"The training ground is where you learn who's pretending. The battlefield is where pretending gets you killed. I lived in both. The trick was making sure nobody could tell the difference."
Monday morning arrived like a sentence being handed down.
I stood outside the Hunter Association's Training Complex B—a squat, brutalist building in Nerima ward that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated windows and loved concrete. The kind of building that existed to be functional, not admired. Grey walls. Grey floors. Grey everything.
Forty-seven new awakeners stood in the courtyard, shifting their weight from foot to foot, clutching orientation packets, radiating nervous energy so thick you could practically taste it. Most of them were sixteen, like me. A few were older—late bloomers who'd missed the standard ceremony window and been caught by supplemental testing.
I stood at the edge of the group. Watching. Counting.
Forty-seven people. In the original timeline, I'd gone through this same program with a different cohort. Different faces. Different names. Same fear.
Same outcome for most of them.
Of the forty-seven people in my original training cohort, eleven were dead by Year 5. Twenty-three had quit active duty by Year 7—broken by trauma, injury, or the simple grinding reality that being a Hunter was less glory and more grief than anyone warned you about. By the time the Cataclysm hit, only six of us were still active.
Six out of forty-seven.
Twelve percent survival rate to the end. The same percentage as the awakening rate itself. Symmetric cruelty.
I wondered how many of these forty-seven would make it. I wondered if changing the timeline would improve those numbers or make them worse.
I wondered if wondering about it was already the corruption talking—analyzing human lives as statistics, sorting people into categories of useful and expendable without conscious effort.
Stop. They're people. Not numbers.
But the numbers were so much easier to carry.
"ATTENTION!"
The voice cracked across the courtyard like a whip. Every new awakener snapped upright—some out of discipline, most out of sheer startle.
The man who'd spoken was built like a wall someone had given legs to and taught to scowl. Six-foot-two, shoulders wide enough to block a doorway, arms thick with the kind of muscle that came from decades of combat rather than gym work. His hair was cropped military-short, salt-and-pepper grey, and his face was a geography of old scars. A deep one ran from his right temple to his jaw, pulling the corner of his mouth into a permanent half-grimace.
I knew this face.
Instructor Sergeant Ito Daichi. Twenty-year veteran. A-Rank, Physical Enhancement specialist. Former frontline fighter who'd retired from active Gate duty after losing his left eye in a B-Rank dungeon. The eye had been replaced with a mana-prosthetic—a glass-like orb that glowed faintly blue and, rumor had it, could detect lies.
The lie-detection part was bullshit. I knew that from experience. But the intimidation factor was real.
In the original timeline, Ito had been my training instructor too. He'd been hard. Uncompromising. The kind of teacher who broke you down to your foundations and rebuilt you from scratch, whether you liked it or not.
I'd hated him for the first three weeks. By the end, I'd respected him more than almost anyone I'd ever met.
He was also one of the people Akira had killed. Year 8. Made to look like a Gate accident. It wasn't.
Ito stood before us now—alive, whole, both eyes intact (one real, one glowing), his presence filling the courtyard the way only someone who'd walked through hell and come back annoyed could manage.
"My name is Instructor Sergeant Ito," he said. His voice was the auditory equivalent of gravel in a blender. "For the next eight weeks, I am your god. I decide when you eat, when you sleep, when you breathe, and how deeply. If you have a problem with that, the exit is behind you. Nobody will stop you. Nobody will judge you. The world needs accountants too."
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
"Good." Ito's false eye swept across the group with an unsettling precision that made several awakeners flinch. "Let me tell you what this program is and what it isn't. It isn't a vacation. It isn't summer camp. It isn't a reality show where you compete for points and prizes and the audience votes for their favorite. This program exists for one reason: to keep you alive long enough to be useful."
He began pacing. Slow. Deliberate. Each step placed with the control of someone who'd learned that careless movement got people killed.
"The Hunter mortality rate in the first year of active duty is thirty-one percent. One in three. Look at the person to your left. Look at the person to your right. Statistically, one of you will be dead within twelve months."
Forty-seven heads turned. Forty-seven pairs of eyes met other eyes, and in each pair, the same terrible arithmetic was being performed.
