A hazy blue space rift appeared out of nowhere, and Chris stepped through it first.
The moment his heel touched down, the opening behind him zipped shut like a closing zipper, as if it had never existed at all.
No sooner had he steadied himself than Ryuuen's unmistakable, manic laughter rang out beside his ear.
"Heh-heh-heh... heh-heh-heh~"
"A rule-kill that snaps someone's neck the instant your eyes look away..."
"Now that we've got our hands on this Little Peanut worth over a hundred points, catching people off guard is bound to take out plenty of monsters who think too highly of themselves!"
"Even that strongest Feathered Wing-type worth a whopping 185 points got completely locked down by this stupid rock!"
"This one, we scored big time!"
Chris turned his head and saw Ryuuen practically glowing as he stared at the Little Peanut figurine dangling from his hand.
Chris set the Little Peanut down heavily on the ground. Faced with Ryuuen's optimism, he doused it with cold water.
"Don't get too excited, Ryuuen."
"Even if it can kill a target the instant no one's watching, at best this thing lets us ambush a single strong enemy traveling alone."
"But if there's more than one target—if two or more show up at once and it can't manage a simultaneous double-kill—the moment a second set of eyes locks onto it, it's just an oddly decorated lump of concrete."
"Basically useless." Ryuuen just gave a noncommittal snort, not caring in the least.
"Even if it's useless, it's still half a mission objective, at least."
"Besides, in this garbage game called the Black Sphere, having one more trump card in hand beats having nothing at all."
"It's not like it's costing us any S Points, anyway..."
He hefted the Little Peanut's weight with one hand and urged, "Alright, let's get moving."
"We don't want to waste time here and have that Feathered Wing-type from earlier catch up to us. That would be a real disaster."
Chris nodded.
His gaze fell on the heavy, rust-covered, rivet-studded iron door directly ahead.
"Let's hope our luck's better in the next world. I'd rather not run into another completely unreasonable, twisted place like that last one."
Ryuuen didn't answer. He simply strode forward and threw his mechanical arm's strength into it. With a creak, the heavy iron door swung open.
The two of them stepped inside.
After a brief moment of disorientation, what came into view was a somewhat gloomy but clearly visible environment.
The surrounding architecture bore all the hallmarks of a classic Western medieval style—towering stone pillars, carved domed ceilings, and dim torches burning along the walls—every detail proclaiming that this was an ancient royal fortress.
"Interesting."
Ryuuen held the Little Peanut out in front of him, supporting it as he swept his gaze around, then said to Chris without so much as glancing away, "Let's use the Controller to check how dangerous this Backrooms floor is first."
"If it's within a range we can handle, I'll let Amikura and the others out of the Map of Rivers and Mountains. If it's too crazy, we bail immediately!" "...Fine by me."
Chris nodded in agreement. "If this place turns out more dangerous than that world crawling with Mechanoid-types and Feathered Wing-types, worst case we just pull out and go back up a floor."
He glanced at the Little Peanut beside Ryuuen and added, half-joking, "Though you're the only one here—guarding against unknown enemies while also watching the Little Peanut so it doesn't go berserk... can you actually handle both?"
Ryuuen raised a hand and tapped his own forehead, sneering. "Don't waste your worry on me. I'm a pure alien cyborg now, with fully mechanical eyes—no blinking required! I don't even have biological needs. I could stare at this rock until the end of time!"
"Fair enough."
Chris looked as if he'd just remembered something and turned to the clockwork spirit standing quietly nearby. "And with Miss Clockwork here too... having her help keep watch shouldn't be a problem."
Hearing this, Oriana nodded lightly, not refusing the task.
The metal automaton beside her immediately flew directly in front of the Little Peanut, taking up its post as a merciless watcher.
With that worry taken care of, Chris finally raised his wrist and tapped open the Controller panel.
A massive three-dimensional image sprang out into the air, and Chris skillfully shrank the map down.
The instant it unfolded, what met his eyes was a scalp-crawling density of red dots, blanketing the entire royal city and its surrounding wilderness like a swarm of ants.
He didn't rush to check the details on these trash mobs, though. Instead, right in front of Ryuuen and the clockwork spirit, he kept shrinking the map's scale, not stopping until the entire continent appeared as a hemispheric shape.
