The night air of Tokyo seemed insufficiently cool to chill the rage boiling under my skin.
I walked along the deserted alleys of Shinjuku Gyoen, leaving behind the shredded greenhouse and the slowly fading blue oval of the closing Gate.
My steps were absolutely silent. The new epic cloak "Mechanic's Shadow," draped over a tight-fitting black turtleneck sweater, flowed behind my back as if woven from the night itself.
This look — black bottom, black blindfold, and the black fabric of the cloak absorbing the light — made me look less like the Strongest sorcerer and more like a professional hitman.
And, honestly, right now it perfectly reflected my internal state.
— "Satoru... wait!" — Takemichi scurried behind me, puffing heavily and tripping over tree roots.
The yellow miner's helmet had slid down to his ear, and the loot sack was so overstuffed that the blond was dragging it, leaving a trench in the dirt.
— "Where are we going now?! You were just yelling at nothing about taxes, fines, and theft!"
— "What's the point of going into a fifth dungeon if you're saying we're being robbed?!"
I stopped abruptly. Takemichi crashed into my back by inertia and bounced off, rubbing his bruised nose.
Under the effect of the "Icarus Credit," my body was harder than granite.
— "The point, Prophet, lies in my personal vindictiveness," — I hissed, turning to him.
In the darkness of the park, a faint but threatening blue glow from the Six Eyes, operating at two hundred percent, seeped from under my blindfold.
— "The higher powers, you see, decided to cut my profits because I'm too cool for this sandbox."
Takemichi blinked uncomprehendingly, looking around. — "Higher powers? What sandbox?"
— "Satoru, you're talking to yourself again... Did that explosion give you a concussion?"
I ignored his diagnosis and raised my hand, clenching my fingers into a fist until the knuckles cracked.
— "So, to bypass these stupid rules of the universe, we need to find a bigger target. Open the Association forums."
The blond dropped the sack with trembling hands and reached into his pocket for his smartphone. The screen illuminated his dirt- and sweat-streaked face.
— "B-but Satoru... we wanted to find something easy! The fifth dungeon was just for show!"
— "Bureaucrats do things for show. I set records. Look for a B-rank Gate. The freshest ones."
— "The ones that have just started forming or opened in the last half hour, where the Association hasn't yet managed to deploy its tanks and scanners."
Takemichi went so pale he practically blended in with the moonlight. — "B-rank... B-rank... God, you've definitely lost your mind."
— "B-rank is the level of a full-scale military operation! Guilds go in there with teams of forty people!"
— "Search," — I repeated coldly. The mana inside me, restrained only by my will, boiled, demanding a release.
The elixir's 12-hour timer was already ticking, and I wasn't going to waste this precious time on a walk in the park.
— "Found one!" — Takemichi nearly dropped his phone. — "Ueno! The Museum of Nature and Science. A colossal burst of prana was recorded there half an hour ago."
— "The Gate was classified as B-rank. The police have just started evacuating the area, and S-rank guild strike teams will arrive in forty minutes, no sooner."
I smiled broadly. It was that exact, genuine smile of the Strongest — anticipatory, arrogant, and deadly. — "Perfect. A night at the museum."
— "Let's go, Prophet."
I walked up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his school uniform with my free hand, and grabbed the strap of his unliftable loot sack with the other.
Takemichi didn't even have time to squeak.
— "Cursed Technique: Blue," — I whispered.
The space around us bent, compressing into a singularity, and shot us into the night sky of Tokyo.
[ Location: Ueno, Tokyo National Museum of Nature and Science ]
Teleporting with an overloaded inventory and a screaming schoolboy in your hands is not the most pleasant activity, but under the effect of "Icarus's Tear" I didn't even feel the recoil.
My mana channels, boosted by the elixir to a state of divine absolute, channeled the energy effortlessly.
We materialized on the roof of an administrative building adjacent to the museum. Below, on the square in front of the massive museum building with a life-sized whale outside, there was chaos.
Police cars with flashing lights blocked the streets. People were running out of the surrounding buildings in a panic.
