Chapter 2

Land and Air BGM #02 “Dive to Freedom”

1

Something had to be done about the mint-green coupe. It was looking less like a car and more like some kind of abstract modern-art piece. Smoke was rising from the hood, which noisily rattled on its hinges, swinging open and shut like a clamshell. It was more beaten up than the rusted old dumpsters that could be found in the back alleys of the city.

Midori lay in the passenger seat atop Tselika, who was looking rather pale, her mouth agape as though her soul were attempting to escape her body through it. It certainly didn’t look like a comfortable arrangement.

“Mrrrghhh. Mmmrrrmrmrmmmggghhh.”

“What’s come over you, Tselika? You were fine a moment ago.”

“Hmph. It’s much worse when nobody looking on this mess knows what happened. What a disgrace it is to be driven about like this! Sure, it still runs fine, but people are going to make assumptions based on how it looks. You don’t understand, My Lord. This is like a beautiful girl being forced to walk down the street in front of all her friends while wearing nothing but an apron made of dirty old newspapers!”

“Oh. I thought it was something important.”

“One of these days, I’m really going to beat you up, My Lord!”

Midori looked uneasy. “H-hey, those guys are pretty high up in White Queen Tourism, aren’t they? Won’t they just send their AI soldier buddies into the city to take care of us?”

“They’re external contractors, and their ‘soldier buddies’ are PMCs. I’m 99.9 percent sure that won’t happen,” Kaname replied.

“How come?”

“Well, for one, companies can only use AI PMCs to protect their own property. They’re not a private army.”

“But they’re external contractors, right? They could still order the soldiers to protect them.”

“I’m getting to that. I doubt it would be worth it. Being an external contractor has its perks, but it still puts you in service to the company. That restricts your freedom. Only a little, but it makes it difficult to engage in economic activities. Now that they’ve missed their chance to claim the Legacy, they might as well cut themselves loose so they can do what they want again.”

Kaname himself had already severed his connections with White Queen Tourism when he left Ag Wolves. He was now a free agent. Freedom came first. The immediate monetary benefits that came with associating with a large AI company simply didn’t compare.

Midori was stunned anew by this insight into the mind of a frontline Dealer. But her daze was short-lived, for once she saw the mint-green coupe drive straight past a repair shop, she spun her head around, watching it slip away behind them.

“Aren’t we stopping to fix the car?” she asked.

“If we stop now, Ag Wolves will catch up to us. We’ll have to go farther afield, perhaps even off the peninsula. By the way, Tselika, how are you doing on that analysis I asked for?”

“Changing the subject, are we, My Lord? Well, hmm…”

The demon pit babe and Midori were both squeezed into the space of the passenger seat. The two girls were dressed lightly, but especially Midori, who had nothing more than her black, frilly miniskirt and bikini to cover the slight curves of her chest and butt. One wrong move could mean a serious wardrobe malfunction.

However, Tselika didn’t seem too concerned about this possibility, instead turning #tempest.err over in her gloved hands.

“These are just my first thoughts, but I think even if we physically destroyed it, you’d still be able to glean some useful information from it. I don’t know how skilled our foes are, but if we want to eradicate the possibility of someone making their own knockoff Legacies, we’ll need some special disassembly tools.”

“You’re as vague as ever…”

“Well, perhaps I’m a little distracted, seeing as how my beautiful temple is currently riddled with holes!”

“Let’s solve two problems at once, then. We’ll go hide on Mega-Float III.”

The two seemed to have come to a decision without consulting Midori. The twin-tailed girl looked from one to the other anxiously.

“…Wait, my vehicle is still in the peninsula district parking lot! What should I do?”

“Can’t you let your Magistellus bring it over?” Tselika asked. Midori choked at the question, suddenly looking embarrassed.

“Erm…that’s not going to work…”

“Then we’ll figure something out. We can’t waste any time,” said Kaname, controlling the front windshield with his eyes.

First, they had to leave the peninsula; then they would take the large circular bridge that encompassed the area of Tokonatsu City, taking them out onto the sea. Kaname smiled as he thought of passing over Hard Engage Bridge again. He was going back and forth today. Of course, Zaurus was likely to still be on the bridge, but she didn’t seem like the kind of girl to stage an attack unassisted.

Midori was fidgeting uncomfortably—perhaps because she was in an unfamiliar vehicle or perhaps because Tselika was poised above her on all fours as if pinning her to a bed. Tselika, meanwhile, spoke without reservation, looking Midori straight in the eye, while she poked at the buttons on the car radio with her split tail, looking for a music station.

“So how are you enjoying the ride in my temple? Are you finding it uncomfortable to be surrounded by such extravagance after becoming accustomed to a life of poverty? I’d wager you’ve grown to think of luxury as the enemy.”

“Urk.”

“Tselika.” Kaname issued a swift rebuke from the driver’s seat, but Tselika ignored him. She gave a seductive smile as she leaned over the girl.

“Once the issue of the Legacies is resolved, My Lord will teach you how to generate all the scraps of paper you could ever need, but first, you must get rid of that pathetic servile demeanor of yours. It may be true that your life is currently one of poverty, but this is through no fault of your own, is it? This is just a momentary setback, a tiny abnormality. It does nothing to negate your own existence, your own worth.”

“…What do you know?” Midori replied in a voice barely above a whisper. “A Magistellus, talking as though you know anything about the real world…”

“True. I don’t know. But real people still have pride and dignity. Money may be among the most important things in the world, but there are some things that money can’t buy. What if My Lord snapped his fingers and freed you from your debt right now? Would you say, Oh, thank you. You’re my hero. I love you so much, and I’ll be your little heart-eyed servant forever and sell your soul into a life of menial servitude? I doubt it. What about, I’m the victim here, and I need more compensation, now, now, now, and oh wow, what a convenient lifestyle, I’ll never need to lift a finger again, and I can just leech off this guy forever? I don’t think so, either. So take pride in yourself. Be the best you can be. Start being someone who helps other people instead of always being helped. If you don’t, you’ll be putting My Lord’s efforts to waste, even after he swore to atone for his sins by putting his life on the line for you. He didn’t have to do that, you know?”

This is never going to end, thought Kaname with a sigh. He cringed slightly, wishing that Tselika wouldn’t put words in other people’s mouths. Since when was he the savior looking down on Midori? If anything, he should be apologizing profusely to her and her family for putting them in that situation in the first place.

…So without further deliberation, Kaname reached his free hand over and grabbed Tselika’s squirming tail out of the air, directly before where the two ends forked.

“Tselika. I mean it.”

“Hyah?! Stop that! Can’t a girl get away with saying something cool once in a while?! You spout that crap twenty-four seven, with your damn good looks, throwing your signature pose! Oh, hello! I’m Kaname Suou!”

“Now you’ve done it.”

“Ee-gyaaaa?!”

Kaname squeezed her tail a little harder, and Tselika’s backside vibrated in a rather unnatural manner.

“…” Midori, doing her best to keep up with all the new developments, finally realized something.

This was what normal felt like.

Midori became aware that her stomach had been freed of a heavy weight, and her head was no longer plagued by negativity. It wasn’t about getting out of poverty or reclaiming her social standing. It was about something everyone had, even Midori, somewhere deep inside. Something Kaname and Tselika were trying their hardest to bring back. They weren’t like some disgusting philanthropists who dropped a load of cash and walked off, feeling satisfied because, Well, I did my bit. They were committed to seeing it through to the end, until Midori could once again stand on her own two legs. And it was clear from Kaname’s words—he knew that rounding up and destroying the immense power of the Legacies would only be the first step.

“Atone for his sins,” they had said. For the Fall of Criminal AO—of Midori’s brother. To protect that man’s sister, as he had protected Kaname’s. But just how far did that “protection” extend? And on the other side of the scales, just how much had her brother “saved” Kaname’s sister?

Perhaps Kaname’s behavior reminded Midori of how she had seen her brother, back when she’d innocently followed in his footsteps. Perhaps she was ready to accept that her brother had also jumped into his car, pointed his guns, and thrown his life away to save someone.

And maybe, just maybe, they had already returned to Midori something that money couldn’t buy, something they had taught her, not with words but by putting their very lives on the line.

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Midori?”

“N-nothing…”

“Excuse Tselika for her insensitive comments. Despite her high processing power, she can still be a bit dumb sometimes.”

“My Lord, I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me or insulting me.”

“See? You might follow the conversation, but you can’t read between the lines.”

Midori relaxed a little as she listened to the exchange. It was silly to close herself off and do nothing. She realized that now.

Passing through the many scattered islands, they soon arrived at the large, square floating structure Mega-Float III.

“This is my first time coming here… What a place.”

While holding Tselika like a large stuffed toy, Midori slowly peered out the window.

“It’s so…brown.”

She was not wrong. Compared to the standardized industrial complex of Mega-Float II, III was a disorganized mess. Rusted old huts of corrugated iron were packed together in the tens and hundreds, piled up like building blocks and even stretching out overhead. The road itself seemed more like a serendipitous gap in the chaos than anything else, and although the whole thing appeared to be constructed out of waste materials, it did not feel very environmentally friendly at all.

“Apparently, this whole place used to be an airport,” Kaname explained, navigating with noticeable familiarity. “After they built a new one on the peninsula, this place fell out of favor. The airline companies that had backed it all went bankrupt, and it became a breeding ground for small workshops.”

Kaname must have been a regular around these parts, appearing to know exactly where he was going, as he drove up to one of the rusted iron huts and passed through the open shutter.

Seeing Kaname exit the vehicle, Midori made to follow suit but was halted by Tselika, who squeezed her arms tightly around her. Tselika smiled coyly, her forehead pressed to Midori’s.

“There’s no hurry. You wait right there.”

“Hng?” Midori flinched, not at Tselika’s words but at the long, seductive breath that issued from her lips.

Meanwhile, Kaname had finished his discussion with the mechanic. He took the opportunity to wrap a handkerchief around his arm wound, which had previously only been crudely sprayed over. Then he took out a few bills and picked up a ragged old backpack that was hanging on the wall. He threw it into the car through the open window. Tselika carefully placed #tempest.err inside it before getting out of the vehicle. Midori followed her, confused.

“Hey! Where are you taking the Le—?!”

Before she could say the word Legacy, Kaname placed his finger to her lips.

Th-they’re both overly friendly! I do have someone who writes me beautiful letters, you know!

As much as she wanted to deny it, Midori had been feeling a little hot under the collar for a while now. Did this man always act like this, or was it just when he was in the game? She blushed. Waving her hands as if to bat away her unseemly thoughts, she attempted to steer the conversation elsewhere.

“L-let’s just destroy it right here!”

“If that’s all you want to do, then we can do it right now,” said Kaname. “Just run it over in the car.”

“Okay, then…!”

“However, that still leaves the risk that someone could extract data from it. There’s no point in destroying it if someone can copy it afterward. If we really want to leave no trace, we have to use special tools. And we need to do it somewhere that everyone can see, to leave no room for any unwarranted theories to crop up in the future.”

Midori grumbled. Tselika, meanwhile, was standing in front of the car staring at the damage. She gripped her head in both hands and did some kind of strange dance, frantically scratching her scalp as though she was tearing her own hair out.

“Ooh… Ooohhh… Oooooooooohhhhh… This is the worst…the absolute worst…”

“Yeah, the guy said the repairs will take five hours. And this bill… It almost would have been cheaper to buy a new car secondhand. This arm wound will take a while to heal, as well. Perhaps it’s worth logging off for a bit and making our money back.”

“Abulabrefurghah?! H-how dare you say such a thing about my temple! This all only happened because you went and got yourself in trouble, and I had to be a hero and come to your rescue! If you’re going to be so dramatic about Criminal AO, then why don’t you spare a tear for me, as well?! Come on, out with it! Let’s see those waterworks!”

“Bragging about your achievements? That’s why you’ll never be a hero.”

Despite what he had said, Kaname couldn’t log out no matter how much he fiddled with the smart watch on his wrist. He had no choice but to wait for the repairs to finish.

There were only two ways to log out in Money (Game) Master. The first was to get inside a vehicle you own, park it, and wait for at least five minutes. If your vehicle was destroyed or stolen, that could make things quite difficult. You first had to either recover your vehicle or buy a new one.

Otherwise, you had to rely on the second method: put a gun to your temple and blow your brains out.

Kaname had Short Spear with which to defend himself, but it was still unsettling having no wheels in the motorized society of Tokonatsu City. And #tempest.err didn’t make him feel any safer. In fact, if word got out that he had it, crowds of people would descend greedily upon him. It was for that reason that he had chosen a ragged old backpack to store it in. Walking around with a safe strapped to him would only attract unwanted attention.

Tselika side-eyed the mechanic, predictably frustrated at the sight of this strange man fiddling with the coupe.

“So, My Lord. Where do we begin?”

“We have several things to do. First, we need to retrieve Midori’s vehicle from the peninsula district. Second, we need to find the special tools required to take that thing apart. And third, we need to come up with some way to waste five hours.”

“…Do you really hate spending time with me so badly, My Lord?”

“I hate spending time doing nothing. Time is money, you know.”

“Then let’s set sail for Prostitute Island! If you’re there with me, I’ll be able to eat and drink as much as I want, get as hands-on as I want! Why, My Lord, pleasure awaits us! One hundred years won’t be enough to experience it all! (Starry-eyed. )”

“And how are we supposed to get there? Also, you really want to take Midori, too…?”

Kaname retorted with derision, but his words did little to soothe Midori. When she heard, she suddenly put herself at a distance and averted her eyes, as if engrossed by a strange bug or some such.

“I see, so that’s what you’d get up to if I wasn’t around, hmmmm?”

“Uh-oh.”

“Utter trash. This is why I hate digital relationships. Everyone is so vulgar and direct. Ulterior motives are obvious, there’s no emotion, no reading between the lines. It’s crass and obscene! Aaargh, I just want to go home and write a letter…”

“The darkness is flowing out of Midori uninhibited! Tselika, back me up! Help me settle this misunderstanding!”

“On it, My Lord! Okay, Midori, you’ve got your hands on your hips and leaning closer to us, looking ready to give us the scolding of a lifetime.”

“S-so?”

“Well, what do you think the camera aboard my temple-car behind you is seeing right now, as you sway your hips from side to side?”

“Huh? Hwah! Aaaaaaah?!”

The girl’s face turned bright red, and she jumped up and leaped about, placing both hands over her small bottom as though blasted by an invisible water gun. Obviously, despite the miniskirt of her frilly black bikini partially blocking the view, it was embarrassing to be spied on so directly. With teary eyes, she gnashed her teeth.

“Grrrr! This is why you can’t let your guard down around digitalites…!”

“Tselika! Are your subroutines loopy? Why are you throwing oil on the fire?!”

“’Twas a jest, My Lord. You really think I’d turn on the dashcam for this weed of a girl? That device is exclusively for images of my gorgeous self. Ahem. Anyway, it was that Criminal AO guy who was always more into places like that, not us. All we did was show up on occasion. For every good place we found, he’d been to ninety-nine more.”

“???!!!” Midori’s face instantly boiled over. Her Takamasa stock levels had been on a downward trend all day.

“Tselika! You haven’t cleared up anything at all! You’re just fanning the flames! And you conveniently neglected to mention that Takamasa only sent us coordinates! It wasn’t until we got there that we realized where he’d sent us!”

“And so My Lord throws his best friend under the bus. But truly, the instincts of a woman are the one thing my subroutines can’t calculate.”

“Wh-what’s that supposed to mean…?”

“…I’ve been getting a lot of questioning texts from your sister. Reading the subject lines, I thought for certain that they were spam and classified them as such. What do you think—shall we have a read through them? I just wonder how she heard our conversation without an account. How does she do it…???”

“Oh God!”

Ag Wolves would be desperately combing the main peninsula financial district for any trace of Kaname and the two girls. Kaname really didn’t want to go near the place, but neither could he abandon Midori’s vehicle. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to log out. She’d be trapped in the game. After thinking for a while (perhaps still reeling from the psychic damage dealt by the streams of abuse within his sister’s messages), he spoke:

“L-let’s start with finding Midori’s vehicle.”

“Huh?” Midori was puzzled. “After we finally made our way here, you want to go back?”

“We don’t need to go anywhere. We can have an AI truck pick it up.”

“B-but…” Midori put her doubts aside for the moment. “…Argh, I know where it is, but…I don’t remember the name. It’s coin-operated, but I made sure it was a proper garage. They have a barrier that prevents the vehicle from being damaged or stolen, right?”

“First things first. The vehicle you’re using is that large motorcycle, right? The red one decorated with autumn leaves.”

“Huh?”

Before Midori could ask, How did you know that? Kaname continued. “That vehicle uses the Odin Navigation System, Version 4.0. That comes with a security alarm. I’m paying some freelancers to carry out attacks in the area. When your phone gets a GPS alert, we’ll know we’ve hit the money. We can pin down the exact name and number of the place that way.”

“You’re hiring other Dealers…real people for this?”

“Don’t worry. Even if they hit the place your bike is stored, it won’t take so much as a scratch. Then, if we buy out the garage, it’ll change the settings and overwrite the rule that treats it as neutral ground. It won’t count as a garage anymore. Then we just call an AI truck to go and bring it here. Tselika?”

“Given my vehicle is in tatters, this is all I can show you at the moment.”

The demon pit babe put both hands behind her head, displaying her body in a most provocative manner. Alphanumeric characters scrolled across her bright green-and-white bikini top and miniskirt, and Kaname controlled them with his eyes to proceed with the purchase of the land.

