The edge of the dead volcano's crater. Chris stood on a jutting rock, head bowed over the radar display on his Combat Suit rifle's stock.
On the screen, the blip representing Douma flickered twice. Then a green dot drew close to it, while the other three green dots fanned out in different directions.
"Looks like they've started the hunt over there."
Chris tucked the radar away and murmured, "They move fast. Here's hoping everyone makes it out in one piece."
"Senpai really does worry about them, doesn't he."
Beside him, Amase Kazuna sauntered over with her hands clasped behind her back, a teasing grin on her face. Her red twin-tails swayed lightly in the breeze as she pursed her lips and said meaningfully:
"Though the class rep and her crew are a different breed from the rest of us still scraping the poverty line — they've got top-tier airdrop gear in hand, after all."
"And on top of that, they even spent points going into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to get used to their equipment. If they still somehow get caught off guard and taken down after all that... I'd have to seriously question the Black Sphere's taste in picking 'eligible candidates' from the very start."
She paused, fixing her gaze on his profile.
"Speaking of which, Senpai."
"If you'd been over on Ayanokoji-senpai's side from the beginning, you'd definitely have gotten a share of those airdrop items, right?"
"After all, the situation back then was basically survival of the fittest. In terms of ability and experience, strategic resources like those should've gone to 'anchors' like you guys first."
"Hmm... looking at it now, it seems like Ayanokoji-senpai kind of walked off with the life that was supposed to be yours?"
Chris couldn't help the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Truly the product of the White Room.
"That's a real unique angle you've got there," he said flatly.
Chris couldn't be bothered to engage further. He turned and pointed lazily toward Kamuro Masumi and the others, who were bent over picking something up in the distance.
"You've got so much drive — why aren't you out there with Kamuro and the others, searching the area for scattered capsules?"
"There are Combat Suits in those things, you know."
"Granted, it seems like Shiina's the only one lucky enough to have pulled a set so far, and nobody else has seen one — the drop rate is genuinely tragic."
"But you're not like Ayanokoji, who needs to transform into a fifteen-meter titan. Aren't you going to put in some effort toward your own safety?"
Amase Kazuna just shook her head, unbothered.
She slowly raised her left hand.
Her slender left arm split open in an instant, transforming into a Parasyte — one with a visible eyeball and razor-sharp blades.
"I've already fused with a Parasyte. Until I know for sure whether a Combat Suit would clash with or suppress this little guy, I'll leave that opportunity for someone who needs it more."
As she finished speaking, the Parasyte on her left hand swiveled its eye and spoke:
"Hello. My name is Hidari."
"Amase gave me the name."
"..."
Chris gave a nod. "Chris."
He turned his head toward the group of girls who had just returned from their scavenging run.
Even the usually levelheaded Hirata Yousuke and Katsuragi Kohei, once they'd confirmed it was safe, had taken some of the boys out to hunt lone monsters in the surrounding area.
They were cautious — they hadn't ventured rashly into the deeper zones that Ryuuen's group hadn't yet cleared.
But for the moment, the camp had been left largely to the girls.
To keep the girls from getting restless and spiraling into panic — and to prevent them from accidentally wandering into the so-called "spacetime rifts" he'd set up — Chris had simply had the Class D girls pair up with girls from other classes, forming small search teams. They were to scour the nearby area for All-Purpose Capsules, staying well within sight range.
They had nothing else to do anyway. Think of it as opening loot boxes.
Although — as the God Sphere's administrator — Chris knew full well that Combat Suits were only available in limited numbers.
Most of the sets had already been claimed by the likes of Shiina Hiyori and Koenji Rokusuke. As for the Parasyte Fusion Cards, he'd tossed out plenty of them, but almost no one had dared to actually use one.
The truly useful drops in the All-Purpose Capsules were actually the consumables that played a supporting role.
Things like the Golden Apple that could save your life at a critical moment, or the MC Milk that could cleanse negative status effects.
If you tried to sell those in the Black Sphere shop, they'd cost a fortune.
And if Ichinose hadn't been there when they were looting the airdrops — repeatedly reminding Ryuuen, Sakayanagi, and the others to rein in their classmates and protect the vulnerable — given how self-serving those people were, once the bloodlust kicked in, they absolutely would not have cared whether the weaker students lived or died.
When things got bad, these seemingly unremarkable life-saving items would be the only lifeline the bottom-rung students had left.
All you could say was: having a genuinely good person willing to catch everyone who fell through the cracks was a real blessing for the people at the bottom.
Just as he was thinking this, Kamuro Masumi came jogging over.
