Chapter 227: No Game No Life, So Terrifying

Under a gloomy, oppressive sky, fierce winds howled, carrying an unsettling presence.

This was a special floor where the Backrooms and the No Game No Life war timeline had folded and intersected, its survival conditions harsh in the extreme.

Asahina Nazuna and Chika Fujiwara had finally managed to find, amid this wasteland, a natural cave that looked like it could serve as shelter.

But before they could actually step inside, a thunderous explosion suddenly rang out nearby.

“BOOM—!!!” The violent shockwave kicked up a sky full of black ash. Chika Fujiwara flinched violently, instinctively turning to look toward the source of the sound.

Luckily, Asahina Nazuna reacted fast, grabbing her shoulder while keeping her own eyes locked firmly on Little Peanut, who seemed about to move.

In an environment where their line of sight could be blocked at any moment, if either of them let panic make them look away, one of them would definitely have to go through the agony of having her neck snapped and regrowing all over again.

Once the aftershocks died down a little, Chika Fujiwara snapped back to her senses, patting her heaving chest and apologizing to Asahina Nazuna with a touch of embarrassment.

“Sorry, Senpai… I—I got a bit scared just now. I almost got you into trouble.”

“It’s fine. Just staying alive in this godforsaken place is hard enough as it is.”

Asahina Nazuna didn’t turn around, her gaze still fixed on Little Peanut’s position, as she asked in a low voice, “When you looked up just now, did you see anything?”

Chika Fujiwara swallowed hard, seeming to struggle to find the right words.

“Up in the sky above us… there seems to be a dragon, fighting some huge swarm of mechanical angels?”

As a young lady raised in peaceful times, she’d had her share of fantasies about magical adventures.

But putting it into concrete words was genuinely difficult, so she could only describe it based on her raw visual impression:

One side looked like the sky-blotting, terrifying dragons from Western fantasy worlds, while the other was made up of countless girls in formation, each with wing-like bony structures resembling angel wings sprouting from their backs.

If she had to put it into words, that description seemed close enough.

Asahina Nazuna pressed her dry lips together, analyzing without taking her eyes off her target. “Whatever they’re fighting is causing way too much commotion—we can feel the shockwaves even from this distance. Those monsters are probably several orders of magnitude stronger than the thing we’re guarding against right now.”

“Then… what should we do now?” Chika Fujiwara asked instinctively.

Asahina Nazuna sighed, pressing her back against the cold rock wall.

“Let’s just stay here for now, until the ash outside settles and whatever’s fighting out there gets decided one way or the other. Otherwise, if we rush out now and end up caught in some stray missile or meteor shockwave, that’d be a really pointless way to die.”

Chika Fujiwara nodded repeatedly, choosing to trust her Senpai unconditionally.

Though the two of them had only crossed paths by chance while fleeing for their lives, and neither was in the mood for much heart-to-heart conversation, Chika Fujiwara—having once toured the Hyperbolic Time Chamber—still recognized the fitted combat suit Asahina Nazuna was wearing. That kind of bound item couldn’t be lent to anyone else; it was proof that its owner had personally taken the Black Sphere Exam and survived it.

Even if Asahina Nazuna had been the type to coast along on her original team’s efforts, when it came to survival instincts and experience, she was still leagues ahead of a complete novice like Chika.

In a way, running into someone extremely skilled at survival was actually a huge stroke of luck in a place as dangerous as the Backrooms.

As long as she didn’t spend every moment thinking about hiding behind her, that is…

Meanwhile, on Chris’s end.

After the group pushed open the door Suzune Horikita had directed them to, they found themselves in a corridor lined with pure white tiles, beside an endless, rippling warm-water pool.

Level 37, the Pool Zone.

After using the Controller’s radar to confirm there were no red dots marking enemies here, everyone’s tense nerves relaxed a little.

Scrolling through the global map on his Controller, Chris led the group through corridor after corridor and soon found another metal security door marked as leading to a different floor.

They pushed the door open and stepped through.

What greeted them was pitch-black darkness—so thick you couldn’t see your own hand—along with a heavy, oppressive feeling weighing on the mind. “Can anyone light this up?” Chris asked. Ryuuen snorted, and the searchlight mounted on his shoulder flared to life, its blinding beam tearing through the darkness ahead.

