Chapter 226: Exam Begins, Energy Amethyst!

Inside the indoor gymnasium at Advanced Nurturing High School, chosen as the temporary rally point.

Not long after Kei Karuizawa and the others had headed off to the Black Sphere Space to take part in the test, Chris and his group were still debating what to do next. Should they check the group chats first to see if anyone they knew had become an Intruder, or should they just fire up the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for some training instead?

That was the question.

Footsteps suddenly broke the silence.

Miyabi Nagumo came striding over, hands shoved in his pockets, cutting straight past the handful of students loitering on the fringes.

“Sorry to intrude.”

Nagumo stopped in front of the group and got straight to the point.

“I heard from the chairman… something unexpected happened outside. Apparently there’s some kind of otherworldly passage that connects directly to our real world?”

At that, Arisu Sakayanagi, who’d been resting with her eyes closed on the bench, slowly opened them.

“That’s correct,” she said, unhurried. “And based on what we’ve gathered so far, you can apparently even find items in there similar to the miraculous goods the Tengong Society sells.”

“If spending S Points can pry more information out of the presiding god’s Black Sphere, we’ll naturally do it.”

“So there’s really no need for you to be so anxious about it, Student Council President Nagumo.”

“The only thing we really need to worry about is spending so long on this test that it lines up wrong with the start time of your exam tomorrow.”

Nagumo pressed his lips together and let out a soft, unreadable laugh.

“That is one of my concerns, yes. But that’s not the whole reason I came here to ask for your help.”

“Oh?” Arisu Sakayanagi arched a brow, genuinely curious now.

Nagumo didn’t bother playing coy and making them guess. He got straight to the point.

“I just checked the updated ‘Intruder’ registry on the school terminal. Very few people got swept in this time — only two students.”

“Unfortunately, one of them is that special transfer student who joined Ichinose’s class — Chika Fujiwara. And the other… is my childhood friend, Asahina Nazuna.”

“Senpai Asahina?” Honami Ichinose cut in. “Student Council President, are you asking us to save her if we run into her during the exam? Don’t worry — even if you hadn’t said anything, we’d have done that the moment we crossed paths with her.”

But Nagumo shook his head.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small metal capsule, and tossed it straight into Ichinose’s hand.

“Rather than keeping her locked up somewhere safe like a caged canary, I’d rather you hand this to her if you happen to meet.”

“And then… let her learn to grow on her own.”

Ichinose furrowed her fine brows, gripping the capsule as she glanced down at the name syncing onto her Black Sphere Watch.

The next second, she froze. “Sianweistan…?”

Beside her, understanding dawned on Chris.

“You’ve awakened [Unfair Game], so you figure that with a mechanic that lets you swap positions instantly, you don’t need Sianweistan’s time deceleration for the moment?”

“And you’re planning to give this thing to Senpai Asahina, so she can get used to — maybe even take part in — the Black Sphere exams?”

Nagumo glanced at Chris and didn’t argue, just gave a small nod.

He could no longer stir up any romantic interest in Asahina Nazuna, but she was still the childhood friend he’d grown up with, and if there was any way to manage it, he naturally wanted her to survive.

Given his old personality, even after losing interest in her, he’d naturally have kept her close and guarded her like a lion guarding its kill, letting her level up gradually under his protection — that would have been the obvious course of action.

But before the mid-term’s major Black Sphere exam, Horikita Manabu’s presence had complicated things… because he’d developed a certain “unnecessary” feeling for him.

At the time, Nagumo had still been unconsciously self-conscious about it.

Subconsciously, he hadn’t wanted Asahina Nazuna to notice the change and get in the way of his pursuit of Horikita Manabu.

On top of that, taking part in the Black Sphere exam back then really was like putting one foot through death’s door — hardly a good thing.

So Nagumo had just let Asahina Nazuna keep her name on the roster, having her join a single exam to scrape together enough points to buy a Combat Suit, then flatly ordered her to stay put and wait in the classroom.

