Damp, mildewed air. Familiar room. The colossal Black Sphere suspended dead-center.
"They kicked off the main exam in under ten minutes…" Ryuuen Kakeru cracked his neck. "That Ayanokoji bastard works fast, huh?"
"Or — was it some clueless newbie itching to touch something they shouldn't, triggering the forced-start mechanism?"
"Even if a newbie were that reckless, with that many veterans standing right there to back them up, surely they wouldn't make such a basic mistake."
Sakayanagi Arisu pursed her lips slightly. "I'd actually be more inclined to believe that the test itself is just easy to disrupt by accident."
Chris nodded, his gaze sweeping over Ichinose Honami, who was already striding toward the Black Sphere, and said:
"Whatever the reason — we shouldn't waste any more time."
"Since we've already been dragged in, let's check the objective for this exam and get moving to link up with them ASAP."
"Speaking of which…" Amanatsu Kazuha, standing off to the side with her hands tucked behind her back, scanned the crowd. "Who exactly is the random extra who got pulled in alongside us this time?"
The group looked around in unison.
Ryuuen's class: Ryuuen Kakeru and Ishizaki Daichi.
Ichinose's class: her and Ichinose Honami.
Hirata's class — due to the slot rotation, this time it was Chris and Kouenji Rokusuke.
As for the remaining Sakayanagi class — beyond Sakayanagi Arisu and Kamuro Masumi…
A gentle-looking girl was standing quietly in the corner.
She seemed just as surprised as everyone else to have been selected, standing meekly against the wall and giving a small, hesitant wave.
'Shiraishi Asuka?'
'So it's her… right, I remember she's barely got any presence in Sakayanagi's class normally. No wonder nobody noticed her right away.'
Amanatsu Kazuha pulled her gaze away from Shiraishi Asuka.
By this point, Ichinose Honami had already made it up to the Black Sphere.
"GANTZ… nope, never mind. I know there's no point trying to pry any background info out of you right now."
The moment the words left her, she shook her head with a self-deprecating little laugh:
"Just hurry up and tell us the objective for this exam, and let us through the second we've picked our gear!"
"Every extra second they're stuck in there is one more second of danger!"
Faced with Ichinose's urgency.
The surface of the Black Sphere flickered, and a few lines of white text appeared:
[My, you've grown up. Finally figured out that there are things you can't put into words, and that asking won't help. (∇)]
[In that case, I won't waste any of your world-saving time.]
Right after that, four images appeared on the screen — powerfully built, wildly posed, half-naked men.
[Go to the alternate world and stop the birth of the Ultimate Beings!]
[Target Name: Pillar Men x4]
[Characteristics: Surpassing humans, vampires, and undead alike. Two meters tall, eyes painted with red markings, heavily muscled. Ancient ultimate life-forms that are neither human nor god — their one and only wish is to overcome their weakness and escape the curse of the sun.]
[Favorite Thing: Join the glorious evolution!]
[Catchphrase: No matter what means I have to use… as long as I win in the end, that's all that matters AAAH!]
[Time Limit: 60:00]
[Failure Penalty: None for now]
[Friendly Tip: There are no hidden high-score monsters this time, but the arena is actually packed with point-grinding opportunities. Whether you can seize them or not is up to you~]
With the briefing complete, the hydraulic hiss of the Black Sphere's sides kicked in, and the weapon rack slowly unfolded. The screen flashed in sync, and a sixty-second countdown appeared.
Ishizaki Daichi glanced at the weapon rack, then turned to Ryuuen Kakeru:
"Ryuuen, I'll go with the Y-GUN? Honestly, none of these weapons really feel like my style."
Ryuuen Kakeru snorted.
"Just play support and call it a day."
"You had the whole Uninhabited Island exam to put together a Combat Suit, and you still didn't get it done. So am I really supposed to count on you to charge out front and grapple with ancient monsters?"
"Once we're inside, stick with Ayanokoji. You're on Y-GUN duty in the back row protecting those newbies. Just don't get in my way."
Ishizaki Daichi nodded, not in the least bit offended.
After all, Ryuuen Kakeru might have a sharp tongue, but back during the Uninhabited Island exam, the guy really had taken point and shielded the team from a hell of a lot of trouble.
Being assigned to play support in the back row was, in itself, a form of protection.
Amanatsu Kazuha, meanwhile, pressed her lips together, fingers absently rubbing the Parasyte capsule in her pocket.
While everyone else was busy picking gear, she spoke up with a suggestion:
"Speaking of which… for this exam, the personally-purchased gear we've got on hand is pretty stacked."
"Once we're over there, should we maybe split up?"