By the light, Chris looked up at the weathered floor marker on the wall by the doorway. “Level 6.”

Chris read it out quietly.

A jump straight from Level 37 to Level 6?

Before anyone could even begin to wonder whether every floor of the Backrooms followed this same discontinuous, illogical pattern of jumps—

—a series of bone-chilling, unsettling laughs suddenly rang out from the edges of the shadows lit up by Ryuuen’s light. “Hee hee hee…” “Hahahaha…” “Kekekekeke…” Right after, countless pinpricks of pale, candle-like light suddenly flared to life in the deep darkness.

They were enormous, deathly pale grinning faces, their mouths split wide open to the ears, surfacing out of the dark in twisted, contorted shapes.

As it turned out, though, for a fully armed group like Chris and the others, these laughing demons that had come crawling right up to them were basically walking ATMs delivered straight to their door—”good monsters” who’d shown up purely to top off their scores.

Still, it had to be admitted—if an ordinary exploration team with nothing but flashlights, or an unprepared Intruder dragged into all this, had suddenly come face to face with a wall crawling with glowing grinning faces, they probably would’ve had a full-on mental breakdown on the spot.

When you got down to it, every human fear ultimately came down to insufficient firepower.

Once an unknown, unbeatable horror monster had a health bar hovering over its head, and you happened to be holding a weapon capable of actually hurting it…

…then no matter how sanity-draining that monster’s appearance was, the fear in your heart would fade.

It turned instantly from an unwinnable horror game into a beatable Soulslike.

After clearing out the laughing demons like slicing through vegetables, and rescuing a few trembling, terrified ordinary Intruders from the dark corners along the way—

—still relying on the Controller radar’s all-seeing view, the group avoided any unnecessary detours and headed straight for the exit door off Level 6.

They pushed the door open and crossed the boundary.

The group finally emerged onto that same special border floor where Chika Fujiwara and Asahina Nazuna currently were.

The moment they stepped into this new world, they were greeted by a bizarre “black snow.” “What is this?”

Since the Pool Zone and the dark floor hadn’t posed much danger before Chris and the others arrived, some members of the group, out of caution, hadn’t activated the vampire bloodline from their Stone Masks when they’d entered the exam.

A few flecks of black ash landed on the face of one test-taker who hadn’t activated the bloodline.

“AAAH—!!!” The instant it touched him, he let out an agonized scream.

The black ash acted like a highly concentrated acid, burning straight through his skin, sending up an acrid wisp of smoke and leaving behind a scorched, festering scar that would never heal.

This was a byproduct unique to the No Game No Life war era.

At its core, it was the powdery remains left behind after members of the Spirit race died.

To ordinary humans, it was highly toxic.

A mere touch to the skin would corrode it like acid, leaving permanent festering scars; if it drifted into the eyes, it would cause nerve necrosis and instant blindness!

For Chris and the others, though, this was hardly an unsolvable problem.

Stands, for instance. Crazy Diamond was currently in Suzune Horikita’s hands, but to make sure he wouldn’t get blindsided on a first encounter, Chris had—for once—loaded The World’s disc onto himself today.

And so, right as the scream rang out—

“The World!”

The golden, hulking Stand materialized, and the falling black ash froze in midair.

During the interval of Time Stop, Chris calmly activated Weather Forecast (Stand), sweeping all the surrounding black ash back up into the sky.

“Time resumes.”

As color returned to the world, everyone blinked, and by the time their vision cleared, the black snow around them had already been swept away by the sudden wind.

Chris spoke up in warning. “Anyone who hasn’t activated the vampire bloodline, do it now! Anyone who got hurt, get over to Horikita right away and use Crazy Diamond to heal!”

At that, Suzune Horikita didn’t waste a word, hurriedly summoning her pink-and-blue Stand and stepping forward to help. “Dora!”

A flash of Miracle’s light, and the charred, festering wound and the blinded eyes healed completely, as if time itself had reversed.

Arisu Sakayanagi glanced over the student who’d screamed moments ago, then looked up at the gloomy sky, held at bay for now by the storm, her fine brows knitting slightly.

“Just the environment alone is this hostile… Looks like this is a high-danger floor. It’s given us quite the welcome slap the moment we arrived.”

She turned to Chris. “Chris-kun, could you check our current floor coordinates? And while you’re at it, see if there’s anything worth hunting nearby—any high-value monsters?”

