*
The day after we finished the third mission.
"Uuugh..."
I was rolling around on the floor, complaining of a truly awful headache.
At a glance, it might have looked serious, but the reason for my headache was embarrassingly trivial.
Of course, I always suffered from an unexplained headache the day after a mission ended... but this time, the cause was far too obvious.
Where should I even start explaining this...? Hmm. Right.
Since it's a pain, let's start from the beginning.
This is how it happened.
The day before, after the mission was over and the mood was pretty good, Ms. Rodion made her usual suggestion.
"Hey, Ver, since we're done with the mission, how about a company dinner?"
With the atmosphere in a good place and the retrieval of the [Golden Bough] apparently satisfying enough, Mr. Vergilius granted us a team dinner.
There was no problem up to that point.
...Up to that point.
The dinner itself wasn't bad.
The mood was good, and the restaurant Ms. Rodion picked was unquestionably a good one.
Up until then, I'd thought it would end as a perfectly ordinary dinner outing.
...Until the extremely high tension became a poison and Ms. Rodion forcibly shoved a bottle of soju into my mouth.
That was my mistake: I'd been careless enough to decide there was no need to observe the faintly rippling possibility.
"Saramago, aren't you drinking a little too little?"
"Ah, well, this is hardly..."
"Hup!"
...After that, the film in my head cut out.
I could piece together the fragmented memories I caught here and there, but...
First, let's drink some water. I feel like I'm going to die.
"Ugh..."
Clutching my boiling stomach, I headed for the mess hall—no, the bus dining area? Anyway, that place.
Gulp, gulp.
"Khh..."
That's better.
Haa... just how much did I drink to end up with a headache this bad? Seriously...
It was a little awkward to go back to my room now.
In another hour or two, work time would start anyway, so maybe I should just chat with Mr. Dante on the bus?
Or maybe I should get some sleep. With that light thought, I crossed the bus corridor and headed inside.
"Good morning."
"G-good... ugh... sorry, that's not a good morning even in the slightest."
Ah, the hangover was far too severe.
I couldn't even make small talk.
"Hmm, that may be so."
Whether Mr. Dante had noticed how bad I was feeling, he didn't press the matter and quietly stayed at his post.
After staring at him for a moment, I went to my seat and sat down.
Let me at least close my eyes here and shake off this hangover.
...
Just as I was thinking that, a sound came from behind me.
Click, click, click.
Familiar footsteps.
Heavy, yet carrying an inexplicable pressure.
Those were the footsteps of Mr. Vergilius, the man who would unquestionably take first place if the prisoners were asked who they least wanted to see right now.
Damn it, now I can't even get a little nap in peace.
"Sleeping in the morning. How carefree."
"My hangover is just really bad, so I was only trying to..."
"..."
What?
Why are you looking at me like that? Have you never seen someone on the verge of dying from a hangover before?
"Hmph... I do hope that hangover clears up by work time."
Mr. Vergilius, radiating an absurd amount of pressure for no good reason, went to the very front seat of the bus and sat down.
...A person should be allowed to sleep a little. He's really obnoxiously sharp, seriously.
Of course, I didn't say that out loud.
I still didn't want to die.
Anyway... maybe I should get some sleep...
*
Shake, shake
Uuugh...
"Saramago! Work time is about to start!"
"I-I get it, Ms. Rodion, but could you please stop shaking me..."
If she kept shaking me like this, I was absolutely going to throw up. Absolutely!
"Ah! Sorry~"
"It's fine. It wasn't intentional anyway."
Thanks to her, I was definitely awake now.
If I hadn't woken up, I probably would've died first, for sure.
If I got drunk to death and then Mr. Dante had to turn the clock back, I'd never be able to show my face again.
Uuugh... well, whatever.
Still, there wasn't really anything to do during work time, so what were we even going to do today?
Normally, we'd be feeding fuel to the thugs who ambushed us in the back alleys, but not today.
Where we were now was a Nest.
There was no way some lowlife thug could make a scene here.
Unless a Wing was backing them, like during the last mission.
Anyway, the conclusion was that there was nothing to do.
Considering the horrific traffic jam on Nest roads... we wouldn't be reaching our destination for a while either.
Ah, come to think of it, wasn't there something?
