Chapter 223: Chris's Innate Technique, Miyabi Nagumo's Goodwill

Once the general direction for the follow-up elective classes had been settled...

...everything that followed actually became simple and straightforward for the students.

Priority went to those who'd joined the elective classes earliest and already gotten a foothold, letting them continue advancing within the electives.

Once they cleared the passing line in basic courses like cursed energy or Chakra extraction and received advanced instruction, they could move straight into the [Hyperbolic Time Chamber] for secluded training, using the time differential to rapidly convert that training into combat strength.

Right after that came the rotation, handing the slots over to whichever students had just scraped together enough S Points to buy a training seed.

After watching the recorded footage of Jiraiya's ninjutsu, along with Gojo Satoru's and Koro Sensei's abilities with their own eyes, students naturally started picking a mentor based on their own affinity.

As for the rest — the ones who'd just transferred in...

...or the newcomers who simply didn't have enough S Points to spare.

They couldn't redeem a training seed for the time being, but they could still pick up the relevant common knowledge and combat techniques through the school's regular theory classes riding on the new craze.

All they had to do was wait for a few slots to open up in a future advance test — as long as they survived and scraped together the baseline payout, enough S Points to redeem a training seed, they could seamlessly pick up right where they left off and step onto the path beyond the ordinary.

But given how enormous the student body was...

...to keep each advance test's team survival rate from collapsing outright, the class leaders still had to carefully work out the ratio of who got sent in just to scrape by on the baseline payout.

Still, on the whole, most people at the school finally had something concrete to look forward to.

No one had to just idle around burning through the spending points the Black Sphere handed out, the way they had before, and no one was left completely clueless about their own half-baked Ripple or Ki training anymore.

Everything was on the rise.

In contrast, beyond the high walls of the school, the undercurrents of the real world ran far more turbulent than anyone imagined.

Over at the White House...

Atsuomi Ayanokōji stood before the surveillance screens, expression blank as he studied the latest detection report in his hands.

In the end, he chose not to hide the existence of the "Backrooms" entrance, resisting the temptation to sit on it until his own people had mapped it out and he could cash it in for political gain.

As a properly qualified schemer, he had, after all, personally witnessed Godzilla's Atomic Breath with his own eyes in another world.

No matter how little reverence he held for supernatural power, when it came to his own life and death, Atsuomi Ayanokōji was never foolish enough to gamble it blindly.

So, after reporting the intelligence up to those higher above him...

Atsuomi Ayanokōji smoothly secured authorization to deploy a portion of the elite self-defense force trained in Ripple.

The White House's own loyal men volunteered to step into that jaundiced maze reeking of damp carpet and explore it.

And then, unsurprisingly...

After a stretch of scouting, the overwhelming majority of the self-defense squad vanished inside without a trace.

Only through the accounts of the handful of survivors who made it back — most on the verge of a mental breakdown — could anyone piece together even a corner of the Backrooms' horrors.

Inside were not just endlessly stretching, unknown rooms enough to bleed a person's sanity dry.

Roaming the shifting floors were also all manner of physical monsters that defied any ordinary explanation.

By rights, a casualty rate as high as ninety-nine percent alone should've been enough to mark the Backrooms as an extremely dangerous no-touch zone, sealed off for the time being pending further deliberation.

But one of the returning survivors, whose mental state stood in stark contrast to his broken comrades, was the one who caught Atsuomi Ayanokōji's attention.

After sending someone to give him dedicated psychological counseling and confirming he hadn't been contaminated by any memetic hazard, Atsuomi Ayanokōji personally sought him out to ask about exactly what had happened inside.

According to the man's own account...

...he was the type with truly exceptional luck.

Not long after this soldier entered the Backrooms, his squad ran into a bizarre, clay-statue-like monster.

While the clay figure was brutally slaughtering his teammates by twisting their necks, he accidentally got separated from the others as they fled.

After blindly stumbling through room after room in the Backrooms, he miraculously ran into a few other self-defense squad members who'd likewise been scattered.

