The cleaners moved with perfect coordination.
They were professionals in this kind of work.
Even when they noticed booby traps, they didn’t slow down—they either deactivated or circumvented them with practiced ease.
They even seemed familiar with the complex structure of the underground laboratory, knowing exactly which routes to take.
Hans, who was receiving real-time reports of the cleaners' movements through the rats, bit his fingernail anxiously.
This won’t do. At this rate, they’ll break through in ten minutes—no, five.
Ludger had left to kill the mastermind behind all this—Duke Ludwig Benkanto.
That meant the responsibility of defending this place fell solely on Hans.
Well, there's also this tiny Dwarf brat...
Honestly, if not for Seridan’s explosives, Hans wouldn’t have been able to stall them this long alone.
But the enemy was proving far more formidable than he had anticipated.
“What now? Got a plan?”
Seridan pressed him from the side.
Hans finally opened his tightly clenched mouth.
“There is one. I really didn’t want to use it, though.”
At his gaze, the swarm of rats began moving in unison.
* * *
The cleaners’ leader felt something was off.
What is it?
A strange sensation pricked at his brow.
It was the kind of signal that only instinct could send to the body—something was happening.
But no matter how sharply he scanned his surroundings, he couldn’t pinpoint anything unusual.
Well—maybe one thing.
The bomb traps hanging from the ceiling.
The veteran cleaners had carefully avoided them as they advanced.
Since the path was relatively wide, they didn’t need to disarm anything.
And now that they knew their opponent was trying to stall, it was time to pick up the pace.
“Leader. Is there a problem?”
“...No. Nothing.”
Just as the leader shook it off and began to move again—
Squeak. Squeak.
The sound of rats echoed from somewhere.
Rats were nothing unusual, especially in a place like this.
But the leader felt something... wrong.
Were there always this many rats here?
Sure, this was a deeply dug-out laboratory in an abandoned mine, but even so, the rat population was excessive.
And worse—their behavior wasn’t normal.
Instead of fleeing from humans, the rats were climbing pipes and walls, all moving toward a singular direction.
Then it hit him—what they were trying to do.
“...Everyone! Get out now!”
“Huh?”
“Move—!!!”
The moment the leader shouted—
The rats simultaneously triggered the booby traps that the cleaners had purposefully avoided.
KWA-BOOOOM!!!
A massive explosion swallowed the surrounding area.
Feeling the tremors and the echo of the blast above, Hans closed his eyes with a complicated expression.
Sorry, guys.
He had ordered the rats under his command to carry out a suicide attack. And now, he felt something impossible to put into words.
He shouldn’t care about how many rats died—but strangely, his heart ached.
Still, they’d done their job. The traps had exploded, and the area the enemies occupied had been torn apart.
Then maybe...
Hans's eyes shot open at the signal coming from a few surviving rats.
They’re still alive?
Contrary to what he hoped—that all of them had been wiped out—some had survived.
Not all of them. Their numbers have clearly dropped. But how...?
He found the answer as he watched the survivors emerge from the rubble.
Magical protection suits? They’re wearing that expensive crap?
The leader and his elite squad were clad in magical protective gear.
At the moment of impact, the suits automatically triggered defensive magic.
They weren’t quite artifacts, but they served as backup lives for mercenaries in their line of work.
In fact, the leader had survived thanks to the suit.
But they hadn’t emerged unscathed.
Even with the protection, they were covered in wounds from the explosion and falling debris.
And those not wearing the suits were buried under the rubble—dead.
Their number had gone from over thirty down to just seven.
Still not enough.
If he couldn’t finish them off, he’d only provoke them further.
Sure enough, the cleaners’ leader, face twisted in fury, looked like a demon crawling out of hell—his features streaked with blood from a head wound.
RATATATAT!
He began shooting every rat in sight.
We’ve been exposed.
Hans immediately ordered all the rats to retreat.
The cleaners had figured it out.
