"I would like to extend Leanbox's gratitude for helping Cave during her mission," I gave my brief nod in thanks. However part of it was aimed at Chika and Cave, who very much gave me a way out of the massive social faux pas I had committed.

IF largely looked annoyed, while Compa didn't seem to mind. Much. There was just one little problem with that. Wasn't there a third person among their number besides Nepgear? I could have sworn there was another person.

"IF, do you know where RED is by chance?" Nepgear asked, looking around for someone. Honestly? The names were getting completely and utterly wild. By this point, it was well past the point where I needed to roll with this.

"She's around," IF shrugged nonchalantly, as Compa giggled. The problem was that Nepgear looked worried by such a declaration. More concerning was the fact Chika almost looked smug. She had something planned. That much was painfully clear. Likely involving this RED person. Most certainly some form of punishment for the social faux pas.

And why exactly did I hear a noise in my ears? I paused, trying to pinpoint the source, only for it to be somewhere above me. It was a girl, doing an excellent impression of a shell flying through the air.

"WWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIFFFFFFFFFFFF," I decided to use the next few seconds to glare at Chika, hoping to convey that I was going to arrange a date between her Vert body pillow and an incinerator shortly, before I braced for impact.

I barely managed to catch the speeding Red blur as she headbutted me square in the chest. Wind rushed out of my lungs from the impact, as I tried to bleed off her moment without clipping someone upside the head with her shoes. It probably wasn't the most comfortable landing, either. Being in a dungeon meant there would be fighting, and I prepared accordingly. And not just wear baggy clothing, like I did the few days I wouldn't do much.

Of course, someone willing to do that to themselves probably didn't have much of a brain to damage, so there was that upside. I managed to set her down, using my longer arms to at least place her at a greater distance than she could reach.

"Dizzy!" The girl spun around, before flopping over into the nearest chair. I stared at her for a moment as she muttered to herself. That was something that happened.

"Alright then," I muttered, mostly to myself. "Okay, once she recovers from that, we should be ready to go, right?"

I got several nods and statements of confirmation. That was good. The sooner we got to the Mascot, the better. While a fair amount of the ASIC was currently in prison awaiting trial, that didn't mean there were still issues scurrying about. Still, the losses would be a heavy blow to their capacities. The ASIC was not going to walk a blow like that off easily. But it was by no means a death blow, either. The organization had proven to have a considerable amount in common with a cockroach. It would take time to rebuild, however. I could settle for that much. They'd be on their knees for a while as well. Given that procuring that Mascot should take a week at absolute worst? I'd have plenty of time to take advantage of the situation.

And I was going to need to. The last Mascot was the next stage of our plans. And I doubt the ASIC would be able to piece together that we were planning something big using the Mascots. Something they would seek to counter.

We'd need to keep them off balance during the meantime, preventing them from marshaling their forces. Not an impossible task. But it was going to be a future one.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I wiped the sweat from my brow. I wasn't surprised by the heat. Volcanos were known for their sweltering heat. Frankly, if this were back home, we wouldn't be able to get even that close. But this world could only be described as built differently. How else could I describe a world where it was possible to dive into the vents of a volcano with a minor inconvenience?

Of course, that didn't exactly mean it was easy. This was a dungeon, after all, and a big one. Monsters were pretty much everywhere. Nor were they slouches when it came to combat. They were all fairly decently leveled to boot. Nothing was impossible for the number of people that made up our party, though.

Which was seriously kind of stacked. Five Candidates was a strong enough team by its own merits. Several adventures as backup? Alongside an actual honest-to-good healer? That was a blessing in and of itself. I hadn't adventured with a healer before now, as strange as that may sound. It didn't make our journey a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination.

I think it was simply down to the fact that we were very range-heavy. Nepgear was the only one of us Candidates who could be considered a close-quarters specialist. Uni used a gun, which largely overlapped with my specialty when it came to distance-based combat. While Rom and Ram were spellcasters. As well as actual children. They weren't going to do well in melee combat no matter what happened.

This left Cave, IF, Nepgear, RED, and Compa as sort of pseudo-tanks. Roles that they weren't exactly suited for. Well, RED was maybe suited for it, but there were more than a fair share of monsters for a single person to handle. But we were still making progress at a fairly swift clip.

I did come prepared though. What? We were going to a volcano. If nothing else, I was going to be packing water, and lots of it. It wasn't hot enough to start boiling over, but we still needed to stay hydrated. This place ran off its own weird rules a lot of the time, but this wasn't one of them.

"How close do you think we're getting?" I heard Uni ask. The answer was honestly, I had no clue. This stuff went deep, and it wasn't like I'd ever been here before. If volcanic vents were anything to go by in my world? This stuff went deep into the surface of the crust. Never mind the various twisting tunnels and offshoots. While the most likely place for a Mascot in hiding would te at the bottom, that wasn't by any means a certainty. They could be hiding in any damn inch of this place.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then again, it wasn't exactly playing by Earth rules. Volcanic vents tended to be disjointed, as the magma tried to find the path of least resistance. Instead, it was largely straightforward, burrowing into the earth like a serpent. There were very few veins that broke away, and they tended to be fairly shallow. It meant there was less chance of us getting lost on the way out, not that I already prepared countermeasures.

Even if they didn't look like they would be needed. Though it wasn't as if every crisis one prepared for but ultimately didn't need to, always felt like an overreaction.

