**Day 24 – Evening – Omui Town**
As we withdrew from the dungeon and approached the town gates, five men in absolute tatters were staring at us from the entrance. For a moment I tensed up, but—
"Kakizaki-kun…? Why are you in such rags…? Haruka-kun isn't with you…?"
"Ah! Class Rep! """"Sorry for being idiots!"""""
The five ragged figures were Kakizaki-kun and the others—the muscle-headed sports-club idiots Haruka-kun had gone to check on.
Black hair, black eyes, clothes in shreds—they'd apparently been arrested by the gate guards for looking suspicious and mumbling incoherently. They looked so exhausted they could barely move.
They'd run all the way from the cave without sleep, gnawing on stamina mushrooms the whole time, pushing their wrecked bodies nonstop.
One had a missing gauntlet arm. Another had a huge hole in his shirt showing off his stomach. One was missing every clothing or armor below the knees. Arms, legs, torsos, heads—nothing was covering it.
Their bodies had been healed somehow, but equipment doesn't recover.
Which meant they'd suffered those injuries. They'd held the line in the forest in that state—for our sake. They'd nearly died. That's why Haruka-kun wanted them and us to go back. We'd held him back. They'd almost been killed. They'd been on the brink of death. That's why Haruka-kun left. And Kakizaki-kun and the others had dragged their broken bodies all this way just to deliver the message. Nearly killed, nearly dead, barely surviving…
And Haruka-kun is still there.
・ ・ ・
It was the worst possible story. Some of the girls started crying just hearing it. We never imagined this development. If this is true, maybe it was only natural for Haruka-kun to leave us behind.
Even now that we've leveled up, following him would just get us killed instantly.
We thought the target was the fake-delinquent group—Katsuyama-kun and his crew.
The rest of the boys had just gone strange—we thought we could reconcile with them, even if we couldn't trust them.
We thought the problem was having to kill each other.
That's why we were confused.
Did Haruka-kun really need to take such risks?
Couldn't we handle it somehow?
If we had the resolve to kill, if we didn't hesitate, we could do it too.
We were naive. Thinking like that, we'd have been killed immediately.
But that wasn't the issue at all. We probably couldn't even fight. It was the absolute worst situation.
We still don't understand why Haruka-kun went.
It's already hopeless. That kind of story.
"He's a monster."
"Katsuyama, right? That scum? While we were fighting, he got killed from behind. That's how all six of us got wiped."
"Yeah—and after that, the guy started using the illusion Katsuyama had."
That's theft. The skill. Killed and stolen. Why?
"Even without it, nothing lands. No matter what we do. Even five-on-one."
"Magic doesn't work either. What do you even do against that?"
"Plus paralysis, blindness, poison—if we didn't have mushrooms we'd be dead."
"He's supposed to be a magic type, but he was using a spear too."
"After killing Katsuyama's group he started using a katana."
"His attack skills change every time—can't read them."
"We run, we dodge, we dodge again—and it still hits. Makes no sense."
We can't fight something like that. Kakizaki-kun and the others are Lv 43. Their base abilities are already superhuman, plus freakish intuition, super acceleration, limit breaks, one-hit kills, seventeen-slash combos… Their cheats are top-tier. In close combat they should be invincible. Yet they were one-sidedly crushed. Couldn't do anything but retreat. The other boys—twelve of them—total wipeout. All cheat holders. One-sidedly, by a single person.
No matter how much we hear, it doesn't make sense. We can't comprehend it. What we did understand: he can steal abilities, inflict status effects, direct close combat never hits, magic useless, attacks unavoidable.
Haruka-kun has no such abilities—yet he was doing similar things. At least, we've never seen him take a hit. He says "if it lands I die" but it never lands. No attack power yet one-shots enemies. Neither makes sense. No way to fight it. It's something completely different. That's why we were left behind. It's a completely different kind of battle.
And Haruka-kun's last words were for them to tell us "Sorry for being idiots"…
**End of Day 24**