He turned his attention instead to the two largest, most dazzling red blotches at the center of the dense cluster of dots, and lightly tapped them with a fingertip.
[Target: False God · Emperor of Terror]
[Value: 150 points]
[Traits: Full name Emperor Genishoka, king of the largest empire on the continent, and the sole apostle strong enough to dare rebel against the God Hand. He commands countless monster legions, and his true form can transform into a thundercloud spanning the entire royal city. This power alone would have been enough to let him rule the continent—but with the arrival of the God Hand, the defiant Emperor of Terror was forced to undergo a second reincarnation, abandoning his status as an apostle and sacrificing himself once more using an artificial Behelit to become a false god.]
[Weakness: His mere footsteps corrode the ley lines of the earth, and his colossal body can split off hundreds of millions of monster clones. Anything he touches, human or monster alike, will be dissolved and assimilated. However, this immense power far exceeds what a human will could ever bear—the Emperor of Terror now possesses world-ending strength he cannot properly wield. His only remaining scrap of coherent consciousness is devoted entirely to resisting the Hawk of Light.]
"No brain left, running purely on instinct... has he gone full moron?"
Chris arched an eyebrow slightly, then moved his finger to the other point of light.
[Target: Griffith (Femto / Hawk of Light)]
[Value: 180 points]
[Traits: Former captain of the Band of the Hawk, who sacrificed everything he once held dear using the Crimson Behelit to ascend to godhood as the fifth member of the God Hand. His abilities include seeing threads of causality and predicting the future, warping space, and Mental Domination over mortals. He presides over the concept of "Desire," drawing power from the deepest obsessions in every living soul. He now waits at the location fate has ordained, for the new world to open.]
[Weakness: Femto has lost all human emotion. Nothing holds his interest except the struggles of that one man. Everything he does now serves his dream of founding a kingdom. The "Sword of Ripples," forged by the Skull Knight, is capable of severing causality and can harm the God Hand's true form. Likewise, the "Berserker Armor," born from the crystallization of pure hatred, can also pierce through his divine defenses to some extent.]
Having quickly skimmed through the most crucial intel, Chris felt his nerves settle.
He looked up and made a gesture toward Ryuuen. "I've got a decent read on the situation now."
"The strongest boss here only tops out at 180 points—nowhere near as ridiculous as those world-ending monsters from the last floor."
"There are even a considerable number of high-tier monsters and apostles around, with fairly decent point values too. As a grinding ground, this place pays off pretty well."
"We might be able to finish this test's quota right here."
At that, the corner of Ryuuen's mouth curled up. He flipped his hand and tossed the [Map of Rivers and Mountains] to Chris. "In that case, this is our spot."
"Shame, though... we were running for our lives the whole way, so we never got more intel on this Backrooms's underlying rules."
Chris caught the Map of Rivers and Mountains steadily, but shook his head in disagreement. "Don't get greedy."
He unfurled the Map of Rivers and Mountains, safely releasing Amikura Mako and the other non-combatants, and explained in a low voice as he did.
"Without running into some other veteran, us trying to dig up the Backrooms's underlying information on our own is basically impossible."
"The more you do, the more you can mess up. In a place with information as one-sided as the Backrooms, blindly risking everything to chase the truth isn't necessarily a good idea."
"Let's focus on making sure we get out alive first..."
That last line happened to be overheard by Arisu Sakayanagi, who had just stepped out of the [Mirror World] through the passage.
The silver-haired girl's footsteps paused for a moment, a sharp gleam flashing through her pale purple eyes.
The time they'd spent inside the Mirror World hadn't been wasted just sitting around doing nothing, either.
Using the Controller in Hayasaka Ai's hands, they had been continuously probing the boundaries of the Mirror World while also secretly weighing and reasoning through a certain question.
In a bizarre dimension like the Backrooms, would items with their own independent pocket spaces—like the [Mirror World] and the [Map of Rivers and Mountains]—have the "world concept" inside them corroded, assimilated, or otherwise influenced by the Backrooms itself?
Since the time Chris and the others had spent inside the [No Game No Life] world, from entry to exit, hadn't been especially long,
Sakayanagi and the others hadn't managed to spot any concrete clues while inside the Mirror World.
