"We are a collective."
"We will eventually be one."
"Eliminating individual barriers, disputes, and differences."
"Returning to a unified life form."
"For the sake of everyone."
"Do not interfere."
Invisible threads seemed to tremble slightly in the air. Pairs of pale, ghastly white eyeballs focused intently on Amamiya Rin's face. The eerily overlapping chorus of voices carried a bizarre sense of oppression, stating what they believed to be an unquestionable truth.
Amamiya Rin listened to this speech, the mockery on his face deepening. He struck the floor hard with his crutch, producing a crisp clack that shattered the suffocating field of uniformity.
"'For the sake of everyone'?" he repeated, then tugged at the corner of his mouth, his tone dripping with undisguised sarcasm. "Spare me that crap. In the end, are we going to have an ocean of orange juice where everyone holds hands and returns to the Sea of LCL? You talk a big game, sounding so high and mighty, but did you ever ask the orange juice if it wanted to participate?"
"You cannot stop us. We cannot harm each other, but neither can you prevent us from increasing our brethren."
Seeing Amamiya Rin's resolute attitude, Mitsuo Yukiko gave up on trying to persuade him with words.
"You are only one person. We are twenty-five. Your will might explode forth due to your desire to survive, but can you generate twenty-five times that willpower for the sake of others?"
More than twenty faces curled their lips upward, outlining a sneer of counter-mockery.
"Twenty-five times? Don't overestimate yourselves. You lot who have lost your individuality are nothing but a pile of trash, even if you bundle yourselves together."
Amamiya Rin slowly straightened his back. Although he was still leaning on a crutch, his entire being suddenly radiated a sharp, piercing aura, like a blade about to be unsheathed.
A biting chill permeated the air. Those twenty-five pairs of pupil-less white eyes contracted simultaneously. Their skin broke out in goosebumps, a chill ran down their spines, and their bodies involuntarily leaned back. It felt as though a sharp razor had been pressed against their throats, ready to slice open their windpipes at any moment.
That was the fruit of twenty-one years of tempering.
It had been ten days. In reality, only ten days had passed since Amamiya Rin's transmigration.
But in the Nightmare World, the time he had experienced already exceeded twenty-one years!
For twenty-one years of a monotonous existence, he had dedicated everything to teaching himself Hypnosis and Kendo.
His Kendo was not flashy. It consisted only of the basic 'Nine Forms and Thirteen Blades' and the 'Ten Forms of Iaido'—fundamental skills learned from the Kendo club.
But no matter how basic, he had studied them in the Nightmare for twenty years. The number of zombies, bandits, and enemy soldiers he had cut down exceeded 100,000. Even the so-called 'Man-Slayers' of Japan would have to bow in defeat before him.
His Kendo might not be able to deal with non-human monsters, but when it came to dealing with the human body, no one was more adept than him. His killing intent also reigned supreme over any Kendo master of this era.
Feeling Amamiya Rin's killing intent, the sneers on those twenty-plus faces froze instantly.
The women retreated half a step in unison, their white eyeballs staring blankly at Amamiya Rin.
After a brief, dead silence, Mitsuo Yukiko's lips moved.
"Then let's test it. If you can stop us, if you can kill us, then go ahead and do it."
Over twenty pairs of eyes revealed naked malice, and Mitsuo Yukiko's voice carried a blunt provocation.
They desperately hoped Amamiya Rin would attack them. If Rin could break free from their mental constraints, then they would likewise have the opportunity to launch a corresponding counterattack.
With twenty-five of them, wouldn't beating a cripple who walked with a crutch be more than easy?
Having said that, Mitsuo Yukiko, Hashimoto Ayaka, and the others began walking toward the nurse's station, while the other women continued to surround Amamiya Rin, forming a human wall with their bodies.
No matter how strong his willpower was, Amamiya Rin's physical body was still that of a patient in rehabilitation. If a fight truly broke out, they felt that sending just one person would be enough.
"Right, you aren't wrong. I can't make a move, and I can't kill you. After all, the current me is just a cripple. Even if I could knock down a few of you, I'd collapse from exhaustion and be unable to continue fighting."
Watching Mitsuo Yukiko's retreating figure, Amamiya Rin stood still, leaning on his crutch. He slowly closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"However, I do have a sword that can be used to cut."
Beside his ears, the whispers attempting to interfere with his mind became blurry.
His breathing slowed, approaching stagnation.
The frequency of his heartbeat also gradually settled down within his perception.
Amamiya Rin's consciousness sank into pure darkness, like a stone thrown into the deep sea, sinking continuously until all was silent.
In this absolute silence, only one thing became incomparably clear—the sword he had tempered for twenty-one years.
Swinging the blade time and time again, slicing through flesh, cleaving through bone, grinding the act of killing into instinct. Those profound memory fragments surfaced from the bottom of his heart, transforming into tens of thousands of slashing arcs.
The arcs of the slashes intertwined, forging an indestructible long sword within the depths of Amamiya Rin's consciousness.
Amamiya Rin 'looked' ahead.
Not with his eyes, but with this intent.
He 'saw' those twenty-five blurry figures. They were connected by countless slender nerve bundles, like ugly monsters crawling on a spiderweb.
He imagined the sword.
Not any sword that existed in reality, but the purest, sharpest concept of 'Slash' precipitated from twenty-one years of slaughter.
The virtual weight, the cold tactile sensation—under self-hypnosis, it became incomparably real.
He did not assume any stance. He simply held his crutch and stood quietly. But within that invisible network, something was pulled taut to its limit.
Then—he 'swung' this sword.
(Slash!)
Formless, shadowless, soundless, lightless. A trace of a cold sword blade flowed in reverse along those countless, invisible, eerie nerve bundles.
At the same instant, all movements of the twenty-plus women froze completely.
It was as if someone had pressed the pause button.
Immediately after—
"Urgh—!"
A twisted wail leaked from twenty-five mouths simultaneously.
The crowd violently hunched their bodies, their hands firmly clutching their own necks. Their eyeballs almost bulged out of their pale sockets, and their faces wore the same look of horror and agony.
There were no wounds, no blood, yet their nerve endings were transmitting the same signal to their brains: I've been cut! My throat has been sliced open!
A strange sense of suffocation gripped every single one of them with incomparable realism. The phantom pain of a severed trachea made it difficult for them to breathe; the sensation was exactly as if their throats had truly been severed by a blade.
"What did you do?"
The sound of sharp intakes of breath filled the corridor. Twenty-five pairs of pale gazes shot toward Amamiya Rin in unison. Mitsuo Yukiko could no longer take another half-step forward; she turned back to look at Amamiya Rin, her face filled with terror.
Amamiya Rin's features twisted slightly, and a look of painful ferocity flashed through his eyes.
His brain was connected to the brains of those twenty-five people. When this sword was swung, the pain was not only felt by those twenty-five—he, the twenty-sixth person, would also feel the agony of being slashed.
____
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