His gaze swept across the product list, and Ryuuen Kakeru's eyes locked onto the [Yama Sword · Imitation], priced at eighty thousand item points.
"A tachi capable of slicing straight through space and performing spatial teleportation..." He stroked his chin.
"Heh. Putting this thing on display on purpose—does that mean we're supposed to save up enough points to buy it, then go off and fight the Darkness Devil?"
He turned to Kouenji Rokusuke beside him and asked:
"Kouenji, while you were testing things over here just now, did you find any way to earn item points?"
Kouenji Rokusuke pursed his lips and thought for a moment.
"There are ways, of course, Boy. Killing the 'Santa Claus' who can assimilate humans is worth 20,000 points, killing her exquisite dolls is worth 8,000, and as for those ordinary dolls crawling all over the place, those are 1,000 apiece."
Kouenji shrugged. "But as you can see, the difficulty now isn't even on the same order of magnitude as it was at the start."
Ryuuen Kakeru nodded, though he wasn't particularly bothered about the difficulty.
"In other words, if we can land the first kill on Santa Claus, plus another sixty ordinary puppets, we can scrape together these eighty thousand points..."
His brow furrowed slightly. "The problem is, even if we open the gate to Hell, how exactly are we supposed to kill the Darkness Devil?"
Just as the group was mulling it over, Makima—who had kept up her air of mystery off to the side this whole time—suddenly tilted her head slightly:
"I can help you return to Hell. In exchange, all you need to do is find a way to kill the Darkness Devil."
At these words, Sakayanagi Arisu's pale-purple eyes made a circuit over Makima.
She wasn't in any hurry to agree; instead, she suddenly spoke up:
"The presiding god told us at the very start that devils are products born to embody humanity's fear of some particular concept. Isn't that right, Miss Makima?"
Seeing that Makima didn't refute it,
the smile at the corner of Sakayanagi Arisu's mouth deepened. "Well then—since power derives from fear..."
"If we could, through some means, make all of humanity stop fearing the concept of 'darkness'—wouldn't that drastically weaken it at its very root?"
Listening from the side, Ichinose Honami's mouth fell slightly open:
"Sakayanagi-san... You want that 'Super High-School-Level Animator' to help make a brainwashing video? But... even if he really could create footage capable of altering the subconscious of all humanity, we have no distribution channels at all—how could we possibly spread it across the whole world in such a short time?"
"No exposure channels?" Ryuuen Kakeru suddenly let out a low laugh.
He raised a hand and pointed at his own head:
"Don't forget the template I'm carrying right now... a little thing like this is nothing to me."
"Now that Sakayanagi Arisu's pointed it out, I finally understand completely why the presiding god would assign a two-hundred-point ultimate BOSS to a bunch of us who've barely left the newbie village."
Ryuuen Kakeru licked his lips. "So this is what was waiting for us here."
The path to salvation lay right within it!
Ichinose Honami opened her mouth. But with the words right on the tip of her tongue, she forcibly swallowed them back down.
She couldn't ask. Still less could she expose Ryuuen Kakeru's intel here.
Because just a moment ago, Ichinose had confirmed a certain fact via the radar screen of her enhanced gun.
Though Makima was, on the surface, cooperating with them right now,
on the friend-or-foe identification radar of the Black Sphere equipment, the dots of light representing this beautiful lady—and the winged "Angel Devil" standing behind her—were all a glaring blood-red!
That was the color the system assigned to absolute hostile targets!
By contrast, although Quanxi and her Fiend girlfriends were red dots too, that chainsaw boy named Denji, as well as the sword-wielding Hayakawa Aki, showed up as green neutral units.
The information this conveyed was, in fact, already quite obvious.
After mulling it over for a moment, Ichinose spoke up to set the tone: "In that case, our objective now is crystal clear. First, we concentrate our strength to wipe out Santa Claus, save up enough points to redeem the Super High-School-Level Animator's support card, then make the video..."
"Let's just hope that animator can finish what we need within two hours."
"That's plenty of time." Ryuuen Kakeru strode to the edge of the rooftop.
Looking down at the main street below, Chainsaw Man and Quanxi were smashing Santa Claus's main body to a pulp over and over again.
But buffed by the flesh-scraps of the Darkness Devil, the enemy could always revive within an extremely short span, and kept summoning massive hordes of puppets to join the fight.
Quite a few puppets had even climbed up along the building's outer walls, ready to launch a sneak attack on the people remaining upstairs.
"Whoosh—!" In the blink of an eye, Ichinose Honami had spread her wings and flown into the air. Her fingers formed a gun.
