———Lerim———

  <1: 05 pm>

  *Ring* *Ring* *Beep*

  “Haaa… What is it now?” I said as I picked up the call.

  “” Wait a minute, is this…

  “Oh! Director! How has your day been? I believe the st time you called was a few months ago.” I said, quickly changing my tune. I thought it was the guild contacting me about more dipshits going missing inside the dungeon again.

  “” He said, still sounding awkward even after I changed my tone. What is going on over there?

  “Director? Are you alright?” I asked, wondering if something fishy was going on on his end.

  “” What is that supposed to mean? I have been doing nothing but looking after my health, which is basically just procrastinating.

  “I have a bunch of free time, don’t worry about it.” I said while looking around. Sometimes there are also other people standing on rooftops. It’s a cozy spot for people who want some alone time. Right now it’s cold outside so staying out here is actually quite nice. Save some electricity.

  “” He asked.

  “Not really. Is that all?” I asked. Because if there isn’t then I think I’ll go back to whatever I was doing earlier. “What time are we talking, by the way.”

  “” He asked, still sounding a bit exhausted. What in the world was he working with before this? He is known to take chances with a lot of things, maybe he actually did run into trouble?

  “That’ll work. So is that actually all?” Just free all day everyday. Living frugally means that I could sck off and not spend too much each month. Right now a casual dungeon dive would give me enough to not lose too much of my savings each day. A photoshoot gig like this would probably cover more than that.

  “” He said before ending the call. I never realized he was having so much trouble. He was always a passive guy most of the time, probably having a hard time with any sort of pressure, which is definitely weird for a guy with a lot of connections.

  Now that that’s over with. Time to continue with my business. Which is just… brainstorming out in the cold weather. I didn’t have any pns today, so that call was a bit of a relief. It gave me a bit of direction of what to do next.

  *Ring* *Ring* *Beep*

  “Hello?” It’s not the same number as earlier. Who is it now?

  “” This voice… It’s that guy from back then.

  “Why do you want to know? You’re not my boss anymore.” I asked, confused as to why he seemed to panic. It doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with where I’m at right now, it’s pretty peaceful. “What’s with your tone anyway, aren’t you being a bit-

  “” Huh? What is he on about? “”

  “Yeah, I can see that…” I said, noticing the sounds of people panicking in the background. The giant skyscraper isn’t too far from here. Just a minute or two and I’ll be there. “Alright, fine. Can’t do anything without me, can you?”

  I quickly hang up on him and start moving.

  *Leap* *Hop*

  Jumping on the ceiling of these buildings, going multiple feet at a time and making sure to nd gracefully. Just a few more good jumps and I’ll reach the destination.

  “Here I am.” I said, nding right in front of the guy who was panicking earlier.

  I turn to look at the commotion going on in front of him. He sure wasn’t kidding, a bunch of monsters of all kinds are pouring out of this building and onto the main road. They seemed rather confused about my sudden arrival, but it soon turned into aggression. “Didn’t even have a weapon on me. I’m expecting some compensation for this.”

  *Shine*

  All I can really muster is an energy bde that could easily break if I lose too much concentration. It’s about on par with a fine steel bde, but it also constantly drains me of mana for as long as I keep it in the world, it’s not something with permanence.

  “Make sure to catch any stragglers and make sure no one gets hurt.” I said to him before running in. They were already aiming for me the moment I pulled out the sword of light. Looks like I’ll be the bait in this case!

  ———Jeff———

  <2: 23 pm>

  “...Kenni.” Rico gred at her, looking at her pale left arm. I know we talked about it a few times today, but what got her so mad looking at it?

  “What?” Kenni asked, obviously sounding rather bewildered at the change in tone. Rico has been pretty casual with us, why is she suddenly sounding like a teacher?

  “There was a report of someone using the school’s facilities to regenerate their lost left arm.” …Huh? What is this about suddenly? “Where did you go to let that happen?”

  “Is that important? Maybe I slipped and my left arm exploded.” She jokingly asked. Hold on, are they really insinuating that her left arm was destroyed at some point? How does that make any sense? She only has the te afternoon until early morning for that.

  “You know I don’t like miscreants who can do that roaming around here, or pce.” She firmly said. “So where have you been to let this happen? You’re not the type of person to be that risky in the first pce. You’re the css jester, not the css idiot.”

  “Wow! Someone actually remembered to call me that instead of a clown!” She enthusiastically said, though her happy mood dropped seeing that Rico is still serious. “...I fly to the floating isnd.”

