Sora woke to a somber, claustrophobic room that smelled of damp concrete, rusted iron, and the metallic tang of old blood. For several long seconds, he simply lay there, staring at the unfamiliar as a dull, rhythmic throb pulsed behind his eyes as light shone into them.
The air felt somewhat heavy for some reason, like every living thing in the room was holding its breath to avoid shattering a fragile glass reality.
Turning his body, he could see Van and Erza were sitting nearby. They looked like statues, well, Van did at least, just still there, still and not moving. Erza's hands were folded in her lap, her knuckles white, while Van stared at a single spot on the floor with the hollow intensity that was worse than the normal emptyness in his eyes.
There were others, too, in the room. A woman dressed in a tattered, filth-stained jester suit, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, her frantic energy at odds with the stillness. She was arguing with a red-haired woman clad in black tactical gear, a bat symbol emblazoned across her chest, who looked exhausted, her face smeared with soot. Around them stood at least seven more people, all strangers to him.
Sora groaned, pushing himself upright with trembling arms. His head spun, his equilibrium lagging behind his movements. 'What the hell happened…?' he thought, clutching his temples. The last thing he remembered was the sky turning purple and a crushing weight flooring him to the floor.
The jester's voice rose for a moment, something about "Mistah J" and "The Big Blue and Bat", before Barbara snapped at her. Sora ignored the friction, his gaze locking onto Erza and Van. His steps were unsteady, his body still sluggish from the gravity surge Kenji had used to knock him out for his own protection.
"Hey," he said hoarsely, his voice cracking. "Where are we? What happened?"
The two looked at him. Van's face was the same pale, emotionless mask as always, and while Sora hadn't spent enough time around the half-vampire, he seemed to notice the slight, tell-tale tenseness in his jaw. Then he looked at Erza. The sadness she was radiating was almost physical, it hung around her like a shroud, suffocating the room. Her usual warrior's posture was gone, replaced by a slight, defeated slump that Sora had never seen on the wizard of Fairy Tail.
Then, Sora noticed A missing presence that usually filled the air with annoying dad quips and confident energy.
"Where's Kenji?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
The room seemed to grow even quieter, the argument between Harley and Barbara dying out instantly. Erza's eyes drifted toward the floor, her lips trembling in a way that made Sora's heart seize.
'No… it can't be,' Sora thought, a cold, sharp panic lancing through his chest. He stepped closer, his voice sharpening with a desperation that bordered on a scream. "Erza. Van. Where. Is. Kenji?"
They didn't answer.
His hands shook as he pulled up his System interface. He scrolled through the party list, his breath hitching in his throat. The moment his eyes landed on the name at the top, his knees gave out.
Kenji's name was greyed out, similar to when erza had 'died' before.
Sora dropped to the ground, staring blankly at the screen as if he could force the pixels to change through sheer willpower. Kenji was dead? The man who always seemed to know everything and who always had an answer and a way to keep moving forward?
It felt odd just thinking of that. If the strongest among them could be snuffed out, what hope was there for someone like him, a mere human who specialized in only games?
He stayed there for a long time, minutes, felt like hours to be honest. Eventually, Erza knelt beside him. Her voice was a soft, broken rasp as she told him everything: the arrival of the Man of Steel, the absolute lockdown of the Arkham sector, the extraction, and Kenji's final, suicidal choice to seal himself inside a dome with the monsters to buy them a few more seconds of flight.
Sora listened in a hollow stupor. But as the details filled in, he couldn't help but turn the blade of blame inward. He knew, logically, he knew there was nothing he could do but still.
Logic offered no comfort for the crushing weight of his own perceived uselessness. He should have been there. He should have used his luck, his mind, something. He was one half of the undefeated "Blank", the duo that never loses, and yet, he had lost his friend without even being awake for the fight.
His gaze dropped to his System point total, flickering in the corner of his vision.
350,000 Points.
It was a staggering, absurd amount of currency. He knew for a fact he was the one with the highest current balance in the party. Van had once mentioned having around 10,000; Erza had spent most of her 70,000 on gear and high-tier armor requips; Kenji usually hovered around 30,000 because he treated points like a consumable resource to be burned for immediate survival due to his world.
Sora had accumulated this much because of his obsession with side quests. At first, he'd hated them, the idea of leaving his world to fight monsters felt like a chore. But when Kenji explained that side quests could be filtered, Sora had found his calling, so to speak. Games. Card games, video games, strategy puzzles, and chess matches against grandmasters of other worlds. He had traveled across dimensions just to challenge the best, and through it all, he had never lost.
Blank was still undefeated, he couldn't help the small smirk that formed on that thought before it vanished. Shiro wouldn't have forgiven him if he ever lost to anyone other than her.
Still, there was a reason that he had been doing so many games, and it wasnt just the thrill of the challenges. It was the [Invite Ticket] in the System shop. Ten million points.
It looked like an impossible mountain. But it was his only hope to bring Shiro, his other half, his reason for existing, into this life. He had been so selfishly focused on a future reunion that he hadn't spent a single point to increase his own combat utility or support his team.