Then, when they opened the door to one particular room, the point man leading the way was scorched right through the skin by what looked like gorgeous, drifting snow inside, and died a horrible, agonized death.

Terrified, they had no choice but to backtrack, trying to find the way they'd come in.

As time dragged on, their rations and clean water began running out, and their nerves frayed to the breaking point.

To survive, when they found some "almond water" in glass bottles along the way, they had no choice but to hold their noses and drink it.

The results turned out to be surprisingly good.

This [Almond Water] didn't just rapidly restore their stamina — it even effectively eased their steadily draining sanity and their nearly shattered composure.

Unfortunately, their relief didn't last long.

Retreating back the way they'd come, they ran into that same clay-statue monster again, standing motionless in a pool of blood amid severed limbs.

With the earlier lesson fresh in mind, and seeing that the thing wouldn't attack as long as it was being watched, they slowly spread out, trying to hug the walls and skirt around it.

But the last man keeping his eyes on "Little Peanut" — that was what they'd started calling it — couldn't help blinking once out of sheer nerves...

"Crack!"

Little Peanut instantly teleported right behind him and snuffed out his life without hesitation.

They were scared half to death on the spot — even after getting out, they were still left with PTSD!

But it was precisely that teammate's death that let them vaguely work out the rule.

It seemed like as long as you kept staring at it, it wouldn't move?

To survive, the rest of them took turns keeping their eyes locked on Little Peanut.

Later, while taking turns retreating, this survivor boldly suggested checking the spot where the clay figure had originally stood, to see if it hid some way out.

As it turned out, they never found a passage, but he did find an oddly-shaped toy right at that spot.

With everyone else covering him, he carried this [Bamboo Copter] left behind at the clay figure's original position, and miraculously felt his way to the exit, making it back to reality.

As for whether, in that final moment, he'd actually abandoned the teammates on monster-watch duty and fled alone, or whether they'd truly, nobly covered for him...

None of that mattered in the slightest to Atsuomi Ayanokōji.

What mattered was the [Bamboo Copter] he'd brought back!

After rough testing at the research institute, this thing shocked absolutely everyone.

Just wearing it on your head let you ignore gravity outright and fly freely through the air in a way that defied all common sense —

— no fuel needed, no mechanical structure at all, completely overturning modern aerodynamics!

With the Bamboo Copter's existence proven, the Backrooms instantly transformed, in the eyes of those in power, from a one-sided death zone into an endless treasure trove where risk and opportunity coexisted.

As long as you were willing to spend human lives as consumables, you could trade them for fantastical items that completely transcended the current dimension of technology —

— granted, on a moral level it was more than a little inhuman.

But for Atsuomi Ayanokōji and the politicians and financial magnates behind him, this deal was, without question, an absolute bargain!

As for who to send to their deaths?

Worst case, just raise the death benefits a bit, push the settlement money to a level the working poor and impoverished soldiers couldn't refuse.

After all, when the returns so outweighed the risk...

...the so-called corporate drones and soldiers were, by their very nature, the most convenient consumables around.

Weren't they?

By the time all this intelligence made its way to Advanced Nurturing High School's Director Sakayanagi Seimori, it was already after classes on Friday.

There wasn't much time left before the students faced their next Special Exam.

Faced with a development that was hard to pin down as either critical or simple, but that certainly couldn't be brushed off...

...Sakayanagi Seimori sat and thought it over in his office for a moment, then decided to call his daughter Arisu Sakayanagi in.

"So..."

After listening to her father's brief summary, Arisu Sakayanagi sat on the sofa, fingers lightly tracing the capsule in her hand as she considered it.

"They found a stable rift into another world — one you can enter and return from — inside the White House's secret base?"

Sakayanagi Seimori nodded gravely.

"According to what Prime Minister Onijima relayed, the space that rift connects to is something like an independent dimension."

"It has unknown, rule-based monsters inside, and all sorts of items besides."

"Among what's been recorded and brought back to reality — the kind that shows up in your so-called Illustrated Guide — there's already the [Senzu Bean] and the [Golden Apple]."

