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THE HIDDEN SIDE SEEPS OUT

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*****

Once she had punched the yakuza and sent him flying, Arcelia sobered up instantly.

She didn't feel a shred of regret; instead, she locked her sights on the yakuza swarming out from the back of the snack bar. In a single breath, she dove into close quarters, grabbed her handcuffs—improvised into brass knuckles—and struck at their vitals before immediately backing off. Hit and run.

Every time Arcelia dove in and out, one of the tough-looking yakuza would collapse, letting out a groan.

True, Arcelia was a clumsy former office worker who hadn't managed to become a full investigator in ten years, but she had still spent that decade undergoing training for the investigator exams—which were effectively special ops training. Mere yakuza who had never undergone proper training were no match for her.

The drunken patrons and bar staff, who had been cowering in the corners of the shop, watched her with their mouths hanging wide open.

Thanks to her perception filter, Arcelia had disguised her distinctive eyes and ears to look like a standard human's. However, since she hadn't changed anything else, she was putting on a surreal display for everyone around her: a petite woman barely under 130 centimeters tall, punching yakuza unconscious with her bare hands.

「She’s definitely not the kind of fairy I know.」

Rob muttered this as he smashed a beer bottle over the head of a yakuza trying to ambush the agile Arcelia from behind. Even in this world, beer bottles were terrifyingly durable; it didn't shatter, but it certainly knocked the yakuza out.

「This is getting chaotic.」

Around them, thick-voiced shouts of 「They're raiding us!」 and 「Kill them!」 mixed with the metallic clanging of blades clashing. Add in the whistling of air and the crackle of tiny lightning bolts, and this Japanese-style magical world was turning out to be quite hazardous.

Looking over, Saburo was also moving to back Arcelia up, tossing yakuza aside one after another with techniques that looked like Judo or Aikido.

Without a word, the three of them synced their movements, securing a path to the snack bar's exit and urging the patrons to evacuate. Berta was standing by the entrance, leisurely waving them over without having fought at all, which seemed to put the patrons at ease as they headed toward her.

***

「……Well, that’s that for now.」

Rob scanned the snack bar—now filled only with the intro of an enka song someone had apparently requested—to make sure no customers had been left behind before stepping outside.

But waiting outside were the patrons who were supposed to have escaped.

「Didn't you run?」

As Rob muttered this, Saburo noticed something wrong. Senkago’s entertainment district was known as the "City That Never Sleeps," with bright lights that never dimmed until dawn. It was never exactly a safe neighborhood, but now, sirens wailed in the distance. From somewhere else, screams and shouts, and even the sounds of explosions and lightning, echoed through the air.

Black smoke and sparks were dancing into the sky behind a distant building. The patrons hadn't chosen not to run; they *couldn't* run. Despite all this commotion, the police were nowhere to be seen, taxis wouldn't come even if they called, and no one knew where to evacuate to.

「I thought this was just a yakuza turf war, but...」

Rob glanced at Saburo, who had already pulled out a communication magic tool that looked like a cell phone and was contacting someone. After finishing the call a few minutes later, Saburo explained the situation to Rob and the others. It seemed he had made a direct call to the Nichirin government's leadership.

Right now, incidents were breaking out all over Toto's central districts: Chuo, Nagata, Ominato, and Senkago. A truck had rammed into an underground casino. A hitman had raided a mob office. Far-left groups and far-right groups were clashing, and followers of a new religion, who looked like ordinary citizens, were going on indiscriminate stabbing rampages. All over the street corners, sporadic turf wars were breaking out between various factions, and reports of theft, robbery, and rape were pouring in. The police were working at full capacity to handle each incident, but they were completely overwhelmed.

While talking on the phone, Saburo also scanned his surroundings. The intelligence agency bodyguards who always protected him from the shadows were still nowhere to be seen. Something must have happened without them knowing.

「I’m going to take the evacuees to the nearest police station. Can I count on your help?」

Rob and Arcelia nodded at Saburo’s words. It seemed Berta was coming along too.

Rob and the others set off with the evacuees. Along the way, they dealt with yakuza clashes, beat back opportunistic rioters, and gathered more people who had failed to escape, all while making their way to the police station.

***

「――If it weren't for you bastards...」

A sudden roar. A man wearing a helmet jumped out of an alleyway and lunged at them.

Right before their eyes, the young man—who had looked like an average Nichirin person—suddenly inflated into a muscle monster. He was more than twice his original height, and his arms and legs were so thick that Arcelia's entire body wouldn't have been enough to match them. The only thing left of the man was the helmet perched precariously on his head.

