Construction on the new Level Ten has begun.
Digging down into the interior of the great volcano was hard work indeed.
Even Vikir, who had crossed countless lines of fire, thought that it was probably the hardest labor in human history.
…udeudeudeug!
Vikir rolled the huge boulder with his bare hands.
Pushing the boulder up the steep slope.
The boulder was not only heavy, but hot. As if it had just been pulled out of a fire.
But it wasn't just the boulder he was pushing up.
Digging up soil, gushing groundwater, sulfurous gas, melting rock, billowing oil vapor, and blazing flames.
Everything about the construction site in the crater was extremely hot.
Prisoners were forced to walk barefoot and carry heavy objects over the insanely hot bedrock.
Inside this extreme heat, the flesh dries out and becomes crispy.
Blood, sweat, and the moisture of the flesh would drain away, leaving only the tiny bones and nerve bundles underneath.
Compared to this heavy labor, the entrance ceremony seems like a child's play in the cradle.
...If Vikir, a superhuman, felt this way, what about the other prisoners?
All around the workshop, people were collapsing, and the crack of the guards' whips echoed through the air.
Higher-level prisoners, level 6 or 7 and above, also collapse one by one from the constant hard labor and poor food.
Each time, the lower-level prisoners upstairs would fall to the ground.
"Did you hear? There was a death in Level 6 this time."
"What? Level 6 is where the inmates are trapped, right?"
"There are deaths there, too. I thought it was just pure monsters."
"Even among those monsters, there's a division of power."
"Damn, that guy who died there would have reigned like a king if he were on our floor, right?"
Seeing monsters that were much stronger and more vicious than them fall like that, how harsh must the depths of the workshop be?
That's why the prisoners upstairs are so careful to never be transferred downstairs.
Naturally, the vague fear of the prisoners downstairs who survived in such a harsh environment cannot help but grow.
Meanwhile, the prisoners downstairs had fun laughing at and belittling their dying colleagues or the prisoners upstairs.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Hey, I hear there's a death upstairs, must've been working."
"On level six? You're doing all the embarrassing work yourself. They should've transferred that weakling upstairs."
"So, who ate it? The corpse, My mouth is watering...."
"The guys around here ripped it apart and there wasn't much left, just bones and skin, nothing to eat."
It is a strangely distorted boast about the class to which one belongs.
It was a sense of pride and superiority over who was enduring the most severe suffering.
In this atmosphere, a prisoner's body, dried up like a mummy, receives no sympathy or remembrance.
"That monster bastard, he's finally gone. There will be no need to worry anymore."
"Haha – I can't believe you're like that even though you worked comfortably in a cooler place than me. Pathetic."
The dead are greeted with fear, scorn, sneers, and sighs of relief.
Even the corpse is reduced to a piece of meat to be chewed and swallowed in a few bites.
The 'Level 10' construction site was such a place.
At that time.
ttuu-
The sound of a horn echoed throughout the area, announcing lunch time.
A honeyed ten-minute break. Ten minutes that melt faster than ice cream thrown into lava.
This mealtime was my only hope and oasis to make it through the day.
…tug! …tug! …tug! …tug!
The guards circled among the prisoners, distributing food from their baskets.
Vikir, too, was given lunch, the only meal rationed once a day.
…tug!
A chunk of bread so charred it could have been coal fell in front of them.
The bread was already coarse and hard, but something had gone wrong in the cooking process, making it even blacker and harder.
The bread was served with salted sardines that hadn't been gutted, and they reeked of a disgusting smell from the heat of transportation.
But the prisoners ate it gratefully.
Vikir chewed the bread and salted sardines and thought idly.
'... I wonder if the message got through?'
Before being escorted to Nouvelle Vague, he'd sent a message to those who remained via CindyWendy.
He'd even left one more message through Isabella before entering the Iron Maiden, just in case.
There's no telling what the demons might do on Earth without him.
With their companions gone, the remaining demons must be quite nervous.
But Vikir had a job to do here in Nouvelle Vague, and he couldn't stay on the surface any longer.
So Vikir had shared his plan with a few trusted people.
'For now, I'll do what I can.'
Vikir shook off his thoughts and looked up.
Before him lay a vast crater, a shaft of sulfurous gas and bubbling lava.
It's hard to believe this is the inside of an extinct volcano.
'There's something down here I'm looking for.'
Vikir stared at the bottom of the pit, not knowing how much further he would have to dig.
It was then that Decarabia, who had been silent in Vikir's chest, spoke.
[It's not long now, 'it' is surely near].
"So it is. I thought so, too."
Vikir nodded, remembering the time before the regression.
The Level Ten work here in Nouvelle Vague is aimed at digging deeper into the volcano and expanding its interior space.
And it was serving some of Vikir's purposes.
Even if it wasn't for the Level Ten, Vikir had something else he was looking for, and he needed to dig down into this volcano.