“I don’t think money is everything,” Kaname clarified as he worked, “but money gives you options. You can do so much more when you’re rich, see the world in a completely different light. There are few things that money can’t buy, few things more important than money. Not as much as the movies would have you believe anyway. But that just means when you do find something that important, you shouldn’t hesitate to splurge.”

“…”

In that moment, Midori looked at Kaname’s face in profile. Was that how he saw her? Or was he talking about Criminal AO—about her missing brother?

“All right. I’ve requested the truck. Ag Wolves don’t seem to be on to us. Tselika, the parking garage is of no further use to us. Sell it. Immediately. I don’t care if the price has changed.”

“Surely, you must know we’re not breaking even on this, My Lord. This is a big loss. We’re almost flat broke! What are we going to do?” Tselika then lowered her voice, talking under her breath. “…Come to think of it, we still have to pay for the repairs. I told him cash on completion, but we don’t even have enough!”

“We started off with three objectives. We’ve just ticked off one of them.”

“And?”

“Now we have to obtain the special tools and kill five hours. There’s a way to fulfill both objectives, and it’s right here on Mega-Float III.”

Kaname wagged his finger.

“We’ll make it all back at the casino. That’s the quickest way.”

2

Leaving the wreck of the mint-green coupe at the repair shop, Kaname walked through the cityscape of rusted brown sheet metal.

“Huh, there sure are a lot of bargains around here,” he observed. “Looks like they’re selling plenty of used cars at those garages, too.”

“My Lord, don’t…”

“If we don’t want to pay the repair fee, we could always just buy one of these and have you transfer your contract to it, right, Tselika? What do you think?”

“N-never! Not on my life!”

“I didn’t say we’d have to sell our old one. Just have some dirt-cheap car to ride around in while the other one is being repaired. Our second car! It’d mean I could log out, as well.”

“I’ll never accept it, My Lord. My vehicle is my temple.”

“But it doesn’t make sense to have only one vehicle in your inventory. It’s a good idea to buy a cheap secondhand vehicle and keep it in your hideout in case the main one gets destroyed. I mean, what would you do if that coupe got blown up? You can only drive cars I own, remember?”

“It’s about love! Being unfaithful will only lead to you neglecting your precious vehicles as soon as you get a couple more! Once you think, Oh, I have a spare, you’ll go crashing off walls because it doesn’t matter anymore! Some promiscuous Magistelli out there may have dozens, switching among them on the daily, but I’ll never be like them! It’s a mistake to relocate my temple without the consideration it deserves! It’ll lead to nothing but discomfort and a guilty conscience! And don’t even bother bringing out the puppy-dog eyes because it won’t work this time!!”

“None of these words mean anything to me.”

“Okay, well, imagine you had a royal four-poster bed, My Lord. Would you be happy sleeping on a fraying straw mat next to it? You can have the fluffiest pillows, diffuse the sweetest oils, and change into the silkiest see-through nightie, but if it’s wrong, it’s wrong!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Grblebrglewagbrch! Ah! Aaah! Aaaangolmois!”

“You say that, but once we fix it up, it’ll be like a whole new vehicle.”

“Guh! Bleh! The core will be the same! There’s only one temple for me, My Lord! Besides, we’re going up against Ag Wolves. Are you really about to entrust your life to some half-tuned sloppy seconds?! You know as well as I do that it’s common practice to focus your cash injections. It’s obvious no good will come of splitting our growth plan in two!”

“Come on, Tselika.”

“No!”

As their conversation continued, Midori started to wonder. There wasn’t any sign of anything that could be called a casino. Perhaps there might be some people squatting between the buildings, shuffling cards or tossing dice…but an actual, proper casino, with gaudy lights and rows upon rows of tables decked out with cards and cocktails… That was hard to imagine. She voiced her doubts to Kaname.

“Casinos are everywhere,” he replied simply. “We’re in Money (Game) Master, after all.”

“But there’s nothing here but some rusty old shacks, and there’s no space for an underground gambling den on a mega-float.”

“Midori, don’t you remember what I said this place used to be?”

“?”

“An airport, abandoned after financial ruin. There’s an exclusive area for VIPs there.”

Kaname rounded a corner, and there it was. A huge, partially disassembled passenger plane, sitting on the runway.

“Wow,” gasped Midori. “Is this what you meant?”

“First class has been converted into a casino. Economy is a movie theater, and business class is a luxury restaurant, if I remember correctly.”

“Hee-hee!” Tselika giggled. “I hear that some rather raunchy activity goes on beneath the tables and behind the partitions of that restaurant. Massages and more… Not a place for good little kids.”

“(Glare.)”

“Please don’t start that again, Tselika. Spare a thought for the beating my poor foot is taking right now.”

The mobile loading ramp didn’t look like it had moved for quite a while. Kaname climbed the stairs to the fuselage, where a man in a black suit and tie greeted him. In a place like this, you’d usually expect to have to jump through hoops to gain entry, but…

“Welcome back, Mr. Suou.”

“Yeah.”

“And how might you be today? Could I interest you in an overview of our current prizes?”

“I think my chips are going to expire soon. Could you retrieve them for me?”

“In cash?”

“No. I’d like to play for a while, if that’s all right. I assume the cheating tables are in the same location?”

Kaname, with his wounded arm, and the newcomer Midori, who had wounded it, were not subjected to a search or metal detector. Kaname must have spent a lot of money in this place to have gained that much trust, Midori assumed. But there were a few other things on her mind as well. As they walked through the plane, listening to the classy music playing in the background, Midori pursed her lips and asked:

“What did he mean, ‘Welcome back’…?”

“What else could it mean?”

“What are those ‘prizes’ he mentioned?”

“This place partners with a bunch of pawnshops in the area. When you trade in chips here, you trade them for goods, like weapons and gems, not cash. If you want money, you can take the prizes to those pawnshops and sell them. The merchandise all circulates back around, so the casino isn’t losing anything. It’s the same concept they use in pachinko parlors… You know what? Maybe that’s where the idea came from.”

“What are the cheating tables?”

“Special tables where both the guests and the casino are allowed to cheat.”

With just a brief look around, the twin-tailed girl could see all sorts of games. Even the relatively common card games of poker, blackjack, and baccarat made her head spin. And that was to say nothing of the more obscure games like Red Dog and whatever else, which left her entirely confused.

As for non-card games, slot machines and poker machines lined the walls, and at special tables, people were throwing dice, playing…craps, was the game called? Midori knew the name, but which numbers were good and which were bad? Last but not least was that iconic wheel, plastered in little red and black markings. Roulette. It looked very pretty, Midori thought, but the game stirred up no further emotions in her. To her, it was a game where players slam down large towers of small toylike chips, and the dealer uses his little rake to move them around.

“So, My Lord. Where shall we begin?”

“Check the list. Right at the top. It’s just what we need.”

“Oh-ho, a woman, you mean? Well then, let me pick!”

“(GLARE.)”

“Please be serious, Tselika. Someone is pinching me on the butt.”

“Fine,” Tselika whined as she switched to serious mode. Information scrolled across her curves, and she dropped her gaze down to her chest.

“You mean this? Acid D? A delicate mixture, the perfect balance of strong acids. It’s supposedly able to melt anything, even pure gold.”

“That’s the stuff. It was originally used by thieves to break into safes. It should be perfect for taking care of our little problem as well. Midori, you can… Midori?”

The girl had disappeared. Looking around, Kaname spotted her a little way back. She stood still, staring absentmindedly at a waitress who was carrying a tray of drinks. The waitress wore a bunny suit, and Midori gawked as though she had never seen such a thing before. Tselika smiled a malicious smile.

“…See something you like?”

“?!” Midori jumped and spun around, but Tselika didn’t stop there. She chuckled, putting her hand to her mouth.

“Heh-heh. And here I thought you were just a little prude. Turns out all that bluff and bluster was to detract from your true nature, was it not? Hmm, yes, I see. So the blood of Criminal AO really does run through your veins! Come now, Little Miss Perfect—there’s no need to hold back! Tell us what you really feel! Can’t you see how wonderful life can be when you let go of your inhibitions?”

“Tselika, please explain to me why the little girl is trying to beat me up when you’re the one messing about.”

Eyes tightly shut, face red, and arms flailing like a spoiled child, Midori shook her fists in Kaname’s direction. Kaname grabbed them with both arms and then jerked his chin in the direction of the game he wanted to play.

“That one over there should do,” he said.

“Huh? Roulette…?” Midori frowned.

A woman was already sitting at the table. She wore a tight skirt that revealed her bare legs and a gorgeous party dress in lavender and white. She was tilting a cocktail glass in her hand, and her eyes followed a small spherical die that spun around the inner rim of the roulette wheel.

Cheating was supposedly allowed at these tables. But unlike card games where you could choose to change your hand, roulette was based on pure luck. Was there really a way to cheat at such a game?

Midori turned to ask Kaname, who responded nonchalantly.

“If there wasn’t, there’s no way that woman would be on such a winning streak.”

“Everyone has their own way of making money,” said Tselika, “and for some people, that’s gambling.”

When the game ended, Kaname noted the pile of chips awarded to the woman in the party dress with deep-blue hair resting on her shoulders before casually walking over and taking a seat. The lady flashed him a surprised look as he entered the game. Towers of gambling chips surrounded her like a fortress as she peered at him through the pair of glasses that rested on her nose.

“Do you understand the rules of this game?” she asked.

“More or less.”

“Then I’ll have you know you don’t stand a chance here. Please don’t come to the cheating tables if all you’re going to do is copy my bets exactly.”

The bunny-girl croupier took the handles extending out from the top of the roulette wheel and gave it a spin. In the opposite direction, she threw in the small spherical die. The numbers on the board ranged from 0 to 36, but the woman in the lavender dress placed it all on the black 18.

“The Dealer’s name is Laplacian,” Tselika whispered, wrapping her arms around Midori and effectively stopping her from wandering toward the table. “I think her smart glasses are a bluff, as is the Magistellus in the kimono who’s casually turning around behind My Lord. I believe she’s making use of Laplace’s Demon, just as her name suggests.”

Tselika’s hot breath made Midori squirm.

“La…what?” Midori asked.

“Laplace’s Demon,” Tselika whispered. “There’s no such thing as chance in Money (Game) Master. You can calculate anything given the right information. Even something as simple as throwing a basketball through a hoop entails hundreds of different calculations. What if you could do those same calculations yourself?”

“Wha—?”

“That lady has not once let go of her glass, and it’s covered in condensation. Just by flicking a few drops onto the wheel at the right time, she can alter the course of the die, even down to what number will come up.”

Preposterous, Midori thought. How could that be possible? She gulped, but Tselika showed no signs of fear. Her silence told Midori that even this was nothing to be surprised by.

“But,” she said, “that means…”

What was Kaname going to do? Laplacian, the woman in the lavender dress, could control the result entirely. If they agreed not to bet on the same number, then he would just keep losing as long as she was at the table.

As Midori was thinking, something incredible happened.

Thud! Kaname placed all his chips on the number 0. Obviously, this was not the same as Laplace’s 18. At this rate, he would lose his entire stock.

“…Might you be misunderstanding something?” asked Laplacian.

“I’m just betting on what I think will win. That a problem?”

Their gazes clashed like blades. What Kaname was saying, his face calm despite his wound, was this: I’m going to change the winning number and throw a wrench in your cheating mechanism. You’re going to lose all your chips, and I’m going to make back thirty-six times my bet.

The woman in the lavender dress peered at Kaname from behind her glasses, gently rocking her cocktail glass in her hand.

“Impossible.”

With one hand resting on the table and his chin in the other, Kaname replied coolly. “Not necessarily.”

All the while, the tiny spherical die continued to race around the rim of the roulette wheel. When it finally stopped, it would come to rest in one of the thirty-seven numbered pockets, and the game would be over.

“Now’s your last chance to change your mind, young man. I’d prefer you not to double up on my black eighteen, but I’ll be generous and allow you to bet on something else. Red or black, perhaps, or odd or even?”

“No need. It won’t be any of those. The result will be the green number zero. Coming out on top today will be green—green like a Midori Sour.”

“That will never happen. Not a chance.”

“The nose knows. I’m not getting that stinging, fuzzy feeling from you. There’s nothing I need to do, nothing I have to fear.”

There was a small clatter. The ball had lost its momentum and dropped into one of the pockets below. The bunny girl reached out to grab the wheel, to stop its movement and reveal the result. Midori looked down at the pocket corresponding to Laplacian’s bet, black 18.

But there was nothing there.

“Wha—?!”

The woman in the lavender party dress appeared to panic and lose track of the small die entirely. Clutching her glasses, she staggered like she was dizzy. Midori gulped as she looked across the wheel to a different pocket.

Neither red nor black but the sole green. The die had landed cleanly in the space marked 0.

---

---

“…I-impossible,” Laplacian stammered, her cocktail glass trembling in her hand. “This is impossible!”

“Surely, you should expect something like this to happen when you play at the cheating tables?”

“Are you colluding with the croupier? Trying to get me to leave because I’m winning too much?!”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You can think what you want to think. That would be allowed at the cheating tables, after all.” Kaname spoke only the facts, with a totally straight face despite the pain in his arm. “Well? If you can’t take it, perhaps you’d be better off moving to a different table.”

“—Ngh!”

His words were unnecessarily confrontational…but Kaname was well aware of that. The woman in the party dress downed her drink, disheveled her deep-blue hair, and grabbed another from the tray of a nearby waitress before sitting herself back down at the table. The bunny-girl croupier spun the wheel and tossed in the die.

“Red twenty-five. I’ve got you this time!”

“Sorry, it’s zero again. Lady Luck is on my side tonight.”

Kaname must have been cheating somehow to win a 100 percent controlled game. But unlike Laplacian, he wasn’t wearing a pair of smart glasses. Nor did he appear to be tampering with the wheel or the die. Just how was he influencing the outcome?

The one who answered Midori’s questions was Tselika, hugging her from behind.

“Remember how I told you she’s using the droplets from her glass to affect the outcome by altering the coefficient of friction of the wheel?” Tselika whispered.

“What? So…”

“So let that happen. Consider the wind from the air-conditioning, for example. My Lord’s posture, where he places his arms, what he does with his fingers… All that affects the airflow, however slightly. Makes the droplets evaporate faster or slower. What do you suppose would happen then? Do you think the outcome would match up with Laplacian’s intentions?”

“…?!” Midori turned to Kaname, astonished.

He hadn’t just exposed her cheating; he had hijacked it, milked it dry. And he had done it without tools, but simply by sitting down at the table.

“No way… Is that even possible? I knew he was a good Dealer, but I didn’t know equipment skills and Magistelli could allow you to reach such a high level of precision!”

“Well yes, but it’s not about what equipment he’s wearing. Even if he had none of that, he’d find out the answer some way.”

“Huh? So…how did he know—?”

“Silly girl. In Money (Game) Master, your life is constantly on the line. You can’t simply give up when something seems impossible. If you try, you must succeed. Do some mental math or build an abacus out of marbles you scraped together if you must.”

This time, Midori felt like her breath was taken from her.

…Were Ag Wolves aboard the cruise liner like this as well?

Midori gulped. She finally realized just how dangerous it had been, walking into a place like that unprepared. What a burden she had been on Kaname, who had protected her after she rushed in in anger, convinced that she could do anything.

It wasn’t like taking cover to wait out a storm of bullets or using both hands to aim a gun carefully. The tactics the top Dealers had to resort to were on a whole new level.

Just how many mind games were going on back there every second…?

3

Server Name: Gamma Orange.

Final Location: Tokonatsu City, Mega-Float III.

Log-out successful.

Thank you for playing, Midori Hekireki.

“Phew…”

The long-haired girl slowly opened her eyes, and she was in a rectangular room with pink wallpaper. The sensation of the smooth cloth of her black dress came back to her like a memory, and the phone in her hand was warm from being plugged in to the wall.

Money (Game) Master was a totally immersive online experience, but that didn’t mean you had to latch some strange device on your head or go into some sort of cold-sleep pod. All you needed was a smartphone. By firing a burst of colored lights into the eyes, it pulled the user’s consciousness into a virtual world. It was sort of like hypnosis or mental suggestion, but not quite.

Representational markers, was it?

By rapidly stimulating the brain with symbolic information, a combined image could be built up in the subject’s mind. This was called a “representation.” It may have sounded like some strange form of mind control, but the theory was actually quite simple.

“Red.” “Round.” “Sweet.” “About the size of a baseball.” “Fruit.” “Used in juice and pies.” Given all this information, a person would typically respond “apple.” By taking these representational markers and firing them from a phone screen at 120 frames per second, a so-called “high representation” could be produced that blanked out the user’s senses. From there, it was possible to “draw” whatever experience was required directly into the mind itself.

After all, nothing can be more realistic than the image created by the human brain, and even if there was, it wouldn’t matter, since no human could perceive that level of detail. It was just like a TV with a ridiculously high resolution or refresh rate. It was no wonder that people felt exhausted after expending all their efforts on what was supposed to be fun.

Since human eyes were not designed to be used like this, some people experienced motion sickness or painful dry eyes. Fortunately, the girl suffered no such symptoms.

She did, however, feel a little tired—listless, depressed, once again cognizant of the weight of reality, like a child who has been playing outside all evening, only to return home and remember that they have homework due the next day.

Brother…

A life of poverty.

