Chapter 97
Saying goodbye to someone else, regardless of genre, is bound to take on a sentimental tone.
For example, when the android T-800 protecting the protagonist throws itself into a smelting furnace, when you have to release Pidgeot into the forest with tears in your eyes after finally managing to catch it, or when you resolve to remove the talking terrorist brain tumor at long last…….
Anyway.
The relationship between Paul Lucas and me wasn't particularly deep, nor had we known each other for very long, but.
Still, even dislike is a kind of affection, so saying goodbye to the megacorp employee who had often visited our grocery store as a regular customer should normally have taken on a fairly romantic atmosphere.
Bzzzz….
A giant fly the size of a hard candy flew toward me, tracing a figure eight.
I was in the unenviable position of not even being able to get toilet paper.
But I clapped my hands together and crushed the fly barehanded without a hint of emotion.
Smack!!
I roughly shook off the oozing fluid.
My entire body was already filthy from the scavengers’ blood, bits of entrails, rotten food broth, and all sorts of other residue.
In a situation like this, one fly was nothing.
My sense of smell had long since gone numb.
I could truly say that I had become one with the garbage dump.
“……”
“……”
Paul Lucas and the cat kept stealing awkward glances at me.
Unlike me, who had gotten filthy from going all out, their clothes were still fairly clean.
In fact, it was only natural.
I had gone berserk, running up the garbage mountain on my own two feet and cleaning out every scavenger.
I was even dirtier in some respects than the natives living in Area 50.
Therefore.
It was truly difficult for us to feel sentimental in the midst of such a chaotic situation.
I hadn't expected our final moments to take place amid the stench of [Data Expunged], either.
“…Am I supposed to leave through there?”
I asked as I looked at the person-sized sewer opening beneath the wall dividing the city.
I had wondered what he was thinking as he blindly walked toward the outskirts, but it seemed he had been looking for a separate back route.
Paul Lucas cautiously answered my question, which came from a body that literally reeked.
“Yes. It would probably be difficult to leave through one of the city’s official exits.”
The old sewer, with hardened slug residue caked here and there, was blocked by a sturdy iron grate, but that didn't seem like much of a problem for Paul Lucas, a megacorp employee.
Well, shit….
‘There goes my chance to see the wasteland.’
I came all this way for nothing.
My mental stat was already close to zero, so I didn't want to crawl into a sewer, too.
The stench down there was a different kind, for one thing.
I let out a soft sigh and moved to shake Paul Lucas’s hand one last time…….
“…Hmm.”
Come to think of it, there probably wasn't any need to shake hands.
Paul Lucas probably didn't want to take hold of my palm, caked with a scavenger’s dried blood, either.
Not realizing what I was thinking, Paul Lucas quietly bowed his head toward me.
“…Thank you. Truly, thank you for helping me.”
“It’s fine.”
I helped him because I thought I’d have restless dreams if someone I knew got shot and died.
And I had some responsibility for him being pursued by the megacorp.
I answered Paul Lucas nonchalantly.
“Instead of thanking me, worry about yourself, Mr. Lucas.”
The inside of the city was already this fucked up.
Just how dystopian would the outside world be?
Paul Lucas’s choice to head for the wastelands without hesitation in order to survive suddenly seemed remarkable to me.
Paul Lucas gave a small laugh at my words.
His suspicious, narrow eyes curved quite naturally.
“Well, the outside is still a place where people live, too.”
A place where people live.
Maybe because it was an android saying it.
It felt faintly strange.
“Then I’ll be on my way before it gets any darker.”
Paul Lucas gave a brief bow and walked toward the sewer opening in the wall.
“Let me say it again: thank you very much.”
Paul Lucas slowly disappeared into the shadows.
Before long, even his back was no longer visible.
‘…It really is all over now.’
I had dealt with almost every possible variable, and apparently nothing in particular had happened at the grocery store.
It was safe to say that the chances of any more problems related to the megacorp had certainly grown much lower.
‘When am I ever going to get home looking like this?’
I just want to get back and take a shower….
Suddenly, I let out a breathy laugh to myself.
It was funny that, without realizing it, I had naturally come to think of that grocery store as ‘home.’
‘Well….’
It wasn't as if I could go back to my real home looking like this, either.
That referred to my filthy hygiene, but it was also an indirect way of expressing how much I had changed.
The vagrants of Area 50 who had swarmed in at the sound of gunfire as if they had no regard for the value of life had, within only a few minutes of the fight beginning, ended up screaming and fleeing.
In reality, it was too horrific to even call it a fight.
Even their blatant escape hadn't been enough to stop my anger.
The reason I stopped the ‘cleaning’ midway was
because a sudden voice saying that I had leveled up jolted my warped mind awake.
I suddenly came to my senses.
The fact that I had been killing people without the slightest hesitation.
It wasn't that I felt guilty.
Honestly, “cleaning” wasn't an inaccurate term, either.
But….
Once the number had easily climbed past several dozen.
Even I could feel somewhat queasy and unsettled.
“…My lord?”
“What.”
I answered the worried cat’s voice in a flat tone.
I keep telling you to just call me Hot Dog Man.
Come to think of it, this time the cat was calling me “my lord” instead of chief again.
“No, it is nothing.”
“You’re so silly.”
