Chapter 187: Changes in the Various Factions

Inside the chairman's office of the Advanced Nurturing High School.

Sakayanagi Seimori sat glaring at his computer screen, brows knotted tight.

Playing on it was the footage of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo, purple Atomic Breath pouring out of its jaws.

The camera had clearly been rolling from a long way off, yet the frame shook violently. Even through a screen, the pressure was suffocating.

Arisu Sakayanagi, standing behind her father, raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.

"This video... Vice Chairman Tsukishiro filmed it himself?"

"I didn't think he had that kind of nerve. In a situation where he could have died at any second, he still had the presence of mind to record evidence... I suppose you can't say they're completely useless."

Sakayanagi Seimori pushed his glasses up and gave his proud daughter a helpless look.

"Teacher Ayanokoji and Director Tsukishiro are genuinely first-rate talents with excellent political instincts. There's no denying it."

"Arisu, if you truly underestimate them, that won't end well for you."

Arisu Sakayanagi didn't argue. She only tilted her small head a little, that faint smile still resting at the corner of her lips.

"Father, I understand the warning."

She paused. The smile didn't change, but her voice dropped a shade softer.

"It's only that the people I look down on were never worth my attention to begin with."

"As the core of that force called the 'White House', yes, they've entered the game. They've even tasted the cruelty of the Black Sphere's examination hall firsthand. But the question is... what cards do they have left to play?"

"Not in this miniature garden. Even the greatest masterpiece they take such pride in may not share their heart."

"Since they no longer even qualify to be on the racetrack, why waste worry on them?"

Listening to his daughter dissect it, Sakayanagi Seimori sighed again.

"A great many things aren't as simple as you imagine. Because you exist as a permanent Qualified One, my seat on the board of directors is stable enough for the moment."

"But once this starts touching the core interests of those big names... the picture gets very hard to predict."

Arisu Sakayanagi's eyes flickered, a trace of puzzlement surfacing.

"Is this about their misfortune of being turned into Intruders?"

Sakayanagi Seimori nodded slowly.

"Along with that video, they sent the upper echelons a list. Detailed files on every White House staff member dragged into the examination hall."

"Forty-seven people in all. Thirty-four of them had practiced Ripple Breathing. Thirteen had cultivated Ki."

Arisu narrowed her eyes, and after only a moment's thought she saw straight through it. Her lips parted.

"So this is meant as a reminder to the people at the top. Cultivate any technique that came from the Black Sphere and you get branded, turned into a reservist Intruder who could be sent to die at any moment. That's the message?"

The smile at the girl's mouth turned faintly mocking. "Put that way, it really is enough to shake them. The higher a man climbs, the more he fears dying. And against the temptation of Ripple Breathing, a longer life, a return to youth, who could truly hold out?"

Sakayanagi Seimori rubbed his temple, pained.

"Precisely. Even if the Black Sphere's selection mechanism can't be confirmed yet, after seeing a casualty ledger like that, which of those great figures would willingly stand face to face with a natural disaster they can't fight at all?"

"Just a moment ago, even the Prime Minister of Onijima called me personally, hoping I could come up with something."

At the words "Prime Minister of Onijima", the smile faded from Arisu Sakayanagi's lips.

The Sakayanagi family she belonged to was the core ally and chief backer of the Onijima faction.

And Onijima, as Prime Minister of Neon's cabinet, was also the man who had actually founded this Advanced Nurturing High School.

With an ally like that asking in person, they could hardly brush him off.

But... it came back to the same problem.

If only the school held even a sliver of a bargaining chip in front of the Black Sphere or the presiding god...

In truth, the slots for the advance test and the Special Exam were never going to land on ordinary students in the first place.

The powerful had long since carved them up as private ground for harvesting supernatural strength.

The examination halls were dangerous, certainly, death waiting around every corner, but the free extra life the Black Sphere handed out at the start already counted as generous by their standards.

And more to the point, for those sitting safely behind the board, moving the pieces...

Compared with the lives of ordinary people, or even of students, the mysterious items delivered by the Black Sphere's presiding god obviously mattered far more.

Sweet-talk a few hot-blooded fools, use their negligible lives to fill the pit, and you walked away with tools capable of reshaping the balance of the world.

For a politician, it was a bargain with infinite returns and no possible loss.

Fortunately, the Black Sphere's presiding god was no absentee landlord content to let mortals exploit loopholes. It had rules of its own.

In fact, in Arisu Sakayanagi's eyes, the Black Sphere's existence was really rather wonderful.

It had effortlessly cured the congenital heart disease that had tormented her for years, and it had handed her a perfect stage on which to display her talents without a single restraint.

Nothing could have been more delightful.

Still, this was clearly not the time to sit and marvel at it alone.

If she couldn't give the Prime Minister of Onijima a reasonably satisfying answer and steady the ranks inside the faction...

Then even if her value kept Sakayanagi Seimori safe for the time being, as long as the Black Sphere hadn't interfered more deeply with reality...

It would be all too easy for Tsukishiro Tsunenari and that White House crowd to upstage them among the leadership of the Advanced Nurturing High School and seize the initiative.

