The heat was suffocating, rolling in waves.
Nagumo Miyabi used the volcanic rocks beneath him as stepping stones.
He flipped up his visor and downed a gulp of MC Milk — only then did the color begin to return to his face.
Falling back to put some distance between himself and the cursed spirit, he kept his eyes locked on the spot where Horikita Manabu had disappeared. Nagumo had noticed it — the difference between Jogo's Domain now and the first time it had expanded.
But he had no time to pick that apart right now.
Using the armor's thrusters to bound up the cliffside in a few leaping strides, he landed in front of Chris and Horikita Suzune, who were still perched at the top.
He didn't waste a breath lecturing them on why they hadn't evacuated yet.
His expression was ice cold as he looked at the Demon Possession belt in Chris's hands.
"Swap out that garbage equipment of yours! See if you can use [Demon Possession] — and if you can't, then grab her and get the hell out of here right now!"
Chris didn't argue. He calmly deactivated his transformation and held the belt out to Horikita Suzune.
The girl was still shell-shocked, still trapped in the moment her brother had died. Chris's voice was calm — but every word hit like a knife.
He pressed a hand to her shoulder, his tone flat:
"Don't you dare say 'the Student Council President could have run.' That kind of talk helps no one."
"Your brother made his choice. What you need to do now — is survive. Carry his will forward."
Chris pressed the belt into her hands.
"You only get one chance to fall apart. Make it count."
Horikita Suzune's slender frame trembled.
The tears brimming in her eyes — she forced them back. Every last one.
She buckled the belt around her waist and gave a single, firm nod. "...Yeah!"
Watching the armor form around her, Chris exhaled quietly to himself.
Honestly — with Horikita Manabu's intelligence, even without knowing Suzune had a second life, he should have prioritized his own survival. He could have waited until the exam ended and revived her with S-Points afterward.
But — there was nothing to be done. The cursed spirit had chosen its Domain position too well.
Perhaps because it had been provoked and was still riding the rage from earlier, the Domain had expanded at precisely the angle that cut off Horikita Manabu's escape route completely.
With nowhere to run, Horikita Manabu had simply made use of the situation — done Chris a favor, and saved his sister in the same stroke.
You could call it fate's hand tipping the scales.
...Am I being a little too evil here?
Chris was in the middle of this entirely guilt-free moment of reflection when —
"Hah... hah... w-what's the situation?"
With heavy, ragged gasping, a figure stumbled into view not far from them.
Ryuuen Kakeru was coughing up mouthfuls of blood. Dark red was seeping from his nostrils too. The backlash from overusing [Sianweistan] had left him dazed and glassy-eyed — one step away from drooling like a man who'd truly lost his mind.
"Didn't you and Ichinose go rescue the other students? Why are you alone — where is she?"
The air rippled.
Sakayanagi Arisu materialized from thin air, the [Romantic Cannon Platform · Pumpkin] cradled in her arms.
After her ambush had landed, she had used the controller to activate invisibility and slip away from Ayanokoji — that was how she had managed to escape in one piece.
Ryuuen Kakeru shook his head hard, trying to force his vision back into focus. His words came out rough and halting.
"...Too many lava meteors got sprayed everywhere. Fires broke out all over the place. On top of that, several 'space-time rifts' opened up below us — kept tying our hands."
"In the end, we had to leave Ichinose — she can fly — to keep running rescues down there. I came to back you up."
He spat out a mouthful of bloody foam. "Once we settle this volcanic bastard, we split up and sweep up whatever monsters are left — then we end this exam!"
Sakayanagi Arisu nodded. She reached into her pocket and tossed each of them a capsule of [MC Milk].
Then she cracked one open herself, tilted her head back, and drained it — clearing the suffocating tightness in her chest from all the volcanic ash.
She let out a quiet sigh. "This is going to be hard."
"That thing has no obvious weakness, and its regeneration is absurd. In its own home turf like this, it seems to have access to some kind of energy supply on top of that... conventional attacks simply aren't going to cut it."
"Then we kick it out of the volcano!"
Ryuuen wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "It's only a ninety-something-point monster — not maxed out. I refuse to believe it's actually unkillable!"
Then he craned his neck and scanned the area. "Where's Ayanokoji? He didn't follow...? ...Actually, yeah, makes sense. His Breathing technique is probably useless in this kind of scorching, ash-choked environment."
