Chapter 198: Come On, Monsters

The Infinite Corridor.

Glass curtain walls on both sides threw back reflections of the real world. In all that cold, empty space, only two sets of footsteps echoed.

Chris glanced down at the three-dimensional map on the Controller. "Kei…" He stopped short and turned his head toward the blonde girl who had been shadowing him step for step. "Do you have any specific requirements for your Contract Beast?"

Kei Karuizawa blinked, caught off guard.

She didn't fall back on the old reflex, on that clinging little answer of hers — "whatever Chris-kun decides."

Instead she looked down at the Blank Card Box in her hand, thought it over seriously, and shook her head. "If I had to name something… I'd want it to be versatile."

"A Knight-class card box costs thirty S Points. For me as I am now that's trading a slingshot for a cannon, sure, but it's still only a stepping stone. I have to think about whether it'll combine well with other items down the line."

Chris gave her a long look, approval flickering somewhere behind his eyes.

"Exactly. The upgrade path for Knights is still murky, so hanging all your hopes on this box and whatever it contracts would be a mistake."

He turned his head, sweeping a thoughtful glance across the corridor. "As it happens, I just picked up a Mirror Beast on the radar that suits your needs very well…"

He let the sentence trail off and simply watched her.

Kei blinked again. "What Mirror Beast?"

"A Bio-Green Lizard."

Chris explained in an even tone. "It grants its contractor mimicry and invisibility. The invisibility alone makes it worth half a Controller inside an exam site."

"Though…" His voice took a turn. "It's a chameleon-type Mirror Beast. Camouflage is in its blood. Which means right now, it's almost certainly somewhere the naked eye can't find it."

Understanding broke over Kei all at once.

This was a test. Chris was testing her.

She was the one who kept swearing she wanted to stay at his side forever, to be the irreplaceable parasite. After all this time, she owed him proof that she was worth something.

No one can guard another person forever.

And he couldn't spend the rest of his life being her babysitter…

Kei honestly hadn't expected the test to land on her now, of all moments.

But the more she thought about it, the more this place might be the ideal ground for it.

It wasn't an exam site swarming with lethal enemies, where a single mistake meant a corpse. It wasn't an extra instance that sealed off all supernatural power either. With Chris standing right there, her safety was absolutely guaranteed.

Even if she failed, the worst outcome was disappointing him…

No! I am not going to disappoint him!

Kei clenched her teeth.

Honestly — if she couldn't work up the nerve to gamble on herself even with a safety net under her feet, how was she any different from the Kikyo Kushida of those early days, the girl who only shrieked and shrank back the second danger appeared?

She might as well find a quiet corner and wait to die.

Except Chris had handed her nothing but a name and one hint about invisibility.

Finding an invisible chameleon in this glittering corridor was a tall order.

And his intent was obvious: she was to find it and complete the contract with her own abilities.

So. What now?

Kei narrowed her eyes in thought, and then remembered the abilities Chris had gone out of his way to spell out.

Invisibility. And mimicry.

A predator's favorite move at hunting time was to lie low in the dark, conserve every scrap of stamina, and wait for the prey to expose an opening.

If it was lurking invisible somewhere nearby…

The Controller's invisibility can't hold while you're attacking. And invisibility is only invisibility — it isn't intangibility.

As long as something has a body, it has a tell!

Maybe I can feel for it with Ripple and Ki!

Kei closed her eyes and began to steady the rhythm of her breathing. "Out… in…"

Her constitution held her back; her command of Ripple lagged far behind Rokusuke Kouenji or Yotsuya Miko. She still couldn't channel it into a weapon to deal real damage.

But she had drilled for a very long time in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Using Ripple purely as a sensory booster, a way to feel the life energy around her —

That much she could manage.

Faint gold light circulated through her body, and her mind went perfectly still.

Within moments she felt it: roughly five meters ahead and off to one side, something was blocking the flow of air, splitting the current in a barely perceptible way.

Considering that the spot had been plainly empty before she shut her eyes…

That had to be the Bio-Green Lizard, lying in wait.

To be safe, Kei opened her eyes without saying a word. She only frowned slightly, wearing the anxious look of someone who had found absolutely nothing, scanning the corridor as she stepped two or three paces away from Chris — turning her back on the thing, apparently wide open.

And then the Bio-Green Lizard let its guard down. Certain it had stumbled onto free prey, it opened its mouth and fired a long, barbed tongue straight at her.

Kei felt the air shift, sharp and clear. "Got you!"

She threw herself sideways, and the killing strike hissed past by a hair.

In the same motion she hurled the Blank Card Box at the source of the disturbance.

Clang! The box slammed into something solid in empty air.

Blinding light flared, a low droning note rolled through the corridor, and the creature was forcibly sealed away.

When the glow faded, Kei walked over and picked up the box — now finished in a coat of glossy green lacquer, a chameleon crest stamped dead center.

"I… I actually did it?!"

She clutched the box tight, disbelief written all over her face.

Chris smiled, and the praise came without a trace of stinginess. "Beautifully done."