"There are only four targets, after all. If we all clump together, efficiency's going to tank."
Kouenji Rokusuke shot her a sidelong glance and chuckled lightly:
"Heh-heh. With the combat power Chris-Boy showed off inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, he could absolutely function as a one-man army."
"But the actual strategy still needs to wait until we enter the arena. He needs to pull up his controller first and see exactly how much each 'Pillar Man' is worth, score-wise. Splitting our forces blindly wouldn't be the elegant play."
Sakayanagi Arisu, accompanied by Kamuro Masumi and Shiraishi Asuka, made her slow way over to the Black Sphere.
She picked up a Y-GUN handgun and began her analysis:
"We still don't know the specifics on the opposition, but going by the intel the Black Sphere just gave us, these Pillar Men's weakness is sunlight. So they're probably similar to the demons we ran into on the Uninhabited Island."
"With the situation this uncertain, the safest pick for dealing with creatures that have monster-tier regeneration is still the Y-GUN — it can teleport monsters straight into an alternate dimension."
Hearing this, Chris casually grabbed a Y-GUN for Shiraishi Asuka beside him, who was still looking a bit nervous.
Then he picked up another and handed it to Ichinose Honami, reassuring her:
"Don't worry, Ichinose. Trust Ayanokoji, Amikura Mako, and the rest of them. They're not going to fold before we get there to back them up."
Ichinose Honami pocketed the gun and nodded.
Seeing this, Amanatsu Kazuha deliberately drew out her tone in a teasing lilt:
"Senpai, out of every single girl here, I'm the only one you skipped? That's a little much, isn't it~"
Chris glanced at the Y-GUN she'd already been holding the whole time:
"You've already got one in your hand. Stop talking nonsense."
"Cut it out, time's up."
The moment he finished speaking.
[00:00]
[Weapon selection complete]
[All-member teleportation initiated]
In the blink of an eye, the sensation of weightlessness faded.
The group appeared inside a dim, low-lit ruin passageway, walls etched all over with eerie murals.
With more than a few near-death experiences already under their belts, the veterans didn't panic the way a newcomer would.
Only Ishizaki Daichi — when he saw, on the walls all around them, the vampires wearing Stone Demon Masks, the ones letting off sharp "crack-crack" sounds as if they were about to tear themselves free of the statues at any second — had a moment where his eyes went blank.
But he bit down hard on the tip of his tongue and pulled himself back together fast, drawing closer to Ryuuen Kakeru with his weapon ready.
Don't freak out, what's there to be scared of!?
The guys standing next to me right now — every single one of them is a monster in their own right!
Back on the Uninhabited Island exam, they cracked open a Special Grade Cursed Spirit that could trigger volcanic eruptions. How could you dried-up corpses bouncing out of these rocks possibly be tougher than Jikku?!
While he was busy giving himself the pep talk.
Everyone else had already started mopping up the surrounding small fry.
Ichinose Honami rose into the air, and countless feathers poured down like a torrential rain, pinning the vampires trying to leap down from the walls right where they were.
Sakayanagi Arisu hefted her [Romantic Cannon], picking off any stragglers with precision shots;
Kamuro Masumi, gritting her teeth against the fear, raised Sakayanagi's enhanced rifle and put follow-up rounds into the vampires already nailed in place by the feathers.
However, vampire regeneration really was a pain.
Ordinary physical attacks were almost incapable of putting them down for good.
Shiraishi Asuka and Amanatsu Kazuha, on the other hand, leveraging the teleport mechanism on the laser net, took two kills clean off the board without spilling a drop of blood.
But the standout performances in this skirmish belonged to the two melee fighters — Ryuuen Kakeru and Kouenji Rokusuke.
"Break for me!!!"
Ryuuen Kakeru swung the [Soul-Release Blade] with a savage grin.
This Special Grade cursed tool, capable of slashing the soul itself, stripped away their life force with a single swing — not even giving them the chance to regenerate!
As for Kouenji Rokusuke, he was perfectly demonstrating the terrifying natural affinity he had for the Ripple.
"Inhale… exhale…"
The golden Ripple flowed from his fingertips into the Black Sphere combat blade.
Every time he swung, any vampire the edge touched instantly crumbled to ash!
As for Chris.
He just casually flicked the spine of his sword and batted away a few vampires that had tried to close in on him.
Then he calmly pulled up the radar function on his wrist controller.
A three-dimensional map unfolded. Across the screen, dense red dots swarmed everywhere — and only a small handful of green dots were boxed in at the very center, some of which were even flickering and rapidly winking out.
Chris's brow furrowed slightly. He went straight for the red dot nearest the largest cluster of green dots.