Chris opened his mouth to respond —
But the Black Sphere's voice rang out across the sky before he could get a word in.
Between the ongoing barrage of lava meteors and the space-time rifts Chris had set up in advance, the survivor count had been bleeding out fast and had just hit the threshold.
[Attention all survivors!]
[Current survivor count in the examination area: 97.]
[The second supply airdrop will be arriving shortly.]
[Please remain alert.]
"An airdrop?!"
Ryuuen's head snapped up. His prosthetic eye cut straight through the thick volcanic ash and locked onto the high altitude — he found the metal crate trailing a parachute almost instantly.
"It's right above us! Grab the airdrop first — everything else second!"
Sakayanagi Arisu pressed her lips together. "Let's hope another Upper Moon demon doesn't come tumbling out of it..."
The words were barely out of her mouth when the lava pool below exploded open.
The Domain collapsed. Jogo reappeared where it had been standing.
But this time, Nagumo Miyabi had learned from what happened before. The moment the Domain boundary had begun to waver, he had been lurking at its edge — chewing through [Golden Apple] cards and biding his time, waiting for exactly this moment to avenge Horikita Manabu.
"Die!!"
Nagumo Miyabi lunged.
The Black Sphere war blade on his arm swept clean through Jogo's midsection — slicing it in two.
In the same motion, he launched a flying kick that sent the upper half of Jogo's body rocketing into the sky. At the same time he raised his palm cannon and unleashed a volley of enhanced gravity-wave rounds.
"Beautifully done!" Ryuuen bellowed.
Meanwhile, Horikita Suzune was already darting laterally across the jagged lava rocks nearby, hunting for a clean sniping angle.
Unfortunately — the enhanced rifle had a three-second delay.
Against a Special-Grade cursed spirit like Jogo — fast in casting, fast in movement — that delay was a crippling disadvantage.
The moment the Domain had ended, Jogo had already begun weaving hand signs in mid-air.
Yes, Nagumo's ambush had succeeded — Jogo's body had been severed. But that hadn't slowed its technique completion by even a second.
"Pathetic humans — how dare you act so insolent!"
The already-active volcanic magma went berserk under Jogo's cursed energy pull.
Multiple columns of lava, each dozens of meters wide, erupted skyward — engulfing everyone in the blast radius at once.
"Scatter!"
Nagumo Miyabi and Ryuuen Kakeru used their mobility to ricochet off the flying debris, narrowly threading between the lava pillars and avoiding a direct hit.
Horikita Suzune wasn't so lucky.
Even with the Reiwa Rider armor equipped, the stacked defensive strength of two armor layers had its limits — against this wide-range AOE, she couldn't dodge in time. The lava swallowed her whole.
Sakayanagi Arisu would have shared the same fate.
But she'd had the good sense to stay right next to Chris.
"Hold on."
Chris — Demon Possession active — scooped Sakayanagi Arisu into his arms and launched upward, leaping and bounding through mid-air.
Locked tight against Chris, feeling the searing heat radiating from his armor — and from the [Romantic Cannon Platform] clutched in her own hands — Sakayanagi Arisu did not panic.
"The Combat Suit can't hold out much longer! The Romantic Cannon's trait is that the closer the user is to death — the greater its output! "
"Can someone pin it in place?! I need to land a clean charged shot!"
Hearing the call, Ryuuen — who had just barely found his footing — forcibly activated Sianweistan again.
"I've got it!"
Time turned to molasses in Ryuuen's perception.
Stepping across the raining meteors and shattered rock like stepping stones, he blinked behind Jogo in an instant.
"Hold still!!"
The Black Sphere war blade punched clean through Jogo's chest from behind — no hesitation, no mercy.
Below, Nagumo Miyabi moved in perfect sync — his palm cannon blasting relentlessly at Jogo's severed limb stumps, trying to prevent them from reconnecting into the hand seals.
But here was the thing.
For a cursed spirit, its technique was rooted in its cursed energy and its core. A few missing hands and feet meant absolutely nothing — it could not be stripped of the right to cast.
So Jogo — skewered on the blade — didn't struggle.
It laughed.
"Heh heh... hahahaha!"
"It seems... you've deeply misunderstood me."
Jogo turned its head. Its single eye fixed on Ryuuen Kakeru.
