Is This Shit Supposed to Be a Reward?
The coordinates were in the message Vanessa sent.
A massive gas station in Sector 15, perched on high ground near the northern coastline. It used to be a sub-base for Unchained.
A dream jackpot reward was waiting for us!
With a long screech of brakes, the Super Lucky Solution Group's Humvee finally rolled to a stop.
The majestic sight of the enormous gas station...!
"What the hell is this?"
Yui's voice was thick with pure irritation.
Yeah.
It was a total shitshow.
Despite being called a sub-base of the mighty Unchained, there wasn't even a basic barricade in sight.
Actually, it wasn't that it was missing.
Judging by the torn-up dirt, those crazy bitches had spent the past week ripping out every wall, every defensive structure, and hauling it all away by the roots.
Still, since the Unchained bastards had been staying here until recently, the building exteriors themselves weren't complete garbage.
Though the paint was peeling and it all looked pretty rough.
But hey, this much was fine!
Anyway, that was it.
They'd literally left nothing but the empty shells of the buildings.
Everything usable inside—supplies, materials—had been stripped clean. They'd scraped the place down to the soul.
"Wow... they're pointlessly, insanely thorough. They even took the generator? How the hell are they this meticulous?"
Ban let out a hollow laugh, as if he couldn't believe it, and pointed at one spot.
Where a massive generator should have been on one side of the station, there was only an empty space. Thick cables lay scattered like ugly severed veins.
They'd even ripped out the outdoor rest benches, trash cans, and vending machines.
The only things left were the screw holes in the ground, pockmarking the concrete like acne. It was a ridiculous sight.
"I knew this would happen! I told you! It's trash! There's nothing here! It's literally just a 'clean up the shit' quest! I kept saying it over and over and over—"
"Stop. Calm down, Yui. Why do you always know one thing and miss the other two?"
Ban clamped a hand over the rampaging girl's mouth.
"Who cares about the outer shell? The heart of a gas station is the fuel! If it's packed with gas, we're basically oil tycoons!"
Ban, whose eyes had gone half-crazy from a full week of starvation, kicked open the Humvee door and stormed out.
"Claude Ban, the man chosen by the universe. Time to start fuel recovery!? There's no way those idiots hauled out the stuff from the underground tanks too, right?"
He strode forward confidently, grabbed one of the fuel pumps, and yanked out the nozzle.
"Hey! There's no generator, dumbass! How the hell is that gonna work, you brain-dead moron!!"
Yui shouted, but it didn't reach Ban's ears.
"Ta-da!!!!"
*Click.* He pulled the trigger.
*Hssssss—*
Instead of fuel, only the pathetic sound of air rushing out swirled through the empty space.
"Huh? Is this machine broken?"
Ban moved to the next pump and pulled the trigger again.
"Ta-da!!"
*Click. Click. Clunk—*
"Oh come on, boss, your jokes are going too far!"
He went down the entire row of pumps, squeezing every trigger, but there wasn't a drop of fuel.
Not even a whiff beyond a faint smell. They'd scraped the underground tanks clean to the very bottom. Not one liter. Not one fucking drop.
"These insane fucking Unchained crazy bitches!!"
Ban hurled the nozzle to the ground and unleashed a torrent of curses.
Yui jumped down from the Humvee and stomped her foot. Her X-shaped pupils were shaking with rage.
"See!! What did I say! I told you that fox bitch wouldn't just hand over the good stuff! I said it! I said it, I said it, I said iiiiiit!!!"
"Even scumbags have some decency! These bitches call themselves one of the Eight Great Factions and they're so petty they even ripped out the benches and vending machines?! They're straight-up home-invasion burglars!!"
"Kill them all! Let's just kill them all!! Why the hell would you take benches and vending machines!!!"
"Let's go!! We're killing everyone!!"
Ban and Yui's double meltdown had officially begun.
Haze slowly climbed out of the driver's seat and lit a cigarette between her lips.
She'd held out a little hope, but this was exactly what she'd expected.
"That's why I told you not to get your hopes up. Look at the tire tracks on the ground. At least ten heavy tankers came through here."
Just as Haze said, the entrance road was covered in overlapping, heavy tread marks from massive cargo trucks.
