Side: Kasumigaseki

With phones ringing off the hook and emails pouring in one after another, the Bureau was in an uproar.

"Tch, just the ninth one alone is already a nightmare!"

The Bureau was swamped dealing with the ninth dungeon, discovered the day before, and on top of that, the dungeon footage leak online—reported late the previous night—was getting worse.

The reposts wouldn't stop, and cracks were starting to show in the secrecy.

Once one video made the rounds, similar dungeon footage that had surfaced in the past and been scrubbed by various governments got dug up again. The fact that even copies saved by private individuals couldn't be erased had come back to bite them.

Of course, for now most people were just sharing and reposting it half in jest, but some were beginning to realize the footage couldn't be CGI or the like, and it was turning into a real commotion.

There were also dungeons—few in number—that civilians had discovered while slipping past the eyes of public agencies. Some of the people who'd kept such a dungeon to themselves were now releasing partial information mixed with fakes, and it had become a massive uproar of a little truth tangled up with a lot of lies.

Naturally, governments around the world were scrambling to clamp down on it, but the scale and shape of their countermeasures varied so much that they couldn't get in step, and the spread wouldn't stop.

The truth was, it was the same within Japan—the limited few who knew the truth were moving to keep it under wraps, but with so few people, they'd fallen behind the curve.

"There's a report that several hacker groups are spreading it too. Do those guys think dungeons are some kind of treasure trove?"

"Hide something and people want to expose it. That's human nature for you."

"Is this really the time for that?!"

The Bureau staff were doing their utmost to keep it contained, but in a heavily information-saturated modern age, managing and concealing something like dungeons—where you couldn't tell where they'd appear next—was no easy task.

Honestly, they deserved credit for keeping the lid on it this long.

"Report it to the Chief Cabinet Secretary! We could be looking at a worst-case scenario!"

The exposure of the dungeons—like so many other classified matters and secrets, this too was rooted in a lack of trust in a privileged few, in nations, in the media.

It would be intolerable for it to be monopolized by a select few. Even among UN member states, there was a gap in attitude toward dungeons between developed and developing countries; the developing ones, suspicious that the developed nations would corner the dungeon rights for themselves, had begun acting on their own.

Whether that was coincidence or fate—far removed from Kakeru and the others, the world was, little by little, beginning to change.

Side: Amahashi Kakeru

We sure bought a lot.

I'd figured we might eat out for dinner too, but Pricia and the others said they wanted to have a relaxed meal at home, so we'd headed back.

We'd brought home the clothes, the odds and ends, and the smartphones, but furniture like beds we'd had delivered, so those wouldn't arrive until tomorrow at the earliest. For now the girls' rooms only had guest futons, after all.

"This is rather interesting. This thing called a smartphone."

Showing no sign of fatigue and looking the most delighted of all was probably Noctia. She was fiddling with the smartphone she'd just bought.

How do I put it—my image of the Demon Lord, who'd kept up that lofty, enigmatic air the whole time, kind of fell apart.

Now then, I was thinking I should get started on dinner when my phone rang.

"Amahashi! Did you see it?!"

It was Kitamura. He was so worked up he might as well have been saying I should know what he meant even without a subject.

"See what? I was out shopping today and just got home, so……"

Social media, a video-streaming site, whatever—just search "dungeon," he told me, so I booted up the PC and opened the internet.

"There's footage of that creature you drove off!"

The girls, who'd been looking over their purchases, peered at the monitor too, wondering what was going on. A little close. Close enough that I could hear them breathing.

Whoa—now's not the time to be worrying about that.

When I searched like he said, the same video I'd seen at the electronics retailer earlier had been reposted all over the place, and I could watch it. On top of that, there were several videos of what looked like dungeons I'd never seen.

"That's definitely that creature."

"Online they're calling it a goblin! The CGI-and-special-effects crowd and the it's-real crowd are split, and it's a huge mess. The school's in trouble, isn't it? There's no way that's CGI or special effects!!"

In any case, I could tell Kitamura was worked up by how far this had blown past anything normal. With the same kind of monster down under the school, I figured it made sense he'd be uneasy too.

"Just calm down for now. They surveyed it today, didn't they? If anything comes up, they'll explain it or take measures or something."

I mean, judging by the situation, somebody seemed to be trying to hide the dungeons, so there was a good chance it'd get swept under the rug. As an ordinary high schooler, if safety was guaranteed, maybe that was actually the better outcome.

But just then, another call came in.

"Sorry, I've got another call. I'll ring you back later."

"Amahashi-kun? Sorry to call out of the blue. Are you seeing the commotion on social media?"

It was from Horii-san. Who'd she get my number from? I didn't remember giving it out. Through Kitamura, probably.

"Yeah, Kitamura got in touch, so I'm looking at it now."

"It's that creature, right?"

"More the same species than the exact same individual, I think, but I'm pretty sure of it."

I hadn't paid it much mind since it was just a Lesser Goblin, but it seemed the two who'd been there at the time were past mere shock. At this rate, the other one, Aizawa-san, was probably the same.

"My father says he's going to the school again tomorrow. He says the parents should inspect the underground space themselves first. And if all of us testify together that we were attacked by some unidentified thing, he says he'll press them on that too."

"Horii-san, your father is, if I recall……"

"He's a PTA officer."

I'd looked into it a bit after getting home yesterday—Horii-san was the daughter of the president of one of Japan's leading corporations. Naturally, her father was the company president, and his influence over the school was no small thing.

"If you would, won't you testify? I've asked Kitamura-kun and Aizawa-san too. But the testimony I want most is yours, Amahashi-kun—you're the one who drove it off."

A natural enough reaction. Their kids had fallen into an underground space the school didn't even know about. If they said they'd been attacked there by a bipedal, unidentified creature, the parents would worry while doubting their kids' sanity.

If they talked it through properly and the parents understood their kids hadn't lost their minds, it was entirely possible they would believe them and act.

But I was torn. I had a feeling pushing this any further wouldn't lead anywhere good. This wasn't on a level any individual could do anything about.

I'd been through all sorts in that other world too, but standing out as an individual never led to anything good.

"Kakeru, accept. If you refuse, you'll be suspected."

Pricia, who could hear Horii-san's voice leaking out of the phone, gave me her advice in a low whisper.

"She's right. It depends on the degree, but refusing, in your position, would be unnatural."

Filia too, huh. True, that might be the case.

"All right. I don't know if I'll be any help, but if you need me, I'll testify."

"I'm glad. I don't want this getting brushed under the rug like this. It'll be too late once something happens, won't it? Even back then, who knows what would've become of us if you hadn't calmly driven it off, Amahashi-kun."

I thought the school and the police had handled it in good faith. It was just that even when we'd testified we'd been attacked by something bipedal and not human, the response had been lukewarm.

A monkey or something must have gotten in—that was probably the impression they'd had, and that was normal.

That said, what we'd seen didn't look like a monkey. And once similar footage like this started going around, of course we'd feel sure of it.

For the moment, Horii-san and I ended the call there.

Well now. We'd just have to see how this played out.