As soon as John and Fate left the bar, Draco lost it, flipping the table in front of him.

“Those trash!” Draco yelled, punching a wall. “They have the nerve to stand up to me? Me?!”

“My lord, calm down-”

“Calm down?” Draco yelled. “They stood up to me! They dared to insult me! Do they even know who I am?”

“Sir-”

“And what did you do?” Draco growled. “Why did you let them get away? You should’ve broken a bone or two at the very least!”

“With all due respect, we cannot do that for no good reason. You must keep your family’s honour in mind. Your father asked us to protect you, not to take part in street brawls.”

Draco’s expression was truly disgusting as he walked up to his knight. Despite being considerably shorter, he acted as if he could kill the knight with a snap of his fingers.

“Listen. If I am insulted, my family is insulted. We must send a message that I am not to be messed with! When I tell you to do something, you do it, understood?”

“...understood.”

Draco sat back down. “Fine. Contact the mercenary guild. Tell them I have a request.”

The mage took a notepad out. “What is the request, sir?”

“Make sure those three are dead.”

A cruel light entered Draco’s eyes. “Actually, not dead. Capture them. Alive. And have them brought back to me.”

“...as you command.”

~~~

Two weeks passed by. Prota and Fate continued to train. John continued to do nothing. Two weeks of training. All for this day.

And it wasn’t starting off very well.

The mansion was worn down and broken, with the doors falling off the hinges and dust coating the windows. It was a perfect horror setting.

“A dingy mansion, a cloudy day… there’s no way this ends well.”

John shook his head and sighed.

“So, what do they want us to do?”

“Did you even read the request?”

“No.”

Fate sighed. “What would’ve happened if I wasn’t here?”

“But you are here, aren’t you? So it all works out.”

“Seriously, this guy,” Fate grumbled as he took out a sheet of paper.

“Enter the mansion and subjugate the living armour. You will know that your job is done if the walls start crumbling. That being said, please destroy the building once you are done.”

John looked at the instructions with a frown.

“This sounds like a trap, doesn’t it? And what’s up with destroying the building? What are we, a demolition crew?”

“You’re the one who chose to take this request,” Fate grumbled.

“Hey, it wasn’t me.”

“You could’ve taken anything else, no?”

“Those were stolen, remember?”

Fate was about to reply, but was cut off as Prota spoke up.

“Can we… go in?”

Fate stared at her, stunned. She rarely spoke, and even then, it was mainly to John. For her to say something meant that she really wanted to go in. He wanted to question it, but she probably wouldn’t answer anyway.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s go in.”

John was about to follow Fate when Prota tugged on his arm.

“...?”

[There is someone following us]

John’s eyes shot open in surprise. Prota had used the messaging system. Why had she tugged on his arm if she was going to use the messaging system? No, this wasn’t the time to think about that.

[Are you sure?]

[Strong mana in the forest. Waiting for us.]

John rubbed his chin. What was he supposed to do with something like this? Was this something that was supposed to happen? If they were after Fate, then it was better to leave it alone, but if this mysterious person was after him and Prota…

[Do you want to tell Fate?]

Prota shook her head.

[Why not?]

[Because Fate and John will fight]

[Fight? What?]

[John will kill the bad guy. Fate doesn’t want to kill bad guys]

Prota wasn’t naive. It was clear that the two would butt heads whenever it came to dealing with enemies. It was baffling how they’d become companions in the first place, especially given how they’d met, but that wasn’t really important.

This wasn’t the time or place for them to be fighting. Something about this place made Prota feel uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just the way the place looked. They knew there was someone watching them. That was enough. If they had to deal with it, they would do so.

~~~

About three hours later, the party was still hunting monsters. It wasn’t that there was an abundance of them. In fact, there were only twenty living armours they had to deal with in total, and they weren’t particularly hard to deal with either.

“Phew… this really sucks,” John said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Am I missing something here?”

“I’m just as confused as you are.”

Fate just sighed as he pulled his sword out from a pile of cut up armour. They’d tried everything. Melting, freezing, cutting, dispersing, crushing, but no matter what they did, the metal would remould and reform back into the shape of armour. Thankfully, it took the armour about half an hour to reform, giving the party breaks in between.

At first, Fate had decided to use it as a training opportunity. He’d explained to John at an earlier date that hand to hand fighting and swordsmanship were skills he was versatile in, whereas magic was something he wasn’t used to, so he took whatever opportunity he could to improve it. It definitely was a good scenario. Armour that posed nearly no risk of killing you were good target dummies, and if they kept coming back, then it was just more practice.

However, if the target dummies kept coming back, then at a certain point, it stopped being practice.