But the main thing was right in the air above the museum. A huge rift, pulsating with a dark crimson light, hung right over the building's dome, like a bleeding wound in space itself.
It emitted such mana pressure that even the air felt thick and heavy.
[ WARNING! B-rank Zone Detected. ]
[ Threat Assessment: High. A raid party of at least 50 A-rank Hunters is recommended. ]
«Well, System,» — I smirked mentally, looking at the bloody haze. — «Are there going to be penalties for being too high-level?»
[ Sync System: Penalty annulled. The Host's risk of death in this zone is estimated at 78%. Enjoy your suicide.]
I chuckled, letting go of Takemichi's collar. The blond collapsed to his knees, hugging the concrete roof and breathing heavily.
— "We... we flew across half of Tokyo in a second... I'm going to throw up..."
— "Keep it inside, kid. If you stain my new cloak, I'll throw you right into the Boss's maw," — I walked to the edge of the roof, looking down.
The police cordon was weak. A couple of patrol cars, no mana scanners, and no elite Association mages.
They were just trying to keep civilians at a distance until the professionals arrived.
— "Alright then," — I jumped down from the parapet back onto the roof and walked over to Takemichi. — "Listen to me carefully."
— "This is a B-rank. There won't be glass butterflies or rusty robots here. This is the big leagues."
Takemichi gulped, raising tear-filled eyes to me. — "I... I'll stay here! To guard the loot!"
— "And miss the chance to get experience from a B-rank Boss?" — I shook my head reproachfully. — "No way."
— "You're coming with me. But this time you won't have to pick out cores with a knife."
— "You'll just walk right behind my back and collect whatever is left. And, for the love of God, do not take off that helmet."
I stepped to the edge of the roof and simply took a step into the void, falling straight down toward the museum's main entrance.
[Infinity] softly broke my fall a centimeter from the asphalt. Takemichi, howling in despair, climbed down the fire escape.
We walked right past the police cordon just like I did in Roppongi — absolutely ignoring their existence.
The police, sensing the monstrous pressure of my aura, which I wasn't even trying to hide, simply parted, lowering their weapons.
They instinctively understood: whoever was heading toward those Gates was far more dangerous than what was inside.
We entered the museum lobby. The crimson light of the portal pulsated right in the center of the hall, tearing through the marble floor.
I didn't hesitate. Step. And the world changed.
[ You have entered a Dungeon (Rank: B) ]
[ Zone Specifics: "Necropolis of the Ancients" ]
[ Feature: High concentration of undead. ]
[ Enemies possess resistance to physical damage and poisons. The dead know no fear. ]
We found ourselves in a giant cavern stretching deep underground. The walls were made of bones and compacted earth.
A thick, greenish haze of necrotic energy hung in the air, immediately causing Takemichi to start coughing.
— "Satoru... it smells worse in here than the Roppongi sewers..." — he wheezed, pulling his shirt collar over his nose.
— "Don't breathe through your mouth," — I tossed back, looking around.
Silhouettes began to emerge from the green fog. Dozens. Hundreds. These weren't just zombies or skeletons.
They were Draugr — heavily armored undead, encased in rusted but still sturdy armor.
An icy blue fire burned in their empty eye sockets, and they clutched massive two-handed swords and battleaxes.
[ Enemy: Armored Draugr (Rank: C+) ]
[ Quantity in line of sight: 150+ ]
Takemichi let out a sound like a dying mouse's squeak and tried to hide behind his sack.
— "Now this is what I call service. Finally, a decent crowd," — I smiled broadly, stretching my arms to the sides and rolling my neck until the vertebrae cracked loudly.
The mana inside me, fueled by the elixir, demanded more than just a release. It demanded destruction. I wasn't holding back anymore.
I was the Strongest, and I was going to get my money's worth.
— "Takemichi. Plug your ears and open your mouth, or your eardrums will burst," — I said calmly, casually, bringing the fingers of my right hand together.
The army of the dead let out a blood-curdling battle cry and moved toward us in unison, like a single mechanism, kicking up clouds of bone dust.
I didn't wait for them to get closer. My right hand was enveloped in a dense, sparking blue glow, making the space around it warp and hum threateningly.
