But as Chris had said — the rankings were clearly the least important thing on anyone's mind right now.
So, after a brief moment of consideration, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka simply ignored the shocked stares his classmates were throwing his way and redirected his attention back to the Black Sphere's holographic screen hovering in the air.
Just like it had been from the very beginning.
The Black Sphere seemed to have a temperament of its own. It simply hovered there in silence — as if biding its time, waiting for the surrounding noise to die down and fall below some invisible threshold.
Only then did it make its next move.
The screen flickered.
The ranking list vanished. In its place appeared a detailed 3D topographic map of an island — and across that map, an almost uncountable swarm of glaring red dots blinked and pulsed, packed so densely together that just looking at them made one's scalp crawl.
"Quick — take a photo!"
Someone shouted it first. A moment later, the rapid-fire clicks of phone cameras began going off one after another throughout the crowd.
As though confirming that most people had finished recording, the map automatically shrank into the upper-right corner of the screen. Lines of text began to materialize in its place.
[The next exam is called — the Uninhabited Island Survival Tournament.]
[You will act as exterminators, tasked with conducting a full sweep of the anomalies deployed within this exam zone.]
[To protect your world. To protect your families. And above all — to protect your own lives... steel yourselves. On this island, it's kill or be killed.]
[Of course, you are ultimately still a group of untested newcomers. As this is your first large-scale live combat operation, I will not demand too much of you.]
[Therefore, there are two ways to end this exam:]
[First: Eliminate all anomalous targets on the island.]
[Second: The number of surviving examinees drops to 45, at which point the exam is forcibly terminated.]
[At that point, final rankings will be determined by the score earned through eliminating monsters. The top three will receive special prizes custom-crafted for them by the Heavenly Forge Guild.]
[Note: Death during this exam will not result in immediate removal from the exam zone. Instead, you will revive on the spot — but one of your extra lives will be consumed.]
[If your extra lives reach zero while inside the exam zone... well. Good luck.]
When Matsushita Chiaki read through those final lines, she pressed a hand over her mouth, unable to suppress a horrified gasp:
"Death doesn't remove you from the exam zone... which means, if the second ending condition is supposed to trigger..." She faltered. "This exam is going to forcibly eliminate two-thirds of us?!"
Those words hit like a bucket of cold water.
"You've got to be kidding me! A two-thirds casualty rate?! You're sending us to our deaths!"
Someone couldn't take it. Their legs gave out and they crumpled to the ground, sobbing and calling out for their parents.
"GANTZ! This is way too much! We're just high schoolers! Can't you lower the difficulty?! Or let us buy our way out with points?!"
Others tried shouting directly at the Black Sphere, desperate to bargain with the system. But the Black Sphere simply hovered there, utterly unmoved — as if offering two choices at all was already the greatest mercy it could extend to these insects.
"Shut up, all of you!"
In the end, it was Koenji Rokusuke who put an end to the chaos — kicking over a decorative planter nearby and raising his voice:
"Crying — does crying solve anything?!"
"If tears could buy sympathy, we'd have long since run back to our dorms and gone to sleep! What are you doing, standing here blubbering like livestock penned in for slaughter?!"
His gaze swept over the students who had broken down. "Everyone, quiet. I have something to ask GANTZ."
His words were crude, but not wrong — and though more than a few of the emotionally shattered students lashed back at him with ugly words, calling him heartless and cold-blooded, the venting didn't last long. In the shadow of death, reason has a way of reasserting itself.
About ten seconds later, when the noise in the hall had dropped to a level where voices could actually be heard, Koenji Rokusuke raised his chin and addressed the Black Sphere:
"GANTZ."
"If I wish to use the reward I won from the 'Preliminary Test' — the whole-class intrusion exemption — how does it apply to this mandatory all-student exam?"
The surface of the Black Sphere shimmered, and its reply appeared:
[An intrusion event is an intrusion event. A formal exam is a formal exam. The two are not comparable, and the exemption cannot waive the obligation to participate in a mandatory all-student examination.]
[However...]
[Because the purpose of clearing anomalies will not change regardless of your effort, a failsafe mechanism will activate as a last resort — a spacetime rift that will cleanse everything. There is an extremely small probability that this rift could sweep up an unlucky examinee and transport them to an unknown parallel world.]
