One day before entering the Other Side.
Having taken the commission, Ichi naturally forced the Other Side on me.
Seo Mok had left to resume his long-term project.
Sophia was busy handling the situation caused by the Captain's absence.
Felix was on infiltration duty.
And above all.
Ichi's constitution made him a body that could not be eaten by an Other Side.
Even granting that my head recognized it as an unavoidable situation, it was also true that I felt somewhat wronged.
How is it that I have to step up every single time?
Is this not an unreasonable arrangement?
And on top of that, Ichi's beaming mug as he shoved me into the Other Side was really something.
There is no way to see it as anything but deliberate.
Ichi suspecting a suspicious bastard who had slipped into the protagonist's seat was fair enough.
He thought he would be looking after a soft little puppy, and instead there is a foul-tempered stray cat with its claws out.
That said, I am not calling myself a cat, so let there be no misunderstanding.
At any rate, Ichi suspecting me and the situation I was in were both understandable.
They were.
It is only that the intent was so blatant that it did piss me off a little.
So the insurance I had laid down was the chameleon.
Room 404's Other Side Administrator.
I had given Chamel a simple, undemanding order: after I entered the Other Side, to watch the movements of Ichi, who would be waiting outside.
......And yet.
"Ha! This refreshing air, this is it, this!"
Why are you charging into the Other Side?
Here, of all places?
At this point in time?
"You've lost your mind."
Chamel was thoroughly drunk on the Other Side's air and did not appear to notice my disbelief at all.
I grabbed Chamel by the collar as he brimmed with happiness, eyes shining, unable to contain his mood, and yanked him aside.
The guard, attacked without warning, had already sprung upright and was clicking his head about.
【......Two bastards without employee badges.】
Even having taken a hit, the guard carried out his duty faithfully.
Deliberating which of the two to clear away first took him under three seconds.
The guard shook the keys in his hand.
【Outside beings must be blocked.】
With the sharp jangle of the key ring, the plants that had been sitting quietly around us began to thrash.
Even the vines laid as camouflage over the floorless air heaved, and the ground undulated.
"Chamel, you, insane, ha."
The guard's combat power grew in proportion, multiplying with the number of beings he had to face.
In the original work Smith was disposed of without a chance because at that time none of the three had employee badges and the guard had gone berserk.
In the rooftop garden in particular, the guard behaved as though he had landscaped all these plants himself.
Because of that, the plant monsters' malice was directed at us all too clearly.
In the original work, too, this was the point where Seo Mok got pissed and went wild; if even the timing of my getting pissed matches, what does that make me?
No, Seo Mok had every reason to be pissed there. Smith dies, the protagonist gets taken out by the guard and flung away, and in the middle of it all he picks up Smith's badge and receives the guard's excessive kindness on top of it. He had reason enough, I tell you.
"Chamel, you...... what is this. I, you, ha."
They do say a person loses his words when he is dumbfounded enough.
After Chamel, who had been dodging this way and that, was bound up tight in vines, there was truly nothing to be done.
I tried to take the moisture and wither the plants, but for that the attacks were too fierce and I could not even concentrate.
At most I managed to dry up the vines lunging in close.
Even making a large mass of water and drowning the guard whole was useless, since he was not moving himself but using the plants.
"The frost attribute, I swear I'll―"
A vine flew in like a whip and finally wrapped around one ankle, and I lost my balance.
After that I was in the same position as Chamel.
Wrapped in vines and hurled out of the building.
Seeing the guard's sneer while being thrown far off was surely not my imagination.
Suspended in the pitch-black air, even within my spinning field of vision I found Chamel's position.
First to be wrapped in vines, and first to be thrown, too?
The moment I confirmed the thing pushed as far as the building's outer wall, the precarious boundary of the Other Side, I concentrated.
The black sky, still without a single visible star, made me feel instead as though I had sunk beneath a dark abyss.
The terror of being suffocated in dark, heavy, cold seawater.
And the limp swaying of the plants creeping about was also like strands of kelp swept in the waves.
Ah, it really does feel like drowning.
I pulled myself together, gripped one vine tight, and snatched the falling Chamel with a droplet of water.
Precisely, I struck him with a droplet several meters across.
The CEO's office, situated about half a floor below.
The angle at which we had been thrown from the rooftop garden.
Vines in quantity enough to wrap around a whole body.
Chamel's intrusion made revising the plan unavoidable, but there was no reason it could not work.
Following Chamel, who, held in the large droplet, crashed straight through the CEO office window, I too flew in, covering a circus-like stunt with a vine stem.
CRASH-BANG.
If at least a cloud of dust had risen, I would not have had to show such an unsightly figure.
"Wagh! M-monster, no, a person! Are you a person?! Don't come near me!"
Very close to where we had tumbled down was a large office desk with the CEO's nameplate on it.
Smith had been curled up under that desk and let out a scream.
"Mister Smith?"
"......"
Instead of answering, Smith poked only his head out with a tearful expression.
However much the monsters of this Other Side jabbered like people, they apparently had not addressed him by his own name.
"......I'm from the Ability Office. My name is Do Hae, deployed on commission to rescue you, Mister Smith."
"Oh, God. I love you, Styx CEO!"
He tried to spring up, scraped his knee on the desk, groaned, and then danced by himself out of joy; I left Smith to it and shook my head.
The one who suffered in the field is me, and the one who placed the commission was a team head, not the Styx CEO.
However much this place is one of Styx's countless subsidiaries, is that not excessive company loyalty?