It was now a war of attrition.

According to Prota, the armour was being constantly powered by mana, although she couldn’t figure out where from. While this meant that she, too, had an infinite mana source, her body was flesh, unlike the tireless metal monsters. There’d been so much excess mana that she’d filled her staff up to the brim, but more mana wasn’t going to help her here.

“Hey, wanna make a bet?” John said as he sat down.

He was the least damaged out of everyone, but that was because he couldn’t fight. The bullets would put small holes in the armour, but without a person inside, that didn’t really do much.

“What kind of bet?”

“We know there’s a source, right? Once we find this source, we’re gonna break it or disable it, and that’s gonna summon some kind of giant haunted armour. Like a boss or something.”

“Seriously? That’s a little…”

John shrugged. “This feels like an area that’ll have a boss once we clear the area. Just watch.”

Fate looked at Prota. If his mask was off, she would’ve seen the “get a load of this guy” look on his face, but even without seeing it, she could imagine what Fate was thinking. Even John’s intuition had to have its limits, right? This prediction was a little, well, off.

Unfortunately, Prota trusted what she knew about John more than the content of the words he spoke.

“John is… probably right,” Prota admitted. She could tell.

John was serious about this one. She didn’t like that he was serious, but she wasn’t going to argue with him just because she didn’t like it.

Fate didn’t like it. When he looked at John and Prota, he got the image of a madman and a voice of reason. It was easy to tell which was which. So if the voice of reason was agreeing with the madman, then…

“Seriously, what kind of prediction is that?”

“Hey, I just guess. Why’re you blaming this on me?”

“Fine. Alright, let’s say you’re correct. What are we gonna do about this boss when it appears?”

John frowned. “Huh? We kill it.”

“And how exactly do you propose to do that?”

“Um… I don’t know. Seriously. Why’re you asking me?”

“You don’t know?”

“What, does it look like I can do anything about it? I’m guessing, not looking into the future. Hey, by the way, you’re not out of mana yet, right?”

Fate shook his head. “I’ve learned mana breathing and mana circulation. I think Kit would’ve taught it to you, but… well, I don’t think it’d be of any use.”

John nodded. “Yeah, whatever. As long as you’re not running out of juice, we really shouldn’t run into any problems. We’ll deal with things as they come.”

[You should really avoid saying that.]

John’s expression didn’t change, but he felt a little bit of him die on the inside.

[Really? Are you kidding me?]

[I’m just saying. You should avoid saying that.]

[What, is this the equivalent of asking if the enemy’s right behind me?]

[I mean, you’re just raising unnecessary flags, no? Really, I thought you’d know better.]

[You can’t tell me these things before they happen?]

[:D]