As pink beams of light shot out one after another, the puppets that were struck turned straight into stone statues and shattered to pieces as they fell.
Seeing that Ichinose's upgrade really was effective, Ryuuen Kakeru lost any inclination to stay.
"I'll leave up here to you—I'm going down to help."
He needed to collect enough item points as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, just as Ichinose had said, if everything else was ready but they hit GAME OVER because they ran out of time, then the joke would really be on them.
With that thought, Ryuuen Kakeru leapt off. The thrusters on his back belched out a tail of flame, sending him crashing straight toward where Denji and Quanxi were—the very center of the battlefield, where the puppets were thickest!
Meanwhile, on the rooftop of the shopping mall.
Since the strongest among them, Makima, merely stood quietly in place with no intention whatsoever of lending a hand, the group had no choice but to hastily spread into formation to deal with the endless army of puppets surging up.
Horikita Suzune and Ichinose Honami were both run off their feet, with no chance for the moment to catch up with Horikita Manabu, who had just narrowly escaped death.
Kushida Kikyo, on the other hand, was holding a Y-GUN. On top of that, even though the sky was now growing dark and she could use the vampire bloodline of the Stone Mask, honestly there was no need to as long as she wasn't making contact with the enemy.
So she hung back at the edge, spectating with a clear conscience, and naturally had plenty of time to observe her surroundings.
She saw Kobeni Higashiyama gazing off at a smashed-up car, wailing "wah-ooh, wah-ooh";
saw the winged Angel Devil standing quietly behind Makima like a doll;
saw Horikita Manabu and Yamada Albert exchanging helpless glances—though they wanted to step up and help, the lack of suitable weapons left them at a loss;
and... her classmates wielding enhanced guns and swinging Black Sphere combat blades, just hacking away wildly, plus Ichinose Honami up in the air, ceaselessly firing pink beams to petrify the puppets...
Everyone's so strong. Kushida Kikyo sighed inwardly to herself.
'I feel like... maybe I can slack off again?'
'Ah, no, I can't slack off! I'm a woman who's got to save up a hundred points to escape the Black Sphere exam—I can only slack a little, I can't actually slack off!'
But the Y-GUN's teleportation mechanism really was rather time-consuming, requiring a target lock and teleport guidance.
In just the idle gaps while waiting in the rear, she could get quite a lot done.
And it was during one of these goofing-off intervals that Kushida Kikyo happened to glance down at the Y-GUN's radar screen, and the smile on her face stiffened slightly.
Wait... Mr. Angel and Miss Makima... why are they both the red dots that represent monsters?!
'Yabai... looks like I've stumbled onto something serious.'
Cold sweat instantly soaked through Kushida's back.
Still, considering how naturally Ichinose, Sakayanagi, and the others had been acting just now... yeah, it was probably better to pretend she didn't know and keep her mouth shut.
With that thought, to cover up her odd stiffness from a moment ago, Kushida Kikyo quickly put on a sweet, concerned smile.
She trotted over to Horikita Manabu's side and took out the Stone Mask's capsule.
"Student Council President, this is the Stone Mask. Just smear some fresh blood on it and put it on your head, and it can turn a person into a vampire with powerful regeneration and strength..."
Kushida Kikyo held it out, her eyes sincere. "We don't need it anymore—do you and the others need it, Student Council President?"
At this, Horikita Manabu shot her a somewhat surprised glance.
But seeing the odd expression on Kushida's face—as if she were straining to hide something—he nodded. "Thank you. That's thoughtful of you."
Kushida Kikyo let out a long sigh of relief.
'Thank goodness—nobody should have spotted any cracks, right?'
But in truth, Makima had, from the very beginning, used the birds circling in the sky to clearly see the friend-or-foe markers on their weapon screens.
Of course she knew she'd been flagged as an enemy.
She simply didn't care.
Since this group of visitors from another world had no intention of opposing her for now—and were even helping her clean up the trouble of the Darkness Devil—Makima was happy enough to keep watching for a while longer.
It wasn't only because she was curious about this so-called "Black Sphere."
It was even more because she couldn't yet get a read on whether that mysterious lizard man—the one who'd driven back the Darkness Devil—might show up again at the crucial moment.
As the Control Devil, she could dominate this group of students at will. But as for that mysterious lizard man... that was hard to say.
As for Horikita Suzune, who was bearing the pressure up front, she was at this moment caught in a tangle of hesitation.
Because she'd earlier agreed to a deal with Quanxi, she tried summoning her Stand to touch a few of the puppets.
As the light of a Miracle flickered, they reverted to the appearance of ordinary humans.
