The landscape of the Police Department District 7 office was closer to a massive garbage dump than a battlefield.
An outdated magi-tech server hummed, spewing heat, while the ventilation fan stuttered, circulating a musty stench of mold.
Holophone rings, shouts, and the clack of typewriters mashed together into a chaotic dissonance.
"Hey! Ren! What the hell is this garbage report!"
The moment he opened the door, what flew at him instead of a greeting was a thick stack of paperwork.
Ren tilted his head exactly 15 degrees, barely noticeable.
The wad of paper grazed past his ear and smacked dead center into the face of the rookie cop walking in behind him.
"Agh!"
Ignoring the scream, Ren walked to his desk and buried himself in his squeaky chair.
Captain Bargo of District 7.
A pot-bellied, bald man, notable for the cheap hair transplants he got to hide his stress-induced hair loss.
He stomped over to Ren's desk, fuming.
"Does this report make any sense to you? A D-rank mutant demonic beast slipped on sewer grease and died of a concussion?"
"It's the truth."
"You crazy bastard! Is a demonic beast some neighborhood drunk? A concussion? Their skulls are on par with titanium alloy!"
"Guess it had astronomically bad luck. Or it's the fault of shoddy construction."
Ren replied dryly and turned on his terminal.
The words 'Booting...' blinked on the screen and froze.
Broken again.
Swallowing a sigh, Ren reached under the desk and gave the main unit a thump.
It wasn't a simple hit.
It was an ultra-precise repair job, using microscopic telekinesis to forcibly reconnect the broken contacts of the aging magi-circuit.
Whir.
The terminal booted up smoothly, like a lie.
Captain Bargo gaped, seemingly at a loss for words at Ren's nonchalance, before finally shouting out of sheer exhaustion.
"Rewrite it! If the Inspection Bureau sees this, they won't just laugh at us, they'll slash our budget! Embellish it! Something like, 'Subdued after a fierce struggle with a beast threatening citizen safety'!"
"There are no signs of a fierce struggle."
"Then go get yourself hurt a little! Go slam your head into a wall or something!"
"Will that cover worker's comp?"
"This little shit...!"
Bargo grabbed the back of his neck and turned away.
Ren habitually put an e-cigarette to his lips, then put it back after seeing the 'No Smoking' warning sign in the office.
This was the life of an extra.
A daily routine where dodging the Captain's yelling is more urgent than the destruction of the world.
[Work Cooperation Request: Support for 'Knights of the Dawn' Magic Residue Cleanup.]
A notification popped up on the terminal messenger.
Sender: Headquarters Special Division.
The content was obvious.
It was the so-called 'aftercare' duty—cleaning up the toxic magic or debris left behind after the protagonist, Kyle, and his party swept through.
Naturally, these dangerous and annoying chores were always dumped on the powerless, backing-less District 7.
"Ugh. Those Knights of the Dawn bastards! Why do they always give us shit when they're the ones who made the mess?"
Tom, the colleague at the next desk, slammed his hand down and grumbled.
Tom was also one of this world's extras.
If he had any defining traits, it was that he talked too much, was a massive coward, and walked around planting every death flag imaginable.
"Hey, Ren. Did you hear? The new Saintess who joined the Knights is apparently gorgeous. Her name was E... E... what was it?"
"Elysia."
"Yeah! Right! How did you know? Acting like you don't care, but oh, I guess you're a man too, huh?"
Ren silently stamped the piled-up paperwork.
There was no way he couldn't know.
The main heroine of Infinite Gearwork, the tragic female lead who would later be kidnapped by the Machine God and serve as Kyle's awakening catalyst—how could he not know?
Around this time, she'd be blushing and flirting with Kyle.
"Not interested."
"Aw, don't play hard to get. Think we'll get to see her in person if we go on this support run? Hey, let's volunteer. What do you say?"
Tom's eyes sparkled as he patted Ren's shoulder.
Ren brushed Tom's hand off like it was an annoyance.
"Go by yourself."
"Let's go together! Who knows? Maybe the Saintess will say 'Good work' and cast a heal on lowly grunts like us?"
"You'll die doing that."
"Stop saying such unlucky things, man!"
He really would die.
It wasn't a joke.
This episode was the 'Ghost of the Abandoned Factory' arc.
A low-tier evil spirit missed by Kyle's party remained at the scene, using a cop who came for cleanup as a host to run amok.