"This... this is the reward? After all that suffering and blowing a thousand coins... are we actually going to starve to death now...?"
Yui's legs gave out and she collapsed onto the dirt.
In the middle of that chaos, Eve came scrambling over to Ban and grabbed his sleeve.
"M-Master! Don't get mad! At least they left the shell! We can take shelter from the rain! Hehe..."
"Oh dear. Our dear Professor is as sunny as ever. But this is seriously fucked up."
Huh. The bastard's eyes were genuinely furious now.
Ban nudged the empty nozzle rolling on the ground with his foot and let out a dry scoff.
Absolute Luck
"Vanessa. You fucking bitch. You really screwed us over good."
His voice was completely drained of emotion, dry as dust.
Yui and Eve flinched and carefully watched his expression.
That guy was scariest when he went dead calm like this.
"What do you want to do? Should we go rip that dumpling head's hair out, drag her back, strip her naked, and throw her to the looters? That'd be one hell of a show."
Ban toyed with the grip of his revolver as he muttered.
"We used up all the bullets that day, remember? And we don't have money to buy more."
"Ah... right. Aaaaaaaaah!!!!!"
Ban clutched his head and kicked the gas station pillar.
At that moment, Haze exhaled a long plume of smoke and stepped in front of him.
"Calm down. We knew this might happen. Let's check inside the building first. There might be some scrap metal or leftovers they missed."
"...Fuck. Stupid universe bastard. My luck's really not kicking in today."
Ban roughly tousled the back of his hair and headed toward the main station building.
The four of them stepped inside and immediately fell silent.
Because there really was absolutely nothing.
It was ridiculously spacious. Their footsteps echoed like they were in a cave.
But that was all there was to it.
The dream jackpot reward? Bullshit. It was just a ridiculously wide, empty garbage dump.
The only things left were a few old hammers the Unchained guys had apparently gotten tired of during demolition, a worn-out shovel handle, and some rusty tools scattered across the floor.
"Wowww! It's super spacious! We got ourselves a huge base, Master! We can even run laps in here!"
Eve bounced around the empty lobby, shouting with pure sunshine in her voice.
Her tear-jerkingly bright attempt to see the good in everything only made everyone's heads burn hotter.
Yui was literally grinding her teeth.
"Is this a base? Did we come for a haunted house experience?! Argh, fuck! We should've just had Sis shoot that Vanessa bitch dead back then! My thousand coins... you said it was a huge gas station in Sector 15eee!"
Yui stomped on the floor and threw another tantrum.
Though to be fair, they had definitely received the thousand coins, and it was their own money they'd spent.
Haze quietly flicked her lighter and lit a fresh cigarette.
The acrid smoke drifted through the empty building.
"Man, they didn't even leave a single secret safe or anything. Stingy bastards. They looked ready to rip out the foundation pillars too."
She poked around, knocking on walls and scanning the bare floor.
There was jack shit.
Ban irritably kicked a dented metal cabinet embedded in the wall as hard as he could.
*Crash!*
"Master! Don't get angry. It's okay. It's spacious!"
The rusty cabinet clattered loudly as it toppled over.
Eve rushed over at the noise and patted Ban's back soothingly.
Ban let out a short sigh and looked down at the floor.
"Huh?"
Where the cabinet had been, something felt off.
A ridiculously, microscopically subtle sense of wrongness.
The grout lines between the floor tiles felt ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly misaligned.
"Hey, shorty. Ice Witch. Come here."
At Ban's call, Yui and Haze approached with lukewarm expressions.
"Doesn't this tile look super weird? The lines don't match up right here."
He pointed at the floor. Both girls narrowed their eyes and stared.
"What? It looks the same to me. Are you seeing things because you're starving?"
"There's nothing unusual. It's probably just poor construction. Or have you finally lost your mind, Mr. Ban?"
The sisters' tag-team attack.
But Ban's instincts were different.
The insane gut feeling that the universe had poured everything into—the same one that had kept him alive in this shitty world—brushed across his mind.
There was something here. There had to be.
Without hesitation, Ban picked up the old hammer lying on the floor.
"Uh, uh? What are you doing?"
