The undying one jerked upright like someone waking from a long sleep. Even with his arms and legs missing, he neither screamed nor recoiled in horror. He merely furrowed his thick eyebrows and looked around. For someone torn apart in a tragic accident, his reaction was remarkably unremarkable.

Which made sense. For undying people who survived having their limbs torn off and their heads severed, injuries like these were an everyday occurrence.

The only difference from their everyday lives was that here, in the bottomless pit cut off from the earth's veins, he could not regenerate.

Coming to his senses, he cried out in bewilderment.

"Oh! What happened? I'm certain my limbs were torn off!"

"They still are. Here."

I held out his severed arms and legs. Instead of reacting in horror, complaining of pain, or growing wary of me, he promptly accepted his limbs and pressed them against the severed ends. He even gave me a thumbs-up with his reattached hand and grinned cheerfully.

An undying one, all right. Losing a few limbs was apparently no big deal.

"Thank you! How very kind of you!"

"You're welcome. Just hold those in place for now."

I'd kept my audience waiting too long. Turning my back on the undying one, I spread my arms and called out to everyone.

"Well, did you see that? Ta-da! Resuscitation! A resounding success! His limbs aren't attached yet, but his heart is definitely beating!"

The miracle of bringing the dead back to life. Wasn't I the Saintess reborn? If I founded a religion, I could fleece dozens of people.

Well, strictly speaking, I'd just forcibly awakened an undying man from suspended animation. Saintess, my ass. I was no better than a nasty Military State alarm clock.

Still, I had gotten a stopped heart beating again. Smiling proudly, I looked at the Regressor and the vampire. Magicians were attention whores who couldn't live without an audience, after all. Their reactions were what kept me going.

Especially the Regressor's. With her clues to the past, she was the biggest reason I'd awakened the undying one.

'That method would... wake him up. This must be how the undying one woke up before! In that case! Is this that moment?!'

What moment? Please, stop putting it like that and actually think it over. Don't just refer to your previous run and call it "that"! Remember it!

Let's not get impatient. Leave the Regressor be for now. I could tease the information out of her gradually.

Now, then, the vampire.

Full of anticipation, I read her thoughts.

And she did not disappoint.

'He forced a heart... to beat?'

A wave of emotion came crashing in.

The weight of twelve hundred years was immense. Her eyes widened in shock, as though she had witnessed a miracle. Comparing the minds I'd read, she was far more astonished than the man who had actually awakened.

'No. It is only possible because he is one of the earthfolk. His stopped heart can be made to beat again because he is an undying being who cannot die even in death. All he needs is a spark to set him moving again. Yes, that is merely a spark...'

But then the vampire remembered something else.

Vampires, who moved their blood through blood manipulation, were also a kind of undying being.

'... Could I, too?'

If only she had a spark to kindle her withered body.

If she could hold that spark within her chest.

'Could my heart beat again, too?'

Someone's expectations.

The common sense they firmly trusted.

A conviction bordering on obstinacy.

The fact that a seemingly solid mind was really nothing, that steadfast beliefs were all illusions, and that a single word from someone could shatter them.

How delightful.

This was the only way I could live, but that made it all the more exhilarating. The fulfillment of being alive, the self-worth of existing as myself, filled my body.

Did humans experience flavor and happiness when eating because they had evolved that way to improve their chances of survival? Or did food itself contain flavor and happiness to begin with?

There was no real need to distinguish between the two.

A sweet taste lingered on my lips.

While I basked in satisfaction, the undying one finished assembling his limbs and rose. He had somehow managed to attach his arms and legs, but no matter how I looked at them, I couldn't expect much more than if he'd taped them on.

He held out his right hand, which he'd attached incorrectly so that its back faced inward.

"A pleasure! My name is Rash. And you are?"

Uh, even if it was backward, I should still take his right hand with mine, right? I firmly clasped the back of his hand and shook it.

"I'm the newly appointed Instructor here. I found you in the cafeteria slop bin—no, in a cabinet—and revived you."