"Worthless scraps of metal with no cursed energy — and you dare try to kill me?! Here, at the volcano's mouth — the very incarnation of humanity's dread of the earth and its fire?!"
"Keep dreaming!!"
The alarm in Ryuuen's prosthetic eye flashed red. The data feedback screamed at him — Jogo's internal energy was spiking exponentially.
"Damn it!"
He acted without hesitation — wrenching the blade in a savage twist, letting it drag across Jogo's skull and split its upper body clean in half, then yanking back and throwing himself into full retreat.
But Jogo had no intention of letting him go.
A terrifying spiral of flames erupted around its body. Crushing gravitational force locked onto Ryuuen Kakeru — dragging him upward toward the sky.
Toward the [Goku-no-Ban · Inseki] — the ultimate meteor technique — that was now crystallizing into final form.
Fortunately, though much of the cybernetics in Ryuuen's body had melted from the extreme temperatures, the Sianweistan module hardwired into his spine still held.
At this knife's edge between life and death —
He coughed up another mouthful of blood and forced time deceleration active one more time. Using the chunks of rock erupting upward around him as makeshift platforms, he barely — barely — wrenched himself free from the gravitational pull.
Seeeing that, Nagumo Miyabi gritted his teeth and fell back alongside Ryuuen.
With Horikita Manabu almost certainly dead, Nagumo absolutely could not afford to die here. Not just because of the massive S-Point stockpile he was carrying — but because if he died, there would be no one left to revive Manabu. No one left to save him.
Meanwhile — using the window of time that Ryuuen and Nagumo had bought with their lives — Chris, still holding Sakayanagi Arisu, landed cleanly on top of the airdrop crate that had just come crashing down.
With lava spraying everywhere, the parachute had long since burned away. The two of them rode the metal box as it plummeted toward the churning lava pool below.
"Szzzt..."
The Combat Suit on Sakayanagi Arisu's body had begun to melt under the intense heat. Her fair skin was already flushing a deep, searing red.
She looked up — Jogo's enormous flaming meteor now dominated the entire sky above them, bearing down with annihilating force.
Death felt very close.
The girl smiled. She turned to look at Chris.
"Look at us right now... we really are becoming quite the ill-fated pair, aren't we."
Chris kept a straight face. He reached out and pulled up the airdrop's opening interface, replying without missing a beat:
"Based on Horikita Manabu's field experience — in this exam, even if you die, as long as your equipment was kept on your person, it carries over when you respawn."
"Dying once isn't the end of the world. Hurry up and let me borrow your Field Guide — I need to know what's in this crate."
Sakayanagi Arisu didn't move.
Even as the Combat Suit failed and she was left holding on by her own strength alone, she kept the Romantic Cannon Platform leveled — locked onto Jogo above.
"Sorry about this, Chris."
The girl's teeth were clenched. The sweat on her forehead evaporated before it could fall.
"My hands... have fused to the Romantic Cannon Platform."
"To keep from wasting the final shot — you'll have to search my pockets yourself."
Chris didn't stand on ceremony. He reached directly into the girl's pockets and began feeling around.
In the process, due to the combination of sensitivity and extreme heat, the girl let out a soft sound of indeterminate meaning — but with [Demon Possession] active between them, Chris didn't have a single brain cell to spare for such things.
Field Guide in hand, he made a perfunctory sweep over the four capsules that had popped out of the airdrop crate.
As the Field Guide's light passed over them, text appeared.
Chris looked almost startled. He grabbed one of the capsules and crushed it in his fist.
With a flash of white light, a peculiar-looking flashlight materialized in his hand.
[Shrink Ray Lamp]!
Chris looked up.
Jogo had thrown all pretense aside. The colossal flaming meteor, carrying the force to obliterate everything, came crashing straight down toward them.
"Come on! Come on!!"
"No matter how many times you insects revive — I'll burn you all to ash! Over and over again!!"
With the meteor nearly close enough to press against their faces — in that razor-thin instant between life and death —
Sakayanagi Arisu yanked the Romantic Cannon Platform's trigger.
"Then... let's find out!"
At almost the exact same moment.
Chris raised the Shrink Ray Lamp, aimed it squarely at the meteor overhead, and pressed the switch.
"Fwshhhh—!"
A miracle happened.