But over the course of that relatively short journey,
Sakayanagi had still learned a startling piece of news from Amasawa Ichika.
It was that certain experiences shared between them and Chris "in the past" had, unsurprisingly, been judged by the Black Sphere system to be of extremely high value!
In other words, what did that mean?
Either some event significant enough to alter the timeline had once occurred between them, with their memories of it forcibly erased by the Black Sphere afterward;
Or, to put it more bluntly and far more outlandishly...
The possibility of time reversal:
Only that could explain why intel about their "past" was worth so much to the Black Sphere. Because that, in itself, would be equivalent to "peering into the future"!
Sakayanagi propped her chin on one hand, having already fleshed out an entire grand tragic epic in her mind:
'On some collapsed timeline, our future selves fought a decisive battle against the mysterious being behind the Black Sphere's presiding god.'
'After enduring countless hardships and paying a devastating price, we still fell one step short in the end...'
'To reverse that hopeless situation, Chris exhausted every last resource and reserve the whole team had, forcibly turning back time! But the attempt to change the future was detected by the wicked presiding god of the Black Sphere, who—to preserve the rules—forcibly wiped every one of our memories!'
Honestly, it wasn't really Sakayanagi's fault for letting her imagination run this wild.
After all, the evidence was right in front of her.
When Chris had formed his contract with the [Goldphoenix], the one capable of manipulating time, Kei Karuizawa and Hiyori Shiina had both been present, and Hayasaka Ai, as their collaborator, had witnessed it with her own eyes as well.
Now, every necessary and sufficient condition had been checked off.
The Goldphoenix, capable of pausing and reversing time, clearly shared some deep connection with Chris—yet its core rewind ability had been forcibly split away, leaving it currently far from its full strength.
Just what had caused that power to go missing? ...It was really such a hard thing to guess!
The only thing to say is that, aside from Chris—who, as the actual mastermind behind it all, could see the countless holes in this theory Sakayanagi had cooked up entirely from her own imagination—
in the eyes of everyone else in the dark, the theory did carry a fair amount of credibility, forming a perfectly closed logical loop at the very least.
Of course, given Sakayanagi's personality, in an environment as fraught with danger as this one, she would never be so foolish as to go running off to Chris to confirm her theory like some lovestruck girl.
She simply extended the idea into a new line of thought.
If the Backrooms was a horror that endangered their home world, then did it itself have countless threads connecting it to the Black Sphere system?
Just like the powerful figures of human society—glamorous and dignified on the surface, but still needing a pair of black gloves behind the scenes to handle the dirty work that couldn't see the light of day.
Without a doubt, in Sakayanagi's eyes, the presiding god of the Black Sphere and the Backrooms were like the "white glove" and "black glove" of whatever mastermind lurked behind them both!
And if that mastermind really was pulling every string purely for entertainment,
then the missing portion of the Goldphoenix's core power might very well have been tucked away—out of sheer twisted amusement—somewhere within this dangerous Backrooms!
Whether to confirm this hypothesis or simply to gather intel on the Backrooms, Sakayanagi decided it was worth taking a risk either way.
And so, once everyone had gathered, Ryuuen impatiently gave the group a brief rundown of the Little Peanut's absolute rule: never let your eyes drift away from it.
Sakayanagi then spoke up with a smile, offering a proposal.
"Since everyone's decided to make this our home base for grinding points—"
"Then, to prevent a situation where we official examinees finish our task and get teleported away, leaving the rest of the testers stuck in the Backrooms to face the danger alone..."
"We definitely shouldn't rush straight into a final showdown against final bosses like the Emperor of Terror and Griffith right from the start."
She swept her gaze around the group. "So, what should we be doing before that point?"
Kei Karuizawa blinked, instinctively chiming in. "Do you even need to ask? Grinding points, obviously."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, rarely enough, spoke up at this point.
"Points are secondary for us, given our current setup."
"With the gear we have, as long as we find a dense cluster of monsters that isn't outrageously overpowered in points, we can farm huge amounts like mowing grass."
"But the more important thing... is still digging into the Backrooms's deeper information."
"After all, the unknown is the greatest threat of all."
