Chapter 225: Phew... Morishita Ai's Great Victory!

When the teleport beam faded from view, the glare of fluorescent light mixed with the damp, moldy smell of an old carpet rushed into their nostrils all at once.

But knowing full well how important this test was, none of the group let the sudden shift in environment leave them dazed or disoriented for long.

Glancing around, Kei Karuizawa didn’t move blindly.

Once she confirmed that everyone teleported in the same batch was nearby, with no one randomly dropped onto some other unknown floor, the tension in her shoulders eased just a little.

Kei quickly drew the formation tight, pulling the handful of first-years without any means of self-defense in behind her.

This wasn’t her first time in one of these tests. Even without Chris by her side, she had her Card Deck with its Contract Beast, and as deputy class representative, she figured she owed the group at least that much responsibility.

Soon enough.

After Amikura Mako and Nanase Tsubasa finished a quick headcount.

the group raised their Black Sphere weapons out of habit, trying to lock onto this test’s target through the radar built into the stocks.

Then, unexpectedly, something strange happened.

“…Weird.”

Somewhere in the crowd, someone let out a startled, low gasp.

“Why isn’t my X-GUN radar showing enemy or ally positions anymore? There’s only… one green dot on here, and it’s just me?!”

“Is something wrong with my gun?”

At that, the rest of the group — who’d mostly kept their composure until now — instinctively raised their hands to check their own Black Sphere gear.

“Mine’s the same!” “The Y-GUN’s radar is dead too! It’s basically just a GPS map now!”

Anxiety and unease began spreading fast through the group.

The radar on their Black Sphere weapons had always been their single greatest safeguard against death in this exam. Now, while they weren’t exactly blind, its support functions had taken a massive hit.

Still, the core of the group quickly ran through a check.

“The equipment’s actual functions aren’t damaged — charging and locking both still work fine,” Katsuragi Kohei said in a steady, reassuring voice. “It’s just that the target-lock radar on the Enhancement Gun, X-GUN, and Y-GUN… has been blocked by something. Something unknown.”

“Not everything’s failed, though.”

The usual cool, detached voice cut in. Suzune Horikita stood a short distance away, eyes fixed on the hologram at Hayasaka Ai’s wrist.

Everyone turned to look.

Sure enough, on the Controller in Hayasaka Ai’s hand, green dots for allies and scattered red dots in the distance were both showing clearly — and even the function to tap and pull up enemy stats still worked fine.

“How strange…” Amanatsu Kazuha’s pretty brows knit slightly, confusion flickering in her eyes. “Could it be because the Controller’s worth more — better components inside — so it’s not affected by whatever’s wrong with this space?”

Beside her, Kei’s expression grew grimmer by the second.

This was the first time, in all their Black Sphere tests so far, that they’d run into an environment capable of interfering with Black Sphere item functions at all!

That fact alone was enough to send a chill down anyone’s spine.

Fortunately, the Controller was still working properly. Besides Hayasaka Ai, Ryūji Kanzaki had also bought one off his Black Sphere Watch, so at least they weren’t completely blind.

“Something’s very wrong with this place.”

Hayasaka Ai swiped quickly across the Controller’s interface, checking the score of the approaching red dot — not particularly high.

But that didn’t make her relax. Instead, she turned and warned in a low, steady voice: “Better safe than sorry. Let’s send whoever doesn’t have much combat ability into the Mirror World for now, just until we confirm the area’s clear.”

Kei didn’t hesitate. She spoke up right away.

“Let’s use my [Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map]! It’s got its own little world inside — plenty of room for everyone to take shelter.” Her eyes swept over the group. “Staying in the Mirror World has a time limit, right?”

Amikura Mako nodded to confirm. “Without Knight Armor, an ordinary person can last ten minutes at most before the Mirror World assimilates them and they disappear.”

“Compared to that, it’s nowhere near as convenient as just going straight into the Sheji Map.”

“Although…” Amikura Mako hesitated. “The one thing we’d need to worry about is — if something happens to whoever’s fighting out here, the people hiding inside the painting might not be able to get out…”

“No need to worry about that.”

Before Amikura Mako could finish, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka — who’d stayed silent this whole time — suddenly spoke up, cutting off her concern.

“Going by what Chris and Hiyori Shiina said after their earlier test, even if you get trapped inside a conceptual item-world like the Sheji Map, you can still get out through the Kingdom of Shadows’ shadow paths as a shortcut.”

