The tapping grew louder, each step deliberate, echoing like a countdown to execution.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The doorknob rattled once. Then slowly turned.
Chara's soul vision flared without his consent, and his breath hitched. Through the wood of the door, he could see it. A human-shaped aura, fractured like a shattered mirror, every crack spilling out the same black-red sludge he had seen crawling on Ruby's team. But here, it wasn't trying to get in. It was pouring out endlessly.
The door creaked open.
Professor Ozpin stepped in. Or at least, something wearing his skin. His cane tapped against the ground as his eyes swept the room. They weren't green anymore—nothing but an abyss, deep black with faint crimson veins spreading like roots.
Every single instinct in Chara screamed, telling him not to move.
Ozpin's gaze drifted across the beds, lingering over Ruby and Weiss. The sludge around him pulsed, expanding, stretching out invisible tendrils that brushed across the room like spiderwebs. When one passed close to Chara's soul, his Trial by Error flashed a single word in his mind
[Resist.]
Beads of sweat collected on his forehead. He forced himself not to react.
The tapping stopped right beside Blake's bed. She didn't flinch, though her nails dug into her palm beneath the sheets hard enough to draw blood. The corrupted Ozpin leaned closer, his hollow eyes scanning her face.
Seconds dragged into eternities.
Then—he straightened. The cane tapped again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The door shut.
Everyone remained frozen, waiting, listening until the footsteps faded completely into silence.
Only then did Kazuma finally sit bolt upright, pale as death. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" His voice cracked, barely keeping below a whisper. "That wasn't a mission boss—that was the final raid boss! The system just dropped us into Dark Souls: RWBY Edition!"
Misaka was pale, too, but she forced her tone into a cold whisper. "Shut up, idiot. If he'd stayed one second longer…" She didn't finish the sentence.
Homura's shield ticked once, her knuckles white on its edge. "We have a problem. If the headmaster himself is corrupted, then this world's entire structure of protection is already compromised. And he's watching them every week."
Ruby, shaking, finally broke her silence, staring at Chara. "…you saw it, didn't you? You saw what he is now."
Chara slowly nodded. "…he's gone. Whatever part of him was human—it's drowned in that sludge. He's corruption incarnate now."
The room fell into silence again, suffocating and heavy.
[System Notification]: "Survive the Night — Sub-Mission: Endure Ozpin's Check-In. Reward: 1 Random Item Ticket."
Kazuma's jaw dropped. "…SURVIVE the NIGHT?! Oh, I hate this system. I hate this system so much."
Chara gave Kazum an annoyed glare. "If you shout, he may turn around and come back. First, we need to learn the situation of this world before we act."
Itadori was hesitant for a moment but spoke. "That corruption felt a bit like Cursed energy, I think I can resist it a bit."
Chara blinked and then turned to Itadori. He remembered everyone had different abilities from their world. "What exactly is cured energy?"
Everyone in the group did not know that, well except Kazuma, but he was too terrified to actively explain right now.
Itadori scratched the back of his head, his voice low, wary of the hall outside. "It's… hard to explain. Cursed energy is born from negative emotions—fear, hatred, and regret. Sorcerers learn to control it, while curses are basically those emotions given form. That sludge coming off Ozpin… it felt similar, only thicker. Heavier. Like the whole world's negative emotions were stuffed into him."
Ruby sat up, a hint of curiosity inside her dead eyes. "It's probably because of this world. Before this all happened, monsters called Grimm existed. They were born from humanity's fear and despair. That sludge around Ozpin… It's worse than Grimm. Almost like it ate them and became something else."
Misaka's brow furrowed, electricity snapping faintly between her fingers. "So the headmaster is basically walking nuclear waste made of despair. Great. Just great."
Weiss scratched the back of her head, her skin pale. "Ozpin isn't the only one, I think the corruption spreads faster for people who have lived longer and have experienced many lingering negative emotions, I don't know what professor Ozpin has gone through but the corruption spread faster in him and he became dangerous but he also protects us from the other corrupted humans when he isn't being controlled.."
Blake, still lying on the bed, dryly continued. "The corrupted humans all have certain rules that once broken allow them to resurface and kill the ones that broke the rule, for example Yang....If–I mean when she used her semblance and entered a berserk state, she got corrupted and began acting...calm, at first we didn't notice but after a few days we realised she had been quietly killing people–and...Sorry, I cannot say, thinking about it makes me want to puke but eventually we managed to take her down at the cost of a few students and Ruby dealt the finishing blow."
Chara is just going to guess that a 'semblance' is just an ability. "So why didn't you wait for her to go out of her Semblance state?"
Blake remained silent before Weiss answered for her. "She did, but she managed to maintain her residual anger and disguised herself as a normal person for three days, tricking us all.."
The weight of Weiss's words settled like lead in the room. No one spoke for a long moment. Even Kazuma, usually first to run his mouth, stayed quiet—his lips trembling as if he wanted to say something, but even his fear of silence wasn't stronger than the memory of Ozpin standing in the doorway.
Blake finally sat up, her golden eyes half-shadowed. "…Semblances are tied to our souls. When corruption seeps into that… it doesn't just twist your power. It twists you. Yang wasn't Yang anymore. She smiled when she killed."
Ruby's hands tightened around Crescent Rose, knuckles white. "She laughed, too."