Hearing this, Honami Ichinose's delicate brows knit together in worry. "But... the uncertainty between floors in the Backrooms is way too great!"
"Not only is there zero coherent logic between floors, but according to what Fujiwara and Asahina Senpai said, there might also be hidden traps that trigger randomly and forcibly send you to the next unknown floor."
"If we get sent to another dangerous unknown floor like the last one, it would be way too easy for something to go wrong!"
"That's exactly why we need Senior Chris to step in~"
Amasawa Ichika walked up to Chris with her hands clasped behind her back, smiling brightly. "Why not try using the [Enma Blade] to cut through space directly, and artificially create a passage back to a floor we've already confirmed is safe?"
"If it works, we'd essentially have a safe anchor point we can retreat to at any time."
Chris nodded in agreement. "Might as well try it. There's nothing to lose either way."
With that, he stepped forward and slowly drew the Enma Blade from his waist.
Deep blue mana swirled along the blade's edge. He steadied his focus, then suddenly swung it straight through empty air! With a slash!
Amid an ear-splitting tearing sound, a faintly glowing rift in space was forcibly torn open.
"Did it work?" Kushida Kikyo murmured, a little nervous.
But what followed right on the heels of her words wasn't the safe old floor.
Instead, from the other side of the rift, several twisted, grinning faces abruptly popped out, baring their teeth in the darkness!
"Hee hee hee... ha ha ha!"
The bone-chilling laughter pierced through the rift instantly, echoing down the corridors of the old castle.
"Laughing Demons, huh... Looks like it actually pinpointed the previous floor."
Kouenji Rokusuke leisurely brushed back his blond hair, not sparing these lowly monsters a second thought.
Chris nodded, watching the claw-reaching monsters with a blank expression, then turned to speak to the group. "Anyone short on points who wants to buy a Chakra Seed or a Cursed Energy Seed, feel free to go at these Laughing Demons."
"They hate bright light, and since it's not dark here yet, they won't actually dare to charge out. Stuck there in the rift like that, they're basically free points on legs."
Hearing this, the rookies in the group had their eyes light up instantly.
Even Chika Fujiwara, who'd been swept up into all this, clenched her small fists eagerly, itching to try.
Setting aside whether or not they could actually beat low-tier monsters like the Laughing Demons—
in a situation like this one, where there was no direct life-or-death danger and it was purely safe grinding, borrowing some high-tier gear or a weapon from the strong people nearby wasn't out of the question at all.
For a bunch of rookies who didn't even have decent gear of their own, an exploit-farming opportunity like this was rare beyond words.
Seeing everyone's enthusiasm running high, Chris didn't hold back either.
He simply tossed over his [Dragon Talisman], capable of unleashing explosive fire, and let them sort out among themselves who'd use it and when.
Meanwhile, Hayasaka Ai used the safe window of time to open up her own Controller interface, searching the densely packed holographic map for entrances and exits leading to other specific floors.
Thanks to her excellent information-gathering skills, she quickly sifted useful information out of the pile of data.
"Found it." Hayasaka Ai looked up, pointing to a coordinate on the map. "But this exit's location... is extremely close to the palace where the Emperor of Terror is. Right beneath his throne, actually."
At that moment, through a gap in the outer walls of the royal city, the group could already see, off in the distance near the palace, a mountainous demonic being of thunderclouds, towering a full kilometer high, blotting out the sky as it roared.
That was the false-god form of the Emperor of Terror after his second reincarnation. Just the aura it carelessly gave off was enough to send chills through some of them and tighten their chests.
Nanase Tsubasa looked at the demonic figure and offered a suggestion. "Since the exit's in such a dangerous spot... maybe we should convert all the item points we've saved up into high-tier gear through Miss Clockwork first, to arm ourselves properly."
"Then just brute-force our way through, carving a bloody path there?"
She looked at Chris. "We've already confirmed before that actively grinding points inside our own test venue doesn't trigger any punishment from the Black Sphere..."
"Even if we hold back and stop grinding now, it probably won't stop the Black Sphere from forcibly ramping up the difficulty of the next test anyway. Might as well go all in."
Chris raised a hand to cut off her aggressive suggestion, offering a warning. "Don't get too reckless, Nanase."
