Watching the green blip on her Combat Suit's radar close in at terrifying speed.
"Geez… that speed is practically cheating."
Sakayanagi Arisu exhaled in frustration, hurriedly retracting the Romantic Cannon's barrel as she broke into a retreat.
The moment they'd entered this simulated rainforest arena and split off from Chris, she and the others had laid out their battle plan.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen Kakeru would push up front as the vanguard in close quarters; Ichinose Honami would provide aerial support from above; and she — from a safe distance — would snipe with the Romantic Cannon.
A classic iron-triangle formation.
What Sakayanagi Arisu hadn't accounted for, not even for a second, was that Chris would bypass all of them completely at the opening bell and make a beeline straight for her.
The Romantic Cannon was more powerful the more danger its user was in — that was true enough — but she had absolutely zero confidence in trying to snipe someone wearing Demon Possession.
Not that it was surprising, really. With a controller in Chris's hands, any talk of tactical deployment or stealth positioning was completely one-sided. To him, their entire formation was transparent.
Sakayanagi Arisu let out a quiet sigh — though her feet, wisely, didn't slow for even a moment.
The only thing she could do right now was sprint as hard as she could toward Ayanokoji and Ryuuen, who were already doubling back to intercept, before Chris could close the gap.
But just as she vaulted over a thick gnarled root —
"Fwshhh——!"
A sharp whistling tore past her ear.
Sakayanagi Arisu's instincts kicked in and she threw herself backward.
A blurred afterimage grazed the tip of her nose and punched clean through the trunk of the tree ahead and to the side of her.
The Red-Backed Shrike — Demon Possession's built-in projectile.
The kinetic force behind it was horrifying. If she hadn't dodged, that hit would have left her dead or crippled.
Just as Sakayanagi Arisu was preparing to create distance for her next evasive move —
Snap.
A faint, delicate crack travelled up from her wrist.
And then, like a tide going out, the surging power her Combat Suit had been feeding her simply… receded.
Without that augmented strength to back her up, the high-difficulty movement she'd been executing mid-stride collapsed instantly. Her body lurched, and she stumbled down in an undignified heap onto the leaf-covered dirt.
Sakayanagi Arisu looked down.
The blue metallic ring around her wrist — the Combat Suit's power node — was shattered. A faint blue liquid seeped slowly outward from the cracks.
That wasn't the Shrike… I took a hit from Karuizawa's Combat Suit rifle?
Sakayanagi Arisu blinked, genuinely caught off guard.
So the Combat Suit has a hidden mechanic — it tanks one lethal hit for you, then gives out… I had no idea.
My Perception readings weren't even that strong just now.
She raised her wrist and opened the Black Sphere interface.
A system prompt had already popped up on the home screen:
[Repair Combat Suit?]
After a moment's thought, Sakayanagi Arisu pressed [Confirm].
Strength flooded back into her limbs — but the girl made no move to get up and run. She simply sat there, still and quiet, on the forest floor.
Because by the standards of this exercise, the moment her Combat Suit had gone offline, she was already effectively "dead." What could her unaugmented body possibly do against Demon Possession?
All she could do now was wait for the next simulation.
While Sakayanagi Arisu sat idling out.
On the other side of the rainforest, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen Kakeru — the moment they registered that Sakayanagi had gone stationary — immediately scrapped any idea of a rescue and pivoted to flank Chris from both sides.
Unfortunately, it made no difference.
Demon Possession stacked on top of a Combat Suit's stat bonuses was genuinely, obscenely broken.
And that was before factoring in how Chris could command the soul dwelling inside the armor as naturally as moving his own limbs.
No matter how hard Ayanokoji and Ryuuen tried to corner him, they couldn't even graze the hem of his jacket. Instead, they found themselves kited endlessly around the terrain — exhausted, breathless, and getting picked off one by one by Karuizawa Kei's steady Combat Suit rifle fire.
Even Ichinose Honami, holding air superiority above the canopy, fared no better.
The dense tree cover might have worked as a jumping platform, but in a high-speed mobile engagement — even with the Combat Suit rifle's built-in X-Ray vision — actually locking onto a target was a different matter entirely. Let alone holding still for a three-second charge.
And so the first exercise wrapped up — cleanly, efficiently, without any drama.
No twists. No reversals.
Just pure, uncontested stat domination.
Chris himself had barely even needed to break a sweat.
As the surrounding rainforest shattered like glass,
everyone stepped back out of the simulation and into the blank, white expanse of the Time Chamber.
Sakayanagi Arisu looked over at Karuizawa Kei — who had just hopped down from Chris's arms, cheeks still flushed a soft pink — and couldn't help a dry, amused exhale.
"My… looks like it was Karuizawa-san doing all the actual work out there the whole time."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka kept his expression completely blank.
