“Rokujo, is there anything in this room that we really shouldn’t destroy?” I asked.

  “What? You shouldn’t destroy any of it!”

  I mean, yeah, I suppose we shouldn’t.

  “Let me put it another way. Is there anything in this room that would be absolutely irreplaceable if it got destroyed?”

  “Well I definitely didn’t leave anything in there that was entrusted to us by clients... But what about my collection?”

  “Can you gather it all up?”

  I glanced over at the desk that had kicked this whole incident off. It looked like that would prove quite a difficult task, given the darkness and the unusual circumstances we were in.

  “Anything truly irreplaceable is back at my house, so if worse comes to worst...” Rokujo conceded quietly, choking back tears.

  I gave her a small nod and took her over in front of the door. Meanwhile, Miyoshi cleared out a space in the middle of the room, then placed the potion I had brought out on a desk.

  There were openings in various locations throughout the building based on its original construction plans. Although there probably wasn’t any duct space in the floor, there were almost definitely holes for running electrical wiring, LAN cables, phone lines, and the like.

  It was highly unlikely, though, that those holes would be located smack-dab in the center of the room. Without knowing exactly where any of those openings were, the best place to lure our target was precisely that location.

  Ushering Rokujo out of the room, I gave her some final instructions.

  “We’ll get this over with quickly, so please, just wait out there until things quiet down.”

  “O-Okay. Please don’t be too rough on the place.”

  I smiled faintly in response, then shut the door.

  “All right, Kei, I’m gonna break the potion.”

  After placing several containers of benzethonium chloride solution nearby, I raised my stats to max, then fired off a wisecrack in response.

  “And I’m gonna pray this plan actually works.”

  There was a tiny cracking sound as something shattered, and a liquid started spilling out across the desk. Miyoshi, who had moved to the other side of the room, pulled a Benzetho-Blast spray bottle out of Storage.

  “One way or another, we’re gonna finish this in a single shot.”

  “If it breaks down the floor and escapes into the lower floors, we won’t be able to chase after it.”

  I nodded.

  “If that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole building collapsed before we could even arrange to be let inside.”

  “This reminds me of when we were up against Ngai,” Miyoshi said.

  “Oh, come on, he wasn’t that bad a Ngai...”

  I heard a tiny snerk escape from her sinuses. Control yourself, Miyoshi! This is not the time to start cracking up.

  “Though really, who would’ve thought that bringing a core out of the dungeon could cause a situation like this, depending on the environment it was stored in?” I mused.

  It was possible someone had brought a slime outside before, but without benzethonium chloride, it would’ve been extremely difficult to reduce it to a core first. Rokujo was most likely the first person ever to do that.

  Miyoshi shrugged.

  “Yet another topic for our next report to the JDA.”

  With an abrupt earthshaking thud, the entire floor near the window seemed to undulate, and the portion of it that was bulging out started making a beeline for the center of the room.

  “Here it comes!”

  The words had scarcely left my mouth when the entire raised floor was suddenly blasted away.

  “How big is this thing?!”

  “Something’s off about its dimensions! It’s just spread out across a wide area, and doesn’t seem to be particularly thick—”

  Paying us no heed whatsoever, the wide, flat mass of a slime reared up like a tsunami and crashed down toward the desk in the center of the room.

  “Now’s our chance, Miyoshi!”

  The two of us fired off simultaneous Benzetho Blasts. The parts of the creature we struck were blasted to bits with loud popping sounds, but just as we’d feared, it wasn’t enough to destroy the main body.

  “It’s just too damn huge!”

  “Less saying, more spraying, Kei!”

  Writhing wildly as if it were screaming in agony while being burned at the stake, the creature started making its way toward the corner of the room in an attempt to get away from us.

  Each time our shots hit it, more parts of it were blasted off, and it was gradually getting smaller. Despite that, though, it kept moving toward the desk it had originally been in, as if it were searching for something...

  “It’s headed for that hole, Kei!”

  “That hole? Which hole is that hole?!” With maxed AGI, I managed to dash ahead of the slime in the direction it was going, but with the room a complete shambles, there was no way I could find a specific hole in the floor. “Dammit! Forget it, then!”

  I pulled every gallon-sized container of benzethonium chloride solution I had out of Vault and slammed them all into the ground. The glass shattered with a violent crash, flooding the entire area with fluid. As soon as the slime came in contact, it exploded instantly.

  “The core, Kei! Get the core!”

  The core had been sent flying, and it sailed through the air as if guided by something.

  “Why is there a hole in that exact direction?!”

  Ignoring everything else, I dove toward the hole the core was headed for.

  Which is going to reach the hole first—the core or my hand?

  Everything suddenly went silent, and it felt like the world was moving in slow motion. Thrusting my hand forward with all my might, I thought I felt my fingertips graze the core, but it slipped past them and continued on its hole-bound trajectory.

  “NNNGAAAAAH!!!”

  As my momentum carried me past the core, I swung my leg out in a last-ditch effort to try and punt it away, but just barely missed. I grunted as my back slammed hard into the wall, causing me to bounce off and face-plant on the debris-strewn floor.