It wasn’t as if debt collectors were breaking down the door. Midori wasn’t auctioning off her organs or selling herself on the streets. Her room had TV. It had air-conditioning. She could eat three meals a day and even go to school.

But there were two things she didn’t have. One, her brother, who had disappeared into thin air. A missing person report had been in vain, and if the police couldn’t find him, then how could she? It still irritated her, however, how quick they had been to say, “Ah, makes sense,” upon learning the reason for his disappearance.

And the second thing…

“Hmm.”

Her smartphone’s in-box was full of messages. They were all from AI businesses.

We write to confirm this month’s payment as of April 11, 20XX. Head company, Absurd Pharmaceuticals. Correspondent, xxxxxxx. Please check your account balance and avoid living wastefully.

“…”

In today’s modern utopia, living in poverty didn’t have to mean starvation. The AI businesses detected such people and extended their benevolent arms.

They were on the TV.

“AI doesn’t mean they have wills of their own. All they are doing is using their algorithms to react to the situation. They can carry out work faster, more efficiently, and on a larger scale than humans. It’s a new kind of work for the modern era.”

And in promotional ads.

“Once AI businesses are the norm, humanity will be free from the yoke of labor. With that time sink gone, we will be able to spend our lives on more meaningful personal development.”

The technology that had once been the exclusive province of call centers and assembly lines was spreading, bringing every last industry into the fold one by one. Just a walk downtown revealed that businesses were now automating street cleaning and serving customers in a restaurant. Most part-time jobs were gone, and even many full-time workers were finding themselves replaced. More and more employers were turning to AI workers instead of humans to keep labor costs low: 30 to 40 percent of jobs were now performed by AI, and that figure was only expected to grow over the next ten years to 60 or 70 percent.

Now AI businesses were cropping up, where everything from the bottom to the top was completely controlled via AI. Data flowed from machine to machine, with no human in the loop whatsoever, and it was said 48 percent of all electronic financial transactions were being carried out entirely by computers.

Humans didn’t control computers. Computers controlled humans. They pulled the strings of the world economy, and the humans could merely dance like their puppets. It no longer even mattered whether an AI was sentient or not, for in nothing more than the pursuit of efficiency, they had allowed themselves to be controlled, and as the profit rolled in, they told themselves that they were winners, and it was our smart choices that had led them here.

It was a very convenient world, but something about it felt wrong.

It was a very comfortable world, but it seemed too good to be true.

The world was full of uncertainties.

Perhaps that was why.

Although the needs of Midori’s family were completely met by AI businesses, they were treated as second-class citizens wherever they went. Even though they lived in comfort. Even though from time to time, she could wear gorgeous dresses and go to parties.

“…”

She unconsciously let out a heavy sigh. Although the girl was being protected from dying of starvation, it was gnawing at her from within. It was no surprise that people saw her the way they did.

AI Dropouts, they called them.

And the more comfortable a life she led, the more she thought.

It’s like there’s an invisible wire at the back of my neck.

It’s like I’m a slave to the AI businesses. They send me signals like “Comfort” and “Satisfaction,” and my arms and legs move like some sort of human-shaped robot.

My thoughts seem like my own, but am I really thinking any of them?

These vague fears and anxieties were eating her up inside.

There’s nothing I can do about it.

Even though it was clear what was happening, there was no easy way out. Everyone went with the flow, even as the world slowly began to drift somewhere unpleasant. It couldn’t be stopped. Those were just the times they were living in.

And now, a hypothetical. There were Dealers in Money (Game) Master making millions off their mastery of the game. Kaname Suou was one of them. If Midori threw herself at his feet and begged him to pay off her debt, would she finally be able to satisfy her psychological needs as well as her physiological ones?

The answer was no. The debt would be gone, sure, but the stigma would remain. She wouldn’t be considered on the same level as those who earned their own livings. Not just by society and its prejudices but by herself. Besides, this was all hypothetical. Midori didn’t even know if the system would let her use a third party’s money to remove the shackle of being an AI Dropout.

So there was no use looking to others. If she wanted to claw her way back up out of the protection of the AI businesses, it would have to be under her own power. Her parents didn’t understand the game, and her absent brother was Dead, which meant he wouldn’t be logging back into Money (Game) Master from wherever he was living these days. There was only one recourse left… Midori herself would have to fight to protect her family.

Don’t be silly… How could I do that?

As she did almost instinctively whenever she felt down, Midori reached into the drawer of her desk. She pulled out several sheets of pastel-colored writing paper and a few pens. Her letter-writing set.

Her interest originally stemmed from a love for the retro, but to her now, it was her one small way of fighting back against the life of an AI Dropout, against a life dominated and dictated by digital data. Of course, should they so wish, the AI could flagrantly disregard the confidentiality of the mail and read the contents of those letters. They controlled the mail sorting and delivery, after all.

But her emotions were contained within her handwriting, and no machine could detect that.

What should I write today?

Granted, things hadn’t been going so well recently, but Midori couldn’t help but feel that she had been overly negative in her recent letters and probably worried her pen pal. It wasn’t right to unload so much on others.

She wanted her letters to be happy, fun, she thought, as she fiddled with her colored pens.

4

Server Name: Theta Yellow.

Final Location: Tokonatsu City, Mega-Float III.

Log-out successful.

Thank you for playing, Kaname Suou.

After the repairs on the mint-green coupe were completed and the young man could finally log out using the correct procedure from the driver’s seat of his car, he was confronted with the reflection of his face in the dark screen of his smartphone. An average face with casually trimmed black hair and no particularly noteworthy features. He was wearing a set of gray pajamas, perfect for napping on the bed or milling about the house. He suddenly remembered he’d been wearing his contacts when he logged in, so his eyes were even drier than usual.

He clenched his fist and released it. He’d logged out, of course, so his wound was gone.

April 11, showed his phone. The temperature was a little chilly. It was abundantly clear that he was no longer on the golden shores of Tokonatsu City.

The young man gently shook his head, and reality came back to him like an image settling into focus. He took his eyes away from the screen and looked at the picture frame on his desk. Contained within was not a photo but a single postage stamp. It celebrated the anniversary of commercial space travel—a gift from a pen pal using the dying art of snail mail. He gently traced his fingers over the protective glass before leaving the room.

His sister was reclining on the apartment’s living room sofa, dressed casually in an oversize pale-pink sweatshirt and pair of short pants, her shoulder-length hair free. On her chest was an image of a cartoon pig, perhaps a character from somewhere. The loose fit of the top around her collar occasionally afforded some pretty risqué views, but she didn’t seem to mind too much. She spoke as she watched TV, a pair of black straps visible on her shoulders. A string was tied around her ankle, perhaps some sort of fad.

“I ended up going with that soba place for takeout. Their curry is the best thing on the menu, though.”

“Hmm.”

He cast a glance over to the kitchen, and sure enough, there were several large plates covered in plastic wrap. The smell of spices and soba broth wafted over: a very Japanese smell. She must have chosen curry instead of soba so that it wouldn’t go soggy, since she wouldn’t have known when he would log out. The rice and the curry and the roux were all on their own separate plates, too. Perhaps she’d specified that on the phone. It may have looked like a token effort from the outside, but it was obvious to him that his sister had put a lot of thought into it.

He threw the meal in the microwave and sat down to eat at the living room table. His sister had in her hand a glass of milk, and she had added a soft-boiled egg into her curry. Clearly, she was not a fan of spicy foods, but she had compromised for his sake.

“How did it go?” she asked, but not in a nosy manner, as she crushed the egg beneath her spoon.

“Meh. Good enough.”

On the TV, comedians were being humiliated by obvious trick questions.

When the siblings spoke, they would be like machine guns or bombs, but when they were silent, they were dead silent. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, either. Unlike at school or on the internet, these two didn’t need to mince words around each other.

“I’m just going to take a break and have a bath, and then I’ll log back in. If you have homework or something else to show me, now’s your chance.”

“It was fine today.”

“Oh, also, do you know where the eye drops are? The strong ones. My eyes hurt, so I want to put some in before I go back.”

“Awww…” His sister sounded troubled, her spoon held in midair. Her hair fluttered gently around her shoulders as she slightly averted her gaze. At his puzzled expression, she confessed. “Sorry, they’re at the secret base.”

“Man, how long ago was that? You still using that place?”

“It’s on the way to school, so it’s perfect for taking a break. You’ll never find another place like the abandoned planetarium near the park. It’s sturdy. It’ll last for another ten years if kept clean.”

“You like those ruins? Even though you never know when somebody else could intrude?”

“I could put a big, scary chain and padlock on the front door. They’d be all like, Oh no! The management companies have their eye on this place! and scamper off.”

“Either way, you never know what could happen out there, so don’t leave anything you wouldn’t want to lose.”

“Okaaay.”

“And don’t fall asleep there. Someone could always wander in.”

“Yeeeahhh.”

It was hard to tell whether she was agreeing or just trying to end the conversation.

An ordinary apartment. An ordinary walk to school. This was what Criminal AO had given his livelihood to protect. A life not as an AI Dropout but supported by one’s own two legs and carving out a living with one’s own two hands.

Nobody knew who had made Money (Game) Master, and nobody knew where its servers were based, but with it, Kaname could make millions in a single night whenever he wanted. AI Dropouts, however, temporarily gave up their rights to own property. It was a prerequisite for filing for bankruptcy. That meant that even if someone was willing to donate to them, they had no way to accept. No matter how much Kaname wanted to send Midori money, he couldn’t. There was only one way out. The debt that the AI company shouldered had to be paid off in full by the AI Dropout. There was zero interest, so even a little at a time would work.

But even if it were possible to pay off the debts of the AI Dropouts, would that really count as saving them? You could send them as much money as you wanted, but you couldn’t buy back their pride. Whether it was an AI business or a human friend keeping the life support turned on, the mental burden would be the same. In fact, if they took the help, then their relationship as friends, as equals, would be gone.

Perhaps her parents, who didn’t fully understand the workings of the game, would be happy, at least for a while. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter. Once the novelty wore off, the darkness would begin to claw away from within as they realized they were being kept alive by someone else, that they would need to be thankful to someone else, for the rest of their days. That would be all his money had bought.

I have to do something, he thought as he scooped up a spoonful of curry, a totally normal act in his totally normal life.

For his pen pal who still valued the dying art of writing letters.

For the girl he’d met in Money (Game) Master.

For the sister of Criminal AO, of Takamasa.

I need something more substantial. I need a way that will truly pay him back.

5

Server Name: Mu Green.

Final Location: Tokonatsu City, Peninsula District.

Log-out successful.

Thank you for playing, Lily-Kiska Sweetmare.

“Dammit!” the girl screamed as she logged out, no longer within earshot of the other Ag Wolves. She wore nothing but a dress shirt a size too large for her. The most successful Dealers were like world-class poker players: They didn’t reveal their feelings, even to their closest allies.

Her room was large but sterile, as if no one had been living there at all. It was like an entire floor of an old office building: dark, cold, and filled with LCD monitors. Some on desks, others hanging from the ceiling, mounted on arms. They covered everything regarding exchange rates and the prices of stocks and commodities such as oil, food, precious gems, gold, and platinum, plus any news that might influence them.

And not just within Money (Game) Master. The monitors showed all the money-related data she could find.

Even now, all over the planet, huge deals worth billions were taking place ten thousand times a second. The movement of that data, the money changing hands, was what made the world go round. The demand for autonomous investment programs had increased, and that propelled AI to the forefront. Perhaps the other Ag Wolves were on the opposite side of that data, and perhaps they weren’t. After all, they didn’t even know one another’s real names or faces. It was entirely possible that their programs were fighting one another, and they wouldn’t even know it.

In the real world, she wore the oversize dress shirt day in and day out, never venturing outside. She didn’t wear a bra, either, for her chest was rather modest. But it wasn’t like she knew nothing of the outside world. On the contrary, she had tasted all life’s pleasures. People liked to claim that there were things money couldn’t buy, but if they meant love, then that was the first thing she had bought. Then she had moved on to art and then to music, then antiques, collectibles, food, travel, a social life, charity, sports, and cameras and trains and history and anything. Lately, she had even been buying trouble. But she was sick of it all. She was reaching the end of what the world could offer her.

She could see that this was all life had to it.

So she had nothing left to look forward to. She had amassed a large fortune, done everything that could be done, and had run out of ideas on how to spend her money. Nothing surprised her anymore, and the dull, colorless days gradually stripped away her soul. There was no place left for her in the real world.

The only way to stay human was to give up on the real world entirely and throw herself fully into something like Money (Game) Master. And when she had, she had met a man who shook up her soul so much, it made her skin prickle.

Kaname Suou.

Why had he betrayed Ag Wolves and taken #tempest.err?

If he was a member, why was he so strongly opposed to letting us have the Legacy back there? she thought, grinding her teeth. We must have rushed the initiation. He didn’t feel like he was one of us, and that’s why he backed out at the last minute…! It’s true what they say. The child is father to the man. And now I’ve failed again!

She ran her fingers through her long black hair. She was unmatched when it came to numbers and data, but she could never understand the machinery of people’s emotions. You might say she had been raised not needing to. If she ever got on the wrong side of somebody, a billion was usually enough to smooth things over.

But…

But this time, it hadn’t gone that way. Her opponent was a Dealer of equal caliber: Kaname Suou.

I knew it…

It certainly stung seeing the Overtrick stolen before her very eyes, but there was an even stronger emotion welling up inside her.

There was something else in this world that was not so easy to obtain.

Yes. Beyond this soulless world of gray, devoid of any remaining dregs of color, a thrill yet waited that set her heart ablaze. She remembered Kaname’s words. The ones that had so conclusively set them on different paths.

“Helping others isn’t about bragging rights or asking for something in return.”

Incomprehensible. She didn’t get it. That was exactly why it stuck with her. That one single phrase. As it burned inside her mind, she muttered something.

“…Then what are you saying I should do?”

6

Server name: Psi Indigo.

Starting location: Tokonatsu City, Mangrove Island.

Log-in credentials accepted.

Welcome to Money (Game) Master, Kaname Suou.

Accompanied by a brief spell of dizziness, Kaname was back in Tokonatsu City. He was sitting behind the wheel of the mint-green coupe, which was parked neatly inside a garage attached to a log cabin. And since logging in reset all nonfatal wounds, his arm was as good as new.

For a few moments, he sat back in his seat until the motion sickness passed. When he got out of the car, he was in the open space of the garage. Also parked there was a large bright-red motorcycle decorated with autumn leaves. It seemed he had a visitor. But it was the sound he could hear outside that interested him. A constant, faint, muddy sound.

“?” Frowning, Kaname opened the garage door. It rattled loudly and violently as a powerful storm rocked the building. “Whoa!”

Fine sand had mixed with a deluge of water to create a raging river, and the palm trees were making a very unsettling noise. Strong winds and heavy, angled rain assaulted him. It was difficult to even stay upright, and it seemed the flailing garage door could strike Kaname at any moment.

“A cyclone… Dammit, did I forget to check the event reports…?”

Kaname squinted back at the mint-green coupe, or rather, at the car stereo, but it was too late now. He steeled himself and stepped outside. It was only a short distance to the door of the log cabin, but by the time Kaname reached it, his clothes and hair were soaking wet.

Inside were Midori and Tselika, who had made themselves comfortable in the kitchen. The pit babe’s bright-teal hair and the young girl’s skin around her black bikini top and miniskirt were completely dry. Perhaps they’d set up before the cyclone hit, or perhaps they had simply been in here long enough to dry out. It was also possible they’d used the shower already.

A large two-handed pot was sitting on the dining room table. Kaname could see vegetables and sausages, and it appeared to be some sort of stew. Presumably the ingredients came from the refrigerator or the underfloor storage of the cabin.

“Nice location you have here,” commented Midori, showing none of the restraint of a guest at somebody else’s place…or perhaps it had been Tselika who roped her into doing the cooking.

Still feeling a bit dazed, Kaname decided against cooking. He had just been eating takeout with his sister and was not too keen on the idea of food right now.

“Well, when you log in, you can choose between your last vehicle’s current position or the garage of your hideout,” he replied, grabbing a towel and rubbing himself down. “I figured I’d build my garage as far away from the crossfire of the financial district as possible. It gives me more options.”

“It’s small, but it’s in good shape,” noted Midori. “It looks expensive.”

“That’s so I can sell it quickly if I ever need to.”

Even Kaname didn’t understand why Tselika, an AI Magistellus, needed to eat, but she stood and stuffed her cheeks with thick sausage like a squirrel. Her two-pronged tail swished back and forth, likely indicative of her good mood.

“Om-nom. This stuff isn’t half bad, My Lord!”

“I can see that,” said Kaname. “It looks like it came out well.”

It wasn’t entirely a compliment on their cooking abilities, because Midori hadn’t peeled the vegetables herself and made the whole stew from scratch, with its carrots, radishes, onions, and cabbage, boiled with pork and sausage in a chicken bouillon broth. She was simply combining insta-meals and microwaveable pouches to create a whole new dish.

“I’ve always been good at bringing out the best with what I’ve got,” said Midori.

“Ahhh,” sighed Kaname. “I bet you’re the type of person who sees a million possibilities in a packet of good mushroom soup.”

“Aren’t those the best? If it were up to me, I’d award it a Nobel Prize.”

Anything that could suppress Tselika’s normally selfish and whimsical mood was a good thing in Kaname’s book. And indeed, she eagerly wolfed down Midori’s cooking despite her usual aversion to anything not under his possession. That was certainly a curious point, but Kaname supposed that since the ingredients were originally from his hideout, it must technically count as his.