"Demon Possession is, at the end of the day, a piece of equipment worth 160 S-Points." He said it like he was reading from a spec sheet. "If Chris refuses to engage us head-on and just keeps running interference with Karuizawa providing long-range suppression — on a map with complex terrain — we have no effective counter."
Ryuuen Kakeru clicked his tongue in irritation.
"The controller letting him see our whole deployment in real time is the real problem. There's no play against that."
"Though — in a real Black Sphere exam, enemies shouldn't have anything like that ability. That item needs to be banned." He paused, then added with his usual cold pragmatism: "That said, plenty of monsters in the Black Sphere have sharp enough senses of their own. Setting the controller aside, the basic radar that comes standard with Black Sphere equipment is still fair game."
"Fair enough."
Chris scratched the back of his head, and actually volunteered a suggestion:
"Next time let me try it with melee only… and while we're at it, I want to test how long the Y-GUN's laser wire can actually hold me."
The moment those words landed, Karuizawa Kei shot her hand up, practically bouncing.
"Then… can I still be on Chris-kun's team next round?"
Honestly? Being carried through the rainforest in Chris's arms — that sense of being completely sheltered by someone overwhelmingly stronger than her — had been intoxicating.
And the pure flow state of not having to think about anything else, just focusing entirely on pulling the trigger — that was something she'd never experienced before.
But before the words had even fully left her mouth —
"No."
Ichinose Honami cut her off with a flat, cold expression.
"If Karuizawa-san keeps sniping from the shadows alongside Senpai, we'll still have no valid way to counter it. That defeats the entire point of the exercise."
And besides —
Because of the tree canopy, Ichinose hadn't been able to see exactly what Chris and Karuizawa were doing down below throughout the whole match.
But for some reason — just looking at those two radar blips on her screen, blinking practically on top of each other the entire time — she'd felt this uncomfortable tightness in her chest. Like her head was somehow turning green just from staring at it.
Ichinose Honami paused, forcibly tamping down that little prickle of something sour, and pressed on:
"Karuizawa-san — you're one of the people scheduled for the advance trial this afternoon, so technically you don't need to train with us. But you've already been through several exams, so there's no real need for you to readjust to standard equipment either."
"In that case, how about you join us instead of teaming with Senpai — or rather, team up with us and train together with Senpai?"
Karuizawa Kei instinctively looked over at Chris.
Chris, for his part, showed absolutely no intention of stepping in to rescue her.
She puffed out her cheeks in a small, put-upon pout, and reluctantly surrendered to reality:
"Then… then I'll go with the Y-GUN next round. If I take a Combat Suit rifle, I have a feeling Chris-kun would just one-shot me instantly…"
Chris didn't particularly mind Ichinose's reshuffling of the roster. He turned to Ayanokoji Kiyotaka instead.
"Since we're working on team coordination anyway, should we pull in Koenji Rokusuke and the others for this?"
Ayanokoji nodded. "Sure. The Combat Suits here auto-repair anyway — good chance for them to get a feel for the equipment."
With that, Ayanokoji tapped open several room-invitation interfaces on his Black Sphere wristwatch and vanished from the spot — apparently planning to go door-to-door and round everyone up in person.
Seizing the gap while they waited, Sakayanagi Arisu tilted her head thoughtfully and drifted up beside Chris and Karuizawa Kei with a pointed look.
"Speaking of which — since Class D is already locked in as the winner of the advance trial, why didn't you invite Horikita Suzune to enter?"
"She's out of safety net lives at this point, isn't she? A Resurrection Count reward would be perfect for her right now."
Chris shrugged, expression perfectly easy.
"Who knows whether this trial even has a Resurrection Count reward… And on top of that, her brother's status is still unknown. She's cooped up in her room trying to get her head together. Cut the girl some slack."
At those words, Ichinose Honami seemed to remember something, and glanced over at Chris.
"Now that you mention it — yeah. When I was heading out this morning, I saw Nanase Tsubasa at Horikita-san's door, checking in on her…" She hesitated. "Senpai, is it really okay to leave Horikita on her own like that?"
Chris gave her a look of weary exasperation.
"Ichinose, not you too… I've talked privately with her brother. I guarantee — nobody in this room understands Horikita better than I do. Relax."
The actual truth, of course, was that Horikita Suzune had spent last night going absolutely feral with water magic practice — done so many circuits that she'd burned through her stamina reserves entirely and was in all likelihood still flat on her back in bed, hoping the post-sage-mode clarity would grant her enlightenment on the true essence of Ripple Breathing.
But that was private information. Naturally, Chris kept it entirely to himself.
Sakayanagi Arisu, listening from the side, pressed a hand to her lips to smother a delighted smile.
