Deep in a dark forest — the kind no scanner could ever reach.
The blue light of the teleport faded away.
Chris swept his gaze around, confirmed they were safe for the moment, then turned his attention to Sakayanagi Arisu — who had already composed herself a short distance away, brushing a stray lock of hair from her temple, her elegance fully restored.
"To think you'd get teleported right next to me..." Chris rubbed his chin, expression slightly puzzled.
"Now that I think about it, it was already suspicious that you could get into Class A while lugging around that disability of yours.
"Be honest — you didn't get first place on the midterms by pulling strings through that same connection, did you?"
Sakayanagi Arisu had been on the verge of giving him a bright, radiant smile — she'd been quietly delighted to find herself revived right beside him — but at those words, her expression froze ever so slightly.
She pressed one finger lightly to the side of her head, and let out a haughty little huff.
"Getting into Class A was entirely thanks to this incomparable brain of mine."
"When you're dealing with a true genius, even the most rigorous screening systems make appropriate allowances. It's called an exceptional admission. Perhaps you've heard of it?"
Chris made a noncommittal sound and pressed his lips together.
A genius who plays chess, huh.
Honestly... put her up against an AI, and she'd probably lose.
Not that Chris had any intention of pushing the point. This kind of idle bickering was just part of the routine — taking it seriously would be a waste of everyone's time.
He dropped the subject and, without ceremony, reached out and closed his hand around Sakayanagi Arisu's slender wrist.
At the sudden, assertive gesture, Sakayanagi Arisu's heart gave a small, involuntary jump.
The first thought that flashed through her mind was:
Should I put up at least token resistance? If I just go along with it so easily, doesn't that make me look... cheap? Way too eager?
But when she lifted her eyes —
She found no trace of anything untoward on Chris's face. He was simply pulling up the controller radar on her wrist at speed.
Sakayanagi Arisu gave a small, composed cough.
She smoothed over her own embarrassment without missing a beat, and redirected with a note of mild deflation in her voice:
"Speaking of which — that supply drop capsule... I believe it contained four items in total..."
"Aside from the one I just used, what were the other items?"
Chris didn't bother with preamble. He flicked his wrist and tossed two capsules her way.
Sakayanagi Arisu fumbled to catch them, visibly startled.
"My, how generous... aren't you worried I'll misuse these and end up getting you killed?"
Chris was already tapping through the three-dimensional map, tracking the cluster of green dots closing in on their position. He didn't turn around.
"Go ahead and look for yourself."
"I'd love to see how you'd manage to misuse those particular items."
"Though honestly, what I'm more curious about right now is that [Demon Essence] you chugged down. What's the status on that?"
"Can we call that a... forced fusion success?"
Sakayanagi Arisu gave a proud little huff at that.
Without asking permission, she reached directly into Chris's pocket, fished out the Item Catalog, and held it up to scan the two capsules.
Beep —
[Amenonuhoko + Black Rope (Special-Grade Cursed Tool)]
[Ability: On contact, forcibly nullifies and dismantles all cursed techniques without exception. This includes limitless techniques, Domain Expansions, Reverse Cursed Techniques, and other conceptual defenses. The Black Rope component additionally disrupts and cancels all techniques on contact.]
[Will be reclaimed at the end of the exam. Value: 40,000 Item Points.]
[Soul-Release Blade (Special-Grade · Soul-Severing Tachi)]
[Ability: A tachi capable of directly severing the soul. Ignores physical defenses, and wounds inflicted by this blade cannot be healed through conventional Reverse Cursed Techniques.]
[Will be reclaimed at the end of the exam. Value: 20,000 Item Points.]
After reading through both descriptions, Sakayanagi Arisu let out a quiet, impressed murmur.
"It seems these two items are precisely what it takes to counter that cursed spirit."
"Though converting to S-Points, each one is only worth around forty..."
"The Black Cauldron Armor valued at a hundred points, and the Combat Suit at two hundred — both looked completely outclassed in that last battle."