"As for the rest — things like the [Bamboo Copter] and the wreckage codenamed [Cybernetic King Kong] — they haven't shown up in the Black Sphere's Mystery Shop, but they're clearly beyond anything on our world's tech tree."

The man sighed, his gaze deep. "It's hard to say a place like this — one that lets us freely go in and out and bring items back — has nothing to do with the Black Sphere's presiding god..."

Hearing that, Arisu Sakayanagi pressed her pale cherry-pink lips together slightly.

"It could very well be connected to our upcoming Special Exam..."

the girl said quietly. "Next time I go into the presiding god's space, I'll find a chance to ask it directly what's really going on."

"But Father, has the outside world already made this much progress? Gaining this much in such a short time?"

Sakayanagi Seimori shook his head with a wry smile.

"What the people out there have to work with, apart from their own equipment, is just the Ripple and Ki that's been shared out from your side."

"In this little time, hardly anyone's amounted to much — the higher-ups certainly aren't going to send their genuinely valuable seedlings out to gamble their lives that easily."

"Being able to produce these items is, at its core, nothing but the possibility bought by grinding down irrelevant lives at the bottom."

"Just as I thought!"

Arisu Sakayanagi nodded in understanding, then knit her delicate brows, and after a moment's thought, said:

"Then what if what they find in the Backrooms is tempting enough thatthey decide to reach their hands toward our school instead? What then?"

"Honestly, I don't think that pack of greedy politicians could withstand much temptation at all."

Seeing his daughter cut straight through to the heart of it, Sakayanagi Seimori nodded, a little pleased despite himself.

"Arisu, you're right to strip away any illusions about people in power and clearly recognize they're just ordinary people driven by desire like anyone else."

"But… you don't need to worry too much either."

"Even if they wanted to reach for our school, at the end of the day, whether we're willing or not doesn't actually change much."

Sakayanagi Seimori looked out the window, his gaze distant.

"On this island, the ultimate will governing everything comes down to the Black Sphere's own intent."

Arisu Sakayanagi nodded obediently. "I hope so."

After all, the Black Sphere hung suspended over every single person at Advanced Nurturing High School — no one could obstruct or alter its will.

But at the same time, it genuinely had no interest whatsoever in interfering with the school's administrative affairs.

Now, with Chris and Ichinose having already confirmed through practice that "Black Sphere-exclusive items can't be used even after leaving the school"...

...if the people outside really did intend to go to extremes over that fate of certain destruction...

...then for these students, that would actually turn into an enormous headache.

Because not many people are without a single soft spot.

Even if the people outside didn't resort to open pressure or threats, all it'd take was dangling a huge payout in front of your friends or family, or secretly coercing and tricking them into the Backrooms.

When it really came down to that...

...would you choose to protect yourself by pretending not to know, or walk straight into the trap to save them, knowing full well it's a trap?

It was a scheme with no counter — laid out in plain sight, impossible to solve.

...

The next day. Saturday morning, the morning mist hadn't fully lifted yet.

Arisu Sakayanagi used a private line of contact to call Chris and Honami Ichinose aside, alone, to a quiet corner of the school building.

She gave her two allies a brief rundown of the Backrooms entrance that had appeared at the White House's base.

On hearing that the Backrooms wouldn't just steadily drain sanity but also housed all sorts of bizarre monsters bound by murder-triggering rules, and that plenty of powerful items could be brought back out of it...

Even though Arisu Sakayanagi hadn't gone into detail about exactly how the authorities had gotten hold of this intel...

...Honami Ichinose could more or less guess just how brutal a price had been paid to obtain it.

She stood there quietly, listening to the whole thing, her brow slowly knitting tight.

"So far, has only this one entrance connecting to the other space been found?"

Ichinose asked, worried. "Could there be similar passages somewhere else in the world too?"

"Or could it be like the spacetime rifts the students ran into during the midterm exam — the kind that could swallow someone up without warning?"

At that, Arisu Sakayanagi glanced at Honami Ichinose.