“Still, My Lord, Midori’s been fiddling with that thing in her hands the whole time. She oughtn’t be distracting herself! If she focused on the food, I’d wager it’d taste much better! Not that it’s unappetizing, but just imagine what could have been!”

“ ‘That thing’?” repeated Kaname. “You mean her phone? Was she looking up a recipe?”

“I-it’s nothing, I said!” Midori called out. She was hiding both hands behind her back, looking very embarrassed. It must have been her phone. In Money (Game) Master, one’s Magistellus usually played the role of secretary, executing calculations at high speed and displaying the results on the car windshield or the like. This meant that mobile phones were more or less obsolete.

But it didn’t look like that was what Tselika was referring to.

“She was scribbling down notes for some letter or something,” she clarified. “I don’t see why she couldn’t just send the message as-is, though.”

“W-wait, when did you look at it?! Anyway, it’s none of your business! I know it’s an old person’s hobby, but I have someone to share it with, and I won’t let you make fun of it! A handwritten letter clues the other person into what’s in your heart!”

“Oh!” Tselika happily replied. “I don’t get it!”

“…Don’t make fun of my hobby with such a big smile on your face…”

Seeing Midori’s frustrations, Kaname allowed his lips to crack into a small smile. Noticing this, Midori turned to him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

There was no deeper implication. This was her hobby, an eccentricity, the most fleeting part of her personality.

“Anyway, My Lord. What are we going to do next?”

“What do you mean?”

“Our target right now is Ag Wolves. However, until we find out where they’re hiding, we don’t know their numbers or their firepower. And even if we stage an assault, we don’t know which Legacy they have or where they’re keeping it.”

Kaname wasn’t the next one to speak. It was Midori. However, it wasn’t to reveal some sort of grand plan she had prepared.

“Ag Wolves… They’re a strange bunch, that’s for sure. They’ve got all sorts: a sniper, a melee expert, a trap master… But it doesn’t seem like they were trying to cover one another’s weaknesses. It’s more like just a group of the best Dealers in each field, all in one place.” Midori spoke almost to herself, but Kaname and Tselika had turned toward her in rapt attention.

“Wh-what? Why so quiet?” Midori shot back, growing flustered.

“You know their load outs?!” asked Kaname.

If you knew what weapons your opponents were using, like sniper rifles or machine guns, you could guess at their tactics. But that wasn’t exactly what Midori was saying.

“Huh? I mean…”

Without realizing the value of her words, she continued:

“Can’t you tell just by getting a feel for it? I don’t mean knowing if it’s partywear or streetwear but like, the purpose behind their outfit or, like, their intentions for that day. Money (Game) Master doesn’t have experience points or levels, so your stats only exist as a combination of your weapons and equipment, right? That means you can deduce what someone’s role is by the vibe of their outfit, can’t you?”

“My, my. Is she saying what I think she’s saying, My Lord?”

“Tselika. Scan our dashcam footage for any images of Lily-Kiska’s attire you can find. Have Midori draw up a list and see how many we can identify.”

“…Wow. I only got about forty percent, but I think with what Midori just said, we may even bring it up to one hundred percent, My Lord.”

“She and Takamasa really are siblings. The things that come out of their mouths would put a professional scout with a million-dollar camera to shame…”

If you could find out in advance what your enemy’s optimal range and tactics were, then you could come up with a strategy specifically to beat them.

People often tried to deduce such things using their skills or their Magistellus’s support, but these analyses were flawed at best. They were nothing more than guesses. Players took great pains to prevent their appearance from giving them away—either by hiding their necklace beneath a scarf or deliberately wearing a knockoff bag with the same design. But none of this fooled Midori. Even the mighty wolf pack would be stripped bare before her discerning eye.

“????” Midori simply cocked her head in puzzlement, unaware of the rarity of her gift, like Cinderella before she met her fairy godmother.

Kaname had Midori write down as much as she could about the features of Ag Wolves members. As she did, he thought.

We have many reasons to oppose Ag Wolves.

First, the obvious one. To steal the Legacy, which Ag Wolves control and use for personal gain.

Second, Midori is in their sights. If we ignore them, they could come after her or perhaps find out that she’s related to Criminal AO. There’s no telling what they’d do if they were to capture her if they thought she could teach them about the Legacies.

That was reason enough. He had sworn to protect Takamasa’s sister, just as Takamasa had once protected his.

The immediate concern was locating the Ag Wolves’ base.

“…I actually have some thoughts on that,” Kaname declared. Tselika and Midori both turned and looked at him. Kaname approached the dining room table.

“If we can’t go to them, we’ll make them come to us. They mentioned that to raise the money to pay for those missiles, they’ve been trading futures in the food market. Many things that would be natural disasters or poor crop seasons in the real world are announced beforehand as events here. That means it’s a lot lower risk, since you don’t have to worry about irregularities messing with the prices.”

“So what are we going to do with the food market?” Midori asked as Tselika presented her empty soup bowl to her and asked for a refill.

Kaname nodded. “Food doesn’t mean much if you’re only staying in Money (Game) Master for a few hours. It all gets reset when you log out, so to normal players, it doesn’t matter if you don’t eat. But despite this, many Dealers eat because it helps them control their emotions or keeps them focused in the face of difficult market predictions or sharpshooting tasks, as well as because they just like the taste, of course. If this is the market that Ag Wolves are making a killing on, then the solution is simple.”

There was a momentary silence. Kaname, the man who walked alongside a demon, concluded as follows:

“We’ll destroy their source of income entirely. When they tire of waiting and come out to find us, that’s when we’ll trace their movements backward to pinpoint the location of their base.”

7

They had decided what to do. There was just one thing to confirm. Kaname looked out the window of the rain-beaten log cabin.

“I wanted to use that Acid D we got at the casino to destroy #tempest.err,” he revealed, “but this cyclone is making that difficult…”

“You did say that there’s no point in destroying it if nobody sees it, didn’t you?” asked Midori.

Kaname nodded. “The reputation of the Overtrick is massive. It doesn’t matter if we destroy it if nobody believes us. They’d think we’re lying, that we’re still hiding it. As long as they live in fear of the Legacies, they’ll never break free of their spell.”

“Which means they’ll just keep on thinking we have it forever,” Tselika extrapolated.

“Or people could claim to have stolen it from me. We’ll have no means by which to disprove any conspiracy theories that might arise. Dealers won’t even need to use the Legacy; they can just prey on the fear that it might still exist in order to control people.”

“…And people will continue to be hurt by what my brother left behind,” added Midori.

“That’s why we have to destroy it in a way that nobody can refute. And even video evidence can be faked. We might just have to put on a show right in the middle of the financial district. That way anyone can record and upload it.”

“But this cyclone means that…” Tselika trailed off.

“Yeah. Nobody’s going to come outside and watch in this rain. We’ll just have to wait until it passes.”

Midori let out a heavy sigh. It was understandable, as she wanted the thing gone as soon as possible. And Kaname didn’t plan to hold on to it for any longer than he had to, either. #tempest.err was the source of all their problems.

“That’s why we should focus on Ag Wolves for now,” said Kaname. “Tselika, have you finished that job I gave you? All the materials should be on the shopping list I prepared.”

“You sure like to work me to the bone, My Lord… Making me grind down all those aluminum cans into little pieces using a blender; trawl the beaches with a magnet for iron sand, as well as get all sorts of other secret ingredients; and fill a bunch of cans with the stuff…”

“?” Midori had on a puzzled look. Tselika had been quite busy before she came to help with the stew, it seemed.

Tselika opened a briefcase and revealed the fruits of her labors.

“Voilà! One hundred thermite incendiary grenades! What do you have to say to that, My Lord?!”

Midori was struck speechless by the incredible reveal.

Thermite was a special mixture of aluminum and iron oxide that underwent a violent chemical reaction when ignited, capable of reaching over thousands of degrees. Given that the melting point of iron was only 1,500 degrees Celsius, even a metal wall provided little protection against this kind of weapon.

And a hundred of them?

“Wh-what are you planning on doing?! Declaring war?!”

“Well, what do you expect? We’re taking on Ag Wolves,” Kaname answered as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “We’ve seen about a dozen of them out in the open, but you can bet for sure there’s going to be more hiding in reserve, supporting them. If each one has ten people behind them, then that means we’re dealing with over a hundred in total. If each one has a hundred, then that’s a thousand. If that’s not war, then I don’t know what is.”

“Powerful teams always have plenty of backers,” said Tselika. “After all, if you can entrust your fortune to them and have it multiplied without you having to lift a finger, why wouldn’t you do it and put your feet up?”

“…”

Midori was once again floored by the enormity of the problem they faced. They had taken on a thousand PMCs on the cruise liner, but this was a whole other level. No matter how strong they were, the PMCs could protect only the territory dictated by their contract. A human opponent, however, was one whose movements you could never quite predict. They were free agents. You never knew where and when they might strike.

Midori hadn’t been able to do a thing on her own. Yet Kaname hadn’t wavered. He had stridden right into danger and held out his hand.

“But there’s still a way,” declared Kaname. “Let’s get started.”

“Huh? Huh?”

Midori, flustered, could do nothing but follow. Another short distance back to the garage through the pouring rain, and Kaname tossed #tempest.err along with the briefcase full of incendiary grenades into the trunk of the mint-green coupe.

“Tselika. How are the tires?”

“Hmm. It looks like we might run into trouble, so I filled them with foam.”

“Foam?” Midori looked confused.

Kaname answered. “Tires are usually filled with air, but they can also be filled with resin. It means that even if they take a bullet, they don’t puncture, and you can keep on driving.”

“I hear that in the real world, they use it on presidential vehicles,” Tselika added.

“That sounds useful. Would it work on my motorcycle as well?”

Kaname and Tselika proceeded to replace the tires of Midori’s autumn-leaf-patterned bright-red motorcycle.

Midori, still dripping wet, bent over and watched on with interest, once again ignorantly pointing her bikini-clad backside toward the dashcam of the coupe. Of course, there was no point in recording the inside of a garage, so the dashcam was off, but still, in many ways, the girl was not very aware of her surroundings. And so it was Kaname who fretted all the more over the sister of his dear old friend.

“But if it’s that good, then how come everyone doesn’t use this foam stuff?” she asked.

“Well, it’s easy to put in, but taking it out is a different matter. It’s a lot rougher on the tires, too. A long, hard car chase will wear them out entirely.”

“What?! Why didn’t you tell me that before?!”

It was too late. The inner tube was already filled with the special resin.

“It doesn’t matter now,” assured Kaname. “Let’s just get moving; we need to be on the road.”

“H-hold up, My Lord! Wipe yourself off before you get behind the wheel! Those seats are real leather, you know!”

Ignoring Tselika’s protests, Kaname opened the door and sat right down in the driver’s seat, sopping wet. Beside him, Midori straddled her bright-red motorcycle. Obviously, she wasn’t going to wear a helmet in a video game, but it seemed like it would be painful nonetheless to be pelted by the torrential rain as she rode.

“Come on out, Meiki. Hold on. Meiki?!”

The girl screamed at empty space for a while until, finally, as though she had waited long enough, a beautiful young woman emerged from the back seat. Meiki—Midori’s Magistellus, presumably. Her elegant black hair came down to her shoulders, and a pair of horns sprouted from her head, while between them was a paper talisman. As for her clothes, she wore a rather seductively short cheongsam, bright-red and trimmed with fur around the neck, that daringly teased glimpses of her bare skin along both of her sides. She was quite tall, but her breasts were even smaller than Midori’s. All over the surface of her cheongsam, just like with Tselika, the logos of prominent companies, as well as measures of their reputation, stock prices, revenue and expenses, employee counts, and more streamed in and out of view.

And from time to time, her body would flicker with some sort of gray noise. Not the monitor-like dress but the demon lady herself. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Kaname appeared uncharacteristically surprised.

“What is that? …It can’t be a bug, can it? Not in Money (Game) Master.”

“Perhaps they’re not too compatible with each other. I know if it were me, I couldn’t abide a lowly two-wheeled vehicle. On the other hand, you, My Lord, are far more to my liking.”

“Shut up, you,” snapped Midori. “A Magistellus’s job is to help their Dealer. If anything, you should change to suit us. I should count myself lucky she showed up at all. When she doesn’t, not even bashing the bike will make her come out.” Midori pouted.

Kaname used the remote to open the garage door, and they departed. Kaname’s wipers were working full blast. Putting the wind- and rain-swept Mangrove Island behind them, the two vehicles joined onto the massive four-lane circular bridge. Even on a day like this, there was quite a lot of traffic, and the radio continued to report.

“Cyclone Elizabeth is expected to continue in full force for the rest of the afternoon. All harbors and airports have closed, and the resulting shortages have caused the prices of…”

“The group of skydivers calling themselves the Skychasers who cross from building to building have become more active recently. According to an online video announcement, they were not about to let this favorable wind pass them by. Anyone out and about in the financial district should take care not to be struck by falling persons. Now, on to our next segment…”

“The Transaction of Pivotal Calculator stock price index, TroPiCal, is sitting at 24,900, up 250 points from yesterday’s figures. In anticipation of Cyclone Elizabeth, several insurance companies have seen a sharp increase in their share price, including Early States General, Golden Luxury, and Karen Insurance…”

While idly listening to the event announcements, Kaname fired up a chat window with the old IM aesthetic and sent a request to Midori, who was riding alongside him. She quickly accepted the connection.

Midori: We’re heading to the peninsula district, right?

Kaname: Yeah. That’s where we’ll destroy Ag Wolves’ source of income. That should draw them out of the woodwork.

Midori: You mean their…“food futures”? Erm…so we’re going to do something to them?

On reading the message, Kaname frowned. He turned to look at the bright-red bike driving alongside him and saw a somewhat uneasy look upon Midori’s face.

Kaname: Hold on… You do know what futures are, right? How can you live in Money (Game) Master and not know that?!

Midori: Oh, lay off it! I’m only here to destroy my brother’s Legacies!

Kaname groaned. Tselika gave a shrill cackle. What Midori had just said was like playing a fighting game without knowing about the health bar. It was a wonder she hadn’t Fallen already.

Kaname: A futures contract is an agreement whereby you pay now and receive the goods at a later date. This span of time can range anywhere from a few months to several years.

At Kaname’s words, the company logos covering Tselika’s fur-trimmed pit-babe outfit disappeared and were replaced with something else: the names and prices of futures contracts for rice, wheat, beans, and so on.

Midori: Sounds complicated. Why can’t they just give it to you right away?

Kaname: What if the price of cider goes from one hundred snow per bottle in the winter to one thousand in the summer? By taking advantage of the change in price, you can turn a profit when the time comes by simply selling the goods on.

Futures trading was everything on the agricultural market. These were no small contracts; the volume of wheat or corn in a single trade was to the tune of many tons.

Midori: So the guys after the Legacies have been raising funds using those futures contracts? But what if hundred-yen soda drops to one yen instead? They’d make a huge loss, wouldn’t they? I mean, iced coffee or tea could start trending or something.

Kaname: Of course. And usually there’d be nothing you could do about that. But they’ll be using a dirty trick to get around it.

Midori: How?

Kaname: It’s easy to make the price of something rise. Just blow up the freight trains or ships carrying the product to create a scarcity. It’s like how certain kinds of candy go up in price once they’re no longer produced. If they cause the price of a bottle of cider to shoot up, they can cover their losses that way.

In the real world, that would be a textbook case of terrorism, but in here, it was simply par for the course. Kaname continued typing with his eyes on the windshield as the rain struck against it in large droplets.

Kaname: But that’s the sort of thing any Dealer can do. Ag Wolves will be going one step further. They don’t just make the price go up when it seems like they’re about to make a loss, but they can also make the price of a specific stock go down.

Midori: ??? Why would they do that? How do you make money if the price goes down?

Kaname: Let’s say Ag Wolves want to make a profit on wheat. It’s not just the state of wheat itself that affects the price. If the prices of rice or corn fluctuate, that’ll have a domino effect on wheat, as well. By controlling both a positive and a negative, you can effectively make the price whatever you want.

You could also use this to correct the price range if you destroyed too many freight trains or ships. After all, if the price was too high, nobody would buy. Being able to tweak the dial in both directions made it impossible to go wrong.

Futures trading was a method for making profit over the course of a few months or years, but Ag Wolves had raised the money for buying the anti-ship missiles and influencing the cruise liner company in just a short time.

It would have been impossible to put together such a fortune in just a few days without using a powerful means of control.

Midori: But what are they doing specifically? I can imagine attacking boats or trains to destroy the supply, but how do they do the opposite and flood the city with it?

Kaname: We’re going to find that out right now and put a stop to it.

8

Server name: Sigma Blue.

Starting location: Tokonatsu City, Peninsula District.

Log-in credentials accepted.

Welcome to Money (Game) Master, Lily-Kiska Sweetmare.

Within the dachshund of a black limo, the girl with swept-back hair and glasses seethed. Crossing her mismatched boots, she folded her arms moodily, pushing up breasts that were already emphasized by a pair of underarm holsters.

As soon as she had arrived, the glass table in the center of the room was filled with all sorts of bad news. Several windows opened as reports continued to stream in from the other Ag Wolves. She didn’t want to use her smart glasses and have it all get in the way of her vision.

“Crap, crap, crap, crap! I don’t know how, but they worked it out! They’re coming after our controls!”

