ld city, but the sound had changed.

I looked over at the window without thinking.

I had somewhat relaxed because the crane could not crash into the second floor.

But then something unexpected happened.

Something huge mercilessly crashed through one of the external walls on the second floor.

I fell over after being hit by some of the rubble, but I think it was more the surprise from the sudden noise that knocked me over. Karen and I crawled along the floor to frantically move away from the window (or rather, the spot where it had been a moment before).

A tremendous amount of dust limited our vision.

“Oh, my!! Would you look at that.”

“He’s swinging something around with the crane’s wire? Has he strapped together steel frames to use in place of a wrecking ball?”

I felt like the entire floor had tilted. It was not often that a building made of reinforced concrete felt so unreliable.

I heard the sound of something roaring through the air.

The second impact was coming.

historical

I looked around in hopes of finding a way of jumping to the neighboring building. But I did not make it in time. I did not have the guts to stand up in this situation. With a great shock, some large object broke through the wall and flew into the building. If that so much as grazed a human, he would be smashed.

Cracks ran through the ceiling and a piece larger than a tatami mat fell down.

“Um...”

“What?”

“If the crane is swinging something around, doesn’t that mean its center of gravity is higher than normal? A crane needs to use a special leg to fortify its position when extending its arm. That means the crane cannot move right now. Doesn’t that mean we can more safely approach it right now?”

If we did nothing, the third impact would soon arrive.

At this rate, even a normal building would be utterly destroyed. And this was one that had been abandoned for decades and had dubious earthquake resistance.

Standing up and running along would be easy enough, but anyone who was willing to do so while everything was shaking so much had to have a death wish.

If only there was some way to finish off the man controlling the crane without having to move.

“...I just had a horrible idea.”

“What is it?”

“After that wrecking ball made up of pieces of metal framework hits the building, how long do you think it takes to pull it out from the rubble?”

“Well...About 10 seconds I think, but what can we do in 10 seconds? That isn’t enough time to get up and jump out the window, much less head downstairs.”

“We attach the flamethrower tank to the wrecking ball. It has to pass right by the main body of the crane while swinging, so we just have to detonate it at that exact moment.”

“...Are you serious?”

“Tying it on with rope would take too long, but 10 seconds should be enough to attach something like a hook onto a wire.”

With that makeshift wrecking ball making a mess of the place, bent pieces of rebar that could be used as a hook were lying everywhere. With a bit of preparation, I would be able to make something to attach the tank.

“Approaching that seems crazy to me,” said Karen.

“This is the same as my first decision.”

“?”

“If I had given into those two handguns and handed you over, I would have ended up cornered somewhere. Insisting on safety will get me nowhere. In this attraction at least, I need to take on some risk if I want to win.”

The third impact was coming.

If it so much as grazed me, I would be smashed into a pile of meat.

But this was my last and greatest chance.

A burnt smell and orange flames assaulted the senses.

In reality, this attraction that used real human lives did not progress like scripted entertainment. In other words, it was not structured such that each consecutive enemy was more powerful than the last.

In my opinion, my most powerful enemy had been the first woman with the two handguns.

And with the two handguns, the flamethrower, and the mobile crane defeated, I had already eliminated the most obviously dangerous enemies.

That just left the military knife and the stun gun.

They simply could not compare to the previous enemies.

That meant the situation had reversed. With the enemies more powerful than myself defeated, it was my turn to hunt the others down and kill them.

“This didn’t turn out right at all!” I groaned.

Gunshots rang out. But they were not being fired by us. They were likely audible everywhere on the island. Naturally, this was a new turn of events. I half-leaped behind the rubble of a crumbling warehouse at the harbor to hide alongside the bunny girl.

I heard a noise.

It had come from a man’s corpse rolling to a stop right next to me.

He held a military knife in one hand, but he remained so motionless that he looked frozen.

“That just leaves the stun gun. Or did the last participant have the stun gun’s owner hold the knife before killing him?”

