An Old Man Restaurant Owner Is Unparalleled by Relying on His Old Tricks. It Turns Out, He’s the Legendary Dungeon Conqueror. - 69

Chapter 69: I Ran With All of My Might

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“What should I do…”

At my wits end, I groaned while holding my head in my hands. I couldn’t remember how I got out of the dungeon, but I somehow safely made my way back home albeit the overwhelming anxiety plaguing me. I only remembered the police came to my house and asked some questions of what had happened. No report had been filed yet, so I wouldn’t get arrested yet. In fact, if she filed a report, I could claim it was a false accusation. The police told me that cases like this were typically resolved as a civil case. I had to temporarily close the shop due to this incident. The videos had already spread across the internet and I had received numerous hate messages on platforms like Y and XTube. Some of them were downright threatening my life, making it impossible for me to run the shop under such pressure. 

And yet, by the time I realized it, I had already come to the restaurant at my usual time, just like always. 

“Good morning, Manager-san.”

“Osaka-san? Why are you here? I thought I already told you the shop was closed today…?”

To my surprise, my part-time employee, Mao Osaka, was already at the shop too. 

“Yes, I’m aware of that, but it seems Manager-san is going through some difficulties right now.”

“…I-I didn’t do anything… I swear, I didn’t…”

“Of course you didn’t. Manager-san is not the kind of person who would do something like that after all.”

“….You believe me?”

“Fufu. Of course.”

“But still… It’s going to be difficult to run the restaurant for a while…”

“Don’t worry about that, Manager-san. Here, look at this.”

“Huh?”

Mao Osaka showed me the screen of her smartphone. There was a video being played on her smartphone.

“This is… The video from that time?”

It was the video of that foreign woman repairing the drone just before I was about to be falsely accused by her. The drone came back to life in that video and while I was trying to link the drone to my XTube account with my smartphone, she was tearing her own clothes to shreds behind me. 

“This video has been spreading on the internet for a little while now. It seems another explorer happened to be nearby and recorded it. Some people are saying this video must be a fake video, but it looks like most of the people that Manager-san is the real victim of this incident.”

“Thi-This video is real! This is exactly what happened back then! There’s no doubt about it! But just who recorded this video…?”

“I don’t know who to thank, but… This is great news, Manager-san. You should be able to prove your innocence with this.”

Thanks to the video that was uploaded to the internet, my false charge had been cleared up. Only a small minority were claiming that the video was a fake video, but most of the public opinion seemed to be saying that foreign woman must be targeting me so she could ask me for a lot of settlement money. There were many people asking for the restaurant to reopen soon and just when I was thinking I might be able to open up the restaurant tomorrow…

“Huh? A phone call… From Nanoha? Hello, Nanoha? What’s the matter? Huh? You want me to come to the Dungeon Management Agency right now? You guys already caught the woman who tried to frame me?! W-Wait, I got it, I’m on my way!”

I rushed to the Dungeon Management Agency and I was once again led to the same office room as before. There were Rinko Nagao, Mizusawa-san, Nanoha and that platinum blonde foreign woman. No doubt about it, that was the same woman from yesterday!

“Hm? Nana Tendou…?”

For some reason, Nana Tendou was there too.

“Thank you for coming, Nishida-san. You must have been in Tachikawa. I’m surprised you were able to get here this quickly.”

“Yeah, I ran with all of my might to get here.”

It had taken me about 10 minutes to get here. I was a bit tired, to say the least. 

“…I see. (Although I’m confident I can run faster than the train, but it’s impossible for me to reach Tachikawa in just 10 minutes from here…)”

Nagao-san chuckled, seemingly a bit exasperated for some reason.

“Alright. Let’s get straight to the main topic. The incident from yesterday was something the Dungeon Management Agency couldn’t overlook, so we’ve conducted various investigations. As a result, we found out the perpetrator of that incident was an S-rank explorer, Elsa Simon, who had entered this country for tourism purposes from the Great French Union.”

“So she wasn’t Japanese.”