It wasn’t until later, when Gojo Satoru, Koro Sensei, and other powerhouses from other worlds showed up and brought the life-saving technique known as [Substitution Jutsu], that Nagumo changed his mind and decided to let Asahina Nazuna really get into the game.

But of course, man proposes and fate disposes — she’d been picked directly by the Black Sphere system right at this exact moment!

With things as they were, all he could do now was pin his hopes on Chris and the others.

With a Combat Suit, an X-GUN, a vampire bloodline as a fallback, plus Substitution Jutsu and Sianweistan… Nagumo believed that with Asahina Nazuna’s abilities, as long as her luck wasn’t too terrible, that combination should be more than enough to keep her out of serious trouble in the exam.

“Then I’m counting on you.” Nagumo pulled his thoughts together and looked up, about to add a few more words of warning.

But everything in front of him blurred.

Chris, Sakayanagi, Ichinose…

The people who’d been standing right in front of him a moment ago vanished from his sight without a trace, like a TV signal abruptly cut off, as though they’d never existed at all!

Nagumo raised an eyebrow and immediately checked the time on his watch.

“It’s barely past four… they’re forcing the exam to start this fast?”

Inside the pure white expanse of the Presiding God’s Space.

The abrupt teleportation left everyone who’d just landed a little startled.

After all, if Nagumo hadn’t shown up earlier and interrupted them, they wouldn’t even have finished checking who exactly had become an “Intruder” in this test.

This was nothing like the previous test exams, which had all wrapped up in a brisk hour!

This time, they’d been pulled in unusually fast.

Still, everyone standing here was a seasoned veteran who’d crawled through life-and-death situations before.

After a brief moment of shock, no one showed any panic. They accepted the reality of the situation almost instantly.

“Presiding god… since you couldn’t even wait to drag us in—”

Ryuuen raised a hand, expertly loading equipment through his Black Sphere Watch as he tilted his head and asked—

“—then quit stalling and just tell us the mission objective already!”

Beside him, Kushida Kikyo immediately put on a worried face, clasping her hands to her chest as she chimed in.

“Right, right! Time waits for no one — what if Karuizawa and Senpai Asahina are in danger right now?!”

In response to their urging, light rippled across the surface of the God Sphere floating in the center of the room.

[Because everyone unanimously chose the newly added “extra test” option during the advance test held before your official exam,]

[your exam format and location for this round will change accordingly…]

[Within the Backrooms dungeon selected by the test personnel, due to its endlessly extending nature, no small number of worlds have been absorbed and are continuously merging inside it.]

[Therefore, the conditions for completing this exam are—]

[Contain one monster worth 200 S Points; or eliminate two monsters each worth more than 150 S Points.]

[You have five minutes to prepare.]

[Time Limit: 24H]

[Failure Penalty: The Backrooms’ erosion of your real world increases by 30%.]

“An extra test? Eroding… the real world?”

Kamuro Masumi read the text on the light screen and clicked her tongue.

“If we fail this, is our world going to get assimilated?”

Arisu Sakayanagi pressed her pale cherry-blossom lips together and calmly reasoned it through.

“Either Hayasaka and the others did something inside that brushed against the rules before the advance test began, or the advance test itself changed as time passed.”

Her gaze swept over everyone. “Either way, we’ll be able to confirm it once we’re in the exam.”

“In comparison, I think the mission requirements this time deserve more attention right now…”

“One 200-point monster, or two 150-point ones. That alone tells us there are far more top-tier monsters lurking in this Backrooms exam ground than just those.”

Sakayanagi gave a soft laugh. “Seems the presiding god decided we’ve been living too comfortably and finally saw fit to crank up the difficulty.”

Kamuro Masumi still felt uneasy, though, and asked—

“Then why don’t we ask the presiding god right now what this ‘erosion of the world’ actually looks like in concrete terms?”

Before Sakayanagi could answer, the ever-gentle Hiyori Shiina couldn’t help cutting in softly.

“Kamuro… we’re about to head straight into the exam.”