[I hate you, you know that?]

~~~

“Behind you!” John yelled, smashing a helmet in with a boulder he’d found.

Four hours into the job, John had started to do what he could. It wasn’t very effective, but he was picking up rocks and smashing helmets in. It was a lot slower, but it allowed Prota to conserve some energy. They’d been systematically going through the mansion, room by room, looking for anything suspicious. They’d scoured the entire place, but found nothing. It didn’t help that the armour seemed to always know where they were.

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“Whoah!” John yelled as a sword nearly cleaved his head off. The armour was frozen just in time, the tip of the sword stopped right at his neck. John looked over at Prota, who had both hands extended.

“John,” she said. Her meaning was clear. She didn’t want him fighting.

“You’re the one getting tired, not me. Go. Rest. I’ll be fine.”

Prota wouldn’t budge. After a brief staring contest, John just sighed.

“...just don’t overdo it, ok?”

Prota nodded and raised her hand. A pillar of fire erupted from the ground and melted another monster to slag.

“I think that’s all,” Fate panted as his sword took down another armour piece. “This is the last room, right?”

“The basement? Looks like it,” John said, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

He looked around, but it was too dark to see anything.

“Can someone give me a light?”

Fate lit up a fireball in his hand. John hadn’t had time to get a good look during the fight, but now that everything was visible, it should be easy. The basement was pretty open, with no pieces of furniture to obscure vision. In fact, the lack of anything was jarringly unusual, seeing as how the rest of the place was filled with decaying and broken items. Fate sat down, catching his breath, when John called out.

“Hey, Fate. Have you ever seen a button in this world?”

“Like, for clothing?”

“No. Like, a comically large red button.”

It was well hidden, but near the floor, there was a large red button that was practically begging to be pushed.

“That wasn’t there before, right?”

“...hey, you didn’t put that there, right?”

“Me? How would I do something like that?” John frowned. “Is the fatigue getting to you or something?”

“John, that’s not normal!” Fate protested. “Even if someone put a button here, why would it be so large? What the hell is going on here?”

“The [Author] thinks they’re funny,” John muttered, but just shook his head and carried on. “Should we press it?”

“It has to be a trap,” Fate said, eying the button suspiciously. “There’s no way no one else found this.”

While the two were talking, Prota walked over and stared at the button with a fascinated look in her eyes. Kit hopped off of Fate and joined her. Together, the two stared at the item they’d never seen before.

It just looked so pushable…

“Oop.”

Prota covered her mouth as she accidentally pressed it. In her defence, it was a very appealing button. Even John had been strongly drawn to pressing it, so for someone who’d never seen a button in their life, it must’ve been irresistible. After all, why leave a good button unpressed? The sounds of grinding gear could be heard as the wall opened up before their eyes, revealing a large set of doors.

“Huh. Would you look at that.”

John cocked his head to the side and stared at the door.

“That has to be what we’re looking for, right?”

“Are you sure?” Fate said, his hand on his sword. “I mean, it does look suspicious, but we need to be careful. Something might pop out from there. The fact that the button didn’t kill us in the first place is astounding.”

“Hm… yes, that’s true. Wanna bet on it? Whether it’s safe or not.”

“Do you have some kind of gambling addiction? What’s with all this betting?” Fate sighed.

“Gamblers don’t lose,” John said with a smile. “They just quit.”

Fate just looked away and sighed.

The doors slowly opened with a loud creaking sound. The hinges sounded rusted, as if they hadn’t been used in a long time. Dust billowed as the pressure between the rooms equalized, giving an even more ominous feeling.

“Everyone! Get ready!” Fate yelled, drawing his sword.

Everyone waited with bated breaths for… nothing? The room seemed empty. There was no monster, no guard, and it didn’t look like there were any traps.

“...there could be something,” Fate said. “Wait.”

“Nah, I’ll go in first.”

Before Fate could say anything, John waltzed in as if he were taking a pleasant stroll. Prota was about to reach out and stop him, but it was too late. He was already in the room. However, as she saw the calm look on his face, something clicked. She understood why he was so comfortable with going in first.

He couldn’t die. Fate could. Well, if Fate died, John could always bring him back. But why was it that someone who cared so little about the lives of others was unwilling to let Fate go in first?

“No traps,” John called out. “It’s safe, I think, unless there are mana sensitive traps. That would suck.”

“...don’t do something like that again,” Fate growled as he sheathed his sword.

Prota gave John a worried look, but John just gave her a thumbs up. Prota reconsidered her line of thought. Maybe it wasn’t as deep as she’d thought. Maybe John was just a special kind of stupid. The other three went in carefully, making sure to watch their backs, but nothing was happening. It truly was just an empty room, save for one thing.

“Hey. There’s something over here,” John called out.

“What is it?”

“Looks like… marbles? There’s a small machine, too. It kinda looks like a blender. Great, now I want a smoothie.”

“A blender?”

“Yeah, like a kitchen appliance. You know what a blender is, right? I’ve never seen anything like it during my time here. Small glass cylinder with a bunch of marbles inside, and some weird thing at the bottom. There’s even a cord connecting it to the wall.”

Fate ran over to see it for himself, and it was exactly as John said. There were three small marbles in a cylinder of sorts, with a chord being connected from the machine to the wall.

“What the hell is this?”

John shrugged. “Dunno. Probably the thing powering those monsters.”

Fate nodded. “Alright.”

“So? Let’s just break it.”

“Not yet,” Fate said. “There might be something else. Let’s look around a bit longer.”

John sighed. “You want to look for what? There’s nothing in this room except for that. Surely that’s the thing powering the armour, right? Prota, can you see anything?”