[Using the exemption will ensure that Class D is absolutely protected from being affected by spacetime disturbances during this exam.]
[Will you use it?]
Without a moment's hesitation, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Koenji Rokusuke answered in perfect unison:
"Use it!"
Meanwhile, the students from the other three classes — who had only just learned that this exam was hiding yet another game-changing bombshell — had gone completely numb.
They didn't even have the energy left to cry. They just stood there, hollow-eyed, staring at nothing.
Just what kind of hellish difficulty setting was this supposed to be?!
Looking at the despair etched across everyone's faces, Sakayanagi Arisu shook her head and turned to the Black Sphere:
"GANTZ, if you're sending us out to face these monsters as cleaners, you can't seriously expect us to go in empty-handed. Surely you'll at least provide some weapons?"
Ichinose Honami stepped forward right after, her voice urgent:
"And even if you handed out unlimited X-GUNs, Y-GUNs, and Gantz Swords to everyone right now... for the majority of ordinary students who have never even held a real gun before, there'd be no practical way to use them effectively in actual combat. You know that, don't you?"
The Black Sphere screen flickered:
[Indeed.]
[Therefore, for this exam — aside from the exclusive equipment already purchased by veteran participants using S-Points — this system will not provide any starting gear at the beginning of the exam.]
"What?!" The crowd's faces fell in collective dismay.
[However — in response to that.]
[GANTZ will conceal more powerful and easy-to-use conventional weapons and survival supplies throughout the island's hidden corners, and will also deploy them through intermittent airdrops into the exam zone for everyone's use.]
[Naturally, your right to use these supplies is limited to this exam only. If you wish to keep them after the exam concludes, you may exchange S-Points earned through monster kills to permanently acquire them.]
[Are there any further questions?]
Ryuuen Kakeru walked forward, his expression cold:
"Are you not even going to give us a basic rundown of the monsters this time?"
"And since this is a survival match — can we act in teams? Please don't tell me you're going to scatter us across the island completely at random, like seeds thrown to the wind."
The Black Sphere answered:
[First: The identity rings on your wrists have been upgraded with a field guide function. It will automatically assess and compile intelligence on any anomalous creatures you encounter within your field of vision — there is no need for me to waste time on introductions here.]
[Second: Cooperation is of course permitted. However, to manage the initial survival rate and prevent everyone from being wiped out the moment they land... I do not recommend placing all of you in a single location.]
[Is that understood?]
"..." Ryuuen Kakeru exhaled sharply, raking a hand through his short red hair. "I've got nothing more to say."
[Then — full transfer will commence in 60 seconds.]
[Everyone, please prepare yourselves.]
Chris took in the faces around him — classmates in every conceivable state, some with eyes closed in prayer, some wearing expressions of utter hopelessness, others clustering together in twos and threes to offer each other last words of encouragement.
He thought about it for a moment.
Then he moved through the crowd, walking over to Karuizawa Kei — who was being pressed in close from all sides by Sato Maya and a few other girls, clearly trying to draw some sense of safety from the group.
He also glanced toward Horikita Suzune, standing a short distance away, quietly examining the ring on her own wrist.
"Remember the uninhabited island map I posted in the group chat?" Chris said, his voice calm and reassuring.
"No matter where you get dropped — just focus on surviving and make your way toward the center of the island. I'll be waiting for you at the highest point."
He held Karuizawa Kei's gaze for a long moment, then let it drift to Horikita Suzune beside her:
"Do your best to stay alive... There's no going back this time."
Karuizawa Kei bit her lip. But under Chris's steady gaze, she gave a firm, decisive nod:
"I will! I'm definitely coming to find you! You'd better wait for me!"
[00:00]
[Full transfer — initiating.]
A blinding column of blue light swallowed the entire hall whole.
One hundred and fifty-six students were transported to an unknown island.
Chris alone was the exception.
When the light faded, he found himself standing in the clean, orderly interior of the Black Sphere Space.
He casually pulled up the surveillance system.