"So when it comes to supernatural monsters like this, you really do need a specific counter, don't you?"
Chris shook his head at that.
"It's like medicine."
"Talking about gear strength in a vacuum, without considering who's wielding it, is completely meaningless."
"Consider the possibility — Jikku is simply strong to begin with. It's a high-tier monster worth eighty or ninety points. Our side has just been holding on through sheer equipment advantage."
"At the end of the day, we're all students who haven't even graduated yet. None of us have had real, targeted combat training. You expect a three-year-old handed a top-of-the-line sniper rifle to immediately become a dead-eye marksman?"
Truth be told —
If you swapped out the current users of [Demon Essence] and [Demon Possession] for, say, the late-arc sadist queen Esdeath from Akame ga Kill!, and a dragon-transformed Tatsumi —
Fighting Jikku would be a completely different story. One with an ice-general blizzard leveling cities, the other tanking hits that would stagger a Mahapratima.
When you stripped it all back, it came down to the same thing:
Stats were just too low. They couldn't even use the cheat items properly.
Skill issue. Grind more.
Sakayanagi Arisu listened, then nodded slowly, thoughtful.
She turned her gaze back to the controller interface. "I didn't expect us to be teleported all the way out here — getting back to the crater is going to take some time. Let's hope Ryuuen and Vice President Nagumo are tough enough to hold out."
"On that note..." She pointed to something at the edge of the radar display. "Karuizawa and Kushida are surprisingly close to us right now. Want to check on them first?"
Chris pressed his lips together.
He knew perfectly well that before Ichinose left, she had entrusted the Sukuna's Finger recovered from Douma's stomach to Karuizawa Kei and Shiina Hiyori for safekeeping.
Given how cautious Jikku had become — especially after the Romantic Cannon had shaved off a chunk of its maximum health — it would absolutely be desperate to reclaim that finger and replenish its cursed energy.
But from where Chris currently stood, he wasn't supposed to know any of that.
So he thought for a moment, then answered smoothly, as if it were the most natural conclusion:
"Let's find Jikku first. Pleasantries can wait."
"We're sitting on the lion's share of the drop equipment from two exams combined. If we let Jikku keep running rampant — if it actually erupts the volcano and sinks the whole island — doesn't that make us look completely useless?"
Sakayanagi Arisu let out a soft laugh. "Fair point."
"Then let's go rescue our dear Ryuuen and the others first."
As she spoke, she tossed the capsule containing [Demon Essence] back to Chris.
The girl tilted her head up and asked, half-joking:
"Once we've dealt with that cursed spirit, you should be sitting on over a hundred S-Points. Have you decided which item you're taking home?"
Chris gave her an amused look.
"We haven't even started fighting yet, and you're already thinking about divvying up the loot after the boss is dead?"
"I'd just like to point out — not even a few minutes ago, we got absolutely demolished, and nearly wiped. Ring any bells?"
Sakayanagi Arisu lifted her chin, unbothered.
"As you yourself just said — we've got the exact counter in hand and the whole strategy figured out. If we still can't pass this, then we really would be completely useless, wouldn't we?"
And as the two of them bantered —
Rumble, rumble, rumble —
A tremor rolled through the ground beneath them.
Sakayanagi Arisu glanced up sharply at the controller.
On the screen, the deep crimson dot representing Jikku was surging across the display at terrifying speed — bearing straight down on the position she had just pointed out: Karuizawa Kei and the others.
Sakayanagi Arisu's brow furrowed slightly. The realization hit her in an instant.
"Its heading is that deliberate... Don't tell me — Ichinose handed Sukuna's Finger to Karuizawa and Shiina for safekeeping?"
"Doesn't matter now."
Chris lifted the broadblade of [Demon Possession].
"Since our target has somewhere it needs to be — let's just set up an ambush along the only route it can take."
---
A brief rewind in time.
After parting ways with Ichinose Honami —
At the makeshift camp on the forest's edge, Amikura Mako turned her head and looked toward Karuizawa Kei, who was doing her best to calm the other girls down.
