Chris faced Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.
He watched as Ayanokoji reached into his pocket and produced the universal capsule containing the Parasyte and the [Armored Titan Serum].
The capsule cracked with a flash of white light, and a writhing lump of flesh burrowed under the skin at his fingertip.
Without missing a beat, Ayanokoji drove the Armored Titan Serum straight into his own vein.
Seeing this, Chris tapped a few times on his wristwatch.
The [Augmented Rifle], the [Controller Radar], and the summoning shortsword for [Demon Possession] appeared in his hands in sequence.
"Karuizawa, hold this for me."
Chris tossed the Augmented Rifle to Karuizawa Kei, who was standing nearby with a face full of worry.
Then he snapped the Controller onto his wrist.
Truth be told, if you were judging purely on stealth capability — Demon Possession came with its own cloaking ability, not unlike optical camouflage. In fact, once mastered, it could completely conceal even the user's presence and life energy.
In actual combat, it was arguably superior to the Black Sphere Controller, which only provided optical camouflage and broke the moment you attacked.
But then, he'd only gotten this piece of equipment a couple of days ago.
You had to take things one step at a time, didn't you?
Using it this fluently this fast... if you didn't know better, you'd think he was a seasoned veteran.
And honestly, that was one of the personas he'd once considered slipping into.
But Chris preferred letting people piece it together from the clues on their own — rather than just announcing it himself.
With that thought turning over in his head, Chris gripped the sword hilt and looked across at Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, who was already coiled and ready to move:
"Ayanokoji. Ready?"
"Right now? Right here?"
Chris's reflection filled Ayanokoji's eyes.
He gave a small nod. "Right now. Right here. Let's settle this."
The words were barely out.
Ayanokoji raised his right hand, commanding the Parasyte to lash out like a whip, forcibly driving back the new students who were still crowding too close. Then he let the Parasyte tentacles curl back in reverse — and slashed open his own left arm.
"Shhrriick——!"
Blood sprayed. Brilliant golden lightning erupted from the wound and crackled across his entire body.
In under two seconds, a titan standing fifteen meters tall and encased head to toe in bone armour came crashing down onto the training floor.
On Chris's end — almost simultaneously — he drove the shortsword into the ground.
"Demon Possession!"
The phantasmal silhouette of a massive Danger Species roared into being at his back. Silver-white heavy armour swept over his entire body, and a red cloak snapped behind him in the air.
Meanwhile, Housen Kazutomi — who had just been sent tumbling by the Parasyte whip and was still rolling across the floor in an undignified heap — finally clawed his way back to his feet along with two other bystanders. Ayanokoji had deliberately reined in the force of his lash, so no real damage had been dealt. But that stinging, whip-crack sensation was a hell of a thing to shake off.
"That son of a—"
Housen Kazutomi was just about to explode.
Then he felt someone snatch his collar from behind, and his entire body was hauled backwards against his will.
"BOOM——!!"
The instant his feet left the ground, an enormous armoured foot came slamming down right where he'd been standing.
The floor fractured. A shockwave laced with chunks of debris raked across his cheek like sandpaper.
Housen Kazutomi's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Ryuuen Kakeru was the one holding him — after backpedalling a few steps to put some safe distance between them, he casually dropped Housen onto the ground.
"Hey hey, watch yourself, dumbass."
Ryuuen Kakeru remarked offhandedly:
"Getting killed by the shockwave of someone else's fight before the real thing even starts... that would be a little too embarrassing, don't you think?"
Housen Kazutomi let out a cold snort.
He turned his head and noticed something he'd missed. At some point, all the veteran students wearing Combat Suits had already retreated with their respective class's new students to the far edges of the room.
And at the centre of the battlefield — where dust hung thick in the air — the towering Armored Titan raised its foot and drove it down toward Chris again with bone-crushing force.
"Looking to die..."
Housen Kazutomi narrowed his eyes.