The enormous meteor that had been on the verge of swallowing the entire volcanic crater — shrank in an instant. What had been a mountain of destruction compressed into a single burning chunk of rock no bigger than a human head.
The moment the meteor shrunk, Chris snapped the Shrink Ray Lamp off — cutting the beam before it could accidentally clip the Romantic Cannon Platform's output.
And then —
"BOOM — !!"
A pillar of golden light erupted into the sky.
That terrifying surge of energy tore through the shrunk meteor, blasted straight through the volcanic ash cloud overhead, and punched clean through Jogo itself — all in one shot.
The golden column screamed upward and burst a hole through the heavens themselves.
For the first time since the exam began — brilliant starlight came pouring down into the volcanic crater.
"Impossible..."
Jogo screamed as its body was completely vaporized.
But because of its nature as a cursed spirit — and because this was its home turf — it didn't truly die.
After a brief silence, Jogo's form began to reconstitute itself from within the splashing magma.
Only this time — it was far slower. Its aura was feeble. The confident ease it had displayed moments ago was completely gone.
It reached out a hand, grasping for the Sukuna's Finger that had just tumbled free from within its body.
It had to swallow it again — both to reinforce its cursed energy, and to prevent some thief from stealing it once more.
Directly below, the airdrop crate — now without support — plunged toward the now-exposed lava pool, carrying both of them with it.
Sakayanagi Arisu stared up at the hole punched through the clouds, something close to disbelief on her face.
"The Romantic Cannon Platform... was really that powerful?"
Chris glanced down at the lava about to swallow them and remarked dryly:
"That powerful, yeah. It was bought with a life, after all."
"...By the way — can the Shrink Ray Lamp shrink the lava around us too?"
Honestly, with [Demon Possession]'s own adaptive resilience, Chris could technically take a lava bath and walk out fine if he wanted to.
But out of a certain respect for Jogo — ninety-something-point monster and all — Chris figured he'd go ahead and spend one of his lives here.
Besides. Staying completely unkillable indefinitely was inevitably going to raise suspicion.
Sakayanagi Arisu gave a small shake of her head. "Just die and be done with it. If what you said is accurate, it's faster to just respawn with a clean slate and go again."
Then she turned her head, tilting it with sudden curiosity.
"By the way — what were the other items in the crate?"
Chris answered casually:
"One of them is [Devil's Essence] — a Danger Species blood sample. Drinking it grants the ability to freely manipulate ice..."
He hadn't even finished the sentence.
Sakayanagi Arisu, from some unknown reserve of strength, had already snatched the red capsule right out of his hand.
"You had something this good and didn't say so right away... I'm trying it!"
She crushed the capsule and downed the vial of dark red blood in a single swallow.
Only then did the rest of Chris's sentence drift quietly to her ear:
"...Although legend has it that drinking it grants dominion over ice — in practice, the overwhelming majority of people who've actually consumed it couldn't withstand the rampaging bloodlust that came with it. They all lost themselves and went mad."
"And on top of that — this thing is an Imperial Arms. No one person can wield two Imperial Arms simultaneously..."
Sakayanagi Arisu swallowed the last of it and smiled.
"Going mad? That sounds rather entertaining."
"Death is a cool summer night — a sleep without worry."
"We're going to burn to death anyway. A more dramatic exit isn't exactly a downgrade."
The girl licked her lips, feeling something stir and tremble inside her:
"Besides... I feel better right now than I ever have in my life."
The words were barely out before —
With Sakayanagi Arisu as the epicenter, ice crystals erupted and spread in every direction.
The surrounding lava — hot enough to melt steel — lost every trace of heat in moments before the encroaching frost, freezing solid into black volcanic rock.
The ice crawled upward along the walls of the volcanic crater. In the span of a few short seconds, the entire boiling volcano was encased — completely buried beneath a thick, creeping glacier.
And in the wake of unleashing that world-freezing final chorus —
Sakayanagi Arisu's body finally reached its absolute limit.
The outcome was, of course, obvious.
She had never possessed the ability to tame a super Danger Species.
Moreover — the reason Sakayanagi and Ichinose had been able to wield Imperial Arms at all was because they had been modified in advance, lowering the threshold of use.
But even so — the problem of conflicting Imperial Arms wills had not been resolved.
Or rather — it had been deliberately left unresolved.