"My job," Ito continued, "is to reduce that number. Not to zero—zero is impossible. The Gates don't care about your training, your preparation, or your feelings. The Gates exist to kill you, and they are very, very good at it. But if I can take that thirty-one percent and bring it down to twenty, or fifteen, or ten—then I have done my job."
He stopped pacing. Faced us directly. That false eye glowed brighter for a moment—probably a trick of the light, but the effect was chilling.
"So here is what we are going to do. For eight weeks, I am going to teach you how to not die. Basic combat. Mana control. Gate protocols. Team coordination. Threat assessment. The boring, unglamorous, tedious fundamentals that every cocky new awakener wants to skip in favor of learning flashy skills and impressing their friends."
His gaze locked onto a boy near the front who'd been whispering to the girl beside him. The boy went rigid.
"The flashy skills will come later. If you survive long enough. But fundamentals first. Because fundamentals are what keep you breathing when your mana runs out and your skills are on cooldown and there's a C-Rank monster between you and the Gate exit."
He let the silence hold for three full seconds.
"Questions?"
Nobody had questions. Smart.
"Then fall in. Single file. Move."
The first week was assessment.
Not the kind they'd done at the Awakening Ceremony—no crystals, no rank displays, no dramatic revelations. This was practical assessment. Physical fitness testing. Mana capacity measurement. Reaction time evaluation. Combat aptitude analysis.
For me, it was eight hours a day of the most careful, exhausting performance of my life.
Because I had to fail. Not catastrophically—not so badly that I stood out for being weak. But consistently, precisely, measurably below what I was actually capable of.
When they tested push-ups, I did forty-three. I could have done ninety in this body's current state.
When they tested sprint speed, I clocked 12.1 seconds for the hundred-meter dash. My actual time, if I'd pushed, would have been under 10.
When they tested mana capacity, I let the measurement device read my suppressed reserves—120 MP, consistent with a mid-tier C-Rank. My actual reserves, behind the compression technique, were significantly deeper.
When they tested reaction time, I deliberately delayed my responses by 0.2 seconds. Enough to register as "above average" without entering "impossible for his rank" territory.
Every test. Every evaluation. Every single metric carefully calibrated to present the image of a talented-but-normal C-Rank awakener who'd gotten lucky during a crisis.
It was exhausting. Not physically—the tests themselves were trivially easy. Mentally. The constant vigilance of maintaining a lie across dozens of data points, any one of which could unravel the whole facade if I miscalculated.
Ito watched me during every test. I could feel his false eye tracking me—not with suspicion, exactly. With interest. The interest of a veteran who'd trained hundreds of awakeners and had developed an instinct for when the numbers didn't match the person.
He never said anything. But I caught him making notes in a small book he kept in his jacket pocket. Notes he didn't make for any other trainee.
I filed that under "potential problems" and moved on.
The cohort sorted itself into the inevitable social hierarchy within the first three days. This was human nature—put forty-seven strangers in a high-stress environment and they'd form tribes faster than you could blink.
At the top: the strong ones. The B-Ranks and high C-Ranks who'd performed well in initial assessments and had the confidence that came with knowing they were above average. They clustered together during breaks, trading stories about their awakenings, comparing skill sets, speculating about which guilds would recruit them.
In the middle: the average ones. E-Ranks and D-Ranks who were competent but unremarkable. They kept their heads down, worked hard, and hoped that effort would compensate for limited natural talent. Some of them would make excellent Hunters. Most would wash out within two years.
At the bottom: the stragglers. F-Ranks and low E-Ranks who were already struggling with the physical demands. They ate alone, spoke quietly, and wore the particular expression of people who were beginning to realize that the universe's gift might actually be a burden.
And then there was me. Sitting precisely in the middle of the middle group. Not standing out. Not falling behind. The epitome of unremarkable.
Invisible.
Except to one person.
"You're holding back."
The voice came from behind me during lunch on Day 3. I was sitting alone at one of the outdoor tables, eating a rice ball and reviewing the training schedule, when a shadow fell across my food.
I looked up.
The girl standing over me was about my age—sixteen, maybe seventeen. Average height. Athletic build. Black hair cut in a sharp bob that framed a face of angular, deliberate beauty. Her eyes were unusual—light grey, almost silver, with a focused intensity that reminded me uncomfortably of a scope settling on a target.
