chapter02 · 032-ep32

Episode 32: "What a Commander Really Is"

At forty-two, mornings that are a first for me have become rare. Today was one of them.

"Abyss Clearing Team Begins Joint Training Today. Entire Process to Be Broadcast Live"

"Venue: Agency's Third Managed Dungeon. Unprecedented Decision to 'Show the World Our Hand' Divides Opinion"

"Spectator Lottery: Four Thousand Applicants per Seat"

I looked at three headlines and turned my terminal face down. Washed rice. Messed it up once this morning.

We'd decided from the start to show our hand. Secrets weren't the only thing I didn't want to bring into a place humanity had never entered. I didn't want to bring the habit of keeping secrets, either.

Still—I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.

For eight years, or twenty if you counted the notebooks, I'd observed how people moved and put it into words. But today would be the first time in my life I'd use those words to "command" anyone in a practical combat exercise.

Two messages from Hina-chan.

"Sensei! The press cameras here are out of control!"

"Also, Maru-san ate enough breakfast for five this morning. Business as usual!"

All right. Business as usual for me, too.

◇

The Agency's Third Managed Dungeon was a shallow-layer training labyrinth where monster density and spawn zones were controlled. Six people in full gear stood in the plaza before its entrance.

Everyone's back seemed a little stiffer than usual. Understandable. All six had taken my lessons hundreds of times, but today would be the first time they'd follow my "command" in anything resembling combat.

As usual, I held up a sheet of paper with three lines on it.

"Objective: work our Abyss formation into all six of you."

"Retreat criterion: same as the real operation. If even one person can't put their 'next step' into words, stop immediately."

"After return: observation report meeting (everyone's reports)."

"Let's begin. First assignment: travel to the fifth layer and back. —I'll give you every instruction for it in the next ten minutes."

"Every instruction?" Rei-kun asked.

"Every one."

Then I kept talking.

At the width of the second passage, Rei-kun's draw would lose half a step to the wall. Sound carried around the third fork, making it easy for a pack to come up behind them; if that happened, the place Maru-kun planted his shield would be "noon," and everyone would rotate clockwise into new positions. Mio-san's blueprint would be updated from Yagarasu-kun's reports, and Hina-chan's relays would fill the gap in the meantime. If the formation broke, the first thing to move wasn't the firepower—it was Kokoro-chan's position.

Seventeen things likely to happen, in the order they were likely to happen. I put them in everyone's heads ahead of time.

"That's everything. Off you go."

【Off you go!?】

【The commander's staying at the entrance?】

【He's not going with them...】

From today on, my lectern was a desk lined with monitors.

◇

On the way down, I spoke exactly zero times.

At the third fork on the way back, a flanking maneuver on a scale you rarely saw in a managed dungeon occurred. I reached for the microphone to raise the alarm—and before I did anything more than reach, it was over. Maru-kun's shield was planted, the other five had rotated clockwise into position, and Kokoro-chan stood at the center of the circle without anyone telling her to.

"...Yes. That was the 'third move' I mentioned before you went in."

In the end, I sent only three instructions into the dungeon all day.

【Hold on. The commander barely said anything, did he?】

【And yet the six of them moved like one living thing】

【Is this... command?】

At the break, Hina-chan took a microphone and ran around the plaza. She stopped in front of Yagarasu-kun, who was leaning against a wall.

"Yagarasu-san! A question from a viewer! 'Why can everyone move when it looks like Sensei isn't doing anything?'"

"...You're making me explain that?"

Yagarasu-kun scratched his head as if it was a terrible bother, but turned to face the camera squarely.

"Listen. An ordinary commander tells you 'what to do now.' That's the job. —Sensei's different. He puts 'what will happen three moves from now' into everyone's heads in advance. So we move before he tells us to."

"He only needs to speak to us down there when something doesn't match his prediction. And today that happened three times. Three surprises in training meant to simulate an unexplored labyrinth. ...Funny, isn't it? There's another whole dungeon built inside that man's head."

"Additional note."

At some point Mio-san had entered the shot.

"Standard command communication during a clearing operation is four to twelve messages per minute. Sensei issued seventeen before entry and three inside the dungeon today. As far as I know, a commander who 'pays for' ninety percent of his instructions in advance is a first in recorded history. That is all."