Ayanokoji raised an eyebrow, his flat, dead-fish eyes drifting over the group. “As for Phantom Masks — I don’t think we’re so short on them we can’t spare even one.”

Amanatsu Kazuha smiled and chimed in at that.

“Senior Ayanokoji’s right~”

“And it just so happens Amikura-senpai’s got the [Phantom Mask] Ichinose gave her, plus her Card Deck with the Contract Beast.”

“So all we need is for Amikura-senpai to go into the painting with everyone else, as both protector and ‘key.'”

“As for the kill points they’ll be missing out on…”

She blinked slyly and made her pitch.

“Once we’ve got things secured out here, we can just haul the half-dead monsters straight into the Sheji Map and let them land the finishing blows.”

Amikura Mako weighed it for a moment, realized it really was the safest plan for the group as a whole, and nodded without objection.

With the plan settled, Kei wasted no time.

She quickly unrolled the scroll, and in a pull of white light, drew in the classmates around her who lacked serious combat gear — Amikura Mako included — into the [Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map].

With that done, and to stay ready to jump in at a moment’s notice.

“Henshin!”

Kei pulled out her Card Box and, using the mirrored reflection of her phone screen, instantly suited up in the bio-organic green armor of [Kamen Rider Verde].

She slotted the invisibility card into the summoning device.

Her body turned invisible, and she quietly slipped over to stand right beside Hayasaka Ai, who was still holding the Controller.

Kei knew exactly where she stood in all this.

In this squad, the only two currently holding a Controller — their “full-map cheat code” — were Ryūji Kanzaki, fresh back from the Revival Round, and Hayasaka Ai, who’d farmed a big score in the Bone King dungeon.

Not that Kei, gritting her teeth, couldn’t have afforded one herself.

But the Controller’s map function only carried its full 40-S-Point value the first time — going from zero to one. Everyone owning one would just be a waste of resources.

So Kei figured her most urgent job right now wasn’t chasing kills for the spotlight, but making sure the group tucked away inside her Sheji Map stayed absolutely safe, and keeping Hayasaka Ai — their “human radar” — protected too.

Nearby, Yotsuya Miko noticed this and silently pressed her hands together, running the cursed technique she’d picked up from Gojo Satoru.

Through her innate technique, she dropped her own presence to nearly nothing, trailing like a ghost right at Hayasaka Ai’s other side.

Miko was clear-eyed about her own role: not getting in the way already counted as a win. Managing to help on top of that would just be a bonus.

Maybe it was exactly this kind of restraint and self-discipline that let Yotsuya Miko awaken her own unique [Formless Watching Technique].

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, meanwhile, trailed at an unhurried pace beside Kouenji Rokusuke.

In fact, Ayanokoji was holding a Phantom Mask of his own right now.

It was the [Orenji’s Mask] that Miyabi Nagumo had once lent to Ryuuen.

The Shadow-Devouring Legion it summoned could grow stronger by devouring its enemies’ shadows — and could even seal away the souls of those it devoured. A brutally domineering ability.

But given that the Backrooms itself seemed to carry some kind of ongoing mental-corruption debuff, on top of the Phantom Mask’s own side effect of corrupting whoever wore it —

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had no intention of using it unless it was truly necessary, or unless things reached a dead end.

He’d rather watch how things played out for Suzune Horikita and the others first, so he wouldn’t risk losing control after putting the mask on and end up doing more damage than the monsters themselves.

“Speaking of which, Kanzaki…” Ayanokoji’s gaze drifted toward a corner of the wall in the distance. “What kind of monsters did the radar pick up earlier?”

Ryūji Kanzaki checked the Controller, his expression turning strange as he answered. “According to this, what’s closing in are a [Skin-Stealer] and a [Smiler].”

“The Skin-Stealer hunts humans, then wears their skin to disguise itself and blend into a crowd, waiting for the chance to strike. The Smiler’s drawn to light sources — the only way to avoid its hunt is by keeping eye contact with it in the dark.”

Ryūji Kanzaki frowned. “But neither of these two is particularly strong. Without exception, their point values don’t even hit ten. Feels a little out of place, showing up here…”

By all rights, given the Black Sphere’s presiding god and its love of ramping up the difficulty gradually — its own twisted idea of fun —

in a space eerie enough to jam even the radar, they shouldn’t be starting off with such cheap little mobs.