His desire to see Shiro again had effectively cost Kenji his life. If he had spent those 350,000 points on support items, or a combat ability, or anything, would Kenji still be here? The guilt was a weight, pressing the air out of his lungs until he felt like he was drowning on dry land.
Van stepped over, his small, pale hand landing on Sora's shoulder. It was surprisingly heavy for a small kid, grounded in a way that Sora couldn't manage. "Trust Kenji," the boy-king said flatly.
Sora looked up, his eyes rimmed with red. "What?"
"Trust Kenji," Van repeated.
Sora was about to snap back, to ask how he could trust a dead man whose status was literally "Deceased," when the window chimed. The greyed-out text flickered, turned a static-filled white, and then surged with a vibrant light again.
"What?!" Sora's mouth fell open, his jaw practically hitting the floor. He looked at Erza, whose expression shifted from crushing grief to stunned, tearful relief in a heartbeat. The shadows around Van's feet seemed to recede, the boy offering a microscopic nod of satisfaction.
Sora let out a hysterical, breathless laugh that bordered on a sob. "Okay… is this going to be a thing now?" he gasped, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "First Erza, now Kenji. Are you guys just taking turns dying and coming back to mess with my head? Is this some kind of prank?" He turned to Van, his voice still shaky. "Should I expect you to keel over and respawn next?"
Van didn't respond, but the suffocating tension in the room had broken. Sora exhaled deeply, leaning his head against the cold concrete. 'Thank Tet,' he thought, his heart finally slowing to a normal rhythm.
But even as the relief settled, a new, harder resolve took its place. He wasn't going to stay the "item hoarder" anymore. If he didn't get stronger, if he didn't start contributing to the survival of the group now, the next time might be permanent.
Meanwhile, in the deep, lightless forest miles away from the ruins of Gotham, a lone tree stood beneath the swirling, radioactive ash of the night sky. Carved deep into its gnarled bark was an octagram.
At its base sat a small, enchanted candle. It had been burning silently since they first arrived on this Earth, the flame never flickering despite the howling winds. Suddenly, the candle flared with a roar. The tiny light expanded into a violent, violet inferno, the flames warping into a humanoid silhouette. The fire spiraled inward, weaving itself into flesh, bone, and form, before dissipating into a shower of sparks.
Kenji collapsed naked onto the damp, cold earth, gasping for breath as if his lungs had forgotten the basic mechanics of respiration. His skin was deathly pale, his eyes wide and shot.
"First time… dying," he muttered, his voice a dry, agonizing wheeze. "definitely a 0 out of 10 experience.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the grey, ash-heavy clouds. He didn't care about the freezing cold or his lack of clothes. He just started laughing, a low, ragged chuckle that built into a full-blown, belly-aching roar that echoed through the dead trees.
"Fuck," he groaned, his laughter subsiding into a pained wince as his newly-formed nerves fired off phantom pain. "I don't want to do that shit again. Dying sucked. It sucked badly."
He looked at the tree. The candle had vanished, the wax consumed entirely. He opened his status screen, and his smile immediately vanished, replaced by a grimace of pure annoyance.
Every single stat point he had gained from, well, everything he had done since he put up the save point, that was when they appeared on this earth, was gone.
Worse was the Nen. He reached inward to feel his reservoir and winced. "A third? I lost a whole third of my total capacity?" 'Wow, resurrection was not cheap.
In the world of Nen, capacity was everything. Losing a third was like a professional athlete losing a limb. Even a two-thirds capacity Kenji was still a monster by most standards, but the loss was a stinging, permanent reminder that resurrection wasn't a free "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Still, 'Better the Nen than permanent deletion,' he grumbled, pushing himself up.
He summoned a set of clothes from his inventory, sturdy black pants, a reinforced shirt, and boots, and dressed quickly. He opened the group chat, 'I'm alive.'
The responses were instantaneous, a flood of relief, swearing from Sora, and Erza. He brushed off Sora's frantic apologies, telling him not to worry and that it wasnt his fault, and began to coordinate with Erza to find their location.
She didn't really know where they were since she wasn't familiar with this world, but she'd ask Jim and get back to him.
Just as he was about to check his mana reserves, a message from Vandalieu popped up, 'We need to talk. It's about the shard....' he started, and Kenji kinda knew what he was going to say already. he had since his locator glow when the vampires came to surround him. Kenji already had an idea. No, he already knew where the shard was, and he was tempted to take it and leave, but...
Before Kenji could even begin to type a reply, a voice drifted through the trees behind him, smooth, melodic, and calm.
"Now this is interesting."
Kenji froze. He didn't feel anything.
He spun around, his hand already reaching for the Yamato he summoned, but he stopped mid-motion, his breath hitching in his throat.
Standing behind him was a figure that he should have known he would meet if things went sideways in this world, and just as he thought, there they were.
"Oh shit," Kenji muttered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The stranger tilted its head, a ghost of a smile touching its lips. "You know me? How curious. I don't know you." It said, and Kenji felt his skin crawl and the hairs on his body stand.
'I'm fucked'.
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