“If getting an answer from the presiding god costs precious S Points, it doesn’t seem worth it right now.”

“Even if we knew the consequences of the erosion ahead of time, if we die without clearing the exam… we’d have asked for nothing.”

“Better to save the points for strengthening ourselves and ask again once the exam’s cleared. It’s not too late then.”

Kamuro Masumi nodded thoughtfully, thinking Hiyori made a fair point.

But her mind quickly spun in another direction, and she caught something off.

“Wait, actually, we could just ask first!”

“Even if there’s a fee, the presiding god can’t force us to buy, right? We just listen to the price and then don’t pay the S Points! That way we can plan our post-exam S Point budget ahead of time too, so we don’t forget later.”

With that, Kamuro Masumi worked up her nerve and looked up at the God Sphere.

“Presiding god, don’t you think I have a point?”

The light on the God Sphere seemed to pause for a beat, as if at a loss for words, before a line of text appeared.

[To obtain a detailed answer regarding the failure penalty, payment of 20 S Points is required.]

With that, the God Sphere fell completely silent.

Only a string of countdown numbers surfaced on its surface, showing that it was still watching them.

Having confirmed the S Point cost of her question, Kamuro Masumi scratched her head awkwardly.

She turned to look at Sakayanagi and the others, who were busy upgrading their equipment, and felt a bit at a loss.

It wasn’t that she regretted rashly testing the system’s limits just now.

It was simply that… she genuinely had nothing better to do!

After all, once she’d exchanged for those life-saving training seeds, Kamuro Masumi had no S Points left to spare.

Even though items could be exchanged directly for spending points here in the Presiding God’s Space, she hadn’t taken part in the last test against Godzilla, so in practice, she couldn’t afford anything right now.

Under her envious gaze—

Sakayanagi spent 100 S Points without a second thought, upgrading her [Soul Gem] back to its complete form.

Ryuuen stroked his chin, thought it over for a moment, then spent 60 S Points buying a [Rose of the Destitute] from the store.

Ichinose raised her hand and spent 60 S Points on a Heroic Spirit [Class Card] the system flagged as compatible with her [Ruby].

Aside from the rest of them, who — like her — had no spare S Points left and could only watch enviously—

the only one in the whole group who actually had money but bought nothing at all was Chris.

“Hey, Chris…”

Ryuuen, having just finished syncing with the Lion God console, rolled his neck and suddenly turned to ask Chris—

“Don’t you have any gear that needs upgrading?”

“Sure, you’ve still got a couple hundred S Points in your account, but restoring the [Beta Box] is going to take at least one or two more exams’ worth of grinding, I’d guess. What’s the point of hoarding that much?”

Chris glanced sideways at him, shook his head, and spread his hands helplessly.

“Stand upgrades need specific matching items. [Demon Possession] already adapts and evolves through combat on its own, so there’s no point wasting points forcing it along. As for the [Enma Blade]…”

Chris sighed. “The system says upgrading it to the original version costs 500 S Points.”

“Add that to what I already spent buying it, and altogether it’s not far off the value of the original [Beta Box]…”

“500 S Points… it’s worth that much?” Ryuuen looked stunned.

But on second thought, he came around.

The “spatial cutting” and “short-range blink” abilities the Enma Blade currently displayed really were a bit absurd.

And that was just a hastily forged replica. If upgraded back to the original — with a Majin bloodline thrown in as a bonus — it clearly wasn’t going to come cheap.

Thinking about it that way, 500 points was even something of a bargain.

By contrast, there was his own [Lion God Template].

As a purely tech-side piece of equipment, this mass-produced killing machine had no hidden settings like a “willpower-driven Berserk power-up” or “bloodline awakening.”

Now that he’d spent points upgrading it back to the original, this mechanical body had almost no room left to grow.

It was genuinely useful in certain situations, sure, but within two more exams at the latest, as monster strength kept climbing, he’d likely fall behind and lose pace with the exams.

That was exactly what left him stuck between a rock and a hard place.

