At that very moment, the Adventurers' Guild command room looked less like a place of order and more like a field hospital thrown into chaos. Shouted reports collided in the air with the shrill wail of alarms, men and women in guild uniforms running from console to console with bloodied sleeves or hastily wrapped bandages still clinging to them. Every screen on the wall flickered with maps and red warnings that pulsed like open wounds.
Hikawa Reina standing stiffly in front of the main monitor, her complexion drained as though the color itself had abandoned her. Her lips barely moved as voices around her broke into overlapping cries.
"Fifth defense line, gone! The undead have broken through into Sector Seven!"
"There's no stopping them—there are too many! Even the A-rank party, the Silver Valkyries can only stall them!"
"At this rate, in thirty minutes they'll be spilling onto the surface!"
Everyone in the command room knew it. They'd fired every shot they had, set every trap, held every choke point until their shields splintered. The only card left to play was the ugliest one—collapse the dungeon entrance and seal the gates by brute force.
It would slow the monsters, maybe, but it would also strand every low-rank adventurer still trapped inside. The unspoken words hung over us like smoke: sacrifice them.
Reina bit down so hard on her lip that a tremor ran through her jaw. Her faint grind of teeth, as if frustration itself wanted to shatter enamel. Her gaze flicked for an instant to one corner of the monitor where a lone marker still blinked, tagged F-rank, solo. One stubborn signal holding steady against the tide.
Sato Kōichi.
Her heart whispered a question she would never say aloud: If it were you... what would you see here?
* * *
I, meanwhile, couldn't drag my eyes off the television in my own living room, where the dungeon map splayed itself in harsh green lines and flickering overlays. My brain, the same one that had once sorted contracts and handled furious clients as a middle manager, kicked into full simulation mode. The undead's advance routes. Each floor's architecture. The placement of traps and guild-installed defenses like scattered chess pieces waiting to be repositioned.
Sector Seven—it has narrow corridors, low ceilings, and walls with pockets of leaking combustible gas.
Sector Five—its room cut through by an underground river, where triggering the [Collapse Trap] would flood the entire floor.
Sector Three—the final choke point of the undead advance, where the guild had placed a towering [Iron Gate] and its paired [Activation Switch].
The more I traced the lines, the more they linked together, until a full campaign spread across my thoughts. A chain reaction spanning multiple sectors, each trap and installation rearranged, the horde driven back, smothered, drowned, or crushed in sequence. Something only possible with the [Rearrangement] skill at Level 2—something only I could do right now.
I clenched my fists. I can do this. The certainty burned through me, ridiculous as it sounded. Still...
"...What a pain."
The words slipped out before I could stop them. It was reckless. One mistake and I'd be torn apart, just more bones for the undead to gnaw on. Even if I pulled it off, there'd be no medal, no applause. Worst case, the guild would mark me as a troublemaker again, strip away the scraps of quiet I'd clawed back for myself. Risk and reward didn't even belong in the same equation.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Momo and Misaki staring at the screen, their faces tight with fear. The streets where they laughed and bought taiyaki, the home we shared—would I really let those monsters pour out into that town?
The answer was obvious.
"Momo."
"H-Here," she stammered, straightening up.
"You stay here. Don't go outside. Look after Misaki for me."
My voice sounded too calm, like it belonged to someone else. Misaki's big eyes blinked up at me, swimming with worry.
"Dad, where are you going? It's dangerous out there."
"Just a little errand," I said, and ruffled her hair, letting my palm linger for a moment on the warmth of her head.
"There's a job I've got to do."
I said it with the same tone I'd once used when a client's complaint forced me into the office on a supposed day off. I pulled on my usual old jumper, shrugged into it like armor, and stepped toward the door.
For the first time, I was going to use this strange power of mine not for money, not for petty survival, but for someone else—for the public. Maybe it wasn't noble, maybe it wasn't even "right," but that didn't matter.
This was the work I had to shoulder.
A complaint on the grandest scale, and as a former sales manager, I couldn't just pretend I hadn't heard it. I stepped out alone toward the dungeon, where chaos waited like a roaring furnace.