She held out a softly glowing capsule toward Chris:
"Chris... I just found a capsule with a [Combat Suit] inside — it was wedged in a crack in the rocks!"
"Who do you think we should give it to?"
Chris blinked, a little surprised. "You're asking me to decide? You found it — just make the call yourself."
"Ha, like I don't want to."
Kamuro Masumi let out a sigh, her voice rueful:
"Except for a handful of people, almost no one has any points left. Even if someone gets the Combat Suit, they can't exactly strip down and change clothes out here in the middle of nowhere, right?"
"They'd have to go into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to put it on. But that costs points to enter, and everyone's flat broke — so I figured I'd come ask your opinion. Once we've settled on who gets it, we can team up and hunt a few small monsters together to help them scrape the points together."
Kamuro Masumi glanced around and lowered her voice: "By the way, I noticed Karuizawa from your class picked up a Combat Suit earlier too, and just handed it straight to Matsushita Chiaki. Matsushita got lucky — she'd saved up some points before..."
"Honestly, it feels like the drop rate gets better the closer you are to the island's center!"
Chris nodded.
Naturally.
With a heavy-hitter event about to go down, if he didn't sweeten the deal first, how were they supposed to hold out when it hit?
He was just about to open his mouth —
BOOM —!
Without any warning, a violent tremor erupted from beneath their feet!
Karuizawa Kei, who had been excitedly rushing over to show off her find to Chris, stumbled and nearly fell.
She scrambled to steady herself and instinctively glanced down at the radar screen on the Combat Suit rifle in her hands.
The next second, the color drained from her face.
"Chris! Down there — something appeared down there!"
Karuizawa Kei pointed at the screen, her voice trembling: "In — in the crater, a red dot just appeared out of nowhere! And there are two green dots right next to it!"
At the warning, Horikita Suzune reacted with lightning speed.
She snatched up a Combat Suit rifle and, using its built-in scope, peered down from their elevated position into the crater.
Through the lens.
What she saw made her pupils contract sharply.
Rising from the volcanic ash billowing up from below.
A hunched, one-eyed monster — its head shaped like a miniature active volcano — was spewing flames without a care in the world.
Within that sea of fire, two figures were locked in close combat.
One wore a heavy, bulky suit of armor that vaguely resembled a gorilla in shape.
The other was clad in sleek silver-white armor, wielding a Black Sphere blade in one hand and a cherry-blossom-red lance in the other.
"What's going on?!"
"Is it an earthquake?! Or are more monsters spawning?!"
"It's so loud — is it close to us? Are we going to die out here?!"
The sudden tremor sent the girls who had scattered across the area searching for supplies rushing back toward Chris's position, all at once.
A wave of barely-contained panic broke through the crowd.
Chris furrowed his brow, just about to speak up and steady the group.
Horikita Suzune beat him to it — her voice cutting clean through the noise of the crowd:
"Everyone, quiet!"
"I looked through the Combat Suit scope. It appears to be a new high-value monster."
"However — two individuals in unknown armor are currently engaging it. Their identities are unclear, but it looks like they have airdrop-grade equipment as well..."
Amase Kazuna stroked her chin, letting the Parasyte on her left hand speak for her: "Should we head down and help?"
"Don't do anything rash." Amikura Mako immediately cut in. "Ichinose and the others haven't come back yet. With just the people we have right now — can we actually be of any use?"
Kushida Kikyo echoed her concern, worry written all over her face: "She's right. And on top of that — what if this monster is like the demon from this morning, and can release a wide-area poison fog...? We don't have nearly enough [MC Milk] to go around!"
Chris considered for a moment, then made a swift decision:
"Karuizawa — take the non-combatants and start evacuating."
"Anyone who has a Combat Suit and is willing to stay — come with me with your Combat Suit rifles. We're not going for the kill; just see if we can provide some fire support from the perimeter."
Karuizawa Kei heard the order.
She cast a glance at the crater below, lava beginning to seep up from the depths.
Every fiber of her was terrified — but in front of Chris, she forced herself to stay composed and gave a firm nod.
As a parasite, she knew her top priority right now was to follow orders and absolutely not become a burden to Chris.
She turned to Matsushita Chiaki, meaning to ask her good friend to help organize the retreat.
But Matsushita Chiaki shook her head, walked straight to Chris's side, and gripped her Y-GUN tightly.
"Kei, you take Kamuro and Shiina and get the others out of here. I'm staying."
Matsushita Chiaki's voice was calm: "I won a fight earlier, so I have two extra lives on me right now. Don't worry about me."
Karuizawa Kei opened her mouth, but in the end could only say: "Chiaki... you have to come back alive!"
Amikura Mako pressed her lips together, looking at those who had chosen to stay. "Stay safe, all of you."
