"Ayanokouji... came back to school? What's he even after?"
Ryuuen, who had just been about to leave, stopped in his tracks at these words, his face full of sheer disbelief.
He'd burned a full hundred S-points and barely clawed his way out of this death-trap of a battlefield, and after only a few days outside, he came crawling right back, eyes wide and eager?
Chris pondered for a moment, then explained on his behalf:
"Honestly, it's understandable."
"Yesterday, in the world of Chainsaw Man, when the Black Sphere forcibly dragged Senior Tachibana Akane and the rest of us into an extra instance, we ran into Ayanokouji in there—along with a whole crowd of intruders who weren't from our school."
Chris paused, then went on: "Once you've already submitted your points and left, but you can still get indiscriminately dragged into an exam anyway... what else can he do besides come back?"
"Don't forget, he only had a single Parasyte with him when he left. That was fine before, but now he'd probably struggle even to protect himself."
Ryuuen nodded in deep agreement at this. He didn't bother pressing Chris on why he was only now sharing such important intel.
After all, for "fixed ones" like them—chained to the war chariot from the very start—whether or not one could leave was empty talk to begin with.
Whether it was safe outside or not meant absolutely nothing to their group.
And a matter like Ayanokouji being dragged right back into a Special Exam instance even after spending a fortune to leave—
if it ever got out, it would absolutely deal a devastating blow to the morale of the students who still had something to hope for.
Given the character of people like Sakayanagi Arisu and Ichinose Honami,
even if they had already learned this from Kamuro Masumi and Yotsuya Miko beforehand, their first instinct would surely have been to tacitly keep their mouths shut and let it rot in their bellies.
If he didn't ask about it himself, he'd naturally have had a hard time finding out.
Hirata Yousuke, however, looked up in mild surprise:
"Ayanokouji... already intruded into the instance yesterday?"
Chris nodded:
"I was actually planning to keep it under wraps for a while, to avoid causing panic. But I didn't expect him to come back this fast—so now there's naturally no point in hiding it anymore."
At this, Chris rubbed his chin: "By the way, in what capacity did he return to school? A transfer student re-enrolling? But I'm pretty sure there aren't any open spots in our first year right now... don't tell me he transferred into the second or third year?"
Hirata Yousuke blanked for a moment, then came to and explained with a wry smile:
"No... he came back as a 'combat teaching assistant.'"
"I only found out because I'd booked the school's combat survival course for everyone earlier, and my phone just pushed a notification about an instructor change. I took a glance and saw the new assistant's name was actually Ayanokouji—that's when I realized something was off."
Nagumo Miyabi raised an eyebrow, a mocking curl tugging at the corner of his mouth:
"Teaching assistant? What a crude and heavy-handed method."
"Looks like the school has no intention whatsoever of hiding the fact that Ayanokouji has returned."
"Are they trying to use this to utterly crush everyone's thoughts of escaping the school...?"
Sakayanagi Arisu elegantly smoothed her short, silvery-white hair and gave a soft, pursed-lip smile:
"It's already an established fact, after all—even if they wanted to cover it up, they couldn't, so there's no need to keep hiding it, is there?"
"Rather than letting people wildly speculate behind their backs, it's better to lay reality right out on the table."
Ichinose Honami listened to everyone's discussion, the corners of her eyes softening slightly.
She lowered her eyelids:
"But... they only just managed to grasp a sliver of hope in a hopeless situation, and now it's being snuffed out all over again..."
"For those ordinary students, this is still just a little too cruel."
Sakayanagi Arisu, however, didn't see it that way.
She turned her head and looked straight at Ichinose.
"I'm even inclined to think that, because of this episode, it might actually make those clinging to wishful thinking give up completely."
"Either they abandon their fantasies and just rot away waiting to die, or they accept reality, take up arms, and push through until they clear this Black Sphere game."
"Better a short pain than a long one. This kind of blunt, straightforward despair is actually far kinder than hiding it until the very end—until someone has painstakingly scraped together enough points to leave, only to be told that fleeing is useless."
Chris glanced at the two girls and offered a summary:
"Since it's come to this, all we can do is make everyone accept reality."