The moment he raised his hand to shake mine, his right hand came off. His detached right arm then clung tightly to my hand and dangled there, as though afraid of falling. I had abruptly become a man with two elbows.

Silence settled over the room. Looking at his fallen right hand, the undying one scratched his head with his remaining left arm and chuckled sheepishly.

"Ha ha. Sorry for the trouble. On the surface, it would reattach in a second. It certainly takes a while in the bottomless pit!"

"Well, these things happen."

I pried his fingers loose one by one, then pressed the arm back into place around his elbow. Working his recovered right arm with stiff, creaking movements, he spoke.

"The Military State actually sent a living person down for once! Usually they just send lumps of metal to sneak peeks at us! Anyway, what about the others? Did everyone escape?"

"If you mean the trainees who were here before, they all escaped. These are the only people left."

As I spoke, I discreetly read the undying one's memories to learn how he'd ended up dismembered and discarded in a slop bin.

Rash the undying one had been a prisoner. Impressed in many ways by the Military State's advanced laws and institutions, he had wanted to learn more about the country. The Military State, however, had not put in as much effort as he had into getting to know it.

The way of life of an immortal race was very different from that of ordinary humans. Injuries didn't bother him, and whenever physical labor needed doing, he was always the first to step forward and handle it. He rarely tired and laughed off even bodily injury.

He was undoubtedly a wonderful neighbor. The sort anyone would want living nearby.

That didn't mean Rash was a pushover.

Having no fear of injury or death, the immortal race instead placed great value on honor and codes of conduct. They might laugh off someone gouging their bodies with a knife, but they would not tolerate an insult to their honor.

Unfortunately, one citizen provoked him, having forgotten the saying that the law is far away, but a fist is close at hand. The Military State's military law, closer at hand than most fists, seemed to have warped his survival instincts.

He solemnly recited a prayer declaring that uncultured savages who never tired were born to be slaves. Among friends, it would have been no more than a tasteless joke; spoken to a savage's face, it became a prayer for suicide. As a courteous member of the earthfolk, Rash exercised patience once and reasoned with him. But a fool's suicide attempts generally came in waves of two or more.

As a courteous member of the earthfolk, Rash humbly accepted his wishes and tore him to death.

He also tore to death anyone who attacked him to save the man, taking it as agreement with those wishes.

The Military State attempted to execute him, but it had no way to kill a man who rose unharmed after being shot and walked out of fires. When its ability to kill something fell short, there was only one way to dispose of a prisoner. The Military State's leadership made its decision.

And so Rash was dropped into Tantalus, where he got along just fine until he became embroiled in the bottomless pit jailbreak—

Hmm. Interesting.

Wait. If he'd witnessed the escape from Tantalus firsthand, wouldn't he know how it was done?

I casually broached the subject.

"Trainee Rash. You asked earlier, didn't you? Whether they'd all escaped."

"I did. Why?"

Dead men tell no tales.

Therefore, an undying man who could not die made an excellent witness to tell them.

Just as he'd been a witness in the Regressor's future, the undying one was a witness for me now. A precious witness who might know how to escape this prison.

"The Military State authorities are extremely curious. This is the bottomless pit, a place that cannot be entered or left by ordinary means. How on earth did they manage to escape?"

Pretending to interrogate him, I pushed my mind reading to its limit as I questioned the undying one. If he so much as recalled the relevant memories, I could acquire a new card to play: a way out of the bottomless pit. The Regressor had fallen into the pit just before their jailbreak, so she didn't know much about it either.

I watched him, brimming with anticipation.

"I don't know!"

And had to sit there and listen to his hearty declaration.

"That sorcerer went off and did something on his own, then suggested we all escape together! Said escaping as a group would work better, or something! Well, I had no reason to refuse, so I agreed!"

"... Really?"

"Indeed!"

Damn it. This useless undying bastard.

"Surely you overheard something? Who he was, what method he used."

"Why would I need to know? That scrawny sorcerer must have escaped using some bizarre trick."

"Oh, come on. Make an effort to remember."

"Sorry, but remembering every word a man mutters isn't a hobby of mine. Especially not a sorcerer's empty boasting."