After all, Ryuuen’s whole hope of surviving into the future rested on this mechanical body — he could hardly switch tracks halfway through and start training in ninjutsu or something, could he?

That would be way too undignified.

But before Ryuuen could work out a solution in his head—

the countdown on the God Sphere hit zero.

A blinding flash of white light swept through, and everyone in the space was instantly teleported away.

Meanwhile, in the Backrooms—

On the floor where Ayanokoji’s group currently found themselves, the air was thick with the smell of mildew and age.

They’d already run into a group of exploration team members in bright yellow hazmat suits, carrying detection equipment.

After a brief exchange of feints, they’d successfully beaten a few [Smilers] lurking in the shadows to prey on them down to their knees, then forcibly contained them with capture guns.

That officially satisfied the prerequisite for triggering this round’s official exam.

The whole process, from landing in the Backrooms to finding an entity and triggering the exam, had taken no more than thirty minutes total.

No wonder Nagumo, back at the gymnasium, had been so surprised.

After all, most people subconsciously assumed the difficulty of Black Sphere exams and advance tests climbed step by step.

Someone like Nagumo especially — who’d just barely managed to trigger his own official exam after a grueling struggle in the “Bone King” high-pressure dungeon not long ago — would naturally think the Backrooms progress here seemed unbelievably smooth.

But this so-called “smoothness” felt subtly unsettling to Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and the others actually living through it.

Fortunately, Chris and the others hadn’t lost too much time being forcibly summoned to the Presiding God’s Space, even counting the few minutes spent shopping for gear.

Chris soon showed up with the main group on the same floor where Ayanokoji’s team was.

He’d tracked them down using the locating function on his wrist-mounted Black Sphere [Controller].

The moment they met, Chris’s gaze swept over the Smilers on the ground, still mid-teleportation, and he spoke up first.

“What happened?”

“Why did the presiding god say you changed the nature of the test? And…” Chris raised the enhancement gun in his hand, brow furrowing slightly, “the target-lock function on both the enhancement gun and the teleport gun seems to have completely failed in this space?”

At that, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka turned around.

He shook his head, expressionless, and explained.

“We changed the test because after we spent S Points asking the Black Sphere some questions about the Backrooms, it offered up an extra option we hadn’t asked for.”

“After weighing it all, we decided that instead of grinding points in some irrelevant world, we needed to prioritize understanding a test like the Backrooms — one that keeps devouring other spaces and might even ‘erode our real world.'”

“So we chose this option.”

Ayanokoji paused, glancing at the weapon in Chris’s hand.

“As for Black Sphere items… only the [Controller] can still barely maintain its radar function. Everything else that relies on spatial coordinate lock-on has stopped working entirely.”

“We don’t understand the reason for that yet, either.”

“My guess is that the physical laws of this space are already in some chaotic, disordered state, and that’s what’s dragging everything else down with it.”

At the explanation, the tight furrow in Chris’s brow eased slightly.

He turned his attention to the group in yellow hazmat suits huddled together not far behind Ayanokoji.

“And who are they?”

Beside them, Kei Karuizawa couldn’t wait and stepped forward first to report to Chris.

“These are official explorers who came in through the ‘White House’ entrance!”

“We already questioned them when we found them, but they don’t know much themselves.”

“They just said they were given orders from above — come in, search for survivors, mark out explored floors, and pick up any special items scattered along the way.”

Hearing this, Sakayanagi tilted her head slightly, a flash of mockery crossing her pale violet eyes.

“If they were ordered here to mark floors, how do they not even understand the basics?”

“As far as I know, the organization behind them… has been in contact with the Backrooms for a while now.”

“Even if they wouldn’t hand core intelligence to these rank-and-file operatives, before sending anyone into a death trap like this, the bare minimum — floor layouts, supply point markers, map data their predecessors gathered — surely wouldn’t be left out. Would it?”

The moment she finished speaking—

Amasawa Ichika let out a soft, amused snort.

She strolled lightly over, right up to the leader of the hazmat-suited group.