— "Cursed Technique: [Maximum Output Blue]"
I didn't just create a point of compression. I created a gravitational anomaly the size of a house right in the center of their formation.
Space exploded. A vacuum funnel of monstrous power sucked in half of the Draugr army in a fraction of a second.
Heavy armor, ancient bones, magical weapons — all of it was crushed into a single, dense ball of metal and dust with a deafening screech and crunch.
I sharply clenched my fingers into a fist. The ball compressed to the size of a billiard ball, and then exploded from the inside with a monstrous crash, showering the entire cavern in a rain of bone shards and system loot.
[ Killed: 84 Armored Draugr(Rank C+) ]
[ Experience Gained: Colossal! ]
[ System Coins: +2520 (No penalties!) ]
The rest of the undead army froze. The System said they knew no fear, but even their primitive intellect was currently throwing a critical error, unable to comprehend how their vanguard had been pulverized in a single second.
— "Hey," — I lazily waved at the remaining monsters. The cloak billowed dramatically behind my back from the residual gravitational waves.
— "What are you standing around for? My time is expensive. Come closer!"
I crossed the fingers on my left hand, and a blinding red sphere ignited in the center of my palm.
The fifth speedrun had begun. And it promised to be very, very profitable.
The rest of the way to the museum's main hall felt less like clearing a dungeon and more like an evening stroll with a highly aggressive lawnmower.
I walked down the wide marble corridors, my left hand stuffed into my cloak pocket. With my right, I simply snapped my fingers periodically.
Every snap was a tiny, pinpoint burst of [Red] that shattered the armored skulls of the Draugr into bone dust with a dull pop, before they even had time to swing their rusty battleaxes.
Takemichi, bent double under the weight of the sack, scurried behind like an obedient but very frightened snail.
— "Satoru..." — he puffed, picking up another glowing core. — "Right now... right now you look like the final boss."
— "If I were a monster, I'd hand you my loot myself and run away."
— "Glad to hear it, Prophet," — I lazily dodged a bone spear flying at my back, letting it bounce harmlessly off [Infinity].
— "But the local inhabitants lack a self-preservation instinct. Which, however, plays right into my hands."
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
We stepped into the giant central hall. In the real world, this housed the main exhibition of the Tokyo National Museum of Nature and Science.
The dungeon had twisted it beyond recognition, but the scale remained: the space was colossal, with a high glass dome through which a deathly pale light filtered.
Right in the center of the hall towered a mountain of bones. But these weren't human remains.
They were colossal dinosaur fossils, ripped from the museum displays and fused together by necrotic magic.
As soon as we crossed the threshold, the mountain of bones began to move.
The air in the hall sharply dropped in temperature. The green fog thickened, drawing into the center of this pile of dust.
A gigantic Tyrannosaurus skeleton, reinforced with spikes, extra limbs, and pulsating black prana, slowly rose to its feet.
Its roar shook the museum walls, showering us with a rain of broken glass from the dome.
[ WARNING! Dungeon Boss Detected! ]
[ Target: Bone Tyrant (Class: Necro-Construct, Rank: B+) ]
[ Feature: Absolute immunity to physical damage from piercing and slashing weapons. Decay Breath. ]
— "A zombie dinosaur," — I smirked, adjusting my blindfold.
— "The designers of this System clearly had a lack of imagination."
— "But I give it a like for the size. I'm sure a decent amount will drop from you."
The Bone Tyrant didn't waste time on greetings. Its massive jaw swung open, and a toxic green flame ignited deep within its empty chest cavity.
A second later, it exhaled a roaring stream of concentrated decay breath our way — magic that turns any organic matter to dust.
— "A-A-A-A!" — Takemichi threw himself to the floor, covering his head with his helmet.
The green flame hit us like a tsunami... and smoothly flowed around, breaking against the invisible barrier of [Infinity].
Not a single spark, not a single drop of toxic gas touched my cloak.
I stood right in the center of this infernal fire, my hands shoved in my pockets.
— "You know, as a kid, I always liked Triceratops more," — I said calmly, drowning out the roar of the flames.