"Hopefully soon," I said, as a few nodded. We'd been down here for at least an hour or two. Three at most.

After a brief moment, we set off. Still, this place was marvelous. There were an insane number of geologists who would kill to see the insides of a volcano like this. It was almost a shame that I was here as part of a job. I'd have to come back sometime in the future. When things were far less chaotic and I'd just be able to breathe. Get to explore this crazy world and all its wonders. Without having to worry about keeping a nation intact.

But that wasn't happening. Not today.

In large part because the next room had a massive dragon within it. That wasn't exactly unforeseen, but unpleasant all the same. The little Wyvern things were annoying. But full-on dragons? They were rat bastards. Tough as nails and they tended to give as good as they got.

"Maybe we could sneak around it?" I offered, taking a light step forward. But the moment my foot touched the rocky surface in the room, the dragon's eyes snapped open as if I'd stepped on a tripwire.

"Son of a!" I started to get out as the dragon opened their mouth. "Move!"

We managed to scatter in time as flame erupted forth from its maw. I slammed my bow into the ground at the end of my roll, firing off an arrow. It shot through the air, clipping the inside of its mouth. I almost winced as it let out a roar of pain. Thankfully, that was enough to get it to stop breathing fire as it reared up.

And by that point, everyone else was taking potshots or closing the range. I pulled back with another arrow, letting the energy build up into a fine-tippedd point. It flew true, biting into the joint of the dragon's wing, skewering into the limb.

That should be enough to cripple its movement. Dragons were not monsters that one would want to leave with their freedom to fly around a place intact. They were dangerous enough without the mobility.

As if to prove my point, the dragon brought its maw down, trying to bite at those who had already closed the distance. Thankfully, everyone had already begun to spread out, as to not be caught by wide-reaching attacks. The beast bellowed as it swiped and tore into the earth, sending igneous rock flying through the air. Despite the beast's massive size, we had pure numbers. Which it really couldn't counter. Sure, it could always do what dragons did best. Breath an insane variety of different things from out of their mouth, but it still had to aim. And it wasn't going to be hitting any more than one, two of us, tops.

It took longer than I'd care to admit to whittle away at the dragon, but eventually, the thing slumped over, scattering into particles. Thankfully, everyone looked like they hadn't been too badly hurt.

Looking around the room, I scowled. It looked like every single other room in this tunnel system. But with one, major, all too important, difference. There was nothing on the other end of the cavern. Which meant this was the final room of this stinking place. Unless there was some hidden passageway, there was no Mascot.

Which meant we had come here for nothing. That was an annoyance. Sure, there was another target, even if we couldn't hit it today. What would happen if that was also a failure? Leanbox only had so many volcanos, and while myths were going to be a good starting point, things changed. The odds of it being destroyed over the eons were unlikely. And frankly, if the ASIC had gotten here first, then they would be rubbing it in our faces. So either it was hidden.

Or it wasn't here in the first place.

Neither was great, as it meant spending time combing the enter dungeon top to bottom for anything we may have missed the first time around. Something that could be time spent on nothing, if it was really in some other location. Damnit!

"That was an impressive display. It's been some time since so many have come into this place," a voice came, seemingly from nowhere, snapping me out of my thoughts. I looked around, head whipping wildly to confirm the source of the voice, only to find empty air. That was when the air began to flicker, as a small alcove appeared in one of the walls.

"I'm a bit surprised to see this many Candidates in one place at the same time. This is truly a strange event," the voice continued. I tried to get a good look at, whatever it was making the noise. It was hard to describe it. At first glance, it almost looked like an ordinary, if green-colored, disk. But it seemed to flicker as if it were more than just simply a disk. As if it were there, but at the same time, not.

"It's a bit complicated. Right now, Leanbox, no, the world, really needs your help right now," I said, deciding to take point. After all, this was Leanbox's Mascot.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Things hadn't exactly gone as expected, but I wasn't exactly going to complain by this point, either. Whoever got the power boost in the grand scheme was irrelevant. While I might have concerns about putting all your eggs into a single basket, but Nepgear had already collected something from each of the other Mascots.

But that left us with the question of what now? I don't think anyone had expected things to go that smoothly. Or at least, nobody was used to things going so well.

I was going to have to set up some degree of protection detail for the Mascot. They were a national legend and deserved at least that much. I had no problem with them staying in retirement, but I wasn't going to leave them unguarded, either. Especially now. There was little doubt in my mind that the ASIC would not take kindly to one of the Mascots being active.

Given how they went after the others? Even if people really didn't believe they existed anymore, they still had power. Something to look into, once everything was said and done. It had to be tied to Shares in some capacity.

"We really should try to stay in contact with one another. At least help one another when it's needed, if we can," I was at least giving us a place to start. Frankly, everything that had happened over the past two days spoke for itself when the topic of cooperation was concerned. I wasn't expecting mountains would be moved. But getting us to at least keep in contact would be a major step up.

"Of course!" Nepgear smiled as I grinned. Oh, there are very few things I wouldn't give to have a at least friendly face from the start. Sure that could have caused problems, but it could prove to be a potent alliance that would have expanded much earlier.

"You guys are cool, I guess," Uni frowned slightly, and I had to resist the urge to chuckle.

"That would be great!" Ram jumped up into the air, startling her smaller sister who shyly nodded. Something to work on, I did suppose. But I was going to take it.

After all. We all had people to rescue.