She was holding her own tray. She hadn't asked to sit down.
I didn't recognize her from the original timeline.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"During the sprint test. You decelerated in the last fifteen meters. Not much—most people wouldn't notice. But your stride pattern changed. Your cadence dropped. You were deliberately slowing yourself down." She tilted her head. "Why?"
My heart rate ticked up. I kept my face neutral.
"I was tired. I didn't pace myself well at the start."
"No. Your breathing was controlled throughout. Heart rate stable, based on the neck pulse I could see. You weren't tired. You were performing." She set her tray down across from me and sat without invitation. "I'm Yuki Arakawa."
The name hit me like a fist to the sternum.
Yuki. Arakawa.
Not the same Yuki from my previous life—different family name, different background. But the first name triggered a cascade of memories I wasn't ready for. Yuki's vacant eyes in the SSS-Rank Gate. Yuki's voice, hollow and mechanical, as she activated the trap that killed Mira. Yuki, who'd been Akira's spy for three years because he'd threatened to murder her entire family.
Different Yuki. Different person. Same name. Same cold feeling in my gut.
"Ryu Takahashi," I said. Keeping my voice level. "And I think you're reading too much into a sprint test."
"Am I?" She picked up her chopsticks and began eating with methodical precision. "I have an Observation-class ability. B-Rank. My skill is called Analytical Eye—I can detect physical inconsistencies in people's movements. Deception, injury, concealed ability. It's passive. I can't turn it off."
B-Rank Observation class. That was rare. And dangerous—to me specifically.
"I'm not trying to threaten you," she added, apparently reading the tension in my posture. "I don't care why you're hiding your abilities. Everyone has reasons. I'm just telling you that I can see it, so you should be aware that your cover isn't as solid as you think."
The bluntness was disarming. In my experience, people who identified your deceptions usually tried to leverage them. Blackmail. Manipulation. Trade. Nobody just... told you.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Nothing. I'm giving you information for free because it benefits me to have you aware of my ability." She chewed. Swallowed. "If we end up in team exercises together—which we will, because Ito assigns teams based on complementary skill sets and our abilities are highly complementary—I'd rather have a partner who knows what I can do than one who's constantly trying to maintain a lie around me."
Pragmatic. Efficient. Zero emotional noise.
I reassessed her. This wasn't hostility. This was strategic transparency—revealing her own card to force me into a more honest position. It was the kind of move a veteran operative would make.
She was sixteen.
"You're perceptive," I said.
"I'm observant. There's a difference. Perception implies intuition. Observation implies data." She met my eyes. Silver on grey. "I don't do intuition. I do data."
"And your data says I'm hiding my abilities."
"My data says your displayed performance is between 47 and 53 percent of your actual capability. The variance depends on the test—you're better at suppressing mana readings than physical performance. Your combat aptitude assessment was the most egregious. You moved like someone pretending to be clumsy, which is significantly harder than actually being clumsy and tells me your real movement efficiency is likely exceptional."
Forty-seven to fifty-three percent. She'd quantified my suppression level with terrifying accuracy. If she shared this analysis with Ito, or Hayashi, or anyone with the authority to investigate...
"You said you're not threatening me," I said carefully.
"I'm not. I have zero interest in your secrets. I have interest in your competence." She set her chopsticks down. "I awakened as B-Rank, Observation class. Do you know what that means practically?"
"Tell me."
"It means I can see everything and do nothing. My combat ability is F-Rank at best. I can detect threats, analyze enemy patterns, identify weaknesses—but I can't act on any of it. I'm a pair of eyes without hands." A flicker of frustration crossed her face—the first genuine emotion I'd seen from her. "In team exercises, I need a partner who can execute what I observe. Someone fast. Someone precise. Someone who doesn't waste movement."
"Someone whose real ability level is higher than their registered rank?"
"Someone exactly like that. Yes."
I leaned back in my chair and studied her. Yuki Arakawa. B-Rank Observation class. Analytical Eye. A human detection system who'd just offered me a partnership based on mutual benefit—her intelligence, my execution.
