“It’d never pass scrutiny. In the meantime, we can use the knowledge we’ve obtained to build our own base,” Miyoshi said, picking up one of her scampi. “After all, our company has some of the most dependable employees out there.”

  With that, she tossed the seafood into one of several mouths lined up next to her.

  Even Dolly had her blind spots; we were just lucky enough to have the Arthurs to delegate the detailed observation duties to. Their surveillance network had been perfect thus far.

  “We can repeat our experiments as many times as we want, and eventually we’ll get an ideal setup where the Arthurs don’t encounter any slimes at all. And once we do—”

  “—We sell it?” I asked.

  “It’s sounding like Igloo 1 is pretty close to being finished too.”

  “Oh yeah, that whole thing...”

  Igloo 1 was something we had put in an order for after Dolly. In a nutshell, it was more or less a mobile base for use in dungeons.

  “They cobbled it together pretty fast, huh.”

  “Design aspects aside, on the inside it’s basically just a spruced-up motor home. It doesn’t need any special shielding like a spaceship, and it doesn’t need spaceship-level precision in its construction either. And it didn’t even have to use a single custom screw!”

  “Making good use of civilian products, I see. I can see the huge grin on Urushibara’s face already.”

  “I wonder if good ol’ Kiyomi would want to make something like this for us himself?”

  “Hey now, don’t start poaching from the JSDF all of a sudden. We don’t want to mess up our relationshi—” I put a hand to my chin. “Would it mess up our relationship, though?”

  “From what I’ve heard, the Future Capabilities Development Center’s D-Cap division is in a pretty awkward position right now.” It had only been two months since the dungeons appeared when their organization was first established, and apparently a lot of things had ended up being rushed.

  “From a publicity and efficiency standpoint, developing equipment for dungeons might end up being completely outsourced to civilians... Wait, what would they do about military equipment research?”

  “The arms industries in capitalist nations are pretty much all civilian-owned, Kei.”

  “Hm. Yeah, I guess they are.”

  “Besides, there’s this little thing here in Japan called ‘free choice of employment.’”

  “All right, calm down. Just try not to stir up too much trouble.”

  Offering me a small nod of assurance, Miyoshi scooped up another one of the scampi with her fork and popped it in her mouth.

  Not particularly reassured by her display, I picked up a scampi of my own and took a bite. When I sank my teeth into the tender flesh, sweet juices oozed out into my mouth. It had a rich umami flavor that truly evoked the essence of seafood from Suruga Bay.

  “Wow, this is really good,” I stated in awe.

  “The kind from Suruga Bay has a much more pronounced flavor than the European kind, if you ask me.”

  “Maybe. Though we might also be tasting the difference between frozen and fresh.”

  At risk of stating the obvious, European and New Zealand scampi always came to us frozen. The latest freezing technology was definitely top-notch, with no appreciable flaws, but one could still usually tell the difference between frozen and fresh—and depending on the product, that difference could be quite pronounced. Shellfish in particular had always seemed way tastier to me when they were sourced locally, so I couldn’t rule out that past experience was coloring my judgment.

  “The pinot grigio isn’t bad either, but with something like this that’s basically just salty grilled shrimp, I would’ve probably gone with a beer.”

  “Oh, hello, typical Japanese dad.”

  “Cut me some slack. Brand-name Japanese pilsners are the best in the world.”

  They did use what were probably some of the highest development budgets in the world in an attempt to suit the average Japanese palate, after all. They were bound to be tasty after all that effort. You couldn’t really expect that sharp craft beer flavor from them, but they were the perfect choice for a relaxing late-night beverage.

  “Dolly has been really useful so far, but I’m kind of worried she’s not really suited for the lower floors,” I said. “And considering the JDA knows about Storage already, I imagine Igloo 1 will be making its debut pretty soon.”

  We still needed to take Rokujo and the others down to the lower floors, after all. Tents were pretty scary at our experience level, and while we might have already divulged the existence of Dolly, it would be a pretty tight fit for so many people.

  As I was pulling a small bottle out of the fridge, Miyoshi suddenly shot up out of her seat, looking incredibly panicked.

  “Oh, no! Kei!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a huge relief we managed to get out of the dungeon, but what do you think happened to the cleaner we left on the first floor of Yokohama?!”

  “Hmmm...”

  If it’s actually still there, we could be in for a repeat of the division nightmare we just had to deal with...

  “As much as everyone was probably running around the place like crazy, I’m sure they would’ve at least checked on it, right?” I murmured.

  First of all, the JSDF and Falcon had apparently secured a cleaner of their own. Second, there was no way Naruse hadn’t gone in to take a look around Shinshinan after Miyoshi and I had gone missing. Finally, if there had indeed been a cleaner left after all that, I was positive they would’ve disposed of it properly.

  Miyoshi furrowed her brow.

  “We should get in touch with Naruse just in case—but I honestly don’t know how to explain why we’re already back here...”

  We had ended up being teleported from the thirty-first floor to the first floor. The speed of our return didn’t make a whole lot of sense, at least by normal standards. Though if they checked our exit time at the gate, the jig would be up anyway.