Over a dozen massive monitor screens floated before him, showing a god's-eye view of the few people he'd flagged as priority targets — every move they made, laid out in full.
As the "God of the System," Chris's first order of business was naturally to fine-tune the landing coordinates of each faction.
He relocated Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, Sakayanagi Arisu, Ryuuen Kakeru, Ichinose Honami, and the others — placing each of them near clusters of students who already showed a tendency to group together.
With their abilities and reputation, it would take no time at all for each of them to rally a survival squad around themselves in the chaos.
As for Shiina Hiyori, Karuizawa Kei, and a few other girls who lacked the capacity for direct frontline combat...
Chris's finger swiped across the screen.
He placed them separately, scattered across the outer fringes of the wilderness.
There was really no other way about it — the damsel-in-distress scenario was a tired old trope, but when it came to building goodwill and loyalty, nothing worked better.
"That said..."
Chris watched the panicking students flickering across his screens.
He was concerned that certain morally flexible individuals might reason that in this remote, lawless wilderness — as long as no one was watching — anything goes, potentially triggering a cascade of irrational and violent incidents.
To head that off, Chris added one extra rule to the system:
On this island, if anyone — anyone except him — engaged in harmful behavior toward a fellow human, the system would immediately flag them as a "Threat."
As a reward for that designation, the Black Sphere would instantly spawn either an SSS-rank Ghoul or an Upper Moon demon from Demon Slayer — right on the perpetrator's face.
Divine retribution, delivered in the most literal and physical sense possible.
He was here to cultivate talent, not to breed criminals.
That said, looking at the current monster configuration across the uninhabited island...
While Chris had crammed in a large number of stored low-tier monsters — partly just to pad the numbers and push the headcount down toward 45 as quickly as possible — he never actually intended for everyone to die.
So the roster was weighted heavily toward things like Evil Spirits, Pure Titans, and Parasytes.
Aside from a select few, he'd also left everyone some breathing room to search for supply drops.
Once people had settled into the rhythm in the late game — or once the population dropped to 130 and the airdrops began, and they encountered the "Mysterious Black Market Merchant" he'd planted to upgrade their gear — these ordinary low-score creatures would cease to pose much of a challenge.
"Still... I'll need to plant a few genuinely threatening heavy-hitters to keep things tense."
"But picking a proper final boss to act as the climactic closer... that's actually kind of a headache."
Chris rubbed his chin, mulling it over.
"Forget it."
"I've got the[God Sphere]now. I can come up with a boss on the fly whenever I need one."
"Better to deal with specifics as they come."
"For now, let's set a milestone threshold... Once the examinees collectively take down 100 Pure Titans, Parasytes, and similar low-score creatures, I'll start ramping up the difficulty."
Chris locked in that baseline, then split a portion of his attention toward the exam zone where the upperclassmen were competing.
The basic flow and rules for the second- and third-years were more or less the same as those for the first-years.
However.
To set the stage for the "spacetime wormhole" mechanic he'd be introducing later, Chris decided to have a little fun.
He intercepted Tachibana Akane, Kiryuuin Fuka, and Asahina Nazuna — and redirected them directly to the uninhabited island where the first-years were being held.
In exchange, he casually picked three random students and tossed them into the upperclassmen's exam zone to fill the slots.
"Equal trade. Nobody gets shortchanged."
Chris glanced at the screen, selected a profile icon at random, and confirmed the transfer.
...
At the same time, elsewhere.
A gentle breeze — carrying the faint, earthy scent of soil and moss — brushed across her cheek.
Shiina Hiyori slowly opened her eyes.
Surrounded by dense, richly green forest, with the distant murmur of ocean waves barely audible through the trees, the girl felt an inexplicable pang of wistfulness settle over her heart.
"Dropped alone into the wilderness, just like that, huh..."
But she didn't let herself stand frozen for long.
She gave her own pale cheeks a firm pat.
The girl who was, by nature, deeply afraid of dying forced herself to accept the situation.
"Now is not the time to be scared..."
Shiina Hiyori steeled herself inwardly: the most urgent thing right now was to search the surrounding area for the airdropped weapons and gear the Black Sphere had mentioned — and then find a recognizable landmark to cross-reference against the phone map and get her bearings.