In the original timeline, I'd never had a partner like this. I'd been the blunt instrument. The firepower. The S-Rank hammer that saw every problem as a nail. Having someone who could provide real-time tactical data would have changed... everything.
It could still change everything.
But trusting people was a luxury that had been beaten out of me by a decade of betrayal. The last person I'd trusted this quickly had been Akira. And Akira had used that trust to put a sword through my heart.
"Let me think about it," I said.
"Take your time." She picked up her tray and stood. "But think quickly. The first team exercises start on Day 8, and I'd rather not be paired with someone whose best strategy is 'hit it harder.'"
She walked away. Precise steps. No wasted movement. The walk of someone who saw the world as a dataset and moved through it accordingly.
I watched her go and felt the system pulse in my peripheral vision.
Controlled trust. Reveal enough. Conceal the rest.
The story of my entire second life.
The first week ground on.
Days blurred into a rhythm of controlled mediocrity. Morning physical conditioning—running, strength training, flexibility work. Midday mana exercises—control drills, capacity testing, basic skill application. Afternoon tactical lectures—Gate classifications, monster taxonomies, Association protocols, legal frameworks.
I knew all of it. Every word. Every concept. Every technique. I'd lived it for a decade and died knowing it better than the instructors who taught it.
But I sat in the lectures and took notes. I struggled appropriately during drills. I asked questions that a C-Rank newcomer would ask—basic enough to be credible, specific enough to show engagement.
The performance was flawless. And it was killing me.
Not literally. But the psychological toll of pretending to be less than I was—hour after hour, day after day—was corrosive. Every time I deliberately failed a drill I could ace, every time I held back during sparring, every time I let an instructor correct a "mistake" I'd made on purpose, a small piece of something inside me calcified.
The corruption helped with that, I realized. The cold efficiency. The emotional dampening. It made the pretending easier—stripped the frustration of its heat, reduced the humiliation to a data point. I could endure the lie because the lie didn't hurt as much as it should.
That scared me more than the lie itself.
After hours, I trained for real.
Every evening, I returned to the tunnel beneath Ikebukuro. Two hours of actual conditioning—full effort, no suppression, pushing my body against the enhanced gravity until my muscles screamed and my mana reserves emptied.
The results were measurable.
Level 5. Stats climbing steadily. Skills sharpening. The gap between who I pretended to be and who I actually was growing wider with every session.
A ticking bomb of deception.
Day 8. Team exercises.
As Yuki had predicted, Ito assigned teams based on complementary abilities. Four-person squads, designed to cover the basic Hunter team roles: frontline combat, ranged support, defense/healing, and reconnaissance/intelligence.
My squad assignment appeared on the board at 0800:
Squad 7:
— Takahashi Ryu (C-Rank, Shadow Walker)
— Arakawa Yuki (B-Rank, Observer)
— Honda Takeshi (C-Rank, Earth Shaper)
— Endo Saki (D-Rank, Healer)
I stared at the list. Yuki Arakawa—expected, given her prediction about complementary abilities. Honda Takeshi—I didn't recognize the name, but Earth Shaper was a defensive class, which filled the tank role. Endo Saki—D-Rank Healer. Essential but vulnerable.
A balanced team on paper. Reconnaissance, assault, defense, support.
In practice, the team would only be as strong as its weakest link—and with me deliberately performing below capacity, that weakest link was designed to be me.
Which created a problem. In team exercises, my underperformance wouldn't just affect me. It would affect Yuki, Takeshi, and Saki. If I held back too much, we'd fail the exercises. If someone got hurt because I wasn't performing at my actual level...
The moral calculus twisted in my chest. How many people was I willing to let down to maintain my cover? Where was the line?
"Squad 7, assemble!"
Ito's voice cut through my deliberation. I walked to the designated meeting point and found my teammates already gathered.
Yuki stood with her arms crossed, her silver eyes already cataloguing everyone's posture, breathing patterns, and micro-expressions. She gave me a nod—minimal, professional.
Honda Takeshi was large. Not tall, but wide—stocky, broad-shouldered, with thick arms and a center of gravity that suggested he'd be very difficult to move once he planted himself. His face was round and open, with the kind of earnest expression that made you want to trust him immediately. Brown eyes. Cropped hair. A small scar on his chin that looked like it came from a childhood accident, not combat.