— "They're somehow... more elegant."
The fire died down. The Boss, whose empty eye sockets stared at me with clear systemic incomprehension, took a step back.
The elixir boiled in my veins, turning me into a living embodiment of absolute power.
— "My turn."
I slowly raised my right hand, extending my index finger toward the monster's gigantic skull. A blinding red spark ignited on the tip of my finger.
— "Cursed Technique: [Red]"
I held nothing back. A beam of dense red energy shot from my finger with a deafening sound, like a clap of thunder.
It struck right in the center of the Bone Tyrant's skull.
The armor of thousand-year-old fossils burst like a soap bubble. The bone behemoth simply exploded from the inside.
Chunks of ancient bones the size of cars flew in all directions, crumbling to dust.
The Boss was destroyed with a single strike.
I smirked smugly, waiting for the crimson haze of the portal behind the pedestal to change to a safe blue.
And I was already anticipating the sound of coins dropping into my account.
But the portal didn't turn blue.
Instead, the crimson light suddenly flared so brightly that it illuminated the entire cavern with the color of fresh arterial blood.
The floor beneath our feet shuddered. The air became so thick from the mana pressure that Takemichi fell to his knees, frantically gasping for oxygen.
[ WARNING! CRITICAL ANOMALY! ]
[ Spatial overlap detected. Gate Type: DOUBLE (RED). ]
[ Host's probability of death recalculated: 78% -> 99.9%. ]
— "Double Gates?" — my smile slowly slid off.
The pile of bones from the slain Tyrannosaurus suddenly began to melt, turning into black, bubbling necrotic resin.
This sludge poured like a waterfall into the cracks on the marble floor, dissolving the stone with a hiss and widening a passage into the darkness, from which came a blood-curdling squelching sound.
The next moment, the marble in the center of the hall exploded.
Something that defied logical description burst out of the black abyss. It was a colossal, worm-like construct that almost touched the glass dome.
Its body consisted entirely of hundreds of compressed dead bodies, faces, and broken limbs stuck together into a single biomass.
In place of its head gaped a giant, rotating meat-grinder maw, studded with chaotic rows of human and animal fangs.
[ TRUE BOSS: Abyss Devourer (Rank: A) ]
[ Feature: Organic Absorption, Spatial Puncture. ]
The monster let out a squeal that sent a web of cracks crawling across the glass dome above us.
I instinctively reinforced [Infinity] around myself, preparing to deflect any attack.
The elixir hummed in my veins, and I was even glad the target turned out to be A-rank. They definitely wouldn't issue a penalty for this one.
But the Devourer didn't even look at me. Its thousand-eyed blind snout jerked to the right.
To where Takemichi was frozen on his knees, paralyzed by animalistic terror. The schoolboy from whom I hadn't removed my protection, but who stood exactly two meters outside the radius of my Infinity.
The monster didn't jump or crawl. It used its ability.
The space in front of it distorted, collapsing into a funnel, and its giant maw emerged straight from under the floor directly beneath Takemichi.
— "SATORU-U-U!!" — was all the blond had time to scream frantically.
CRUNCH.
The meat-grinder jaws slammed shut with a deafening clang. Takemichi, along with his giant jingling sack of loot, instantly disappeared into the monster's belly.
The Devourer let out a guttural burp, pulling its maw back into its main body, and only then turned toward me.
The silence in the hall became dead.
The Six Eyes instantly scanned the creature's stomach. Takemichi was alive — he was saved by the miner's helmet, his thick jacket, and the fact that the monster swallowed him whole, along with the sack that was now wedged across its esophagus, preventing the fangs from closing completely.
«System. How much time until complete dissolution of organic matter?» — my mental voice was stripped of all emotion.
It became as cold as absolute zero.
[ Sync System: A-rank stomach acid possesses extreme corrosiveness. 12 seconds until irreversible tissue damage. 20 secondsuntil complete digestion of the Companion Host. ]
Ten seconds.
I screwed up. I relaxed, reveling in my power and VIP buff, completely forgetting the main rule of any team raid: you need to keep the support behind your back.