She began picking her way forward with extreme caution. Every step was delicate and deliberate — she even kept her breathing shallow and quiet, terrified of disturbing whatever might be lurking nearby and ending her life in this godforsaken place before she'd even done anything.
But the world had no interest in accommodating her hopes.
The island might have been vast.
But the low-tier monsters Chris had scattered across it in waves were also truly everywhere — crawling and creeping in every direction.
She hadn't gone far before Shiina Hiyori stumbled right into one.
The good news: it was the lowest-ranked type of Evil Spirit.
As long as she acted like she couldn't see it, there was a real chance she could walk away without a scratch.
Of course, the girl didn't let her guard down even for a second.
She still clearly remembered: during her very first Black Sphere exam, Kamuro Masumi had slipped up and made a noise, causing an Evil Spirit to instantly fly into a berserk rage and launch an attack. If Sakayanagi Arisu hadn't been there to open fire immediately, there would have been casualties on the spot.
And besides — right now, she was completely unarmed. She had nothing. Utterly defenseless.
So when the Evil Spirit — hideous beyond all reason, reeking of rot, its entire body radiating a stench of decay — shuffled closer and closer until its ruined face was practically pressed against the tip of her nose, and began asking, over and over again in that neurotic, twitching voice:
"Can you see me?"
"Can you seeee me?"
Shiina Hiyori fought down the violent urge to retch.
She fixed her eyes on a tree trunk straight ahead, kept her face completely blank, and continued walking forward at a perfectly even pace — the picture of someone who could not see a thing.
But.
This Evil Spirit wasn't just grotesque — it was also absurdly, impossibly fat.
Its mound of a body was wedged solidly between two large trees, completely blocking the path ahead. There was no way through.
If she tried to force her way around it, she'd definitely attract its attention.
But if she walked straight into it... she wasn't sure whether she could physically pass through an Evil Spirit's body. And if it turned out to be solid — that would be the end of everything.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, she had no choice but to stop — and the two of them entered an awkward, tense standoff.
And then the Evil Spirit noticed that the girl had suddenly stopped moving.
Its eyes blazed red.
"RAAAHHH——!!"
It snapped its massive jaws wide open — the fetid fangs yawning so close they nearly swallowed her entire head whole.
"You CAN see me!! You SEE me!!"
"You saw me! You definitely saw me!!!"
The reeking, foul wind slammed into her face.
Shiina Hiyori's pupils constricted to pinpricks.
"...Is this where it ends for me?"
The girl squeezed her eyes shut. In an instant, her final words were already forming in her mind.
"Dad, Mom... I'm sorry. Hiyori still couldn't make it back to see you one more time... Goodbye..."
Just as tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes and were about to spill down her cheeks —
Bang.
A violent gust of force swept her bangs sideways.
The Evil Spirit that had been looming over her — raging and snarling just a heartbeat ago — exploded before her eyes like morning mist struck by sunlight, dissolving into nothing without a trace.
"...?"
Shiina Hiyori blinked several times, barely daring to believe it. She pressed the back of her hand against her eyes and wiped away the tears that hadn't quite fallen.
Only then, through clearing vision, did she make out the figure standing before her.
"Chris... senpai?"
The girl's expression shifted from shock to pure, startled joy — but then her gaze landed on his fist, and she faltered:
"But... you didn't use an X-GUN. How did you hurt it?"
Chris rolled his wrist and answered casually:
"I actually thought you had to use an X-GUN to damage them too. But the moment I got transported here, an Evil Spirit spotted me. I didn't have time to aim — I swung my arm on instinct to block, and that's when I figured it out."
"This Combat Suit is Black Sphere equipment in its own right. Naturally, it carries the property of dealing genuine physical damage to incorporeal entities."
In truth, according to the original lore of the series the Evil Spirits came from, any human with a sufficiently robust physical constitution and vital energy could actually burn a low-tier Evil Spirit just by touching it.
And for someone like Chris, who had stacked hundreds of layers of Heart of Steel and whose very life force blazed like a furnace — the fact that he hadn't just exhaled on the thing and reduced it to ash was already him holding back.