“Hayashino-san... Did you forget the introduction back at the beginning? A girl had the stun gun.”

But it was impossible for a self-defense item like that to blow a hole in a human body.

The only possibility I could think of was...

“Dammit. Was there an old hunting weapon left behind in the rubble or one of the buildings?”

“Seems that way. If the powder grew damp, it would have been useless, but it can keep for decades as long as it does not touch the outside air.”

I could not say this was a wise move on my enemy’s part. I had no way of knowing if this gun truly had been sitting on this island for decades or if it was a new one set up by the organizers. However, using an old gun that had been thrown out like an old rusted pipe was suicide.

Nevertheless, the enemy had acquired a powerful weapon by taking that risk that was akin to walking barefoot across a minefield.

The bunny girl leaned towards me and said, “From the look of that body, this is a rifle and not a shotgun.”

“I doubt she can hit a very distant target without a scope, but we only have three shots. If we don’t finish her off right away, the gunshots will tell her where we are.”

“What about that sling made from a belt? There are more small stones than we could ever need here.”

“It’s all over if we’re shot while swinging it around to build up centrifugal force. And it was only ever meant as a diversion. It isn’t enough to kill in a single strike.”

We had no idea how many bullets the enemy had, but if she had a full complement, we were at an overwhelming disadvantage.

Searching for a new weapon would require we carelessly travel through an open area. Yet staying in one place would allow the enemy to widely circle around and target us with the rifle while out of range of our attacks.

I could hear the rifle being fired intermittently and the nearby ground and rubble was worn away bit by bit. She was searching for us rather than actually trying to kill us. But that would not last long. And her ability to do that showed she had plenty of ammunition. If she figured out how little we had, she would force her way in.

...So we’re cornered.

I breathed in and then out while hiding behind the rubble.

I asked the bunny girl, “This attraction’s prize is determined by the number of keys acquired rather than the number of people killed, right?”

“Yes, and?”

“It’s a long shot, but I’m going to take a gamble based on that.”

An explosive noise and a cloud of dust scattered throughout the dark harbor.

“Cough.”

Tatsukawa Shouko, the girl who had drawn the lot for the stun gun and was now using a hunting rifle she had found in the city area, coughed lightly after breathing in some of the dust that flowed her way.

She had been intermittently firing at areas her enemy might be in the hopes of driving them into a panic, but something must have ignited because the rubble had suddenly exploded.

“Cough, cough. What was that? Did I shoot the fuel tank of a fishing boat?”

And then...

As Tatsukawa peered cautiously through the rifle’s sight, she spotted a man’s leg lying next to the flaming rubble.

“...Did that blow him up?”

Just to be sure, she fired two or three more shots in that direction but received no response. She doubted he was still hiding amid that burning rubble.

“So did I do it? Oh, there it is, there it is.”

She spotted a man’s arm in a gap in the rubble. She had no idea what had happened to the rest of the body. Just the arm was stuck there.

And a single key was visible on the elastic band on the wrist.

And several other keys came jangling from the clenched fingers.

“He’d collected a lot of these. Looks like waiting until the very end to make my move was the right decision.”

Two handguns, a mobile crane, and a flamethrower.

While the others were winning powerful weapon after powerful weapon, Tatsukawa had won a stun gun. The other participants had likely looked on her with pity.

But she had not seen it that way.

The rules never said she needed to fight with only her initial equipment.

She had guessed the other participants would hunt down those with the most threatening weapons first and leave the easy jobs until later. And so Tatsukawa was off their radar. She had weaved through the gaps in the city and acquired a new powerful weapon.

She doubted she would have been able to do that if she had won a powerful weapon during the drawing.

Everyone would have focused their attacks on her, preventing her from moving around freely.

“One, two, three... Oh, this is everyone’s! What an idiot. He had collected so many and yet he let me steal them all in the end.”

She still had a fair bit of time until the time limit at dawn.

But she had all the keys and all the other participants were dead.

There was no real reason for the attraction to continue.