Chris pulled his gaze away from Suzune Horikita, who was calmly tending to the wounded, nodded slightly, and raised his hand to pull up his Controller.

A three-dimensional image popped up in response.

On the map, not far from their position, high up in the sky, a massive red dot blinked ominously.

Scattered around that red dot were many smaller, dimmer red lights, moving at an astonishing speed.

Chris tapped his finger lightly, pulling up the target’s information.

[Target: Yanlong · Aranleifu]

[Value: 260 points]

[Trait: One of the Three Kings of the Dragonia, an upper-tier species. Commands seven black lesser dragons and belongs to the war-mongering radical faction. As a Dragon Spirit itself, it exists simultaneously in past, present, and future—damage from ordinary attacks gets automatically repaired by the timeline. It can briefly glimpse the future, and achieves teleportation and flight by warping spacetime; ordinary spatial magic cannot lock onto or pursue a Dragon Spirit. Dragon Spirit Speech itself, as the most primal all-purpose Word of Power, can command all things to crumble without need of a spirit host.]

[Fatal Weakness: The Dragonia possesses a unique innate skill, “Far Cry”—a universal ultimate move that sacrifices the user’s own life to unleash devastating destruction, an extreme high-heat beam of flame with enough energy to destroy anything. Correspondingly, as a “vessel” carrying spacetime itself, even a minor wound inflicted by outside force will echo and amplify infinitely across the timeline, ultimately causing self-collapse.]

Next came the info for the countless red dots nearby, swarming to besiege the dragon:

[Target: Prüfer · Uc207Pr4f57t9 (Ex-Machina)]

[Value: 100 points]

[Trait: The Prüfer is one of five types within the Ex-Machina—a dedicated unit for computational analysis of information. Its combat performance is comparatively weak, with output at only 32% of a Combat Unit’s. However, thanks to its racial trait of analyzing, copying, and replicating any attack it receives, it can decode an attack pattern after taking just one hit and reproduce it at a certain ratio. Given the ongoing war, it’s already logged no small number of skills.]

[Fatal Weakness: The Ex-Machina itself lacks emotion and doesn’t initiate attacks—its primary task is to analyze certain targets, only triggering its counterattack protocol when attacked. However, thanks to the Ex-Machina’s reliance on a “Cluster” for shared global consciousness and synchronized data, offending a single Mecha unit means making an enemy of the entire race.]

[…]

After looking over the somewhat exaggerated stat panels and point values, Arisu Sakayanagi couldn’t help clicking her tongue. “That many Mecha units… just eyeballing it, there’s got to be at least several thousand of them, right?”

“Even an Prüfer that’s not great at direct combat is worth 100 points on its own? If you add them all together, the qualitative change that results… that’s downright terrifying.”

She tilted her head back to look up at the clouds above, flashing over and over with blinding light from the ongoing battle, and murmured softly, “No wonder… That Dragon Spirit worth over two hundred points, along with its lesser dragons, looks like it’s about ready to give out.”

As she spoke, Arisu Sakayanagi suddenly paused. She turned to face Chris, staring at him intently, and made a serious proposal. “Hey, Big Boss.”

“Want to take a gamble? While they’re busy beating each other to a pulp, we jump in and grab a piece of the action—go straight from riding a bike to riding a motorcycle?”

Chris’s mouth twitched, and he gave her forehead an irritated flick. “Get a grip.”

“I’m not so arrogant as to think I could single-handedly kill a Dragon Spirit worth over two hundred points, in the middle of a four-digit mechanical army averaging 100 points each, and then walk away without a scratch.

“Let’s just use the Controller to scan this floor first and see if there’s some other monster that’s strong enough but off on its own.” Chris widened the Controller’s detection range.

“If there is one, and it’s not too much trouble to deal with, we’ll pull it straight into the Mountains and Rivers State Map and take our time with it. Don’t forget—besides farming points this time, we’re also here to find Senpai Asahina Nazuna and gather intel on the Backrooms…”

Before Chris even finished speaking—

—the students nearby who’d already activated their vampire bloodlines and were immune to the black ash’s damage had already gathered together quickly under Honami Ichinose’s direction.

Working in perfect sync, they raised their hands together and activated the cursed technique barrier [Curtain] that Gojo Satoru had taught them earlier.