Immediately, the intel popped up:
[Target: Stroheim (Vampire)]
[Value: 10 points]
[Traits: Combat knowledge of a former Ripple master + the undying body of a vampire. His killing technique, Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, can fire bodily fluid from both eyes under high pressure — with enough force to punch clean through a human body or a steel plate. He fears only the Pillar Men and the Ripple, which represents the sun.]
[Critical Point: For a newly-fledged Ripple warrior, he'd be an absolute nightmare to deal with. But if you do beat him, you can scoop up — for free — a special tool, woven from the gut-thread of a 'Satiporoja Beetle', that conducts Ripple far better than human flesh can.]
"Everyone, heads up!"
Chris called out clearly to the group in the middle of the melee:
"These things are vampires. Their bodies are basically immortal — ordinary physical attacks won't do it! The only ways to take them down are Ripple or special means!"
Before the last word had even faded.
Kamuro Masumi and Sakayanagi Arisu had already swapped to their Y-GUNs in silent coordination, ready to execute pinpoint clears.
Ichinose, meanwhile, manipulated the wings at her back, deploying her secret technique "Wings of God."
The wings, originally used for long-range fire, fused together into beams of light, forcibly driving back every vampire that tried to close in on the girls in the back row.
Seeing the formation stabilized, Chris drove Demon Possession into the ground.
The phantom of Tyrande roared into being, and gleaming silver-white heavy armor instantly enveloped him.
He hoisted the Red-Backed Shrike with one hand and poured the Ripple into it.
"Swoosh——!"
The longspear swept in a horizontal arc!
A dazzling golden crescent tore through the darkness, and the seven or eight vampires that had lunged in at close range were cut clean in half at the waist, scorched into drifting ash under the Ripple!
Seeing that, beyond Ryuuen Kakeru and Kouenji Rokusuke, there was yet another heavyweight presence among them.
The remaining vampires — though still ravenously hungry — were ultimately creatures that had retained the cunning of their living days.
One after another, they turned and melted back into the dark passageways around them, fleeing to find different prey.
Ryuuen Kakeru and Kouenji Rokusuke, having finished off the stragglers near them, didn't bother giving chase either.
The two of them, by unspoken agreement, drifted over to Chris's side and looked at the controller in his hand.
"Heh-heh… how utterly magnificent!"
Kouenji Rokusuke flipped his golden bangs, his eyes practically glowing with rapture:
"To think the power of the Ripple would be this captivating~ Truly, the so-called miracle capable of mimicking the energy of the sun. As expected — it suits a perfect existence like myself best of all!"
Ryuuen Kakeru, equally riding high, slung the Soul-Release Blade over his shoulder:
"Wouldn't have figured that the whole 'directly cleaves the soul' setting on this Soul-Release Blade was actually real!"
"Slashing this bunch of immortal-bodied vampires, one cut and they're dead-dead, not even a shot at regenerating. So damn satisfying!"
He licked his lips. "Gotta say… for once, I actually made the right call!"
Sakayanagi Arisu laughed softly off to the side:
"Either way, it cost a full 40 S-Points to swap for that thing. Without some kind of special property baked in, it might genuinely have been less useful than the combat blade the Black Sphere hands out for free at the start."
"Everyone."
Ichinose Honami folded her wings and landed, sitting out the banter entirely. She pointed at several flickering green dots on Chris's controller, voice tight with urgency:
"Senpai's found Ayanokoji-kun and the others' position!"
The group went quiet, all eyes locking onto the three-dimensional map on the controller.
The green dots representing Ayanokoji and the others were, at that very moment, surrounded by a massive, swarming cluster of red dots.
Kamuro Masumi looked at the radar, then looked at Chris, and asked, puzzled:
"Looks like we'd better hurry over and back them up… but, you guys, look. The red dots around them are disappearing crazy fast!"
"They're dropping in waves. With efficiency like that… don't tell me Ayanokoji turned into a Titan?"
Sakayanagi Arisu propped her chin on one hand, looking thoughtful:
"Transforming into a Titan inside a cramped ruin like this is a great way to trigger a cave-in and bury themselves alive. Ayanokoji wouldn't pull a stunt that stupid."
"Maybe… they ran into the 'Mystery Merchant' and got their gear upgraded. At that monster-clearing pace, it's not exactly something Ayanokoji could pull off solo."
Ichinose immediately followed up: "Either way, let's hurry over and link up with them first. We'll get the full picture once we meet up."
"Hold on."
Chris, however, raised a hand to stop her: "Before we head out, let's check the intel on this round's targets first. I just pinned them on the radar."
