You crazy bastards actually did it! We broke the 10-review barrier. A deal is a deal, so here is your extra chapter as promised. Feast on it! But don't get lazy now... KEEP DROPPING THOSE POWER STONES IF YOU WANT MORE!
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[WARNING! WARNING! Target 'Rinko Akiyama' (Taimanin) is about to trigger an event at Seishū Private Academy. Respond immediately!]
[Time remaining: 00:59:59]
The [Early Warning Journal] alarm exploded inside his head.
Jin snapped his eyes open in the darkness of his room. The familiar ceiling greeted him while the red numbers on the clock read 3:07 AM.
"Tch..."
Grunting, he shoved the sheets aside halfheartedly. His body was begging him to stay in bed, but a one hour countdown left zero room for negotiation.
He got dressed quickly.
"Seishū Private Academy..."
Reading the data the system displayed as he tied his shoes, his eyebrows shot up.
Straight into the lion's den.
The very nest where Washizu Shigeru and his board of directors operated. The place he'd been planning to infiltrate nice and easy.
But Rinko had beaten him to it.
Before heading out, he made a sweep of the house.
Mira, Yuna, and Nina: fast asleep.
Good. No one would miss him until morning.
Slipping out through his bedroom window, he landed in the garden without a sound.
"I was planning to deal with you this weekend, Washizu..." He murmured into the cold night air as he pulled out his phone and started looking up information. "But it seems like not even fate wants you to keep breathing."
Seishū Private Academy was located on the outskirts of Seishū City, far from Tokyo. An elite school with a full boarding system, famous for producing prominent figures in academic, athletic, artistic, and entertainment fields.
So far, so normal.
What wasn't normal was the internal structure. The academy was divided into four sections: General Course, Academic Course, Maid Course, and Valet Course.
"Maid Course and Valet Course... this is the kind of stuff you only find in hentai."
Putting his phone away, he gauged the distance. Seishū City was pretty far from where he was. At normal speed, it would take hours. At his current speed...
"I'm gonna have to go all out."
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath.
The Magnetic Field Rotation activated, expanding into every limb. His muscles tightened, his senses sharpened, and the air around him began to warp.
And then, something changed on his face.
White lines sprouted from the edges of his face, tracing across his skin like brushstrokes of light. They spread across his temples, crossed his cheekbones, ran down his jaw, and circled his eyes, covering his entire face in an intricate pattern that transformed his features.
The War Marks.
Every high level martial art had its own, a hallmark that the strong carried. Jin's were those of the Ōga Whale Killing Fist: white lines that gave him a look somewhere between tribal and demonic.
And as a very convenient side effect, they made his face completely unrecognizable.
Unless someone was extremely close to him, nobody would be able to identify him under that pattern.
"At least I don't have to bother putting on a mask..."
He bent his knees.
Crack
Beneath his feet, the ground split open and the earth sank into a circular crater.
BOOOOOM!
The blast tore through the silence of the night like thunder. A shockwave rattled the windows of nearby houses and ripped leaves off the closest trees.
But when the lightest sleepers peeked out their windows, there was nothing to see.
Just a crater in the empty street.
And far above the rooftops, a figure already reduced to a tiny speck against the starry sky, tearing through the night at a speed that left a trail in its wake.
In less than a second, he was gone.
...
Seishū Academy. Third floor of the faculty dormitory.
Swish
A silver flash sliced through the air of the darkened room.
The waves expanded in circles, and from the center of the distortion, a female figure materialized, wrapped in a skintight suit.
Rinko Akiyama.
Her blue hair, pulled up in a high ponytail, swayed with the residual momentum of the teleportation. Her eyes scanned the room: single bed, desk, shelves lined with books, window with the curtains drawn, bathroom door...
Bathroom door with steam seeping out around the edges.
And the unmistakable sound of a shower running on the other side.
Looking at the door, Rinko shifted her gaze to the clock on the wall.
"Shizuru-senpai..."
She sighed with a helplessness that suggested this wasn't the first time.
"We clearly agreed on a time..."
After Muneichi Yazaki's death, Asagi Igawa hadn't wasted any time. Following the trail upward through the chain, she set her sights on Muneichi's uncle: Washizu Shigeru, president of the Zeus Foundation.
