'Heh. They finally ran into the Silence, huh?'
'And yet... still too soft. She had at least one clean kill lined up and let it solo her without taking a scratch?'
Chris muttered to himself, eyes fixed on the floating interface only he could see, then turned his attention back to the corridor ahead.
Thanks to the X-GUN's tragically short range and sluggish response time, Horikita Suzune had essentially appointed herself the team's designated breacher — charging ahead of the group to chase down points before anyone else could.
And Chris.
He only stepped in when a stray Kabane tried to flank them from the side. Those were the only moments he felt the situation actually called for his involvement.
He was the administrator here. Did people really expect him to cosplay as some divine descendent and go scrambling to steal kills from the young and upcoming? That was beneath him.
More importantly...
You had to give people room to grow. How else was this generation going to produce anyone worth a damn?
Besides — there was still a whole nest of Silence waiting on the rooftop. He'd show up for that finale, do something appropriately dramatic, and call it a day.
It made sense. As a high-offense, zero-defense mob type, the Silence really were perfect mid-tier content for newer players looking to level up.
Functionally similar to the Parasyte niche, in a way.
Though in Doctor Who they were never really full-on villains.
In this world, though — measured against the moral line he'd drawn — the number of Silence that had crossed it was... higher than expected.
That was part of why he'd decided to patch this trial with a little extra DLC.
Couldn't let his point economy hit hyperinflation, after all.
He was still turning that over in his head when —
"Chris-kun."
Sakayanagi Arisu glanced back at him from the front of the group, wearing that smile that never quite committed to being a smile.
"You did promise to keep everyone safe. So why have you drifted all the way to the back?"
"Slacking off so openly... that's a little unprofessional, don't you think~?"
Chris kept his face perfectly straight. "Don't talk about things you don't understand. I'm covering the rear."
"Covering the rear?"
Sakayanagi blinked, all innocence.
"If I remember correctly, the Gantz Sword doesn't have radar. Are you actually worried about getting ambushed?"
"We've been doing fine, haven't we?" Chris said, offhand. "Look around — anyone hurt?"
If someone did try to flank us, I'd flip it back on all of you for failing your duty of warning me.
Sakayanagi, finding that particular wall unscalable, let him be. She turned instead to look at Horikita Suzune, who was walking ahead of them in focused silence, lips moving slightly as she tallied her score in her head.
Sakayanagi nudged Kamuro Masumi with her elbow.
"Hey, Kamuro."
"What do you think Horikita-san's score is at right now?"
Kamuro Masumi gave her a look that said are you for real and rolled her eyes.
"I'm not some score oracle. How would I know what Kabane are worth?"
"All I know is you and that guy both grabbed two each, Horikita Suzune got three, everyone's been fighting over kills like it's a sale at a discount store — and me? Ha. I didn't get to do a single thing."
Sakayanagi gave an amused little shake of her head, as if she hadn't heard the very direct complaint buried in that answer, and pivoted naturally.
"Just now I noticed the threat markers on the radar near the survivor clusters disappeared."
"Must have run into Ichinose's group."
"Lucky timing..."
She sighed with something that almost sounded like genuine feeling.
"At least that's a floor guarantee. We won't lose every single point to survivor penalties~"
Kamuro Masumi's eye twitched.
That's what you're focused on? People's lives are on the line here. How does someone like you ever change... you absolute score-brained dividend slave.
From his position at the back, Chris glanced down at the screen in Sakayanagi's hand.
"Same objective as us. Looks like we're converging for a boss raid at the end after all."
Sakayanagi glanced back at him sideways.
"In a raid, someone who spends the whole run coasting and freeloading..." She tilted her head. "Usually gets kicked before the final boss, Chris-kun~"
Chris didn't dignify that with a response.
Ahead of them, Horikita Suzune hadn't said a word since they'd started moving. She was already running the math on the hidden target waiting at the end.
It didn't take long.
The two groups linked up on the fifth floor of the academic building, at the bend in the stairwell leading to the rooftop access.
Chris's eyes went to Yamada Albert's back — and the dead weight of Hirata Yousuke draped unconscious across it.
"He's in that bad a shape? Are you sure he doesn't need the nurse's office right now?"