A bunch of red crosses were marked on her map around the financial district area. They showed the locations of the control stock Ag Wolves used to influence the prices of their futures contracts, but anyone who saw the actual locations would probably be pretty confused. After all, there weren’t any buildings, just large, rusted metal dumpsters.

However…

It’s the incubators! They’re coming after the incubators that we disguised as commercial waste containers! They’re using some kind of incendiary grenades to destroy them!

There were two ways to control the prices of futures contracts.

First, you could blow up the freighters and prevent the goods from reaching the city. That would cause the price to go up as supply fell.

Then, the second way: prepare a large quantity of goods in secret, as Ag Wolves were doing now using nutrients and ultraviolet light. Then, when the time was right, flood the market with an overwhelming supply, tanking the price.

A positive and a negative. By covering both sides, Ag Wolves had created for themselves a situation where they couldn’t lose. Or so they thought.

“Those bastards… There! I see them! Their mint-green coupe! I’m gonna go make mincemeat out of ’em!”

“Titan! Stand down! Wait for reinforcements to—”

Lily-Kiska yelled into her communication device, but it was too late. The line had already gone dead. It took her a while to realize what had just happened, but before long, the cruel reality sank in.

“…No… No way…”

9

Server name: Omega Purple.

Final location: Tokonatsu City, Peninsula District.

Fall confirmed.

Titan will be logged out for twenty-four hours.

10

The mint-green coupe came to a halt in the pouring rain. Kaname, still holding Short Spear through the open driver’s seat window, clicked his tongue.

“Damn. Killed him. We won’t get anything out of him now.”

The storm had already drenched his hair, and the wind was so loud, it was impossible to even hold a conversation. Tselika’s eyes narrowed as she thought about the poor leather seats. Midori pulled up beside him astride her large motorcycle and fired off another chat message.

Midori: How did you know about the dumpsters?

Kaname: Think about it from another angle. Money is everything in Money (Game) Master. Anything that can be turned into cash is something worth fighting over. If they had a single factory producing enough crops to influence the price of all their futures contracts, it’d be asking for trouble. The thicker you make the walls, the more it makes Dealers think there’s something inside worth having.

Midori: So…

Kaname: Keep it in something that looks totally worthless, and nobody will think twice. Even a metal canister can become cash in this city, but nobody would ever pay attention to a large dumpster that’s just used to store food waste. And there are hundreds of them all around the city. If they lose one, it’s no big deal. And most importantly…

Kaname pointed out his window with his gun barrel, indicating the large dumpster that was sitting there. Or more precisely, the thin cable that ran out of the metal container and along the side of the building. It was connected to an outlet designed for decorative outdoor lighting.

Kaname: What sort of food waste dumpster requires electricity? There aren’t batteries strong enough to keep the UV lamps burning day and night without needing to be replaced all the time, and of course, solar power is no use when you’re in a back alley. They probably only did it because they had no other choice, but luckily for us, it means we can easily tell the real ones from the fakes.

The car’s wipers swept back and forth at a steady pace across the windshield. Kaname’s eyes raced about as he typed his response. At the same time, he brought the short-range sniper rifle back inside and took out one of his incendiary grenades, pulling the pin with his teeth before hurling it through the window. The bomb, no larger than a spray can, rolled cleanly into the narrow opening beneath the car-size dumpster. There was a flash of white light, as bright as a welding torch, as the incubator was engulfed in flames hot enough to melt steel. Closing the electric window, Kaname typed up another message.

Kaname: Let’s move on to the next one. The closer we tighten around their necks, the more they panic and give themselves away.

Midori: Right.

Midori was taken aback but managed to type out a response.

Midori: But are you sure about this? Didn’t you say there were going to be hundreds, if not thousands of investors backing them?

Kaname: That’s exactly why they’re scared.

Midori: ?

Kaname: They’re only borrowing that money. It’s not theirs. Those patrons entrusted their capital to Ag Wolves because they guaranteed a return on investment. Now, what if they lose it all? It won’t just be us they’ll be pointing their pitchforks at.

The boy let out a quiet sigh.

Kaname: It’s not like Ag Wolves are making amazing market predictions. It’s more like they’re playing poker with a couple of extra wild cards in their hand. So what if you take those away? The trading doesn’t just stop. It can’t. Once they veer off course, the losses will start piling up. Like they would have done all along.

Midori: Today’s ally is tomorrow’s enemy, I suppose…

Kaname: Futures trading is a tough business. Nobody wins 100 percent of the time.

The pair set off for their next target, leaving behind the charred remains of the incubator and Titan’s convertible, wrapped around a traffic light.

Then Tselika, who was tapping buttons on the radio, bored, switching through the channels, suddenly hit upon something.

“This has been an update to the bounty program. A new bounty has been posted. A reward of fifty million snow per head is being offered for two Dealers: Kaname Suou and Midori Hekireki. The payout is being offered by a team called Ag Wolves…”

After sharing the information, Kaname received a panicked response from the rider of the motorcycle driving alongside him.

Midori: What are we going to do now?! Does this mean every Dealer in the city is coming after us?!

Kaname: Calm down. Any Dealer worth their salt is going to draw up a plan of attack before rushing in blindly. We’ve still got time. The way to shake off a bounty is simple. Think like a mercenary. We just have to prove that Ag Wolves can’t pay.

Midori: Huh?

Kaname: If we kill them all, the problem goes away on its own. Our goal hasn’t changed.

Midori: …How are you so calm?

Kaname: Those guys dropped 200 million on a single anti-ship missile. Compared to that, this reward is peanuts. I don’t feel like dying when they’re holding out.

“Tselika. Forget the news. Change the channel.”

“Aye-aye, My Lord!” Tselika grinned as she fiddled with the knobs, looking for something to put on. “Now then,” she said, “when are we going to find out where they’re keeping the Legacy?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” Kaname replied.

The mint-green coupe and the bright-red motorcycle raced through the city, the streets hazy with mist from the pouring rain.

“Really?” Tselika asked. “At this rate, you’re likely to end up slaughtering the lot of them. What happens if you kill half of them and the rest decide to cut their losses and flee? Then we’ll have lost our only clues!”

“Not our only clues.”

“Oh?”

“Take Lily-Kiska’s limousine, for example. The size of that thing would make it stick out like a sore thumb in any ordinary parking lot. But then, so would having a special garage for it. So where do you think she keeps it?”

“Maybe somewhere it wouldn’t look out of place?” Tselika said as she stopped on a channel playing her favorite music and sat back with a satisfied smile. Kaname frowned a little at the crude lyrics.

“Somewhere she doesn’t need to hide. Somewhere with a luxury hotel or casino, where a grand column of limousines doesn’t look the least bit strange. That’ll be her area of operations. We find that, we’ll find her hideout.”

“Well, why didn’t we go after that in the first place?”

“Because we can only get to Lily-Kiska that way,” said Kaname. “It won’t lead us to the rest of Ag Wolves, and there’s no guarantee the Legacy will be there. That’s why it’s only plan B.”

A large sightseeing bus passed by on the other side of the road, cleaving through a pool of water and sending it crashing against Kaname’s windshield. For a moment, he was blinded, the wipers useless.

“Watch it! That’s my—” Tselika turned to flip off the driver, but before she could say the word temple, her jaw dropped at what she saw.

Kaname felt that strange yet familiar itch on the end of his nose. He looked over at the rearview mirror to confirm.

Then it happened.

Clang!

There was a great clatter as the rear of the double-decker bus swung down into a slope, and a black limo flew out from within.

Until now, Kaname and Tselika had agreed that Lily-Kiska’s limousine, her mobile base, was probably being kept outside a hotel or a casino.

But they had been naive.

She could hide anywhere in the city if she had a larger shell to hide in!

“Watch out! Billboard Head’s on our tail!” shrieked Tselika.

“This is bad…”

Once he laid eyes on the source of the danger, the Lion’s Nose went into overdrive. It was like being punched in the nose. The buzzing sensation spread until it filled Kaname’s entire head.

Kkrrrrrrr! The screeching sound of tires on asphalt quickly approached from the rear. Kaname fired off a chat message to appraise Midori of the situation.

Kaname: That limousine is coated in bulletproof steel. The engine is ridiculously powerful, too. We can’t outrun her at full speed, and she can plow straight through walls as well. If you don’t want to die, follow me!

11

The actual presidential limo was a little under 180 centimeters tall. A person could walk through the back door, and the tires were bigger than a dump truck’s. In photos, it looked long and thin because there were no rulers or matchboxes around to give a sense of scale, but there was a reason they called it the Beast.

The thickness of the walls was what made it so big. The presidential vehicle was like a bank vault. Plate it in thick armor and of course it was all going to add up.

Lily-Kiska’s limousine wasn’t like that. But bulletproof glass was ten centimeters thick. It was quite threatening to see this thing roll down the road at 490 kilometers per hour, shrugging off assault-rifle fire. It looked harmless enough when the hybrid vehicle ran in electric mode, but with the flick of a switch, the jet engine, suitable for drag-racing vehicles, could kick in. People often used cars as mobile weapons, but this one was more like a wrecking ball on wheels. A collision with this monster would be like running into a freight train.

The limo’s straight-line acceleration was unbeatable. It sliced through the water on the ground, kicking up spray like angels’ wings. Lily-Kiska was wearing several accessories on her ears and around her neck. Even now, inside the luxury car, she was painting her nails, guided by images appearing on her smart glasses. Rearranging her skills. Focusing on maximizing her original specialty of ultra-long-range combat. If she got close, she could mow them down in her superheavy armored car, and if they made some distance, she could pick them off from afar. There were no blind spots.

Folding her legs clad in mismatched boots, she calmly issued an order over the intercom. “Sophia. Crush them.”

“As you wish, Miss Kiska.”

As soon as the limo was immediately behind him, Kaname cut the wheel and swerved. The predator barreled into the space its prey had just occupied, cutting through the metal barrier dividing the road and the sidewalk like a sheet of wet paper. Without stopping, the limo returned to the road, snapping a lamppost on the way and sending it flying toward Midori’s head. By ducking down atop her bright-red motorcycle, the young girl narrowly avoided being decapitated by the spinning pole.

But Lily-Kiska didn’t care about her. Kaname was the priority. Crush him first and the rest would follow.

“…?”

Lily-Kiska suddenly sensed something was wrong and turned to the glass table in the center of the room, opening up several windows to analyze the bright-red, leaf-patterned motorcycle in more detail. The image was slightly obscured by rain, but the person riding the bike was clearly not Midori. She was too tall, and instead of a frilly bikini, the figure was wearing a cheongsam.

“That’s not the Dealer… Is her Magistellus riding it for her?”

Even if the keys were already in the ignition, a Magistellus couldn’t steal somebody else’s vehicle. They could only interact with their Dealer’s property. But if it was their Dealer’s property, then there was nothing stopping them from driving a car or riding a motorcycle.

Lily-Kiska muttered to herself. “Does that mean…they’re doing the same with the coupe? Dammit, Kaname Suou! Where did you go?!”

12

A little before that…

Amid the cyclone, in the slanting rain, Kaname and Midori had left their vehicles and were hiding from sight, huddled together and soaking wet.

“Wh…? Wh…?”

“Stay quiet.”

Midori’s skin was warm despite the chill of the pouring rain, but Kaname had no time to wonder why. He had to do something about Lily-Kiska and her limousine as quickly as possible. They were right beside the main road, hiding in the narrow space between a gigantic commercial building and some tall vegetation.

“…Oh my God, what a brute. Why can’t you take a few lessons from that guy?” Midori whispered.

“Which guy? Is there a Dealer or someone you could call for help?”

Midori jumped in Kaname’s arms. She blushed hard, and her body temperature rose even in the cold rain. She shot back in a desperate tone.

“Yes, someone I admire! That a problem? It’s someone who writes such lovely letters, and I bet has a personality to match. Someone who’s always been there for me with a gentle smile whenever I had a problem. Someone mature—nothing like some digitalite I happen to know!”

“…” Kaname felt himself pale from the awkwardness, and with all his might, he resisted the urge to avert his gaze. “…The tingle in my nose is spreading. Let’s get out of here for now. Our little trick won’t fool her for much longer. In the meantime, Tselika and Meiki should keep her distracted, and that’ll buy us some time. We should move on with our preparations.”

“You mean…” Midori was speechless. “You mean we’re going to destroy that monster limousine? How?! The armor on that thing can deflect assault-rifle fire, and it can fly along at five hundred kilometers per hour, and its tires are filled with foam so you can’t even shoot them out! How are we supposed to beat that thing with what we have?! And #tempest.err is…”

Midori paused. Perhaps she was avoiding the idea of using a Legacy to her advantage after arguing so ardently to destroy them all.

Kaname spoke frankly. “It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with it. If we Fall here, it’s all over anyway.”

“…But it’s still in the trunk of your car. We couldn’t use it even if we wanted to.”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, we need to move. Right now, it’s dangerous to even walk across the block. If that limo spots us, we’re as good as dead. We need to use a safe route.”

“Wh-what do you mean, ‘a safe route’?!”

Kaname jogged out into the middle of the road. Midori followed him with a puzzled expression, whereupon he leaned over where he stood. From the pouch at his waist, he withdrew his smartphone, a rather useless item in a world where Magistelli took care of communication and calculation for you.

“What are you doing?” Midori asked.

“In Money (Game) Master, money talks. I won’t say it’s everything, but it certainly increases the size of your hand and your freedom to act. The world looks totally different. I mentioned this before.”

“What does that—?” Midori stopped halfway. Kaname held his smartphone over a manhole cover in the ground. Just as Midori thought it looked like he was trying to make a payment, there was a metallic clang, and the whole thing slowly rotated forty-five degrees. Kaname lifted the lid as though he was checking on his boiled potatoes.

Huh? Are these things supposed to open so easily? Midori thought but soon put such a trivial question aside.

Down there, a different world awaited. Not the stuffy, smelly, dark, sewage-filled tunnels she’d expected to see but an unbroken surface of water. Far larger than the pool at school. Owing to the heavy rain, there was the thunderous noise of rushing water, but it didn’t look so bad underground. The place was well lit with electric lighting, and the water looked pretty, the light twinkling off its reflective surface.

It was a drainage channel. Many rivers had been built over in the city’s development. This was one of them.

But that wasn’t what surprised her. Something else did.

Right there, beneath the manhole, in the center of the underground river, lay a cigar-shaped submarine about one hundred meters long.

Kaname never said money was everything, but he did say that it makes the world look totally different.

Midori was beginning to feel as though she understood what he meant.

Beside the submarine hatch stood a girl dressed in a brown sailor uniform and a skirt-suspender combo that looked not unlike a work apron. She was obviously not a human but a Magistellus, as her entire body was molded out of some sort of translucent pink slime.

Kaname peered through the manhole into the subterranean world and shouted so as to be heard over the storm.

“Sorry to bother you in this weather! We’re glad we caught you passing by. It must be hard to stay anchored in such a high tide, mustn’t it?”

“Don’t worry—we charge a million snow for admittance, so it’s really no problem. However, Kaname Suou, we have heard of you. My master, Frey(a), has eagerly awaited your arrival. Please come this way.”

Kaname and Midori climbed down a ladder below the manhole and stepped onto the submarine, opening the hatch and heading on inside. But as soon as the hatch opened, a flood of music hit Midori’s ears. It was dance music, although Midori would be hard-pressed to place the exact name or specific genre.

It was unlike any submarine she had seen in movies or on TV. There were no cramped cabins or twisting passageways. The inside was vast, as though the inner walls had all been knocked down, connecting every room save the bridge and the engine room into one large indoor space. In terms of size, it seemed about as large as an entire floor of a school building.

The air was dim, lit only by lasers that cut through the darkness, accompanied by a back-and-forth between unintelligible vocals filled with English slang and the driving beat of the electronic dance music that reverberated in her guts.

“Wh-where are we?” Midori asked.

“We’re on this guy’s turf now,” answered Kaname. “There’s more than one way to have fun in Money (Game) Master. Don’t run off on your own, Midori.”

The reason Kaname said that was because the room was almost bursting with young men and women. It was hard to say if they were getting physical with one another or simply letting their bodies be guided by the music.

Oh my gosh, he’s touching her—Oh geez, are they going to—? Oh my God, she’s getting close to his—? Oh wow, oh wow… I wonder if I’ll do that someday… Maybe…with the person who writes the lovely letters…

“Midori.”

“Wh-wha—???!!!”

The twin-tailed girl hurried over and followed Kaname, flustered. Farther on, the pair broke past the crowd of men and women and into an area filled with tables and love seats. The submarine’s owner was already waiting there.

He wore a pure white dress suit, and both his eyes were different colors, with a mole just beneath one of them. His features were on the feminine side, and his hair was long and blond. Despite the sofa only being sized for two, he sat there with a beautiful woman on each arm, both of them wearing short, almost conch-shaped dresses. With a smile, he spoke. “Hey, hey! Over here, Kaname, my boy! My, this is a pleasant surprise! Is it finally time for me to lend you a hand?”

“Frey(a). I don’t have much time, actually. Sorry for the short notice, but I want us to work together.”

Kaname didn’t get any tingling feeling in his nose from the handsome man. But with him, that was not grounds to let down his guard. In fact, it only made him think Frey(a) had found a way to fool the Lion’s Nose, hidden somewhere behind that plastic smile.

The man beckoned to a sofa opposite him, and Kaname and Midori took their seats. When they did so, the two women by Frey(a)’s side came over and sat down with them. This, however, was no act of hospitality. Kaname and Midori felt the overwhelming pressure from all sides as the women moved in uncomfortably close. It was a gesture that really wasn’t necessary.