I stretched languidly and turned around to look at the cat.
On the front of the cat’s full-face helmet.
[ ⚆ _ ⚆ ;;]
An emoticon roughly like this, as if it were reading the room, was displayed.
Like a “reading-the-room” emoticon….
“Pfft, heh heh….”
“…??”
When I suddenly started laughing, the cat, unaware of the shape of the emoticon appearing on the helmet it was wearing, tilted its head to the side.
It was a different kind of laughter from before.
Looking at it, I said calmly,
“Well, shall we head back soon?”
To our second home.
To the grocery store.
* * *
Paul Lucas walked very cautiously through the pitch-black sewer passage.
…Step, step.
The sound of his footsteps carried through the quiet passage.
And a little while later.
Step, step.
Once he had reached roughly the center of the sewer, Paul Lucas’s posture as he walked changed from hunched to upright.
Step, step, step─.
His hunched shoulders spread wide, and his back, which he had kept bent, had straightened before he knew it.
It wasn't because the sewer had gotten taller.
It was simply because there was no longer any reason for him to look so ‘pitiful.’
Just as Clark Kent in Superman changes his posture and expression to conceal his identity, the impression created by one’s outward appearance was quite important.
He needed help, so there was no reason to deliberately show the appearance of a coldhearted businessman.
The reason he usually showed his subordinates a gentle, kind, and somewhat casual attitude was the same.
‘As expected, accepting his help really was the best choice.’
If it hadn't been for that Hot Dog Man’s help,
by now Paul Lucas would have been caught by the mobile special operations agents, with his head pried open while he was still alive.
It was an obvious lie that he hadn't chosen the grocery store as his destination.
Paul Lucas had driven the van with a destination in mind from the very beginning.
That was because, while separately investigating Hot Dog Man, he had learned that the man took care of the lowly homeless people on the streets out of goodwill.
‘I thought he used homeless people for illegal experiments or organ trafficking, like other people did.’
No homeless people disappeared from the grocery store.
In other words, he really was taking care of people out of ‘goodwill and kindness.’
If so….
‘Then of course he might help a pitiful corporate employee whose face he had seen often.’
He didn't seem to harbor any particular antipathy toward corporations, either.
Paul Lucas’s prediction proved correct.
He felt little guilt about using Hot Dog Man for his own safety.
To an android, a conscience was merely an optional accessory, after all.
And.
Paul Lucas still believed that Hot Dog Man was the real culprit behind the theft of Veltech’s cargo.
‘Especially that sloppily made mask….’
In fact, the Black Square faction had even placed a bounty on the ‘masked purist.’
Though the lofty megacorp people who never went into the field themselves wouldn't know that.
Now that he had been fired from the company he used to work for, the suspicion was meaningless anyway.
‘I even considered contacting the Crossfell family and making the situation more complicated….’
Fortunately, his escape had gone smoothly.
Now all that remained was to start a new life in the wastelands.
Then Paul Lucas stopped walking for a moment and looked blankly back at the passage he had walked through.
From within the wall dividing the city.
The inside, that is.
He formed a light smile and clapped his hands.
Clap clap.
“Then I’ll take my leave from the stage. That’s all…….”
A brief silence.
“It was just Paul Lucas. …Ta-da.”
* * *
The central business district of Area 21.
With countless megacorp-built skyscrapers occupying the sectors like a forest.
After finishing a call with Ryan Eliens Company chairman Sola Faust, the chairman of Veltech muttered in an irritated voice.
“That arrogant bastard….”
The call that had suddenly come in had done nothing but stress him out.
Considering that android’s personality, there was a good chance he had called simply to tease him.
Frederick Kessler’s executive secretary quietly followed behind the chairman of Veltech.
“Chairman.”
“Get out.”
“……Understood.”
At the firm dismissal, the executive secretary bowed his head and withdrew.
And so, the chairman’s office was left empty except for him.
He walked to the large desk and operated the touchpad while standing.
Soon, a tiny female figure, apparently no more than 30 centimeters tall, materialized as a hologram.
[Why did you call me all of a sudden? Ah! Did you finally find my body? Huh?]
It was an exceedingly casual tone to use with the chairman of a megacorp commanding hundreds of thousands of employees.
Yet a gentle smile hung around Frederick Kessler’s lips as he looked down at the hologram.
“…No, not yet.”
At that, the holographic woman’s face fell.
[It’ll take an incredibly long time to recreate a high-spec body like that….]
“But I’ll find it soon.”
[…Hmph.]
The social mask of being a megacorp chairman was truly heavy and cumbersome.
Since it was difficult for him to casually say even a single word in public, it was hardly strange that he felt comfortable with an ordinary AI.
[Got it! I’ll wait! I was in the middle of an online flame war, so just a moment!!]
That childish voice brought him peace.
Frederick Kessler felt as if the shackles constricting his body had vanished somewhere.
He gazed at the empty space where the hologram had been and murmured quietly.
“For your sake…. I will find that body and give it to you, no matter what.”
Frederick Kessler reaffirmed his resolve.
* * *
【Quest ‘For Your Sake’ failed!】
【The probability of a special random encounter occurring has increased!】
“??”
A question mark rose above my head as I showered.
It was because I had heard a deranged voice saying that some bizarre quest I had never even received had failed.