"We don't have a choice." Ichinose Honami's voice came out tired. "The connecting corridors between this building and the others are sealed. All we could do was patch him up with the first aid kit from the chemistry lab."
"If we want to actually save him, we have to finish this trial first. Clear the last Kabane, end the exam."
She paused.
"There's no time to go hunting for the hidden target. Hirata-kun can't hold on that long."
"Actually — maybe we don't need to."
Sakayanagi Arisu cut in smoothly, one finger pointing upward.
"Look. That last Kabane has been sitting on the rooftop this entire time. It hasn't come down once."
"That posture — sitting there waiting for us to come to it..." She smiled. "Doesn't that look an awful lot like something that wants to be found?"
Ichinose Honami went quiet.
She looked at Hirata, unconscious and barely breathing. Then at Amikura Mako and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka behind her, both of whom looked distinctly off.
She turned around.
"Shiranami-san. Shiina-san."
"Please stay here and look after Hirata-kun. And Ayanokoji-kun and the others... I'm leaving them in your hands too."
"What comes next — leave it to us."
Even Shiranami Chihiro couldn't argue with that.
Because no matter who you were — fear of death was universal.
No exceptions.
"Ichinose — go get them. I believe in you!"
Shiranami Chihiro held out her capture gun, eyes steady and sure.
Ichinose considered it for a moment — then didn't take it for herself. Instead, she turned and offered it to Chris.
"Chris-kun."
"The stairwell's narrow. A long blade would be hard to maneuver up there. This gun..." She looked at him. "Could I ask you to use it?"
"I think it'll do a lot more good in your hands."
The moment those words landed.
Shiranami Chihiro's face fell about eight emotional floors in under a second.
That's MY gun. I gave it to YOU for self-defense. Not to hand off to some guy you want to impress.
"Shiranami-san?" Ichinose glanced back, genuinely puzzled. "Is that alright?"
Shiranami Chihiro looked into Ichinose's completely pure, utterly guileless eyes — and forced a smile so wide it hurt.
"...Of course. Of course it is."
Chris accepted the gun. He came extremely close to losing his composure.
Fortunately, no one was given much time to dwell on broken hearts.
"Stop stalling! It's right up there!"
Horikita Suzune and Ryuuen Kakeru — one desperate to finish the exam, the other desperate to claim the final hidden boss — had already set foot on the stairs. The rest of the qualified participants followed immediately.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka hesitated for a moment, then fell in behind them.
He kept feeling like he'd forgotten something.
Not that he could claim perfect recall under normal circumstances.
But when people forget a thing that genuinely happened — the forgetting usually has a reason. Usually, it's because the thing made them uncomfortable. Made them want to look away.
The pain still pulsing inside his cheek, though, told him this was important.
And it had happened recently. Very recently.
...
The higher they climbed, the thicker the wrongness in the air became.
Ryuuen Kakeru didn't bother with subtlety. He put his foot through the rooftop door.
And then — when he saw what was on the other side — he stopped dead.
"What the hell... is that?"
The last remaining Kabane was throwing itself at the base of the rooftop water tower — shrieking, slamming itself against it over and over like a child pitching a fit because no one would give it what it wanted.
And what it was after was, to put it mildly, significant.
Packed into the shadow beneath the water tower's overhang, hanging upside down in dense, overlapping clusters — a colony of creatures in black suits, skin pale and waxy and wrong, draped over each other like sleeping bats.
He'd never seen them before in his life.
And yet — inexplicably, irrationally — Ryuuen Kakeru felt like he had.
Like something in the back of his skull had filed them away a long time ago. Like he'd seen them in a nightmare, so many times the memory had worn grooves.
"Damn it..."
The wrongness hit him like a physical force. His arm moved on instinct — gun raised.
Never mind the feeling. Just make sure I can end this at a moment's notice.
FWISH —
The laser net shot out and bound the last remaining Kabane without resistance, snapping it off its feet mid-charge.
And in doing so — the noise woke what was sleeping in the shadows above.
Shhk ——
Three. Five. More. Pairs of eyeless, lidless, pale grey pupils rotated — slowly, in unison — and turned toward them.
In that moment.
Every person on that rooftop felt their memory go briefly, terrifyingly blank.
____
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