A hemispherical barrier of concealment quickly spread open above everyone’s heads, sealing out the falling black ash and creating a relatively safe zone for the group.

At the same time, Hayasaka Ai and Ryūji Kanzaki, who were also equipped with Controller radars, were quickly scanning through their holographic screens, dividing up the search duties with Chris on their own initiative.

It had become an unspoken understanding between them by now.

After all, the only items in the group’s possession capable of seeing through the entire map and precisely locking onto both friendly and enemy units were the three Controllers held by these three.

In an exam where every second counted, dividing the labor was unquestionably the most efficient approach.

According to the assignments: Chris, as the main combat force, was responsible for scouting nearby high-value enemies worth fighting; Hayasaka Ai, with her sharp eye for detail, was responsible for finding Intruders or other exploration survivors who might be in the Backrooms; and Ryūji Kanzaki was in charge of zooming through the map to locate the current floor’s exit.

It was under this efficient coordination—

—that Hayasaka Ai quickly picked up two green friendly signals in an obscure corner near the edge of her screen, mixed in with a light signature representing the special NPC merchant.

“Found them!” A flicker of joy rose in Hayasaka Ai’s chest.

Meanwhile, as Ryūji Kanzaki pulled up the edge data on the 3D map, he stumbled onto a blind spot.

He noticed that this so-called “Backrooms floor” had terrain edges that seemed fundamentally different from the plain, flat interior spaces they’d passed through before.

The edge of this map actually curved—clearly, visibly curved!

Frowning, Ryūji Kanzaki tried pinching two fingers on the screen to zoom the map way out.

As his viewpoint climbed higher and higher, the final outline of the Controller’s map came into view.

It wasn’t a room or a continent anymore—it was a complete sphere, like a globe!

Orbiting the planet, there even hung a shattered, broken moon…

Stunned, Ryūji Kanzaki’s fingers trembled as he tapped open one of the massive red squares drifting along the “planet’s” outer orbit, like a floating island.

The moment he made out the monster’s name and its suffocatingly high power score, Ryūji Kanzaki felt like he’d been struck by lightning. And so—

—in the quiet within the barrier, two voices rang out almost simultaneously.

“I found the location of Fujiwara and Senpai Asahina, plus the Mysterious Merchant!” “I think… I know the truth behind this floor of the Backrooms!”

The first was Hayasaka Ai’s excited report; the second, Ryūji Kanzaki’s trembling murmur.

Faced with these two wildly different pieces of major news—

—Ryuuen, who was keeping watch on the perimeter nearby, glanced back at them.

Honami Ichinose quickly stepped forward and gently soothed them. “Let’s not rush, everyone—take it slow. If we hurry and mix up the information, it’ll just muddle our judgment…”

Hayasaka Ai took a deep breath and nodded, gesturing for Ryūji Kanzaki to go first with his so-called “truth.”

Ryūji Kanzaki didn’t decline. He composed himself, projected his Controller screen enlarged into the center of the group, and spoke in a low, grave voice.

“As the one in charge of finding the floor’s exit, I’ve covered more map area than anyone else this time.”

“But I’ve discovered that this space is fundamentally different from the flat structures we passed through before, like the pool or the corridors.” He pointed at the planetary image on the screen, speaking slowly, word by word.

“This place… isn’t a Backrooms floor at all. It’s an entire planet, complete with its own star system ecology!”

“A whole planet? But what does that have to do with this ‘truth’ you’re talking about?” Kei Karuizawa looked utterly lost, unable to follow the logical connection.

Suzune Horikita’s expression darkened as she explained on his behalf. “What Ryūji Kanzaki means is… this alternate world, with its complete ecology, might be going through the exact same thing our own world is.”

“It’s being swallowed and assimilated by that bizarre spatial concept known as the ‘Backrooms’!”

Amasawa Ichika propped her chin on one hand, the Parasyte on her left arm squirming restlessly, and picked up on Horikita’s reasoning. “If what you’re all thinking is right… then once the assimilation is complete, this world will eventually lose its original spatial dimensions too, turning into an endless, dead, flat plane like the other Backrooms floors?”