After hearing Kanzaki’s report, something deep and distant settled behind Ayanokoji Kiyotaka’s eyes.

“Maybe it’s not that the monsters’ values are out of place.”

“Maybe it’s that this space called the ‘Backrooms’ is just too strange, period.”

“It’s the kind of place that contains everything — capable of birthing all sorts of low-tier entities with bizarre rules of their own, and yet still able to suppress the Black Sphere’s technology at some fundamental level.”

Factoring in the vague, half-finished hints the Black Sphere had dropped before the exam started —

a bold theory surfaced in Ayanokoji Kiyotaka’s mind.

Could this endlessly-extending thing called the Backrooms actually be, itself, some kind of unfathomable, colossal ‘monster’?!

Just as Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and the others braced themselves, ready to deal with whatever native entities the Backrooms might throw at them —

elsewhere, on another unknown floor of the Backrooms.

the upperclassman Asahina Nazuna crept forward along a wall, feeling her way ahead with cautious steps.

Suddenly, her feet stopped dead.

Not far ahead, at a corner, the floor was smeared with a pile of dark, reddish-brown filth — half-dried excrement mixed with blood — and standing right in the middle of it was a crude, somewhat abstract-looking statue.

The statue had an oversized head, short stubby limbs, and crudely painted marks on its face meant to resemble eyes and a mouth.

Asahina Nazuna didn’t recognize [Little Peanut], but the mess at its feet alone was enough to make her realize instantly that it was no lifeless object.

She locked eyes with those ridiculous painted-on eyes for a full ten seconds.

Once she was sure it wasn’t moving, showing no sign it meant to attack —

and going by the old survival wisdom of “better to avoid trouble than invite it,” Asahina Nazuna decided to slowly edge around the foul-smelling statue and make her escape.

But then.

Exactly one-hundredth of a second after her eyes left the statue, just as she began to turn —

Crack! A crisp snap of bone shattered the silence of the closed-in corridor.

Before Asahina Nazuna could even react, her neck had already been twisted into a grotesque 180-degree angle!

It happened so fast she never even got the chance to trigger her Substitution Jutsu or activate her Combat Suit’s failsafe.

“Ngh…” As her vision went black, the world spun around her.

Thankfully.

When she’d entered the Backrooms exam ground, she’d immediately activated her vampire bloodline as a precaution against exactly this kind of emergency —

for an ordinary human, a neck snapped like that would be fatal. But for a vampire with powerful regeneration, agonizing as it was, it wasn’t irreversible.

But. Little Peanut’s rule was simple: as long as nothing was watching it, its killing spree would never stop!

“Crack! Riiip—!”

While Asahina Nazuna lay convulsing on the ground, struggling to reset her own spine —

Little Peanut, like some tireless meat grinder, tore into her and snapped her bones over and over, hundreds upon hundreds of times, at teleport-like speed!

It didn’t stop until every drop of blood and every scrap of life force in her body had been completely drained.

A few seconds later.

along with the flicker of blue light from the Black Sphere’s revival system.

Asahina Nazuna — having just burned her one and only revival — came back at full health, right where she’d fallen.

Gasping for air, eyes snapping open, she watched the very monster that had just pulverized her into paste turn back into a harmless little clay figure the instant it fell under her gaze again.

Her feelings, to put it mildly, were an absolute mess.

“Huff… huff…”

“What kind of unreasonable monster even is this…”

But no matter how much fury and helplessness boiled inside her, with the thing standing still, Asahina Nazuna — who’d already paid dearly for one mistake — had zero intention of poking it to test her luck twice.

Though everything had happened in a blur, in that split second between life and death, the key details she needed to hold onto weren’t actually that many.

Even if she still didn’t fully understand what species this thing even was —

one thing stuck with her: [Little Peanut] only struck the instant she looked away and lost sight of it.

In other words… all she had to do was keep staring at it?

Lips pressed thin, not daring to blink, Asahina Nazuna anxiously turned over what to do next.

She couldn’t just stand here locked in a staring contest with a lifeless thing forever, could she?

On the verge of tears, Asahina Nazuna bit down on her lip.

As a vampire now, she really could go a long stretch without blinking through sheer force of will. But she wasn’t an actual statue — there was no way she could go forever without ever blinking, without ever looking away!

The second she tried to leave this corridor, the second her field of view had any kind of blind spot, this thing would appear right behind her again and snap her neck!

It was an unsolvable dead end.

