“I think you already know this, but we can’t check it out that deeply,” Sadeena said.

“I wouldn’t have thought you could,” I replied.

“For something involving digging, Imiya would be much better suited to helping out,” Sadeena commented.

“No point in bringing up people who aren’t here,” I said. If she was here, of course, she would have been digging already. For sure.

“S’yne says she casually attached a pin to someone entering the building,” her familiar revealed.

“Should we try the same thing at the entrance we discovered?” I suggested. The problem was that we hadn’t seen anyone actually going in or out. The guards had been stationed at a smaller building on the ground level, and there was no one actually going inside. Security really was tight.

Having Sadeena check the vicinity with her sound waves was another option.

“However—” S’yne said.

“Yes, I understand. She said that she did place a pin on someone entering the building but then experienced jamming at some point after that. She has a bad feeling about all this,” her familiar relayed. Jamming? That was strange. S’yne’s teleport skill had the effect of being able to check the state of the destination site. I hadn’t heard of her being unable to use it for anything other than physical interference at the site itself. There was a chance that S’yne’s skill was just incompatible with Kizuna’s world, but the fact that it was being jammed suggested something more sinister was at work. The whole situation made me think of all sorts of nasty possibilities.

“Itsuki, how about you and your team? Did you find anything out?” I asked.

“Some things, yes,” he replied. “The area you were investigating is top secret and so regular adventurers can’t find out anything about it. But we did obtain information on part of the underground maze,” he said. With that, Rishia and Ethnobalt brought out a copy of a map of the underground maze.

“It appears there’s a maze below this town, with the layers closer to the surface having already been reasonably mapped,” Ethnobalt explained.

“Hmmm. Based on the location of the castle town, I’m thinking around here . . .” I traced over the map. We also had to consider an infiltration through the maze . . . Then I noticed something.

“The first three levels have been significantly developed, creating an underground city. The state management block is not on the map, however,” Ethnobalt explained.

“Control of information, huh? That sure sounds suspicious,” I said.

“Shall I explain what else we discovered?” Itsuki asked.

“You have more?” I asked.

“Yes. Some other suspicious points,” Itsuki continued. Rishia and Ethnobalt looked at each other, seemingly unsure of what he was talking about. “First, I’ll tell you about the musical instrument vassal weapon holder. He is also from another world—apparently, he’s Japanese. His name is Hidemasa Miyaji.”