Privately marveling for a moment at Ichinose's almost instinctive nobility and compassion, the girl answered quietly:

"As far as I know, at least for now, only that one entrance at the White House has shown up."

"Of course, the world's a big place — there's no guarantee there isn't another one somewhere else."

"On that point, I think once we're in the presiding god's space this afternoon, it'll be a lot more efficient to just ask the Black Sphere's presiding god directly, rather than waiting on delayed reports from the outside."

Beside her, Chris nodded.

This was the kind of strategic information there was no way to fully untangle in the short term, yet one that carried far-reaching consequences for the real world.

At its core, it was really just a bargaining chip Chris had deliberately engineered to pad the Black Sphere system's "performance metrics."

As intel touching on the world's survival and the final exam, charging a modest consultation fee wasn't exactly unreasonable, was it?

Perfectly reasonable, all around.

"Too bad it's Saturday morning right now."

Chris pretended to frown, smoothly picking up the thread.

"Koro Sensei, Gojo-sensei, and Jiraiya-sensei — none of them are at school right now."

"Otherwise, we could've just asked them straight up whether their own worlds had ever produced anything like this."

"If it's simply a spacetime rift causing worlds to intersect… those monsters can't have just been conjured up out of nothing."

"Who knows," Arisu Sakayanagi said noncommittally.

"Who's to say whether the monsters in the Backrooms actually fell in from other planes through the rift, or whether they've been native to that place all along?"

Still, since she already planned on asking the Black Sphere's presiding god directly during the exam...

...Arisu Sakayanagi didn't waste much more energy on a question that was bound to lead nowhere.

She quickly changed tack and moved on to today's real business:

"Barring surprises, our grade's Special Exam and advance test will start at four this afternoon."

"These past few days, most of the main forces from each class have basically been in seclusion training inside the Time Chamber."

"So maybe — later, when there's time, we could pull everyone together and run a simulated mid-tier boss fight in the Time Chamber, just to check how their training's paid off?"

Listening to this, Honami Ichinose gave a small shake of her head.

Even though, deep down, she really did want to agree with the suggestion.

Unfortunately, [cursed energy] and [Chakra] weren't like Ripple and Ki, which could be trained directly at school.

Maybe because of some inherent instability, the system restricted them to being trained only in the Time Chamber, or in the elective classes after 4 PM on weekdays.

To let the students set to take part in the upcoming exam quickly grasp the most basic techniques and ninjutsu usage, and to let more people cycle through training...

...over these past few days, nearly every class had poured a fair amount of Class Points into it.

That was the only reason this current batch of newly-initiated students could train day and night in the Time Chamber, while the daily afternoon elective classes were freed up for the slightly less gifted students — forming a decent, self-sustaining cycle.

Right now, without having taken the exam yet or replenished their Class Points, spending a Time Chamber ticket just to run a test... would be something of a waste.

After all, no one could be sure how many points this Black Sphere exam would actually yield — they still had to keep some reserve for continued growth down the line.

Chris, taking the cue, voiced the same concern as Ichinose:

"We really don't lack for plain sparring matches against each other inside the Time Chamber anyway."

"These days, Class Points are worth their weight in gold — an extremely precious strategic resource. We can't afford to burn through them recklessly like before."

Seeing both of them push back, Arisu Sakayanagi spread her small hands in mild resignation, but didn't press the point further.

She just let out a soft sigh, quickly settling back into her usual composed, calculating manner.

"Well then, in that case, let's each spend a bit more time before four o'clock polishing up our own skills."

As she said this, the girl suddenly looked up, a not-quite-smile playing on her lips as she looked at Chris:

"By the way, Chris. The technique you awakened with the [Demon Essence]… it's weather manipulation, isn't it?"

"Just going by wide-area lethality alone, it's quite a bit stronger than both mine and Ichinose's."

"After training these past few days… have you touched the threshold of the Reverse Cursed Technique? Or maybe developed your own Domain Expansion?"

Chris shook his head flatly. "You're kidding, right."