That mirror thing...
"Dante, the time has come. To begin work time."
"Ah, y-yes."
Mr. Dante still didn't seem used to announcing the start and end of the prisoners' work schedule, so he spoke after a brief pause.
"I will begin the prisoners' work."
"Very good. We will now begin the LCB team's duties, which may vary over the next twelve hours."
Hmm, a boring work period with nothing much to do.
If anything, extraction might count as work.
Up to now, most of our missions had been spent sleeping and fighting thugs.
"..."
Tick.
Mr. Dante, perhaps thinking the same thing, let out a small clock-like sound.
"Ah, Faust. Can we go to that Mirror Dungeon now?"
Mirror... ah! Right, after the second mission, that door had suddenly appeared next to Mr. Dante's room.
I'd forgotten about it for a moment because the third mission had left such a strong impression.
"Of course, Dante. If necessary, we can enter immediately."
"Then shall we explore the Mirror Dungeon today?"
At Mr. Dante's question, most of the prisoners reacted positively.
Sure enough, our department had too many aggressive people to just sit on a bus seat and sleep all day.
Since it was a dungeon, there would be plenty of combat, so there wasn't much reason to refuse.
For that reason, today's schedule was decided: exploration of the Mirror Dungeon.
There was no reason to waste time, so we headed there right away.
*
"Sss!"
Wow, I feel like I've seen that somewhere before.
"Sss! Sss! Sss! Sss!"
If my eyes and ears weren't malfunctioning, then the thing that turned Mr. Heathcliff into a lump of meat during the second mission was standing right in front of us.
...And the possibility leaking off that thing was clearly telling me it wasn't an illusion.
Of course, Faust had told us that Abnormalities might appear as we passed through the eerie spaces of the Mirror Dungeon.
We'd actually run into things like the Kongkongi Gang's associates and even N Corp inquisitors who had picked fights with us before.
Hmm, but suddenly having creatures that could casually kill one or two of us pop out was pretty damn shocking.
It was true that we'd grown considerably stronger after crossing so many thresholds of death... and we did know how to counter their revival, too.
But back then, it had been closer to getting through by sheer luck.
Faust had made it clear that dying in the Mirror Dungeon didn't matter, so we probably wouldn't have too much trouble... right?
*
To get to the point, there wasn't much of a problem.
"Die!!!"
Mr. Heathcliff, trying to get revenge for last time, charged in first and got crushed by brute force until his head burst.
"Mr. Heathcliff! I shall avenge you!"
Ms. Don Quixote rushed in after seeing that and got turned into a matching pile of mush, but that was all within the expected range of variables.
With Mr. Meursault's proper tanking and Mr. Hong Lu's unexpectedly monstrous strength, we were able to pin them down cleanly and make it back out of the dungeon.
The Mirror Dungeon itself wasn't especially difficult, and the fact that death carried no risk gave us a huge advantage.
The time it took was... about fifty minutes? Shorter than I expected.
It looked like we wouldn't be able to spend the entire work period on this alone.
There wasn't much else to say about combat, exploration, combat, exploration.
The truly important thing was somewhere else.
Soon after we came out of the Mirror Dungeon, I received something I hadn't expected from Faust.
It was a sheet of paper labeled "Abnormality Observation Log."
"For the Abnormality's name, please write down everything you learned while fighting [Abnormality] Are You Stronger?"
That one sentence was enough for everything to click into place.
So this was what Mr. Gregor and Mr. Heathcliff had been writing with such miserable expressions during work time.
"Understood."
I immediately took the paper.
There was no point asking obvious questions like why I had to write this; the answer would obviously be something like, "It's company policy."
Even if I'd asked a cleverer question, they would've just brushed it off with something like, "We can't tell you that right now."
Since I knew asking would be pointless, there was no reason to bother.
"Quick to understand. Good. Then hand it in before today's work period ends."
So that was it.
The time was fairly tight, but if I used the possibilities I'd observed with my own eyes and a few other things, maybe it wouldn't be so tight after all.
There wasn't anything else I had to do, so maybe I should just start right away.
I quietly picked up a pen.
Rustle, rustle.
Then I sat there in silence and began to recall the second mission.
Remembering the time when I first encountered an Abnormality.