All-In Chaos
The restaurant was a complete disaster.
“You all. Become my comrades.”
“...What?”
“Free coupon. I’ll use it right now.”
Where did they think they were slipping away to? If they wanted to profit, they had to get their feet dirty themselves. My brazen demand left Orca staring with her mouth hanging open. She clearly hadn’t expected anything like this.
Helmet tucked under one arm, she blinked a few times before letting out a short, disbelieving laugh.
“Ha! You’re recruiting people for a war with a free delivery coupon? That’s one hell of a cost-performance calculation.”
“Don’t like it? Then forget I said anything.”
“No.”
Orca snatched the business card from my hand. The playful glint in her eyes vanished, replaced by the sharp focus of a gambler.
“Yeah, no helping it. The stakes are what they are. It’d look pathetic to just sit back and watch, right?”
Orca shoved the card into her pocket and flashed a wide grin.
“Sometimes you have to go all-in, yeah? Call. I’m in.”
Orca accepted my proposal without hesitation. The word “all-in” made it clear she saw this as the perfect chance to land a real blow against Reverse Company. At the very least, she must have calculated that standing out in this request would earn her the protection of the Magic Tower or Crome.
“Good. Then leave transportation to us. We’ll get you to Sandhill faster and rougher than anyone else.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“But you’re not seriously suggesting we just charge in blind, are you? You do have a plan, right?”
Orca’s gaze turned skeptical.
The opponent was Reverse Factory—one of the four major guilds. And not just anyone, but their elite recovery unit, the Scavengers. Rushing in without preparation would mean not even leaving bones to collect. Still, I simply shrugged with complete composure.
“Of course I have one.”
“Oh? Let’s hear it.”
“We’re going to keep escalating the scale. Enough that everyone in Shion pays attention.”
“Escalate the scale? What are you talking about?”
Orca frowned, pressing for an answer. I pulled out my phone and showed her the HunterNet screen.
“What the hell is this…”
“The board’s already set. Someone kindly leaked the information for us.”
I tapped the screen and continued my explanation.
“The HunterNet side will stir up noise on its own without us needing to do anything more. What we need to do is pull in other factions.”
“Other factions?”
“As things stand, it’s almost guaranteed that Reverse Factory comes out on top, right? There are plenty of people who won’t like that.”
The four major guilds might not fight openly, but everyone knew they waged proxy wars through their subordinate organizations. There was no way they’d sit back and let something good happen to Reverse Factory. At the very least, they’d move their own forces to interfere.
“If the whole of Shion gets dragged into the resulting chaos… who started it won’t matter anymore.”
“Oh-ho. So you’re going to flip the entire table so no one can tell who the real culprit is?”
“Exactly. So each of you, contact everyone in your network and spread the rumor. Something like, ‘Reverse Factory is transporting something huge in Sandhill. They say it’s an object that could flip the world on its head~’”
When I laid out the plan, Elly immediately pointed out one critical flaw.
“Even so, without proper countermeasures, won’t we all get swept up by both the Destruction Device and the grimoire?”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
“...You really do have a terrible personality.”
“Wait, is it that bad?”
I was just trying to expand Crome’s plan from HunterNet to the entirety of Shion. Did that really deserve such a harsh judgment? While I stood there stunned by Elly’s reaction, she nodded and approved of the strategy.
“Still… this is probably the best method.”
“Right?”
“If we fail to recover the grimoire, I’m going to curse you out plenty.”
“Hey, we’re definitely recovering it.”
As I waved off her threat, everyone began discussing which factions they would spread the rumors to.
“I’ll have to bring it up with the Academy.”
Elly would use her connections with the Academy.
“Then I’ll blanket the back alleys with the rumor. This kind of thing is our specialty.”
Orca would handle the back alleys.
“Um… I’ll talk to my sister!”
“Yeah, give it your best.”
Yuna would contact her family. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from her. The fact that Yuna was even here was proof that the Magic Tower was already involved, so it didn’t matter if she produced results or not.
“Alright. Then…”
“Before we break up, let me point out the obvious—that angel is clearly a trap prepared by Reverse Factory.”
Elly raised her hand and addressed the most important issue. She was right. If Reverse Factory truly hadn’t wanted any interference, they could have kept it completely hidden. The fact that it had been exposed to this many people meant it was a trap by design.
“My guess is they deliberately gathered people to use them as sacrifices for some kind of ritual.”
“I agree.”
Considering Orca’s testimony, it made sense that they were preparing some kind of ceremony. If we couldn’t find a way to counter that angel, it would be game over.
“I’ll look into it by tomorrow. If I don’t find an answer by then, we’ll figure something out.”
“By tomorrow? You think that’s possible?”
“It is.”
If I invested both today’s and tomorrow’s future sight searches, I should at least be able to find a hint. When I nodded with that thought in mind, everyone around me looked anxious, but Elly simply accepted it.
“If you say so, then it must be possible. Fine. Let’s break up here. I don’t feel like staying any longer.”
“Wait, you’re leaving? What about dinner?”
“You actually feel like eating in this situation?”
Elly shot back before vanishing into the mist. Orca’s group also mounted their bikes and disappeared. In the end, only Yuna and I remained in Estelle.
“S-Should we head back too?”
“...We still need to eat.”
I had paid good money for a reservation. It felt wrong to leave without even eating. When I glanced at the manager, he calmly cleared away the debris as if used to situations like this and served us our meal.
“Thank you for the meal.”
“Of course. We hope to see you again soon.”
The food at Estelle lived up to the price. Even in the middle of a wrecked restaurant, it still tasted incredible. That alone told me everything about the chef’s skill.
“Then… I’ll be going.”
“Yeah. Get home safe.”
I sent Yuna back to the Magic Tower and hurried to my own lodging. I was worried whether I could actually uncover a way to deal with the angel using future sight.
“...First, let’s confirm what exactly an angel is.”
As soon as I reached the safety of my room, I began searching. The first keyword was simply “angel.”
“...Yeah, I figured.”
It was pure chaos—people just slapping the word “angel” onto their favorite characters. The most notable detail was how often Luca came up, the character who constantly battled Estelle for first and second place in popularity polls.
“Hmm.”
I set that search aside for now. What about this, then?
I pressed the search button, praying for actual information this time. What appeared instead was an overwhelming wall of despair-inducing posts.
“Who the hell asked about her taste in cake….”
What I needed to face wasn’t a girl who got happy from eating strawberry cake, but a weapon that tore people apart. I clutched my head and revised the search terms. Adding the location name should change the results, right?
“Angel Descent?”
A suspicious new keyword had appeared. I checked the contents of the posts mentioning the Sandhill incident.
Detailed information about the Sandhill incident itself didn’t appear, but simply obtaining the keyword “Angel Descent” was enough.
I immediately entered the new keyword. This time, far more concrete information poured out.
During the Sandhill incident at BB Tower, Reverse Factory used the Eyes System and a grimoire to lure people in. The combination of the Destruction Device and the real grimoire drew aggro from every faction. But Reverse Factory’s actual goal wasn’t the Destruction Device or the grimoire—it was testing the Angel Descent. They basically anchored it like in the main story, burned fuel to activate it. At that point the descent wasn’t perfect, so they also needed the Eyes System’s observation. In the process, the Ash Witch evolved into the Painting Witch, the Eyes System was taken by Monad, and everything went to absolute hell. But the Factory succeeded in securing experimental data, which led to the insane events of the main story. In simple terms, that’s the plot.
“Hmm…”
After investing a massive amount of future sight to gather information on the Angel Descent Experiment, I could immediately draw one conclusion. This Angel Descent Experiment was not something we could stop.