“Heh… a perfectly reasonable guess.” Kouenji Rokusuke’s tone remained elegant, though his usual air of nonchalance had faded from his eyes. “Though we can’t be certain yet what kind of catastrophic outcome this dimension-level attack will ultimately bring—”

“—but just looking at how sparsely populated and resource-starved the other Backrooms floors are, with even monsters growing scarce… in a way, that’s already a preview of this world’s grim future.”

Hearing this, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka fell into thought.

He remembered the warning Koro Sensei had given back at school.

Koro Sensei had said that if nothing was done, the world containing Advanced Nurturing High School wouldn’t survive past next year.

Could it be… that what Koro Sensei was talking about was this very Backrooms, the one assimilating their world?

Was that why the presiding god was so desperate to use the Black Sphere Exam to train them?

The most pressing task now was to find a way to completely sever their world from the Backrooms.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka rapidly ran through the possibilities in his mind.

But since the information they had was genuinely too scarce—only fragments pieced together—he didn’t dare jump to conclusions, and pressed the doubt down for now.

Meanwhile, as the true “Creator” and GM, Chris kept his own expression just as gravely serious, without a single crack in the act.

Even though all of this was really just some patchwork backstory he’d thrown together off the top of his head, he still played his part with due diligence, curiously wandering over to Ryūji Kanzaki’s side to take a look at the red-dot panel he’d just opened.

[Target: Jibril]

[Value: 185 points]

[Trait: The strongest individual among all Flügel, the only one with a solo kill record against an upper-tier race, known as the “Final Model.” Can split an entire ocean using just 5% of her power. Naturally masters the Flügel’s universal spatial magic, capable of ultra-high-speed instant movement, spatial teleportation, and long-range pinpoint transport. Physically powerful, with a reserve of magic far exceeding other Flügel.]

[Fatal Weakness: Her signature ultimate move, Sky Strike, unleashes maximum damage by fully expending her own magic reserves—one full-power strike can pierce through the earth’s crust, a single blast enough to wipe out an entire city! Correspondingly, after using it, she falls into a state of complete exhaustion, becoming little more than a helpless little girl, with almost none of her strength remaining.]

[Target: War God · Artosh]

[Value: 580 points]

[Trait: A Old God member, a primordial concept-god native to this world, and the creator of the Flügel. In essence, he is the concept of war, fighting will, and slaughter itself—as long as battle exists anywhere in the world, his power will keep climbing without limit. With the entire world locked in endless war over the Star Cup, he is, without question, the strongest being this world has to offer. Even with only 33% of his full power remaining, he can still crush every other Divine Spirit combined.]

[Fatal Weakness: His exclusive ultimate technique, the Godly Smite, gathers the Sky Strikes of every Flügel into one, channels them all through himself, and unleashes them as a single blow capable of piercing a planet’s crust and exposing its core. The cost is exhausting the full combat strength of every Flügel under his command, while he himself exposes the fatal weak point representing his divine essence. But since the War God himself, as a concept, is fundamentally undefeatable, he’s subconsciously always hoped to be struck down—so he earnestly longs for a formidable opponent capable of dodging or tanking the Godly Smite, one who could grant him death.]

Looking over this character panel—setting aside his current role for a moment—Chris actually felt a bit conflicted.

After all, he was the man who’d casually drawn the Star Cup.

Within the world of No Game No Life, the moment he drew it, he became, by the rules, the equivalent of this world’s “One True God.”

Since he’d chosen this place as one of the settings for their instance training, naturally he’d come to scout it out before the game actually began.

As it turned out, ignorance really would have been bliss.

The instant he’d taken a look, Artosh had sensed the presence of the Star Cup and come charging over to demand a one-on-one duel.

Though in that fight with Artosh, Chris had one-shotted him without even using the Star Cup.

The War God right now was in the awkward state of having just been casually resurrected by Chris, freshly emerged from his post-climax “sage mode.”

Still, Chris couldn’t help but think this Artosh guy was pretty remarkable…

He clearly had the power to just go grab the Star Cup himself and end this long, tedious war outright.

And yet—he just wouldn’t take it! He’d rather sit back and watch the people below fight to the death, savoring the pure, unfiltered process of conflict itself!

Come to think of it, the fact that the Ex-Machina managed to kill Artosh together in the original story really did carry a hint of him being sick of living and courting death on purpose.

Setting aside these idle, out-of-character thoughts—

—Chris kept his expression steady, turned to the group, and warned, “War God Artosh… the Controller rates him at 580 points.”

