The Great Tomb of Nazarick — the Treasury.
Chris held the [Enma Blade] loosely in one hand, boots crunching over the jewels scattered across the floor.
Not far ahead, at the entrance to the Shrine, stood a faceless figure — its head smooth and round, with only three black holes where the eyes and mouth should be.
As guardian of the Treasury, Pandora's Actor faced this threat like a man staring down doom — even the exaggerated, theatrical military poses he usually loved to strike were nowhere in sight.
Chris, though, paid him no mind at all. He simply answered Hiyori Shiina's voice from outside, sounding a little surprised.
"Let me see if I can carry a few items out of here... Didn't they drop any gold on their end? Like the World Items Albedo and the others were holding?"
After a brief silence, Hiyori Shiina's voice came back, tinged with helplessness.
"No drops... Just like the monsters from earlier exams. The moment they die, whatever they're holding turns to light and vanishes along with the body."
"Sounds like a game mechanic. Soulbound, maybe?"
Chris pursed his lips slightly, a touch of regret in it.
Pandora, still guarding the Shrine's entrance, wore no expression anyone could read — but the magic power surging off him turned violent in an instant. He was clearly furious.
"Unforgivable Intruder..."
He snapped his arm up, striking a resolute stance that said plainly: even as a corpse, Chris would have to step over his body to reach the Shrine.
In truth, Pandora knew exactly what he was doing.
The Shrine was Nazarick's second-most forbidden ground after the Eighth Floor — forcing entry would instantly awaken the many undead avatar golems inside, each one modeled after a Supreme Being's likeness and armed with max-level divine gear.
An assault of that magnitude — even if the man standing before him brought his whole party along — would leave them skinned alive just trying to get out in one piece.
And now here he was, daring to storm in alone. If Pandora could lure him in, this arrogant Intruder would regret it dearly!
Yet Pandora chose not to feign retreat or a fake surrender to draw Chris deeper in.
His position wouldn't allow it.
As a creation of the Great Tomb, his pride wouldn't let him bow his head to an Intruder.
Besides, rather than risk tipping his hand and raising the man's guard for nothing, it was better to hold the entrance to the death and let this arrogant human believe that killing him alone would be enough to settle everything.
His mind made up, Pandora's form began to shift.
In a flash of light, he switched directly into the form of his creator.
He planned to use a weakened, mimicked version of [The Goal of All Life is Death] combined with an instant-death spell to feel out Chris's limits — and if that failed, to quickly switch to the form of Touch Me or another Supreme Being to respond.
The plan was flawless.
But he had clearly underestimated Chris.
Ainz Ooal Gown himself had only managed to hold his own against Fūka Kiryūin thanks to his cash-shop items and an information gap.
This all-around weakened skeleton Pandora had transformed into now held even fewer items than Ainz did.
Naturally, that left him with nothing to stand against Chris with.
Against lesser beings, Pandora's mimicry could be called comprehensive.
But against a monster like Chris, who'd stacked so many layers of [Heartsteel] that even he'd lost count, and who was simply, brutally strong on top of every other boost...
Once you failed to pick the optimal move from the very first moment, the so-called battle stopped being a fight at all — it just became the difference between 'surviving ten seconds' and 'dying instantly.'
Sure enough.
Before the giant clock behind Pandora had even ticked down a single notch...
"Whoosh—!"
A pale blue rift in space had already bloomed across Pandora's field of view.
Chris appeared right in front of him, and the [Enma Blade] slid silently into Pandora's skull, cutting smoothly all the way down!
"Crack."
The blade rang out, clean and sharp.
Split cleanly in two, Pandora crashed to the ground, reverting back to his true form — the faceless figure in a yellow military uniform.
In his final moments, the system's judgment began breaking Pandora's body down into particles.
Still, he refused to give up, his mouth working to make one last attempt at psychological warfare.
"Never... as long as I draw one breath, I'll never let anyone touch Nazarick's treasure..."
Chris glanced down at him.
"Looks like you're out of resurrection items, huh..."
"Then I'm afraid that last breath is about to run out."
Far from panicking at thosewords, Pandora seemed almost relieved — his 'grand scheme,' the one built on his own death, had succeeded.
Before he dissolved completely, he let out one last, sorrowful lament.