In the original novel, that cop's name wasn't mentioned.
He was just 'Unlucky Cop A.'
But looking at Tom chattering away right in front of him, Ren had a pretty good idea of who 'Cop A' was.
Troublesome.
Ren rested his chin on his hand.
Non-intervention was the rule.
However, watching the chatterbox next to him get possessed by an evil spirit and his intestines spill out live wasn't exactly a pleasant prospect.
Above all, if Tom died, the probability of his workload falling onto Ren was 99%.
Absolutely not.
Besides, even though he was unnecessarily nosy and frivolous, Ren had received a lot of help from Tom early on.
Nothing grand—just stuff related to patrol duties.
Naturally, Ren hadn't been diligent about patrol work from the start.
He couldn't be, not if he was sane.
If it hadn't been for Tom back then, he would have been fired long ago.
"Hey. Tom."
"Huh? What? Changed your mind?"
"Your luck is shit today."
"What are you talking about? Did you read my fortune or something?"
"Your face says you're going to die an unnatural death while working overtime."
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Ren rummaged through his drawer and pulled out a worn, rusty talisman.
It was a cheap defensive artifact drained of mana, picked up from the confiscated goods scrapyard a while ago.
With his fingertip, he carved an invisible magi-circuit onto the back of the talisman.
An absolute defense formula that not even the Machine God could pierce, carved impossibly thin and precise.
Toss.
Ren threw the talisman to Tom.
"What is this? Trash?"
"Keep it on you. It's a charm."
"What the. Do you like me or something? Why are you being creepy all of a sudden?"
"Throw it away then."
"No. I mean... I'll take it since you're giving it to me."
Tom shoved the talisman into his uniform pocket, still grumbling.
With that, Tom's death flag was pulverized.
If an evil spirit tried to attack him, it would be annihilated the moment it touched the charm, unable to even scream.
"Ren! Tom! What are you doing? Roll out!"
Captain Bargo's yell echoed through the office again.
The inevitable had arrived.
Ren slowly stood up.
He grabbed his baton and checked the battery of his issued magi-pistol.
"On our way."
Heading out to clean up the stage swept by the protagonists.
It was a night faithful to the duty of an extra.
*
The scene was a disaster.
The abandoned factory zone in District 4.
It was originally a factory that illegally produced mana batteries.
Now, it was just a massive graveyard of scrap metal.
"Wow... these guys are absolute psychos."
Tom clicked his tongue as he got out of the patrol car.
The factory's outer wall was half-melted, bent like taffy, and the ground was cracked with deep fissures, likely the aftermath of a Holy Sword.
The air stung the nose, a mix of acrid ozone and the metallic stench of residual magic.
This is the path left by the apostles of justice.
Ren casually kicked the head of a robot soldier rolling on the ground.
Then again, the protagonist's party were experts at obliterating city infrastructure under the righteous cause of defeating evil.
Thanks to them, taxes went up, and overtime increased.
"Hey. Ren. Look at this. Look at the Holy Water spilled on the ground. It's a damn flood. A flood."
Tom grumbled, pointing at the muddy floor.
To spray high-grade Holy Water around like this.
A year's worth of the Police Department's budget was pooling on the ground, rotting away.
"Let's finish this quickly. Before the last train stops."
Ren pulled out his issued 'Mana Neutralizer.'
It was a clunky machine that looked like a vacuum cleaner.
His duty today was to walk around the scene with this thing, sucking up the magical dregs left by the protagonists.
"Anyway, they strike all the poses, and we clean up the shit."
Tom trudged ahead, leading the way into the ruined entrance.
It was dark inside.
Neon light occasionally seeped through cracks in the ceiling, but it wasn't enough to illuminate the depths.
Vzzzzzt—.
The Neutralizer hummed to life, sucking up the purple mana dust from the floor.
Manual labor.
Ren mechanically waved his arm around while scanning the surroundings.
... Knew it was here.
An alien energy caught on Ren's sensory net.
Just like the original.
When the protagonist Kyle blew away the boss with a flashy ultimate move, a single, rat-like low-tier evil spirit hiding in the corner survived.
The bastard was currently hiding in the shadows of the factory's second-floor railing, eagerly waiting for an opportunity.
Its prey was, naturally, the civilian with pitiful magic resistance: Tom.
"Ugh. Creepy. There aren't ghosts here, are there?"