"Don't forget, Griffith apparently has the ability to see through causality and predict the future."
"Since we're already here, and quietly at odds with him no less, we should be careful while grinding points. There's no need to risk getting ambushed and set up by a God Hand just for the sake of some points right in front of us."
Honami Ichinose nodded in strong agreement and put forward a safer plan. "If it's really just about grinding points safely, we could just forcibly pull the monster legions on the outskirts straight into the [Map of Rivers and Mountains]."
"Then we go into the little world inside the Map and clean them out like fish in a barrel."
"Outside, we'd just need to leave behind a few people with enough self-defense ability, like Ryuuen, to help filter the monsters, keep watch on the surroundings, and hold down our anchor point in reality."
"That way we can grind points while keeping variables to a minimum."
"That's a solid plan. But—" Yagami Takuya sharply pointed out the issue at hand. "If we're going to split up and send some people to explore other unknown floors of the Backrooms, how do we decide who goes? How many people would be right?"
Katsuragi Kohei rubbed his bald head and set the tone in a low voice. "For unknown exploration like this, quality matters more than quantity."
"Too many people going would just become a liability. What we need is people with sharp minds, strong adaptability, and the ability to cover each other tactically..."
"Oh my~ Isn't that basically describing me?"
Sakayanagi finally heard the words she'd been waiting for, and couldn't help but purse her lips in a small, satisfied hum.
She walked up to Chris, her manner intimate. "Conveniently, Chris and I have been through plenty of hardship together before, working through crises side by side. Our abilities complement each other perfectly."
"I think just the two of us going to explore would be more than enough."
The moment she said this, Honami Ichinose was momentarily struck speechless.
Watching Sakayanagi's completely matter-of-fact way of staking her claim, Ichinose couldn't help feeling a bit off about it.
But she also had to admit that Sakayanagi's reasoning made sense.
This woman's wits were beyond question, and she'd even shown tremendous courage before, risking her life to freeze the reactor core during the Godzilla crisis.
Most importantly, if Sakayanagi left the main group, it wouldn't significantly impact their progress clearing monsters on the front line. The risk was entirely acceptable.
Still... venturing deep alone was always an extremely dangerous thing to do.
Honami Ichinose looked at Chris, still somewhat worried. "I noticed there seems to be an extremely powerful self-enhancement item in the Mystery Shop this time."
"Chris, your points should be just enough to exchange for it, right?"
Chris nodded, admitting it frankly. "Points-wise, I do have enough."
"But considering I still need to save up an enormous amount of points to eventually buy the [Beta Box] and cover the upgrade costs for the Enma Blade... I wasn't planning on wasting resources on other enhancements for now."
Before Chris even finished speaking, Sakayanagi cut in, vetoing him without a shred of hesitation. "I know your sense of responsibility runs deep, Chris."
"But setting aside the [Enma Blade], which can't be lent out to anyone else, the upgrade burden of something as strategically critical as the [Beta Box] absolutely shouldn't fall on your shoulders alone."
Shiraishi Asuka chimed in from the side in agreement. "Sakayanagi's right."
"Besides, from what the Controller's radar map shows, this world isn't exactly short on monsters and apostles."
"Their point values might not match the top-tier bosses, but they make up for it in sheer numbers."
"As long as we're willing to put in the time, earning enough points to upgrade the Beta Box isn't an impossible task at all."
Faced with everyone's persuasion, Kei Karuizawa and Suzune Horikita, who'd been standing quietly beside Chris this whole time, both opened their mouths as if to speak.
Even though they'd wanted to chime in and agree, seeing that everyone else had already said exactly what they'd meant to say, they simply closed their mouths obediently. It wasn't that they'd been half a beat slow to react.
It was purely because one of them saw herself as a "parasite" who had to cling to Chris to survive, while the other regarded him as her master and herself as his "disciple."
On a matter as big as team resource allocation like this, neither of them felt comfortable interfering with Chris's personal decision in front of everyone.
So they inevitably felt that awkward sense of "words stuck in the throat."
Chris took in everyone's expressions. He furrowed his brow and pretended to mull it over deeply for a moment.
Finally, he nodded, conceding. "Fine."