“Precisely. Erina is a fake name. The story about her parents receiving citizenship and her being born and raised in Japan is a lie too. In other words, a foreigner had unlawfully entered our country’s dungeon.”

“Ugh…”

Erina, now revealed to be Elsa, winced at Nagao-san’s stern remarks. 

“So? Why is Nana Tendou here?”

“Nana Tendou is working as a freelance explorer for the Great French Union and Elsa Simon is one of her team members.”

“Huh? Is that so?”

So it turned out everything was orchestrated by Nana Tendou. I guess she still held a grudge against me. 

“J-Just so you know, I had nothing to do with this! Elsa acted on her own! I didn’t tell her to do any of that!”

“That’s right! I did it on my own accord! Nana has nothing to do with this incident!”

Oh. It turned out Nana Tendou didn’t have any connection to this incident. 

“Then why did you try to frame Nishida-san?”

“I came to Japan because I wanted Nana to return to France as soon as possible! But… To my surprise, she said she couldn’t go back because of THAT MAN! I couldn’t forgive him because of that…!”

According to her full confession, the man who partnered with her was a freelance explorer she had hired with money. Apparently, the male explorer readily agreed to her request when this beautiful foreigner asked him to. 

“But still, how did you manage to identify her this quickly?”

“Yes. We worked really hard to identify her. Information regarding S-rank explorers from France is not something publicly available in our country, so she probably thought it wouldn’t be easy for us to identify her… Good grief. This woman underestimated Japan too much, huh? Right, Jeanne d’Arc of the Dungeon Era? Heh.”

“Ughhhhh….”

Provoked by Nagao-san, Elsa could only ground her teeth in frustration. 

“Nishida-san, what will you do? We could arrest her for illegal dungeon trespassing, but at most, she’d only face a fine. As an S-rank explorer, a fine of that level is just a small change for her. However, she’s a very popular explorer in her home country. We could use this incident to have the Japanese government pressure the French government. This issue could be treated as an international issue and potentially affect her future endeavors back home.”

Honestly, even if we were to do that, my grudge to her would only be appeased a little. Thanks to the video that proved my innocence, only very few people still thought of me as a sex offender online. I should be able to reopen my restaurant again soon.

“You know what? I don’t really mind whatever you will do to her. Just make her swear she will never do something like this ever again.”

“I see. Understood. Then, would it be alright if the Dungeon Management Agency took this matter into our hands?”

“Fine by me.”

I agreed and Nagao-san nodded in satisfaction.”

“In that case. Elsa Simon, you will be diving into the Kabukicho Dungeon in Shinjuku.”

“…You want me to dive into a dungeon?”

“Yes. As of now, a team led by one of our S-rank explorers has gone missing in the Shinjuku Kabukicho Dungeon. We’d like to form a rescue team and send them immediately to help the missing team, but the location of the missing team is quite deep underground. We’ve been unable to find suitable explorers for this task.”

“So… you want me to join them?”

“Exactly. If you do, we’ll let this incident sweep off the rug without any fuss.”

Nagao-san said. She was exuding an air of authority, leaving no room for objections. She smiled pleasantly before shifting her gaze to Nana Tendou.

“Ah, right. I almost forgot. Nana Tendou-san here hasn’t made any amends yet for the time where she attacked Nishida-san the other day, right?”

“…So I basically have to join the rescue team too?”

“Well, you’re only rotting yourself up in your home without doing anything ever since that incident anyway, right?”

“Ughhh….”

“Although Elsa-san was acting on her own accord, you’re not entirely without fault. You still need to bear responsibility for her.”

“Fi-Fine…”

It seemed both Nana Tendou and Elsa Simon would be joining the rescue team for the Shinjuku Kabukicho Dungeon. The two of them were S-rank explorers, so this must be the best possible outcome the Dungeon Management Agency could come up with. They could atone for their actions using their skills. 

Then, Nagao-san turned her gaze toward me. 

“And then,  Nishida-san. I have one more thing I want to discuss with you.”

…I wondered what it could be? I had a really bad feeling about this, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong… Right?

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