Tom shuddered and swung his Neutralizer.
His footsteps were heading toward the pillar where the evil spirit was hiding.
Three seconds.
Ren swallowed a yawn.
Two seconds.
The evil spirit's shadow flickered.
One second.
"Eek?!"
Tom spun around, startled, as if he felt something.
At that moment, a mass of black smoke engulfed Tom's face.
It was a classic possession attempt.
A normal extra would have screamed here, eyes rolling back, and attacked their colleague Ren before meeting a miserable end.
CRACKLE!
"Ack! Hot! What the?!"
A blinding golden flash erupted from Tom's pocket.
The scream didn't come from Tom, but from the evil spirit.
No, it couldn't even scream.
The formula Ren had planted in the talisman was closer to 'annihilation' than 'defense.'
Fsssh.
Before it could even touch Tom's body, the evil spirit was disintegrated at the molecular level and scattered into the air.
Like dry leaves touching a blast furnace.
All that was left was a burning smell and a dumbfounded Tom.
"Wh-what? What was that just now? Lightning?"
Tom patted his chest.
His uniform pocket was scorched black, and the charm Ren gave him had vanished without a trace.
It had turned to ash.
"……."
Tom blankly looked back and forth between his hand and Ren.
"Hey. Ren. Did you... see that just now? Something flashed in my pocket and..."
"Static electricity."
Ren replied nonchalantly, swapping out the Neutralizer filter.
"St-static electricity? Hey! What kind of static electricity pops like a flashbang? And what's this burning smell?"
"The mana density here is high. It can happen if frictional electricity gets amplified. It's in the precautions on page 13 of the manual."
"R-really? Was there something like that?"
"There is. If you're so curious, look it up yourself."
It was a lie.
But there was an indisputable firmness in Ren's voice.
Though Tom tilted his head, he gradually seemed to accept it, convinced by Ren's confident demeanor.
By nature, people are more comfortable with plausible lies than unbelievable miracles.
"Why would I look it up. I guess... it is a bit dry in here. Wow. Still, that really freaked me out. Thought my heart stopped."
Tom swept a hand over his chest and resumed working.
A rather light reaction for someone who just survived a brush with death.
That was a relief.
Ren suppressed a chuckle and sucked up the scattered remains of the evil spirit with the Neutralizer.
Whir.
Clean.
No need to clean up a corpse, no need to write an incident report.
With this, the
Behind the scenes of history, in a place no one knew.
"Job's done. Let's pull out."
Thirty minutes later, the two men stepped out of the factory and breathed in the fresh air.
The rain had stopped, but the city was still damp.
Just as they were about to get into the patrol car, a silhouette standing near the factory entrance caught his eye.
A robe draped over a white priestess uniform.
Platinum blonde hair glowing softly even in the dark.
A holy aura that seemed to purify even the filthy air around it.
... Elysia?
It was the heroine.
He thought Kyle's party had already left, so why was she still here?
She was staring toward the factory, as if searching for something.
Her brow slightly furrowed, head tilted.
"Uh, huh? That person. Isn't that the Saintess? Wow. Holy crap! She's stunning in person!"
Tom made a fuss, clinging to the window.
Ren immediately turned his head, sat in the driver's seat, and started the engine.
"We're leaving."
"Hey, wait a sec! Let me at least say hi... Ugh!"
Ren stepped on the gas, and the car lurched forward.
Tom was thrown back into his seat as the patrol car roared out of the factory zone.
Elysia's figure grew distant in the rearview mirror.
She seemed to watch the departing patrol car for a moment, but soon lost interest and turned her head back toward the factory.
She probably felt something.
The microscopic fluctuation generated when the evil spirit was annihilated.
Being a Saintess, she might have sensed it.
But she wouldn't suspect a beat-up patrol car driven by lowly grunts.
To her, Ren and Tom were just background noise, passing NPCs 1 and 2.
"Aw, come on! I could have at least tried talking to her! You did that on purpose, didn't you? Huh?"
"I'm hungry."
"You emotionless, machine-like bastard! Thanks to you, my romance ended before it even started!"
"Just file for overtime."
Ren turned up the radio volume to block out Tom's whining.
An upbeat idol song flowed from the speakers.
Got through today safely as well.
The world was at peace (probably), his identity remained hidden, and Tom lived.
There couldn't be a more perfect day for an extra.
Need to go home and crack open a can of beer.