Yesterday, when I threw the pot at the Regressor, it had been completely empty when it should have been full of stew. Someone had eaten every last bit before I even arrived.

There were two prime suspects: Azi, or some presence hiding in the dining hall.

But the presence hiding in the dining hall had turned out to be a golem, and golems didn't eat. With one suspect naturally eliminated, the culprit's identity was now clear as day.

Confronted with my accusation, Azi opened her eyes wide and shouted. How about that? Gave you a shock, didn't I?

“You ate all the food?! All by yourself?!”

“You're the one who ate it!”

“No! Woof! I didn't eat! Hungry, but I wait! Eat together!”

Despite my relentless questioning, Azi denied it to the bitter end. Even now, when her guilt was certain, she insisted so vehemently on her innocence that even my cool-headed reason began to waver.

Was it really not her? Or had she simply forgotten an inconvenient fact because she was a dog, and was now digging in her heels? Without mind reading, I honestly couldn't tell. If she were human, I would have known immediately whether she was telling the truth.

But everyone else, all those people who couldn't read minds, managed to struggle through life without knowing the truth. When someone lied, they hunted down evidence and witnesses and reached reasonably accurate conclusions of their own. Just for today, I would follow their example.

“Anyway, we'll know once we check. Captain AB! Were you in the dining hall all last night?”

『Affirmative. I connected to this unit at approximately four o'clock yesterday and was gathering information.』

“Then did you also see who stole the stew from the pot yesterday?”

『Affirmative.』

“Good. Time to find out. Ta-da, ta-da-dah.”

Humming, I picked up the golem under its arms. For some reason, I thought I heard an airy sigh from its microphone.

Holding the golem carefully from behind, I glanced around and spoke.

“Captain AB. Now, pick them out! The culprit who crawled out of the darkness like a rat last night and secretly ate the stew in the pot!”

Well, then. Who would the golem's finger point to? Not that there were many directions to choose from. About one, perhaps?

The golem slowly raised a finger. I watched in anticipation of the future that cold steel would reveal.

The golem's hand pointed toward me.

Huh?

“It was me?!”

Good heavens. The one twist a mystery must never pull! It was really me? My subconscious had done it?

『Negative. I am not pointing at you.』

The golem shook its head and raised its finger again. Looking closer, I saw it was pointing slightly past me. Even when I tilted my head out of the way, the finger didn't follow.

Wondering what was going on, I followed the golem's finger in small steps, as though dowsing for water. The direction it pointed shifted slightly with each step. I adjusted course accordingly and felt my way forward until I finally reached a densely perforated iron cover, with a drain beyond it. It was the drain we used to wash away the water when disposing of leftover food.

It looked a little too narrow for a person to fit inside. Hoping I was wrong, I looked down at the golem.

“... You're saying the thing that stole the food is in here?”

『Correct.』

“Is there a rat or something in there?”

『A foolish question. No subterranean animals or insects exist in Tantalus.』

“Right. There's not even mold here. Damn it...”

A land cursed by Mother Earth, where her workers could not trespass. That was why I had been so certain Azi had stolen the food. The only living beings in the bottomless pit were me, Azi, and the Regressor, more or less. And of those, the stupid dog with the least resistance to her desires would have been anyone's first suspect, not just mine.

Besides, since I could read thoughts, I knew the Regressor hadn't eaten it. Process of elimination, deductions based on experience—every clue pointed to Azi.

And yet the culprit was someone else entirely. It was a completely unexpected outcome.

Come to think of it, hadn't I faintly heard thoughts in the dining hall before? I'd dismissed them without thinking, but the clue had already been there. I should have concluded that there was something else in Tantalus.

Anyway, the past was the past. What mattered now was deciding what to do next. I didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest, but if I was going to deal with this, now was the time, while Azi was here. If it turned out to be a monster, I couldn't handle it alone.

When danger lay ahead, dogs were humanity's oldest friends.

“Azi.”

“Woof!”

“Apparently, the one who stole your food and mine is down here.”

“Woof, woof! Bad!”

“Bad, right? So let's get them out and teach them a lesson. Could you pull them out?”

I was too scared to try pulling it out myself, so I'd have Azi do it. Dogs were man's best friends, after all.

Azi came over to my side. But instead of immediately digging into the drain, she looked up at me, plainly displeased.

“But you were worse! I didn't eat! I waited, good puppy, but you got mad! Said I ate it!”

Ah. She remembered that. I'd hoped she'd forget, but apparently she wasn't quite that stupid. Dogs seemed to have better memories than goldfish, at least.

Still, Azi was the King of Dogs. A being I could persuade with words. A mere dog was no match for my silver tongue.

“Azi. Is that really important right now? We have a common enemy. The real thief who stole our food.”

“Woof! I didn't eat!”

“Right. Sorry I suspected you. For now.”

“Woof! I didn't eat!”

“Yes, yes. I said I'm sorry. Let's be friends from now on.”

“Woof, woof! Didn't eat! But you yelled I did! Got mad! Not friends!”

“The thing is, Azi...”

“You were bad! Woof! Bad!”

“...”

Whew. No other choice, then.

I'd brought this disaster on myself. I would have to pay the price.

I returned to my room and took out the leather ball for the first time in a while. After just a few days of neglect, it had already lost all its air and gone limp.