But... these ordinary people who'd just regained their senses hadn't even managed to run a couple of steps before they were touched again by the other puppets surging up from behind like a tide, and turned back into monsters.
Immediately after, they were pierced through by a single shot from Sakayanagi Arisu's [Romantic Cannon] and blasted into smithereens.
Watching this scene, honestly, Horikita Suzune found she couldn't quite bring herself to act.
"Horikita." Matsushita Chiaki, fighting back-to-back beside her, noticed something was off. Slashing apart an approaching puppet with one stroke, she spoke between breaths:
"I know what you're thinking. But... pity is something only the victors—only those who survive in the end—are worthy of possessing. It's humanity's noblest compassion, but it is absolutely not the kind of mercy that belongs on a battlefield."
"As for right now... you'd better look after your own life first."
Horikita Suzune fell silent for a moment, then nodded heavily. "I understand."
That said, because Chris had earlier shaken her awake, she'd decided to "be herself." Having stopped blindly imitating her brother, Horikita Suzune did in the end make a compromise.
She didn't completely cast aside the kindness in her heart and slaughter ruthlessly, but neither did she foolishly restore people in the middle of the monster pile, leaving them to do pointless work.
She simply, in the midst of the fighting, deliberately struck down those individuals who had broken away from the main puppet force, then used [Crazy Diamond] to restore them to their original state.
After that... like tossing a beanbag, she flung these restored, living people down at the feet of Makima, who stood at the rear watching the show.
At least on the surface she's not hostile to us, so it should be fine. Horikita thought to herself.
The world of "Final Destination".
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the departure lounge, he watched a Boeing airliner that had taken off into the night sky only moments earlier suddenly erupt into a fireball and crash.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka stood before the glass curtain wall, sinking into silence.
Although the instant he'd suddenly appeared in this foreign airport, he'd realized he had likely been dragged into the so-called Black Sphere examination once again.
But honestly—even though over the past few days a Parasyte calling itself "Zero" kept appearing in his dreams, chattering endlessly to him about the experiences that had taken place at school;
even though the moment he stepped out the gate of Advanced Nurturing High School, he was immediately hauled off by White Room personnel for examination;
when he was awake, looking at his utterly unchanged arm, his mind was a complete blank.
Only at this moment, witnessing this unspeakable fatal accident with his own eyes, did Ayanokoji Kiyotaka finally feel it was real.
'The Black Sphere... really does exist.'
'Come to think of it, this is probably the very reason why—even knowing that, when faced with a Miracle like the Black Sphere that can grant extraordinary power, staying was the optimal choice—I still chose to leave.'
Whenever he was uncertain whether something was real, he always wanted to go and see the result for himself.
There was no doubt about it—Ayanokoji Kiyotaka was a man of voracious curiosity.
That said, he was also a man of cold, detached emotions.
Take right now, for instance. Watching the White Room staff who'd been traveling with him reduced to ashes in the explosion, Ayanokoji felt not the slightest ripple in his heart.
Neither satisfaction nor any feeling of pity.
He merely nodded calmly, wearing an expression that said "just as I thought."
Then, soon enough, this detached attitude of Ayanokoji's—as though he were admiring a masterpiece of his own—brought trouble down on him.
Following the alarm and identification raised by airport staff, the FBI agents naturally came, at the first opportunity, to investigate this group of remaining people who had been scheduled to board but had canceled their trip at the last moment.
However, given that he currently knew nothing beyond the basic "rules" of the Black Sphere exam, Ayanokoji had no intention of trying to flee or resist.
Dealing with an official organization not only secured temporary safety; and even in the worst case, if some accident really did occur, wasn't that also the most convenient place to get hold of a weapon for self-defense?
Harboring this pragmatic line of thinking, Ayanokoji, along with the few remaining White Room staff, cooperatively made their way to the local police station.
During the simple, separate-room questioning, although the White Room members had extremely strong mental fortitude—and the agents, for all their coercion and inducements, couldn't pry out any substantive testimony—they were nonetheless temporarily detained in the holding room.
After all, a whole plane's worth of their fellow travelers had died, and only these few had had a change of heart at the last minute and not boarded. Anyone with a normal IQ would easily connect this air disaster to a terrorist attack.
Though, mind you, this plot's timeline was still a few months off from 9/11.
And then—while being escorted into the holding room, Ayanokoji discovered a pleasant surprise.
Through the iron bars, in the holding room across from him, he saw Chris, Tachibana Akane, and the others, all wearing Advanced Nurturing High School uniforms. Ayanokoji raised an eyebrow.