---

---

Midori began to blush as her head was pressed into Kaname’s shoulder. “H-hey! I’m taken! I mean…not right now, but I—I—I want to be taken! …But not by you, by someone else! I—I mean… I’m not into love triangles like in those sappy mangas! …At least, not in real life! …Or games, for that matter! Ooohhh, please don’t fight over meeee…!”

“Midori, calm down,” said Kaname. “He’s trying to make you panic. It’s what he does best.”

“…”

“Midori, please explain to me why you’re biting me on the shoulder right now.”

The man in the white suit, Frey(a), chuckled to himself as he watched Midori blush. But it wasn’t the young girl’s bathing suit that put a smile on his face. He was simply enjoying watching the two argue.

“So the Reaper of Called Game has gone soft. Oh, no, please don’t be offended. I meant that in the best way possible, of course. But I wonder, are you still the same on the inside? …That anonymous donation to Nibelheim Pharmaceuticals, that was you, was it not? The roadblocks to eradicating disease are not only scientific but economic. It simply isn’t profitable due to the low number of consumers…ahem, I mean, patients. But now, those patients, whom economics had forsaken, have been given a new lease on life, thanks to you.”

“Frey(a). We don’t need to talk about that.”

“Why not?! You should be more proud of your accomplishments. I don’t understand why you didn’t use your real name in the first place. Just look at all the other so-called ‘philanthropists’ of the world. They’re getting good publicity out of it. In fact, that’s the whole reason they’re doing it. It’s cheaper than simply paying an advertising firm.”

“Listen, you. Helping others isn’t about bragging rights or asking for something in return. If money can solve the problem, then fine, do it. If not, then find another way, but don’t start looking to get something in return. As soon as you impose like that, you’re not helping people anymore. You’re just encroaching on their lives.”

For a moment, nobody said a word. Then…

Untz-untz-untz-untz—the driving bass of the dance music rose to fill the empty silence.

Then at last, Frey(a), who had not stopped smiling, spoke. “Was that Criminal AO?”

“Huh?” Midori raised her voice at the unexpected mention of her brother’s name.

Kaname remained silent, so the man in the white suit continued.

“…He used to say that, didn’t he? He was a good man. Every bit as good as you. Such a shame what happened to him,” noted Frey(a). And then, in a softer voice, “I would have liked to sleep with him, just once.”

Midori didn’t know how to respond to that. She looked to Kaname for support.

“Wh-what did you mean by ‘work together’? A-and who is this guy anyway?”

“Oh my! I haven’t introduced myself to the young lady!”

The heterochromatic gentleman beamed. His pure-white suit would not have looked out of place at a wedding.

“My name is Frey(a)! I am a proud pawnshop owner in this fine game! Have you heard of the Treasure Hermit Crabs…? Well, judging by the look on your face, I’d guess it’s safe to say you haven’t.”

“Pawnshop?” asked Midori.

“Precisely. I work with the casinos, the ones that give out physical prizes, to broaden their range of operations. Even the things you see here do not all belong to me. The lighting, the audio equipment, the furniture, the kitchenware, the decor, and even this very submarine. They’re all things that my precious customers have entrusted to me.”

Midori finally saw what Kaname had meant by “work together.” Basically, this pawnshop would have what they needed to destroy the bulletproof limousine.

But there was another thing that still gave Midori pause. A sense of unease, long lingering in the back of her mind, finally came to her.

What is with his outfit?

There were no levels or experience in Money (Game) Master. A Dealer’s strength was determined by their weapons, clothes, and cars… Or so she thought, but Midori could not identify a single unifying theme that underpinned Frey(a)’s clothes. He had chosen them because of their appearance, not their stats.

Noticing her, Frey(a) grinned wider.

“I have no interest in anything so uncouth as gunplay. Nor car chases, for that matter. The only thing I use cars for is to decorate the stage over there. Similarly, money, the TroPiCal index, none of that bothers me in the slightest. I run a business, sure, but only because I have to. And if I had to, I would fight as well, although to be honest, that’s what my Magistellus and my subordinates are for.”

Midori looked over in the direction Frey(a)’s gloved finger pointed, where, sure enough, above the young men and women surrendering their bodies to the loud music, there were about half a dozen vehicles lined up on a raised platform. They were all perfectly tuned and colored bright silver, like a row of undecorated tin cans. However, as Midori watched, their colors shifted and changed before her very eyes, the textures swirling like wet paint.

Each player was allowed only one Magistellus. So to accomplish that effect, he must be continually transferring among the vehicles a single Magistellus, who was lighting up the surface of the vehicle like a monitor and causing the wavelike motion.

A Dealer’s vehicle, along with their weapon, was their lifeblood. And this man was using them as playthings.

Midori gave a puzzled look. “Then…what do you—?”

“Do? That’s obvious! Love! Or perhaps you could call me a simple purveyor of chance meetings. But love is what I look for in Money (Game) Master! Love! I don’t care about anything else!” The man’s impassioned voice was enough to drown out the dance music.

“There’s more than one way to have fun. We’re on this guy’s turf.” Kaname’s words replayed in Midori’s head.

“Which is why I’m sorry, but I only work with couples. And your Magistellus doesn’t count, no matter how pretty she is. You see, love is the most primal game we play. We bargain and strategize. People without love, with nothing to protect, want to die heroic deaths. It makes me a little reluctant to want to ally myself with them. I’m not sure I’d even want your contact details if you don’t have the brains to handle a single online relationship.”

His position was not a complex one. Love was everything to this man.

“That’s why I’m genuinely happy to see you,” he continued. “Look at you—sitting there acting all cool. I’m so glad you’ve finally found yourself a human lover. I’ve been ever so worried about you, you know!”

“Pfff! Wh-wh-wha—? Lov…lover?! How da— Mph!”

Before Midori could say anything more, Kaname grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her toward him, pressing her mouth into his chest before she could say anything that might ruin the moment.

“Mmmrggghhh!” Oh, what’s wrong with me? Why am I getting worked up when I have the man with the lovely writing? Oh God, why am I like this?!

Though he wondered why he could feel the girl’s heartbeat racing like mad, Kaname cut straight to the point.

“Frey(a). I came here for a reason.”

“Did you? Well, if it’s important, I should think we ought to do something about the young lady’s nerves before we begin. Perhaps my appearance is causing some distress, hmm? After all, I can imagine a child such as her might be a little uncomfortable listening to a gentleman like me speak about love.”

Frey(a) raised his hand and clicked his gloved fingers.

The effect was immediate. His suit began to unravel. The fabric exploded into countless white threads, reforming themselves on his body into a pure-white wedding dress with an especially revealing bust. The man’s body began to change, too. His chest bulged, his hips widened, his arms and legs became more slender… And his face. His face was that of a woman. His mole was now on the other side, and the colors of his eyes had swapped.

Midori, her face red and buried in Kaname’s chest, had all but forgotten her embarrassment due to the shock of what she was seeing.

“Wha…? Huh…? No way, what is he…?!”

“Ha-ha! This is Money (Game) Master! There’s nothing you can’t do with money! I told you, didn’t I? That I came here for love. Why should I let my biology restrict me? I want to experience all love has to offer! I’ll do anything to make that happen! Do you now understand my position?”

“Frey(a).”

“Young lady, I see you’re uncomfortable with a dashing young man. That’s a very pure and innocent reaction. Then let us speak as girls. That should be far more appealing, hmm?”

“Frey(a).”

“Just know that it was out of consideration for you that I adopted the form of a man for our first meeting. More than once have I been told, when introducing myself to someone as a woman, that I reminded them of an ex-girlfriend! Ha-ha! But you… Being faithful is very important to you, but you also don’t want to bog your partner down with jealousy. Quite the excellent find there, Kana—”

“Frey.”

It was like he’d stabbed her with a knife.

At being so blatantly referred to by a masculine name, the woman in the wedding dress began to pout. Raising a gloved hand, she once again clicked her fingers and returned to the form of a gentleman in a white suit.

Kaname, still pulling Midori toward him, attempted to get back to the point.

“I came here for a reason.”

“Yes, yes. What is it you want me to do?”

“I’m sure you’re up-to-date with the situation unfolding on the surface. We need your help to destroy Lily-Kiska’s armored limousine.”

“This is merely a pawnshop, I remind you. I deal in goods, not people. I can’t provide you with an army. Luring people away with money is fun enough in love, but I wouldn’t want to make a business out of it.”

“I’m not intending to incur that much of a debt today,” Kaname replied. “I just want you to ferry me to a fixed location, a manhole, in an expedient and safe manner. And that’s not all.”

Kaname explained his proposal. Frey(a) looked disapproving, as Kaname had expected.

“…That might not matter to you. But for me, that would affect the very foundation of my business. You understand that, don’t you?”

“This is Money (Game) Master. Even if money isn’t everything, it gives you the freedom to do so much more. You can do the impossible if you’ve got the cash to make it happen, don’t you think?”

“Hmm, perhaps you’re right.” Frey(a) clicked his fingers.

“Eek!” Midori gave off a high-pitched squeal as the back of the sofa suddenly swung out, flat. It appeared to in fact be a sofa bed. Before she could process what was happening, Frey(a) had gotten up out of his seat, crossed the glass table between them, and crawled up on top of Kaname. His suit had turned back into a wedding dress, and he had become a woman once again. Frey(a) spoke on all fours.

“How much are you willing to pay to obtain my consent?”

“…”

“You can’t pull out now. You aren’t willing to sacrifice those Magistelli and vehicles that are providing the diversion. So here’s what we’ll do. I won’t turn you away. I’m going to help you in any way I can. However, if my compensation is not to my liking, I’m going to make up the difference with your body. Understand?” Frey(a) licked her lips seductively and ran her fingers across Kaname’s chest.

The person of indeterminate gender called Frey(a) quickly stole a glance toward Midori.

“Perhaps we should make her watch as well. That could be fun. Ha-ha! I want to experience love in its many forms, you see. Pure love is all well and good, but the more kinky and corrupting forms… Oh, it gives me the shivers just thinking about it!”

“…”

“I’ll grant you one chance. Now then, Kaname Suou, tell me: How far do you want me to go?”

She closed in, so their foreheads touched, and breathed a soft sigh. Even if Kaname wanted to fight his way out, he’d only succeed in making an enemy of everyone on the ship.

Kaname’s expression had not changed. He raised an eyebrow.

“Your pawnshop is affiliated with the casino on Mega-Float III, correct?”

“Hmm? Well, yes. That and five others. Two of them I run myself. Even love requires money, you know. Especially in this world.”

“Then whichever. I don’t care if it’s in the cyclone—go to whichever one has the most people and propose a wager: Who will win between Kaname Suou and Lily-Kiska? Then bet on me, and I’ll make you as much money as you want.”

There was a silence. It seemed like Frey(a) had not been expecting to hear that.

Then, finally, she snorted before exploding into uproarious laughter.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! I see! Theoretically infinite, hmm? Indeed, that is an offer I cannot refuse! Money is everything here in Money (Game) Master, after all!”

“Everything? If you really thought that, you wouldn’t be here chasing after your love affairs,” Kaname quipped.

“Fine,” said the woman in the wedding dress, stepping back. And then, with a wink, “I’ll take you up on your offer. But let me say this. Once this goes public, it won’t only be your hat in the ring. You understand, my little stallion?”

13

The submarine traversed the countless underground waterways beneath the city. When they arrived beneath the designated manhole, Kaname thanked the translucent slime Magistellus.

“Once we go up there, get out of here as fast as you can. Oh, and sorry for all the trouble.”

“Not at all. I can’t remember the last time I saw the master having fun like that. I do hope you’ll come visit again, Kaname Suou, Midori Hekireki. I’m not just saying that to be polite; I mean it.”

After undoing the special lock on the manhole lid and watching it swing open like a trash can lid, Kaname was struck once more by the fury of the storm outside. They were a short distance away from the road where they had first gone underground, now right in the middle of a large four-way intersection. Midori, exiting behind him into the driving rain, stared at her phone in bewilderment.

“No way. Apparently, we were only in there for ten minutes. Did we go into fairyland or something?”

“That’s a better name than Treasure Hermit Crabs. He’s a sucker for anything romantic and twisted; send him that in a message and he might change the name.”

Perhaps the conversation had gone more smoothly than expected, or perhaps something was interfering with Midori’s phone. In any case, as they continued to talk, the two of them walked out into the storm, Midori following Kaname’s lead.

They headed across the intersection to a commercial building, to the rear of a coffee shop on one of the floors. There, they found a metal cylinder almost as tall as Midori herself. She frowned.

“A propane tank…?” she asked.

“No, compressed hydrogen,” corrected Kaname. “Part of the smart power grid.” He detached the hose and bracket holding it in place.

“Are we going to blow it up to destroy that limo?”

“No, that won’t be enough to take down that hunk of metal.”

Kaname hoisted the canister up onto his shoulder like a large bag of rice. However, the wind and the rain made it difficult to carry, and as he swayed to one side, Midori stepped in to support him. Midori’s cheeks burned as her soft body pressed against him, and she thought, Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! Come on, Midori. This is so you can destroy your brother’s Legacies and fill your letters with pleasantries again!

“A-actually…you have quite a peculiar outfit as well, Kaname.”

“What do you mean?”

“The same with that short-range sniper rifle of yours. It’s a sniper rifle, but it’s geared for close combat. And now? Don’t you usually need a dolly to carry those gas canisters? You’re so strong physically, but how well does that help you in an actual fight? I can’t really figure out what the concept is behind your gear choices…”

Kaname headed for one of the manholes in the center of the intersection. There were many small holes in its surface—openings for fitting the tool used to unlock it—but with the special locking mechanism fitted by the Treasure Hermit Crabs, such a tool was unnecessary. The holes were nothing more than camouflage. Kaname fed one end of the hose through one of the holes and undid the valve. The canister emitted a hissing noise as the hydrogen gas began to flow.

It was for this that Kaname had required the consent of the master of the underworld.

Soon, something happened.

The sound of screeching tires from far away heralded an approaching vehicle, and Kaname’s nose was assaulted by a feeling totally unlike either electricity or numbness.

“Ack! She’s here!”

“Midori, hide! Dammit, there’s no time!”

Kaname lightly kicked the sideways canister with the sole of his foot, sending it rolling into the thicket at the side of the road, and drew Short Spear from its holster at his waist. He grabbed Midori and ran, but he wasn’t able to get far. He unfolded the collapsible stock on his weapon.

First, the mint-green coupe came speeding around the corner, heading right toward the intersection. It was followed by the bright-red, leaf-patterned motorcycle.

“Eek!”

Midori instinctively tried to shrink away, but Kaname pulled her rain-soaked body close. The two hunks of metal passed by either side of them. Kaname felt the girl’s heartbeat. Her fear was almost contagious. The next moment, the jet-black armored limousine showed up. And it was heading right for them!

14

It all started as a longing.

There was once a legendary team by the name of Called Game.

One look at the team’s track record would make it obvious why they were called that.

One day, in a shoot-out just like any other, they saved the life of a girl.

But when the girl asked to join the team, they refused.

Instead, they told her…

“…”

At that moment, within the limousine, Lily-Kiska was carrying out another threat assessment, one hand supporting her chin and her golden headband sweeping back her long black hair. A projection of the intersection ahead was visible on the glass table, and Kaname’s weapon and the canister of hydrogen gas rolling along the road were both clearly marked.

However…

He can shoot it if he wants. He could fasten that canister to this vehicle’s underside and blow it up at point-blank range; it won’t even make a dent in this armor.

“Sophia.” Stroking the arm of her smart glasses, she spoke over the car’s intercom. “If they resist, run them down. I’ll retake #tempest.err if I have to pry it from his cold, Fallen hands.”

“As you wish, Miss Kiska.”

The wrecking ball on wheels sped up even more. Whichever way Kaname and Midori decided to flee, Sophia could flatten them with a turn of the wheel. They were as good as dead already. They didn’t appear to have #tempest.err on them, either; it would be hard to conceal that monstrous weapon. Even if they did have it, it wouldn’t make a difference now. They could inflict a lot of damage on the limousine, but the hunk of metal would still wipe Kaname and Midori out.

Then Lily-Kiska noticed something strange on a window on the glass table. As Kaname stood in the middle of the main road with the twin-tailed young girl in one arm, he raised his other and pointed Short Spear right toward the oncoming limo.

It would never penetrate the armor.

But Kaname still showed determination in his eyes.

What is he doing…?

Before she could have her answer, Kaname fired.

15

If the gas had been heavier than air, like propane, then the plan would have taken a little more preparation. But hydrogen was light. Even after being pumped underground, some gas would still rise to the surface through the openings in the manhole cover.

So Kaname pointed his rifle at it and fired. That spark was enough for it to ignite.

Just blowing up the canister of hydrogen gas wouldn’t have been enough to take out the armored limo. That was what Kaname had told Midori—but that wasn’t what he was trying to do.

The limo bore down on them. As soon as its front-right wheel passed over the manhole cover, the gas ignited.

Which meant…

Boom! An explosion thirty feet in diameter erupted up from the hole in the ground.

There was no need to blow up the vehicle itself. All Kaname had to do was collapse the road and have it fall underground so it could no longer drive.

An even stronger wind than the one from the cyclone whipped across him.

“?!”