"Mister Smith, if you want to live, follow my instructions from now on."
"Ah! Yes, yes! Of course, absolutely. That's right. I-I have to live. Ugh."
Leaving Smith, who grew more timid with drooping eyes the more he answered, I surveyed the situation around us.
'Ah, this is ruined.'
The guard was essential to my original plan.
To forcibly drag the guard to the seventh floor, which blocks monsters, this was the only method.
I had thrown away my badge and diligently smeared on the honey to lure the guard, and Chamel barged in and spoiled all of it.
Even for me there is a limit to how many people I can bring along swept in a current.
If such precise control were possible, why would I have knocked myself around like this in person? I could have turned the water on from the start and simply hooked Smith as he came rolling.
"Haa."
To tie up the guard, who blocks every single clock-out on the first floor, this method was the best.
That is why, the moment I grasped that Smith was in the CEO's office, I hooked the guard and brought him along.
All at once, three people without badges were set to face guard×3.
Phase 1 would be one thing, but 3 is a death sentence.
At this rate we were looking at infinitely repeating confinement on the first floor.
What did I revise my whole plan for, dragging the guard along.......
I glared at Chamel, gulping down water in the corner and looking happy.
What has that little shit so pleased?
"Hey."
At my call, brimming with cold, Chamel flinched, ran forward, and prostrated himself.
Watching that, Smith had the sense not to interfere and crawled obediently back under the desk.
"You had better give me an explanation that satisfies."
"Well......."
"Don't work that head of yours."
Chamel glanced back and forth between Smith and me, then poured out words in a rush.
"The bastard you told me to watch was closing the Other Side, sir!"
"Ichi?"
"Yes, sir!"
"I know."
"......Sir?"
I already knew he was suspicious.
I know that Ichi's influence lay behind all of it when they shoved me into Room 404 in the name of an Ability Office interview.
He offered the strange excuse of testing whether I kill people, and I also knew that behind that beaming mug his intentions were pitch-black.
This is Ichi, who plays double agent and still goes around hunting for something entertaining out of boredom.
There was no way he would hold back from something that looked this fun.
And the way Ichi looks at me is of the sort that says, he is entertaining so goodwill arises, but I would like him buried somewhere out of sight.
Considering Ichi's Other Side severance ability, it was well within expectation.
"Fourth floor, third floor, then the rooftop garden, I imagine. If anything more, the second or the sixth floor."
"You saw it? No, how?"
I had spun my ability to the Ability Office as being advantageous for grasping Other Sides.
Which is to say, as an excuse for the cruise ship escape, as a way of smoothing over the Room 404 case, and in preparation for what lay ahead, I had slathered on the traits of an intelligence operative.
Naturally, before coming in here I had recited my plan to Ichi at length.
Half of it was a lie, but Ichi does not know that anyway.
Diligently sending transmissions while omitting specific locations was for the same reason.
Ichi would be taking aim at me from outside, and at the very least would not hesitate to torment me.
Ichi, who would want to watch me flail rather than kill me outright, would have interfered with the Other Side by matching my pace and striking after the fact.
And he would enjoy watching me, once I came out alive, chatter about how I cleared it.
I looked at Chamel's sloppy figure, sweating profusely, and swept back my hair.
It was already done, the plan was overturned, and pressing that thing any further here would only be a waste of time.
I took out the transceiver.
The quiet transceiver's screen still showed no response whatsoever.
Closing an Other Side from outside was a catastrophe for the bastards inside it.
Ichi's Other Side severance ability was closer to negating the space itself, so parts of the Other Side world vanished as though scooped out of a pudding.
"Rescue subject located in the underground parking garage. No threat to life. Will join up and clock out."
At my report Chamel tilted his head, and Smith, watching from the corner, worked his mouth.
"I know, that this is the seventh floor."
"Master, are you a liar?"
"You didn't know?"
Have you heard of a drive hunt?
Take any road you like, so long as you end up on the seventh floor.
That guard little shit definitely sneered at the end.
For the sake of his mental health, and further for the legitimacy of his eyewitness statement outside, I put Smith to sleep.
Which is to say I knocked him out.
***
SLAM!
Not long after I sensed that the rooftop's plants had all vanished, the CEO office door flew wide open.
The guard who had sneered so fully at the end stood there huffing, still in his grotesque state.
The one difference was that his uniform, which had certainly been stained with plant juice on the roof, was now crisply pressed as though laundered.
I had simply failed to notice it in the dim lighting; the guard's attire had been changing subtly to match the location.
【What have you done?】
Let us go over this.
The CEO's office blocks out every monster by the CEO's authority.
The only monster that could walk into such an office on its own two feet was the CEO.
It had been suspicious.
The excessive authority granted to the guard.
Compared with the other monsters bound to a place, he roamed all over the building and even held the authority to lock and unlock doors.
The guard's duties changing to match the location.
An attendant in the elevator, a clock-out-prevention guard on the first floor, a systems maintenance technician in the underground garage, a safety officer in the emergency stairwell, a gardener in the rooftop garden; then what in the CEO's office?
Absolute power over employees, hostility bordering on excess toward outsiders.
The guard's praise of overtime, as though some corporate secret had been robbed, was unbearable to listen to.
As confirmed, the guard came here, and right now he would be acting CEO, would he not?
Furthermore.
"You're the Administrator."
At my words Chamel whipped his head around, and the guard, belatedly grasping the situation, flinched.
Caught you, you rascal.