"But looking on the bright side—knowing there's no hope of leaving, plus the soaring exam difficulty—at least for the next advance test, there shouldn't be many people mindlessly scrambling for a slot to compete."
"Before everyone recovers... at the very least, we need to make sure the students who genuinely want to grow stronger have the ability to protect themselves."
Ichinose Honami clenched her hands, her voice very soft yet threaded with resilience:
"That really is all we can do."
Because of Chris's proposal—and since basically everyone present was a central figure from their respective classes—
regarding the news of Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's return to school, everyone reached a tacit understanding, and no one deliberately concealed or whitewashed it.
Naturally, back before there was the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, quite a few students had signed up for the school's combat course to save their skins—and after receiving the assistant-change notification, all it took was a few of them recognizing the name Ayanokouji.
With a little spreading, the news sprouted wings and swiftly flew across the entire grade.
In the hallway.
Kushida Kikyo, for one, froze on the spot after hearing the news from a passing girl.
Her first reaction was: this is a cheap, shoddy joke.
After all, that was freedom bought with a full hundred S-points!
Having already escaped this hell, what possible reason was there to come back?
Either Ayanokouji was sick in the head and deliberately wanted to come back for the abuse,
or... the outside world wasn't actually safe either, and he had to come back just to survive!
Considering that Chris, Ichinose, and the others were currently doing special training inside the Time Chamber, even if they knew the inside story, they probably wouldn't have the time to bother with her questions.
Anxious as a burning fire, Kushida Kikyo immediately clacked along in her little leather shoes and hurried to the bulletin board on the first floor of the academic building, where personnel-change notices were posted, wanting to see for herself.
And then.
As she looked, the normally empty, seldom-visited notice board was now surrounded by layers upon layers of people, who kept letting out inexplicable sighs of lament.
Kushida Kikyo peered through a gap in the crowd.
"Wooom—!"
In that instant, everything went black before her eyes.
As if all the strength had been drained from her body, her knees buckled and she stumbled forward uncontrollably, nearly collapsing to her knees right there on the cold marble tiles.
Fortunately.
At just that moment, a pair of slender hands reached out from beside her, sparing her from making a fool of herself.
"Careful."
A cool yet courteous female voice sounded by her ear.
Kushida Kikyo instinctively turned her head, only to find that the one steadying her was none other than Shiraishi Asuka, who had also come to check on the situation.
Shiraishi Asuka paid no mind to the flash of panic that flickered across Kushida's face.
She simply, calmly, helped Kushida Kikyo over to a nearby bench to sit, then reached out and gently patted her back to help her catch her breath.
"You don't look so well..."
"Sit and rest a bit—no need to force yourself."
Feeling the touch on her back, Kushida Kikyo took several deep breaths and forcibly welded her nearly shattered "little angel" mask back onto her face.
She nodded, looking at the blonde girl beside her, and managed to force out a faint, grateful smile:
"Thank you, Shiraishi..."
"But you came to check the news about whether Ayanokouji was back too, didn't you?"
Shiraishi Asuka turned her head, her gaze crossing the corridor to glance faintly at the bulletin board up ahead:
"I think there's no need to go check anymore."
At this, Kushida Kikyo reached up to gently rub her slightly throbbing forehead, saying uncomfortably:
"Yeah..."
"Whether he came on his own, was forced in from above, or was deliberately summoned back by the Black Sphere... none of it is good news for any of us!"
If even the strongest bunch couldn't escape, what damn freedom could a small fry like her even talk about?
Shiraishi Asuka pursed her lips slightly and gave a soft "Mm":
"That's true. Still, I think most students actually had some psychological expectation of it—I don't think anyone's really lost their heads."
If anything, people like Kushida Kikyo—reacting so violently, as if the sky itself were falling—were the rare minority.
After all, a hundred S-points, for the vast majority of ordinary people who could barely even survive,
was a number they could only ever gaze at from afar, forever out of reach.
Now that the "pay to leave" route had been eliminated,
everything that followed actually became simple and clear-cut.