"Then in the end the Black Sphere is the only place to make a breakthrough."

Arisu Sakayanagi thought it through and laid out her reasoning.

"If we want to give them an answer, the first thing we need is a grasp of the underlying logic running behind all of this."

"But realistically, the only window we have for contact and conversation with the Black Sphere's presiding god is that short preparation period before the advance test and the official exam begin."

"Our year group's exam just ended, so from here on I'm afraid we'll have to work through the exam frequency of the upper years. Ah, that reminds me..."

Arisu Sakayanagi paused, then shifted tack.

"Not long ago, Vice Chairman Tsukishiro went over your head and made promises to the students directly, on the school's behalf. Given his seniority and his current position, that's unquestionably a probe past the line."

Sakayanagi Seimori laughed at that and pressed a hand downward, telling his precious daughter to cool off. "I know about it already."

"It's no great matter. Even if he'd kept quiet, pressure from above would have forced us into a similar reassurance anyway."

Sakayanagi Seimori looked at her, his gaze deep. "Compared to that little maneuver of his, I think that classmate you've had your eye on all this time, the one called Chris, is far more deserving of our attention."

Hearing her father single out Chris's name, Arisu Sakayanagi ran a fingertip lightly along her chin.

"True. Next to Chris-kun, Tsukishiro and the rest do look like small-time noise... you've almost made me feel petty."

The girl shook her head, smoothed the hair at her temple, and smiled. "Let's do it this way, Father."

"Leave the matter to me. I'll take care of it for you."

Seeing his daughter brimming with confidence, Sakayanagi Seimori inclined his head, wearing the gratified look of a man who trusted his own child without reservation.

...

The next day.

Thanks to the losses in the last exam, every first-year class had empty seats that needed filling.

But pulling transfer students in from other schools meant paperwork, and even at top speed nothing could be finalized before the weekend.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka was another matter entirely.

With Tsukishiro Tsunenari working the levers behind him, his reinstatement moved at frightening speed. First thing that morning he was transferred straight into Ryuuen's class.

As for his old title of "White House teaching assistant", that hadn't been revoked either. They had let him keep it.

Which plainly meant they'd stamped the White House's brand onto him by force. He was to serve as a living billboard, advertising them for free.

To Ayanokoji Kiyotaka himself, though, the gesture was entirely pointless.

The White House's training cycle was long. Even if it did benefit, even if it drew in fresh blood, by the time it produced the next batch of people worth deploying...

Whether the Black Sphere and the death exams behind it would still exist was anyone's guess.

After all, at the rate the exam difficulty was climbing, exponentially...

Ayanokōji doubted the Black Sphere's presiding god would grant them many more chances to drill troops at their leisure.

Odds were that at some large-scale exam down the line, the presiding god would simply go all in.

Clear it, and the planet had proven it deserved to survive. Exam passed.

Fail to clear it, and Earth was wiped out, the Black Sphere dusting itself off and starting fresh in some other universe.

When that day came, what part would the White House have to play?

Would there even be a reason for it to exist?

Still, he had to admit one thing.

The fact that he'd returned to student status this fast, free of the usual school regulations, owed something to the faction his father Atsuomi Ayanokōji represented.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had no intention of pretending otherwise.

Accept the convenience, accept the obligation that came with it.

Now, in the Class D Classroom.

After giving Ryuuen, who'd wandered over out of curiosity, a simple explanation of what the "White House" was, Ayanokōji pulled out the specially made phone that had buzzed a moment earlier and glanced down at it.

A message from Tsukishiro Tsunenari.

The content was simple, and thoroughly high-handed.

He was to find a way to determine exactly how the Black Sphere decided which White House personnel became Intruders, and a method of avoiding that mechanism.

That would be his payment for the White House getting him back into school.

Ayanokōji's brow creased slightly.

The task itself wasn't especially difficult for him.

But it plainly wasn't an even trade for what Tsukishiro Tsunenari and the others had put in.

Before this, had Ayanokōji wanted to, he could have gone to any number of other factions looking for cooperation.

Given his value, a favor this small was nothing, and it certainly didn't need to be treated as a bargaining chip.

'So they really are at the end of their rope now.'

The corner of Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's mouth curled. He nearly laughed.

Beside him, Ryuuen was still chewing over what he'd just heard about Ayanokōji's history in the White House, and clicked his tongue.

"Tch... no wonder I can't take you in a straight brawl when I'm not using the Lion God template."

"Nine years old and you were already beating every professional martial arts instructor they threw at you. Nearly killed a grown man with your bare hands, too. That's one hell of a resume."

Ryuuen shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at him. "If you hadn't landed in the same class as that freak Chris, you might honestly have snatched the starting permanent Qualified One slot away from the rest of us right at the beginning."

Which brought a question bubbling up in him.

"You, Chris, Kouenji Rokusuke... what the hell goes through the heads of you defective geniuses?"

"You're all ridiculously strong, and yet you insist on packing yourselves into Class D, that garbage heap at the bottom of the rankings."