But something happened that Kaname didn’t expect. The limousine didn’t fall. Instead, it floated on the air for a few moments. The explosion had been too strong. It rose up and now balanced on its two right wheels, still barreling forward. The side that had been about to plow into Kaname and Midori was now up in the air, and the boy and girl fit cleanly in the empty space, the bottom of the car nearly grazing their heads.

It all happened in an instant, and then the limousine continued on two wheels, blasting through the intersection.

“Ngh! Did we get it?!” Kaname spun around, still holding Midori in one arm.

He’d destroyed one of the manholes with the special locks. He’d blown a huge hole in the road and opened up a new entrance to the sealed-off depths. What’s more, the huge explosion would inevitably draw the attention of many more Dealers to the secretive subterranean world itself. In order to get the consent of its ruler, Frey(a), Kaname had needed to strike a hard bargain. That’s why he wanted the results to show for it.

Although things had not quite gone according to plan, there would be nothing to be afraid of if Lily-Kiska’s car had flipped over onto its side. After all, no matter how thick the armor was, it would pose no threat if it couldn’t move.

However…

“Damn…”

“What? What?” Midori looked up from Kaname’s arms, red-faced. However, he was looking not at her but at their foe. The fuzzy feeling in his nose had not gone away.

“It’s back…! Damn! How could it recover from something like that?!”

Before their eyes, the car lurched. Not toward the roof but the wheels. The base of the limousine contacted the wet road once more, sweeping across the ground like a giant swinging a hammer as it completed a U-turn. It didn’t look like a movement that such a large vehicle should have been capable of. A crescent-shaped spray of water flew through the air.

“My Lord!”

There was the screeching of tires, and the mint-green coupe and the bright-red motorcycle came around to meet them via a different road to the collapsed intersection.

Midori rushed away from Kaname and onto the front seat of her motorcycle, taking over from Meiki, who shifted backward to make room. Kaname also headed to the driver’s seat of his own vehicle. Tselika didn’t even complain about getting the seats wet. It wasn’t the time for that.

“It didn’t work!” he shouted.

“Bullets won’t hurt it, and we can’t outrun it, either! What are we to do, My Lord?!”

“What about our grenades? The thermite ones.”

“They have a five-second fuse; good luck hitting her at this speed! And she already knows we have them because we used them on the incubators, so she’ll be on her guard for them!”

Kaname clicked his tongue and used his eyes to compose a chat message. The wipers crossing his field of vision made it difficult.

Kaname: Going in a straight line is suicide. Let me link my map. We’ll head into an alley and shake her off.

Midori: Hey, what about that Acid D stuff? It can melt anything, right?

Kaname: This wind is just as likely to blow it right back in our faces if we try.

At Kaname’s direction, the windshield lit up like a fighter jet’s HUD, projecting a series of augmented-reality signs made of light that floated in the air, showing the way. If Midori had synched her map, she should also have been able to see them lined up like streetlights or roadside trees.

There was a fuzzy ache in the tip of Kaname’s nose.

Using the hand brake along with the wetness of the road surface, Kaname swung out the rear of the mint-green coupe, making a sharp turn while evading the pursuing limo. He entered a narrow alley, flanked by gray concrete and red brickwork. Too narrow for the limousine to follow.

As the two vehicles sped along, Kaname grimaced. They should have gotten away, but if anything, the tingling sensation was getting worse. He stopped the car to check.

This wasn’t on the map.

The simplified plan showed the path that weaved through the buildings suddenly opening up into a larger plaza area, with multiple exits in different directions. But what Kaname saw there was the steel frame of a building under construction, with equipment and bags of cement scattered around. The multiple exits he had been expecting had all been blocked.

“A private plot…,” Tselika muttered. “I don’t like it here.”

In the passenger seat, Tselika hugged her own shoulders and gave a look of displeasure. Being unable to handle anything but her Dealer’s property could not have made this situation any easier for her. It wasn’t as if she would be unable to take a single step, but there were an enormous amount of obstacles for her that humans simply couldn’t see.

Midori: Did we just walk into a trap?

Kaname: Maybe.

Lily-Kiska’s limousine had made too strong an impact on them. Ag Wolves did not just consist of her alone. Other members could be closing in as well. And the scariest thing, in fact, was not her superheavy armored vehicle.

…It was how Lily-Kiska had known Kaname and Midori’s position in the first place.

As if thinking the same thing, Tselika suddenly voiced her thoughts.

“A satellite? Or a drone…?”

If that was the case, then they needn’t have waited until they came to the peninsula district. They could have attacked Kaname and Midori while they were in their log cabin on Mangrove Island.

“Perhaps they’ve been using their thousand patrons to spy on us with their smart glasses?” she suggested.

“Perhaps, but given that their reputation is already on the ropes, you really think they could persuade all their backers to go along with that? And even if they could, Ag Wolves might not be comfortable trusting that information when they’re already in a rough spot.”

“In that case, what do you think?”

Kaname felt a sharp pain in his nose. The mysterious Lion’s Nose that went beyond the five senses had found a new target. Kaname peered around the building site through the slanting rain, taking it all in.

“…It’s the security cameras,” he finally declared.

“You mean they’ve bought out a security company?”

“No. Look over there.” Kaname pointed through the windshield, through the scene swept by the wipers, to a dirty wall on which was installed an inelegant, boxy camera.

“Why are there security cameras when the building isn’t even finished yet?” he asked. “The wiring for that sort of thing ought to be left until last.”

“Wait, you don’t mean…?”

“They didn’t need to take over a security company. They’ve just bought a bunch of security cameras and put them up all over the city themselves! They’re so conspicuous that nobody would think they’re spying on anyone; they’d just think these were normal cameras. Ag Wolves have set up a system whereby they can freely spy on everyone in the entire peninsula district, at the very least!”

Perhaps they had gotten their thousand backers to help them set up the cameras. It didn’t seem like the dozen or so core members could have accomplished it alone.

Kaname lowered his window, unbothered by the storm, and fired Short Spear at the camera, piercing it with a single bullet. It was an act that served little purpose now.

Kaname shared his information with Midori, controlling the digital keyboard with his gaze, but he received a rather odd response.

Midori: Hwuh? You mean Ag Wolves saw you and me hugggugggugno no no what if he finds out hell think im unchaste and impurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Kaname: Midori! Stop messing around! Ag Wolves could be on us at any moment!

Midori: I know, but what are we supposed to do—build a barricade?! That might help us restrict the enemies’ movements by limiting their entry points, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re outnumbered!

She was right.

“Tselika. Research the surrounding area. Get me any information we can use!”

“That’s what I’m doing, you idiot!”

Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping! Windows appeared all over the rain-splattered windshield, almost looking like it was infected by a virus. As Kaname scrutinized the data, he drew up a quick strategy by drawing red lines between the windows with his eyes. Tselika whistled at his efficiency.

Kaname: Okay, how about this?

16

Lily-Kiska had herded the targets, Kaname Suou and Midori Hekireki, to the construction site beyond the alley. Now it was time for the other Ag Wolves to enter the narrow passageway. They left their cars and moved in, among them the hunched man, M-Scope, and Zaurus, the girl with the single braid and catlike eyes. They were wearing thick, electrically powered outer shells, huge tanks strapped on their backs, and at their hips, they held a naphtha-based flamethrower.

The range was a little over twenty meters. They could only sustain output for thirty seconds, but that would be more than enough for the confines of the building site. Even if the aim was slightly off, the heat could cause a car’s radiator to boil over, immobilizing it. It could melt the tires or cause the gas tank to explode. It was a vehicle-killing machine.

Even if Kaname and Midori managed to take cover from the flames, the heat and the oxygen deprivation would get them.

The Wolves’ suits covered even their heads. If there was one thing they feared…

“Let’s just hope they’re not desperate enough to whip out #tempest.err,” whimpered M-Scope.

“Aw zip it, Mr. Doom and Gloom! That’s why we gotta burn ’em to a crisp before they get the chance!”

And then it happened.

Krrrrrrrrr! The screeching sound of skidding tires echoed from within. Thinking the targets were coming out to attack, the Ag Wolves readied their weapons. But their prediction was off the mark.

Kaname and Midori were escaping.

The Ag Wolves were confused. They had blocked off every other exit with construction machinery or piles of cement bags. The only way out was through their flamethrowers.

The mint-green coupe, driving around the square lot, had plenty of space to build up speed for its next maneuver.

Bwoooof!

Using a slightly inclined steel plate from the construction site as a makeshift ramp, the vehicle flew through the air.

“Ah.”

As he stood there dumbfounded in the pouring rain, watching Kaname drive off, M-Scope remembered something: the skydivers who jumped from building to building, the Skychasers.

The large, bright-red motorcycle, decorated with autumn leaves, was next. It launched itself through the air and landed on the roof of another short, single-floor building, using a different ramp that the sympathizers must have set up.

It was a driving technique you were unlikely to see in the real world. It was almost like an aerial maneuver.

Money (Game) Master, however, was not the real world. It was a place where even more thrills could be found.

“Those bastards…!”

The braided girl, Zaurus, was incandescent with rage. Then something happened.

The thick suits they wore to protect themselves from the flames had prevented them from noticing until it was too late. Prevented them from noticing the strange smell that hung over the whole area and stung the nose. And prevented them from noticing the thin underground pipe, unearthed by the construction efforts, which had been broken open.

And the finishing touch: the thin wire that led from the rear of the bright-red motorcycle to the thermite grenade planted in the ground.

Exactly five seconds later, the entire construction site was engulfed in orange flames.

17

The mint-green coupe and the bright-red, leaf-patterned motorcycle leaped through the vast sky of the cyclone again and again. From roof to roof, gradually gaining altitude.

“Argh, now rooftops! This is still private property!” yelled Tselika.

“We should be able to avoid the PMCs if we keep moving,” replied Kaname.

“That’s not the problem. I don’t like it! Just please, buy all these buildings!”

Normal tires would burst under the shock of the impact generated by these repeated jumps. It was fortunate they had filled theirs with foam.

If Kaname had to stop on every rooftop and build up speed again, it would kill his momentum. So while he was flying through the air, he used the time to identify the location of the next ramp; then when he touched down, he pulled on the hand brake just a little to make the turn without losing too much speed. If he didn’t keep his acceleration high, he would be on course for a brutal collision with the ground. Even with the wipers on full blast, it was a harrowing experience.

As for why Kaname and Midori were still in such a hurry after putting the back alley behind them, the answer was quite obvious. The pain in Kaname's nose had exploded, warning him of danger.

Something tore through the air, momentarily creating a hole in the rain. It struck an external air-conditioning unit right beside the mint-green coupe, and immediately afterward, the whole thing went up in a fiery explosion. A sniper.

But no ordinary one: A lead bullet wouldn’t produce such greasy, noxious flames. No, they were using armor-piercing incendiary rounds. An ammunition type that could penetrate armor and burn everything inside to ash, be it machinery or human bodies. If that wasn’t enough, it was loaded with white phosphorus, said to engulf the body in flames on contact or burn the lungs with just a single breath of its deadly fumes.

It seemed they had made contact with the twin-tailed girl as well.

Midori: They’re here! That limousine is jumping the buildings along with us!

“Ha-ha!” Tselika laughed. “A woman leaning out the window of a flying limousine, holding a huge anti-materiel rifle in her little hands! I’ll say this much—things are never dull in Tokonatsu City!” she added, turning up her music to full blast, high on adrenaline.

Midori took a moment to analyze her foe’s outfit, deducing her stat modifiers.

Midori: Sniper, long-distance. She’s put all her money into eliminating her shooter wobble. She’s not using auto-aim, either. Looks like it’s all manual, but that might actually be bad news for us. Even at this distance, she’s not relying on luck but intending to line up the shot perfectly by herself! She might even predict where we’re going to be!

Across the large main road, over uneven buildings of all shapes and sizes, the black limousine that had once been chasing Kaname and Midori through the streets below now leaped from rooftop to rooftop as if by magic.

Logically, it made sense. After all, circus performers could accomplish feats such as huge leaps and somersaults when given a ramp, even on unicycles or wheelchairs. But it was a different matter entirely to see it before your very eyes.

However…

“Don’t be fooled by the spectacle! That’s not what’s important!” Kaname yelled.

A second bullet whizzed through the air, ripping up the storm and hitting a rooftop storeroom, causing it to explode in a ball of odious flames. Multiple windows popped open all over the windshield, analyzing the destruction by comparing images.

“This one’s the same,” observed Kaname. “This one, too. And this one.”

“What are you talking about?!” asked Tselika.

“That external air-conditioning unit and the storeroom weren’t the same thickness. They should have both been destroyed in different ways. But that didn’t happen with Lily-Kiska’s anti-materiel rifle! They were both destroyed in the exact same way!”

“So?!”

“No ordinary sniper should have my nose going like this. Something’s not right here. What sort of weapon can exceed even the preset physical limits of this world?”

At Kaname’s question, it finally dawned on her. Tselika’s eyes went wide. A message came from Midori, as well.

Midori: Hey, don’t you think that could be one of my brother’s Legacies?

Kaname: Correct. It must be his infinite-range, ridiculously powerful anti-materiel rifle!

The only reasons Kaname and Midori were still alive were the cyclone’s heavy winds and the fact that both shooter and target were moving at high speed. Otherwise, one or the other of them would be roasting in the bombed-out shell of their vehicle by now.

Kaname: A bullet from that gun never loses energy from air resistance or wind direction. It never drops due to gravity. It would probably just keep going in a straight line forever. That already makes it enough of a threat. The horizon is five kilometers away at ground level. From somewhere high up, you could hit a target over ten kilometers away!

Short Spear’s maximum range was about five hundred meters, and Midori’s handgun that she kept for self-defense wasn’t much good beyond twenty. That showed just how truly fearsome the stats of Lily-Kiska’s anti-materiel rifle were.

Kaname: A bullet fired by that thing releases all its energy the moment it contacts the target. It’ll end up looking like a 12.7mm anti-materiel round hit you at point-blank range. Also, it comes with an incendiary effect. White phosphorus—nasty stuff. It’s virtually impossible for us to win in a fair fight. She’ll either hit us with the flyswatter or burn us with pesticide and a lighter!

It looked less like she was bracing a rifle against her shoulder and more like she was wielding a bazooka. If one had to give it classification, perhaps bullpup would be appropriate. The magazine was located farther back than the grip and more closely resembled a telephone book made of metal.

It was a monster of a weapon; the barrel alone was two meters long.

It probably disassembled into two parts for easier transport, but the sheer weight would have made it impossible for one person to carry around on their own.

The Lion’s Nose trembled.

A terrifying enemy. An impassable wall. An insurmountable cliff. It wasn’t warning Kaname just so he could turn tail and flee. The lion used its nose to seek out the largest, juiciest prey.

As he leaped between the rooftops, Kaname received a message request on his IM-style chat system.

Lily-Kiska: Hand over #tempest.err. Both of us may have a Legacy, but my #fireline.err is more useful here. White phosphorus hurts like hell, you know. You’ll regret not cutting your losses when you had the chance.

Kaname: No thanks.

Lily-Kiska: You think the cyclone works in your favor? You think I can’t aim while our vehicles are moving around? But you know…

Boom! An explosion tore through the landscape.

It wasn’t the mint-green coupe or the bright-red motorcycle that had been hit, however. What the white phosphorus flames engulfed was the ramp they had been planning to take.

“Dammit!” Kaname shouted.

The steel plate had been shifted out of alignment only a little, but Kaname couldn’t risk his life jumping it. He slammed on the brakes while simultaneously messaging Midori to do the same. Even as the perilously wet surface made his heart pound out of his chest, he somehow avoided skidding too much and flying off the rooftop.

Lily-Kiska: It’s not so hard to hit a stationary target, is it?

The black limousine landed on one of the rooftops and appeared to be turning around, adjusting its position.

The range was between eight hundred and nine hundred meters. Too far for Kaname’s and Midori’s weapons to reach but just perfect for Lily-Kiska’s rifle. As if to make the shot even easier, the black limousine rolled around until it was perpendicular to the line of fire, and Lily-Kiska stepped out onto the rooftop. Using the rear of the vehicle as a shield, she set up the enormous anti-materiel sniper rifle #fireline.err on a bipod.

Lily-Kiska: And now you’re in another dead end. I’ll give you one last chance. Hand over #tempest.err. Otherwise, first it’ll be your vehicle, then you.

“…”

The rooftop was scattered with air-conditioning units, flower beds, storerooms, even chairs and tables for one to enjoy a nice afternoon drink. Plenty of cover, but nothing that could stand against the Legacy. A single shot from the anti-materiel rifle would spread white phosphorus everywhere, melting flesh and searing lungs.

“What do we do now, My Lord?!”

First, Kaname removed Lily-Kiska’s chat window from the windshield, the wipers still sweeping to and fro. She’d probably take that as an affront, which was fine. He sent Midori the bare minimum directions she needed and then…

“Tselika. Do you know about confluence points? It’s a term used by disaster response workers.”

“Hmm?”

“Every city has confluence points. Places where the land and buildings guide the flow of the wind into one place. During typhoons and cyclones, the sheer force of the wind blows huge amounts of trash around, and in certain places, they can form mountains over ten meters high. Trash from all around the city ends up deposited in one place. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Hold on a second, My Lord. What’s that symbol you’re marking on our map…?”

“Now, the big question. If our coupe was to dive off this twenty-story building we’re currently on, unmanned, would it hit this confluence point? It’s a simple ballistic calculation. You should be able to take care of that.”

The demon spouted objection after objection, but the boy ignored her. After realizing he wasn’t joking, Tselika started to panic.

