Chapter 189: The Cabin in the Woods Casting

Second-year Class B. Out in the corridor.

Kiryuuin Fuka looked at the two standing shoulder to shoulder in front of her — Chris and Arisu Sakayanagi — and at the wordless understanding running under everything they said.

Her eyes narrowed, the outer corners tilting up.

"Don't tell me… you're planning to rope me in too?"

"Rope you in?"

Chris blinked at her, the picture of total bafflement. "Weren't you the one who came to me and said we'd all trade information once the exam was over?"

"I just finished talking with Tachibana-senpai and President Nagumo. Once they fold in what Ichinose gave them, the notice they're planning to circulate should be pretty much identical. I came all the way over here specially to keep you in the loop…"

Chris spread his hands and made as if to leave. "If you think it isn't necessary… then I'll go?"

Kiryuuin Fuka went still.

The sidelong glance she'd been aiming at him locked onto him instead.

Her thoughts spun for two frantic seconds, and then it came back to her like waking from a dream.

Right. That conversation had, in fact, happened.

Beside her, Arisu Sakayanagi caught every second of Kiryuuin's brief lapse.

She dipped into a small bow of apology. "It seems… the fault is mine~"

"I appear to have caused Kiryuuin-senpai an unnecessary misunderstanding."

"It's not on you. I overreacted."

Kiryuuin Fuka ruffled her silver-white hair and let out a helpless sigh. "I just grew up watching hypocrites drift over whenever there was profit in it. My instincts tell me to stay out of that kind of mess."

She dropped her hand, her gaze clearing. "But when it comes to saving the Intruders, I won't let my own preferences get in the way."

"They're living human lives, whatever else they are."

Arisu Sakayanagi nodded slightly, and before she could get a word out, Chris cut in, surprise all over his face.

"Looking at you two… you're both those legendary rich young ladies…?"

"Don't tell me your old lives came with political marriages and family power grabs and all that soap-opera drama."

Sakayanagi redirected the words already on her tongue and explained on Kiryuuin's behalf. "Chris-kun, the house Kiryuuin-senpai comes from is a genuine dynasty — a tier above even my family."

"So of course, from the day she was born, the family had her entire life mapped out for her."

"And precisely because it's real old money, the sordid dealings and infighting inside are far worse than you'd imagine."

The girl tilted her head toward Kiryuuin Fuka and said softly, "Which makes me think Kiryuuin-senpai enrolled at a completely sealed-off school like Advanced Nurturing High School to escape those arrangements — to choose her own road. Am I wrong?"

Kiryuuin Fuka leaned back against the cold wall and let out a long sigh.

She wasn't angry that Sakayanagi had laid her background bare in a single breath.

After all, whether at the Advanced Nurturing High School that had once billed itself as "merit above all," or in the Special Exams where death now loomed at every hour, so-called pedigree and background… had long since stopped counting for anything.

In front of monsters, a conglomerate heiress's flesh tore just as easily as a commoner's.

What she hadn't expected was that, after all that running in circles, she'd be tangled up in that world again so soon.

"My old ideas about escaping the family… in the current situation, they're petty little squabbles. Not worth mentioning."

Kiryuuin paused, and a light flickered in her eyes. "But now… if I really can pass this so-called presiding god's trial and survive to the end—"

"Then I might actually win absolute authority over my own life."

Chris nodded in complete agreement. "I can't say I really feel the pain of rich-family problems, but… our number one issue right now is still staying alive, isn't it?"

"Honestly, once you're staring life and death in the face, you find that most of the things you used to agonize over stop being problems at all."

Kiryuuin Fuka raised an eyebrow and gave him a long, searching look.

For a moment she genuinely couldn't tell whether this junior of hers was comforting her or needling her on purpose.

Still… considering that in Muzan's Infinity Castle exam she'd used her mobility to cut through enough rooms to clear the reward condition of the advance test.

Which meant she now carried one extra life count.

On that thought, she decided to take Chris's remark as concern in disguise.

The proud senior completely failed to register — or deliberately ignored — one small fact.

From Chris's vantage point, unless she told him herself, there was no possible way he could know such fine-grained details of what she'd gone through in that exam venue, or what she'd been rewarded with.

All one can say is that a girl whose heart has begun to stir will run her own romance route in her head without ever noticing she's doing it.

"All right, that's enough reminiscing. Let's talk business."

Kiryuuin Fuka reined her expression in and steered the topic herself. "If you've got intel worth sharing, out with it. I'd rather not have to hear all of this later out of Nagumo Miyabi's mouth after he's finished processing it."

Chris didn't mind the blunt pivot. He glanced at the clock on the wall of her classroom and said, "Tachibana-senpai will put together a detailed document on the specifics later, so I won't belabor it. Class hasn't started yet, so let me just hit the key points."