The kid trusted me. He was carrying my stuff. And he just got devoured right before my eyes because of my arrogance.
This thought hit my consciousness like a sobering jolt of electricity. The eye under the blindfold blazed with an icy blue light.
— "Spit him out," — I said quietly.
The Abyss Devourer rushed at me with a roar, opening its maw to swallow its second snack.
I didn't dodge or cast spells from afar. The points in Agility and Strength, multiplied by the infinite mana of the elixir, turned my body into an artillery shell.
I dashed toward the monster, breaking the sound barrier with a deafening crack.
I flew right into its gaping, rot-stinking maw.
[Infinity] protected me from the snapping fangs, stopping them a centimeter away from my skin.
I found myself inside the slimy, dark tunnel of the esophagus, bracing my legs against the lower jaw and my hands against the upper.
— "TAKEMICHI!" — I barked into the darkness.
Somewhere below, in the bubbling acid, there was a muffled, hysterical sob and the jingle of scattering cores.
— "Satoru!! I'm dissolving! It's dark, wet, and smells like dead bodies in here!!"
— "Hold onto the sack!" — I forced mana into my muscles to the absolute limit.
— "Cursed Technique: Blue." I didn't shoot the spatial anomaly.
I wrapped the attractive force around my arms and legs, latching onto the monster's flesh from the inside with a death grip.
And then I simply spread my arms and legs apart with monstrous, inhuman strength.
From the outside, it must have looked epic. An A-rank Boss that had swallowed a human suddenly froze, letting out a bubbling wheeze. Its body trembled.
And then its giant head simply began to burst at the seams.
I was literally tearing its jaws in half from the inside. Flesh tore, bones snapped.
With a wet, nauseating crunch, I split the monster's skull in two like a rotten watermelon.
Acid, foul-smelling blood, and black sludge gushed out. In the gaping hole that formed, I saw Takemichi flailing about.
His school uniform was smoking from the acid, and the yellow helmet was half-melted, stuck fast to his hair, but he himself was intact.
I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and violently threw him out of the monster's carcass onto the safe marble floor.
Then, with a kick, I knocked out the acid-hissing remains of the sack of cores.
The Abyss Devourer, having lost its head, wildly convulsed, trying to regenerate.
Its decapitated carcass blindly thrashed at the surviving museum columns, bringing them down one by one.
I slowly stepped out of the puddle of blood. My cloak and sweater remained perfectly clean — not a single drop breached the Infinity barrier.
— "Twelve seconds," — I stated coldly, raising my right hand and forming my fingers into my signature gesture.
The elixir pulsed inside me, demanding a final chord. — "You ruined my mood, you freak."
I focused [Blue] and [Red] simultaneously on my fingertips. A sphere of absolute attraction and a sphere of absolute repulsion.
The space around me crackled. Reality began to distort, unable to withstand the colossal density of the mana I was now shaping.
— "Hollow Technique... Purple"
A colossal, pulsating purple sphere of pure annihilation shot from my fingers. It swept through the museum hall absolutely silently.
Everything it touched simply ceased to exist. The carcass of the Abyss Devourer, massive load-bearing columns, the remnants of necrotic resin, and half of the museum wall — Purple erased it from reality, leaving behind only a perfectly smooth, smoking semicircular canyon that cut right through the dungeon.
[ TARGET DESTROYED! ]
[ Killed: Abyss Devourer (True A-rank Boss) ]
[ Reward: 50,000 System Coins (Ring Effect: +25,000 Coins) ]
[ Total: 75,000 System Coins! ]
[ Level up! ] [ Current Level: 38 ]
The blood-red portal behind the erased monster finally blinked and turned a deep, calm blue.
I exhaled, lowering my hand. My mana was still boiling, but the incident was over.
I turned to Takemichi. The blond was sitting on the floor, hugging his knees.
He was shaking so violently that his teeth were chattering loudly. His melted helmet lay nearby. His eyes were glassy, unfocused.
PTSD knocked on his door and walked in without waiting for an answer, making itself comfortable on the couch.
— "Hey. Prophet. How are you?" — I walked over and lightly kicked his boot.