"And Amase... you don't have a Combat Suit. Don't go throwing your life away."
Hearing her upperclassman's concern, Amase Kazuna nodded obediently and fell back to stand level with Horikita Suzune.
"Don't worry, Senpai — I know my limits. I'm not going down there to get myself killed."
"I'm just... a little curious about those two people who appeared out of nowhere down there. I want to take one look through the scope before I go."
With that, Amase Kazuna leaned over to Horikita Suzune's side and peered down through the Combat Suit rifle's scope.
Then, the easy composure on the girl's face vanished.
"Wait — Senpai, I don't think any of us are getting out of here."
Amase Kazuna snapped her head up. "That monster... it looks like it can control the volcano!"
"What?!"
Horikita Suzune looked toward where she was pointing.
Sure enough.
Just as Amase Kazuna had said — at the base of the crater, the lush vegetation that had been there moments ago was rapidly withering and charring to ash.
Countless cracks laced with dark-red magma were spreading outward in every direction from the one-eyed monster at their center, branching like a spider's web across the ground.
"We can't wait any longer."
Chris took a deep breath, pulled out the Revice Belt that Ichinose had pressed into his hands earlier, and clicked it into place around his waist with a snap.
He turned to Horikita Suzune:
"Horikita — go with the others. Evacuate."
"I'll head down and assess the situation. I've still got plenty of lives left. Dying once won't matter."
"But you... you have something more important to do, don't you?"
Horikita Suzune went rigid.
She knew exactly what Chris was referring to. She knew that retreating now was, rationally, the optimal move.
But for some reason — in the very instant she tried to turn and leave — a sharp, sudden ache stabbed through her chest.
As if... if she walked away right now, she would definitely miss something she could never, ever get back.
The feeling was utterly irrational. And yet it surged through her like a tide.
"No."
In the end, Horikita Suzune chose to trust her instincts.
"I'm staying to help you."
"One death won't hurt me. At worst... I'll just score top three in the final exams and get the reward back."
Seeing her so utterly resolved, Chris didn't waste any more breath trying to talk her out of it.
He took one last look at Amikura Mako and the others being shepherded by Karuizawa and Kamuro, hurrying down the mountainside.
Facing the crescent moon slowly being swallowed by volcanic ash in the sky above, Chris brought his palm down hard onto the belt's activation trigger.
"Henshin."
The mechanical transformation sound rang out, and mass-production-model armor encased in a metallic sheen locked itself around his entire body.
Then he leapt.
That brazen, charge-toward-death posture of his... well, if you set aside the part where it was actually he himself who had unsealed the binding on Sukuna's finger and deliberately let Jogo catch the scent of it, purposely triggering the monster's rampage —
It would actually have made for a pretty convincing lone-hero moment.
.....
Meanwhile, in a valley some distance from the volcano.
Ryuuen Kakeru, having just finished off Douma with the others, was frowning at a withered, finger-shaped object he'd pulled from Douma's gut.
"What in the hell is this thing?"
Ryuuen clicked his tongue in irritation: "Why did swallowing it make that bastard Douma not only regenerate faster, but hit harder too..."
"What is it, some kind of steroid?"
Even though Douma hadn't grown strong enough to turn the tables and kill them after swallowing the finger —
The sudden spike in his ice-manipulation ability was undeniable fact.
Ryuuen knew it clearly: if it had been the original Douma — back before — when he activated [Sianweistan], Douma would have had absolutely no way to evade it.
The monster got stronger. The only possible reason was this finger.
Even if the extreme degree of cybernetic modification had given him something of a cybernetic psychosis — even if he'd had to shut down portions of his prosthetic nervous system mid-battle just to keep his mind straight — Ryuuen Kakeru had not lost one bit of his razor-sharp intellect.
"Whatever. No point guessing."
"We'll have Sakayanagi scan it with that Field Guide of hers in a bit and we'll know."
With that, Ryuuen leapt, landing on Ayanokoji's shoulder — planning to use him as a springboard to get back to Sakayanagi Arisu's sniper position halfway up the mountain.
Just as he was coiling himself to jump —
BOOOOOM —!
Even from Ayanokoji's shoulder.
Ryuuen could feel it.
With over seventy percent of his body mechanically enhanced — Ryuuen the Cyber-Psycho Dragon — he instantly activated his prosthetic body's sensory system.
The data that fed back made his expression change drastically.
"Volcanic eruption?!"
Ryuuen's heart lurched. He instantly used the titan's shoulder as a launch pad and vaulted high into the air.
Midway through his arc, Ryuuen was already roaring:
"Sakayanagi! Open the controller now! Find out what the hell is happening on Chris's side!"
