Having barely escaped death at the hands of the Dizziness attack, Amase Itsuka's heart was still hammering.
She crouched in the shadow of a tilted shipping container, hastily wrapping a torn strip of cloth around the graze on her forearm where a stray bullet had nicked her, jaw clenched tight.
She sucked in ragged breaths and tilted her head back to look up.
Even she — someone who had survived hellish training at the White House — couldn't suppress the shock of watching that helicopter twist and warp before her very eyes, morphing into a ten-meter-tall mechanical giant like something out of a nightmare.
Something like that was simply beyond what human flesh and blood could ever hope to contend with.
"Nearly got myself killed... but at least..."
Amase Itsuka raised her phone, eyes settling on the video clips saved to the screen, and felt a quiet comfort spread through her chest.
"I confirmed the reality of the supernatural with my own eyes. This trip wasn't a waste after all."
She carefully peered out from cover.
The distant gunfire and explosions had fallen silent at some point without her noticing.
But at the far edge of her vision, the once-towering port lighthouse was now groaning like a dying animal, tilting irreversibly toward the sea!
What made Amase Itsuka's pupils contract sharply was something else entirely.
The falling lighthouse hadn't crashed into the ocean — instead, it had lodged at a sharp diagonal angle against a vast, semi-transparent dome!
"An energy barrier... So this place really is a sealed 'terrarium'?"
Amase Itsuka quickly raised her phone.
Through the lens, a massive mechanical scorpion was clawing its way out of the broken foundation, scaling the tilted tower toward the small figures clinging at the top — clearly intent on crushing every last one of them.
Meanwhile, at the very top of that crumbling lighthouse.
Sakayanagi Arisu, Kamuro Masumi, and Karuizawa Kei were all clinging to the outer metal maintenance railing for dear life, the only thing keeping them from tumbling into open air.
"Kamuro! Karuizawa! Hold me steady!"
Sakayanagi Arisu screamed through gritted teeth, panic stripped raw on her face.
Kamuro Masumi and Karuizawa Kei — both already white as sheets — snapped out of their daze and scrambled upright, bracing their shoulders on either side of Sakayanagi's body to keep her from losing her footing on the slanting surface.
Looking down at the Scorponok titan that had already climbed to the tower's midsection and was now driving its tail spike into the structural supports — no order from Sakayanagi was necessary.
Kamuro Masumi had already raised the Y-GUN with one hand.
A deep-blue laser rope shot out, binding the Scorponok — already badly damaged from the earlier bombardment — tight against the reinforced concrete at the tower's midsection.
"ROOAAR——!!"
The Scorponok titan let out a shriek and thrashed furiously.
Every time it struggled, the already crumbling lighthouse let out an agonized wail, sending chunks of concrete and rebar raining down in mixed cascades.
"Now!"
Sakayanagi Arisu bit down hard on the tip of her tongue, using the searing pain to force herself through the vertigo that came with near-weightlessness.
With Karuizawa Kei bracing her, she leveled the gun barrel dead-on.
"BANG——!"
The muffled report tore through the sea wind.
With a burst of blinding sparks, the Scorponok's grotesque scorpion head detonated instantly, reduced to twisted scrap metal.
"Hah..."
Sakayanagi Arisu let out a long breath, slumping against Karuizawa Kei as if all her strength had drained out at once.
"All I can hope now is that the Black Sphere's teleport kicks in quickly..." she murmured with a weak, wry smile. "If we fall before it does, that would be one seriously unfunny joke."
One second.
Two seconds.
The Scorponok's powerless husk began sliding down the laser rope under gravity, its massive metal body the final straw — the weight dragging another agonized groan from the overloaded lighthouse as the whole structure shuddered under the strain.
The electronic chime that would signal the exam's end — the sound of survival — refused to come.
"What's going on?!" Karuizawa Kei stared around in horror. "Is the exam seriously not over yet?!"
Kamuro Masumi heard that and glanced down at the radar screen on the Y-GUN holstered at her hip.
"Something's wrong!" she cried out. "There's still a red dot on the radar! But... weren't there only six Decepticons? With the hidden boss factored in, we accounted for all seven targets!"
Sakayanagi Arisu seemed to piece it together all at once, shaking her head with weary resignation.
"This scorpion — didn't it emerge from behind that helicopter just now? I suppose the Black Sphere counted this kind of symbiotic offshoot as an independent Decepticon unit..."
"Looks like we'll be meeting everyone in the Black Sphere space after all~"
With a thunderous boom.
The lighthouse snapped completely apart, dragged downward by gravity!
An overwhelming sensation of weightlessness engulfed them in an instant.