“Let’s see. He was given that bunny girl as a weapon, but is she dead too? Hey! Who’s running this thing!?”

“Coming.”

Like a family restaurant waitress arriving to take her order, the bunny poked her head out from where she had been hiding nearby.

Tatsukawa Shouko was cautious, but...

“Oh? Didn’t you call for me?”

“...Hm? Oh, I get it. Your owner lost the gamble, so you don’t belong to anyone now.” Tatsukawa lightly waved the man’s arm before tossing it aside. “Anyway, I have all the keys. I’ve won it all. There’s no point in continuing, so count the keys and pay me already.”

“Hmm. But the time limit is not until dawn.”

“I don’t want to stay in this dusty place a second longer than necessary.”

“I’m impressed you were willing to use that old hunting rifle. Weren’t you afraid it would explode and blow your face off?”

“Ugeh. That can happen!?”

Either due to a sense of superiority over defeating everyone else or due to a fear of losing everything by blowing herself up in the very end, Tatsukawa hurriedly threw the hunting rifle to the ground.

The bunny girl continued smiling and said, “Are you sure you want me to add up your winnings with those?”

“Just get it over with.”

“Understood.”

The bunny girl checked over each of the metal keys attached to the elastic band Tatsukawa held out.

Still smiling, she said, “Um, you have 0 valid keys according to the rules. As such, you will receive no reward.”

For an instant, Tatsukawa Shouko did not understand what she had just been told.

“What!? But...that can’t be true! I have all the keys!!”

“Well, y’see, Tatsukawa-san. As explained at the beginning, the key you started with does not count toward your reward.”

“I’m not talking about that one! What about the ones you have there!?”

“Oh, these?” The bunny girl tossed the keys to the ground like trash. “These are fakes created by making a mold of a real key and pouring melted lead inside. Fishing weights were easy enough to find and lead is well known for having a low melting point.”

“Wh-wha...?”

“Oh, that blown-off arm? That belongs to the knife man you shot. He even had the knife with him, so it wasn’t too hard to set up.”

Tatsukawa Shouko’s mind went blank, but then a thought came to her.

Tatsukawa had called for the bunny girl to end the attraction because she had thought everyone else was dead and she had all the keys. The original limit had been dawn, so if she still had not found all of the real keys...

“It isn’t over, you idiot,” said a male voice to the side.

But before Tatsukawa could turn around, Hayashino, who held the real keys, unhesitatingly pulled the trigger of his handgun loaded with the three remaining bullets.

Exactly three gunshots rang out and Tatsukawa collapsed to the side.

And so everything really did come to an end this time.

Brilliant light covered the entire island, making it seem the darkness from before had never been there. It seemed countless spotlights of the type used in theatres had been installed. The light had no warmth, but the brightness seemed to restore reality like a film projector room after the movie had ended.

A large number of men and women in work uniforms appeared from somewhere.

The bunny girl smiled and spoke to me.

“Well done.”

“I was just lucky. If she had seen through the lead keys I made as insurance, if she had seen through the severed arm, if the lead keys had melted in that fire, or if she had been more cautious and kept the hunting rifle, I would have been done for. You can’t say I had everything under control.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

I knew what she was trying to say.

Today, I had definitively decided to kill someone myself.

No matter how much I had succeeded here, I could never return to where I used to be.

“You win a full 500 million yen. How would you like to be paid?”

“In cash.”

“A diamond would take up less space.”

“I said in cash.”

Without ever dropping the smile, the bunny girl snapped her fingers. The surrounding people in work uniforms began contacting someone.

“By the way, may I ask what you need this 500 million for?”

“It’s nothing special,” I spat out. “I just need a foothold to begin a bit of revenge. Revenge against someone like you.”

Did you see that, Imada?

I’m no longer just all talk. I can actually kill people.

Imada Construction was one of the largest underworld general contractors that helped construct the stages for this sort of attraction, but if I could play the part of someone with a fair bit of wealth, I could likely make an appearance at their salon.