The hulking arms roared. He swung an arm as thick as a log, which slammed into the ground between them like a cannonball. Rob and his group scattered, easily dodging the clumsy fist of someone who had clearly only dabbled in boxing.

「――GRAAAAAAAHHHHH!」

The muscle man bellowed and continued to thrash wildly at anything within reach. The evacuees screamed, and a few collapsed in terror. Perhaps finding them annoying, the muscle man glared at them and raised his fist.

But by then, Rob had already slipped behind him, gripping a certain gun in his hand, and swung it down with all his might.

『Gun-Hammer』

It was a rifle that was essentially a model gun, with the only defining feature being an incredibly hard pistol grip. The method was simple: hold the barrel and swing the hard grip like a club. It was a desperate measure Rob had devised to fight in this Nichirin world, where personal armament was extremely restricted.

The sideways blow from behind sent his helmet flying, and the muscle man stopped for a second, but he didn't change targets and swung his fist again.

But Saburo was already there. Managing to wedge himself into the split second Rob had created, Saburo parried the muscle man's fist and used the momentum to throw him. At the same time, Saburo put his weight into the muscle man, pressed a baton-type magic tool against his throat, and discharged electricity the moment he slammed into the ground. Between the impact of the fall, the strike to the throat, and the powerful, lightning-like discharge, even the muscle man lost consciousness.

Arcelia then used the "Shackles that Bind Evil" to restrain his wrists.

「The magic in this world is frightening too. Are there swarms of these guys running around?」

Saburo shook his head.

Powerful magic didn't exist in this world. Most magic only unleashed significant power when amplified by magic tools. And even those tools, when used normally, didn't have the power to warp a human body into a muscle-bound monster.

「……He probably had several magic tools embedded in his body, magically fused with him.」

「Is such dangerous tech actually out there?」

「Once fused, there’s no turning back. It’s illegal in the public sphere, and even in the underworld, not even hitmen use it.」

Technically, there were few who could perform the procedure, and it was far too expensive to be used for disposable pawns.

Saburo looked down at the transformed man. His true identity was unclear. If appearances were anything to go by, he was a far-left fighter. If he was in disguise, perhaps a far-right agent, or maybe a member of an extremist religious group that viewed summoners and the Alliance as enemies. It was also highly possible he was just a regular citizen who had been instigated by one of those groups.

*If it weren't for you.* It was the stock phrase of those hostile to Saburo and the Alliance.

If this world had followed the same history as Japan's, it might have ended with the defeat of the Nichirin Empire. But with Saburo's summoning, that had been thwarted again and again since World War II.

Historically speaking, one could say his military power, knowledge, and ideology had completely transformed the world—to the point where history is divided between "Before Fujita Saburo" and "After." Saburo had certainly considered the fact that his very existence had changed history. Even so, he had never had the option of not intervening in the war if he wanted to live with his head held high. He had no regrets about that.

Saburo only looked at the muscle man for a fleeting moment before resuming the evacuation. After about thirty more minutes of fighting and guiding the evacuees, Rob and the others finally reached the police station. Barricades had been set up in front of the station, and police officers in heavy gear were standing guard.

Behind Rob, sighs of relief broke out. Finally making contact with the government officials and those who had been guarding Saburo from the shadows, the current situation became clear.

The trigger for all of this was the discovery of Rob's identity by the Nichirin government. But that, in itself, had been resolved without issue through discussions between the Nichirin government and Edmond.

But the foreign nations felt otherwise. Socialist forces had stirred up Nichirin’s far-left groups to create a commotion, sending in assassins to kill Saburo or Alliance members while taking advantage of the chaos.

The Nichirin government, which had been tracking the far-left groups, moved to stop them, but a high-ranking Nichirin politician went rogue, deciding that it would be better to kill Saburo than to let him be poached, and set far-right groups and hitmen in motion.

Then, the far-left and far-right factions clashed, and antisocial organizations connected to each side were mobilized. In the shadows, spies and operatives from other countries moved in to profit from the aftermath, running into each other in the process.

With all that, various other unrelated disputes between these nations that had been shelved until now became entangled, and the situation quickly spiraled into a quagmire.

Everyone's gaze gathered on Berta. One could argue the cause was Berta revealing Rob’s identity to Nichirin.

「I don’t know what you’re talking about? No one told me to keep my mouth shut.」

Certainly, Berta was just the one who pressed the final button; one could say the root cause was allowing Rob and Saburo to meet in the first place. Or even before that, there were issues with how the Alliance and this country were structured, or perhaps the cause was an international community that couldn't fully trust them. There was no clear enemy, no target to defeat to resolve the situation. For Rob, who had spent his life fighting the absolute evil that was the Demon King, this was a rather difficult situation to handle.

*****

Of course, it's Berta again.

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