Karuizawa Kei squeezed her eyes shut in despair.
No... I don't want to die! I only just...
But at that razor's edge of a moment!
A violent rush of wind surged upward from below.
Karuizawa Kei felt an iron grip close around her waist, as if she'd been seized by a pair of steel tongs.
The desperate plunge of her heart suddenly reversed, yanked back upward.
"Ah——!"
As Kamuro Masumi's startled shriek rang out beside her, Karuizawa Kei's eyes flew open.
What she saw was Chris's sharp, distinct profile.
She was tucked under his left arm like a briefcase.
On the other side, Kamuro Masumi had it far worse — Chris had one hand gripping her thigh, and she had no choice but to cling to his chest like a koala, her entire body plastered against him with almost no gap between them.
And just like that, Chris bounded through the cascading wreckage of the crumbling lighthouse, using the debris as footholds as he leaped from one broken slab to the next.
We're saved...
Karuizawa Kei's heart hammered in her chest — and then a question surfaced: Wait. What about the other one?
The confusion didn't last long.
When she instinctively turned her head, searching the howling wind for that small white figure, Karuizawa Kei nearly burst out laughing on the spot.
Dozens of meters above and off to one side.
Sakayanagi Arisu was carving a parabolic arc through the open air in the most undignified way imaginable.
Eyes clenched shut, face white as paper, lips trembling — she looked ready to pass out and start foaming at the mouth right then and there. Where on earth was the regal composure she'd had just moments ago?
"Senpai! I've got you!"
Ichinose Honami, who had already been waiting on the shore below, seized the moment — legs exploding upward in a powerful leap — and caught Sakayanagi Arisu clean in her arms.
Thud.
Seconds later, Chris landed on solid ground with both girls safely in tow.
Karuizawa Kei's legs were still a little wobbly.
But watching what Chris had just done — throwing himself headlong into danger without a second thought to save her — the urge to throw her arms around him was still surging through her chest.
As expected... it really does matter whose side you're on.
Before the still-shaken Kamuro and Karuizawa could even get out a word of thanks, Sakayanagi Arisu — still barely catching her breath in Ichinose's arms — fired the opening shot.
"Hah... hff..."
The girl gulped for air in ragged bursts, her dark, aggrieved eyes locked squarely onto Chris.
"Excuse me, Chris... exactly what was your reasoning for carrying those two while you launched me into the sky like a shot put?!"
"I'm practically an invalid, and it's not like I contributed nothing... couldn't you show me the tiniest bit of respect?"
Ichinose Honami gently patted Sakayanagi's back to help her breathe, while hurrying to speak up for Chris.
"I'm sorry, Sakayanagi-san. By the time senpai arrived, the lighthouse had already collapsed. In that situation, getting everyone out in one go meant he had to use... well, the most efficient method available."
Ichinose lowered her head with a trace of guilt.
"If anyone's to blame, it's me — I haven't been training enough, I couldn't fully sync with the Combat Suit's rhythm, and I arrived too late..."
"Enough. Don't go shouldering blame that isn't yours."
Chris waved it off and cut in without missing a beat.
"Besides, the Black Sphere restores everyone's physical condition once the mission's done, so there's no point sulking about it. What I'm actually more concerned about is — if you already took down that scorpion, why hasn't the exam ended?"
Hearing that, Kamuro Masumi didn't even bother straightening her disheveled clothes — she raised the Y-GUN immediately.
"There's still one that slipped through! It escaped at some point — currently it's in... Katsuragi's direction?"
Chris glanced at the radar and understood at once.
It was Barricade's partner — the small spy robot, Frenzy.
Though it ranked dead last among the Decepticons in straight-up combat power, it was still more than deadly enough against a group of ordinary high schoolers without Combat Suits.
"Katsuragi has the X-GUN, but we're still talking about a Decepticon..."
Chris made the call without hesitation, turning to Ichinose.
"Ichinose, let's move — we'll back them up before anything else goes sideways."
Ichinose gave a firm nod and handed the weakened Sakayanagi Arisu off to Kamuro Masumi.
"Sakayanagi-san, you two find somewhere safe to hide. Let's go, senpai!"
Watching the two of them vanish into the dark, Sakayanagi Arisu looked down at her own unfeeling legs and shook her head with a self-deprecating smile.
If things go smoothly this time, I should have enough points to reclaim my health...
Next time, I refuse to tolerate being tossed around like dead weight.
The girl quietly swore it to herself.
"Hey... Sakayanagi."
Kamuro Masumi suddenly tightened her grip on the capture gun, voice going taut.