Either desperately grow stronger in the Special Exam and become the last one standing,
or just give up entirely—take the school's generous spending points, enjoy the rest of your life to the fullest, and live out your days as a happy piece of expendable material.
In any case, the intruders the Black Sphere selected each time weren't all that many once spread across the entire grade.
And even if one were unlucky enough to become an intruder, those veteran players desperate to farm points would protect them for the sake of their own interests and value.
That being the case, why not keep the music playing and keep on dancing?
Only, all of that logic held true solely from the perspective of an ordinary person.
For a veteran like Kushida Kikyo, who could clearly feel she'd been given "special attention" by the Black Sphere, this theory didn't quite apply.
Precisely because she had more life counts than others, she'd believed she had a chance, and wanted to save up enough points as fast as possible to flee while there was still time.
But now you're telling her the door has been welded shut!
So then, with her life count now effectively no better than an ordinary student's starting point, plus her utterly unremarkable combat power,
did she really still have a chance to survive the increasingly monstrous Special Exams ahead... and make it all the way to the far shore?
Kushida Kikyo honestly felt it was hard to say.
So then... if she wanted to survive now, her only option was to cling tightly to a big thigh!
And she couldn't just foolishly cling to one single person—she had to cling to a whole group of them!
Otherwise, if a test happened to fall during a stretch when Chris and the others were away, wouldn't she be finished in an instant?
In tandem, besides clinging to thighs, she also had to demonstrate her own irreplaceable "value," and strengthen her ability to protect herself...
Best of all would be some heaven-defying item that could give her a place to hide straight through until the exam ended!
Thinking of this, Kushida Kikyo couldn't help but feel a wave of regret.
As the sole group leader who had first connected the Black Sphere examinees, she could easily have used that to consolidate intel and do people favors, greatly boosting her standing within the grade.
Unfortunately, once the Black Sphere exam went public, the group lost its original covert function, and she'd let it slide... she truly regretted it now!
A faint crease pinched between Kushida Kikyo's brows; the sweet, soft smile she usually wore had vanished, her complexion slightly pale, looking somewhat gloomy.
Shiraishi Asuka, sitting beside her, simply watched quietly.
Though she too was one of the victims of the Black Sphere exam,
Shiraishi Asuka's state of mind was far steadier.
After all, unlike Kushida, she didn't know she'd been singled out for special attention by the presiding god.
On top of that, she herself was a member of an organization on par with the White House; her enrollment in the Advanced Nurturing High School to begin with had been to keep Ayanokoji Kiyotaka under surveillance.
Her psychological resilience was naturally far greater than that of an ordinary student like Kushida Kikyo, who only knew how to play two-faced games at school.
But now that the Black Sphere exam had appeared out of thin air,
honestly, Shiraishi Asuka felt there was no longer any need for her to surveil Ayanokoji Kiyotaka at all.
Any mortal scheme or mission had to give way before the Black Sphere.
Even if the higher organization behind her issued no notice, she—as one who was there in person—understood this better than anyone.
The reason she'd come to check the notice now
was mainly out of curiosity about the meaning behind Ayanokouji's return to school.
She wanted to see whether she could sift out any noteworthy hidden intel from the mouths of the others who'd also come to look.
She hadn't expected, though, to gather barely any intel and instead run into Kushida Kikyo in such a sorry state.
Yet she vaguely recalled that Kushida Kikyo was one of the earliest veterans of the Black Sphere exam, who had even deliberately set up a group chat to serve as everyone's initial communication hub, hadn't she?
So how could she, facing something like this, look as wretched as a rookie who hadn't prepared for anything at all?
Could it be that ever since the Black Sphere appeared, all she'd thought about was hiding in the back and leeching survival points, without the slightest inclination to improve herself?
Shiraishi Asuka pondered for a moment, then shook her head inwardly, deciding she was probably overthinking it.
She shifted instead, speaking softly and considerately steering the topic elsewhere:
"Come to think of it, the upper-years' exam that was set for Friday seems to have been moved up to today because of some sort of incident..."
"I wonder if our first-year's next exam will get bumped up on short notice too."
By now, Kushida Kikyo, who had finally calmed and steadied her emotions, fell silent for a moment.