“Sir, seems like you weren’t quite telling us the truth just now…”

Amasawa Ichika turned her face slightly to the side, her eyes narrowing dangerously, her left hand rippling with a faint, ominous shift.

As if some terrifying weapon were about to burst free beneath her skin, only for her to forcibly hold it back.

“Honestly, I don’t believe you people had absolutely no idea we existed before you came in here.”

“I can’t say what our positions will look like down the line, but based on every bit of information available to you right now, we’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

“We might even be your single greatest chance of surviving this place. In a spot this dangerous, playing games with the people protecting you… is that really wise?”

Faced with Amasawa Ichika’s near-threatening pressure—

the hazmat team leader broke into a cold sweat, taking a deep breath behind his mask.

In the end, caught between his orders and his instinct to survive, he decisively chose the latter.

“We… we honestly don’t know much.”

His voice cracked as he gave in.

“Before we came in, we just got a rushed briefing on some basic survival rules for this space.”

“Like, the ‘Almond Water’ you find here can restore your sanity and stamina. Every floor seems to have some kind of hidden entrance and exit, but which floor those exits connect to isn’t fixed. Sometimes you can leave the current area by cutting straight through a wall.”

“Sometimes, if you wander long distances and accidentally trigger something, you can drop straight into another floor… We don’t understand the mechanics of it either. Command just told us it happens and to avoid messing with walls if we can help it.”

“Wouldn’t it have been so much easier to just be honest from the start?”

Amasawa Ichika sighed softly and kept pressing.

“So do you have any floor data your previous teams collected?”

The man swallowed and answered.

“We do, but very little. Or rather… too few people ever made it back alive with intel.”

“The areas we know are relatively safe right now are just ‘Level 3 — Electrical Station,’ ‘Level 11 — The Endless City,’ and ‘Level 9 — The Suburbs.'”

“We’ve run into entities in those areas, but maybe our team’s just lucky — none of them were too strong, and we managed to handle them.”

The expedition leader gave a bitter laugh.

“As far as I know, the first elite team that came in here had far better gear than us, and they still ended up with no survivors at all.”

At that—

several of the hazmat-suited crew behind him couldn’t hold back their murmuring.

“Wait, that’s not right — Chief! Why have I never heard about that intel before?!”

“If I’d known this hellhole was this dangerous, nine deaths for one life, there’s no way I’d have signed up just for that money!”

“Exactly! At the very least let us actually spend the ‘reward’ they promised us up front before something like this happens!”

Clearly, these low-level explorers who’d been kept in the dark had mistaken the death benefits Atsuomi Ayanokōji had promised to console bereaved families for a hefty wage they’d receive just for participating.

The gap between expectation and reality hit them hard.

The students present all silently agreed to ignore the adults’ griping.

Meanwhile, beside Chris—

Ichinose scanned the surroundings, silently tallying the current headcount in her mind, and her fine brows knit tightly together.

She hurried over to Ayanokoji and asked, a note of urgency in her voice.

“Where are Amikura and Miko? Did you two get separated from them?”

Right on cue, Ryūji Kanzaki put away the Black Sphere radar in his hand and stepped up to explain.

“Don’t worry, Ichinose.”

“Since we can’t confirm the Backrooms environment is completely safe yet—”

“we had the weaker fighters take shelter early inside the [Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map] Chris left with us.”

“And the ones with concealment abilities are using their own powers to hide nearby, ready to back us up at a moment’s notice.”

The moment he finished—

not far from the load-bearing pillar where Hayasaka Ai had originally been standing, Kei Karuizawa voluntarily dropped her optical camouflage, waved toward Chris’s group, and jogged over.

Yotsuya Miko, meanwhile, appeared like a ghost — silently, without anyone noticing when — right between Kei Karuizawa and Shiranami Chihiro.

“Whoa!” The sudden appearance startled Shiranami Chihiro so badly she nearly swung a slap at her.

“M-Miko! How are you here?” Shiranami patted her chest, her face full of confusion.