"Your Ripple still isn't something you can use in a straight fight, but as a way to read your surroundings, that performance was more than passable."

He clapped his hands once, and his tone snapped back to business. "All right. Your errand's finished, so let's head back and see whether we can help with anything."

Kei's cheeks went pink under the praise, and she nodded hard, smiling as she jogged back to his side.

This was the real thing — something she had accomplished entirely on her own wits and nerve.

As a parasite, she was dying to share the joy with her "host."

But hearing what he'd just said, she remembered how urgent things were outside.

The spoiled little remark already forming on her tongue changed shape. She looked at him with genuine concern. "Chris-kun, what about you? Aren't you going to contract one while we're here?"

Chris shook his head lightly. "I don't need that particular kind of power right now."

"An ordinary Mirror Beast would just be dead weight to me."

His gaze traveled around the corridor, dark and unreadable, and there was something under his words. "Besides… I'm not certain that if I contracted a Mirror Beast here, we'd still get to exist in this world."

"Let's finish what we've already decided to do first."

Meanwhile.

Amikura Mako was still scouring the dozens of mirrored panels floating in front of her, hunting anxiously for any trace of Yotsuya Miko and Shiranami Chihiro.

Off to one side, Hiyori Shiina stood quietly before a single enormous panel.

As the mirrored image cycled, she found herself looking into a vast underground hall of obscene luxury, as if the whole thing had been cast from gold.

On the throne at its center sat a skeletal monster stripped down to bare bone, draped in ornate magical robes.

It was addressing a crowd of misshapen creatures gathered below the dais, its voice low and heavy with authority.

Hiyori listened closely and caught fragments — something about "Shalltear must be recovered" and "the dignity of the Great Tomb of Nazarick will not be trampled."

Looks like the instance Senpai and the others landed in is no small headache either.

She pressed her lips together and was about to swipe the interface over to check on Miyabi Nagumo's situation —

when a side door at the edge of the image swung open, and an elderly man in a butler's uniform escorted another man inside.

"Isn't that… Director Tsukishiro?!"

Hiyori's small mouth fell open.

Before her mind could catch up, before she could lean in for a closer look, the twin crimson flames burning in the skeleton king's eye sockets contracted sharply.

An instant later, the monsters kneeling below the throne snapped upright as if they'd caught the scent of danger, weapons out, heads swiveling in every direction.

Hiyori jerked back, tearing her hand off the mirror and severing the connection.

Hayasaka Ai, standing guard nearby, caught the movement and whipped around. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Did you see something bad?"

Hiyori pressed a hand over her hammering chest and murmured, not entirely sure of herself, "Um… Hayasaka-san. When I touch this mirror, I can hear the people on the other side talking. But it seems like… they can hear me too?"

Hayasaka raised an eyebrow.

"So touching it opens a gap between the two worlds?"

"Some kind of… Schrodinger's observer state?"

Hiyori wasn't confident either. She threw a hesitant glance at the monsters in the mirror, now fully braced for combat. "Just now I think I saw Director Tsukishiro being escorted into a palace full of monsters…"

"And the targets of Senpai's test seem to know we exist now, too…"

"Hayasaka-san, should I… try reconnecting and negotiate with them? Buy some time?"

Hayasaka frowned. She opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out —

Amikura Mako cried out from the other side. "Found them!"

She jabbed a finger at the mirror in front of her, her voice shaking. "I think I know what Yotsuya-san's extra instance is about!"

"I heard the people sitting behind the monitors in there — they're an organization that offers human beings as sacrifices to an evil god underground. That's how they keep it asleep!"

Her words came out in a rush. "And they said rituals are running in a lot of places at once. Which means they're treating Yotsuya Miko and Ichinose and the rest, the ones who barged in out of nowhere, as variables — and they plan to execute them along with everyone else!"

The World of The Cabin in the Woods. Underground secret facility.

"Relax! The Neon Branch nails its ritual perfectly every single year. There's no reason for us to be this wound up. Take it easy, people!"

In the control room, a heavyset technician with a coffee mug in one hand watched the students trapped in a sealed room on the monitor and egged the others on without the slightest shame.

"You ask me, we wipe these mystery guests out too. Who cares who they are? They came in, so there's no reason to let them walk out."

Not far from him, a bespectacled rookie frowned, unable to stomach it. "That's probably not right… They're unrelated civilians, and minors on top of that!"

"Our priority should be finding the candidates we originally locked in and completing the ritual by the book!"

The fat man sighed, walked over to Jack, and clapped him hard on the shoulder.

"Jack, Jack. You've barely been here five minutes and your head's still full of naive outside-world apprentice thinking. That's not how it works."

"Or did you forget what our ultimate goal is?"

"…The ritual?" Jack said uncertainly.

The fat man nodded and shot back, "So what do you figure is actually interfering with our sacrifice?"

He slammed a palm down on the console and snarled, "It's this pack of shit-for-brains students who crawled in from God knows where! They show up out of nowhere, they scramble our monitoring, and they lose us our offering!"