“Just going by that number alone, he’s probably on the same level as the final boss Evil God you all ran into during the Revival Round.”

Ryūji Kanzaki took a deep breath.

“Honestly, what worries me most isn’t the war god by himself.”

“Chris, as the one mainly checking the monster values around us, you must have noticed too…”

“The sheer density of high-value monsters in this world is unexpectedly high!”

Ryūji Kanzaki swiped his fingers across the screen, displaying the surrounding data. “Setting aside Artosh at the very top for a moment—”

“—Divine Spirits, Flügel, Phantasma, Dragon Spirits… these are races where even a single random individual is worth over a hundred points, and in this world, most of them operate as entire population groups.

“Armies made up of hundreds, even thousands of high-value monsters…

“If even a world with combat power this absurd is ultimately doomed to be assimilated and swallowed by that unknown force in the Backrooms… then what hope does our own world have? Do we actually stand a chance of winning?”

As his words fell—

—the atmosphere within the barrier inevitably grew heavy, oppressive enough to steal the breath from everyone’s lungs.

Even Honami Ichinose, the eternal optimist, could only bite her lower lip hard, unable to offer a single word of comfort.

But rather than dwelling pessimistically on such an as-yet uncertain, hopeless future—

—the more level-headed among these students, who’d already weathered numerous life-or-death trials, preferred to focus on the present and prepare ahead of time.

Like the ever-composed Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

“Given how dangerous this world is—its combat ceiling even exceeds what we could reach even by borrowing every item at our disposal—

Ayanokoji set the tone in a cool voice. “—then let’s find the exit as fast as possible. And while we’re at it, let’s bring along the two Intruders Hayasaka just located, plus the Mysterious Merchant.”

Hearing this, Kouenji Rokusuke pulled his gaze away from the somewhat pessimistic Ryūji Kanzaki.

As someone likewise born into a wealthy conglomerate family, he naturally knew Ryūji Kanzaki already.

Seeing how his old acquaintance had, after coming back from the dead, grown a bit too pessimistic and overly cautious, Kouenji couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the change.

But he didn’t mock him for it—he simply shook his head and spoke decisively. “Ayanokoji Boy’s right.” “Since we’re racing against time, let’s split up. Let’s aim to finish both finding the people and finding the exit in the shortest time possible.”

Honami Ichinose nodded and followed up with a question. “If we’re splitting up… to minimize the risk of getting spotted by high-value monsters along the way, shouldn’t we have most people take shelter inside the Mountains and Rivers State Map first?”

Arisu Sakayanagi agreed. “We should keep the number of moving targets to an absolute minimum. If there are too many people around, we’ll inevitably turn into a target.

“We don’t have anywhere near the strength to hunt these monsters right now. If we get exposed, we’ll end up as the prey instead.

Suzune Horikita thought it over and added a detail. “The Flügel are experts at spatial magic. I’m worried the Mountains and Rivers State Map’s spatial barrier alone might not be enough to slip past their perception.

“To be safe, once everyone’s inside the Mountains and Rivers State Map, we should also use the power of the Blank Card Box to hide inside the Mirror World together, for double the isolation.”

“As for who stays outside to handle the physical logistics and act as backup…” “I’ll do it,” Ryuuen volunteered.

“I don’t have any special stealth or presence-reducing abilities, sure, but I can fly, and my mobility’s absolutely faster and more skilled than the Bukujutsu you and Ayanokoji use.

“Besides, as a pure mechanical life-form with no flesh-and-blood scent, I’m already the best camouflage in a world overflowing with magic and spirits. And I’ve got the extra life the Energy Amethyst grants me as a safety net, too.”

Ryuuen grinned. “I’m confident running for my life shouldn’t be a problem.”

Chris glanced at Ryuuen and nodded, accepting the responsibility. “Fine.

“Then Ryuuen, take Kanzaki’s Controller and go find those two Intruders.

“I’ll go find the Mysterious Merchant and see if there’s any powerful item we can buy on the spot to boost our survival odds.”

No one present had any complaints about Chris’s swift, decisive plan.

From a purely practical standpoint of combat strength, splitting the group with Chris—the strongest among them—and Ryuuen—whose survival skills were top-tier—really was the optimal solution.