Just as the massive foot was about to land —
Housen Kazutomi felt the world blur in front of him.
The silver-white knight who had been standing there a heartbeat ago had simply vanished.
"Where'd he go?!" Housen Kazutomi's eyes went wide as he frantically scanned the area.
It wasn't until he saw more than a dozen razor-sharp tentacles suddenly mutate from the Armored Titan's right arm and start slashing madly through the air that he finally caught a glimpse of Chris's afterimage.
Chris was sprinting along the titan's arm as though it were flat ground.
Facing the flurry of blade strikes, he weaved through every single attack with the unhurried ease of someone out for a stroll. Then, in a single flicker of movement, he slipped past the Parasyte's defensive net and teleported directly to Ayanokoji's shoulder.
The Red-Backed Shrike carved through the air — aimed right at the titan's throat.
In that razor-thin instant.
The Parasyte tentacles — which a moment ago had been too far away to reach — suddenly snapped out like a compressed spring, folding in some uncanny way and launching themselves into Chris's back.
"Clang!"
Feeling the sharp gust at his back, Chris twisted to dodge, using the force to spin himself aside — and in the same motion, slapped the Controller button on his wrist without a second's hesitation.
The next second, Chris vanished from the air.
Even accounting for every possible landing point the Parasyte's precise calculations could project — none of them landed a hit.
He was gone. Physically, literally gone.
"Where is he?"
Housen Kazutomi was about to turn to Ryuuen Kakeru and ask what on earth had just happened.
"Thud!"
The Armored Titan suddenly lurched, as though something beneath it had given way — its massive body buckled, and it crashed down onto one knee, barely catching itself with one hand braced on the floor to keep from fully collapsing.
Ryuuen Kakeru took one look at the scene and broke into a cold smirk, narrating as he went:
"Invisibility."
"After vanishing to shake the tentacles, Chris circled around to the titan's blind spot and severed that thing's Achilles tendon."
"And this is just a sparring match... If that last strike had been aimed at Ayanokoji's eye — if he'd let the Black Sphere combat knife drive through the socket and churn up the brain matter — Ayanokoji wouldn't have even gotten the chance to undo the titan transformation."
Ryuuen Kakeru clicked his tongue with mild disinterest:
"This match is already over, really."
Housen Kazutomi, however, rubbed his chin and kept his gaze locked intently on the centre of the battlefield:
"Not necessarily."
"From where I'm standing, those two out there... don't seem to think so."
Ryuuen Kakeru followed his gaze.
And sure enough — even with both legs destroyed and down on one knee, Ayanokoji showed no intention whatsoever of undoing the titan transformation. Steam poured continuously from beneath the armour, and countless tentacles began a frenzied, indiscriminate flailing in every direction, with himself at the centre.
"Still holding out?"
"Could it be... the titan's weak point isn't the brain after all?"
Ryuuen Kakeru raised an eyebrow slightly. "Doesn't matter though... He can't find a Chris who's gone invisible. This desperate last stand is nothing but a slow death."
And as he predicted.
Seeing that Ayanokoji's will to fight was still unbroken, Chris slipped back into invisibility once more.
This time, threading through the storm of Parasyte tentacles whipping across the air —
"Shhhk—!"
A cold flash of steel.
The arm Ayanokoji had been using to prop himself up was severed at the elbow.
"CRASH!"
With nothing left to support it, the titan finally lost all balance and collapsed thunderously onto the wreckage of the broken floor.
As if finally accepting that this stubborn resistance was pointless.
A wave of steam rose into the air.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka stepped out from within it.
Chris, too, dropped the invisibility at the right moment, coming to a stop around ten metres away:
"Keep going?"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka raised his right hand and summoned the Black Sphere combat knife from his wristwatch.
"Let's try close quarters."
"Titan form is destructive, sure — but the sheer size is a liability against an invisible, high-mobility opponent. It's too much of a sitting target. Hard to work with."