The information Rikka had provided fit like the missing piece of the puzzle. At the private academies established by the Zeus Academic Group, disturbingly similar rumors had started circulating about a "special guidance" program for students. The pattern was too consistent to be a coincidence.
And it reminded her of a race from the Demon Realm, the Incubi and the Succubi.
So she sent Rinko to investigate and also informed her that a veteran Taimanin was already operating inside the academy as an undercover agent who would assist her.
And that agent was, at this very moment, casually taking a shower while the mission window was shrinking.
As if sensing the presence on the other side of the door, or simply because she ran out of hot water, the shower gradually died down until only the intermittent dripping of the faucet remained.
The door opened.
And from the mist emerged a woman who seemed to have been designed to make serious people lose their patience.
Blonde hair, long and loose, falling over her shoulders in wet strands that dripped. Her body wrapped in a single white towel that was heroically fighting to do its job, but the battle was already lost.
The towel covered her from mid chest down to her upper thighs, but what was contained inside was simply too much...
Her massive breasts pushed against the fabric with a pressure that made the edge threaten to give up at any moment, and the gap between them formed a deep cleavage that the towel couldn't manage to hide. And below, the fabric barely managed to wrap around her hips, stretching taut over an ass that defied textile engineering.
Kousaka Shizuru.
She was Rinko's inside contact for this mission. A veteran Taimanin specializing in solo infiltration missions, an expert in "Wood Art," the plant manipulation art that had earned her the nickname "Shizuru of the Flowers." She'd been inside the academy for months, operating under the cover of a teacher.
An elite agent. Experienced. Dangerous.
And with an absolutely warped sense of time.
Upon seeing Rinko standing in the middle of her room, in her combat suit, wearing an expression that said "I've been waiting for five minutes and you owe me an explanation," Shizuru didn't show a single ounce of urgency.
She smiled playfully.
"Ara~, Rinko-chan. How is it that you got here so early?"
Ignoring her, Rinko pointed at the clock with a flat expression.
"Shizuru-senpai, we're already past the agreed time."
"Really~?"
Shizuru tilted her head with "surprise." "Seems like I miscalculated the time. How silly of me~"
And before Rinko could say anything else, Shizuru closed the distance between them in three quick steps and caught her cheeks between her hands, pinching them with familiarity.
"And Rinko-chan, how many times do I have to tell you?" She gently tugged on her cheeks. "You can call me Shizuru-nee, you know? That whole 'senpai, senpai' thing all the time makes it sound like we're not even friends~"
"Mmh, got it, Shizuru-nee..."
Rinko stepped back, freeing her cheeks from the assault with a step backward and her dignity slightly bruised.
"So please hurry up and get dressed. We have work to do."
Being a serious person by nature, people like Shizuru, overflowing with energy and with an apparent allergy to urgency, short circuited every protocol she knew.
She didn't have the slightest idea how to handle her.
"I know, I know~"
Shizuru turned toward the wardrobe with exasperating calm, but while pulling out her battle gear, she threw one last jab.
"You should smile more, you know? Girls who always have a serious face age faster, Rinko-chan."
Rinko said nothing, just pressed her lips together.
The towel dropped to the floor without ceremony.
Shizuru didn't bother turning around or finding a corner. She got dressed right there, without a shred of modesty, and Rinko looked away... though not entirely.
The red suit clung to her body like it was licking her. It compressed her breasts to the point of nearly bursting them, so tight that her nipples showed through. It sank between her hips and outlined every part of her body as if it were wet.
The stockings dug into her thighs and the red boots snapped shut around her legs with a click.
Her blonde hair fell loose, long, wild down her back.
But when her uniform enveloped her, something changed.
It wasn't just the clothes. It was everything. Her posture straightened, her shoulders pulled back, and the playful energy Shizuru radiated sharpened, transformed into something completely different.
She adjusted her glasses over the bridge of her nose with a gesture Rinko knew well.
It was the switch.
"Rinko, do you remember the documents we found in the principal's office the day before yesterday?"
Rinko turned immediately, attention at a hundred percent.
"Over these two days I managed to decipher them." Shizuru crouched beside the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out a large sheet that she unfolded.
"Look at this."