Just as her eyes grew dry and raw, her nerves fraying further by the second —

a burst of hurried, uneven footsteps came echoing down the corridor behind her.

Chika Fujiwara, who’d been sprinting blind after being spooked by some unknown noise, rounded the corner right at that moment and stumbled into the scene.

Like it was written into fate itself.

Right as Asahina Nazuna’s eyes had grown so dry she could barely hold back a blink —

Chika Fujiwara spotted the figure standing ahead, and, as if seeing a lifeline, called out with tears welling in her eyes.

“Waaah~ I knew I wasn’t imagining it — there’s actually a real person here!”

“Hey, senpai, that’s an Advanced Nurturing High School uniform — you got dragged in here too, right? Come on, let’s run! Something invisible and terrifying’s coming down the corridor behind me…”

At the sound of that familiar human voice —

Asahina Nazuna’s nose twitched. The scent coming off the girl was still unmistakably human, giving her a faint sense of relief.

Only then did she let herself blink her sore, aching eyes — quickly, gratefully — before snapping her head right back up to keep her gaze locked on the clay statue across from her.

Just as she’d guessed: with Chika Fujiwara now standing in as a second “observer,” Little Peanut didn’t so much as twitch, even after her blink.

In the brief moment it took Asahina Nazuna to think this through, Chika Fujiwara had already run, panting, right up beside her.

Following her fixed stare, Chika Fujiwara finally spotted the motionless, unsettling statue lying on the ground.

“Senpai… what’s going on with you?”

“Why are you staring at that ugly lump of clay like that?”

Chika Fujiwara shrank her neck down a little, looking a bit scared herself now.

Asahina Nazuna took a deep breath, eyes never leaving the statue, and explained in a low voice.

“Listen up, kohai.”

“This creepy little clay statue in front of me isn’t some lifeless thing. It’s a monster that can attack at any second.”

“The moment my eyes leave it — even for a fraction of a second — it teleports over and snaps your neck.”

At that.

Chika Fujiwara’s expression froze solid.

“…Wait, what?!”

She staggered back a step, goosebumps crawling instantly over every inch of her skin.

But as someone who’d carved out a place for herself as the student council’s secretary, Chika Fujiwara — scatterbrained as she could be — wasn’t exactly useless when things got serious.

The girl forced herself to swallow, then yanked her Black Sphere Combat Blade free.

“So it’s basically red-light-green-light — it can’t move as long as someone’s watching. Then let’s just chop it to pieces while it’s stuck!”

Chika Fujiwara gritted her teeth, hyping herself up. “Otherwise, once whatever’s chasing us catches up, we’ll be sandwiched from both sides! We’ll be finished!”

With that, she steeled her nerve and swung the blade toward Little Peanut.

“Don’t be reckless!”

Asahina Nazuna’s reflexes kicked in — she grabbed Chika Fujiwara’s shoulder and physically held her back.

“Calm down!” Asahina Nazuna pointed at the horrifying pool of blood on the ground. “The only reason I know its attack pattern is because… it already killed me once, just now.”

“It’s fast enough that there’s genuinely no reacting to it. Even with my vampire body, even wearing a tenfold-amplified Combat Suit, I still couldn’t dodge its hit.”

She glanced sideways at Chika Fujiwara’s plain school uniform and bare, pale wrist. “And look at you — you don’t even have a Combat Suit… What happens if your attack doesn’t land a clean kill, and it registers that as an attack and strikes back outside the eye-contact rule? What are you going to bet on that — your life?!”

“Huh? This thing’s THAT messed up?!” Chika Fujiwara’s hand shook so badly she nearly dropped the blade.

She turned to Asahina Nazuna in a panic. “Then… then what are we supposed to do now? We can’t just stand here staring it down forever, waiting for someone to come collect our bodies!”

Asahina Nazuna took a deep breath, mind racing through the options.

“We take it with us.”

She made the call. “We bring it along. On our way out, the two of us take turns keeping an eye on it, so it’s never unwatched, not even for a second.”

Chika Fujiwara froze at that — then her eyes lit up.

“Genius, senpai!”

“That’s brilliant! If some nasty monster shows up while we’re running, we just chuck this clay thing in front of it and let them duke it out!”

“No way anything mindless in this hellhole knows a rule as twisted as ‘don’t look away or you die’ — there’s no way!”

Chika Fujiwara clapped her hands excitedly, but then her eyes landed on the filth pooled around Little Peanut’s base — the mix of blood and worse.