"I figured, since I already have the Darkness Devil's flesh as a trump card, my physical strength probably wasn't lacking a little extra boost like this anyway..."
"But you all do have a point. At a time like this, an extra bit of self-defense capability is never a bad thing."
With that, he turned and walked over to stand in front of Oriana.
He decisively deducted the points on the shop interface, bought the [City Superman Serum], and injected it directly into his body.
Feeling the surging power now coursing through him, he clenched his fist in satisfaction.
Then he pulled a few capsules out of his Black Sphere Watch and handed them straight to Suzune Horikita.
"Chances are I won't have much use for clean-up items like the [Gravity Gun] and the [Momonga Jade] anymore."
Chris told her, "You hold onto these. Use them later when you're clearing out monsters inside the Map of Rivers and Mountains."
"If you coordinate your tactics right, you might even be able to pull off a combo with whoever's pulling monsters outside, boosting your point-farming efficiency."
Suzune Horikita fumbled to catch the capsules. Her eyes filled first with disbelief, and then she nodded solemnly.
Honestly, she'd assumed Chris would hand off such a powerful weapon to Honami Ichinose, who was currently coordinating the overall strategy.
At the very least, she figured it'd go to a proven powerhouse like Kei Karuizawa, Hiyori Shiina, or Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.
She hadn't even considered the possibility that such good fortune would land on her.
After all, she already had [Crazy Diamond] as her support power.
By all logic, it shouldn't have been her turn.
And she'd never once been the type to act cute or whine for the sake of getting gear.
"Teacher... he's really been paying attention to me all along!" the girl thought, secretly moved.
Loyalty to Chris, absolute!
This wasn't just an act of trust—it was recognition of her strength!
Conveniently, this round's Mystery Shop had also restocked a [Zanpakuto] that would sync with a certain special soul-awakening ability.
Suzune Horikita had already made up her mind—once she farmed enough points, she'd buy that blade.
She would carry the Su Family Swordsmanship to greater heights and never disgrace her teacher's reputation!
As for all this, Chris—who could easily read the girl's mind through his [Omniscient Five Sight]—could only shake his head helplessly in his own thoughts.
He turned to look at Sakayanagi, standing beside him like a proud swan that had just won a fight. "How are we getting over there?"
"Do we just fly straight there, or try the Enma Blade and see if we can teleport directly across space?"
Sakayanagi covered her mouth and laughed softly. "The more dramatic, the better, naturally."
"Honestly, I'm quite curious. That Griffith, hailed as a God Hand—just how far can his so-called ability to see through causality and the future actually reach?"
The girl's eyes burned bright as she stared at the distant Kusha Royal Palace at the storm's center. "Since this world's already been stuck fast to the Backrooms, its inescapable end is sealed."
"I really would like to know—when faced with an indescribable horror, does this so-called God Hand have the nerve to follow us and go explore other floors himself?"
Chris nodded, his gaze equally deep. "Fair point."
"As for the Emperor of Terror, even though he's another high-value monster worth over a hundred fifty points, he's already lost his sanity and is instinctively pouring all his obsession into resisting Griffith... Might as well head over together and help draw Griffith's attention."
"Conveniently, I also want to test something—whether a native monster of this original world, unlike us examinees chosen by the presiding god, can also disregard the boundary between planes and freely travel to other floors of the Backrooms, just like those explorers from the White House."
"Of course, that's assuming... he can actually hear our little conspiracy right now."
Still, Chris knew perfectly well in his own mind that a so-called God Hand couldn't possibly be truly all-knowing and all-powerful.
Aside from being able to peer into things from the Interstice, at most they were like high-level fortune-tellers, glimpsing the general flow and branching possibilities of the future to use as reference for their own schemes.
Otherwise, in the original story, Griffith wouldn't have completely failed to anticipate the Skull Knight suddenly bursting in and even rescuing Guts right out from under his nose.
When it came down to it, they were fundamentally nothing more than high-ranking agents under the "Idea of Evil."
And the kind of hired hand that got rotated out periodically, replaceable at any time no less.
If you really wanted to talk about style points and lore depth... you'd have to say they're honestly falling a bit behind the times.