I let out a long sigh and raised my left arm straight out. With my right fingers, I tapped rhythmically from elbow to wrist. As I performed the prescribed somatic gestures, my pathetic body squeezed out its mana and pushed it up through my left arm.

“To think the day would come when I'd be the one to suggest playing ball. I'm a disgrace to humanity. But remember this, you mutt. I lost. Humanity didn't.”

Mana gathered. The mana spread throughout my body traveled through my veins toward the fingers of my left hand. A sense of omnipotence, as though I could accomplish anything, filled my fingertips. At the same time, I could see its limits. I felt all too keenly the regret that once I used up this tiny amount of mana, barely enough to fill a single finger, that omnipotence would end too.

Why did I have so little mana? Grumbling, I inserted a finger into the ball and recited a level 0 standard-issue magic spell.

Level 0 magic that invoked nothing more than the phenomenon of a burst of air.

“Pascal.”

POP!

The leather stretched taut as the ball swelled to full size. Sewn with small pieces on the inside and large pieces on the outside, the ball wouldn't leak through the seams if inflated in one burst. I withdrew my finger, sealed the hole with alchemy, and carried it back to the dining hall.

There, Azi had her forepaws on the table, her eyes sparkling more brightly than ever and her tail spinning furiously. The sight of the leather ball had thrilled her.

I held it up and asked,

“Will playing ball do?”

“Woof, woof! Tasty food too!”

“All right. I'll make you something tasty.”

“Awooooo! Good! Good! You're good! Good now!”

“Now, then. Pull out whatever's in there.”

Azi nodded, ran straight to the drain, and thrust her paws in repeatedly, like a dog digging up the ground. After scraping at the floor a few times, she stuck her rear out and shoved her head halfway into the drain, finally managing to grab something.

An arm severed below the elbow.

A leg.

This time, a large hand.

And the last thing Azi hauled out, grunting with effort, was a large torso with only one arm and one leg attached.

A muscular body that looked harder than a golem, with short hair and a short beard. He resembled an eminent martial monk, but with an arm and a leg torn off, his condition was utterly wretched. The muscles stood out vividly at the severed surfaces.

“Urgh.”

I felt sick. That wasn't a human. It was a h-u-m-a-n, in pieces.

The severed surfaces were clean. Judging by the twisted parts alone, it looked as though some enormous giant had grabbed his hands and feet and snapped them off like a toy. But no blood seeped out, and the bones were still neatly in place, making me wonder if it was a well-made anatomical model. Despite the horrific sight of his missing limbs, there wasn't a single bloodstain on his bronze skin, leaving me unsure whether he was really dead. Still, since I couldn't hear even the tiniest thought, he certainly seemed to be.

Someone must have attacked him, smashed his entire body, and thrown him into the drain. Perhaps his tenacious vitality had kept him alive for days, only for him to die alone somewhere no one would ever look.

“Oh, you poor soul. How did you come to meet your end in a place like this...?”

The thoughts I'd heard back then must have been his dying cries. It was unfortunate, but there was nothing to be done. Intending to bury the dismembered corpse, I picked up the severed right arm. This land might be cursed by Mother Earth, but surely being buried was still better...

When I grabbed the right arm, the right arm grabbed me back.

Uh.

What?

“Aaaaaagh!”

In a panic, I tried to fling the right arm away. But the right hand gripping me had tremendous strength; it merely swung along with my hand and refused to come off.

Holy shit, this much strength in a severed arm? If he'd been intact, his grip alone could have crushed my arm.

This was no time for that. I turned over my other palm and produced the card I'd hidden there. The ace of diamonds—a strong, flexible playing card made by tightly weaving metal through alchemy.

I slid the thin card between the fingers gripping me. A slight twist made a finger slip free. After prying them off one by one, from the little finger to the middle finger, I finally managed to pull the right arm away and throw it.

“Hah, hah... Hah... What is that thing?”

The right arm landed on the floor and tried to crawl forward on its fingers, then stopped, apparently exhausted. Faced with something beyond horror and well into gore, I gasped for breath.

I turned to the golem, which was watching the right arm impassively as though it had known all along.

“Captain AB. What is that?”

『A right arm that moves despite being severed. I presume it belongs to a member of an immortal race.』

“Was that thing a trainee too?”

『Correct. During the prison break, he was witnessed being killed by another trainee. However, his immortality appears to have prevented his death. To think he can revive from injuries of that magnitude. His assessment will need to be raised by one tier.』

“You should've told me sooner if there was something like that! It scared the hell out of me!”

Azi was curiously poking the right arm. Every time it twitched, she jumped back, only to return once it went still again. I pushed her aside, carefully picked up the right arm, and held it against the corpse just below the elbow.

The severed surfaces fit perfectly, but they didn't join. The right arm remained detached and acted independently, as though it were a completely separate being.

Good heavens. A right arm that moved by itself.

“So you're saying that right arm ate the stew?”

『Affirmative. It instinctively sought food to heal the body, which had entered a state of suspended animation.』

“What. Is that. That's terrifying.”

Now even severed hands could move on their own. Tantalus really did have every kind of monster imaginable.

The golem looked at me and asked,

『What will you do?』

“About what?”

『The immortal.』

“That thing? What am I supposed to do with it?”

At my irritable reply, the golem turned its head and stared directly into my eyes. A cold light glimmered in its inorganic crystal orbs—no, orbs that were quite literally inorganic matter.

『I suggest eliminating the immortal before he revives.』

Pardon?