Preaching

Schemes and struggles were often hidden in the shadows, beyond the sight of ordinary people.

The view shifted. Onscreen, the Ghost-Faced Swordsman had already sat back down on the rock and was examining the shield with the tip of his sword.

Low laughter finally broke out in the booth. The guy's disgust was obvious, even with most of his face hidden beneath bandages.

"—Nothing but useless junk. This is it? How could anyone offer this up?"

A muffled mutter came from the video, thick with disdain. He sounded like a housewife who had bought a dead fish at the market.

"Heh, this guy sure knows how to talk!"

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The middle-aged man beside him slapped his thigh and laughed. "He's way better than those actors in TV dramas who sound like they're reading straight from a script."

Yet onscreen, even as the swordsman said that, he carefully prodded the "useless" shield. Only after testing it and finding no obvious tampering did he toss it beside the rock.

He looked a little nervous, but plainly couldn't bear to part with it. A miser through and through—

Having seen what had happened before, the viewers knew why. Someone had once hidden explosives in the "spoils." The swordsman had spotted them and hurled the item away as he retreated. The blast sent gravel and dust flying, and when the image cleared, the bandages on his left arm were scorched black. The flesh beneath had clearly suffered badly.

Others had smeared drugs on items or tucked poisonous insects into their seams—

It was no exaggeration to say that forcibly accepting a trophy under the pretext of a "rotation," when someone might try to kill him the very next instant, was even riskier than fighting a straight-up battle!

Sato, the middle-aged man, picked