But of course, Shiina Hiyori had no way of knowing any of that.
She looked up at Chris — the one who had fallen from the sky, of all places, to save her.
"I'm so lucky to have run into you here..."
Shiina Hiyori let out a long, shaky breath. "If you hadn't been there just now, I would've been done for."
Chris shook his head:
"Don't misunderstand — I wasn't passing by. I came looking for you on purpose."
As he spoke, he pulled out the radar controller he'd redeemed from the Black Sphere and pressed a button.
Instantly, the device projected a crisp, three-dimensional holographic interface above it — showing not just the island's full terrain, but dozens of blinking indicators representing monsters and allies.
Chris pointed to the projection and explained:
"This is a controller I exchanged for with S-Points after the last exam. It does full-map positioning — and it also has a built-in optical stealth function."
"Once I got the hang of it, I picked up that you were nearby and had been stationary for a while. So I thought I'd go invisible and come check if I could lend a hand."
He gave a small, dry smile. "Let's just say your luck really was on your side. It was an Evil Spirit. If it had been a Parasyte instead... I was still a few dozen meters away from you. I'm afraid there wouldn't have been much I could do."
Despite how blunt and unvarnished those words were, Shiina Hiyori showed not the slightest trace of offense.
She nodded in heartfelt agreement, lacing her fingers together at her chest:
"You're right... what incredible luck. And not just because it was an Evil Spirit." She paused. "But also... because the one who came to save me was you, Chris-senpai."
Just as the two of them were talking, the sky — which had been relatively clear moments ago — began to shift. A dark bank of clouds drifted in overhead, casting a broad, heavy shadow down on them. A low, muffled rumble of thunder reached their ears.
"Is it going to rain?"
Shiina Hiyori looked up at the sky, then turned back to Chris with a wry look:
"It feels like we might both be jinxes. We were just celebrating how lucky we were — and now the universe is already proving us wrong."
She scanned their surroundings and pointed toward a hillside not far away:
"Actually, when I was walking over here earlier, I spotted a natural cave about halfway up that slope. Should we... go take shelter there? Getting our clothes soaked out here in the wilderness would mean a cold, and that would just create more problems."
Chris nodded:
"Sure. You lead the way. I'll activate the stealth function and follow behind — keep an eye out for anything approaching."
With that, Chris pressed a button on the controller.
An instant later, his body began to fade from the ground up — erased from Shiina Hiyori's sight like chalk wiped from a board, until there was nothing left.
"Ah..."
Shiina Hiyori's lips parted slightly as she stared in involuntary wonder:
"That's incredible... He's completely invisible. Not even a shadow..."
"Less talking, more walking." Chris's voice drifted in from the empty air, carrying just a hint of impatience. "If we don't move, the rain really is going to get heavy."
His words had barely finished when the sky answered.
Drip — then patter — then a sudden roar.
Fat, heavy raindrops came pouring down in sheets, punching through the gaps between the leaves and hitting the clearing where they stood without mercy.
And then a rather amusing sight emerged.
The dense curtain of rain traced two unmistakable human silhouettes in the air.
One was a beautiful girl, hair soaked, looking just a little pitifully drenched — and the other was a "transparent person" rendered entirely in the shape of countless water droplets slamming against an invisible form.
"Ah... there's the real jinx right there!"
Shiina Hiyori raised a hand to shield her forehead and looked at the ridiculous water-drop outline beside her, unable to hold back a burst of laughter.
"Speaking of which, Chris-senpai... in rain this heavy, do you really still need to stay invisible?"
"Ahem."
In the empty air beside her, Chris's footsteps stuttered almost imperceptibly.
"That's none of your business."
"I spent 40 S-Points on this thing. Not using it would be a waste!"
The girl ducked her head, shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter.
The soft sound of it mingled with the rain pattering against the leaves — quiet enough that it would be easy to miss.
But as the one who had set all of this in motion, Chris caught every last bit of that stifled amusement just fine.
He cast a sideways glance at the weather forecast — visible only to him.
"...Alright. Good timing."
"Once we reach the mouth of the cave... I'll let the rain stop."
Chris fell into step behind the girl, and together they walked on through the rain.
____
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