Pain wracked my body as though I had been beaten all over. Grimacing, I pushed myself upright.

There wasn't a part of me that didn't hurt. My arms and legs ached as though someone had taken a club to them, and my parched mouth tasted of sand. I rubbed my gritty eyes a couple of times and looked around, but everything was still pitch-black. Apparently, my eyes weren't the problem.

A faint light glimmered in the distance, but it was nowhere near enough to illuminate my surroundings.

After a moment of groaning and scratching my head, I noticed something strange.

Wait. Who took off my straitjacket? I was definitely bound tight when they threw me into the bottomless pit.

I had been trussed up so tightly I couldn't move a single limb, with a blindfold over my eyes and even a gag in my mouth. Unable to move, I had been thrown to the bottom of the pit without a single safety measure.

Even during the fall, I had struggled desperately to survive, but the Military State's specially made straitjacket wasn't something an ordinary person like me could do anything about. Well, it would have been strange if I could undo a straitjacket the Military State had put so much effort into making. I kept up my futile resistance inside it until I finally collapsed from exhaustion.

I consoled myself with the fact that Mother Earth would at least finish me off in one painless blow.

And yet I was alive after hitting the bottom? After falling for hours without any safety equipment?

No, hold on. Before that...

This was supposed to be the bottomless pit cursed by Mother Earth. An abyss with no bottom. So why did it have one?

It was a contradiction. The bottom of a bottomless pit—the words alone made it clear that no such thing should exist.

After pondering what could possibly have happened, I realized something and muttered aloud. This was it. There was no other explanation.

"Oh. I died and went to hell."

["No. This is not hell."]

"Aaaagh!"

The voice had come from right behind me. Startled out of my wits, I tumbled across the floor. Pulling my trembling body together, I shouted at the “something” in front of me.

"Who's there?!"

Two eyes gleamed in the darkness. Something with a presence as faint as a ghost's was glaring at me from that spot.

It definitely wasn't human. If it were, I would have read its thoughts. Then what was it? A ghost? An animal? Or a messenger from hell?

While I trembled in fear and waited for an answer, those eyes slowly approached. My eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, picked out its outline.

Recognizing what it was, I addressed it in a shaky voice.

"A golem?"

It was neither a ghost nor an animal. A messenger from hell was probably the closest description.

After all, the thing before me was a military magic golem manufactured by that hellish country, the Military State.

Was this what you'd get if you tried to imitate a human using nothing but cylinders and blocks? The golem watched me with glowing crystal-orb eyes. A mechanical voice issued from the speaker beside its mouth.

["I am Captain AB, a communications officer of the Military State. As of today, you have been transferred to this training facility. You are required to perform your assigned duties under my direction."]

A magic golem. The remote-controlled type that moved in sync with its operator. Easy to control, it was a commonly used piece of Military State equipment.

Looking at the golem, I nodded and lamented its fate.

"So golems go to hell too? Tsk, tsk. Just how many people did you slice up...? Blame yourself for being born a Military State golem."

["This is not hell. If you do not believe me, I recommend looking around."]

I looked around as the golem suggested.

The ground was concrete, the kind you could see anywhere in the Military State. I didn't know what lay beneath it, but the concrete covering it held up the world in a solid slab. Naturally, there was no grass or any trees. Only colorless, man-made structures stood in place of vegetation.

Without thinking, I looked up. There wasn't even a glimmer of anything, let alone a sky. Pure darkness, neither night nor anything else. A light-swallowing blackness that only the void could offer stretched out above.

Then, as I slowly lowered my gaze, a rather familiar building came into view.

Searchlights swept from side to side, illuminating the darkness within the bottomless pit. Round patches of light scoured the concrete ground. Then one brushed my foot, and every searchlight in the place swung toward me at once, their beams crawling across the ground like thoroughly provoked beasts.

The blinding artificial light converged on me as though trying to burn me alive. Shielding my eyes with a hand, I took in the enormous structure I hadn't noticed before.

A rectangular five-story building constructed solely for practical purposes. Searchlights for spotting escapees hung from thick concrete walls reinforced here and there with steel plates. Large lamps mounted high above illuminated the area around the prison, but they were a pitiful substitute for the sun. Here, only a few dozen meters away, I couldn't see a thing unless a searchlight reached it.

An isolated island on land, built to separate the inside from the outside completely.

The prison I had only ever seen from afar now stood before my eyes. An emblem of the Military State itself, it watched me through dozens of searchlights, as though declaring that this was where I would be staying from now on.

Calmly standing in all that light, the golem spoke.

["Do you understand the situation now?"]

I nodded slowly.

The great prison of Tantalus certainly seemed like a place worthy of becoming a Military State legend.

"What a deranged country. They find a miraculous place like the bottom of a bottomless pit, and they build a prison."

Should I call it typical of the Military State? Only a country that insane would follow a deranged tech tree that started with building a prison at the bottom of a bottomless pit.