The moment Yui jumped back in alarm, Ban swung the hammer and smashed it down on the tile.
*CRAAAAASH—!*
The tile shattered into pieces, fragments flying everywhere.
"What the hell are you doing, you maniac! That's dangerous!!"
But there was nothing. Just ordinary concrete underneath.
"See! There's nothing! Have you actually gone crazy?!"
"No. It might be buried deeper."
Like a madman, Ban raised the hammer again.
*BANG! Crash! CRAAAAASH!*
The gas station building rang with deafening noise that sounded like it might collapse.
Concrete shards flew in every direction.
Yui and Eve tried to stop him, but Ban couldn't hear them.
With half-crazed eyes and ragged breathing, he began smashing the floor like a lunatic.
As if the truth of the entire universe was hidden beneath it.
"Ah... he really has lost it..."
"He was so confident when he told us to trust him. It must be embarrassing. We should understand him, Yui."
Yui shook her head, looking fed up.
Haze, ever the big sister, at least tried to defend him... or maybe not, but she still covered for him.
Anyway, they knew they couldn't break that stubbornness, so they decided to just let him be.
How much time had passed?
Roughly two hours later.
Yui, Eve, and Haze had left the noisy building and were sitting side by side on the Humvee's front bumper outside the station.
They were blankly staring at the wide-open northern sea in the distance.
They were so hungry they didn't even have the energy to complain anymore.
From inside the building, the dull, intermittent sound of smashing still echoed.
"That perverted weakling... sure has good stamina. Isn't he hungry...?"
Yui clutched her stomach and muttered weakly.
Right then, the smashing sound from inside abruptly stopped.
"Fuck!!! Kids, get over here!!!!"
Ban's piercing scream rang out across the entire gas station.
The three women jumped down from the Humvee in shock at the tearing shriek coming from inside.
Yui got there first, grumbling as she approached the shattered floor.
"What now!! Did you find gold bars or something?!"
Yui peered into the dusty pit and froze in surprise.
Beneath the concrete floor that Ban had spent two hours maniacally hammering away at.
There lay a ridiculously massive hunk of metal, covered in dirt.
"What the hell is this hatch? Why is there suddenly a hatch??"
Yui shouted in disbelief.
It was a completely random underground hatch. Why the hell was something like this buried under a gas station floor?
"What did I tell you? I said the universe helps with my luck, didn't I?"
Ban, face drenched in sweat, grabbed the hatch handle and twisted with all his strength.
*Greeee—*
*Greeeeeee—!*
With brute force, the handle turned.
Then he jammed the shovel handle into the gap as a lever.
"Uaaaaaaaah!!"
Veins bulging on his forehead, Ban put his full weight on the lever.
Eve and Haze joined in, adding their weight as well.
*Greeeeeee— CRASH!!*
With a heavy grinding sound, the massive steel hatch finally flipped open.
Below it stretched an endlessly wide staircase, broad enough for ten adults to walk down side by side.
But the craziest part wasn't that.
"Huh...? The lights are on?"
Haze said, pulling out a fresh cigarette.
Just as she said, soft lights glowed from the fixtures installed along both sides of the stairs.
"No way... they ripped out the generator and cut all the cables outside. So why is there still electricity?"
At Yui's question, Ban just shrugged.
"No idea, fuck. Guess that dumpling head couldn't find this part. Let's head down."
The four of them carefully descended the stairs.
After what felt like an eternity, they reached the bottom. This time, a vast lobby-like space appeared—completely empty.
The walls were made of cold, sleek metal, nothing like the old, hollowed-out gas station above.
And at the very back of the lobby.
A massive elevator door stood imposingly.
"I-It looks like it works, Master!"
Eve pointed at the control panel beside the elevator.
The panel had faint lights blinking. It meant power was definitely being supplied.
"How do you open this? I don't know how to operate it."
Yui fiddled with the panel, but it gave no response.
There were no number buttons, no up or down arrows.
Just a smooth metal plate.
Ban pushed Yui aside and stepped right up to the panel.
His eyes scanned every inch, looking for some way to activate it, until his gaze dropped to the bottom.
Right in the center of the lower section. A tiny engraved groove.
"Huh...?"