She nodded and said softly: "There really is such a thing."
"I went and asked the upper-year seniors, and they said the Black Sphere—citing the reason that a student was about to perish in another world—proactively asked them whether they wanted to start the exam early."
Shiraishi Asuka nodded slightly, indicating she understood.
Kushida Kikyo watched her, and seeing that Shiraishi apparently had no intention of pressing further,
the intel already on the tip of her tongue took a turn in her mind, and in the end she chose to toss it out anyway.
She paused, then continued:
"According to the seniors, when faced with the Black Sphere's question, they apparently had no right to directly agree or refuse—the final say... rested entirely with the Student Council."
"I wonder what the arrangement would be if our grade ran into a situation like this."
Shiraishi Asuka's eyelids drooped gently halfway, her cool gaze going vacant as it settled on the swaying shadows of the trees outside the corridor:
"I think... the outcome should end up the same as the upperclassmen's choice."
"Even if the choice were in our own hands."
"After all, it's not an extra exam appearing out of nowhere—it's simply been moved up in time. It's really just a matter of sooner or later."
Kushida Kikyo let out a sigh, mumbling under her breath, thinking who knows what.
The atmosphere between the two of them, weighed down by this heavy topic, quieted for a little while.
And just as Shiraishi Asuka figured Kushida Kikyo's mood had improved and she could find an opening to get up and leave,
Kushida Kikyo suddenly turned to the side, staring at her with blazing eyes, and spoke:
"You... are Shiraishi Asuka from the former Class A, right?"
Shiraishi Asuka was slightly startled; she tilted her head and looked at the other girl, but didn't deny it.
Only then did Kushida Kikyo take a deep breath and lower her voice to explain:
"So here's the thing."
"In yesterday's exam for our grade, because we ran into utterly unreasonable monsters like the Darkness Devil and the Control Devil, in the end—apart from a mere handful of people—all the rest of us were forcibly docked one life count."
Shiraishi Asuka nodded, quietly waiting for what she'd say next.
Kushida stared into Shiraishi's eyes:
"So, I've been thinking—while everyone's resting up right now, we ought to prepare for a rainy day and put together a list of the next batch of people willing to voluntarily take part in the advance test."
"After all, not everyone is willing to take part in that kind of high-mortality test when there's zero margin for error, right?"
That's right—this was the clever little scheme Kushida had come up with to find herself a backer, a thigh to hold onto.
If you wanted someone in this school willing to protect you, you first had to demonstrate your own irreplaceable "value."
So then, if she—as one of the earliest veterans—
took the initiative to shoulder the "HR" work of coordinating, contacting, and arranging personnel for the next advance test,
thereby helping Chris, Ichinose, and the others handle all those tedious problems of selecting and communicating with people... wouldn't that be perfect?
It would both showcase her usefulness and reasonably gather up thighs worth clinging to!
Although Shiraishi Asuka couldn't fully grasp the utilitarian motive behind these words,
she showed no intention of refusing either.
She merely asked in return:
"But this sort of thing... at the end of the day, you still have to ask the individuals themselves whether they're willing, don't you?"
"What if some student actually wants to fight for that 'revival slot' reward?"
Hearing this, Kushida Kikyo gave a dismissive little laugh:
"There are only three revival slots in the advance test. And those are meant to be claimed by official examinees like Chris and the others."
"When even the official examinees have been widely docked lives and urgently need to shore up their margin for error, do you really think ordinary people could snatch a slot out of their hands?"
"At least right now, not many people would be foolish enough to gamble their one and only life on this kind of chance."
Shiraishi Asuka thought it over.
Combining it with what she'd observed in Class A, it was indeed just as Kushida said—those daring to fight were few and far between at the moment.
She looked at Kushida, her tone still placid:
"If we really can't gather enough people in the end, I'll go."
Kushida Kikyo had still been calculating how to keep up the persuasion.
Hearing this reply, her face instantly broke into a beaming smile.
She stood and casually laid a hand on Shiraishi Asuka's shoulder, as if the two of them were already comrades bound by life and death.
"Shiraishi! That's exactly the line I was waiting for!"
Kushida Kikyo.jpg
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