【Command paid in advance...】

【He hands them the next three moves ahead of time】

【Even the explanation is perfectly divided between roles. What is this classroom?】

◇

That afternoon.

"Now for the real point of today's lesson."

The six lined up again. I could tell from the speed of the comments that the whole world was waiting for some new tactic from humanity's strongest team.

"Every afternoon until the final day—we're going to practice how to lose."

The plaza fell silent.

"...Pops. Not how to win?" Maru-kun asked.

"No. I can't teach you how to win. Nobody knows what's inside the Abyss. You'll have to find the way to victory when you get there. —But we can decide how to lose before we go in."

I opened my notebook.

"You're all so strong that you've never once practiced retreating. Am I wrong?"

No one contradicted me. Of course not. Only people who expect to retreat practice it. For the strongest people alive, retreat wasn't a plan. It was an exception.

"Retreat isn't running for home. When a formation turns around, the front and rear positions switch. In fact, more people die at that moment than at any other point in an expedition. So we're going to practice escaping neatly. I want the strongest people in the world to learn the cleanest way in the world to run away."

The training was dullness taken to its absolute limit.

The order of their steps as they turned. The order in which to discard their gear. Three sets of markings along the retreat route. Roll call every thirty seconds to check that everyone could say their "next step" aloud. If a single person couldn't, the operation would be called off on the spot. All six had the right to call it off, and no one would blame the one who did.

"The person who speaks up is the one who saved everybody. At the after-action meeting, we'll praise that person first."

Humanity's five strongest practiced running away in front of millions of viewers.

Rei-kun never once looked displeased. Mio-san worked out the turn angle down to decimal places. Yagarasu-kun joked that "running away's my specialty," while following the footwork more carefully than anyone. And Kokoro-chan practiced staying at the center of the circle—practiced being protected herself, probably for the first time in her life.

Once, Maru-kun raised his hand.

"Pops. ...When I ran from the Abyss, I wasn't thinking at all. Threw away my shield and ran like hell. I still dream about it. ...Is this practice for doing that all over again?"

"The opposite, Maru-kun," I said. "Running away blindly is a rout. A retreat with a procedure is part of clearing a dungeon. If you escape cleanly, you bring information home. And if you bring information home—you can try again as many times as you need. Because the five of you retreated five times, humanity gets to make a sixth attempt now."

Maru-kun went quiet for a while, then shouldered the hardest shield in the world again.

"...One more round, please."

【The strongest people alive are practicing escape】

【This should be a blow to their pride, but not one of them is sulking】

【So that's what trust looks like】

【Man, I'm starting to feel sorry for the Abyss. These guys are even perfecting 'losing'】

◇

Training continued for nine days.

On the last day, Mio-san's measurements showed that the time required to complete the turn had fallen to a third of what it had been on day one. The "three seconds" in Yagarasu-kun's reporting delay had shrunk to one and a half. Hina-chan no longer missed a single person's meaning when she relayed it.

"—We go in the morning after next."

Apparently that night's concurrent viewership was "unmeasurable" again.

◇

The night before entry.

In my six-mat room, I opened a cardboard box.

A little over a hundred notebooks. "Rei Kenjo — Footwork." "Mio Hyodo — Breathing." "Shishiomaru — Load-Bearing." I ran my fingers over eight years of spines in order and pulled the last notebook from the very back.

On its cover:

"Abyss — Clearing Hypothesis."

I wrote that title last month. It wasn't until the night I received the nomination that I finally learned my opponent's name.

But the date on the first page—was three years ago.

Every time my students returned from missions they couldn't talk about, something about them had changed, little by little. How they stood. How they counted their breaths. How they lowered their lights. All five kept silent, as if they'd agreed to it, and all five had the look of people defeated by the same "something."

Without knowing its name or location, I watched that "something" through their bodies for the last year they were with me, and through publicly released combat footage for the two years after they went independent. Three years of hypotheses from a man whose only talent was observation and putting it into words filled this one notebook.

Only the sound of turning pages broke the silence in the six-mat room.

"...I'm not going to say 'Nice to meet you.'"

I spoke quietly to the opponent I would meet tomorrow.

"I've known you for three years."