The mood among the group was nothing short of miserable.
The meteor shower of lava that had rained down moments ago hadn't caused a total wipe — they were far enough away for that — but several unlucky girls had taken direct hits, losing a precious life on the spot.
The sheer helplessness of it — the feeling that death could come for you at any moment no matter what you did — had left everyone feeling like a candle guttering in the wind.
"Listen, everyone..."
Amikura Mako raised her voice, trying to pull people back from the edge. "I know things look bad right now, but please — trust Ichinose and the others! They're fighting for us out there on the front lines!"
"Even if we can't do much to help, the least we can do is not make things worse right now. Trust Ichinose! Trust everyone!"
She pointed toward the volcano. "And look — the supply drop already appeared, and that erupting volcano has literally been frozen solid! With new equipment in hand, Ichinose and the others will definitely come back victorious!"
"Right, Horikita-san?"
As she spoke, Amikura Mako turned a hopeful gaze toward Horikita Suzune, who was standing a short distance away.
Horikita Suzune had appeared at the edge of their camp not long ago.
She'd been spotted by Kushida Kikyo — because the moment she'd transformed into Leo Rider, she'd gone absolutely wild tearing through every stray monster in the area, venting her grief with enough noise to draw attention.
At first, Amikura Mako's heart had sunk to her stomach when she spotted the Leo Rider belt — she'd thought it meant Chris had died and been teleported back.
But when the person deactivated the transformation, it turned out to be Horikita Suzune.
Her expression was so dark and frightening that no one had dared ask what had happened.
But now, watching the group's collective morale collapsing under the pressure, Amikura Mako couldn't hold back any longer. If anyone could give these girls even a shred of confidence, it was this frontline fighter standing right among them.
Unfortunately, Amikura Mako was about to be disappointed.
Horikita Suzune was silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was cold and flat.
"Don't cling to unrealistic fantasies."
"Unless the supply drop contains some kind of one-hit-kill special equipment — with our current combat strength, there is absolutely no way we can beat that monster."
"Most likely... our only option is to wait for the survivor count to drop to 45 and trigger the failsafe — the one mechanism that forces the exam to end."
The moment those words landed, the already fragile group fell into even greater panic.
Kushida Kikyo managed to force a strained smile. "H-Horikita-san... you're joking, right?"
She'd also taken a direct hit from a lava meteor during the earlier evacuation chaos, losing one of her lives.
If the Black Sphere hadn't already locked her into the fixed roster at the start — if it hadn't given her those two extra safety lives as a baseline guarantee — she'd genuinely be one bad moment away from permanent death.
Horikita Suzune didn't contradict her. She simply continued.
"So — in order to survive, I believe we should go on the offensive."
"Not against Jikku. I'm not asking you to go throw your lives away."
"What I mean is — we seek out the low-scoring monsters and steadily build up our S-Points."
"That way, even if the exam ends with only 45 of us left alive — at least we'll have something to work with. A foundation to start over from."
From a purely rational standpoint, Horikita Suzune's words were reasonable enough.
But to the ears of a group that was already scared out of their minds, the message boiled down to exactly one sentence:
Jikku is coming. Another city is about to fall.
"Waaah..."
Suppressed sobs finally burst open.
Even Karuizawa Kei — who had come here to comfort everyone and keep spirits up — felt her own chest tighten involuntarily.
After all, she was, at heart, a coward who was good at putting on a brave face. Every bit of security she had ever felt came from Chris's protection.
Now, with Horikita Suzune's bleak words ringing in her ears, the only reason Karuizawa Kei hadn't crumpled to the ground right then and there was a blind, stubborn faith in Chris.
Chris... you're okay, right? You have to be.
But before that sinking, spiritless atmosphere could fully take hold —
Rumble, rumble...
The earth shuddered.
The leaves around them hissed and rattled. Morishita Ai stumbled on her footing and nearly fell, only barely caught by a friend beside her.
At that moment, Shiina Hiyori — who had been staring fixedly at the Y-GUN radar screen — spoke up, her voice trembling.