Her face crumpled, mouth twitching in despair.

“This monster’s got some serious sins on it… that blood looks really scary.”

Watching Chika Fujiwara fuss over hygiene in the middle of a life-or-death situation —

Asahina Nazuna found it both funny and, weirdly, kind of reassuring.

At least this one hadn’t dissolved into a useless, screaming mess out of sheer panic.

“Don’t worry about it.” Asahina Nazuna sighed and took the dirty work on herself.

“That blood on the ground’s from right before I revived. I’ll carry it myself.”

“You can take over once we’re somewhere safe.”

At that, Chika Fujiwara nodded like she’d just been granted a pardon. “Okay, okay! Senpai, you’re seriously the best! I promise I won’t blink even once watching it!”

With their strange little guardian pact sealed, the two made their way through the cramped, suffocating Backrooms corridor, trading off watch duty over Little Peanut as they walked.

Thanks to their surprisingly good teamwork, they managed to make it through a fair stretch of the path without any close calls.

The catch was, with Asahina Nazuna’s X-GUN radar completely dead, the two of them were basically feeling around blind.

Relying on whatever compass and map-logging functions the Black Sphere gear still barely held onto, they could just about tell whether a passage was a dead end.

As for pinning down where enemies were hiding in the dark, that was pure wishful thinking.

So they were left leaning on their vampire-enhanced hearing, sprinting toward whichever dead-quiet direction had no strange sounds.

The whole time, their nerves stayed razor-taut. Neither of them dared look back.

They kept it up, hearts in their throats, for a good stretch.

Then the scenery around them started to warp and fold in on itself.

The change wasn’t gradual — it felt like passing straight through some invisible membrane.

One moment they were in a cramped, abandoned factory corridor; the next, they’d crossed over into a vast, endless wheat field!

But before either of them could even process how this dreamlike scene shift had happened —

the solid ground beneath their feet suddenly vanished!

“Ahh—!”

Chika Fujiwara let out an instinctive shriek, eyes snapping shut against the sudden weightlessness.

At the same moment, Asahina Nazuna — still carrying Little Peanut — staggered from the same sudden drop.

Her gaze wavered downward for a split second, and her eyes slipped, just barely, off Little Peanut.

That single instant was all it took.

Chika Fujiwara’s scream, mid-air, cut off abruptly.

Like a duck whose throat had been snapped shut.

Because the instant it broke free of the gaze-lock, Little Peanut teleported directly behind the falling Chika Fujiwara —

its rough stone arm twisting without mercy, snapping her neck clean.

Just as Little Peanut moved to finish Chika Fujiwara the same way it had finished Asahina Nazuna earlier —

Asahina Nazuna, forcing her body to twist mid-air and land properly on the snow-covered ground below, finally — in that razor-thin margin between life and death — remembered that Little Peanut, that harbinger of death, still existed.

She whipped her head around without a second thought, her gaze snapping right back onto Little Peanut, arm still raised.

“Phew… that was way too close.”

Chika Fujiwara, using the window bought by Asahina Nazuna’s gaze locking Little Peanut down again, forced her vampire vitality to work overtime, struggling to heal her wound.

“Hiss… ow… it hurts so bad…”

Chika Fujiwara sucked in a sharp breath, eyes brimming, but as the healing dragged on, she quickly realized something was off.

“Senpai… my recovery’s… really slow.”

By rights, with a vampire’s powerful self-healing —

unless something like what happened to Catwoman occurred, where a burst of high-intensity Nen crushed someone’s skull to pulp in an instant, an ordinary broken neck should have healed fast.

But that wasn’t what was happening.

Not only was the wound on Chika Fujiwara’s neck healing at a crawl —

even Asahina Nazuna, who hadn’t taken a scratch, started feeling a burning sensation on her skin, like acid eating away at her, just from the surrounding air.

At first, Chika Fujiwara figured she’d just been hurt too badly, damaging something at the core.

But when she saw even Asahina Nazuna’s tough, pale skin start breaking out in what looked like red rashes —

that was when she knew something else was going on.

Chika Fujiwara kept her eyes locked tight on Little Peanut, several meters off, taking over watch duty from Asahina Nazuna, while urgently warning her.

“Senpai… these rashes on us… they seem to show up right after the falling snow touches our skin!”

“There’s something wrong with this snow!”

Asahina Nazuna nodded slightly, using the moment to glance thoughtfully around them.

