The innkeeper's psyche at Eunbong's Pub. Inside, it looked remarkably similar to the Mirror Dungeon we had cleared on the bus several times before.
It kept presenting us with branching paths, and if we followed them, enemies would appear. It was that sort of setup, one where you could even take special items, [E.G.O gift], along the way.
"Kreee... kreeee..."
One difference, if I had to name it, was that the enemies weren't [Abnormality]s or the foes we'd already fought, but mutated chickens and K Corp employees with chickens stuck on their heads.
In any case, there wasn't any major problem.
And naturally, the way to obtain [E.G.O gift]s was the same as always... or... was it?
The first non-combat room we reached was one of those rooms where you usually make contact with an [Abnormality] and perform a certain action to acquire an [E.G.O gift]. In that room, some chickens were... dancing.
A ball? ...No, a dance? Tango?
"That is tango."
Well, if Mr. Meursault said so, then it probably was tango. But as I stared blankly at the thing, with its short arms and legs making it hard to tell whether it was dancing or wrestling, I suddenly noticed seasoning leaking out of one of the chickens.
It didn't seem to realize it itself. So this choice was probably related to that.
Then Dante's answer was...
"...Let's pretend we didn't see it."
Let's pretend we didn't see it, huh.
That was unexpected. Or was it consideration, since the chickens seemed to be enjoying themselves in their own way?
"Shouldn't we tell them?"
"But, you know~ they look pretty happy right now, don't they? How about we watch a little longer?"
Apparently Ms. Rodion's opinion was similar to Dante's. It also seemed like the choice she suggested.
"What if all the seasoning runs out?"
Huh? Good point.
Gregor's sudden question caught me completely off guard.
"Wouldn't it just become a chicken with less seasoning absorbed into it?"
"Oh, that does make sense, Ms. Ishmael."
Convinced. ...It was an obvious fact, really, that seasoning wasn't all that important to a chicken. Why hadn't I thought of that?
Soon, the seasoning that had been seeping out of the chicken stopped flowing altogether.
"Kyeeet!"
Had it noticed its body getting lighter? The chicken suddenly performed a high-difficulty move.
"Amazing."
Even the chickens dancing around it stared at the sight in a daze, then let out some strange cheer and approached the chicken.
And then those chickens gave it a piggyback lift and disappeared beyond the lights.
What remained was... only the seasoning that had leaked from the chicken's body earlier.
"...What was that?"
"Who knows? They seemed to like it, so I suppose that's enough."
Was that how it worked? Hmm... it would be easier on my mind if I just didn't think too hard about it.
After that encounter with the strangely odd chickens, we ran into another peculiar situation.
"Look at that rich juice! The way it runs down and highlights the grain of the meat... that's real chicken!"
"Wrong. This clean, simple taste with not a trace of grease. That's the real chicken."
It was a bizarre argument I couldn't make sense of at all. I'd never seen people fight over whether chicken breast or chicken thigh tasted better.
The two strange people then looked at Dante at the same time and said,
"Hey, you there! Which one tastes better?"
"....."
Dante seemed to be thinking very seriously... no, was he just looking at them with pity?
Anyway, he seemed to be considering what answer to give them.
Hmm, by my own standards, thigh meat definitely wins on taste.
At the cost of more fat, though.
...Wait, if you add all that up, aren't they basically the same?
"Aren't they both just chicken? Why are you even separating them?"
Oh, an unexpectedly sound argument from between the thigh-meat and breast-meat options.
Indeed, there was no reason to split apart two things that were really just a matter of preference.
"That... is true."
"An irrefutable truth."
Perhaps they thought the same as we did, because they soon lowered the hands they'd been pointing with and calmed down.
"So we were fighting over something ridiculous, huh."
"Yes... the truth is that chicken is always right."
The two, as if enlightened, shook hands warmly and then handed us the chicken in the middle, bucket and all.
"The wise are entitled to eat both. Please accept it."
A chicken bucket containing both thigh and breast meat.
It was clearly an [E.G.O gift] by all appearances, but... I could feel the hungry stares of the Sinners behind me.
...They weren't planning to eat it, were they?
No, hold on. Ms. Don Quixote, stop licking your lips while looking back and forth between the seasoning we got earlier and the chicken. Both are important!
I had a bad feeling about it, but thankfully the chicken was handed over to Ms. Faust through Dante's hands.
Good. At least this way our [E.G.O gift] wouldn't disappear for some absurd reason.