  The core struck the edge of the hole and bounced straight upward, like a golf ball that had just barely missed its mark, then started circling around the rim.

  “Please, God!”

  Just as I was getting ready to stand back up, I saw it make another loop around the rim, then pop right back up onto the floor. I watched it roll toward me and finally come to a stop right in front of my face—and the moment it did, sound finally returned to the world around me.

  “Kei!”

  “Owww...”

  After seeing me dive headlong onto the floor that was littered with shattered fragments of gallon-sized jars, Miyoshi ran over to me, her expression frantic.

  I stood there in silence, cuts all over my body, covered in blood—

  “Huh. You look fine.”

  —or so I had thought at first. The broken glass had sliced up my clothes pretty good, and the benzethonium chloride solution had turned me into a sticky mess, but there was no blood on me whatsoever.

  Once she had patted me down here and there to make sure everything was kosher, Miyoshi finally relaxed, letting out a sigh of relief.

  “What are your stats set to, anyway?”

  “They’re maxed out.”

  “Aha. That VIT’s really putting in some work!”

  “No kidding.” Maybe it isn’t complete baloney to think that I might be able to take a bullet.

  “Um, uhhh...?!” Rokujo, perhaps noticing that the commotion had died down, had opened the door and poked her face in. The state of the room had left her at a loss for words.

  “Oh, we’re finished now!”

  Rokujo swallowed.

  “So is the room, apparently.”

  Taking another look at the room around her, which was a complete mess—or perhaps “utterly demolished” would’ve been a more accurate description—Miyoshi offered a strained smile.

  Leaving Rokujo be as she surveyed the devastation around her and sighed in despair, Miyoshi went over and picked the core up off the floor, placing it in her palm.

  “Whew, what a night! But one thing’s for sure, at least—”

  As she struck a stupidly smug pose, making me wonder how on earth she planned on finishing that sentence, I saw her raise the core high above her head.

  “—this mystery has been dissolved!”

  Hearing that, a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over me, and I hung my head in silence.

  Rokujo didn’t seem to get it, though, and merely stood there with a metaphorical question mark floating over her head.

  “So, um, about the core...”

  “Huh? No reaction at all?!”

  Of course not, stupid, I implied by shooting Miyoshi a cold glare, then took the core from her and placed it next to Rokujo.

  “You should be the one to do this, Rokujo,” I said, then retrieved her usual hammer and held it out to her.

  She stared at the spherical object for a while with a tearful expression, until finally, she looked up again and took the hammer from me, eyes full of resolve.

  “You were...really beautiful,” she murmured softly.

  After gazing at the core for a bit longer, she slowly raised the hammer above her head—then brought it down in one swift motion.

  In the dim predawn illumination of the room, the core dissolved into a puff of black light, shimmering like shards of obsidian before scattering into nothingness—just as Rokujo’s tears scattered to the ground beneath her.

  “It’s almost dawn,” Miyoshi whispered, glancing at the time.

  Soon, we began to hear the faint sound of sirens. Looking out the window, we saw some police cars and what appeared to be a number of security company vehicles gathering below. Perhaps one of the security lines had been cut, or maybe one of the guards had heard the commotion and reported it.

  “Well, the police will probably be up here soon. Do you think they’ll believe us if we tell them that a single slime did all this?” Miyoshi frowned as she eyed the devastated room.

  Common sense dictated that would’ve been impossible, and the slime “culprit” had already vanished into particles of light. All that was left was a room that had been ripped to shreds, me in my torn-up clothes, and the two of them.

  “You didn’t happen to record this, did you?” I asked Miyoshi, just in case.

  “I don’t record things when we’re not inside dungeons, Kei.”

  “Yeah, I pretty much figured...”

  Hopefully Rokujo’s testimony and the scooped-out floor cross section will be enough evidence to convince them...

  “There’s one other thing, though.”

  Miyoshi suddenly turned to look at me, a serious look in her eyes. The light coming in through the glass from outside gave her a bright white outline.

  “Wh-What?”

  “I...”

  “You what?”

  “I can’t believe...that slime...was the only surviving member of its species. But...if benzethonium chloride...is ever made public...it’s possible...that another slime...might appear...somewhere in the world again.”

  I let out a groan.

  “I don’t remember you being a paleontologist, Miyoshi.”

  She stuck out her tongue with a “Tee-hee.”

  That was almost certainly going to happen, though. Someday, benzethonium chloride would go public—and when it did, there would absolutely be parents taking their children on trips to the first floor of Yoyogi to get their D-Cards.

  Some of them might even try to take home slimes like they were stray dogs, secretly raising them inside their sheds—

  Just then, the elevator let out a beep as it stopped on our floor. As I gazed again at the state of the room we were in, I let out a sigh, knowing that we were probably in for a long session of questioning.

  I have no idea whether they’ll believe us when we tell them a slime caused this entire mess—the only solid evidence dissipated into a puff of light, after all.

  At least this night of terror has finally come to an end. For now, we may as well just be happy about that.