They were now standing in a dead-silent world completely swallowed by gray-white fog.

Overhead, countless white flakes that looked like snow drifted through the air.

They swirled like pale little death spirits, dancing on the wind, blanketing the whole world in what looked like fresh snow.

But when Asahina Nazunaheld out her hand and caught a snowflake in her palm, looking closely, she discovered the truth.

This snow… didn’t have any of the cold a real snowflake should have.

Not only did it lack the hexagonal crystal structure of actual water molecules, it carried a sharp, acrid stench — something like burnt flesh.

Calling it a romantic snowfall would be generous. What was really filling the sky, drifting down around them, was some kind of ash from something burned.

“Looks like this stuff might be toxic.” Asahina Nazuna shook the ash off her hand, still a little shaken. “Even our vampire bodies are breaking out just from touching it. If it were an ordinary human without even a Combat Suit…”

“They’d probably have their skin rotting within minutes. And if they breathed this ash into their lungs, their organs would probably dissolve completely.”

Chika Fujiwara bit down on her pale lips and offered a suggestion. “Senpai, we need to find somewhere with cover, get out of this snow!”

“Wandering around out in the open like this isn’t going to cut it either. What if the toxin builds up the longer we’re exposed, or we end up somewhere even worse than this?”

Asahina Nazuna thought it over.

With the radar down, this really was the smartest way to conserve their strength for now.

She agreed quietly. “Okay. Let’s look around here, see if there’s any kind of shelter nearby.”

Neither of them noticed one thing, though — their nerves stretched too thin from guarding against Little Peanut and scanning for cover.

Not far from where they stood, tucked inside a thick snowdrift —

a girl was curled up tight at that very moment, hands clamped over her mouth and nose, shaking from sheer terror, hiding out inside.

Only after the footsteps and voices of Asahina Nazuna and Chika Fujiwara had faded well into the distance —

only after she was sure that in this dead-silent world, aside from the faint rustle of falling ash, nothing else was moving nearby —

did the girl in the snowdrift finally poke her head out, slow and careful as a spooked rabbit, eyes darting fearfully in every direction.

“Good thing they didn’t see me. That would’ve been so unlucky…”

“Phew… total victory for Morishita Ai!”

Meanwhile, on Ayanokoji Kiyotaka’s side of things.

the situation looked nothing like what Chika Fujiwara and Asahina Nazuna were dealing with.

Bam! The Parasyte slammed a Skin-Stealer — one that had just been trying to fake a human voice and call for help — down hard onto its knees, right beside him. At the same time, the faceless Smiler, nothing but a grin stretched ear to ear where its face should be, got cornered and pinned by Kouenji Rokusuke and the others, letting out a hissing shriek of pain.

After making short work of both entities, beating them down to their knees in critical condition —

Hayasaka Ai and Ryūji Kanzaki stepped forward without hesitation, already moving through the motions of using the Y-GUN.

They aimed at the two monsters, now stripped of any way to fight back, and pulled the trigger.

As blue laser anchors snapped tight around them, pinning them in place, the pair pulled the trigger again, triggering the teleport sequence.

While the countdown ran, scanning the entities for light-speed transport —

everyone else held their breath, waiting to see what the Black Sphere system’s verdict would be.

If even a couple of cheap, low-point Backrooms entities like these could be successfully contained through the Y-GUN and count toward their kill score —

then starting the exam, or even clearing it, in this danger-riddled place might end up being about as hard as peeling a banana.

And sure enough, the result was exactly what they’d hoped.

Once the two monsters had been teleported away —

the Black Sphere Watches on the wrists of the two who’d just fired the Y-GUN gave a light, synchronized buzz.

Right after that, the Black Sphere’s notification chime rang out in everyone’s ears.

[Target entity successfully neutralized/contained.]

[Current exam-opening condition progress updated.]

[Remaining requirement to officially open the exam: 1/3]

Seeing the notification, Katsuragi Kohei — who’d been tense this whole time — finally let out a long breath.

He rubbed his bald head, muttering under his breath. “So… we can really just contain these low-tier mobs to pad the count?”

“This… isn’t this a little too easy? Something feels off,” Yotsuya Miko said, worried.

At that, Kouenji Rokusuke, standing nearby, gave a noncommittal counter.

“Katsuragi-boy, Yotsuya-girl, you’re both falling into the same trap here.”

“Just because the opening condition’s simple doesn’t mean the rest of this dungeon’s going to stay simple too, does it?”