"Do you just get that big a kick out of playing the pig to eat the tiger?"

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka looked up at Ryuuen and shook his head calmly.

"It isn't about any twisted amusement."

"It's only that the more problem students gather in one place, the more friction there is. Which makes it the best and most honest breeding ground there is for observing human nature. Wouldn't you agree?"

Ryuuen blinked at that.

His mind went straight to Yamauchi Haruki, Ike Kanji and the rest of them, the ones who'd spent their days bouncing around making noise and then died wretchedly in an exam.

He broke into a grin and stuck a thumb up at Ayanokōji, snorting. "Heh. You know how to have fun."

"If the Black Sphere hadn't dropped in out of nowhere and shredded every rule, you'd have gotten to watch plenty of clown acts in Class D."

"Now, though? That's a tall order."

Ryuuen rubbed his chin.

"With death on the table, unless the incoming batch of new students includes some idiot who doesn't believe in bad luck at all, there aren't many people left with the guts to stick their neck out and get it cut off at a time like this."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka put his phone away and answered offhandedly.

"Looking at the transfers who've already arrived, most of them came with a clear purpose."

"They've obviously been screened carefully. The kind of fool who can't read the situation will be rare from here on."

Besides. Judging by how frantic Tsukishiro Tsunenari and the man standing behind him looked right now...

Every single transfer slot had probably kicked up a bloodbath out in the wider world.

Anyone who managed to get sent in would be far from second-rate.

With that thought, Ayanokōji slid the phone back into his pocket, stood, and walked toward the classroom's rear door.

"Where are you going?"

The question came out of Ryuuen on reflex. His tone was almost that of a man afraid this guy, freshly transferred into his class, would run right back to Chris's class to rekindle the old flame.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka didn't turn around, just waved a hand lazily. "To see Nagumo Miyabi. There's something I need to confirm."

Only then did Ryuuen relax, though he still added a reminder.

"Go on then. But don't forget, a man who's turned his back on his own position is never taken back by the circle he came from, no matter how hard he tries to return later."

"You've already made your choice and come over to my side, Ayanokōji. From here on, I'm afraid you'll just have to live with that reality."

Ayanokōji's steps slowed a fraction.

He turned his head and gave Ryuuen a distinctly odd look.

Honestly, he had no idea what made Ryuuen so certain that "class allegiance" and "collective strength" still counted for anything at this stage.

But he had no appetite for explaining it either.

As long as Ryuen didn't start fixating on his body for no discernible reason the way Nagumo Miyabi did, it was fine.

Speaking of which... with a personality as proud and obsessive as Nagumo Miyabi's...

His earlier decision to vanish without a word and spend points to leave the school had almost certainly registered in Nagumo Miyabi's eyes as weakness, a retreat on the eve of battle.

He wondered whether Nagumo Miyabi still had any interest at all in a "coward" like him.

...

After leaving the classroom.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka soon reached the floor where the student council was housed.

Along the way, the upperclassmen he passed mostly wore grim, anxious faces.

They had clearly all learned what the first-years had gone through inside the examination hall the day before.

Now everyone was living on edge, terrified that the presiding god would take another whim and open an early exam for the upper years too.

And if they were unlucky enough to be swept in as Intruders, facing monsters on that scale, they'd almost certainly die on the spot.

Of course, Ayanokōji had always respected other people's fates and never inserted himself into their causes and consequences.

If it weren't for the errand Tsukishiro Tsunenari had assigned him, plus a genuine curiosity about the powerful items the upper years currently held, he wouldn't have bothered making a special trip to find Nagumo Miyabi at all.

So he passed those panic-stricken seniors as a cold spectator, watching calmly.

He arrived in front of the Student Council Office at the end of the corridor.

He raised a hand and rapped lightly on the heavy mahogany door.

Knock, knock.

A familiar "Come in" answered from within.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka pushed the door open, looked up, and found someone he hadn't expected.

"Chris?" he said, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

Chris, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea, waved a hand and smiled.

"Don't make a face like you've seen something strange."

"I'm a proper, card-carrying officer of the student council these days."

"Me showing up here counts as coming home to visit family and check in on my senpai."

Chris lifted the cup and took a sip, then teased, "You, on the other hand, just got reinstated as an outside hire. If anyone here is the real outsider, it's you."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka went quiet at that.

"..."

At that moment, Tachibana Akane, seated behind the desk and recording something with exhaustion written all over her face, looked up toward the door.

Seeing Ayanokōji, she quickly asked, "Ayanokoji-kun, is something urgent?"

"Chris just came by to share some intel with us about the Special Exam."

"If it isn't pressing, could you sit over there for a while and wait until we've finished..."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka nodded, expression unchanged, and walked over to the sofa on the other side to sit down.

"I don't mind."

"You two go first."

____

👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan on P a t r e o n🔥👻

🔥 New history: Dragon Ball: But I Get Stronger by Taking Girls to Bed — find it on The_Mikudayo

📚 40 chapters ahead at Walnut-chan — every supporter directly speeds up the translations

Let's hit these goals:

🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!