He was nervous. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides, and his weight was shifting from foot to foot.
Endo Saki was small. Barely five feet, with a slim build that made her look younger than sixteen. Her hair was long—dark brown, pulled into a ponytail that reached her mid-back. Her eyes were large and dark and perpetually worried, like a rabbit that had been placed in a field and told there might be hawks.
She was clutching her orientation packet like a lifeline.
D-Rank Healer. The most vulnerable person on the team, and the most essential. In a real Gate situation, keeping the healer alive was priority one. Everything else was secondary.
"Alright," I said, because someone needed to speak and nobody else was going to. "I'm Ryu. Shadow Walker class. Stealth and mobility."
Yuki: "Yuki. Observer. Intelligence and analysis."
Takeshi: "T-Takeshi. Honda Takeshi. Earth Shaper. I, uh, make walls and stuff." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm still figuring it out."
Saki: "..." She opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "Saki. Endo Saki. I'm a healer. D-Rank. I'm sorry."
She apologized for her rank. This girl—this tiny, terrified, sixteen-year-old girl—was apologizing for her existence to people she'd just met because someone, somewhere, had taught her that being D-Rank meant being a burden.
Something hot and sharp twisted in my gut. Not corruption. Just anger. The ordinary, human kind.
"Don't apologize," I said. "Healers are the most important people on any team. Ask any veteran Hunter—they'll tell you they'd trade an A-Rank damage dealer for a reliable healer without hesitation."
Saki blinked. "R-really?"
"Really. Without you, the rest of us are one bad hit from being out of the fight permanently. You keep us functional. That's not a weakness. That's the foundation everything else stands on."
She stared at me. Takeshi stared at me. Even Yuki's eyebrows rose a fraction.
I'd spoken with too much authority. Too much certainty. The words of a veteran commander, not a fresh awakener. I could feel the mask slipping and I couldn't stop it because I'd meant every word and some truths refused to be suppressed.
"I... thank you," Saki whispered. Her grip on the orientation packet relaxed slightly.
Yuki's silver eyes were boring into the side of my head. I didn't need to look at her to know she'd added this moment to her ever-growing dataset of evidence that I was not what I appeared to be.
"Okay," I said, pulling the conversation back to practical ground. "Let's talk about the exercise. What do we know?"
The team exercise was a simulated Gate raid.
Not a real Gate—the Association wasn't insane enough to throw untrained sixteen-year-olds into actual extradimensional death traps. The Training Complex had purpose-built simulation chambers: massive rooms that used mana-projection technology to create realistic Gate environments, complete with holographic monsters that could deliver non-lethal but painful feedback hits.
Think of it as a violent, magical video game, except the controller was your body and dying meant a very real electric shock that left you twitching on the floor for thirty seconds.
The scenario was E-Rank. A basic cave dungeon with eight to twelve goblin-type hostiles, one mini-boss, and a Gate core that needed to be destroyed to complete the exercise. Standard stuff. The kind of mission that real E-Rank Hunters did every day.
For our squad, with two C-Ranks, one B-Rank, and one D-Rank, it should have been straightforward.
It wasn't.
The problem was immediately apparent: we had no cohesion. Four individuals who'd never worked together, never fought together, never even had a conversation before thirty minutes ago. Takeshi didn't know how to coordinate his walls with my movement patterns. Saki didn't know where to position herself for optimal healing coverage. Yuki had tactical data pouring in from her Analytical Eye but no established communication protocol to relay it.
And I had to fight at fifty percent capacity while pretending it was my maximum.
The simulation started. Cave environment. Low light. Ambient sounds designed to create unease—dripping water, distant growls, the occasional scraping of something moving in the dark.
"Contact," Yuki said quietly. "Three goblins, twenty meters ahead. Two on the ground, one on the ceiling. The ceiling one is a Lurker variant—it'll drop on whoever passes underneath."
"I see two," Takeshi said, squinting into the darkness. "Where's the third?"
"Ceiling. Eleven o'clock. It's using the shadows for concealment."