Chris gave a small nod.
The next second — "Slash!"
He closed the distance in an instant, thrusting the longspear straight at Ayanokoji's chest.
And just as Ayanokoji had said — with the titan transformation cancelled, drawing on the Combat Suit and the reflexes his White Room training had honed to the razor's edge, he managed to dodge that lethal thrust by a hair's breadth.
Simultaneously. His right arm Parasyte-shifted into a cascade of blade-light, weaving a dense net that came crashing down over Chris from every angle.
Facing an onslaught that would have shredded an ordinary person into ribbons in seconds —
Chris didn't dodge. Didn't evade.
He simply let the razor bone-blades hack down against Demon Possession.
"Clang clang clang clang——!"
A dense chorus of metallic impacts rang out.
Streak after white streak was carved into Demon Possession's surface.
What made it truly demoralising was this:
Those white streaks seemed alive — they closed themselves up almost instantly, and within moments the armour looked as good as new.
And as the attacks continued, by the time the Parasyte made contact with the armour again, it couldn't even leave those initial white marks anymore.
Chris walked straight through the torrent of blade-light right up to Ayanokoji's face, and spoke again:
"Keep going?"
Looking at the near-unkillable Demon Possession armour, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka thought it over.
He concluded that even if he channelled Ripple energy through the combat knife, it probably wouldn't deal any more meaningful damage to this bizarre armour — not while the Parasyte alone couldn't break through its defences.
After all, Ripple counted for around 12 points, Parasyte for 2, and even adding the Combat Suit it was barely 24 points total.
In the face of an absolute gear gap, technique's contribution shrank to practically nothing.
So he made the smart call and stopped.
Looking at Demon Possession — pristine and unmarked as the day it was forged — Ayanokoji offered his assessment:
"An adaptive living armour that continuously evolves in response to incoming attacks?"
"That is a genuinely impressive piece of defensive equipment."
Chris retracted the visor and gave a slight shake of his head:
"It's not perfect either."
"Back on the uninhabited island, when we were facing Jikku — I noticed that even wearing this armour, Student Council President Horikita still had to actively dodge."
"Which tells me this adaptive evolution has a threshold. If the instantaneous damage exceeds what the armour can absorb, it'll still break."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka remained noncommittal:
"That's a near-perfect score monster capable of triggering natural disasters — of course something can hurt it."
"Besides, the S-points the Black Sphere gives us are things that can be slowly accumulated by grinding lots of low-score small monsters."
"A piece of equipment worth 160 points — you can't just directly equate its value with a monster that's genuinely worth eighty or ninety points in a straight fight."
"Even if it does have a synergy reaction with the Combat Suit."
Chris nodded in full agreement:
"That's exactly right."
Actually, from Chris's perspective —
A cursed spirit at Jikku's level, transplanted into the world of Gantz, would easily qualify as a maxed-out 100-point entity capable of single-handedly wiping an entire team. The reason he'd only tagged it at 90 points... was purely because Chris set his standards high.
He simply didn't think the midterm exam was worthy of a full-score monster.
But come to think of it — even putting your life on the line to take down a high-score monster like that, the difficulty versus the points yield seemed completely disproportionate.
If you were actually calculating score-farming efficiency, you were genuinely better off hanging back at the edges and grinding all those ten- and twenty-point small fry for steady gains.
Maybe... that was exactly why Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had chosen to scale down and enter through the preliminary trial.
After all — it wasn't as though he couldn't farm points in the preliminary trial. But the Resurrection Count bonus that came with winning the preliminary was something the main exam flat-out didn't offer, and it was considerably more precious.
So then... since nobody particularly wanted to gnaw on the hard bones —
Chris quietly turned something over in the back of his mind.
'Probably time to start adding some exclusive drops to those high-score BOSS encounters. A big enough reward draws out brave men, after all.
But if the BOSS in question was one of the Pillar Men from Part Two of JOJO... what kind of good loot would killing them even drop?