Chris could barely imagine anyone else in this world — other than himself — who could forcibly reconcile two Imperial Arms at once.
Still — looking at the completely frozen volcanic crater —
Chris glanced at the weather forecast display behind him and gave a satisfied nod.
"That gives me a decent excuse to make my exit."
"Nice teamwork. Not bad at all."
At the same time —
In a dense forest several kilometers from the volcanic crater.
Ichinose Honami had just hoisted Amikura Mako up onto an ancient tree that the lava hadn't reached yet.
She was about to turn back and dive in again to search for more students still trapped in the inferno.
Suddenly, Amikura Mako up in the tree canopy pointed at the distant night sky and called out:
"Ichinose! Look over at the volcano!"
Ichinose followed her gaze.
In the distance, lit from below by a hellish orange glow —
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, transformed into the Armored Titan, was directing the Parasytes — morphed into dozens of tentacles — like a net, fishing the remaining students out of the sea of fire one by one.
But what shook her even more was the volcano itself — still belching thick smoke and magma.
Just moments ago — a golden column of light had punched clean through the cloud layer.
And then — with visible speed — the entire volcano had been sealed shut under a layer of pale, ghostly ice.
Fire and ice, colliding under the night sky — the visual impact was staggering.
Ichinose turned back to Amikura, words coming fast:
"Mako, stay with Karuizawa and the others — get somewhere safe and wait!"
"I'm heading over there to check what happened!"
With that, she beat her wings and launched herself straight toward the volcano.
She arrived quickly.
Ichinose Honami pulled up to a hover in front of Ayanokoji, raised her voice over the noise:
"Ayanokoji! What happened over there?!"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka shook his head:
"I don't know. I got wiped out by that monster right at the start and have been working the perimeter doing rescues ever since. I didn't see what went down."
"But — the Black Sphere just dropped the airdrop on Chris's side. Whatever just happened, that's probably why."
Hearing that, Ichinose's brow furrowed tight, worry deepening in her chest.
"Senpai was still in there..."
She bit down on her lip, then looked at Ayanokoji:
"Ayanokoji, you stay here and keep protecting everyone! I'm going to check the crater and see if I can help!"
Ayanokoji didn't stop her.
He'd already burned one of his lives after all.
Even counting the extra one he'd earned as yesterday's reward, he had more than enough reason to play it careful now.
Besides — right now he was far more interested in hunting down the lower-scoring monsters scattered across the area.
Taking on Jogo? Completely out of the question.
But sweeping up the stray Parasytes, Evil Spirits, and demons roaming around — grinding a little extra on the side — that was perfectly doable.
The rules were clear: the exam wouldn't end until either the survivor count inside the exam area dropped to the threshold, or all the monsters were cleared.
This plan of his served double duty — farming points for himself, while genuinely keeping everyone safer.
Completely reasonable. Logical, even.
Just as Ayanokoji was mentally mapping out his point-grinding route —
He suddenly caught the sound of a girl screaming from below.
Ayanokoji looked down.
Only then did he notice — in the muddy ground below —
Wang Meiyu and Sakura Airi, one on each side, were desperately clinging to Ibuki Mio — who was already waist-deep in the earth, being pulled down by something in the mud.
"Let go!"
"If you don't, that thing will eat you both too!" Ibuki Mio was drenched in sweat, shouting through gritted teeth.
Wang Meiyu's face was flushed crimson — she refused to release her grip.
"That's not a monster! That's Ayanokoji!"
She whipped her head up and screamed:
"Ayanokoji! Please — help us!"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka assessed the situation quickly. He wasn't the type to watch and do nothing.
He extended a Parasyte-formed tentacle toward the three of them, ready to pull them up.
But —
Just as the tentacle was about to make contact with the three girls —
The space-time rift beneath Ibuki Mio seemed to develop a mind of its own.
It surged — suddenly pulling with far greater force.
"Ahhh——!!!"
No time to react.
Not just Ibuki Mio — Sakura Airi and Wang Meiyu, still holding on, couldn't let go fast enough. All three were swallowed by the rift together.
A gentle breeze drifted past.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka stared down at the now-empty patch of ground, his expression perfectly blank.
A long moment passed.
He said nothing. He simply, quietly, retracted the tentacle.
"...Well. Back to farming points, I guess."
____
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