The group went silent again.
Chara's soul-vision pulsed faintly, still remembering the jagged fractures running through Ozpin's aura. He filed away the information—rules, negative emotions, semblance corruption—but a deeper unease gnawed at him. If the strongest protectors of this world were already gone, what exactly had they been thrown into?
"Alright," Misaka finally broke the silence, electricity snapping faintly in the air around her. "We've established that the world sucks, the rules are stacked against us, and that thing comes sniffing around every night. Question is… How do we survive this without turning into laughing psychos ourselves?"
"The chat group is giving us sub-quests so it is helping us but it also seems to be limited by some rules, maybe the mission it gave us had a reason to be hidden so the chat group may be...afraid," Char said solemnly.
Itadori's eyebrow ceased. "Of what is the corruption?"
Homura spoke. "Chara said the corruption is a metaphysical concept and a source was used to infect this world so yes the chat group is afraid of the corruption spreading to other worlds so it may have given us this mission with an emergency despite us just meeting yesterday...clearly this was an unprecedented event even for the group chat."
[Ding all members have survived Ozpin's check-in, The admin has received random item gacha tickets which will help you in this world.]
Chara smiled. "It seems after Ozpin checks someone's room if they are sleeping, he doesn't check again, and I don't know what the ticket will give us but it will help...now then girls, we may need your help fighting this corruption."
Ruby didn't move, but she ultimately spoke. "What's the point..."
As she said that, the aura on her soul weakened, and more cracks began to appear. The blackish red sludge began hitting the aura shield more furiously, seeing this Chara's lips twitched, he gained a slight idea and the in a moment the kindness soul appeared beside him and his eyes turned green, he raised his arm and then projected the soul energy of kindness and the cracks in their aura healed for a bit making the black sludge writh in annoyance.
Ruby blinked, almost startled at the sudden warmth that spread through her aura. The hairline cracks, which had been spiderwebbing wider with every second of despair, pulled together faintly—like a wound stitching closed just enough to stop the bleeding.
Her dull eyes widened. "That… what did you just do?"
Chara exhaled, steady but tired, the faint green glow fading from his irises. "Kindness. It's one of the souls I carry. It can't purge the corruption entirely, but it can push back despair and repair fractures in the aura before the sludge eats through. At least for a while."
Ruby's lips trembled, her voice caught between disbelief and desperate hope. "…then maybe we can fight it."
Kazuma practically launched himself forward, grabbing Chara's shoulders, his eyes wide with a survivalist's manic light. "YES, YES, THAT—exactly that! Support magic! Healing magic! Screw the corruption, as long as you can spam heal, we've got a chance to cheese this raid!"
Chara's expression flattened. "I may have a higher energy deposit due to having seven extra souls but my weakness is that they are fragile and if they are destroyed it may hurt me...really badly and I could get corrupted and then you would have to fight an almost unstoppable and ever-adapting version of myself filled with twisted determination, actually I could even begin to hate everything and revert to the old days and even cause Genocide in the scale of an entire planet or I would inevitably erase the world once my determination , Hate and LOVE reaches the highest level and the corrosion from the void might also resurface somehow so I don't think using my souls often is a good idea."
Kazuma instantly became blank and sat up to hug his knees. The poor guy was utterly proven wrong by reality. "I could just someone Megumins persona and drop a nuke in this school..."
Homura spoke this time. "What if your Personas get corrupted and somehow form a link to their originals and corrupt your world?."
Kazuma. "..."
Misaka rolled her eyes and spoke. "I could probably control them with my Geass."
Kazuma spoke, deadpanned. "Really, I thought you were smarter than everyone in this room. What if you used your Geass and the corrupted use it to corrupt your soul through your mind."
Misaka raised a finger but eventually put it down with a thoughtful expression. When did this dumb guy start getting clever, and it was truly troublesome not being able to use her new ability, but she just shrugged. "Oh well, i guess Rail hun it is, though. i don't think i can kill them..."
Homura coldly turned to Misaka and emotionlessly said. "Don't be soft. If you were about to die, you would be forced to kill."
Itadori scratched his cheeks. "Uhm, but weren't they normal people if we kill them, won't we be in the wrong?."
Chara looked at itadori with almost pitying gaze. "Those who have become monsters can only turn to dust, so if the world compels you and your desire to survive is stronger than your desire to die or if you become angry enough, you will eventually kill that monster for the greater good of others or you could let it live and kill you and then more lives will be lost and they would all be kn you, just because you didn't kill that monster."
Itadori listened deeply to his words and had a slight hesitation in his thoughts. Did he really have to kill someone innocent? No someone who used to be innocent, the answer was simple, if that person was normal, he would not, but if they were to harm others when their corruption resurfaces, he wouldn't hesitate
With that conviction, his expression became determined to save this world.
Misaka meanwhile frowned, Charas thought the process was truly profound. She wouldn't expect less from imejn nicknamed Genocidal Child, thay was the main reason she didn't interact with them that much when they met up...in fact she was just playing a bit dumb to investigate more of this chat group but it seems it threw her into a precarious situation which enabled her to potentially make her hands dirty.
Misaka rubbed her forehead and began taking the situation from a logical point, if worse comes to worse she would just think the corrupted were buildings that would collapse on people so she would use her rail gun to divert the building away do the people can live for another day.