Chris had naturally spotted him too, and waved with a smile. "Yo, Ayanokoji. Didn't expect us to meet again so soon."
Ayanokoji's tone was flat. "My memories of the school have no impression of you. In the Black Sphere exam... were we close before?"
Chris shook his head with a smile. "I'd say it was pretty average. Just barely the sort of relationship where we could be comrades-in-arms, that's all."
Ayanokoji didn't mind, and walked up to the iron bars. "Looks like we used to be in the same class."
"So then, as 'comrades-in-arms'... do you know what the monster of this exam is?"
Chris explained in a relaxed tone, "Precisely speaking, this exam has no physical monster for us to defeat."
"All we need to do is survive these twenty-four hours... We've been marked by 'Death.'"
Ayanokoji lowered his eyes thoughtfully. "...Death?"
Before he could think it through—"Bang—crackle!" A faint yet crisp, strange sound came.
The old incandescent bulb above Ayanokoji's head suddenly burst!
The sharp shards went flying, shooting out like bullets, slicing with pinpoint precision through the carotid arteries of two White Room staff beside him!
Blood gushed, spattering half the wall.
But in the hair's breadth before they could slit Ayanokoji's throat, he tilted his body slightly and narrowly dodged the strike.
Chris watched the scene through the bars. "See? Death has come."
"But as I recall..." Chris paused. "When you dropped out, you took the Parasyte you'd fused with along with you, didn't you? How come right now it doesn't look like it's working at all?"
Ayanokoji glanced down at his right hand and said calmly, "It only appears in my dreams."
Chris understood. "That figures. There's no way the Black Sphere's presiding god would allow that kind of extraordinary power to manifest in a low-power world with no monster invasion."
"And it's not just you. Take Tachibana-senpai, Nanase, and the others—the Combat Suits they used to wear lost all function the moment they arrived here too, turning into ordinary skin-tight bodysuits."
"Otherwise, I wouldn't have had to obediently tag along with them and get locked up here in this police station."
Just as Chris was explaining the rules, Kamuro Masumi—who had been pressed tightly against the wall, listening carefully for sounds—suddenly turned her head:
"Um... Chris, listen—is there some strange sound coming from the ventilation duct?"
At her words, Chris very obligingly leaned in toward the vent and pretended to cock an ear.
Even though he'd actually known all along that it was Death making its move.
First, by making the exhaust fan in the equipment room overheat and short-circuit, then having a tiny spark trigger incomplete combustion. It ignited the dust that had been piling up in the ducts for years, along with the old, crumbling bits of insulation cotton.
Causing large amounts of colorless, odorless, yet deadly carbon monoxide to pour silently through the ventilation system into this nearly airtight detention room...
Seeing this, Ayanokoji wrinkled his nose, turned, and strode quickly to the window, giving it a hard push. The window didn't budge an inch, as if it had rusted shut from long disuse.
"Death has come." Chris looked up at the ventilation duct and gave a soft laugh. "Yeah—there's a bit of a burnt smell now. Looks like it intends to gas us to death with carbon monoxide right here. What petty, two-bit little tricks."
Before he'd even finished speaking—"BOOM—!!!" A thunderous roar, accompanied by violent shaking!
Dust came rustling down from the ceiling along with it. Outside, everything instantly descended into chaos, alarms blaring.
A fat police officer, drenched in sweat, came scrambling over half-stumbling. With a careless glance, he tossed the keys from his belt toward Chris.
"A runaway tanker truck just crashed into the gas station next to the precinct... I've got no time for you lot right now—open the door yourselves and hurry home!"
With that, the fat officer scurried off to save his own skin without so much as a backward glance.
But it was precisely in this life-or-death instant that coincidence struck once more. That lifesaving bunch of keys—wouldn't you know it—was hit by a loose chunk of stone falling from the ceiling!
"Clang!" The keys changed trajectory, bounced twice on the floor, and finally came to rest in the very middle of the corridor, a good three or four meters from the door of their cell.
A maximal distance that, no matter how far they stretched out their arms, they could absolutely never reach.
—End of Chapter—
I tallied up what I owe for the bounties this time—18 chapters, that's 36,000 words; should pay it off soon. The bounties will keep running as usual after this, but since there's an event on right now, let's bump monthly tickets to 120 per bonus chapter—razor blades stay at 50.
____
👻🔥+40 ch on Pátreon: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: DanMachi: But I am a Monster — read it on The_Mikudayo
📚 Forty chapters of advanced reading at Walnut-chan, and it goes straight into keeping the translations on schedule
Let's achieve our community goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 extra chapter for everybody