"This is supposed to be a dead volcano! Why the hell is it erupting during our exam?!"
At that furious shout, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ichinose Honami — arriving close behind — both froze at the same time.
"Volcanic eruption?!" Ichinose exclaimed.
Sakayanagi Arisu grasped the severity of the situation immediately.
She raised her wrist, and a three-dimensional holographic map unfurled before them all.
On the holographic map, the crater position — where Chris and the others had been safely stationed just moments ago — was now a frenzy of green dots, scattering away from the volcano like a colony of ants fleeing a flood.
And at the very center of the crater.
Four green dots were clustered around a single glowing blip.
Though their distances and positions were each slightly different.
Sakayanagi Arisu reached out and tapped open the information on those dots.
They read, respectively:
[Chris], [Horikita Suzune], [Nagumo Miyabi], and... [Horikita Manabu].
None of them paid the two names that had no business being there any particular mind. They tapped open the red dot instead.
[Target: Jogo (Special Grade Cursed Spirit)]
[Value: 90 points (originally 80 points; increased after absorbing one of Ryomen Sukuna's fingers)]
[Traits: The embodiment of the earth's fear of volcanoes. Signature ability: manipulation of volcanic magma and extreme-heat flames. Can instantaneously spray magma hot enough to melt steel. Can summon explosive swarms of insects, 「Ember Insects」, for wide-area bombardment.]
[Critical Notes: No apparent weak point. Secret Technique — Disaster Flames: Horizon「Cinder」 can call down massive flaming meteors. Domain Expansion:「Coffin of the Iron Mountain」 creates a magma-volcano space with an unavoidable burning effect. Also proficient in Domain Amplification, neutralizing enemy techniques. Represents the absolute pinnacle of destruction among Special Grade Cursed Spirits.]
"Ninety points..."
Ichinose Honami frowned. "And... no weak points?!"
To put it in perspective — Douma, who had nearly wiped them all out earlier, was only forty-something points.
Compared to Ichinose's shock.
Sakayanagi Arisu's attention had gone straight to the shriveled finger in Ryuuen's hand.
"Sukuna's finger..."
Sakayanagi Arisu's eyes grew thoughtful. "Could it be... the very thing you're holding right now?"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka added:
"It's possible. I did see Douma swallow something as he was dying, and his power immediately surged in a very abnormal way."
"Though — likely because Ryuuen extracted the finger in time — Douma's final score didn't change in the end."
Ryuuen Kakeru clutched the finger, murderous light flaring in his eyes:
"Damn it! The monster's already worth ninety points on its own — if it gets its hands on this finger, that thing would evolve into a perfect hundred-point boss?!"
"I'm crushing this useless piece of trash to powder right now!"
"Don't be reckless."
Ayanokoji reached out to stop him. "Scan it with the Field Guide first. If brute force destruction triggers some kind of nastier curse, we'll be well and truly done for."
Ryuuen Kakeru clicked his tongue in frustration — but held himself back, and begrudgingly held the finger out toward Sakayanagi Arisu.
Sakayanagi aimed the Field Guide at it and pressed the scan button.
"Ding —"
[Target: Finger of Ryomen Sukuna (Special Grade Cursed Object)]
[Description: The remnants formed from the death of the King of Curses. A single finger contains cursed energy equivalent to that of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. There are 20 in total, scattered and sealed across various locations in Japan.]
[Traits: Fatal if consumed by a human; grants a massive power boost if consumed by a Cursed Spirit. As a Special Grade Cursed Object, it cannot be destroyed by conventional physical means — it can only be sealed or retrieved.]
[Note: Turning it in to GANTZ after the exam ends will earn an additional bonus of 20 S-Points.]
"Twenty of them?! Scattered all across Japan?!"
Ryuuen's fury broke into bitter laughter.
But Sakayanagi Arisu remained perfectly composed:
"Ryuuen-kun, it seems you've already forgotten what the Black Sphere told us before. Have you forgotten those two ape-men we eliminated earlier — the ones who claimed to have crossed over from another world?"
"This finger — and that Special Grade Cursed Spirit called Jogo — they are simply not products of our world."
"Now that we understand the situation, let's not waste another second!"
Ichinose Honami spread her wings, her expression urgent.
"We have to get back to the crater and support the others — right now!"
"If the volcano actually erupts... almost no one will make it out alive!"
When the nest is overturned, no egg is left unbroken.
A simple truth. Ryuuen Kakeru naturally understood it.
He met Ayanokoji's gaze for a brief moment, then spoke.
"Then... let's move!"
— End of Chapter —
____
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