— "There... there were faces in there..." — he whispered monotonously, rocking side to side.
— "It tried to chew me up... My tie dissolved... Satoru, I was inside a stomach..."
— "Look on the bright side," — I optimistically patted his shoulder. — "You survived."
— "And now we have 75 thousand coins. We can buy you a new helmet. And even two bowls of ramen."
— "Or maybe even three."
He slowly raised his gaze to me like a man who had aged ten years in a single night. — "I quit."
— "I swear, I am quitting this madness..."
— "You can quit tomorrow. Right now, grab the sack. They're waiting for us at home."
I hoisted half the loot onto myself (Takemichi physically couldn't lift all that junk with his shaking hands) and dragged the schoolboy toward the saving blue light of the portal.
The fifth raid was complete.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
The transition from the silence of the cleared dungeon to the real world hit my ears with a cacophony of sounds.
The square in front of the National Museum of Nature and Science had changed beyond recognition. The police cordon had been crushed and pushed all the way back to the trees.
Instead of the military or elite Hunter Association strike teams I expected to see at a B-rank clearance, the square was packed with... reporters.
Dozens of television company vans with extended antennas. Hundreds of cameras, whose flashes were blinding even through the blindfold.
Drones with the logos of Tokyo's leading news channels buzzed in the night air like a swarm of metallic bees.
When Takemichi and I emerged from the Gate — me in my flowing black cloak, radiating a terrifying, cold aura after using [Purple], and a twitching schoolboy covered head to toe in foul-smelling stomach slime and clutching a melted helmet — the crowd erupted.
— "IT'S HIM! THE WHITE-HAIRED ANOMALY!"
— "HE CLEARED A DOUBLE GATE! IT'S ONLY BEEN TWENTY MINUTES!"
— "HEY! MR. HUNTER! WHO IS YOUR PARTNER AND WHY IS HE COVERED IN STOMACH SLIME?! ARE YOU USING CHILDREN AS HUMAN SHIELDS?!"
— "MR. GOJO!"
— "SHUEISHA PUBLISHING IS ALREADY PREPARING A LAWSUIT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, HOW DO YOU COMMENT ON THIS?!"
— "IS YOUR SPATIAL SKILL A MAGICAL IMITATION OF 'INFINITY' OR ARE YOU JUST A CRAZY S-RANK CHUNIBYO?!"
The flashes merged into a continuous blinding storm. The crowd of journalists rushed right at us, thrusting their microphones forward like spears.
To them, I wasn't an alien from another reality. To them, I was just an eccentric, fanatical cosplayer whose Awakening miraculously coincided with his favorite manga, and who decided to turn his life into one continuous, deadly performance.
And, honestly, this was the perfect disguise. It was better for all of Japan to think I'd read too many comics and lost my mind than for the Association to guess the existence of my System.
Takemichi squealed in terror, dropped his heavy sack—from which a few green cores rolled out with a clink—and tried to climb back into the saving portal.
But the red oval had already blinked and dissolved into the air, leaving the blond pitifully scratching at the museum's brick wall.
I stopped, lazily shoving my hands into my cloak pockets. The microphones bumped into the invisible barrier of [Infinity] half a meter from my face, prompting surprised exclamations from the journalists — they physically couldn't get any closer.
— "Mr. Hunter! A few words for the viewers! Are you planning to join an S-rank guild, or will you create your own under the name 'Jujutsu High'?!"
I slowly raised my right hand. The crowd instantly shut up. Hundreds of cameras focused on my face, catching every movement.
The world held its breath waiting for a grand speech from the most scandalous player in the Hunter arena.
I pushed the black blindfold up slightly, revealing one shining blue eye, looked right into the lens of the nearest camera, and flashed a wide, arrogant smile.
— "All questions regarding copyrights, guilds, and my porter's stomach slime should be directed to my manager" — I said in a deep, confident voice.
— "She has blonde hair, a stupid pink hairpin, and terrible taste in jacket fabrics."
Then I elegantly folded two fingers together, forming the gesture for spatial distortion.
— "And now, excuse me. My limit for free socialization has been reached."