Still, as the two shouldering the highest risk throughout, it was only natural that certain people in the group who cared about them would feel a pang of worry.

As everyone filed one by one into the Mountains and Rivers State Map—

—Hiyori Shiina paused just a second before she was about to step into the scroll.

The girl pressed her lips together in silence for a moment before finally turning back to look at Chris, asking softly, out of concern, “Chris-kun… do you want me to come with you?”

Watching this, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, as though suddenly recalling something, spoke up to interrupt the girl’s worry, offering a timely reminder. “Don’t forget, Chris has the Enma Blade on him.

“If he runs into danger, he can just use the Enma Blade to cut through space and retreat into the Mirror World whenever he wants. He’s got more survival tricks up his sleeve than any of us.”

Having said that, Ayanokoji turned to Chris and added, “Oh, right, something just occurred to me. Once we’re safe and have some free time, remember to try something with your Enma Blade… see if you can use its space-cutting ability to slice straight through the physical barriers between Backrooms floors.”

“If it works, we’ll have total initiative in all our future exploration of the Backrooms.

“Of course, all of this can only happen once we’ve made it safely out of this world.

Chris nodded at Ayanokoji, indicating he’d taken note.

He then turned around, looked at Hiyori Shiina’s worried face, and reassured her with a light laugh. “Just like Ayanokoji said, I’ve got the Enma Blade as a backup plan.

“And besides, did you forget? I already got the strongest contract beast before.”

“Don’t worry about me, Hiyori. Just go on in and wait for my good news.”

Hiyori Shiina’s lips moved slightly, as if she wanted to say a few more words of caution, but in the end she just gave Chris an obedient little wave. “Mm… please come back safe.”

Standing by the entrance, Honami Ichinose took in the whole exchange between the two of them.

She pressed her lips tightly together as that familiar, bittersweet ache welled up inside her once again.

But in the end, she just reached out and gave Hiyori Shiina’s slender shoulder a gentle pat, without saying anything more.

Meanwhile, in a barren, snow-like wasteland formed by the drifting piles of spirit-remnant black ash falling from the sky—

—Morishita Ai was walking through it alone.

She turned her head and glanced back behind her.

Where deep footprints should have been left in the ground, there were only the faintest, barely visible traces.

Looking up again at the toxic black snow swirling through the air—snow that passed straight through her body the instant it touched her, leaving no burn marks at all—

Morishita Ai couldn’t help a strange, inexplicable murmur of wonder. “It’s really unbelievable…”

If she hadn’t seen with her own eyes how this “snow”—which would instantly cause horrific burns on an ordinary person—had absolutely no effect on her whatsoever right now…

…she probably would’ve had a hard time truly grasping the reality that she was now a “ghost.”

Should she say she was currently in some kind of quantum superposition state…?

Morishita Ai mused, shaking her head with a touch of self-deprecation.

Just as she was about to continue wandering this wasteland aimlessly, hoping to find some stray classmate to help—

“BOOM—!!” Amid the dense series of explosions echoing high overhead, a strange tremor suddenly cut through the noise!

“Someone’s coming?”

Almost on reflex, the girl lunged forward and dropped into a tactical prone position, tucking her small frame behind a massive, weathered boulder.

She forced herself to hold her breath completely.

After a brief, breathless wait—

—Morishita Ai carefully peeked half her head out from the edge of the rock, holding her breath and focusing intently as she looked toward where the sound had come from.

Through the sweeping curtain of black ash—

—she made out who was approaching.

It was a girl made of metal, like a mechanical doll dancing atop a music box.

She was advancing steadily toward Morishita Ai’s location with elegant steps, a floating metal orb of magic trailing alongside her.

“That’s… Oriana?” “The Mysterious Merchant?!”

Morishita Ai first let out a breath of relief. Then her face went pale as she realized something was wrong. “Oh no!”

After all, as the “Mysterious Merchant” of the Black Sphere Exam, she was like a searchlight in the dead of night, a rare treasure drop in a game.

Every single examinee and test-taker was bound to actively hunt her down without exception!

If anyone came here searching for the merchant, there was a huge chance they’d stumble onto her hidden “ghost” state.

“I’m done for…”

Morishita Ai’s usually eternally-blank, emotionless little face finally cracked, giving way to an expression of utter despair.

“So, in other words, right now is…” “Morishita Ai’s Big Crisis!”