Yuki's Analytical Eye was remarkable. In real-time, she was mapping enemy positions with a precision that most Hunters couldn't achieve with dedicated scanning equipment. If we could build an effective communication system, she'd be the most valuable person on this team by a wide margin.
"Takeshi," I said. "Can you put a wall between us and the ground units? Something they have to go around?"
"I... think so? How big?"
"Two meters high, three wide. Doesn't need to be thick—just an obstacle to break their charge line."
He nodded, pressed his palms to the cave floor, and concentrated. The stone shifted—slowly, clumsily, but it shifted. A wall of compressed earth rose from the ground with a grinding sound that echoed through the cave.
The goblins heard it. They turned toward us, yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.
"Lurker is moving," Yuki reported. "Repositioning to flank. Saki, move two steps to your left. Now."
Saki moved. A fraction of a second later, the Lurker dropped from the ceiling onto the spot where she'd been standing. It hit the ground with a thud and scrambled to orient itself.
I was already there.
Not Void Step—I couldn't use that without breaking cover. Just speed. The physical speed that my training had built, throttled to what a C-Rank should be capable of. I closed the distance in three strides and brought my training weapon—a blunted practice blade—down on the Lurker's spine.
The holographic goblin flickered and dissolved. One down.
The two ground goblins came around Takeshi's wall, splitting to attack from both sides. I intercepted the left one. Takeshi, to his credit, held his ground against the right one—not with finesse, but with stubborn physicality. He raised another wall in front of himself, caught the goblin's charge against it, and then brought a mana-enhanced fist down on its head.
Crude. Effective. The goblin dissolved.
The one I was fighting was faster. Holographic or not, the simulation's AI was good—it adjusted tactics based on player behavior, which meant enemies got smarter as the exercise progressed.
This goblin had seen me kill its friend. It didn't charge. Instead, it circled, probing, looking for openings.
I gave it one. A deliberately clumsy overextension on a practice swing—the kind of mistake a C-Rank might make under pressure. The goblin lunged for the opening.
I let it get close. Closer than I should have. Close enough that its crude blade came within inches of my ribs—close enough that Saki gasped and Takeshi shouted a warning.
Then I pivoted, caught the goblin's weapon arm, and redirected its momentum into the cave wall. It hit hard. Dissolved.
"Clear," I said.
The squad regrouped. Saki was pale but functional. Takeshi was breathing hard but grinning—the high of his first real combat experience, simulated or not. Yuki was watching me with those silver eyes.
"You let that last one get too close," she said. Quiet enough that only I could hear.
"It was a realistic distance for—"
"For a C-Rank. Yes. But you could have ended it three seconds earlier. You saw the opening at the same time I did—I watched your eyes track it. You chose to wait."
Damn her and her observation skills.
"Adrenaline," I said. "I froze for a second."
"You don't freeze. Your heart rate hasn't changed since we entered the simulation." She paused. "But I said I wouldn't press. So I won't. Just be aware that if you're going to perform below your level, the seams show more clearly in team combat than individual assessment."
She walked ahead to scout. I stood for a moment, processing.
She was right. The seams did show more clearly. In individual testing, I only had to fool the evaluators. In team combat, I had to fool my own teammates—people watching me from three feet away, in real-time, with their lives depending on my performance.
If I held back too much, Saki could take a hit meant for me. Takeshi could overcommit to cover a gap I'd left deliberately. People could get hurt—simulated or not—because of my deception.
The calculus was shifting. The lie was getting heavier.
We cleared the simulation in twenty-three minutes. Eight hostiles eliminated, mini-boss defeated (a larger goblin with a crude shield that Takeshi's walls and my flanking maneuver dealt with efficiently), Gate core destroyed.
Results:
Squad 7 — Exercise 1 Results
Completion Time: 23:14
Casualties: 0
Efficiency Rating: B+
Individual Scores:
— Takahashi Ryu: B (Good combat instincts, occasional hesitation noted)
— Arakawa Yuki: A (Exceptional situational awareness, effective communication)
— Honda Takeshi: B- (Strong defensive capability, needs work on reaction time)
— Endo Saki: B (Solid positioning, good response to callouts, minimal wasted healing)
B-plus efficiency on our first run together. Respectable. Not exceptional. Not suspicious.