And so, when Chris and Sakayanagi activated their gear, like two meteors trailing brilliant tails of fire, tearing openly across the dim sky, flying straight toward the Emperor of Terror's position—
Griffith—or rather, Femto—deep within the Interstice, looking down over the mortal world,
had actually already noticed this band of uninvited guests the moment Chris drew the [Enma Blade] and cut through space, opening that door to other floors of the Backrooms. After all, a God Hand was, by nature, a being that could only exist within the Interstice, cut off from the mortal world.
Even though the current Griffith, using the corrupted infant in Casca's womb and the "Egg Apostle" atop the Tower of Conviction, had completed his incarnation and regained a perfect body capable of walking among mortals once more—
he had, at the end of the day, only split himself in two—his true form as a God Hand still remained within the Interstice.
As Femto, capable of intervening in reality through dreams, he could naturally perceive with total clarity that space-cutting blow powerful enough to affect the world's very foundation. Moreover, thanks to the peculiar nature of the Interstice, he had also faintly overheard the shocking secrets Chris and the others discussed afterward.
The Backrooms, the tests, other worlds...!?
Truth be told, Griffith was genuinely curious about this so-called "Backrooms" Chris and the others kept mentioning.
He'd even shown intense interest in the [Enma Blade] Chris carried, capable of so easily severing the boundaries of space.
If he had that blade in hand, he could entirely skip the time spent waiting for the Skull Knight.
He could go kill the Emperor of Terror right now, forcibly opening the passage that would fuse the Interstice and the mortal world, and complete his grand dream of establishing an absolute utopia!
But... as a God Hand who could see the causality of fate, once your perspective climbed high enough, facing someone like Chris—someone completely detached from the threads of destiny—was bound to breed a measure of wariness.
More importantly, his top priority right now was using the Emperor of Terror to bring about the fusion and descent of the mortal world with the Interstice. That was his destiny as a God Hand.
Compared to going all-in against a variable of unknown strength just to seize that Enma Blade... scheming against the Skull Knight—who would absolutely dive out like a moth to the flame for a surprise attack the instant Griffith showed even the slightest opening—was clearly the lower-risk, more stable choice.
So even knowing full well that Chris and the others had listed him as a hunting target too, Griffith decided he'd wait, at the very least, until his own plan was complete before taking any action against these visitors from another world.
At that moment, along with the fall of two streaking lights, Chris and Sakayanagi had already crashed down like meteors onto the ruins of what had once been the Emperor of Terror's palace.
The massive impact kicked up a sky full of dust, instantly alerting an apostle who was busy fighting monsters nearby.
Zodd, the Minotaur apostle known for his immortal body, suddenly beat his massive wings and flew straight to Griffith's side, carrying a reek of blood and death with him.
He dropped to one knee, his massive head bowed completely low. "Hawk of Light, two powerful, unfamiliar presences have arrived. Shall I go confirm whether they come as friend or foe?"
Griffith merely raised a hand slightly, his long silver hair drifting like silk in the wind. On that face too perfect to belong to any mortal, his expression stayed utterly indifferent. "No need."
"Their trip here is to hunt down the rebellious monster legions. No need to bother with them. Their arrival here was always destined to be part of fate's unfolding. Everything still falls within the calculations of causality."
Though the Minotaur Zodd didn't understand, out of absolute obedience to the Hawk of Light, he didn't ask another question. He gave a heavy nod and respectfully withdrew.
Meanwhile, this mortal-world Griffith slowly turned his head. His cold gaze cut straight across the kilometer-long distance, gazing far out at the wasteland where several tiny figures were quickly approaching the battlefield.
There was Honami Ichinose, pristine white wings sprouting from her back and dressed in an ornate gown, like an angel descending to earth; and further beyond her, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen, gripping the [Map of Rivers and Mountains] and continuously sealing monsters into it.
Watching these vivid, powerful souls, Griffith felt neither sorrow nor joy—no trace of emotion showed on his face at all.
He merely murmured softly, as if lost in thought. "Heretics, forcing their way into the fixed threads of causality, willing to wager everything to take my life... It doesn't matter. No matter who they are, none of them can stop the new world I'm about to overturn and create. Let this grand festival become the prelude to welcoming the new king!"
____
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🔥 New history: COTE: My High School Life Became Jujutsu Kaisen — posted on The_Mikudayo