Inside a ruined house in a ruined city—a place so desolate not even the presence of a living rat could be felt—several men and women were gathered in the living room.
Seated on a tattered sofa, a one-eyed man wearing a white suit and hat closed the book he was reading. Turning his gaze toward a man and woman standing before him, he asked with a piercing, hawklike glare,
"So you ran away and came straight back. Is that what happened?"
"That thing is insane! We barely managed to escape from the grunts chasing us! But that guy dressed all in black was on an entirely different level! There's no way the two of us could take him!"
Pepper, a short, hunchbacked man in black clothes wearing goggles over both eyes, raised his cracked, frantic voice.
"That's right... I'm certain that was... a spiritual lifeform," Vinegar, a woman wearing skimpy black clothes and an eyepatch over her left eye, muttered quietly, wrapping her arms around her body with a pale face drained of blood.
The one-eyed man in the white suit shifted his gaze to a tall, handsome young man wearing a turban, who was folding his arms with a troubled, contemplative expression.
"Salt, what do you think?" he asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.
"If it managed to plant this much terror in both Pepper and Vinegar, then realistically, at our current stage, you're probably the only one who could stand against it, Captain."
The turban-clad man, Salt, looked straight at the one-eyed man who had addressed him and answered immediately with a solemn expression.
"An unknown spiritual lifeform, huh... The odds certainly don't look good."
Watching the captain make such an assessment, Salt gave a wry smile and spoke with exasperation.
"Captain, do you even realize what kind of face you're making right now?"
The captain wiped the utterly sinister smirk from his face, returning it to his usual iron mask before issuing orders.
"Vinegar, Pepper. As a two-man team, probe into Eastend."
"W-Wait just a second! I just told you! There's no way in hell I can deal with that thing!"
"He's right! We were noticed the instant we set foot in Northground! If we go poking our noses around that area, we're definitely gonna get caught!"
With desperate expressions, the two objected to the command.
"Don't misunderstand. All entry into the vicinity of Eastend is strictly forbidden for the time being. Gathering information from afar should be child's play for the two of you, shouldn't it?"
"If that's the case, I don't mind!"
"M-Me neither!"
Looking as though they had just narrowly escaped death, Vinegar and Pepper nodded vigorously.
"Still, how do you plan to beat a monstrous spiritual lifeform like that? Like you said just now, coming out victorious and unscathed is going to be pretty damn hard as we are, isn't it?"
"Naturally, I have a plan. Chili, how is that matter progressing?"
He directed the question toward a man in a white lab coat and round glasses who was sipping fruit liquor at the table.
"YES, it is going VERY well! As expected, Elves are WONDERFUL! If we assimilate them with a spiritual lifeform under specific conditions before absorbing it, we should be able to gain tens of times—no, potentially HUNDREDS of times more power!"
"Hundreds of times?! Are you serious?!"
Salt leaned forward toward Chili, who had answered in an exuberant tone.
"Sauce, you are to thoroughly scour the spiritual lifeform habitats!" the captain commanded the slender man covered in full-body tattoos, who kept both hands shoved in his pockets.
"Understood. And what will you and the others be doing, Captain?"
"Salt and I will be capturing that. As far as spiritual lifeforms of this world go, its strength is in a league of its own."
"Ah, the Three Great Calamity Beasts of the World, was it? Weren't they visitors from an alternate world or something?"
As Vinegar murmured with her index finger resting against her chin, the captain nodded silently. Sweeping his gaze across the members, he shouted,
"Now then, let us move out! We are 'Kyou'! Defeat is unacceptable! Any fool who picks a fight with us, regardless of right or wrong, shall be slaughtered without a shred of mercy!"
With that shout, he began walking toward the building's exit, and the other members followed suit.