"First: the exam venue isn't fixed to our current world. There's a chance of dragging in monsters from other worlds as well."

"Second: from that Mystery Merchant, Orianna, the Lady of Clockwork, you can buy items you missed in earlier rounds."

"And third, the most important one…" Chris's gaze sharpened. "Outsiders who've practiced the Black Sphere technique that leaked out of the school will most likely be flagged by the system and turned into Intruders in future Special Exams."

None of it differed much from what Arisu Sakayanagi had already told her.

But hearing the warning twice over, Kiryuuin Fuka found herself thinking of her grandfather…

She propped her chin lightly on one hand, expression unchanged. "Aside from the venue not being fixed, the rest… doesn't stray far from what I'd already guessed."

"If anything — the presiding god only now opening a channel to buy back past items, even dragging in the people who tried to get something for nothing in the real world to serve as free-point Intruders… should we call that a merciful balancing mechanism?"

"Or is it that the system took into account that until now we simply didn't have the power to protect that many civilians?"

Sakayanagi laughed softly beside them. "Perhaps… both are possible."

"In the eyes of a presiding god looking down from on high, goodwill being read as malice is perfectly ordinary."

Kiryuuin Fuka shook her head at that.

A trace of weariness spread through her eyes.

It was impossible to tell whether she was troubled by the thin ice they were all walking on now, or sighing over the bloodbath the future guaranteed.

Chris pressed his lips together, thought it over, and offered a practical piece of advice. "Senpai, unless it's genuinely necessary, from now on try not to open the Hyperbolic Time Chamber during the window when the 'advance test' is running."

"Yesterday we burned a lot of points purely because of how the time difference gets judged."

"And once you fall out of step with the outside timeline, you can't borrow someone else's item in an emergency either."

Kiryuuin Fuka slid him a sidelong glance.

That last line struck her as funny. "Coming over to tell me all this… is this a hint that you'd like me to come borrow items from you sometime?"

"I didn't take you for such a contrary type. You're worried about someone, and you still have to dress it up in some roundabout excuse."

Chris looked pained and started to explain.

Beside him, Sakayanagi's mind went to the things he'd said to Karuizawa Kei the night before.

Her eyes glimmered, and she joined the teasing. "It's true. In certain respects, Chris-kun is an extremely contrary person."

"Though for him… perhaps it's a kind of 'imprint' carved deep into his mind, reminding him at every moment to stay rational."

Rather like the inexplicable, unsuppressible fondness she felt for Chris.

Even believing as she did that she had absolute command of her own emotions, that pull from beneath conscious thought…

Even if something really had wiped her memories, it was impossible that no trace at all had survived.

More or less, it was only a question of degree and of the shape it took.

Chris's brow furrowed at her words.

As though something distinctly unpleasant had surfaced, he let Sakayanagi's remark pass without picking it up.

He changed tack and went back to business. "Actually, quite a few items can be lent out with no worry about damage or loss."

"The Darkness Devil's flesh, the Phantom Mask, even the Stand discs… those all fuse into the body or bind to the user, so there's no risk of dropping them inside an exam venue."

"If we coordinate properly down the line, lending them across venues and rotating them is perfectly workable. It'd raise survival rates enormously."

Kiryuuin Fuka had her mood back under control by then, and picked the thread right up. "If the chance comes along, I'll certainly remember to borrow from you… I have no intention of passing up the opportunity to fleece a moneybags like you."

"Assuming, of course, that the chance comes at all."

Chris turned his head, taking in the seniors hurrying back toward their classrooms with all manner of expressions on their faces, and his tone took on a certain distance.

"One thing at a time. You only learn what the second step should be after you've taken the first."

"We've taken that first step already. The road after it is always easier than going from zero to one."

He'd barely finished when the warning bell ending the long break rang out down the hallway.

Kiryuuin Fuka straightened up and volunteered a reminder. "With your abilities you can probably afford to lose this bit of class time. But let me warn you anyway…"

"Advanced Nurturing High School's finals aren't only written tests. They combine your everyday performance with a special 'Comprehensive Practical Combat Exam' to rank everyone. The whole thing leans closer to how a university handles credits."

"Right now the Black Sphere Special Exams have everyone's attention, so I doubt we'll see a repeat of that brutal 'paired partners trampling each other for class points' scenario."

"But to be safe, the two of you should still tread carefully."

"Finals are a whole grade above midterms, and there's no telling whether the Black Sphere's presiding god will keep letting the school decide the assessment format on its own."

Neither Chris nor Arisu Sakayanagi had any objection.

For two people who in practice already held the power to dictate class points, time was the one thing they had in abundance.

And since the unlock permissions for sparring with high-score monsters were almost entirely in their hands, any upperclassman who wanted deeper, targeted training would inevitably end up knocking on their door.

