Dungeon's Final Boss: Banished by My Boss, the Goddess, to Earth—So I'll Continue My Past Life - 102

Chapter 102: Negotiation

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“Yes, yes. I thought so after all. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I appreciate your help.”

It was morning. After ending the call on my smartphone, I used the water I’d boiled with the camping set stored in my item box to make instant coffee.

Watching the sunrise from the mountain peak had a certain charm, and drinking coffee while enjoying the view was also a nice touch. I could finally understand the sentiment behind celebrating the first sunrise of the year.

Back when I was still human, I never did anything like that. I didn’t have the stamina for it, and more than anything, I had no desire to go to crowded places. Even now, I hate lining up at popular stores. But these days, I had the means to seek out quiet, secluded spots.

Maybe this year, I should go watch the first sunrise of the year. When that time comes, I’ll invite Mio too.

“Um…”

“Help…”

I ignored the hoarse voices I heard and sipped my coffee. As I popped a piece of chocolate from the item box into my mouth, I leisurely enjoyed my morning coffee to the fullest.

“Well then.”

I finally looked toward the direction I had been ignoring. Blue pillars stood evenly spaced in a tight circle. Inside, those two were trembling violently.

They were completely naked, but I wasn’t the one who undressed them. They undressed themselves. After I poured water on them and gradually lowered the surrounding temperature, they stripped to avoid having their clothes freeze on them.

The surrounding pillars were absolute zero pillars. The frigid air blasting from them naturally sapped the body’s warmth.

“I’ve confirmed that you two are fake detectives.”

Before my coffee, I had made a call—to Minister Niitaka. He had checked the registration numbers on their police badges, and it turned out they were fakes.

“I told you so!”

“Yes, I heard you.”

I had already extracted more information using 【Brainwashing】, but the two hadn’t realized that. So why was I doing this? Since they went out of their way to irritate me, I couldn’t just let them off with something as simple as that.

“But we were just…”

They repeated the same excuse while shivering. They claimed to be antisocial individuals hired by a certain person. Apparently, even the underworld had something like staffing agencies. They were simply following a job request and knew nothing about the client.

That was the same information I’d extracted through 【Brainwashing】. What they hadn’t told me, though, was the detailed profile of the person who contacted them. Whether their silence came from a sense of professional ethics or fear of the organization, I didn’t particularly care either way.

“I will spare your lives, but I won’t be responsible for what happens afterward.”

“W-Wait!”

One of them turned pale when he saw the smartphone in my hand. Yes, it was his phone. It wasn’t set up with facial recognition and required a passcode, but I had already obtained that.

He didn’t seem to understand why the home screen was visible, but I opened the phone app in front of him, picked a certain number from the call history, and tapped it. The number wasn’t in the contacts—this was the number of the person who assigned them their job. Their broker.

When I tapped it, the call connected.

“Yes?”

The voice answered almost immediately.

“Good morning.”

“…And who might you be?”

“I’m the one you picked a fight with.”

“Well now, I don’t recall picking a fight with anyone.”

“Oh? Isn’t your business model essentially a fight-for-hire? Which means, right now, you and I are enemies. More importantly, the hand you extended has pissed me off. That should be reason enough, don’t you think?”

“I apologize. That was not my intention. Shall we discuss compensation?”

“Then, give me the name of the client.”

“I’m sorry, that’s against our organization’s rules.”

“Then it’s war.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Sure?”

This was going to be fun.

“Cockroaches are troublesome because of their resilience, but that’s all it is. Resilience and how gross they look. They’re not a physical threat. Or are you going to start making everything around me miserable? Go ahead and try. But before that, I’ll be coming to see you myself.”

“Hah, and just how would you do that?”

“Like this.”

In the next instant, there he was—a man in pajamas standing right in front of me. My location had changed too. I was inside a room. No, it looked like a hotel room to be precise. 

“What the—?!”

“I recognized your existence and identified you as an enemy. That’s all I need.”

There was a monster called a Hellhound. Once it marked a target, it pursued it with relentless, hellish obsession until either it or the enemy was dead. As a dungeon monster, it couldn’t leave the dungeon to chase its target, but the moment that target reentered the dungeon, the monster would instantly recognize their presence and resumed the attack.

The Hellhound’s unique skill was 【Hellhound’s Obsession】.

“I never let anyone escape.”

I bound the panicked man with 【Telekinesis】.

“I never give in.”

I looked into his eyes.

“I never show mercy to my enemies.”

I declared to the trembling man and extracted his information using 【Brainwashing】. I took his phone and contacted the next target.

Now, on to the next one.

“Did you know? The resilience that people use as a metaphor for cockroaches refers to the species’ survival strength, not the toughness of any single individual. And right now, in front of me, is just a lone cockroach.”

I pulled information from the next one, then the next. And the next. And then the next. Eventually, I arrived at a corner of a sky-piercing skyscraper in a foreign country. There, finally, I managed to twist the organization’s principles and force them to give up the client’s name.

Good grief, what a hassle. Now then, time to return to Japan.

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