Yotsuya Miko raised a finger, scratching her cheek a little bashfully, and explained in a quiet voice.

“My technique is basically hiding myself and erasing my presence…”

“Actually, I’ve been here this whole time, watching you two talk for a bit already…”

Shiranami Chihiro looked her up and down in shock.

“That’s kind of impressive! I didn’t notice you at all! Not even your breathing…”

“Now that I think about it, doesn’t that basically make you an invisible person in a conceptual sense?!”

Yotsuya Miko gave a small nod, more or less confirming it.

But for some reason, the way Shiranami Chihiro’s phrase “invisible person” came out sounded a bit off to her, the kind of thing that too easily brought to mind certain not-so-wholesome late-night dramas.

To keep the awkward topic from going any further, Miko quickly craned her slender neck and shifted her gaze to Ichinose, forcibly changing the subject.

“Ichinose, what’s the actual objective for this round’s official exam?”

“Our advance test just required containing monsters of different ranks in this maze and sorting them.”

“The Black Sphere never gave us a clear end condition, so it looks like… we’re really going to have to spend a full 24 hours here.”

Ichinose turned at the sound and frowned even deeper.

“You have to stay a whole day…”

“Our task is to successfully contain one top-tier monster worth 200 points, or kill two monsters each worth more than 150 points.”

“One 200-point one, or two 150-point ones?”

Shiraishi Asuka pressed her lips together and calmly broke it down.

“If we go by the odds from the ‘Mysterious Merchant’ before, where only five or six items refresh at a time…”

“in a Backrooms space the Black Sphere explicitly called ‘endlessly extending,’ pinpointing a target of the exact right point value to specifically contain or kill…”

“that’d be next to finding a needle in a haystack.”

Right then, Ryuuen strolled over, waving a hand dismissively, cutting through the girls’ worries.

“No need to sweat these little probability details for now.”

“I already asked Ayanokoji. He says once you all got here as test-takers, you ran into monsters and just stayed put ever since.”

“Right now, the priority is finding the Mysterious Merchant who can resupply us.”

“And…” Ryuuen glanced around, “the other Intruders who got scattered around… ugh, this is a pain!”

“This exam ground’s built floor by floor, so even the Controller’s panoramic scan can’t locate everyone on every floor at once.”

“We’ll just have to hunt for the exam target like headless flies while also searching for the people who got swept in here.”

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka picked up the thread, his gaze landing on the hazmat-suited group.

“Before that, let’s send these explorers back to the real world.”

“Otherwise, dragging a bunch of ordinary people around here will just slow us down, and keeping them is a liability that could blow up at any time.”

In truth, given the means Ayanokoji’s group had at their disposal, they could easily have just forced the whole group of explorers into Chris’s [Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map] and locked them up there.

But Ayanokoji was more curious about something else — whether the [Enma Blade] in Chris’s hand could actually break through the world barrier of the Backrooms, this place conceptually judged to sit right up against a crack in their own real world.

Chris, naturally, saw right through Ayanokoji’s little probe.

He didn’t refuse a reasonable test like that, and simply nodded.

“Let’s give it a try.”

“If we can send them straight back, it’ll save us a lot of trouble.”

“If the space can’t be cut open, there’s still time to shove them all into the Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map instead.”

With that—

Chris raised a hand and drew the [Enma Blade] from his waist.

Holding his breath and focusing his mind, he swung the blade and slashed a hard vertical line into the bright yellow wallpaper in front of him.

A pale blue flash of the blade’s edge cut through the air.

At first, nothing stirred in the air at all.

Chris frowned slightly and twisted his wrist.

This time, he poured in more power and slashed horizontally again!

“Skreee—”

This time, the space finally split open into a pitch-black gash.

Sakayanagi watched the two strikes thoughtfully, stroking her chin as she asked.

“Chris, was there some fundamental difference between those two cuts?”

Chris sheathed the blade, brow furrowed, and explained.

“The first cut, I was trying to break straight through the barrier between the Backrooms and our real world to send them back. It didn’t cut through.”