"I didn't notice before... but there's a girl over there, and she's heading our way."
Sakayanagi Arisu looked up.
Silhouetted against the fading amber of the evening sun, she saw a red-haired girl approaching — a blood-soaked strip of cloth still wrapped around her arm.
"Amase Itsuka, hm..."
Sakayanagi Arisu narrowed her eyes slightly.
...
Meanwhile, deep within the container maze.
After successfully linking up with Ayanokoji's Class B and Class D teams, Katsuragi Kohei hadn't taken his eyes off the X-GUN's radar screen for a single second.
As the red threat indicators on the screen winked out one by one, the collective tension in the group slowly began to unwind.
"Phew... Looks like the main force is doing well."
Kanzaki Ryuuji wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "Hopefully the casualties are light this time around. These Black Sphere exams keep getting more and more overtuned. Losing veterans with actual combat experience at this stage would be a disaster for everyone."
"This isn't the time to relax."
Katsuragi Kohei maintained his guard stance, voice low and firm.
"Don't waste energy worrying about things outside our control. The fact that every single one of us interlopers has survived this far is already significant — as long as we keep our heads down, avoid throwing our lives away, and don't bleed class points, that's the greatest contribution we can make to Ichinose and Ryuuen's efforts."
Kanzaki Ryuuji nodded in firm agreement.
After all, each surviving interloper represented 1 S-point — in a Black Sphere space where lives were cheaper than tissue paper, their mere existence was already the highest-value resource available.
"Katsuragi."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka spoke up suddenly, gesturing toward the X-GUN in Katsuragi's hand.
"There's a red dot moving toward us."
Katsuragi Kohei checked the radar immediately.
"You're right... Everyone, take cover! The mission target is a Decepticon in combat-weapons mode — it should be enormous, easy to spot."
"All we need to do is use the containers as cover and hold out until Chris and the others arrive!"
Everyone immediately crouched low, pressing themselves flat against the cold metal walls of the containers, barely daring to breathe.
Only Koenji Rokusuke, as the group fell back, gave an instinctive sniff and looked around with puzzled curiosity.
Strange... just a moment ago, I definitely caught a whiff of an unfamiliar woman's perfume somewhere around here.
But now that we've moved over here, it's gone completely... Did she take a different path? Or is she hiding somewhere?
Curious as he was, even Koenji Rokusuke wasn't about to break away from the group over something this trivial in a situation like this.
Time trickled by, second by second.
The group kept their eyes fixed on Katsuragi Kohei's screen, watching the Decepticon's red dot drift back and forth within thirty meters of their position.
Yet it showed no signs of attacking.
"What is it doing? Why isn't it coming at us?"
Hirata Yousuke furrowed his brow, keeping his voice low. "The radar says it's right on top of us — so why can't we hear those heavy footsteps?"
Even Katsuragi Kohei was starting to look uncertain.
"...Could this actually not be a Decepticon at all, but the hidden boss we've never encountered?"
"No."
Koenji Rokusuke dismissed the idea without hesitation.
"If this were the hidden boss and it's the last red dot on the radar, that would mean every regular mission target has already been cleared."
"Under the Black Sphere's rules, completing the base objectives ends the exam automatically. It wouldn't still be running."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka gave a quiet nod.
Koenji's reasoning matched his own exactly.
More importantly — within the ambient noise that everyone's nerves had caused them to tune out entirely, Ayanokoji had caught something unusual.
Buried beneath the roar of the sea wind and the crash of waves against the shore — almost imperceptible — was the faint, delicate scraping of metal on metal.
A massive Decepticon could never produce a sound like that, nor could it move in near-total silence.
A bolder idea flashed through Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's mind.
Was it possible... that among the Decepticons, there existed a miniature role — something like a scout, or a spy?
If its purpose was infiltration, eavesdropping, and sabotage, it wouldn't need a large frame at all — in fact, the smaller the better!
With that thought, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka shifted almost imperceptibly toward Katsuragi Kohei.
That subtle movement immediately caught Katsuragi's attention.
Following the direction of Ayanokoji's gaze, Katsuragi Kohei understood in an instant.
He snapped the X-GUN up, training the barrel on a container slightly ahead and to the side — one that looked completely unremarkable from the outside.
Through the built-in X-ray display on the gun's stock.
Katsuragi Kohei could clearly see that behind that thin metal wall, a mechanical silhouette no larger than a full-grown adult was crouching in wait!
The moment the X-GUN's targeting frame shifted from blue to red.
Katsuragi pulled the trigger without hesitation.
A blinding burst of blue light blazed from the barrel.
— End of Chapter —
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