After watching the rats trigger the explosion, even fools would have caught on.
“What’s the situation?”
Seridan asked from the side.
“...Some of them survived.”
“Survived? How?”
“They’re wearing high-end gear. They're barely hanging on, but they’re pissed.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“Well, at least it’s fewer. So what now?”
“There’s no ‘what now.’ We’re out of traps.”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
Hans hesitated.
Then, he pulled out a small fang from his belt.
“...Run.”
“What?”
“I can’t fight, but I’m the only one here who can buy time.”
It wasn’t like Hans hadn’t thought of fleeing.
The kid sleeping in that glass tube had nothing to do with him.
He had no obligation to risk his life to protect her.
No responsibility.
But Ludger had asked him to protect this place.
And now he knew exactly what kind of experiments had taken place here.
“...I’ll stall them for a bit and run when I can.”
So he couldn’t retreat.
He had always been someone who ran away despite his strength—but not now.
Seridan’s eyes widened.
Then she suddenly burst into laughter and slapped Hans’s back with her gloved hand.
“OW! What the hell!”
“I’m impressed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you were just some weasel always reading the room, but now I see you in a new light. Yeah, even if you don’t want to fight—sometimes you’ve got to. So I’ll help.”
“You could die, you know. This isn’t your fight.”
“Two are better than one. Besides, they already messed with me too—so it’s not like I’ve got nothing to settle.”
Grinning, Seridan asked Hans,
“So what now? If you say no, I’ll just go off on my own.”
“...Just don’t get in my way.”
Hans growled as he stabbed the large beast fang into the back of his hand.
His body began to swell—and then he transformed into a massive brown bear.
Shredded clothing fell between patches of bristling fur.
Seridan stared at him, then grabbed a tuft of fur and climbed on top of him.
“Alright, let’s do this! Bear Rider, charging out!”
“Stop giving things weird names.”
Hans growled as he prepared to face the approaching cleaners.
* * *
Arriving at the mine, Ludger narrowed his eyes at the tracks on the ground.
About thirty.
A large group had infiltrated.
He sprinted forward into the interior.
Along the way, the remnants of disarmed traps littered the floor.
Even the traps meant to stall them hadn’t worked.
All signs pointed to professionals.
Ludger realized things had taken a turn for the worse.
This is...
Eventually, the narrow tunnels opened up into the wide expanse of the secret laboratory.
Ludger stopped in his tracks as he saw the collapsed debris.
The blood oozing from beneath the rubble told him—
They hadn’t died long ago.
They’ve been disarming traps all the way up until now. No way they’d make a sudden mistake. Hans and Seridan must’ve taken some drastic action.
BOOM! WAAAUUUGH!!
At that moment, a faint tremor rumbled from below.
Then came a monstrous roar—deep and bestial, like that of a giant bear.
Hans?
There was no way a wild animal could have wandered into this place.
That meant it had to be Hans.
If even that coward had pushed himself to transform, things must truly be dire.
Ludger quickly estimated the direction of the sound with his instincts and line of sight, then used shadow travel magic.
The risk was high—if his coordinates misaligned, he could crash into a wall or phase into solid ground within the lab.
But this wasn’t the time for caution.
A disorienting twist tugged at his body, and his vision flipped.
He rose slowly in the new space, his limbs reeling slightly from the heavy mana consumption.
Sticky, tar-like magic clung to his frame before sloughing off into the shadows.
Rather than check his own condition, Ludger first scanned his surroundings.
“Hans.”
There in one corner of the lab lay a massive werebear—Hans, hunched and bleeding.
Seridan was there too, looking exhausted but not injured.
Clearly, Hans had taken the brunt of the damage for her.
“...Boss.”
Hans, his brown fur soaked red in places, gave a toothy grin at Ludger.
His expression held the kind of relief that came from knowing it was finally over.
“And who the hell are you?”
The cleaner leader, still in a tense standoff, glared at Ludger with bloodshot eyes.