Ito reviewed our results with the expression of someone who'd expected both more and less simultaneously.
"Decent," he said—which, from Ito, was practically a standing ovation. "Communication needs work. Takahashi, you need to commit to your engagements faster. That hesitation in the third encounter could have gotten your healer killed in a real scenario."
"Yes, sir."
"Arakawa, your callouts are excellent, but you need to develop shorthand. In combat, you don't have time for complete sentences. Work on a code system with your team."
"Understood."
"Honda, good instincts with the walls. But you're using too much mana for each construct. Efficiency over size—a wall only needs to be big enough to do its job."
"Y-yes, sir."
"Endo." He turned to Saki, and his voice—impossibly—softened by a fraction. "Good work. You stayed alive and you kept your team alive. That's what matters."
Saki's eyes went bright. She nodded rapidly, not trusting her voice.
Ito moved on to the next squad. We stood in silence for a moment—the particular silence of people who'd just been through something together and were deciding what it meant.
"That was terrifying," Takeshi said.
"That was an E-Rank simulation," Yuki replied. "The real thing will be worse."
"Thanks. Really helpful."
"You're welcome."
Saki laughed. Small, startled, like she hadn't expected to find anything funny. Then Takeshi laughed. Then Yuki's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile if you squinted and believed in miracles.
Something was forming. Fragile, uncertain, held together by nothing more than shared experience and the human need to not face scary things alone.
A team.
Eleven percent corruption reduction at full bond strength. That would bring my effective corruption from 28% down to 16.5%. Below the first threshold. Potentially reversing the physical and mental changes.
The system was telling me what I already knew: people were the antidote.
Not power. Not strategy. Not the cold efficiency that the corruption whispered was strength.
People.
I looked at my squad—three teenagers I'd known for less than a day, standing in the aftermath of a simulated battle, laughing nervously and pretending they weren't scared.
I'd protect them. All of them. Not because the system recommended it. Not because it reduced corruption. Not because they were useful.
Because they deserved it. Because everyone deserved someone willing to stand between them and the dark.
Even if the person doing the standing was slowly being consumed by darkness himself.
The second week brought harder exercises and new complications.
Ito escalated the difficulty progressively—D-Rank simulations with more complex environments, enemies that used tactics instead of charging blindly, scenarios that required genuine teamwork rather than individual heroics.
Squad 7 adapted. Slowly, clumsily, but genuinely. Yuki developed a shorthand system—numerical codes for enemy positions, threat levels, and recommended actions. Takeshi learned to read her callouts and respond with precisely-sized defensive constructs. Saki found her rhythm, positioning herself in the zones Yuki identified as optimal for healing coverage.
And I played my part. The C-Rank Shadow Walker who was good—better than average—but not extraordinary. Fast enough to handle individual threats. Smart enough to follow Yuki's tactical guidance. Reliable enough to protect Saki when the formations broke down.
It was working. The team was gelling. Our scores improved consistently, from B-plus to A-minus across six exercises.
But the strain was accumulating.
Not physical strain—my body was handling the program easily, growing stronger from the evening tunnel training that nobody knew about. The strain was mental. Psychological. The constant, grinding effort of being less than I was.
And the corruption wasn't helping.
Twenty-eight percent. Static. Unchanging. But the effects were deepening. I noticed it in moments of decision—the way my mind now defaulted to tactical assessment before emotional response. When Saki stumbled during an exercise and fell, my first thought wasn't concern for her well-being. My first thought was calculating how her position on the ground affected the squad's defensive coverage.
The concern came a fraction of a second later. But it was a fraction. And the fraction was getting longer.
"Onii-chan, you've been staring at your dinner for four minutes."
Hana's voice snapped me back to the kitchen. Evening. Home. Rice and fish and vegetables arranged with Hana's characteristic precision.
"Sorry," I said. "Thinking."
"About?"
"Training."
She studied me across the table. That look—the one that said she was running calculations behind her eyes, matching observed data against internal models, testing hypotheses.
"Your file is getting thicker," she said casually.
My chopsticks paused mid-air. "Hana—"
"I cross-referenced the security footage timestamps with the Gate's formation timeline. The Gate started manifesting six minutes before the wall breach. Six minutes. The building's detection systems should have caught it in thirty seconds."