"From what Gojo-sensei told me, even he only barely grasped the Reverse Cursed Technique back in the day, right on the brink of death."

"Neither the Reverse Cursed Technique nor Domain Expansion is something you can just pick up by throwing time at it."

Chris spread his hands, perfectly self-assured. "Besides, it's not just cursed technique I have to train — I've got the Three Body Techniques to keep up with too."

"Unless you want to burn our entire class's Class Points on me alone as experience fodder — otherwise, no matter how much of a genius I am, there's no way I'd master something at that level in just a few days."

"My 'Weather Forecast' can only really help me sense shifts in the weather right now, or make small-scale changes to rainfall or lightning."

By the end, Chris even let out a deliberate sigh.

"Honestly, when it comes to real-combat flexibility..."

"I feel like Miyabi Nagumo's [Unfair Game] is actually a lot more useful for tactical coordination than mine is."

Listening to the two of them humblebrag right in front of her...

...Honami Ichinose, standing off to the side, let her mouth droop slightly, looking at the two of them with a faint air of grievance.

"Senior, Sakayanagi…" Ichinose's voice came out muffled. "I really think you two shouldn't be discussing that kind of trouble in front of some unlucky soul who hasn't awakened a bloodline limit OR an innate technique."

Watching Ichinose's rare display of sulking...

...Arisu Sakayanagi's lips curved slightly, a flash of mischief in her eyes.

Chris couldn't help cracking a smile either.

After all, whether or not someone awakened a technique or bloodline limit was, on the system's surface-level rules, purely a matter of luck.

Aside from him personally using his special privileges to slap an "innate technique" skin onto his own Stand [Weather Forecast]...

...he genuinely hadn't tampered much with anyone else's awakenings.

That was all down to their own fortune.

So even though Chris held extremely high favor for Ichinose, Kei Karuizawa, and the rest, if they hadn't rolled it, they simply hadn't rolled it.

They'd just have to make up for it later by buying special skill cards, or spending more time training body techniques instead.

But on the flip side...

...for those who really did get lucky and awaken techniques or bloodline limits on their own, Chris had done plenty of quiet interference behind the scenes.

Like the budget version of Ame-no-Tajikarao that Miyabi Nagumo pulled — [Unfair Game];

like the weakened version of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception that Ayanokoji Kiyotaka awakened — [Ten-Stroke Curse Technique];

and Kushida Kikyo's oddly fitting voodoo-doll technique — [Straw Effigy Curse Technique]…

As for bloodline limits, pure lottery draws hadn't turned up a single winner.

At most, there were a few special cases born with all five Chakra natures, which saved them some trouble.

But since Jiraiya's own repertoire of ninjutsu couldn't cover the full breadth of the ninjutsu system anyway, whether or not you had a bloodline limit didn't make much difference for now.

Compared to all those flashy elemental releases, what most people were really coveting was what Jiraiya called the [Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu] and [Flying Thunder God Technique] — ninjutsu with enormously practical function.

Unfortunately, both fell squarely under forbidden techniques.

As one of Konoha's Legendary Sannin...

...Jiraiya obviously couldn't just casually teach them to a bunch of high schoolers from another world without the current Hokage's approval.

If it came down to teaching completely without holding back...

...that role really belonged to Gojo Satoru and Koro Sensei, who each had full authority over everything they personally knew.

Koro Sensei especially — driven by some deep-seated obsession of his own, he genuinely looked like he wanted to crack his students' skulls open and force-feed every last bit of knowledge straight in.

Then, once they'd made it through every hardship at the very end, they could go and kill him.

Reining in his wandering thoughts, Chris looked over at Ichinose and offered some reassurance:

"Your [Love-Love Fruit] ability really isn't bad at all, you know."

"Didn't you already spend points strengthening it back in the presiding god's space?"

"Now you don't even need the target to actually fall for you to cause partial petrification — with more real combat practice, I honestly think it'd end up stronger than most of our half-baked techniques."

If anything, that only made Ichinose more exasperated.

She fidgeted with her hair, troubled.