He answered indifferently, without even trying to search his memory.

Good grief. I'd never imagined someone could say remembering wasn't his hobby and genuinely erase his memories.

Picking his ear, the undying one asked me a question in return.

"So, what was your question?"

"So that lack of interest in remembering includes what I say, too?"

There really wasn't a single person here who could help me. How could there be absolutely no useful information?

No, no. I just hadn't drawn out enough memories yet. Holding on to a sliver of hope, I pressed him.

"Second question, then. Why didn't you escape when all the other trainees did? Was there a disagreement?"

"A disagreement? Hmm. There was."

Recalling the past, the undying one spoke.

"That scrawny sorcerer said he'd break the prisoners out. But perhaps years in prison had driven him mad, because he suddenly tried to kill everyone who wasn't a prisoner."

"People who weren't prisoners?"

"The laborers. Yes, the people who cooked and cleaned here."

Tantalus was an enormous facility housing vicious criminals captured all over the world.

Unable to control them even itself, the Military State had left them loose in what amounted to abandonment. This place was both a realm of hungry ghosts and the Military State's execution ground. Send people down, and the place would kill them on its own.

That was why the Military State often sentenced political heavyweights it couldn't comfortably execute outright, or ideological offenders who had caused social unrest, to hard labor in Tantalus. It was another name for a death sentence.

"The other prisoners killed so many that there weren't many left, but they were still people who'd lived alongside us. I'd grown somewhat fond of them. Yet he insisted on killing them when they could simply have escaped with us. I objected, but that sorcerer wouldn't listen."

"If they were in the bottomless pit, the laborers must have been fairly major criminals themselves. Why did he kill them?"

"I don't know! As I said, remembering every word a man mutters isn't a hobby of mine."

What a thing to be proud of.

"Anyway, I fought him and lost! My memory's a little hazy, perhaps because he hit me rather hard! Honestly, if this weren't the bottomless pit, I'd have regenerated right away and punched that smug face of his!"

"That's it?"

"Well, is there anything else to tell?"

Absolutely useless.

Oh, to hell with it. I'd squeezed out all the information I could. Time to hand him over to the Regressor.

"Trainee Rash. You see that person over there?"

The Regressor, who'd been leaning forward and watching us with great interest, flinched when I pointed her out.

'Huh? Me? Why me?'

The undying one glanced at the Regressor and spoke casually.

"That boy?"

"Yes, him. I don't know why, but he's very interested in you... Ahem. In a rather peculiar sense."

"What? What the hell are you talking about!"

She kept trying to watch from the sidelines, but not a chance. I would not tolerate anyone having an easier time than me.

Since I hadn't managed to extract any decent information, I'd have to read her thoughts instead. Go on, find out for yourself.

"Trainee Shei, aren't you interested?"

"Of course I'm not!"

"Then is it all right to let him go back to sleep? Trainee Rash will probably fall asleep again before long."

The moment I finished speaking, the undying one swayed on his feet. He looked down at himself in surprise.

"Oh? Come to think of it, my body feels strange. I've woken up, but I haven't fully healed! What on earth did you do?"

"I ran electricity through your heart and essentially forced you awake."

"Oho! That's impressive, too! How did you manage that!"

Apparently fascinated by having his life force hanging by a thread, he kept examining himself. Being undying really did leave him with no sense of danger. I asked the Regressor once more.

"Trainee Shei, are you sure? If we leave him alone, Trainee Rash will go right back to sleep."

"... So?"

"Trainee Rash is the only being who knows Tantalus from before we arrived..."

I caught sight of Azi yawning at the back of the classroom. Come to think of it, there was her, too. Not that she'd be any help.

I corrected myself.

"The only human, I mean. Trainee Shei, if you have any questions, now's your chance to get answers."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You have no questions at all?"

"None at all..."

The Regressor was about to shout, but then remembered something and closed her mouth.

'No. Now that the undying one is awake, there's something I absolutely have to check.'

With that thought, the Regressor's memories began traveling back into the past.