I set down my chopsticks. Slowly.
"Someone disabled the detection arrays," Hana said. "Not all of them—that would have triggered a failsafe alert. Just the ones covering the eastern quadrant of Chamber 12. Specifically, the quadrant where the Gate appeared."
She'd figured it out. In less than two weeks, a thirteen-year-old with a laptop and a public library card had reached the same conclusion that the Bureau of Hunter Intelligence was still investigating.
The Gate at the Assessment Center wasn't natural. It was engineered.
Someone had sabotaged the mana detection systems to allow the Gate to form inside the building. Someone with access to the building's security infrastructure. Someone who wanted monsters to pour into a room full of three hundred helpless teenagers.
"Hana," I said carefully. "Where are you getting this information?"
"Public building inspection reports. Mana detection system specifications—those are in the manufacturer's technical documentation, which is available through their corporate website. The Gate formation timeline was reconstructed from the security footage, which someone leaked to HunterWatch three days ago."
All public information. All technically accessible to anyone with the patience and intelligence to connect the dots.
Nobody else had connected them. Because nobody else was Hana Takahashi.
"You need to stop," I said.
"Why?"
"Because if someone deliberately caused that Gate, they're dangerous. And if they find out a thirteen-year-old girl is investigating them—"
"They won't find out. I'm using public data accessed through VPN-routed connections on a library computer under a guest account. There's no trail."
"There's always a trail, Hana."
"Not for someone who knows what they're doing."
We stared at each other. Two Takahashis. Same stubbornness. Different fears.
"Please," I said. And I heard the break in my own voice—the exhaustion, the desperation, the overwhelming weight of trying to protect everyone while lying to everyone while fighting everything.
Hana's expression shifted. The analytical distance softened into something warmer. Something sisterly.
"I'll be careful," she said. "But I won't stop. Someone tried to kill three hundred kids, Onii-chan. Including you. I'm not going to pretend that's someone else's problem."
She picked up her chopsticks and resumed eating.
I sat in silence and felt the corruption pulse behind my eyes. Twenty-eight percent. But for a moment—just a moment—the warmth of Hana's stubborn loyalty pushed it back. Made it quieter. Made the cold efficiency recede to wherever it lurked when the human parts of me were strong enough to hold the line.
She was my anchor. The strongest one.
And she was putting herself in danger because of me.
The irony was exquisite. And terrible.
Later that night, after Hana was asleep, my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
Not a call. A text. Three words.
"Impressive start, Takahashi."
No sender identification. No context. No follow-up.
I stared at the screen.
The message could be from anyone. Hayashi, keeping tabs. Yamamoto, checking in. A guild recruiter who'd gotten my number. A classmate. A wrong number.
But my gut—my combat-forged, decade-hardened, regression-scarred gut—told me exactly who it was from.
Akira Kurogane.
The golden predator. Watching. Testing. Reaching out with a single text message to see how the prey would react.
Would I respond? Would I panic? Would I do nothing?
I deleted the message. Blocked the number. Set the phone face-down on my desk.
Then I sat in the dark and counted the cracks in the ceiling.
Fourteen.
Same as always.
But the darkness between them seemed deeper tonight. Fuller. Like something was filling the spaces between the cracks, pressing against the surface of reality, waiting for permission to break through.
Or maybe that was just the corruption talking.
I closed my eyes. Counted my breaths. Let the exhaustion pull me under.
Tomorrow, there would be more training. More exercises. More performances. More lies.
And somewhere in Tokyo, a golden-eyed predator was smiling.
I could feel it.
text
[Day 10 of 3,657]
[Corruption: 28%]
[Lives Saved: 286]
[Lives Lost: 14]
[Bonds Active: 5 (Hana, Kaito, Yuki, Takeshi, Saki)]
[Squad 7 Cohesion: DEVELOPING]
[Bureau Monitoring: ACTIVE]
[Akira Kurogane: FIRST CONTACT INITIATED]
[The wolves circle, Sovereign.]
[Some wear sheep's clothing.]
[Some don't bother.]
[Learn to tell the difference.]
[Before the difference tells you.]
[END OF CHAPTER 6]