Pure Ripple energy equivalent to Erina? That could work — it would dramatically raise the Ripple ceiling for this whole batch of beginners. As for the card...'
Might as well throw in Dio's Stand disc. Whoever manages to kill him, gets it.
The more Chris thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
At that moment —
The crowd that had been watching from the sidelines, seeing the fight had settled, drifted over as one.
Kouenji let out a light breath and exclaimed admiringly:
"Heh heh... What a thoroughly exhilarating fight, boys~"
"I imagine after witnessing that little display just now, there's no one left who would dare question Ayanokoji-kun's strength."
Ryuuen Kakeru rolled his eyes.
Thoroughly exhilarating? Where?
Wasn't that basically Chris just unilaterally stomping Ayanokoji from start to finish?!
Still — Ryuuen understood it in his gut.
The equipment gap between those two really had been enormous.
One of them in Demon Possession — worth 160 S-points — plus a 40-point invisibility Controller on top of that. The other with Parasyte and Titan Serum, not breaking 100 S-points total even including the Combat Suit.
With a gap that wide, the result was inevitable.
Of course — even strip away all the equipment.
Put Ayanokoji and Chris in a bare-knuckle brawl with nothing but their fists — Ryuuen Kakeru still didn't believe for a single second that Ayanokoji would come out on top.
If he were stronger — then why had the Black Sphere, when selecting its first batch of "fixed players," chosen Chris instead of Ayanokoji Kiyotaka?
Given the Black Sphere's nature of survival of the fittest —
The only possible explanation was that in the Black Sphere's eyes, Ayanokoji's overall capabilities were simply far inferior to Chris's.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka himself, however, showed no sign of distress or defeat.
He simply glanced once at Kouenji, then shifted his gaze toward Housen Kazutomi, Nanatsura Tsubasa, and the rest of the new students who had just walked over.
"You all — want to give it a try?"
Ayanokoji's tone was perfectly flat:
"If you think I was just bullying the weak using an equipment advantage, I can take the serum and the Parasyte off and fight you one-on-one."
Faced with the open challenge, Housen Kazutomi — who by all rights never passed up an opportunity to let his fists do the talking — shook his head in a surprising move.
"No need."
Housen Kazutomi let out a cold snort. "I looked into your past exams before this."
"The fact is, those pieces of equipment were bought with points you all earned by putting your lives on the line against actual monster-killing."
"Which means they're naturally part of your combat power. In a place where you can't even count on keeping your life, talking about 'fair and square' is just brainless."
Housen Kazutomi clenched his fist and looked between Chris and Ayanokoji:
"But once I've got some decent equipment of my own, I'll be coming for you — both of you. And since this is literally a life-or-death exam, it stands to reason that only the absolute strongest get to call the shots."
Ayanokoji didn't even bother acknowledging that declaration. He simply drew his gaze back without a word.
And in contrast to Housen Kazutomi's bristling competitiveness —
Nanatsura Tsubasa, also a new student, had far simpler things on her mind.
She completely ignored Ayanokoji's existence, walked straight up to Chris, and rubbed her hands together a little nervously before tilting her head up to ask:
"Um... Chris-senpai."
"I wanted to ask — in terms of Black Sphere S-point value —"
"If... I wanted to bring someone who's in a deep coma — a vegetative state — back to life, roughly how many points would that take?"
Before Chris could even get a word in, Sakayanagi Arisu chimed in from beside them with a cheerful smile:
"A vegetative state..."
The girl propped her chin on one hand, putting on a show of genuinely thinking it over:
"I'd imagine... it wouldn't be too expensive. Though of course, for a newcomer's purchasing power, it's absolutely not cheap either."
She tapped her own leg lightly — speaking from personal experience:
"I was originally born with congenital heart disease — completely beyond the reach of modern medicine. But the Black Sphere fixed my heart entirely for just 30 S-points, and threw in curing my muscular atrophy for good measure."