"Um... everyone."
"The red dot at the crater... I think it's... heading toward us!"
"What?!"
Kushida Kikyo went white as a sheet.
She instinctively grabbed Karuizawa Kei's arm like it was a lifeline.
"Kei! What do we do?!"
Karuizawa Kei's face scrunched up.
Sis, if you're asking me, who am I supposed to ask?! I'm barely holding it together myself!
But in the midst of the panic, she felt it — the eerie, dry coldness of the shriveled finger resting in her palm.
And just like that, something clicked.
"Wait!"
Karuizawa Kei snapped her head up. "Before Ichinose left, she said this thing was important... Could it be — that monster is specifically coming for this finger?!"
"If that's really it, then if I run into one of the space-time rifts the Black Sphere set up while carrying it... wouldn't that completely ruin its day?!"
At this bold, out-of-nowhere plan, Morishita Ai stared at Karuizawa Kei with undisguised awe.
"Karuizawa-san."
"Are you... secretly some kind of hidden genius?!"
Amazawa Natsuha poured cold water on the idea at the right moment.
"Great thinking, but the problem is — we have no idea where any of the space-time rifts actually are right now. Running around blindly is just going to get us killed faster."
"Oh, I know where one is!"
Morishita Ai's hand shot up immediately. "I got caught in one earlier! And Chabashira-sensei even drew a safety line around the area at the time... if we cross-reference it with the radar map, we can find it!"
"I'll look it up right now!"
Shiina Hiyori quickly raised the Y-GUN, already scrambling to pull up the record of where the space-time rift had been encountered earlier.
But —
As a last-minute plan thrown together in a panic — against a Special-Grade Cursed Spirit with supersonic mobility — it was still far too slow.
One kilometer. One-point-five seconds.
That was Jikku's speed.
It was fast. Absurdly fast.
Even as everyone was frantically cross-referencing the maps —
The red dot on the radar screen exploded into a frantic strobe.
Jikku had arrived.
BOOM——!!!
With a pillar of fire and the suffocating reek of sulfur, an enormous lava fireball came crashing down without mercy directly toward the girls' position.
Eyes full of despair. Frozen. Not knowing where to run.
And then — the completely unexpected happened.
In the instant before the fireball swallowed them all —
Whoosh —!
A figure clad in silver-white armor, cape snapping violently in the scorching updraft, launched itself into the air.
In one hand, a short dagger of unusual design.
Facing that terrifying fireball — the kind that could melt steel — the figure did nothing more than draw a single, calm line through the air.
Tsss!
The fireball split clean in two.
Then both halves scattered into drifting sparks and dissolved into nothing.
In the same motion —
Still airborne, the figure wrenched its body sideways and hurled the silver spear in its grip at a sharp angle.
BOOM!
The spear punched through three ancient trees as thick as a man's arms spread wide — and drove Jikku, which had just touched down, straight into the ground like a nail.
"Guhk——!"
Jikku coughed up a massive spray of blood. Its single eye stared in utter disbelief.
That technique — the same technique as Horikita Manabu's, but somehow several times faster than when he'd used it — filled Jikku with a dread it had not felt in a very long time.
There was a strange sense of déjà vu. Where was this feeling coming from?
But the dread curdled quickly into humiliation.
"Useless! Useless! USELESS!!!"
Jikku's enraged roar shook the air. The magma around it erupted into violent boiling.
"Even off my home turf — even if you've found some strange weapon to strip away my techniques — what about all these humans you're trying to protect?!"
"These feeble little insects who didn't even dare face me themselves... I'm certain they don't have the same privilege of revival that you do!"
With that, Jikku slammed both palms together and began weaving the hand signs for another technique.
"Extreme · Meteor Fall!"
Bang!
Sakayanagi Arisu — hidden at a flanking high-ground position using the controller's stealth — had been waiting for exactly this moment.
A thick beam of light punched straight through Jikku's outstretched arms, forcibly breaking its casting motion.
"AAAARGH!!"