  Annotations

  A xenomorph injuring itself so it could escape: In Alien: Resurrection, some of the alien xenomorphs escape a containment room by killing one of their brethren and using its blood to melt through the floor.

  Someone from Marukami Village: A reference to Land of Tanabata by Hitoshi Iwaaki. Marukami Village is the birthplace of certain people with the ability to carve out spherical holes in space. Speaking of which, supposedly a live action adaptation is going to air on Disney+ this year (in July of 2024).

  Paleontologist: A reference to Kyohei Yamane, a character appearing in the original Godzilla film. Miyoshi was riffing off his famous speech. The strange pauses in her lines are because she was mimicking exactly how Kyohei Yamane (played by Takashi Shimura) delivered them in the movie.

  Commentary

  Any time Komugi shows up, the stories she’s in tend to include a ton of specialized info. I guess when you’re writing a so-called maniac, you can’t help but channel a bit of your own inner maniac at the same time. Probably.

  This story was originally crammed into the “January 14, 2019” section. There are a few traces of it leftover in volume 5, such as Miyoshi being really tired on the morning of January 15.

  When it was being published as a short story, I had written it with the intent of placing it after the Yokohama incident from volume 6. However, since the discussion about slimes was rendered rather redundant by the events in the volume itself, I edited it to make it seem like the incident happened on January 13 before publishing it. Unfortunately, it was not a Friday, but a Sunday.

  Consequently, that means Komugi smuggled the core out during boot camp. She’s been causing trouble from day one, in true Komugi fashion!

  Note that while the hypothesis that slimes might be D-Factor generators appeared in volume 6, the incident in this short story is set chronologically before that hypothesis is made. To line up with that, I rewrote things from the perspective that they might be using D-Factors when they cut things away.

  I went a similar route regarding the observation of slime cores regenerating outside of the dungeons. By treating the events in this story as a special set of circumstances, in which the slime regenerated by absorbing a first-rank potion in an area with a low D-Factor density, the experiments in volume 6 don’t need to take that incident into account, since it was an exception.

  At any rate, I hope you manage to enjoy this author’s futile attempts to retroactively pull things into some semblance of continuity.

  Finally, regarding all the technical content: While I did my fair share of research on these topics, if I happened to get anything wrong, I’d highly appreciate it if you let me know!

  Chapter 6: AB Night

  Foreword

  Heh, heh, heh. This is a tale from a time when I was truly backed into a corner. (Honestly I feel like I’m backed into a corner on a daily basis, but that’s more of a psychological thing.)

  The story takes place at the end of volume 6, after our two heroes had left Yoyogi Dungeon and gone home.

  Now, without further ado, please enjoy the lamest, most bog-standard short story of all time.

  AB Night

  “Whew, home at last.”

  Once our feet had managed to carry our exhausted bodies back from Yoyogi, I opened the door to our dark office, took off my shoes, and headed straight for the couches.

  “Dhaaaugh.”

  Miyoshi let out a decidedly unfeminine sound as she flopped face down onto a couch.

  “Sheesh, what’s with the zombie grunt?”

  As I sat down on the couch across from Miyoshi, Rosary, who had been nestled on my head, fluttered up and landed on a ceiling beam, letting out a tiny chirp. I really need to put together a proper perch for the girl.

  “Look, these past couple days have really taken a lot out of me. There’s a point where it gets to be too much. I am sick to death of having event after event shoveled down my throat.”

  As if on cue, a small groan erupted from Miyoshi’s stomach.

  “Sounds like you’ve got at least a little room left down there. Want me to make something?”

  Before the whole Dr. Tylor visit, we had barely started eating when Cavall had suddenly shown up. Then, right as we had been about to get back to our meal, the whole Rosary thing had happened.

  “Hmmm, not a bad idea... I do have a few things I’d like to discuss and try to get straight in my mind.”

  “Things like our conversation with Dr. Tylor?” I can’t really think of what else it could possibly be...

  Since we hadn’t actually managed to capture the discussion at the secret garden, the two of us had kept busy on the way back by recording ourselves going over what we could remember about it.

  “That’s a huge amount of stuff to think about all on its own, but even if we focus solely on what to report to the JDA, I doubt we’d be able to come to any conclusions anytime soon.”

  “Yeah, probably not...” I trailed off.

  Can’t believe he gave us that “I hate to see scientific progress bound up by politics” line. Does he think anyone would actually enjoy getting caught up in political gamesmanship?

  We’ll probably have to transcribe the recordings we made earlier, but it’s no big deal to save any big discussion until later. It’s not exactly a problem that the two of us can do anything about on our own, and we’ll need to be extra careful about who we bring into the fold. Though Naruse is definitely a safe bet.

  “So what’s on the menu?” Miyoshi asked.

  “Meh. I’d say we could take the lazy route and do delivery, but that’s not really an option, considering what time it is. We could do some of the premade dishes I’ve always got on hand, or I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have cup noodles every now and then.”

  “We’ve got some langoustine in the fridge, fresh from Suruga Bay!”