The golem took issue with my muttering.

["I must caution you against such subversive remarks."]

"Unbelievable. You lock an innocent person up in a place like this and expect a show of loyalty?"

["Time is short, so I will first brief you on your duties. I recommend listening carefully... unless you wish to die."]

The golem delivered the ominous warning. I had been ready to unleash a torrent of sarcasm, but the menace in its voice made me shut my mouth for the moment.

Once I stopped talking, a flat voice came from the golem's microphone.

["This is Tantalus, a reeducation facility designated as a Level 5 critical facility by the Military State."]

“Reeducation facility” was the Military State's alternative name for a prison. Supposedly, some study had found that words like “prison” and “prisoner” had unpleasant connotations that did nothing for social stability. So they called prisons “reeducation facilities” and prisoners “trainees.”

To put it kindly, it was Military State wordplay. Less kindly, it was language control.

Not that the Military State would admit to either.

["Tantalus was established to house trainees with high threat levels. They possess extremely dangerous abilities and violent dispositions, and lack social skills. They were scheduled to receive socialization training here in Tantalus, completely isolated from the world."]

"What do you mean, 'were scheduled'?"

["However, an unfortunate incident one week ago resulted in most of the trainees escaping from Tantalus."]

"What?"

Escaped? They escaped from the bottomless pit?

I put my rebellious attitude aside for the moment and focused all my attention on the golem's words. Since I couldn't read its thoughts, I strained to glean whatever information I could from its phrasing and tone.

The fact that the countless violent criminals housed in Tantalus had escaped and scattered throughout society didn't matter in the slightest. Why should I care whether a country like that descended into chaos or collapsed?

What mattered was the very fact that they had broken out. That information suggested there was a way out of the bottom of this pit.

"How did they escape?"

The golem stared straight at me as it answered.

["You are not authorized to access that information."]

"Tch."

No luck, as expected. A Military State communications officer wouldn't be that careless.

A shame I couldn't read their thoughts. All I could read were people's minds, not a voice transmitted as a signal and reproduced through a microphone.

I would have to gather information the ordinary, boring way.

I gestured for it to get on with it, and the golem continued its explanation.

["Most of the trainees rioted, damaging the facility and murdering its staff. After seizing Tantalus by force, they all escaped through some means. The military authorities are pursuing them and intend to apprehend and punish every last one before long. Even amid those events, however, three exemplary trainees declined to participate in such violent, barbaric conduct and voluntarily remained here."]

In the Military State, “exemplary” was a label reserved for gullible idiots. In other words, only cowards were left in this prison.

How ironic that the world's most famous prison had become a refuge for cowards.

["However, the escapees left the facility half-destroyed and murdered every member of its staff. We cannot leave cooperative trainees unattended in an unstaffed training facility. Additional personnel were needed to manage Tantalus, which is why you have been assigned here."]

"Ah. So that's it."

Now I understood. Even if I had been framed, there should have been no reason to lock an ordinary petty criminal like me in Tantalus.

I'd wondered why military police had suddenly started roaming the city. From the moment they arrested me to the trial that ended in less than three days, I could see exactly how I had wound up here.

So, in short, they were understaffed, rounded up petty criminals like me en masse, and tossed us into the bottomless pit as “laborers”?

Using prisoners to wait on other prisoners. A favorite Military State tactic.

Using one enemy against another? No, robbing Peter to pay Paul. They were simply plugging holes with criminals, since it didn't matter if we died.

In any case, one thing was clear. I might be trapped, but I was free down here. Whatever I did, there was no one to stop me.

If there were no instructors, and I was the only laborer, how were they going to stop me from slacking off—or building a bomb?

With that realization, I lifted my head and boldly challenged the golem.

"What if I don't do my job? Are you going to come down here and beat me into submission yourself?"

["That will not be necessary. You will have to do something if you wish to survive."]

With that, the golem turned its head toward the prison. Only a few searchlights dimly illuminated the darkness, and deep within it, a black shape flickered at the closed door.

The golem murmured.

["... They are coming."]

"They?"

Ignoring my question, the golem spoke more quickly.

["Those who remained in Tantalus... There is little time. I will now explain your duties."]

Why bother listening closely? It would be nothing but cleaning and laundry at most.

I casually laced my fingers behind my head. Let's see. Only three prisoners left? I could handle waiting on that many. If any of them were pushovers, I could even win them over with a little sweet talk.

No matter how vicious a criminal had to be to end up in Tantalus, anyone frightened enough of the Military State's orders to throw away a chance to escape had to be pretty passive and weak-willed.

I might be a petty crook, but I had always walked the back alleys with my head held high. On top of that, thanks to my mind-reading ability, even fairly violent people tended to lose their nerve around me.

I might lack strength, but I didn't lack swagger. If it came down to it, I'd take over this whole place.

I was just steeling my resolve when it spoke.

["Survive."]