To do so, he turned himself in and traveled all the way down to Nouvelle Vague.
It was as if the power of many prisoners was helping him.
Then.
"...!"
Vikir's thoughts were interrupted.
He heard a group of prisoners giggling and shouting from the workshop above him.
"Hey, 'Stupid Garm'!"
"Not enough bread, damn it, what if we screw this up!"
"What the fuck! Are you asking us to starve to death!"
"Give me your share of bread, you asshole!"
It was an amazing scene.
The prisoners were shouting accusations and profanity at the guard.
And he could see that the guard was rather shaken.
Vikir recognized the guard's face at once.
'You're looking strangely familiar.'
The guard was Lieutenant Garm, who had given Vikir some guidance in the past.
His bushy hair, his cap pressed down so deeply that it obscured his face, and the burn marks that covered his face made it easy to recognize him, but they made it hard to tell what he looked like.
"I-I'm sorry. Inmates. There's a problem with the bread ration, and there aren't enough of them."
"Who cares if there's a problem, you probably stole our bread from the other guards!"
The prisoners' accusations were fierce. No wonder, they were deprived of their once-a-day bread.
The work system at Nouvelle Vague was a bit unusual, with one guard in charge of dozens of prisoners, each working in their own section.
The guard in charge and the prisoners in charge change every month, and it's all recorded as a monthly performance, which benefits and penalizes both the prisoners and the guards.
As a result, the guards do their best to improve the performance of the prisoners they are in charge of this month, often using whipping or solitary confinement as a weapon.
But just begging doesn't work, so the guards try to encourage their prisoners by giving them better tools or extra bread.
And naturally, there were rivalries and nervousness among the guards, who would put well-behaved prisoners in their groups, or sneak extra tools or bread for the prisoners.
Of course, here in the Nouvelle Vague, all goods are limited and scarce, and if someone gets one more bite, someone else has to go hungry.
So the prisoners in Lieutenant Garm's group resented his timidity in bringing them extra bread or work tools, only to have them taken away by other guards or prisoners.
"Damn it, Why should I be assigned to the 'Stupid Garm' group!"
"I thought you said he was the lowest performer among the new lieutenants?"
"Pathetic, I mean, ignored by his fellow guards and even the prisoners."
"Did you hear, those burn marks on his face were inflicted by a prisoner?"
"Pfft- that's not all, the asshole says he gets his meals taken away by prisoners too."
"Do you want to know something more surprising? I heard that the higher-level prisoners even make him keep watch over them at night."
As Vikir listened to the prisoners' descriptions, he suddenly realized why the guard's face looked so familiar.
'It was a lot of hard and difficult work.'
Going to the prisoners of Level Nine to show them around would be something even most guards would be reluctant to do.
You never know when you're going to get into trouble.
Meanwhile, ten minutes into the meal period, the prisoners in Garm's group were still stretching out their legs.
"Damn it, we haven't had any bread anyway, we're not working, just beat us, beat us!"
"I'm not working either~"
"Well, since I'm in the stupid Garm group anyway, I'm not going to get any work done this month."
"I'll just get corporal punishment."
"Hey, take out that triple baton on your waist. And kill me."
Lieutenant Garm was at a loss as the group of prisoners was in a state of despair.
Clearly, there was something a little off about him.
Meanwhile, Vikir thought to himself.
'Now that I think about it, other prisoners are also sabotaging work.'
It's no wonder that the stronger and more violent prisoners are less likely to cooperate with construction.
Prisoners held at higher levels and in deeper cells tended to neglect their work, and the guards couldn't easily intervene with them.
They are dangerous people who are lucky if they don't go on a rampage.
'It would also look weird if I worked too hard on my own.'
Vikir, is a prisoner at Level Nine. Most of the floors here at Level Nine are empty.
Most of the inmates are in and out of solitary confinement on a regular basis, either because they've been labeled as rebellious, a traitor, or a candidate for transfer to Level Ten.
But for personal reasons, Vikir had to work hard on the construction of the Level Ten, and if he did anything wrong, he could be suspected of being too diligent in his labor for a prisoner of Level Nine.
'I'll need to have some sort of 'excuse' for that. ... And there's something else I'd like to try out.'
After making his calculations, Vikir dropped the rock he was holding.
Kurrrrrrr!
The boulder rolled down the slope at a tremendous speed.
"What? What the hell is that!"
"Boulder rolling!"
"Stop, stop, no, dodge!"
The guards scrambled out of the way.
Quack! Pow!
With a loud bang, the boulder crashed into the lava pit, sending rocks and lava droplets flying in all directions.
Soon, all eyes turned upward.
The area where the inmates of Level Nine labor.
There stood Vikir, the culprit behind the boulder, looking nonchalant.
"I didn't do it."
The idea was to see how the guards came out.