is getting annoying..."
"Got any good idea, Greg? You said you were on the vanguard in the war. Go on, then."
"Why is that suddenly... ah, hey, don't push me. Whoa!"
Shoved forward by Ms. Rodion, Mr. Gregor flailed around and ended up falling over by himself...
...and found himself face-to-face with a slave who had broken away from the prisoners and was busy swinging a pickaxe.
"...?"
"Ah, ah..."
An awkward silence hung between the two for a moment.
"H-hey, neither of us is exactly in a pleasant situation here, so how about we just let this go nicely?"
"Uuugh..."
No matter how I looked at it, that gaunt miner didn't seem capable of proper conversation, but Mr. Gregor kept trying his best to persuade him.
"We're not after the money in that vault."
"Sure, money would be nice, but what we really want is to go down to the lower floor."
"We'll make sure nothing troublesome happens. How about you pretend you didn't see us and let us through?"
"Re... pay..."
After hearing Mr. Gregor's words, the miner made a bizarre sound and then resumed swinging his pickaxe.
"Forty-seven million nine hundred and twenty thousand..."
"Forty-seven million nine hundred and ten thousand... forty-seven million nine hundred and..."
"If you don't speak in a way people can understand, I'll break all your remaining fingers."
...What the hell does "break all your remaining fingers" even mean, you maniac.
Apparently frustrated that he himself was the hardest to understand, Ms. Ryoshu gripped the scabbard.
"I think he means he'll break all the fingers you have left..."
...?
How did you interpret that, Sinclair.
<...At this point, I think you're scarier for figuring that out.>
Whether he had understood us or not, the miner stopped speaking in numbers and started talking about something else.
"I have to pay it back..."
"I have to pay back all the debt... then I can go back to my family..."
"They said it was one ann per pickaxe swing... forty-seven hundred... how much... was it again... Agh! Don't talk to me! I have to count the numbers..."
...So he was a debtor.
We had guessed as much from his emaciated frame, but hearing him say it outright made me feel a little uneasy.
"Hold on, what's all the noise over there?"
Apparently the sound made by the miner... no, the debtor, was rare enough that the casino guards reacted immediately.
At this rate, we'd be found out in no time.
Cornered, Mr. Gregor suddenly started shouting in a very unnatural voice.
"I... I can't live like this!"
"What... nonsense... is this tyranny! Tying people up and making them do nothing but swing pickaxes!"
"Let's all... stand up... and resist...! Come on, leeeet's go!!"
<...>
"..."
"..."
Hmm, he did seem to be trying to imitate the voice of a powerless debtor, but the result was... well.
It was so impressive, in every possible way, that even the debtor and the guards went silent.
"What are you doing?"
Even Mr. Heathcliff had to ask that in a tone of genuine confusion.
"Is this propaganda? Regrettably, it did not take."
Regrettably... yes, Mr. Meursault?
"Greg... those people are the sort who've spent their whole lives cheating others like vermin, or being cheated themselves."
"Do you really think a few half-baked lectures are going to make them suddenly wake up?"
"Ms. Rodion, I don't think that's the problem here at all."
"Hah... if you're going to plan an incitement operation next time, at least come prepared with some decent acting."
"Greg... have you never acted a day in your life?"
Following Ms. Otis's remark, Ms. Rodion's neat finishing blow, Mr. Gregor clenched his teeth and said, clearly embarrassed.
"Stop it... I'm embarrassed too..."
Tatatatatak!
...It seemed Mr. Gregor's terrible acting had provoked the guards quite a bit.
Creeeeak!
Otherwise, they wouldn't have flung open the locked iron bars like that.
Sin and guards too... this was going to be a complete mess.
Looking ahead, several Sins were already charging at us.
With Mr. Dante's words came the terse command that followed.
By moving lightly without violating that command too much...
Crunch! Crack...*
we were able to slaughter the small number of Sins that had come toward us in an instant.
Of course, the number the guards had released was nowhere near this small, so we still couldn't relax.
I turned my head forward, thinking of the Sins and guards that would soon come crashing down on us, but...
"W-wait... why are these things coming this way? Stop! I said stop!"
Most of the Sins were targeting the guards, and the guards themselves were blocked by the Sins they had released, unable to even approach us.
...Did they unleash those things without even having a way to control them?
"H-hey, get these things off us! Hurry!"
The guards, grasping at the debtor as if clinging to a rotten rope, begged him for help, but...
"...Forty-seven hundred..."
Apparently the guards were of no concern to him; he simply kept counting the remaining debt in silence and swinging his pickaxe.
We used that opening to head down at once.
"So we ended up getting help from debtors."
"Just a coincidence."
Only Ms. Rodion answered Mr. Gregor's remark with a bored expression.
As Mr. Dante said, although a considerable number of Sins had gone after the guards, there were still some left on our path.
"Move!"
"I'll show you art!"
"I'll break through the front!"
Thud! Slash—*
They were instantly dealt with by the prisoner combat team, who had been itching for a fight.
"There's a passage down ahead! You stragglers, get in quickly!"
After running for quite a while, cutting down Sins from the entrance onward, we were soon able to enter the passage leading to the lower floor.
**
The second basement floor had a very different atmosphere from the first.
Where the upper floor had been defined by debtors and a vault...
"Container boxes made of smooth, vividly colored plastic."
"There are too many alien materials here to simply judge this as a factory facility."
As Mr. Meursault's stiff explanation put it, the place was dominated by huge, vividly colored plastic containers that filled the entire field of view.
Beep-beep-beep beep-beep beep-beep-beep~
And then that strangely bright container facility began operating, singing a cheerful tune.
"This feels ominous..."
"Why are there no guards on the second floor?"
"There are usually two possibilities in such cases, Sinclair."
"One is that the guards have no need to protect the second floor..."
Before I could even finish, the door of the container that had finished activating opened, and inside it was...
"Ah. Ah."
A huge, grotesque robot-like something was standing there.
"...Something the guards can't handle. Something they can't stop."
And then the robot pointed at us and began speaking.
Its voice was made entirely of mechanical noise, carrying just enough of a human quality to feel human, while still being unmistakably not human, which made it thoroughly unpleasant.
"I'm excited!!!"
"Ah~"
"This is fun!!!"
"The game of death!"
"Hmm..."
Faust seemed quite interested in its behavior and watched the humanoid thing closely.
"S."
"S!!"
"S!!!! S!!!! S!!!!"
Even as it pointed at us and shouted ominously in the same mechanical tone, Faust calmly inferred the situation.
"It seems they began large-scale tunneling operations from this section onward."
"Otherwise, there would be no reason to mass-produce enhanced humans..."
Enhanced... humans?
There wasn't a single thing left on its body that looked human, and there wasn't even any reason left to call it sane, yet they were calling it an enhanced human.
No matter how you looked at it, wasn't the definition of "human" getting a little too broad?
Ah, right. That is a problem.
Only then did we start running to avoid the enhanced humans.