"Senior, I've obviously thought about all that too…"

"But the thing is, my charm only really shows a little when I'm just helping out classmates in everyday situations — it barely does anything."

"But once I'm actually in the exam field, facing down monsters trying to hurt people, my charm just vanishes completely… all I can think about is how angry I am at them…"

The girl pulled a pained face, muttering under her breath. "Would any monster actually like — or get charmed by — someone who's furious at it and wants to kill it?"

Watching her pout in that helpless way, Chris couldn't hold back a laugh.

"Who can really say?"

Take him, for instance — the guy would eat just about anything, excluding only ugly people and other men.

In fact, plenty of times, watching someone who was clearly unwilling deep down, and yet couldn't help but yield to their own body's instincts anyway…

...that sense of contrast really was rather entertaining.

The trouble was, they could all too easily piece something together from the sense of déjà vu.

...and inevitably end up in that coy, "playing hard to get" state...

...sometimes even turning jealous and dark.

Sometimes it even scared him a little.

It got to the point where he'd lost count of how many times he'd had to use the [Memory Eraser Wand] to wipe their memories afterward.

"Alright, enough overthinking. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Chris waved a hand, ending the topic:

"Let's get ready. This afternoon's tough fight can't afford any slip-ups."

Time passed, and afternoon soon arrived.

Inside the Time Chamber, once they'd confirmed that all the new and veteran members entered for the advance test and Special Exam — even if not fully mastered — could at least normally use Substitution Jutsu and reinforce their bodies with cursed energy...

...the group gathered together at the usual spot.

They waited quietly for the advance test and Special Exam the Black Sphere had scheduled for four o'clock Saturday afternoon.

In the meantime, to save the S Points they might otherwise spend once inside the space, and also to put an extra safeguard in place against any accidents that might happen to the group afterward...

...Arisu Sakayanagi stepped forward on her own and gave everyone a brief rundown of the intel about the "Backrooms" from that morning.

After hearing the account...

Ryuuen leaned against the corner of the wall, his eyes dark and menacing.

Actually, he'd already picked up bits and pieces of this from Chris himself while sparring together in the Time Chamber.

But now, hearing the full account from Arisu Sakayanagi — the Director's own daughter, no less...

...he couldn't help feeling something all over again.

That pack of old foxes making decisions behind the scenes out there had always sat high above everyone else, and had long since successfully set themselves apart from ordinary people.

To their eyes, it was naturally hard to still see those at the bottom as their equals.

Ryuuen didn't even need to think hard to guess.

Just how many lives had to be thrown into the pit as the price behind Arisu Sakayanagi's casually delivered few sentences.

Even a thug like him, who liked to call himself a villain, felt a chill down to his core just hearing it.

Never mind Nanase Tsubasa, standing not far off, practically overflowing with a sense of justice.

The girl had her fists clenched tight, her clear eyes brimming with outrage.

She genuinely believed that the way the people outside were rashly throwing lives at unexplored pits was profoundly wrong and inhuman —

"Something involving spacetime rifts and monsters like this is obviously closely tied to the Black Sphere!"

Nanase Tsubasa bit her lip, unable to hold back her protest. "Why… why can't they wait just a little longer before sending people to their deaths — give us a chance to ask the Black Sphere first and prepare properly?"

"Those people… it didn't have to happen to them!"

But before she could voice any more of her condemnation...

...Kouenji Rokusuke, standing nearby, cut her off with a light chuckle.

"Heh heh… Girl, you're still far too naive."

"Everything — even people — has a price."

"And once something has a price, it inevitably gets quantified. Changing that isn't a simple matter."

"However!" Kouenji ran a hand through his golden hair, his gaze sliding toward Ayanokoji Kiyotaka standing in the corner, tone pointed.

"The White House… if I recall correctly, isn't that Ayanokōji Boy's old home?"

"That spatial rift, of all places, decided to open right at your White House's base of all things… quite the coincidence, don't you think? Feels a little suspicious, doesn't it?"

Faced with this thinly-veiled probing...

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka kept his usual dead-fish stare, thought it over expressionlessly for a moment, then said, "Speculation is pointless."