"Hehe~ For someone who usually comes across as a total steel wall, Chris-kun does seem to have a surprisingly refined read on the inner lives of girls~"
Ichinose Honami heard the tease and actually thought about it seriously for a moment.
Come to think of it… Sakayanagi wasn't wrong.
But before the pink-haired girl could follow that train of thought any further and let her imagination start painting pictures that would only make her feel worse —
"Alright, enough!"
Ryuuen Kakeru cut through the tea-party atmosphere with barely contained impatience.
"Save the lovey-dovey gossip for after training — take it outside the Time Chamber and coo at each other to your hearts' content. We've still got several hours of real-world time before the trial and the main exam kick off. Plenty of time for you lot to play house."
"Time is precious right now. Stop wasting it."
At that moment, several flashes of white light cut through the air.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had returned — and he'd brought the whole crew with him: Hirata Yousuke, Koenji Rokusuke, Amanatsu Kazuha, Kito Hana, and every other non-first-year student, all pulled in at once.
With the full group now assembled, Sakayanagi Arisu smoothly steered the conversation elsewhere.
"Well~ this is dull. Shall we change the subject?"
"How about this — Ryuuen-kun, you, Ayanokoji-kun, and Chris-kun were the top three finishers in the Uninhabited Island exam. What do you all think the Black Sphere's special reward is going to be?"
Ryuuen Kakeru sucked his teeth and glanced at his wrist.
"The Black Sphere never handed it out at settlement. How the hell would I know what it is?"
"That said — since it's supposedly custom-made by the Heavenly Works Society, we probably won't find out until the main exam, when we run into that mystery merchant again."
Chris nodded in agreement.
"Makes sense. Once the afternoon exam starts, let's use the controller to track down the mystery merchant first, claim the reward, then get into it properly. No point tempting fate by leaving it hanging."
Ichinose Honami stood a little apart from the group, drew a few slow, deliberate breaths — but her cheeks were still faintly, stubbornly warm.
Because she'd just realized — her little jealousy display from earlier had been embarrassingly obvious.
Senpai definitely noticed.
Oh no oh no oh no… Honami, where did your usual composure go? Where's your intelligence??
Ichinose Honami spiralled quietly and frantically through internal self-recrimination.
Seeing that the topic had naturally wound itself up, she gave a small, deliberate cough and forced herself back to a neutral register.
"Since everyone's here… let's go ahead and start the next round!"
"And let's skip the rainforest this time. Open terrain — let's try a desert map."
After a brief scene reload,
everyone materialized in a vast, open desert wasteland.
And predictably — the final result was still Chris walking away victorious.
Though compared to the first run, where the opposition couldn't even land a touch before getting wiped, the resistance had gotten noticeably stronger as the headcount increased.
Simple numbers made a real difference.
Out in the open expanse of the desert, everyone formed up together, keeping a spacing that was neither too close nor too far — close enough to cover each other, loose enough to react.
The moment Chris moved to engage any one target,
everyone else immediately fired their Y-GUNs simultaneously — sending multiple laser wires criss-crossing to cage off Chris's movement options and pin him in place momentarily.
The instant Chris slashed the wires and broke free,
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen Kakeru were already in his face — physically grabbing, grappling, doing everything short of lying on top of him to keep his trajectory locked.
Then Sakayanagi Arisu and Ichinose Honami, from a distance, fired the cleanup shots.
That control chain, in the early rounds, actually did manage to slow Chris down and let the group tangle with him properly.
Of course, that was also because Chris was deliberately holding back.
Because at full speed, the Y-GUN laser wires simply weren't fast enough to catch him. That was just reality.
But this was training — it needed to have give and take. One-sided carnage wasn't interesting for anyone, and it certainly wouldn't help them actually improve.
That said — if Chris was being honest — after a few rounds of this high-intensity sparring, he noticed that this level of punishment seemed to be having less and less actual effect on Demon Possession.
The armor's adaptive evolution was rapidly ratcheting up its defense threshold.
Demon Possession in particular — given that Tyrande's soul was still resident inside it — had always had this trait.
He'd originally been thinking: if he ever arranged for a really heavy-hitting monster someday, he could use the moment to go berserk and transform — lose control, become the hidden raid boss, and put some real pressure on the group.
But if the armor was adapting to absorb these attacks at this rate…
Would I end up having to go the "reformed through the power of love" story route?
Eh. Not necessarily the worst outcome. He'd figure it out when the time came.
After a while,
to better match the group's actual power level, Chris simply stripped off his Combat Suit entirely — fighting forward with nothing but Demon Possession.
Over the next several simulations, the results were noticeably stronger than before.
As team coordination gradually sharpened, even someone as combat-inept as Kamuro Masumi found the nerve to circle wide around the back — coordinating with Sakayanagi to pull a sneaky move — and actually managed to tag Chris with the Romantic Cannon once.