"If we're just talking about waking up someone in a vegetative state... conservatively speaking, forty or fifty points should be more than enough."
"Revival, on the other hand, would cost 100 S-points."
"A hundred points..."
Hearing that concrete figure, a flicker of hope lit up in Nanatsura Tsubasa's eyes.
"I understand!"
Seeing this, Chris took the opening to offer some encouragement:
"Then work hard toward it."
"Honestly — as long as you don't go out of your way to poke the high-score BOSS encounters, just honestly grind the low-score monsters out at the fringes."
"As long as you play it safe and keep showing up to exams, saving up 50 S-points isn't some impossible dream."
Nanatsura Tsubasa gave a firm, emphatic nod, squeezing her small fist:
"I'll do my best, senpai!"
"Then... my main goal for the next few days is to start getting the hang of the Black Sphere's basic weapons!"
With that, the girl impatiently started working her wristwatch.
Chris gave a nod, watching as Nanatsura Tsubasa selected the shooting range scenario on her wristwatch — and then dissolved into white light alongside Housen Kazutomi, Kito Hayabusa, and the rest of the new students.
Watching the newcomers leave, Chris turned around:
"What — you're not going to get some practice in?"
Ryuuen Kakeru shook his head with contempt:
"Shooting at dead targets has zero reference value at this point. We're long past the stage where that kind of basic drill means anything."
"It'd just be a waste of time."
His eyes burned as they fixed on Chris:
"What I've actually been thinking is..."
"Since you're currently carrying the top-tier defensive equipment in the game, plus that Controller that makes you invisible whenever you like — a countermeasure none of us have a real answer to —"
"If we were to translate you directly into a real combat target in a Black Sphere exam —"
"I'd say... the pressure you'd put on us probably wouldn't be all that much less than that Jikku, would it?"
Ryuuen Kakeru licked his lips. "So — with an elite BOSS sitting right here in front of us, why not put it to use?"
Ichinose Honami nodded along from the side:
"At senpai's level, there's really no need to go back to basic drills."
"What do you think... how about we ask senpai to play the role of our hypothetical enemy — apply that crushing pressure — and use it to sharpen our team coordination and reaction speed under extreme conditions?"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka gave a slight nod of his own in quiet agreement.
Of the people remaining, only Sakayanagi Arisu and Karuizawa Kei hadn't immediately weighed in.
Sakayanagi Arisu pressed her pale cherry-blossom lips together:
"Oh my... this really is quite a predicament."
"Honestly — I really do hate losing. So the very last thing I want is to be standing on the opposite side of someone as monstrous as Chris-kun."
She suggested with a smile: "How about... I team up with Chris-kun and act as your examiner?"
Karuizawa Kei immediately scrambled to agree as well, nodding rapidly:
"Pointing my gun at Chris-kun... I just can't do that!"
Sakayanagi Arisu chimed in with a grin:
"See — that works out perfectly. Three-on-three, even matchup. Me plus Chris-kun plus Karuizawa, against Ayanokoji, Ryuuen, and Ichinose."
"Honestly, doesn't that lineup feel fairly balanced?"
Chris was so exasperated he almost laughed.
"Balanced? How?"
"You've got the [Romantic Cannon] worth 80 points in your hands; Karuizawa can just pick up a [Y-GUN] and play crowd control from the side..."
Chris shot her a look. "With me up front as a meatshield — would there even be any suspense?"
Ichinose Honami let out a helpless sigh:
"She's right, Sakayanagi-san."
"The only means we currently have to break through senpai's defences are Ryuuen-kun's [Soul-Release Blade] and your [Romantic Cannon]."
"If even you go over to senpai's side... it just becomes a one-sided steamroll, and the whole point of the special training is lost."
Sakayanagi Arisu pursed her lips and mulled it over.
She seemed to concede that it was a bit too unfair.