"Get it through your skull — if the Neon Branch didn't come through and cover for everybody every single time, we'd be staring down an ancient evil god waking up and the extinction of the whole damn human race!"

"Shit! These people sabotaged our sacrifice. You still think there's any reason to keep them breathing?"

The other veterans who'd been watching from around the control room all wore the same outraged look now.

"He's right! Kill them!"

"No way a few brats get to doom all of humanity!"

Jack, the one with the glasses, furrowed his brow.

He'd wanted to point out that on the channel he'd been monitoring, one of those girls had called this whole thing a "test," had even used a phrase like "presiding god." Maybe they could actually help against the evil god.

But then he thought about it… What existence could possibly measure up against an ancient evil god fated to destroy the world?

So, swept along by the fever of the crowd, Jack chose silence.

Seeing that, the fat man smiled.

He shoved Jack aside and slammed his palm down on the red button of the master console.

"They came in here begging to die, so let's grant the wish!"

"Release the gas! Open the monster gates!"

…

Up on the surface, inside the little wooden cabin.

They had hauled the boy infested by the Xenomorph Facehugger into a room that looked reasonably safe. The moment she crossed the threshold, Miko's nose wrinkled.

"This smell… something's off!"

"They're pumping that hallucinogenic spray in here too, the stuff that messes with your emotions. Everyone, get the windows open and air it out!"

As she spoke, Yotsuya Miko pushed the Y-GUN she'd been carrying for self-defense into Shiranami Chihiro's arms.

Then she rubbed her hands together until golden Ripple shimmered across her palms, meaning to see whether she could force the foreign body out of the boy.

But as she fed the Ripple slowly into his body, the sensation that came back dropped her heart straight through the floor.

His lungs and organs were already deformed. The entire structure inside him was being taken apart and reassembled into some unknown creature.

Yotsuya Miko turned to Chie Hoshinomiya, her face grave, and shook her head.

Before Chie could get a question out, Ryūji Kanzaki had already read the answer off her expression.

He let out a slow breath, took the Y-GUN from Shiranami Chihiro's hands, and walked over to the ashen-faced boy with heavy steps.

"Look."

Kanzaki flipped the Y-GUN's radar screen around so the boy could see it.

"There's already a red dot where you're standing. Meaning… you're turning into one of them right now."

"I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do to save you…"

He kept his voice as level as he could manage. "Tell me your name. If I ever get the chance… I swear I'll gather enough points and bring you back."

The boy's face, twisted with pain, worked through several expressions.

In the end, he didn't beg. "To think I survived two exams… and death caught up with me anyway. Fine."

"Getting teleported into some other dimension by a Y-GUN beats having a monster tear its way out of my gut and drag all of you down with me."

He tilted his head up at Kanzaki and dragged a smile onto his face. "My name's Akito Miyake. First year, Class D."

Akito closed his eyes. "Kanzaki… looking forward to the next time we meet."

Kanzaki nodded hard, moved by the courage of a man staring death in the face.

Zzzt —

The laser tether shot out and bound Akito Miyake tight.

Kanzaki pressed the transport key. Light blazed, and Akito dissolved slowly out of the room.

Watching that decisive, almost merciful killing, Yotsuya Miko stood frozen, at a loss for what to say.

She had watched plenty of people die in front of her by now.

But watching a comrade put down one of their own with his own hands — that was a first.

Kanzaki didn't leave her much room to grieve.

He glanced down at the Y-GUN's radar and found the screen crawling with red dots, all of them closing in on the cabin.

He turned to her. "Yotsuya-san, that Black Sphere Watch on your wrist — it can pull out Black Sphere equipment, can't it? Any restrictions?"

Yotsuya Miko snapped back to herself.

Only then did she remember that she'd redeemed a Stone Mask at some point.

The Black Sphere had been very considerate about it, forcibly reverting every vampire bloodline anyone had gained from a Stone Mask back into capsule form on school grounds.

Which was exactly why the item had slipped to the back of her mind.

Bringing it up now would make her look like she'd been sitting on it — like a dead-weight teammate…

But with a tide of monsters closing in, and more lives on the line, Yotsuya Miko gritted her teeth and produced the Stone Mask.

"This is a Stone Mask. Drip blood on it, put it on your face, and you turn into a vampire with enormous regenerative power."

She rattled off the instructions, then immediately bent over her Black Sphere Watch, trying to spend her remaining item points on basic Black Sphere gear they could defend themselves with.

As for Ryūji Kanzaki — after hearing her explanation, his feelings tangled.

He looked at the spot where Akito Miyake had vanished and let out a bitter laugh.

If she'd brought the mask out sooner… could Akito have been saved?

But it was done, and chewing on "what if" now was pointless.

That thing assimilates your organs. Hard to say a vampire body could have salvaged his insides anyway… He probably would have died regardless.

It was a necessary sacrifice for the bigger picture. Once we have the points, we bring him back.

That was the reasoning Kanzaki used to talk himself down.

He reached out, took the blood-smeared mask, and lifted it to his face.

"Come on, then, monsters…"

____

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