  “I see.” So that’s what… Hold on what!?“Excuse me?” Qyunda called her out very quickly. Yeah, what the hell does she mean by going to the floating isnd? The only one we know of is the one we were talking about for around two days now, which was not close to here in the slightest. Sure, both us and the pce is on the eastern side of the US, but that doesn’t really mean anything. It just goes from not accessible to barely, and even that is stretching it.

  “I see. I suppose you are someone without adequate self-restraint.” Rico said, kinda passive-aggressively criticizing her. “Alright then. Just don’t do it again.”

  …That’s it? From how it was going I thought she was gonna go off on her, but that’s it?

  Everyone else also looks pretty surprised by this. Isn’t what she just did very risky? I thought she would do a really long rant or something. She just walked away silently…

  …I wonder what Karra would say, she hasn’t been around for two days now. Maybe she knows what is going on better than I do.

  ———Lerim———

  <3: 01 pm>

  “What the hell is this pce?” I asked, walking through this underground area, completely wrecked and looking like it was a part of a grand experiment I don’t know about.

  “Beats me. It seems like these trashes were using it to contain and experiment with monsters. I have heard rumors of other simir pces in other parts of the world, but seeing it firsthand…” He said, clearly feeling overwhelmed. It’s like we are embroiled in a grand conspiracy of some kind. “For crying out loud, why did the police force here have to be wiped before all of this…”

  “I mean, I doubt they would’ve done anything of value here anyway.” I pointed out. They got wiped out in a quick fashion by that gang of criminals, and against so many strong and chaotic monsters their chances are probably six feet under.

  Of course, it is rather embarrassing that such a thing happened, but also equally tragic, many lives were lost that day and everything gets chaotic. Even now there aren’t any words on the matter. It’s anarchy, and the way it starts healing is people getting scared of showing their power by stronger and more virtuous figures like myself.

  “Regardless, it is rather annoying that we are the ones on the front lines.” He said as we kept moving, the journalist behind us tried to keep his cool. Can’t believe he even managed to stick around and photograph the gruesome scene outside. “Who knows when we will get our w enforcers back, who knows what those people with their heads stuck in the clouds are up to.”

  “Let’s just look for the transcripts or anything else. The faster we can find the mastermind or anyone else complicit, the better. I want to smash their heads in already.” I said as we walked past a destroyed doorway. There are no giant monitors or keyboards. There are normal computers here and other office equipment. Most of them have been completely wrecked, but maybe we can salvage some data out of this? What’s the component that holds data again? Maybe that part is still intact on these computers. We need to make sure to handle them with care, then dump it on the guy who wants it in the first pce.

  “Hey, you. You should know what should be important documents and such, pick those up and we’ll help carry it back.” …Or we can just make him do the overthinking part for us. It’s not like he has much choice since we’re doing it for free.

  “A-Alright…” He said before scouring through the items in this room. Honestly he probably doesn't need us around, since the monsters have already been wiped out… Unless he wants to tinker with some stuff that might still be operational and might be able to kill him. I can see a few monster corpses here that are probably a result of some sort of security measures going off. This room seems fine, just looks like a normal office, so he should be fine.

  He looks a bit bewildered as he looks through the shredded documents. Looks like the monsters that got in here really tear things up, but some part of it should still be readable. I don’t think he is sharing this information with us just yet.

  Hope he got his pce all locked up and secure. I can’t imagine the people behind this to be happy that he starts publicizing his findings on this pce, and whatever shadow organization this is, it’s probably connected to someone with a lot of money and authority. You can’t have an underground base like this without that sort of fundings, not to mention the cost of transporting monsters… Who even supplied them with those? Maybe some people here got bribed to do something so dangerous? I never went out to check what was going on during the deep of night, I needed my beauty sleep and all that.

  These things are a bit too much for me to think on my own, and stress can mess with health, so I’d rather not.

  “Okay, I think this is all of them.” The journalist said, putting the contents in his rge bag. Does he carry something like that all the time?

  “Then let’s get moving.” The guy next to me said, taking the lead as I moved on to another room. This one is even more messed up, probably with fewer things to uncover.

  Just gonna be a pattern, isn’t it? At least it doesn’t look like this will st too long. Since I have a photoshoot gig tomorrow I want to go to sleep early and make sure to be extra refreshed. If I’m not, I might end up using a lot of time trying to perfect my pose, and that’s hard to do without a clear mind and pgued with drowsiness.