Rinko leaned in, studying the document with narrowed eyes.
"Is this... a blueprint?" She traced the lines with her finger, reading the labels. "Zeus Materials Research Institute?"
"Exactly." Shizuru pointed to a specific section. "This is the original map from when it was built. And take a look at this area right here."
Her finger stopped over a marked area on the east wing of the institute. "Inside the institute there's an office belonging to Washizu Shigeru. Identical in design to the one he has in the academy's administration building."
Rinko frowned. "A duplicate office? Why would he need..."
"Here's where it gets interesting." Shizuru pulled a second sheet from the drawer: an updated blueprint of the academy with a recent date. She placed it next to the original. "Compare."
Rinko alternated her gaze between the two.
"... It's not there."
"It's not there." Shizuru confirmed with a smile. "On the current one, the institute simply doesn't exist. It was erased. As if it had never been built."
Rinko processed the implications. An entire building removed from the official records but still physically there, with a secret Washizu office inside it. That could only mean one thing.
"The real secret is inside the one that 'doesn't exist.'"
"Bingo." Shizuru adjusted her glasses with her middle finger, and the glint of light hid her eyes for an instant. "Whatever Washizu is doing with the demons, the evidence will be there."
Rinko straightened up and looked at the blueprint one last time, committing the layout to memory. "Then... our mission is to infiltrate that institute."
"Correct." Shizuru rolled up both maps and tucked them inside her suit. "We go in, find the evidence of Washizu's conspiracy with the demons, and pull out immediately. No combat if we can avoid it. As soon as we have what we need, we report to Asagi-sama."
Her tone hardened instantly. "When that happens, this will stop being a Taimanin matter alone. The Onmyō Bureau, the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, they'll all descend on Washizu like vultures."
.....
A vast, deliberately neglected forest stretched around the Academy.
But it was the perfect setting for two Taimanin who didn't want to be seen.
Shizuru took the lead. She moved between the trees with the silent fluidity of a Ninja. Her fingers extended at regular intervals and, in response, vines sprouted from the ground around her like obedient snakes, climbing up the security camera poles, wrapping around the motion sensors and deactivating them without producing a single sound.
Rinko followed two meters behind, reading her hand signals. Every gesture from Shizuru was an instruction: "halt," "left," "wait," "advance." And Rinko obeyed each one.
A group of guards passed twenty meters from their position. Four men with flashlights, armed, walking in formation with a patrol pattern that Shizuru clearly had timed down.
Both held their breath, pressed against the tree trunks, motionless like part of the landscape.
The flashlights swept the area. One of the guards stopped, aiming toward the bushes where Rinko was hiding.
One second... two... three... four... five seconds and the beam of light passed within centimeters of her boot.
Then it moved on.
The group walked away. Shizuru raised two fingers. "Advance"
More devices, more guards, more vines doing their job. The density of security was absurd for what was officially a materials research institute that didn't even appear on the current maps.
Every meter they advanced confirmed what they already knew: this place was hiding something.
Roughly half an hour later, the forest ended.
Abruptly, as if someone had drawn a line on the ground and decided that nature ended there. The twisted trees gave way to an impeccably maintained lawn, cut to the same height, and in the center of that clearing, bathed in cold light, the building rose.
The Zeus Materials Research Institute.
At first glance it wasn't impressive. It was a modern two story building, compact, roughly the size of a typical residential area. White walls, polarized windows, a main entrance with glass doors that looked like the reception of any corporate office.
For a research facility, it was particularly small. But Rinko had seen the blueprints. She knew these two floors were just the tip. The real part, the important part, was underground.
"Phew... we're finally out."
Shizuru dropped into a crouch behind the last tree at the edge of the forest, loosening her shoulders with a sigh.
Even for her, half an hour dodging guards and deactivating sensors nonstop was exhausting.
"There were way too many devices and guards for a building that supposedly doesn't exist..." She murmured, releasing the tension in her fingers.
"The more something is protected, the clearer it becomes that there's something worth protecting." Rinko was crouched beside her, eyes fixed on the institute.
"Fufufu~ You're absolutely right."
Shizuru nodded, and for an instant the playful smile returned. But it didn't last long. "That being the case, let's get ready to go in."
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