Burn It All — Let's Go Broke
The Green House Mart entrance was buzzing with chaotic energy.
"Kyaaahuuu! Today we eat till we die! My wallet's sitting on a fat stack of one thousand coins now! It's loaded~! Load it all up!"
Claude Ban stood there looking like the happiest man alive, yelling at his party members while dragging a shopping cart behind him.
"Kyaaaa!! Master is the best!"
"This is so embarrassing..."
"You're being loud."
The reactions were all over the place.
Still, everyone had shaken off the tension from earlier. If they'd actually traded gunfire with those Unchained bastards, it wouldn't have been surprising if someone had died. That was just how things worked.
Thanks to the thousand coins Vanessa had dumped into Ban's digital wallet, today was a proper celebration party.
Yui, embarrassed by how hyped up Ban was acting, kept her distance while sweeping entire shelves of cultured meat into her cart.
How long has it been since I last had grilled fresh meat?
She was secretly thrilled. Her hips wiggled excitedly as she started grabbing random snacks and piling them in too.
"Wow! Master! Look at this! Bandages with pink rabbits on them! And the gauze pads are shaped like teddy bears!!"
Eve darted between the medical supplies aisle and the general goods section, scooping up a ridiculous amount of cute junk and actual medical tools before dumping them all into the cart.
Haze, who had been quietly following behind her, casually tossed three bottles of strong vodka, four cartons of economy cigarettes, and a box of sniper rifle ammo she'd found shoved in a corner into the cart like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Whoa, guys? I said load up, but you're actually going all out? What if we go over a thousand coins?"
"What are you talking about? There's no way we'd burn through a thousand coins with this much."
Is that how it works...?
Ban decided to worry about the bill later.
He'd thought he'd be the most excited one filling the cart, but these three were clearly enjoying themselves even more.
Grinning, he added four more cartons of cigarettes to the pile.
Cigarettes alone were four hundred coins.
"Hey!! You crazy bastard, how many cigarettes are you grabbing?! My sister already got some!"
"Hey now! Don't underestimate a heavy smoker!"
"That's nothing to brag about!!!"
The four of them bickered nonstop as they swept through the mart aisles like a storm.
At the checkout, Ban proudly tapped his digital wallet with a smug look on his face. He looked more annoying than ever, yet somehow happier than he'd been in ages.
A few hours later, back at the shelter living room.
The four of them were huddled together on the floor around a portable burner.
Meat sizzled deliciously on the grill while two empty vodka bottles rolled across the floor.
It had been a while since they'd had real alcohol, and the stuff was coursing through their veins, leaving them more relaxed than usual.
"Maaasteeeer... hehe... Our Master is the best in the universe..."
Eve's face was flushed bright red as she clung to Ban's left arm like a leech, rubbing her cheek against him nonstop.
The feeling of her massive breasts squishing against his forearm made Ban chuckle as he knocked back another drink.
"Hey! You cow!! Stop sticking to him like that! Isn't it hot?!"
Yui, sitting across from them, was slurring her words more than usual.
Her purple eyes were half-glazed thanks to the alcohol.
She pointed accusingly at Eve, then slowly scooted her butt over until she was right next to Ban. She plopped her head against his right shoulder and muttered,
"You... weak perverted bastard! You can't even hold your liquor! Yet you act all tough!!"
"Excuse me? You're the one who's the most drunk here, shorty. And don't drool on my shoulder. Want a hundred forehead flicks?"
"I'm not drooling, okay?!"
Yui grumbled and pinched Ban's side.
In the middle of that mess, Haze took a sip of vodka without any snacks and quietly stared at her sister.
"Hey. Yui. Stop clinging to him."
Whether she was worried her sister was falling for the perverted leader's schemes or just plain jealous, Haze pulled Yui away from Ban.
"Hic...! U-um, sis, I wasn't clinging to him at all, okay?"
Haze dragged the flustered, defensive Yui over and sat her down beside her. Then she refilled Ban's glass without a word.
"By the way, Mr. Ban. Where exactly are you from?"
At Haze's question, both Eve and Yui's gazes snapped to Ban's face.
"Huh? Me?"
Ban picked up some meat with his chopsticks and answered casually.
"Yes. The way you fight... you're at least Aegis or Olympus level. But you also seem way too much like a street thug. I'm genuinely curious about your background."