"Ms. Faust, could you give me just one piece of that chicken? If possible, the seasoning too...!"
"No. [E.G.O gift]s are company assets. They cannot simply be eaten for personal greed."
"Sob..."
...He didn't seriously think that would work, did he?
In any case, nothing else happened after that, and once the situation was sorted out, we decided to move on.
And so we stepped toward that place, carrying a faint brightness tinged with an unknown darkness.
After passing through five or six rooms.
Suddenly, our vision was filled not with a space holding a dim, muted darkness, but with a warm, bright one.
"New scenes are flowing in! It must be the owner's memories."
"It may be a scene he partially lost after being shocked."
So that's how it was. Then the memory from before was... hm?
"Haa... It was hard to find. I thought it would be hidden away very carefully because it was a top-secret recipe, but to think it was being used as a ramen stand..."
"Y-You mean our restaurant's recipe? How did you find it?"
Up ahead, the owner of Boddhisattva Chicken, now speaking in a strangely sneering tone, was arguing with the Eunbong's Pub owner we had glimpsed earlier.
"I sent in a spy. Did you really think a part-timer who'd come in an hour early to prep the opening even at minimum wage actually existed?"
...That's a very realistic thing to say.
Hmm, judging by the situation, the Boddhisattva Chicken owner really was the mastermind.
"W-Why would you do something like this...!"
"I had no choice! If we can't produce the results the headquarters demanded, our shop will have to close!"
That's brutally realistic. The reason for sending in a spy to erase the recipe was to survive. If you call that human, I suppose it is human.
Separate from that, though, it was disgusting.
"I-I still have the recipe all in my head! Two spoons of sugar! One and a half spoons of soy sauce, minced garlic..."
The pub owner desperately recited the recipe, but I knew it was meaningless.
There was a magnificent technique commonly used in situations like this. Namely—
"It's useless. It's already going into the Concept Incinerator. Even the memories in your head will be gone for good."
The Concept Incinerator. Depending on the product, the scope and effect vary, but one thing is always the same.
If you put a certain concept into the incinerator, it erases everything containing memories of that concept within the range of activation.
Someone at that level could buy a product with a range broad enough to wipe out an entire neighborhood chicken shop, using savings or debt.
Use it to erase the other side's concept, and even the evidence gets cleanly deleted.
"Noooooo!!"
Perhaps aware of its existence, the Eunbong's Pub owner screamed and then hurriedly started reciting the recipe again.
"Two spoons of sugar! One and a half spoons of soy sauce..."
"I told you... you should have shut the place down the moment I warned you!"
But it was useless. It wasn't as if they had prepared some method to bypass the Concept Incinerator; the recipe as a concept had simply been incinerated without any defense, so the future ahead was gone.
"Su... sugar... no, was it sugar? I can't remember anything..."
And then, from beyond memory, consciousness surged upward.
"That bastard, I hated him from the first impression. I knew it the moment he slapped that tacky sign on."
"If it was put into the Concept Incinerator... then I suppose the recipe can never be recovered..."
"What is a Concept Incinerator...?"
Oh dear, Gregor didn't know? Then I should explain...
"...No... uh, seeing Ishmael's expression, I don't really want to ask anymore."
What a shame.
"Huh?"
We'll leave that aside for now... surprising, Yi Sang was making that kind of subtle expression... did he have some connection to the Concept Incinerator?
"If one speaks of a Concept Incinerator... it is a representative technology capable of permanently erasing technology."
I already knew that. I'd never used one, but I knew things like its existence and how it worked.
"For example... it would be like returning Ms. Faust's [Mephistopheles] to the state it was in before it was invented."
"Does time go backward?"
"No. It simply... becomes as though it never existed in the mind. All documents, photographs, tiny fragments of parts related to the technology, and even Ms. Faust's memories are crushed or erased."
"The effect and scope differ depending on the cost of the specific Singularity incinerator product, of course."
"Yes...! Whether it was spicy seasoning or soy seasoning... whether sugar was the main ingredient or salt, nothing remains! Even... the countless customers who came to the shop!"
Perhaps because we were inside a psyche space, the Eunbong's Pub owner's voice came through directly.
"No matter how hard I try now, it's all pointless...! Everything is in vain..."
"Hmph, your heart's gone soft before your mind has. Eunbong? No wonder business is bad when you're hanging a tacky country name like that over the door."
"Eunbong is my mother's name..."
Ah.
"Ah..."
"That was too far."
For a moment, the place was swallowed by silence.