  “In that case, how about I contact her? As far as she knows, I wasn’t whisked away to Yoyogi like everyone else was.”

  Naruse knew that Miyoshi had a means to contact people from the thirty-first floor, so even if the timing of my information might’ve seemed a little off, I could use Miyoshi as an excuse.

  “If the stray cleaner really is still around, we’ll be catching a cab to Yokohama after this.” Miyoshi said, staring at the wine in her glass. “Your dream from the other day will finally come true.” Her shoulders slumped as she cast me a reproachful eye.

  Ah yeah, the whole Yokohama thing. I did say I’d like to ride there in a taxi once, but it goes without saying that I have zero interest in traveling there just to clean up.

  “Let’s just hope that’s not the case, then.”

  Placing the beer I had taken out on the counter, I wrote up a quick email to Naruse and pressed the “send” button.

  “If we don’t hear from her for a while, I’ll just have to call her instead,” I said, eyeing the time. “Not only does she have today’s incident to worry about, she also needs to figure out the safe area business ASAP. I’m pretty sure she’s still awake.”

  Between the missing people being located and the first safe area being found, the Dungeon Management Section was no doubt a whirlwind of activity as it began contacting all the relevant agencies.

  “What an exploitative work environment,” Miyoshi quipped.

  “Don’t act like you had nothing to do with it,” I muttered.

  “But we really didn’t have anything to do with this whole mess, did we?”

  In all actuality, we held no blame whatsoever when it came to the nuke in Yokohama, nor were we responsible for being teleported to Yoyogi. Though the latter might have a little room for doubt, I suppose... And incidentally, it was the JSDF that had discovered the safe area. With some caveats there too...

  “I kinda feel like we did contribute a bit, considering we were the ones who found the key and sussed out the location of the keyhole. And the fact that today is the first day of the National Center Exams—or I guess the second, now that it’s after midnight—is probably only making them even more swamped than they already were, right?”

  “It was...an unfortunate series of coincidences,” Miyoshi concluded succinctly, closing her eyes and nodding. She then quickly moved on to a different topic, as if to tell me not to push the matter any further. “Speaking of the safe area, they’ll probably have trouble transporting cargo all the way down there, won’t they? What do you think the JDA will do with that Storage orb?”

  “Changing the subject, huh... Well, it did kind of seem like they were just running on vibes at the time, didn’t it?”

  They had no time, and they didn’t want to let the orb slip away into the hands of any shady buyers. They weren’t sure exactly how to deal with it, but since they had the funds for it, I’m guessing they decided they might as well lock it down.

  “Miyoshi, if you were working for the JDA, and the company itself told you to use a forty-five-billion-yen orb, what would you do?”

  “I’d absolutely refuse! And if they wouldn’t let me, I’d run away.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  It was like a real-life version of The Six Million Dollar Man. In February of the same year that TV series was made, the dollar-yen exchange rate transitioned to a floating system. After the Smithsonian Agreement devalued the dollar, the fixed exchange rate was 308 yen to the dollar, so six million dollars at the time was equivalent to 1.848 billion yen.

  If, say, Naruse ended up using the orb, it would still be worth 140 million dollars at the even at the exchange rate back then. The present-day rate was just under 110 yen to the dollar—which would make her “the Four Hundred Million Dollar Woman.” It was literally a different order of magnitude.

  “You would lose every last ounce of freedom in your life. You’d never be able to travel overseas, and you’d probably never be able to experience real romance or get married.”

  You could probably make the money back if you earned enough, but a skill orb wasn’t something you could regenerate through artificial means. Once it was gone, you could never get it back.

  “We’re pretty much already in the ‘can’t travel overseas’ boat ourselves, you know,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, that’s right!”

  “Anyway, that’s why I doubt they’ll have an easy time finding any takers to use the orb.”

  “Maybe someone like good ol’ Executive Director Mizuho might end up tricking some random staff member into using it?”

  “As much as I wouldn’t put it past him, thankfully the Dungeon Management Section isn’t under his jurisdiction, I hear.”

  “Some particularly twisted explorer out there might be willing...”

  “I seriously doubt the JDA would put such a huge investment into someone like that.”

  Even if they used it on a respectable explorer instead, there would be no guarantee that person wouldn’t have a change of heart sometime afterward. And even if that didn’t happen, their family could end up getting kidnapped by some evil organization to use as hostages. Then they might force the user into getting plastic surgery, give them a new identity, and use them for a smuggling operation. That kind of crazy fiction plot could well become a reality.

  “Is reselling the orb really their only option?”

  “Without really knowing what it’s capable of, even that might be tough to pull off, don’t you think? The price would be way too high for anyone to take a gamble on it.” I turned my gaze to Miyoshi. “Why don’t you fill them in a bit?”

  “I mean, I could try to give them precise measurements... But if its efficiency depends on the user’s INT, they’re gonna feel like they got scammed.”

  “Ah yeah, that was a possibility, wasn’t it... Hey, hold on a sec!” I recalled back when she had done some testing on Storage. “Remember back when you were using those buses as Legos?”

  “I-I did nothing of the sort!”