“The second cut, I settled for the next best thing and opened a dedicated passage to the little world inside my [Mountains and Rivers Sheji Map].”

“That one worked.”

Ryuuen stroked his chin and gave a cold chuckle.

“Guess the underlying logic of this Backrooms place really is unusual.”

“It doesn’t just mess with the Black Sphere’s high-tech weapons across the board — it can even forcibly restrict the use of a conceptual-tier special item like that.”

He snorted. “Then again, I guess that’s normal, come to think of it.”

“After all, that’s still just the forged version of the Enma Blade.” Ryuuen glanced at the sheath on Chris’s hip. “Same reason you can’t use it to open a direct passage back to the unique Mirror World where those contracted beasts live.”

“Since even the Black Sphere treats the Backrooms as something to take seriously, it’s bound to have its own quirks.”

“Try again once you’ve upgraded your Enma Blade to its full, complete form in the Presiding God’s Space.”

“Assuming, of course… our world still exists by then.”

Chris nodded in agreement.

He turned aside and waved for the hazmat team leader to bring the shivering crew behind him into the passage.

“Can’t send you straight back to reality, I’m afraid. You’ll have to settle for the next best thing…”

“Go on in without worry. Compared to the Backrooms, where monsters could show up any second, it’s about ten thousand times safer in there.”

The people in yellow hazmat suits looked as if they’d been granted a pardon, answering in unison.

They hadn’t spent all that long in this yellow maze, but the suffocating oppression and bizarre entities everywhere had already pushed their sanity to the brink of collapse.

Any chance to leave safely was, to them, something to thank the heavens for.

Among them—

the expedition leader who’d first spoken with Amasawa Ichika suddenly stopped just as he was about to step into the passage.

He hesitated, then walked up to Chris on his own.

He pulled a diamond-shaped crystal glowing with a faint purple light from inside his suit and solemnly held it out.

“Thank you so much for your help.”

“I don’t really have anything else to repay you with. We stumbled on this on some floor before coming down here… please just take it.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “We’re all bound to the same side for humanity’s future anyway.”

“Whether we bring this back and hand it up to the higher-ups, or just leave it with you guys, doesn’t make any difference to us bottom-tier expendables.”

Right then, Ryuuen’s prosthetic eye suddenly began flashing red in a rapid pulse.

He stared at the crystal, puzzled.

“Weird… I didn’t pick up on it earlier through his hazmat suit.”

“The second this guy pulled the crystal out, my detector went off. The energy packed inside this thing is abnormally dense.”

“Heh. Guess whoever’s backing them hasn’t come up completely empty-handed during all this time after all.”

Without wasting words, Chris pulled out the [Myriad Realm Illustrated Guide] and scanned it over the purple energy crystal.

At the same time, he turned to Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and asked.

“You’ve all been here a while now.”

“Have you found an entrance to the next floor anywhere in this maze of a place?”

Ayanokoji opened his mouth, just about to answer.

But Suzune Horikita, who’d been waiting for exactly this chance to prove her worth in front of Chris, had already stepped forward and cut in.

“There is! Just behind a load-bearing wall not far from here.”

“But since we don’t know what dangers might wait on the other side, we haven’t dared explore it recklessly yet, for the sake of the group’s safety.”

Ayanokoji, his line stolen out from under him—

let out a helpless sigh and, under Chris’s questioning gaze, could only nod in agreement, his face blank.

Out of the corner of his eye, he also glanced at the screen of the Item Illustrated Guide in Chris’s hand.

[Purple Energy Crystal (Consumable)]

[A rare treasure from a mecha world.]

[Properties: Only effective on mechanical constructs (prosthetic bodies, mechs, intelligent machines, etc.). Upon use, instantly restores the user’s HP and all combat energy to full! Even a shattered chassis, damaged core, or a body on the verge of being scrapped can be perfectly repaired in an instant, bathed in light!]

[For mechanical life forms, this is essentially a built-in, side-effect-free extra life! An absolutely priceless treasure!]

[End of Chapter]