Prota closed her eyes and focused, and sure enough, there was an intense concentration of mana emitting from the machine. However, it felt strange, as if it were being controlled. It felt like a person casting magic rather than mana just flowing about randomly.

She opened her eyes and nodded at John.

“Strange,” she said, pointing to the machine.

“Huh? What’s strange?”

“Flow,” Prota explained. “It’s being controlled.”

John and Fate looked at each other.

“This is it, then.”

Fate started gathering energy, but then Prota noticed something. It was faint, but she could feel it.

A familiar feeling.

She walked over to a wall and put her hand against it. Visually, it was no different than any other wall in the room, but something felt off.

“What’s she doing?” John frowned. “Prota? You good?”

She continued to touch sections of the wall as the feeling got stronger and stronger. Eventually, she reached what she felt was the closest area and blew the wall wide open. Everyone stared. Behind the wall, there’d been a hidden area, filled with glass tubes. Each tube contained a marble similar to the ones in the machine.

“Supply source? Who would need this many? Just three marbles are keeping those monsters alive,” Fate said in a shaky voice. “Then what are all of these for?”

“Take over a country, maybe?” John said. His brain started spinning. Was that the end goal? World domination? Surely not something as boring as that, right?

However, the person the most shook up of them all was Prota. She slowly turned around, terror in her eyes. John was the first to notice.

“Hey, what’s going-”

“S-souls,” Prota stammered. “Those feel like… souls…”

Souls. Even Fate froze when he heard that word. It seemed he knew what was going on as well. John was curious. How did Fate know about souls? Was this common knowledge? No, that didn’t matter right now. What mattered were the implications.

In fact, the only person who didn’t understand was Prota, the very person who’d found it out. She just didn’t like the feeling. Why did these things feel like souls? Why were they here?

“Hey. Are… are you sure?”

Prota nodded.

“These… maybe they’re not souls,” Fate said.

“I don’t think there’s anything that can replicate what a soul feels like,” John said cautiously. “Not that I would know.”

They all stared.

“It’s a lot more than just a concentration of mana. It… it would make sense. Something like a soul would definitely supply an infinite power source of mana, and…”

Everyone stared.

“Where did these come from?” Fate said quietly.

“Extracted. Probably.”

“Ex… tracted? You mean people were used in order to harvest souls? You’re telling me-”

“Fate,” John said. Just one word, but Fate went silent. John’s usual tone was nowhere to be found.

“I don’t even know how this is possible. I know you’re upset about the past implications, but let’s think about the future for a second. Let’s forget about the people and think on a larger scale. Even I don’t know anything about this.”

The ability to extract souls. How? Why?

So many questions running through his head. What was this for? Was this just an obstacle, or was this a connection to the demon king? Was this part of the [Plot], or was this a result of his interference with the world? How did Fate know about souls? And Prota. Soul Steal, Soul Copy, both the abilities of dragons, being copied by demons. Was this a dragonic facility? A demonic facility?

Or something else?

“Hey,” Fate said cautiously. “By the way. How do you… know about souls?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like souls are restricted to this world, right?”

Fate nodded, preoccupied by the thing in front of him.

“Disgusting…”

His sword came down, smashing the device. Surprisingly, the marbles remained intact, and Fate picked them up, staring at them with disgust in his eyes.

John was busy thinking, though.

This quest. It was too suspicious. Why would a mansion like this have a facility like this? What was the purpose of the mansion? The room they’d been in was the only one. So why power haunted armour- no, not haunted armour, mana controlled armour- what was the point? It didn’t look like research was being done. And why was this a request?

Besides, the only reason they’d found this room was because of Prota. According to Fate, they were on the weak side of B rank adventurers. Surely others who took this request were stronger than the party they had right now, right? Then how had so many people died?

Request. Souls. No one had returned alive. Something clicked.

“Fate. We need to get out of here, now.”

“Well, yeah-”

“No, you don’t get it. This quest wasn’t meant to be completed. This is a bait, it’s a bait to collect people! This is a harvesting operation!”

“What do you mean?!”

“Think! No one’s ever returned alive from this quest. Where did they go? Why this mansion? If you don’t find this room, you end up fighting the armour until you make a mistake and die. Then why didn’t they just run? Why keep going at a quest you can’t complete? If the requester knows that the mansion will crumble when this machine is broken, then they know it exists!”

Fate looked at John. A trap. This was the trap. It wasn’t the room. It wasn’t the button. The moment they’d stepped into the building- no, the moment they’d accepted the quest, they’d been in the trap.

“The requester. They must’ve known about the armour, this room, this indestructible building, and yet they requested for it to be taken down anyways. If someone has the ability to extract souls, then what do they need?”

“...souls to extract,” Fate said quietly.

John was worried. That presence Prota had felt before they’d gone in. Who was that? Should he have brought it up after all?

“The armour might not be the biggest of our concerns. We need to-”

“John! Dodge!” Fate yelled as the ceiling came crumbling down.

A giant metal hand smashed through, causing rubble to fall everywhere. John dove just in time to avoid most of the mess but was still battered with debris. Prota managed to throw up a ceiling of ice in time to stop his head from getting smashed in, but he wasn’t uninjured.

John looked at Fate as a giant haunted armour rose from the now ruined mansion. They’d completed that part of the request, at least.

“Hey. Remember what I bet on earlier?”

“You’re bringing that up now?!” Fate yelled as he unsheathed his sword.

They stared with grim expressions as the giant haunted armour raised its sword.