  “Fine, whatever. Wasn’t your INT at a normal level when you stored twenty of them? You hadn’t really done much dungeon diving before Dolly showed up, right?”

  Dolly had been delivered on December 21—I was positive because I remembered that the incident with Mishiro happened the next day.

  “I did go into the dungeon with you and Asha.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t kill any monsters that time.”

  “Yeah, that’s also true.”

  “In that case, you were still at the minimum—”

  Wait. I’m pretty sure she already had a crazy INT of 16 or so starting out... If the skill happens to work on a system by which certain people instantly turn into superhumans, that’d be a scam on a whole different level.

  “Kei?”

  “Ah, why not just offer them a baseline example of what the skill could do from back when your INT was 16?”

  “Aha! Then they would automatically assume I still had an INT of 16!”

  I mean, that’s not really where I was going with that... That reminds me, though, her INT right now is at least somewhere in the lower 90s, I think... If Storage really does rely on INT, I wonder what it can do at her current level? Maybe we could order a second Igloo 1.

  Shaking my head in exasperation, I popped the cap off my bottle of beer. When I turned back to the table, though—

  “Huh?! Where’d my scampi go?!”

  Seated quietly nearby, with a proud, satisfied look on his face and a scampi tail sticking out of his mouth, was Glas. Not even a lone fragment of shell was left on my plate.

  Miyoshi stretched.

  “Ahhh, that was a truly delicious feast. My compliments to the chef!”

  “I can’t believe you guys... I only had two...”

  “Kei, two scampi is actually considered a pretty normal serving.”

  “Miss Miyoshi. Are you mocking me with the same mouth you just used to—”

  With a furious grin plastered across my face, I was just about to enact my revenge when my phone suddenly started to vibrate.

  “Oh, hey, I bet that’s Naruse!”

  I clicked my tongue in disappointment. It was indeed Naruse calling.

  Apparently the Yokohama incident and the accompanying discovery of the safe area had occurred at a time when the JDA had already been trying to round people up to help with the National Center Exams, which they were also shorthanded for. There weren’t even enough people to send incident reports to all the relevant agencies, so Naruse was struggling to put together said documents for submission first thing in the morning. We appreciate all your hard work, supervisor.

  According to her, the problem cleaner in Yokohama had disappeared along with the rest during the aforementioned incident.

  The fact that the consumption of D-Factors ended up affecting areas outside the dungeon, despite the fact that it should typically only occur inside of them, reinforced the idea that D-Factors had indeed been spread into the outside world from within the dungeons, and could be transferred back and forth between the two.

  I thought about trying to come up with good cover stories for where I had been and how Miyoshi had suddenly vanished from the thirty-first floor, but it didn’t take much thought to figure out that our dungeon exit times would’ve been a dead giveaway—not to mention that we didn’t have any entry times either. And it would’ve been a major stretch to claim we had been outside. The most productive option was to just tell her the truth, then ask her to find a way to sort out the records for us.

  Naruse was shocked when I provided a summary of what had happened, but it was far too late in the day to try and sort things out. After saying we could chat in more detail tomorrow, and emphasizing heavily that she would be stopping by our place, even if it was a bit later than usual, she hung up.

  The second day of the National Center Exams would start bright and early. She might’ve been our full-time supervisor, but there was no way she’d be busting down our door first thing in the morning.

  Miyoshi sighed. “There was no fooling her after all, I guess?”

  “It’s those damn entry records... I guess we couldn’t just ignore the gate when we go in or out, huh?”

  “If they found out we were doing that, it would be an even bigger deal than it is now.”

  Standing up, Miyoshi took the plate and glass she had been using over to the sink and started washing them.

  As I stared ruefully back and forth between my plate and Glas (the dog), I took some karaage out of Vault, popped one in my mouth, and chugged the rest of the beer in my hand.

  “Ugh. It’s not even that cold...”

  Fortune and misfortune come in turns. Like the A- and B-sides of a record. I only got to eat two scampi and ended up with a lukewarm beer, so I guess all that misfortune means I’m due for something good to happen tomorrow—though honestly, the only future I see in store for me is Naruse putting me through the wringer...

  As I sat there with slumped shoulders, Glas looked down at me from his position on top of the table, wagging his tail triumphantly.

  Annotations

  Conversation with Dr. Tylor: On the off chance anyone hasn’t yet (as doubtful as that is), I suggest reading volume 6 of the mainline series before this.

  Conclusions: Since this short story was in volume 6, I couldn’t delve too deeply into any conclusions for fear of spoiling volume 7.

  Don-gitsune: Played by Riho Yoshioka. Her contract ended just before I started writing this particular short story, and she was removed from Nissin’s official website entirely. I didn’t work in a mention of her because of that, though—it was just an incredibly timely coincidence. I swear!

  The final episode of Nadia: A reference to episode 39 of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, its final episode, titled “Hoshi o Tsugu Mono...” in Japanese (or “Successor to the Stars...” in the English release). They may be older anime, but Nadia and Future Boy Conan are (apparently) the big two NHK entertainment must-sees. Shout-out to Miyoshi’s circle pals.