“I—I may just be a Magistellus, but I can still be Downed! I’ll go offline if I take a certain amount of damage! Not to mention that without absorbing the impact, the vehicle serving as my temple will be destroyed in the fall!”

“Then would you rather wait for #fireline.err to roast us alive? Just do it! I’ll come and drag you out of the trash pile later!”

“You…you’ve…you’ve gotta… You’ve gotta be kidding meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Kaname ignored Tselika’s cries. After tying down the accelerator, he opened the driver-side door and rolled out onto the rooftop, leaving Tselika in the passenger seat as the sports car embarked on its next flight.

18

“Ngh?!” Lily-Kiska peered through the scope. Her attention was immediately drawn to the sight of the mint-green coupe speeding toward the edge of the rooftop and diving off the building. However…

“…Where’s that red motorcycle? Sophia! Check the footage!”

“As you wish, Miss Kiska.”

The elf in the driver’s seat swiftly executed the command. Lily-Kiska’s smart glasses, covered in water droplets from the raging storm, were next to useless. Pop-ups appeared all over the ten-centimeter-thick side windows of the armored limousine.

Playing back the recording frame by frame revealed Midori had used the distraction of the mint-green coupe to head inside the building. It was twenty floors tall, but Midori could descend pretty quickly down the emergency staircase on her motorcycle. If she took a shortcut down the stairwell, she could be at ground level in an instant.

Lily-Kiska looked at the street below… I can’t see a thing in this rain! She might try to flank me!

There were no levels or experience in Money (Game) Master. A player’s stats were defined only by their equipment. In other words, cash. In other words…

“Aaargh! These compensation skills are throwing me off! And these concentration buffs aren’t helping, either!”

She had to trim off extra skills. As a sniper, there came times when you had to rely on nothing but your own senses.

Lily-Kiska removed her armpit holsters and tore off her white blouse and tight skirt, flinging off her black stockings and mismatched boots until she was standing in nothing but her bright-red bikini. She had been wearing underwear in that slot instead, until that incident with Kaname caused her to rethink her wardrobe. It hadn’t been easy to find swimwear with the exact same stat modifiers.

For an anti-materiel sniper rifle, #fireline.err had ridiculously high stats and supposedly infinite range, but it was not without its flaws. Its weight made it extremely difficult to handle, and because it used special ammunition with a white phosphorus incendiary effect, engaging with an enemy who was too close could result in the deadly flames and noxious smoke engulfing the user as well.

Where did he…? Lily-Kiska fired off another chat request.

There was a response, but it took a while to come. It wasn’t going through the coupe but connecting her to Kaname through the much lower bandwidth of his mobile phone. It was one thing if you were just uploading photos of your food to the internet, but in Money (Game) Master, where transactions go through ten thousand times a second, the kind of speed Lily-Kiska was experiencing was simply abysmal.

Which means he’s not in his car. That wasn’t a double suicide. Kaname Suou is still on the rooftop!

Lily-Kiska sent off her ultimatum with conviction.

Lily-Kiska: Hand over #tempest.err.

Kaname: What’ll happen if I do? You’ll let Midori go, too?

Lily-Kiska: I’ll think about it. It could be quite handy having access to an associate of Criminal AO. But don’t worry—it’ll all be very civil.

Kaname: Don’t know why I bothered asking.

Lily-Kiska: Have you forgotten the power of my limousine’s engine? Its top speed and acceleration are second to none. It could easily jump off this small rooftop! You’ll never be able to force me into close combat! Even if Criminal AO’s kin gets to me, I can just retreat to a different rooftop and try again!

Kaname: And then what?

Lily-Kiska: These rooftops belong to the AI businesses. Soon, they’ll be swarming with PMCs. All I have to do is stall you here, and when the time is right, I can simply move somewhere else. Somewhere outside the range of their protection. Time’s running out, Kaname. What will you do?!

Kaname: Sorry, Lily-Kiska. You’re right—the situation is looking pretty bad for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a worse conundrum. I accept that.

Kaname responded in the affirmative, but it was only the prelude to an outright rejection.

Kaname: But now I’m finding it funny just how childish you really are.

Kaname said nothing more. He simply cut the connection.

In a way, that was his answer to Lily-Kiska’s ultimatum.

That goddamn idiot!

Just then, she remembered something. Long ago, there had once been a team named Called Game.

They said something to a little girl they saved from a shoot-out.

That’s right, it was… “Now it’s your turn to help us.”

…Ngh.

“Sophia! This is going to be a long shot, but get up to speed! I’m going to destroy Kaname Suou while we toy with his accomplice! Get ready…!”

As soon as she said that…

Pchew! Something grazed Lily-Kiska’s shoulder.

It was something red-hot.

It was something that sliced the air like a knife.

“…?” At first, Lily-Kiska didn’t know what was happening.

---

---

It was only as the pain began to worm its way through her shoulder that she was forced to realize.

Had she been shot?

The range was nine hundred meters. Yet he had hit her with that short-range sniper rifle—a weapon designed not for long-range marksmanship but so you could hit an enemy right in front of you, even if they were hiding behind a hostage. Its range shouldn’t have been more than five hundred meters, and yet…

“Wh…what…hap…?!”

There were indeed ways to extend a gun’s maximum range. For example, aiming slightly above your target. Just like throwing a baseball a long distance, a high angle would increase the distance the bullet traveled. But that method wouldn’t double your effective range.

Which meant…

A chill ran down Lily-Kiska’s spine, causing her to all but forget the burning pain in her shoulder.

It can’t be…

“Sophia! Bring up a weather chart! One that includes the cyclone’s gales!”

She didn’t even have to answer. He wasn’t just using a curved trajectory. He also had the gale on his side, using the tailwind to increase his range even farther. He had changed the winds, a sniper’s worst nightmare, to his own advantage…!

Is that even possible…?

Kaname had just gotten rid of the mint-green coupe. That meant he wasn’t even using his Magistellus to calculate the trajectory for him.

It’s a miracle just to even land a hit on target with a curved trajectory! It might be possible in theory, but in practice, and with the cyclone’s storm winds coming across at all angles, how could he possibly land his aim?! It’s more than just a miracle at that point!

Also, with snipers and artillery, the first shot was typically not to kill but a ranging shot placed deliberately off target. By comparing where the shot landed to the estimate given by your sights, you could calculate the error and adjust accordingly. Your subsequent shots would then be far more accurate.

But Kaname’s first shot had grazed Lily-Kiska’s shoulder.

So where would his next shot land?

Lily-Kiska possessed one of the inimitable Legacies of Criminal AO. So great was their power that they had been ridiculed as the Overtrick. With a snap of her fingers, she could use the anti-materiel rifle #fireline.err to throw the balance of the game into chaos. She held a cyberweapon capable of bringing any country in the world to its knees through economic ruin… And yet, right now, her palms were sweating.

She was afraid. She was going up against an opponent of equal strength… No, even stronger.

Perhaps Kaname Suou himself was as powerful as the Overtrick.

Lily-Kiska was woken from her reverie by the sound of a door slamming open behind her. She whirled around to see Midori there, astride her bright-red motorcycle patterned with autumn leaves. Evidently, she had just ridden it up the stairs. In her hands, she held the orange shotgun #tempest.err, an unbeatable weapon within five hundred meters.

“Ah.”

So even that impossible shot was a bluff? He was going with plan A all along!

He must have taken it from the mint-green coupe before it disappeared into the mountain of trash. At any rate, #fireline.err was going to be next to useless at this range. And there was no time to retreat into the armored limousine.

There was an explosion. The End Magic was activated.

There was a second where Midori hesitated. Was it because she was thinking about what it meant to make someone Fall? Or was it just a simple reluctance to shoot somebody? In the end, it didn’t matter, for she then put aside her internal conflict, gripped the trigger, and pulled.

Thinking quickly, Lily-Kiska made a dash for the limousine, throwing open one of its large doors to use it as a shield against the blast.

But #fireline.err was heavy. Her reluctance to let go of the Legacy would be her downfall.

The beam of light flickered, and Lily-Kiska’s mistake was made clear. The two thousand shots struck whatever the light touched. The thickest wall in the world couldn’t protect her if it had a window of transparent glass.

The Legacy’s howl reduced a foot of bulletproof glass to shards. Behind it, Lily-Kiska’s arm twisted in a way it wasn’t supposed to. #fireline.err fell from her shoulder, but this time she didn’t seem to care. Clenching her teeth, she broke into a run, a frantic dash before the second shot came.

Where to?

There was only one choice.

The sky.

It didn’t save her. The railings and walls that struck her on the way down slowed her velocity a little, but it was a twenty-story building. It was a miracle she even stayed conscious, instead of Falling immediately upon contact with the rain-soaked ground.

“…”

Wearing nothing but her red bikini, Lily-Kiska rolled onto her back. The smell of rust suffused the air, like a squashed frog bloating in the rain.

All that remained was for Midori to point #tempest.err over the edge, bathing the street in light, and let loose a rain of death. But the finishing blow never came. Perhaps she was more interested in retrieving #fireline.err from the rooftop. Or perhaps…

Lily-Kiska heard footsteps in the rain. As the storm raged, a person stood above her, looking down into her face. It was Kaname Suou. What shortcut had he used to get here? In his hand he held the short-range sniper rifle Short Spear. He was a reaper, a god. He made miracles happen with nothing more than stock equipment.

He was a monster.

Looking up at him through her cracked glasses, Lily-Kiska couldn’t help but smile.

“…Why…?” she asked weakly.

It’s the last moments of a person’s life that show who they really are.

“…Why couldn’t I have you…?”

Which meant that these were Lily-Kiska’s regrets.

“I dressed myself up,” she said. “I showed you my feminine side through my words, body language, and behavior. I made powerful allies and secured the backing of a thousand patrons. I even kept the Legacy hidden all this time. I just wanted you to see how far I’d come. How well I’d brought everything together.”

“…”

“Anyone I wanted, I took. Even the other Ag Wolves. Nothing was beyond my reach. Why, then…the first time I truly wished for something from the bottom of my heart, was it the one thing I couldn’t have…?”

“…”

“Do you remember?” She laughed. Covered in blood, she looked up at the boy standing over her. “Now that I have it all, now that I have the Legacy…have I finally grown up enough to help you in return? Kaname from Called Game…?”

A few more words were exchanged before she closed her eyes, a satisfied look on her face.

“…It wouldn’t do to be killed by another woman. And I don’t want people to say I panicked and fell off a rooftop, either…”

It was her final wish.

“I should like to die at the hands of the man I love. Then perhaps I could Fall with a smile on my face.”

“…”

There was no response.

She couldn’t see his face, either.

But sensing the moment of hesitation before he pulled the trigger, Lily-Kiska relaxed. Somewhere in Kaname’s mind, whether consciously or unconsciously, he had thought about what a shame it would be to lose her. That was good enough for her.

Then it happened.

19

Server name: Sigma Blue.

Final location: Tokonatsu City, Peninsula District.

Fall confirmed.

Lily-Kiska Sweetmare will be logged out for twenty-four hours.

20

Kaname Suou spent a few minutes just standing there in the pouring rain.

Then the bright-red motorcycle with the autumn-leaf pattern burst out of a nearby emergency exit. It appeared Midori had just shaken off the building’s PMCs. However, Midori didn’t show any of the feelings of accomplishment or relief of a job well done. She just stood there, gazing at the wet road—at the spot where a person had just been lying. Her face creased in pain.

“I…I shot her…with the Legacy,” she said simply. “After I said I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt by what my brother left behind, I shot her…”

“It was me who delivered the finishing blow,” Kaname replied dismissively. “You haven’t made anybody Fall.”

As time flowed for him once more, he cradled the young girl to his chest. Their work here was done. There was no cause to linger.

First, there was the business of the mint-green coupe.

Using a mobile crane, Kaname fished the sports car out of a pile of trash nearly ten meters high. Tselika, of course, was not happy. She puffed out her cheeks like a blowfish. Kaname had deduced that the construction site would be empty because of the cyclone, but she couldn’t even be thankful for that.

“You said you’d come back for me! You promised! That mountain of trash was treated as someone else’s property, so I couldn’t do anything about it! I couldn’t get out! I was trapped! You know how I feel about waiting on the sidelines, don’t you? Then why on earth did you do it?!”

“Well, everything turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?”

“No, it damn well didn’t! There’s this strange fluid coming out of the radiator and the exhaust! It’s beyond help from a car wash; we need to take it to the mechanic! Right now! RIGHT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!”

Kaname remained obtuse. “Sorry, but not right now.”

“ ‘Not right now’…?!”

“Just let me log out first! I’ll take you wherever you want to go after that!”

“?”

Tselika was taken aback at Kaname’s tone. She cocked her head. Kaname and Midori appeared to be fine. They held both #tempest.err and #fireline.err. By all accounts, they had sent Ag Wolves packing and recovered the Legacies just as they’d planned. Was something still the matter?

Kaname answered Tselika’s question in a state of disquiet.

“…Something is very, very wrong. I have to talk to someone.”

“A Dealer? Who?” asked Tselika.

But Kaname had said this, hadn’t he? He’d said, “Let me log out.”

“…To my…,” Kaname mumbled.

“Speak up!”

“I need to talk to my sister! There’s a chance she was involved! Involved in the Fall of Criminal AO and the scattering of his Legacies! There’s a chance it was no accident!”

21

Before she Fell, Lily-Kiska had said something.

Gasping for breath, with countless Dealers about to run her into debt hell, and with her only prospects to be constantly beaten back down into the ground by her rivals, she would have found it very difficult to ever log back in. Therefore, she had little reason to lie.

“You were right, you know. We really did want to make the power of the Legacies our own. But not for our sakes.”

“The currency of Money (Game) Master, the snow, has become a virtual currency on par with the yen or the dollar. The world economy revolves around a game. But what’s really important is the administrators…”

“Nobody knows where this game’s servers are based. Nobody knows how the game is managed. That’s why nobody can bribe or threaten their way up. But we’ve been trying to track down the administrators.”

“Because don’t you find it unsettling? If there was someone with admin rights in this world, they could do anything with a wave of their finger. And I don’t just mean here. They’d have a direct link to the wallets of the seven billion people who are totally reliant on it.”

“They could suck all the money out of someone’s bank account. Bring a country to ruin from their armchair. To negotiate with someone like that, we needed something that could upset the balance of the game. So that, next time…I could protect you, the nice man from Called Game.”

“It was very convenient for us, then, that Criminal AO Fell.”

“But it wasn’t us who pulled the trigger. We think it was one of the administrators. The Overtrick were too powerful. They were customized beyond what was permitted in this world. The administrators couldn’t possibly allow them to exist. If the leaderboards get oversaturated, the game gets stale… That’s why one of them needed to upset the status quo.”

“Their name?”

“Perhaps you know them better than I. They’ve withdrawn for now, but they were there when it all began, when Criminal AO Fell. Even I don’t know their real name; it was only at great length that I was able to learn their username.”

“Ayame Suou.”

“They claimed to be your sister. Perhaps they were role-playing? Or perhaps that’s their relation to you in the real world as well.”

04/01/20XX 10:20 AM

Logging In

A Dealer can log in to the game using their phone. The screen produces intense lights that stimulate responses in the user’s brain, giving rise to a totally immersive sensory experience.

(Real-World) AI Business

The AI business model began with automated call centers and assembly lines as a means to cut labor costs, and it ultimately resulted in the automation of every single position within the company. The only human is the chairman, and a family of a few to a few dozen people who unite several such companies might call themselves a conglomerate. Furthermore, many AI companies are linked to the game, managing their assets in the form of snow.

Machine-to-Machine

This refers to the situation where a financial transaction is created not between a human and a machine but between two computer programs. At present, the proportion of machine-to-machine transactions is 48 percent. Some say that if it crosses 50 percent, then mankind will no longer control computers, but instead computers will control the global economy, and humans will become nothing more than gears in its workings.

AI Dropout

This is one way of declaring bankruptcy due to debt. By temporarily forfeiting the right to own property, a household can receive complete welfare from an AI company. Under this system, one can expect a reasonable quality of life and, at least officially, be subjected to no forms of discrimination. In practice, however, AI Dropouts are often made the scapegoats for the various vague fears and insecurities regarding AI technology. The name AI Dropout itself is a derogatory term, not an official title. In general, debts taken on by an AI company accrue no interest, and an AI Dropout can return to normal life if they pay it off.

Futures Trading

A method of trading in which you pay in advance and receive the goods at a later date. If the market price is constantly fluctuating, it is possible to profit by buying low and selling high. However, it is just as easy to take a loss. Food is the most common, but it is possible to buy futures in a wide variety of commodities such as minerals, fuel, gold, platinum, and foreign currencies. Imagine keeping a close eye on trends and purchasing dozens of tons of a popular product to resell online. It should be easy to see the risks involved.

Patron

A Dealer who does not engage in trading personally but instead invests in a popular team. Obviously, if the team fails, a patron will not get their investment back. There is even the risk of the beneficiary simply taking the money and running. They are able to use the money however they wish, including to wipe out their rivals.

Administrator

A management official rumored to be present in Money (Game) Master. Details are sparse, but if they were to possess special privileges within the game, then in a world where the virtual snow is equivalent to physical currency, they would be able to move money with a wave of their hand and even bankrupt entire states. Lily-Kiska revealed that she had been collecting the Legacies precisely so that she could negotiate on equal terms with this administrator, in order to pay back her favor and protect Kaname. She also suggested that the administrator was in fact Kaname’s sister.