She spread her hands toward Chris with a note of reluctant resignation:
"Alright, fair enough."
"Looks like I'll just have to reluctantly take up arms against you, Chris-kun..."
She raised the Romantic Cannon in her hand and gave a playful wink. "But do be careful — even in a simulation, my cannon hits are quite painful~"
Now that even Sakayanagi Arisu had switched sides —
Karuizawa Kei, left entirely on her own, could only stare at Chris with pleading eyes and ask in a small voice:
"Th-then... what about me?"
"Can I be on your team?"
"Either way... my combat power is basically nothing wherever I end up, so it shouldn't... be a problem, right?"
"Fine by me."
Before Chris could even answer, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had already agreed on his behalf from across the way.
But Ayanokoji immediately followed that up with a condition:
"In that case — for the sake of fairness, Chris, you won't be allowed to use the Controller's invisibility function."
Chris nodded. "Works for me."
He raised his wrist and pulled up the terrain selection interface:
"Then let's pick something with complex terrain. How about the jungle map? Cover and open ground — good for skirmish encounters."
Ayanokoji and Ryuuen Kakeru exchanged a glance:
"Fine."
——
Three minutes later.
Deep in a virtually generated Amazon rainforest.
Chris gripped the Red-Backed Shrike and crouched half-way up on the branch of a massive banyan tree.
He leaned out and looked across at Karuizawa Kei — who was right beside him, cradling the Augmented Rifle and staring tensely at the radar screen.
Chris suddenly seemed to remember something, and smacked his forehead:
"Oh, wait a second!"
"Karuizawa — we're playing the 'enemy monster' side in this simulation. We probably shouldn't be looking at the Black Sphere radar, should we?"
Karuizawa Kei blinked.
She looked at the screen lighting up with blips in her hand, then looked at Chris, and her face went slightly sour:
"Ah, but..."
"That shouldn't be a problem though, right?"
The girl tried to make a case for it. "After all, it's not like we're actual monsters — we're just simulating combat with the help of equipment. It's not a real fight."
"And without the radar scan... in a rainforest this dim with obstructions everywhere, we'd be practically blind. How are we supposed to fight like this?"
Chris thought it over, and conceded she had a point.
"Alright, let it slide. At this point, let's just chalk it up as training their counter-surveillance awareness."
"But since this is a special training session —"
"I'm planning to hang back for now and let you probe their capabilities first."
"Eh...?!"
Karuizawa Kei went slightly pale. "Me?!"
"You want me to go fight Ayanokoji-kun and Ryuuen-kun?!"
Chris stifled a laugh:
"Obviously I'm not sending you to face them head-on solo."
"I'll be with you, using the terrain to keep you out of their line of fire — and you snipe them with the Augmented Rifle. Let's see if they can handle it."
Chris dropped from the tree and landed next to Karuizawa:
"Relax — pain feedback in the Spirit Time Chamber is pretty mild. Worst case it looks a little gory on screen. Nobody actually dies."
Karuizawa Kei still hesitated a little.
But seeing that Chris had already extended his hand toward her with complete naturalness —
The girl swallowed once, and in the end tamped down the fear turning over inside her.
She placed her hand in his.
And you know what — she had to admit it.
When Chris scooped her up with one arm and she heard the rushing wind around her ears —
She found that her heart was hammering, and yet she felt strangely, inexplicably calm.
As long as he was there... there was nothing to be afraid of.
Karuizawa Kei drew a deep breath, raised the Augmented Rifle, and fixed her attention on the radar screen.
Very quickly —
"Chris!"
Karuizawa Kei pointed at a blinking green dot in the upper right of the screen, voice low and urgent:
"There's a signal at roughly our three o'clock, slightly forward!"
"...She's moving!"
Chris glanced down at the radar for a moment, and turned it over quickly:
"Just one person? Deliberately concealed movement like that — has to be Sakayanagi."
"Come on. Let's test her first."
____
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