Jikku shrieked in fury. "I told you it's useless! Attacks at your level can't kill me! How many times do I have to tell you before you——"
The words died in its throat.
Chris had already appeared directly behind it.
In his hand, the unassuming [Soul-Release Blade] was raised high.
Sensing the lethal threat at its back, Jikku's every hair stood on end.
Raw survival instinct detonated — a spiraling firestorm erupted outward, burning to cinders anything that dared draw close.
Chris simply reversed his grip on [Amenonuhoko] in his left hand, and drew a single lazy line through the wall of fire.
Riiip——!!
It came apart like paper.
At the sight of that, Jikku's composure shattered completely.
Desperate, it raised the hand that had just regenerated and flung it into a Domain Expansion cast — anything to buy time.
But against the [Amenonuhoko] — a blade that could cut through even the Limitless itself — all of this was nothing.
Thunk!
Chris drove the Amenonuhoko straight through Jikku's palm.
Then, in his right hand, the [Soul-Release Blade] became a blur of afterimages.
In the flash of that blade — our dear friend the cursed spirit pot was methodically carved into neat, uniform little pieces.
Its soul, too, was severed utterly.
A breeze passed through.
Not even ash remained.
If you did a post-mortem analysis, actually —
The reason Ryuuen Kakeru and Nagumo Miyabi had such a brutal time against Jikku came down, in the end, to a simple type-matchup problem.
Just like the fight against Douma at the start.
The enhanced rifles' output was absolutely sufficient to wound it — but ordinary physical destruction couldn't actually kill a creature like that. You could only drag things out and stall for time, waiting for sunlight or Ripple Breathing.
By the same token —
The enhancements from [Sianweistan] and the [Combat Suit] were genuinely enough to match or even surpass Jikku's movements.
But on Jikku's home turf inside the volcano, against a cursed spirit with infinite regeneration —
If you couldn't damage its soul or core, you were just taking a beating.
Though, Chris did think —
With the current stack of [Heart of Steel] buffs he'd accumulated — over a thousand layers —
Under the Combat Suit's tenfold enhancement, further amplified by [Demon Possession] —
He might genuinely have been able to punch Jikku's body and soul simultaneously into dust with a single fist.
After all, League of Legends was hardly short of undead who didn't stay dead.
And those mechanic-breaking, priority-override cheats they ran were on a completely different level compared to any cursed spirit.
At that moment —
With the crisis finally resolved, Horikita Suzune — nerves wound tight the entire time — came forward alongside Karuizawa Kei toward Chris.
Watching him there, cape swaying freely in the cold moonlight —
Horikita Suzune's vision blurred slightly.
How she wished — the figure standing there, protecting everyone — were her brother.
But she knew. That was something that couldn't be brought back.
Karuizawa Kei wasn't burdened with thoughts anywhere near that complicated.
The moment Horikita Suzune told her the person inside the silver armor was Chris, every ounce of fear she'd been holding back for so long finally gave way all at once.
Like a swallow finally finding shelter in the trees, she threw herself forward without hesitation.
"Chris..."
"...I finally found you... I'm so glad I didn't give up!"
With only a small handful of girls nearby — even with Horikita Suzune standing right there —
Karuizawa Kei let herself go completely, burying her face in Chris's chest and sobbing without restraint.
Looking at Karuizawa Kei, who had cried herself into an absolute mess —
Chris reached up and gently ruffled her golden hair.
"Hey. It's okay now. It's over."
"Go tell everyone to stay put and not wander off. Get some rest yourself too."
He raised his head and looked up at the deep, dark sky.
"From here on in — leave it to me."
"I'm going to end this exam before sunrise."
Horikita Suzune bit her lower lip and stepped forward.
"I'll help...!"
As if afraid he'd refuse, she quickly added:
"If I run into something I can't handle, I'll run. I won't drag you down. I promise."
Chris looked at her — Horikita Suzune, who had finally come to understand her own limits — and gave a single approving nod.
"You've gotten smarter."
"Then — keep up."
____
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