Advance or retreat as they pleased. No rush whatsoever.

"Then I'll take senpai's words as a blessing."

"We'll head back now."

Thanks to the physical boost from the Black Sphere Combat Suit, Chris and Sakayanagi both made it to their own classroom seats before the subject teachers stepped through the doors.

The moment Chris sat down, his gaze drifted to the podium.

He watched Chabashira Sae come in a step behind him, her face missing the usual cold mask.

Chris felt a distinct twinge of disappointment.

Chabashira Sae and Hoshinomiya Chie had been Intruders in last night's exam, and on top of that they were the homeroom teachers of the two flagship first-year classes.

Which meant that on the battlefield where Godzilla was running wild, they'd been given priority care by the students and were among the very first evacuated. No real danger to their lives at all.

At the absolute outside, they'd gotten one scare mid-evacuation when Godzilla decided on a whim to unleash a "spinning omnidirectional Atomic Breath."

In fact, the worst injuries either of them suffered were probably the ankles they twisted early on, hurrying too fast toward the underground shelter.

Chris had been fully looking forward to seeing something out of these two plastic sisters — mutual support at the critical moment, or, better yet, every woman for herself, knives in each other's backs, human ugliness on full display…

Instead, nothing. Not a scrap of it.

Such a waste.

Then again, they were teachers wearing the Intruder tag, and with Black Sphere weapons doubling as locator radar, the two of them had shone inside that venue like fireflies in pitch darkness.

So it wasn't entirely impossible to understand.

If he genuinely wanted the worldline he'd been hoping to watch, he'd have to wait for the extra The Cabin in the Woods instance later on. That would be far easier to arrange.

Chris spun his pen in one hand and quietly ran the numbers.

Because of the rule restrictions, inside the extra instances neither the baseline test personnel nor the ghosts running the Revival Match could pull out Black Sphere equipment.

Stripped of any outside crutch, they'd have nothing but their own wits to face terror with.

And since The Cabin in the Woods was, at its core, a human-run Evil God Sacrifice Ritual…

He wouldn't even need to lift a finger. The instance would supply people eager to manufacture despair all on its own.

Chris turned it over, wavering on whether to toss these two teachers into the next Revival Match instance as a little seasoning.

"Oh, right, speaking of…"

The Evil God sacrifice demanded five sacrificial roles: The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool, and The Virgin.

Setting the Whore aside, the other four were easy enough to cast these days.

Kouenji could be the Athlete, Kanzaki Ryuuji the Scholar, Kushida Kikyo or Shiranami Chihiro the Fool. As for the Virgin… he could grab those by the fistful.

Granted, all of them were the surgically restored variety.

But as for someone who actually fit the "Whore" archetype…

Search the entire school and the only real option seemed to be Hoshinomiya Chie?

The thing was a hard requirement of the ritual, after all — it locked down not just the personality tag but the gender too.

Which disqualified scumbags like Nagumo Miyabi and Machiya at the root.

From the very beginning Chris had never intended to let this Evil God rite actually complete.

But as the presiding god, he didn't mind polishing the details of the set dressing to perfection.

'Ahh… Hoshinomiya-sensei, it isn't that I want to do you in.'

'It's The Cabin in the Woods that's ruining you!'

Chris pressed his lips together and made the decision with quiet delight.

And with it, the look he turned on Chabashira Sae at the podium picked up an inexplicable shade of pity.

Up on the podium, Chabashira Sae was about to open her lesson plan when she caught Chris's blatant stare.

She frowned — and in the end ground her teeth and swallowed it, not daring to say a word in defense of her dignity as a teacher.

There was nothing she could do.

As a teacher she'd also served as the midterm's "Mystery Merchant," which had earned her a small cut of item points.

But she'd never once had the chance afterward to buy anything from the other Mystery Merchants.

And with the pitiful handful of item points she held, a [Phantom Mask] or a [Blank Card Box] was already her ceiling.

Nothing that would hold up to real use.

So even now, she remained utterly incapable of protecting herself.

To come through whatever exam might drop on them next, she had no choice but to lean on this pack of students headed by Chris, Kouenji and the rest!

All things considered, this teaching job of hers had become genuinely humiliating.

Back when she was simply shepherding students, she'd had the run of the place — she could play riddle-master to her heart's content.

However much those students resented it, with the school rules pinning them down, what could they possibly do to her?

And now…

The wheel had turned, and she was the one at the bottom, reading her students' faces for a hint of mercy.

'That damned Black—'

'If you hadn't actually granted my lifelong wish of dragging Class D up to Class A, you'd be the single most deserving-to-die bastard in this world!'

Chabashira Sae pressed her lipsticked mouth into a hard line and drew a deep breath.

All she could do was feed herself that piece of self-deception, and force the textbook open to carry on with the lesson.

____

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