"It's almost four. Once we're inside, we can just ask the Black Sphere directly."

"Whether or not it's willing to tell us the truth about the Backrooms… its attitude alone will already tell us something."

Chris gave a noncommittal nod.

He glanced around, sizing up the students from each class who were about to head into the Black Sphere's space.

Setting aside Kushida Kikyo, Kamuro Masumi, Amikura Mako, and Hiyori Shiina, who planned to take part in the formal exam...

...and not even needing to mention Ayanokōji and Kouenji, whose combat strength went without saying...

...among the rest set to join the advance test...

Kei Karuizawa had her [Enchanted Jade] Knight Card Box for protection; Suzune Horikita had the [Phantom Mask], able to summon an army; Hayasaka Ai had her [Night Knight] armor; and Yotsuya Miko, while the weakest in combat, had a special technique that drastically lowered her own presence…

On top of that, Chris, Ichinose, and the others had generously handed out mid-to-high-tier gear like the [Leo Cavalry], [Dragon Talisman], [Momonga Orb], and [Rivers and Mountains Scroll].

Honestly, just looking at this group of testers' loadouts...

...their overall combined strength was actually pretty high already!

Back in the very first few weeks, a setup like this could've let them solo-clear ordinary dungeons without high-score monsters with their eyes closed.

So this time, behind the scenes, Chris had actually prepared two options for them.

Either get dropped into the "Backrooms" to contain entities, or go take part in the [Culling Game] from Jujutsu Kaisen.

As Chris thought this over, his gaze swept across the clock on the wall.

The hour hand quietly swept past the four o'clock mark.

As someone's pre-set phone alarm went off, the familiar deep blue glow began spreading, right on schedule, from beneath the feet of the students signed up for the advance test.

Just as the teleportation was about to finish...

...Ryuuen suddenly looked like he'd remembered something deeply unpleasant, his expression shifting slightly.

He whipped his head around toward Yagami Takuya, standing in the light, and shouted a warning:

"Yagami! Listen up, you punk!"

"If you're in the exam field and feel like you're about to die, remember to hand the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown] off to Ayanokōji, or to Hayasaka or Karuizawa!"

"I might remember your life, but that thing's borrowed gear — it belongs to that Nagumo bastard."

"If it dies with you and gets destroyed in the exam field… gone is gone! I sure as hell can't afford to pay that back!"

Just as the light was about to swallow him whole, Yagami Takuya smiled and nodded. "Understood, Senior."

"Please, leave it to me."

Beside them, watching this, Chris couldn't help raising an eyebrow in mild surprise. "Hey, Ryuuen…"

"Since when did you get so thoughtful? Worrying even about borrowed gear."

Ryuuen didn't answer. He just twitched his mouth once the light faded, and shivered for no clear reason.

After all, that was the item Nagumo had specifically sought him out to lend, of his own accord.

Honestly, deep down at the time, Ryuuen hadn't wanted to accept a favor that carried such a strange undertone.

But considering that, apart from Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, the rest of his class's combat strength was frankly a bit pathetic...

...and Hiyori Shiina, who had the [Iron Soldier Knight] armor, was staying behind for the formal exam this time, serving alongside Chris as the anchor point for opening the Mirror World escape route...

...when Nagumo had handed over the item capsule, he hadn't made any strange demands, either — he'd just smiled and said, "For the whole grade's survival."

After weighing it over and over, Ryuuen had gritted his teeth and agreed in the end.

But… the more Ryuuen thought about it afterward, the more it nagged at him as wrong.

Given how Nagumo normally couldn't wait to grind everyone else under his heel, the more normal and generous he acted, the more abnormal it actually was in this godforsaken environment, wasn't it!?

What the hell was this guy actually scheming?

Don't tell him the guy had his eye on his body!

Ryuuen cursed under his breath.

Anyway, it was best to stay wary of whatever "Auntie" Nagumo was up to with his little gesture of goodwill.

He definitely didn't want to end up on the receiving end of that.

____

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