The crowd gasped. The cameramen zoomed in all the way. The air around me began to swirl spectacularly.
I opened my mouth to say the name of the technique and beautifully vanish...
...when suddenly my perfect, godlike thought stumbled over a tiny domestic problem.
«And where do I teleport to?»
Marin had never sent me the exact address of Ai's secret apartment. I had no idea where they were hiding.
I froze. The air stopped swirling. The epic blue glow at my fingertips blinked awkwardly and went out with a soft hiss.
The crowd of reporters looked at me in complete, ringing silence. I looked at them.
— "Technical difficulties," — I nonchalantly announced into the nearest microphone, slowly lowering my hand.
Then I reached into my trouser pocket, pulled out the smartphone with its screen cracked from the skirmish in Roppongi, and, absolutely ignoring the dozens of lenses aimed at me, dialed Marin's number.
Such a dead silence hung over the square that you could hear the phone ringing from the speaker. Finally, someone answered on the other end.
— "GOJO SATORU!!" — Marin's frantic squeal must have been heard even by the back rows of journalists without any speakerphone.
— "YOU'RE LIVE ON TWENTY CHANNELS AT ONCE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
— "I know, sweetheart. The local lighting makes me look fat, and the cameramen are taking awful angles from below," — I answered completely calmly, holding the phone with my shoulder and adjusting my black blindfold.
The cameras kept filming my every gesture; every word was broadcasted to the whole country. — "Listen, quick question. You forgot to send the address."
— "Where am I supposed to beautifully vanish to?"
— "W-what?.." — Marin choked on the air on the other end of the line.
— "You're calling me from the cordon of a Red Gate... in front of all of Japan... to ask for directions?!"
— "Exactly. I'm the Strongest, not a GPS. Dictate it."
A dull thud came from the speaker, suspiciously sounding like a forehead hitting a glass table. — "Minato Ward."
— "The elite 'Orion Residence' complex. Twenty-fifth floor, penthouse! And Gojo... for heaven's sake, why is the boy standing behind you covered in some disgusting green slime?!"
— "I'm watching the broadcast!"
— "Long story. Abyss Devourers can't chew, they swallow whole. Anyway, we'll be there soon. Put the kettle on."
I hung up and put the cracked phone back in my pocket.
Then I shifted my gaze back to the army of journalists, who stood with their mouths agape and microphones lowered, clearly trying to process: had they just witnessed the greatest sorcerer of modern times or just an idiot who got lost in Tokyo?
— "Where were we? Ah right," — I flashed another dazzling smile and elegantly folded two fingers together.
The epic, terrifying aura returned in a snap, as if it had never left. — "I desperately need a shower."
— "Cursed Technique: Blue."
I grabbed Takemichi by the scruff of his acid-burned shirt, hooked the strap of his unliftable sack with my other hand, and activated the teleportation.
The air exploded with a deafening crack, knocking the front rows of reporters off their feet and scattering their equipment across the asphalt.
On camera, it looked as though we had simply erased ourselves from reality, leaving behind only a gust of hurricane wind and dust.
The white-haired chunibyo who had broken the ranking system overnight vanished.
We materialized in a dead-end, dark alley in the Minato Ward, exactly two blocks from the glass-gleaming "Orion Residence" skyscraper.
Takemichi collapsed to his knees right into a puddle, hugging his sack in a death grip.
His stomach finally gave out from the wild mix of the spatial jump, the smell of monster stomach acid, and the experienced PTSD.
I leaned against the cold brick wall, deeply inhaling the night air.
The "Icarus Credit" elixir was still maintaining my body in perfect condition, my mana was at its peak, but the timer was relentlessly ticking down.
Dawn would be breaking soon.
Five dungeons. Roughly a hundred thousand coins in total. One destroyed A-rank Boss.
And one hopelessly torn jacket that Marin was going to kill me for.
— "Get up, Prophet," — I lightly kicked the blond's boot, listening to the dull clink of the cores in his sack.
— "Let's go knock on the girls' door."
I pulled up the hood of my cloak, hiding my white hair, and we moved toward the skyscraper. The craziest night was coming to an end.