“If things really were as easy as they look on the surface, our Black Sphere gear wouldn’t already be half-broken the second we walked in.”

Amanatsu Kazuha, chin propped on one hand, smiled and agreed.

“Senior Kouenji’s got a point.”

“Isn’t it possible that behind this simple opening condition, there’s some hidden punishment mechanism waiting, or entities strong enough that even the Black Sphere can’t fully suppress them?”

“So the Black Sphere kept the entry bar low on purpose, just to balance things out.”

“It only feels this easy because we got lucky and ran into a couple of bottom-tier trash mobs, that’s all~”

Hearing the two of them lay it out, Katsuragi Kohei’s expression turned serious.

“You both make a fair point…”

“In that case, we can’t afford to get complacent. We have to plan for the worst.”

“If containing one more monster is all it takes to open the exam…”

Katsuragi Kohei made the call. “Then there’s no reason to keep dragging our feet here.”

“While this floor’s still relatively safe and the monsters aren’t too tough, let’s grab a few more small fry while we can, then go formally pull Chris and the rest in.”

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka glanced over at Katsuragi Kohei and nodded.

“That’s the right call.”

“The main reason we came ahead as scouts in the first place is to figure out the rules and properties of this Backrooms space itself — see whether any of it’s going to affect our survival down the line.”

Ayanokoji’s tone stayed flat. “No point wasting time blindly exploring unknown floors for a handful of S Points, just to risk stumbling into something we can’t walk back from.”

As he spoke, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka looked down at the Parasyte that had, by now, fully fused with his right arm.

Using a mental wavelength only the two of them could hear, he asked silently.

Zero. Since we got here, have you picked up on anything unusual?

On the back of his right hand, an eye slowly split open. A moment later, the Parasyte Zero’s voice answered, low, inside Ayanokoji’s mind.

Ayanokoji… this place they’re calling the Backrooms really doesn’t play by any rules I recognize. Something about it is very wrong.

Setting aside the radar jamming — that’s just a physical effect — I can feel this place giving off something oppressive, on its own.

Whether it’s the air itself, or the extra senses I put out to keep watch, there’s something like an invisible memetic contamination running through it. It’s eating away at things, slowly. The kind of thing that corrupts a mind, drives it toward madness.

Hearing that report, something flickered darkly behind Ayanokoji Kiyotaka’s eyes. He gave a quiet, silent nod in understanding.

If this were some other world — say, the Culling Game exam ground from Jujutsu Kaisen —

to squeeze out every scrap of intel and advantage, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka would probably, without a second thought, break off from the main group the way Yagami Takuya had done before.

turning himself into a hunter, playing the self-appointed “righteous avenger” stalking down evil-flagged Players, stripping them of their sorcerer points.

happily harvesting every high-value target he could find.

But here, things were different.

Having deliberately chosen to step into somewhere as unpredictable as the Backrooms —

for the sake of his own survival and his longer-term plans, Ayanokoji figured caution was the smarter play.

Recklessness here was basically a death wish.

So Ayanokoji went with the most conservative option: stick with the group, advance together.

Around then, Suzune Horikita — who’d been quietly keeping watch on the surroundings — turned her head and noticed that Kei Karuizawa and Yotsuya Miko were nowhere in sight.

Her brow furrowed immediately.

She strode over on her long legs, heading straight for Hayasaka Ai and the Controller in her hands.

On the display, besides the green dots marking their own group —

in an area several corridors away, a cluster of red and green light points were flickering erratically, moving fast.

Suzune Horikita raised her head and called out to the group, still mid-discussion. “We’ve got something!”

“In a corridor about two blocks from here, it looks like a handful of survivors are fighting back against a monster — and going by the signal strength, the monster’s actually taking damage.”

Suzune Horikita’s sharp eyes narrowed slightly.

“This is an unknown, alien space to begin with. An ordinary survivor running into a monster here would just get slaughtered outright. If someone’s managing to fight back effectively, there’s really only one likely explanation…”

“It has to be exactly what Arisu Sakayanagi mentioned before — scouts who went in through the Backrooms entrance ahead of time to explore.”

“Friend or foe, either way, this could be our chance to break the stalemate.”

She rested one hand on the hilt of her blade. “Let’s go take a look. And if the situation allows for it…”

“we might as well go ahead and contain whatever’s left of that monster, and get the exam officially opened.”

she added.