Not unlike how it worked in games: when the "death penalty is real" guardrail comes off and players know they can't actually lose their lives, the sheer variety of brazen, creative plays they pulled out was genuinely hard to keep up with.
When the system notification came through — alerting Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and the others scheduled for the advance trial that their training window was nearly up —
Chris called a halt.
He pressed the [Myriad Realm Illustrated Guide] directly into Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's hands and explained:
"You know how to use this, right? The afternoon trial might take place in another world — if you come across anything interesting, try scanning it. See if you can bring something back that's worth trading to the Black Sphere for S-Points."
Ayanokoji nodded and pocketed it. Then he looked back at Chris.
"By the way — I noticed during the fight just now, you were channeling golden Ripple energy directly onto your spear?"
Chris didn't bother hiding it.
"I used the Guide to scan the Ripple's properties, figured out the conduction mechanics, and started experimenting with extending it along a weapon. It's not actually that different from how you use the Parasyte tendrils as a medium at the start."
"No — it is different."
Ayanokoji shook his head.
"A Parasyte is a living organism. It has its own will — it can act as a natural medium and conduct the energy on its own. But you're extending it through an object. At least in terms of Ripple application, you're currently ahead of me."
He gave Chris one last look. "…I'm heading out."
Chris raised a hand. "See you in a bit."
Once the advance trial participants filtered out,
the Time Chamber felt noticeably quieter. Chris, Ichinose, Ryuuen Kakeru, and the rest settled into a brief rest — then got back to sparring.
But in the gaps between rounds, Chris was also running a parallel thread of attention through the God Sphere.
Asking it to move forward on a plan he'd sketched out earlier.
—
The world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Timeline: 1938.
Mexico. A remote, hidden ancient ruin.
When Speedwagon led his survey team — accompanied by the Ripple master Stroheim — into the depths of that ruin,
what none of them knew was this:
With every step deeper they took, every entrance and exit of the ruin had already been silently sealed off by an invisible, intangible barrier.
And in a narrow underground passage no more than a hundred meters from their position —
Two flickers of blue light pulsed in the dark.
Two girls materialized inside the ancient ruin — one in front, one behind.
One of them was the ill-fated Mieruko, selected by the Black Sphere with her cursed Yin-Yang Eye.
The other — appearing a beat later — was Shiranami Chihiro.
Almost forgotten about by Chris.
Taking in the gloomy, eerie surroundings — walls carved with unsettling murals, the damp darkness pressing in from all sides — Shiranami Chihiro looked utterly bewildered.
"G-GANTZ… where is this? Are we still… in Japan?"
As if in answer to her question,
a pale blue projection screen quietly bloomed into existence before her.
[Thanks to the efforts of your fellow students, the anomalous creatures that had been invading your home world have been returned, in their entirety, to the worlds they came from.]
[Going forward, the Black Sphere exam will begin a new chapter — travelling to other parallel worlds in need of assistance and clearing them, until you have grown strong enough to truly protect your own world.]
Shiranami Chihiro's hands flew up to cover her mouth.
"The monsters… they've already been sent back to their worlds?!" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Everyone… they really did it? Is Ichinose-san okay?"
But the GANTZ system had no interest in small talk or reunions. The screen continued scrolling downward on its own.
[Your trial objective remains unchanged: evade detection by all other examinees and eligible candidates throughout this exam.]
[However — should you be discovered, you will immediately be assimilated into a malevolent spirit and become the target of this exam's extermination mission.]
[That said, owing to your efforts in the previous exam — as a reward, the first person you encounter will be the sole individual capable of "seeing" you. Please be mindful of this privilege.]
[If you succeed this time, you will gain the right to briefly leave your bound location, through the aid of your visible contact.]
[Are you ready? Do you understand the above rules?]
Shiranami Chihiro pressed her lips together.
The atmosphere was creeping her out beyond words.
But the moment she thought of Ichinose Honami — thought of all of them, fighting so hard out there — she, the one who'd been saved, couldn't afford to drag anyone down.
She sucked in a long breath, squared her shoulders, and gave a firm nod.
"Understood!"
[Then — the exam begins.]
[Good luck, little ghost.]
The projection dissolved.
Shiranami Chihiro snapped into focus immediately.
She crouched down, fished a strip of white cloth from her pocket, and swiftly wrapped it around the soles of her shoes — clean, practised movements — to muffle her footsteps and keep from leaving any tracks.
What she didn't know, however —
was that less than twenty metres away, around the corner,
a dark-haired girl stood with every muscle in her small body wound tight, eyes brimming with unshed tears.
Her fingers were quietly digging into her own thigh. She was staring at the alien surroundings, nearly scared half to death —
but doing everything she could to keep her face completely neutral, as though she hadn't seen a single thing.
[Mieruko silently screaming internally: ☆×!!]
____
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