"Street thug... Isn't that a bit harsh, you sexy fox ice witch with the cross eyes..."
"Be quiet. So where are you from?"
Haze immediately cut off his incoming nonsense and asked directly again.
Not just Haze—everyone was curious.
Just where the hell had this crazy bastard come from, and how had he suddenly started running around causing chaos like this?
Especially Yui. She was a former Intelli Master, after all. A monster of his caliber should've shown up on their radar.
Ban chewed and swallowed another piece of meat, then neatly downed the glass Haze had poured for him in one shot.
"Krrgh," he grunted, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before grinning.
"Me? I'm an orphan."
Well, that was pretty obvious. In this fucked-up world, having parents who were still alive was the rarer thing.
"Never saw my parents' faces. Don't even remember them. I just rolled with whatever life threw at me. In this shitty world, who cares about a name? I lived without one just fine."
Yui's eyes narrowed.
"You don't have a name? But you do. Claude Ban. Isn't Claude your family name and Ban your given name?"
Ban pulled something out from inside his shirt. Everyone had seen it before—the pendant he always wore.
A finely crafted silver four-leaf clover. And engraved clearly in the center was the number 7.
"When I had to register as a mercenary, they said I needed a name, so I made one up. Pretty fucking genius, right?"
"What are you even saying...?"
Ban shrugged arrogantly.
"Look closely, everyone? The pendant's a clover with a seven, right? Clover Seven. So I turned Clover into the cool-sounding Claude, and from Seven, I took out the 'Se' from sex—"
"What kind of bullshit..."
"Then you're left with 'Ven,' right? Say that in a cool way and it becomes Ban. Claude Ban! What do you think? This insane naming sense. If I'd opened a naming shop I'd be rolling in money. Hmm. Maybe I should change the group from Solution Team to Naming Team."
"......"
Ah. The alcohol was wearing off.
The living room fell into a winter-like silence. The only sound was the sizzling meat on the grill.
"That's seriously lame. Why did I expect anything from a guy with logic like that?"
Yui pressed a hand to her forehead.
"Just call yourself Clover Seven. That sounds less pathetic."
Haze put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it.
But of course... our Eve is still—!!!
"Why is that genius... exactly? Master, you must have drunk a lot, right?"
Ah... Even Eve wasn't buying it.
"What kind of reaction is that? You guys really don't understand art, do you? Typical for people from the Eight Factions, ugh..."
When Ban looked at them like he'd been wronged and shook his head, the three women lightly ignored him and went back to eating meat.
"...What are we supposed to do with this atmosphere?"
Yui spoke up again.
"What do you mean, what?"
Huh. This guy actually seems a little sulky.
Haze downed another shot and asked again.
"So you were originally from the northern region?"
"Nah. I'm from another continent."
At those words, the chopsticks in all three women's hands froze at the same time.
"What? Another continent? Don't joke around. Do you know how much fuel it takes to travel between continents? Nobody does something that bad for cost-efficiency. And why would you come to this equally shitty place?"
"The continent I was on got completely swallowed by a Dead Zone. Everything. It just turned pitch black from one end to the other."
Ban lit a cigarette like it was no big deal. He was talking about the destruction of an entire continent like it was yesterday's lunch.
"So what did you do?"
"I saw a boat by the shore and just got on. Rowing sounded like a pain in the ass, so I figured if I died, I died. If I lived, I lived. I fell asleep and woke up here."
"...."
Another round of awful silence fell over the room.
"You're insane... Does that even make sense?"
Yui sounded utterly dumbfounded. Of course it didn't. By normal standards, that survival story was completely incomprehensible.
"It makes sense because I'm sitting right here, aren't I?"
Ban thumped his own chest and laughed shamelessly.
"Wow! Our Master really is the man chosen by the universe!! The absolute best!"
Maybe she felt bad for not playing along earlier, because Eve was fully on board this time.
She even clasped her hands together, eyes sparkling.
Yui found it ridiculous but didn't bother arguing further.
It sounded like complete nonsense, but with this crazy bastard... maybe it really was possible?
"Alright then, Mr. Man Chosen By The Universe. I hope that luck of yours means the gas station is still intact. The odds are low, but..."
Haze knocked back the rest of her vodka and let out a small laugh.
The peaceful atmosphere returned. The four of them scraped up every last piece of meat left on the grill.