He, too, had been through a rough battle. His breathing was ragged, his body bruised and cut all over.
Out of his elite squad, only three remained. The rest had died to Seridan’s explosives.
And for that, his mood was beyond foul.
He felt like killing everyone in this room still wouldn’t be enough to make up for it.
Ambushed by amateurish traps, forced to fight a Dwarf girl riding a bear monster, and losing valuable subordinates—
Even if he were paid handsomely, none of it would be worth it.
Sure, this line of work was always dangerous.
But that didn’t make the bitter taste of loss any easier to swallow.
“You with them?”
Still, he didn’t charge at Ludger right away—his instincts held him back.
I didn’t sense him approaching.
It was as if this man had materialized out of thin air.
And the suffocating aura he now radiated...
It told the cleaner that this was someone who had passed through far more deadly crucibles than himself.
Still, if I catch him off guard, I might be able to end it quickly.
The cleaner knew full well that strength alone didn’t guarantee victory.
It wasn’t the strongest who survived—it was the survivor who was strong.
Victory, even through filthy means—that was the only creed he ever believed in.
If I can find an opening... now!
The leader immediately drew a hidden gun from beneath his wrist.
It sprang forward on a concealed spring mechanism, and in one swift motion, he leveled the barrel at Ludger's forehead.
But before he could fire, his head was sliced clean off.
It bounced across the floor.
His eyes never even registered that he’d died.
“B-Boss?!”
His remaining subordinates were equally stunned.
They belatedly realized what had happened and prepared to attack Ludger —but his shadows moved first.
Crack. Crunch.
In a heartbeat, Ludger's shadows devoured them all.
Hans let out a breath filled with both exhaustion and relief.
“All that hell °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° we went through just to stall those bastards... and he takes them out in an instant.”
“...Boss really is a monster.”
The worn-out werebear and Dwarf girl exchanged a look—and then laughed softly.
They were alive.
That was enough.
Ludger approached the two of them.
“It’s not over yet. Hans. What about the experiment?”
“I don’t know. I was too focused on stopping them.”
Ludger handed Hans a healing potion and an antidote.
Hans sprayed the medicine onto his wounds, then injected the neutralizer.
Thanks to the thick bear hide, none of his injuries were too deep.
Still, it clearly hurt—Hans grimaced as he stood up.
“Ugh. I’m never doing this again. At least the bullets didn’t pierce all the way through...”
“But you didn’t use that fang.”
“...Didn’t know what might happen if I did.”
Hans quickly changed into the spare clothes he’d prepared in advance.
The three of them hurried toward the main experiment chamber.
Despite the brutal combat, the interior of the lab remained untouched.
Ludger approached the capsule holding Arte, who now lay unmoving.
“The soul transfer is complete.”
What they were looking at now was essentially a corpse—Arte’s soul was no longer in this body.
It had already been extracted and infused into a new vessel.
“But synchronization will take a bit more time.”
“I see.”
The prototype automaton of the Steel Choir Project—Alpha.
Ludger looked down at the boy sleeping inside the capsule... then suddenly snapped his head up.
“Boss?”
Hans looked puzzled at Ludger's sudden reaction.
“...Hans. Seridan. You two need to get out of here now.”
“What? Wait, Boss, why’re you saying that now?”
“He’s coming.”
Hans and Seridan didn’t understand.
“Coming? Who—?”
THOOOOOOM!
A deep, bone-rattling vibration rolled through the underground lab.
Rrrrumble...
The green liquid inside the experiment tanks began to ripple like an earthquake had struck.
Crack! RUMMMMBLE!
Grinding, collapsing sounds grew steadily closer.
“W-What the hell...?”
While Hans panicked, Ludger calmly stared up at the ceiling.
Or rather—at the person beyond it.
“Looks like she’s really pissed. She’s trying to drill down from the surface just to get to me.”
He had a hunch this might happen.
So he remained calm.
“You really want to catch me that badly... Casey Selmore?”