As he said it, Chris tapped open, one after another, the four markers whose body sizes massively exceeded the ordinary red dots.
[Santana (Pillar Man)]
[Value: 25 points]
[Traits: The youngest and lowest-ranking of the four Pillar Men. Doesn't even have a personalised "Mode" of his own, yet still possesses terrifying physical capabilities far exceeding a vampire's. Relies on instinctive devouring and physical attacks.]
[Critical Point: Can fold his body up to burrow into other living creatures and seize control of them. Those parasitised feel pleasure and lose their sense of pain. He can even use this skill to evade sunlight.]
Once they'd finished reading the briefing on Santana, the group's eyes moved to the other three.
[Kars (Light Mode)]
[Esidisi (Flame Mode)]
[Wamuu (Wind Mode)]
Rewind two minutes.
The moment Santana was using the vampires inside the stone statues, feeding them to Kars's statue in an attempt to wake him.
Because the exam's start trigger conditions were extremely simple.
In actual fact, before Kars and the others had fully awakened, the Black Sphere main exam had already been forcibly judged to have begun.
As for Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.
The instant he heard the Black Sphere's notification chime, and sharply registered the abnormal flaking starting up on the stone statues around him.
He simply stopped walking.
"Zero."
Ayanokoji's voice was cold.
"Attack."
The Parasyte "Zero," having undergone double evolution via T-Virus and Super-Soldier Serum, displayed in this moment a level of destructive power that could only be described as terrifying.
It instantly split into more than a dozen tentacles. The blade-edge of each tentacle was wreathed in dazzling golden Ripple!
"Slash-slash-slash——!"
Like a fully-automatic meat grinder.
Before the vampires had even managed to fully tear themselves free of their petrified state, the Ripple-wrapped blades had already carved their bodies open!
They didn't even get the chance to scream before they dissolved into a sky-wide spray of dust.
Drifting and scattering, in that dim passageway space — for just an instant, even visibility was partially blocked out.
Speedwagon, witnessing this, marveled aloud.
"S… so strong!"
He swallowed hard.
If, back in the day, when he and Jonathan Joestar had set out to bring down Dio after he'd turned into a vampire, they'd had this kind of demigod backing them up…
Dio probably wouldn't have even gotten the chance to be arrogant — he'd have been minced into a fine paste of meat the moment he stepped out the door!
Ayanokoji, having confirmed that the first threatening wave of vampires around them had been thoroughly cleared, and having secured an absolutely safe zone for the team.
He pulled the Parasyte back, turned his head to look at Horikita Suzune, who was burdened with the duty of Mystery Merchant, and said:
"Swap me out two [Crimson Blades]."
"Let Housen Kazutomi, Nanase Tsubasa, and the other newbies who are still short on points for a Combat Suit use them first."
Horikita Suzune, who was operating the interface, raised a delicate brow and asked, puzzled:
"Just two? You don't want to swap for more?"
After all, as the merchant she was on a 10% commission kickback.
Only two? She'd barely skim anything off the top.
Ayanokoji, however, was deeply rational:
"5,000 item points per blade. Converted to S-Points, that's 10 points. Still too pricey."
"On top of that, this kind of weapon — specifically anti-demon ordnance — outside of this exam, there's no guarantee it'll be useful in other worlds later. Way too narrow in application."
He glanced back at the newbies behind him: "Two blades for them to take turns grinding kills is more than enough."
"I'll be running support anyway. Even if they're just waving the Crimson Blade around for show, I'll be right there helping out, making sure they get the system's kill credit and stack up the S-Points they need to buy a Combat Suit."
Before he'd even finished the sentence.
Speedwagon — who'd been on lookout duty — suddenly went pale:
"Stroheim?! You traitor!"
Ayanokoji followed the sound with his gaze.
In the deep darkness, a pair of crimson eyes was fixed on them.
Ayanokoji's eyes darkened, and he immediately rerouted his order to Horikita Suzune:
"Throw in a few more Crimson Blades and Black Keys."
"If this guy named Stroheim really is as strong as Speedwagon says, taking him down might eat up some time. You guys focus on keeping yourselves safe."
He paused, then added:
"That said, it shouldn't drag on too long."
At those words, Stroheim — who'd come tracking the commotion, fully intending to grab Speedwagon and beat the intel out of him — couldn't help but freeze for a beat.
Then he stepped slowly out of the shadows and let out a contemptuous cold snort:
"Hmph… looks like you brat actually have some skill. Fine — try me, then!"
"But understand this. This old man long since cast off his fragile human flesh and became a perfect, undying lifeform!"
"Whatever means you've got — in the face of eternal life like mine… they're all utterly meaningless!"
____
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