After enjoying high-quality food and drinks for the first time in ages, everyone's mood was at an all-time high.
"But how did you know about the Unchained inquisitors the second you saw them? You said you were from another continent."
"Are you stupid? I've been rolling around this world long enough to pick up information. I already knew about that much."
"Heee~ Is that so? Oh right! How much do we have left? You were the one who paid, right?"
At Yui's question, Ban proudly pulled out his terminal.
The number displayed on it was...
12 coins.
"???"
Everyone stared at the number in stunned silence.
Twelve coins? After bringing in a thousand coins?
"What the hell? Why only twelve coins...? What happened?"
"What do you mean, what happened? You guys were the ones who went crazy loading the cart."
He wasn't wrong. They had gone pretty wild.
Though he was the one who told them to load up first...
Yui snatched Ban's terminal and frantically pulled up the receipt.
"Sis... Fifty coins for one bottle of vodka? What the hell, that's insanely expensive!!"
Yui immediately started scolding Haze first.
"It tasted good though."
Looking embarrassed, Haze started lining up the empty bottles.
"And you, Ban!! See?! What did I tell you? Four hundred coins just on cigarettes? You want your lungs to rot and die?"
"Don't underestimate a heavy smok—"
"Shut up!"
Next target after Ban was immediately Eve.
"You cow! Why did you buy a hundred coins worth of rabbit bandages and teddy bear gauze?! Are we in kindergarten?!"
"Hic! Master said we could buy whatever we wanted!"
Under Yui's area-of-effect attack, everyone subtly avoided eye contact.
"...You were the one who grabbed all the meat and snacks, shorty."
Ban tried a weak defense, but it was useless.
"Aaaagh! My money! My hard-earned money!!"
Yui rolled around on the floor screaming. Her personality really was something else.
It wasn't even all her money.
"It's fine. Don't freak out. We've still got that luxury super-sized gas station in District 15. That's our money maker!"
"As if!!!!!"
Ban tried to smooth things over, but just like he'd said from the beginning, there was no way the gas station still had supplies left.
The fact that they'd been told to come back in a week meant they'd already cleared out whatever was left.
The bigger problem was the next seven days.
They'd just finished a brutal request and he'd been planning to lounge around like a bum for a week, but now they'd have to work again.
The fancy meat party was over after tonight.
"A week... I wanted to lie down starting today... How are we supposed to survive on twelve coins..."
Yui muttered, completely out of it. Ban quietly got up and fled to the bathroom.
And then, one week later.
"Ah, fuck. I'm seriously gonna die of hunger."
Ban sprawled on the sofa, staring at the ceiling and muttering to himself.
The Solution Team had ended up stuck inside the shelter the entire week, rationing their remaining food in the most miserly way possible just to survive.
The glorious meat party already felt like a past life.
"My stomach won't stop growling, Master..."
Eve sniffled as she flopped face-down onto Ban's stomach.
The feeling of her massive breasts didn't matter anymore—they were just heavy.
"Get off, you walking wallet. You're pressing on my stomach and making me even hungrier."
Ban lightly shoved Eve aside and struggled to his feet.
Yui was slumped over the dining table, blankly staring at the wall. Haze leaned against the window, just puffing away on a cigarette.
Was she actually keeping watch outside? Her eyes looked a little unfocused.
"Everyone up. Pack your things. We're leaving."
Ban slowly got up and started gathering their gear.
"Is it today...?"
Yui asked in a voice that sounded half-dead.
"Yeah. Exactly one week. That bitch Vanessa finally contacted us. Time to go claim that huge gas station we risked our lives for!"
At Ban's words, Haze let out a small laugh and stubbed out her cigarette.
"A week... It really dragged on. I hope Mr. Ban's right and the place is packed with fuel and supplies."
"As if, sis!"
Well, even Haze didn't actually think it was likely, but she was still holding onto a little hope.
"Of course it'll be perfect! Just trust me!"
Ban grinned as he threw on his coat.
Yeah. If his insane luck was good enough to find a shelter like this in the middle of a Gray Zone, then the gas station was obviously going to be in pristine condition!
The Solution Team, united by their collective starvation.
It was finally time for them to go collect their rightful reward.
The rough sound of the Humvee roaring to life shattered the shitty morning of the northern district.