"Nazarick... once so mighty, so glorious... and now, because of our own incompetence — we Guardians — we've let it all burn to ash..."
"Take it. Take it all! World Items, Supreme divine artifacts — take every last one..."
"But remember this! One day, our Supreme Beings will find you all... and then, they'll kill you ten thousand times over!!!"
With that venomous curse—
Pandora vanished completely from the stone floor of the Treasury.
Back in the Mirror World, having watched the whole scene, Hiyori Shiina bit her lip, worry creeping into her voice.
"Supreme Beings... the guide says there were forty-one of them in total. If every one of them scores as high as Ainz did, it'll be a real headache if they ever set their sights on us..."
Chris sheathed the Enma Blade, neither confirming nor denying it.
"Ainz's score is probably high not purely because of his own solo combat strength — it's likely factoring in the Great Tomb's overall threat level as a whole."
"If you hadn't been feeding us intel from the Mirror World, Kiryūin and the others really would've struggled against a mechanics-heavy boss like this."
"But with your help pulling weight, plus the Controller's box-opening x-ray vision, the real difficulty dropped well below how intimidating it looked at the start."
"Pull him out of Nazarick, his home turf, and it's anyone's guess whether he'd even score a hundred points anymore."
Besides.
Unlike Suzuki Satoru, who'd poured his entire life into the game and ultimately crossed over into it,
the other forty players of the Ainz Ooal Gown guild had either climbed the corporate ladder and become winners in real life, or long since married, had kids, and turned into corporate wage-slaves grinding away in the real world.
Expecting a bunch of people who'd quit the game ages ago to cross worlds and avenge some online friend they'd only gamed with for a few years?
That would be reading way too much sentiment into things.
Maybe someday, if there's ever a raid to run, they'd get the chance to log back in.
Hiyori Shiina had no idea about any of this, but she didn't seem inclined to argue with Chris either.
She simply followed the thread of conversation and moved on to reporting the state of the other battlefronts.
"Kiriyama-senpai's group already wrapped up their fight. Only Kiryuuin-senpai's side is still cleaning up. But her testing time is running out too..."
Catching a subtle note of discomfort in her tone, Chris slowed his steps and asked her directly.
"They still haven't figured out how to handle it over there?"
"Even if they don't want to risk their own people, couldn't they just send the shadow ninjas instead? I've seen those ninjas show some independent thinking."
Hiyori sighed softly from within the Mirror World.
"They tried that already. It doesn't work. Some of the special mechanic checks can only be triggered by a living person."
"In the end, President Nagumo made the call. He sent shadow soldiers to find a local farmer struggling with poverty, gave him all of Nazarick's gold as payment, and promised him protection from the Theocracy afterward... in exchange for the man 'sacrificing himself' to break the [Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown]..."
Hearing that, Chris immediately understood why Hiyori's tone had sounded so conflicted.
After all, they'd all been through so many life-and-death exam trials by now.
But at their core, most of these students still operated on a "Lawful Good" standard. Their original reason for fighting had been to save the world, for the justice of survival.
Something like what Miyabi Nagumo had just done — paying money, exploiting someone else's poverty to buy a life and clear the minefield for himself...
In the brutal arena of the exam, it was hard to say whether that kind of equal exchange really counted as wrong.
But it still carried a certain cold-blooded quality — taking advantage of someone at their most desperate.
For someone like Hiyori — kind-hearted by nature, with an intensely strong sense of empathy, the literary type — it really wasn't an option she could accept easily.
Chris thought it over and chose not to condemn Nagumo.
"Aside from God, no one can bear full responsibility for someone else's fate, Hiyori."
"He made his choice. Nagumo made his."
"That's all there is to it."
Hiyori gave a soft "mm," clearly not wanting to linger on such a heavy topic.
"The Great Tomb's foundational structure has already started to collapse. This test will probably end in just a few more minutes... Chris-kun, are you still planning to go take a look inside that Shrine?"
"I just have this feeling something's off about it..."
At that, Chris turned to look past where Pandora had just been standing.
Then he glanced down at the Black Sphere Watch on his wrist and spoke.
"Never mind."
"There isn't much time left, so it's not worth the risk. Going in now might just cost us more time. Better to just grab what's scattered here and see if I can bug-exploit some of it out."
Of course, the more important reason behind Chris's decision was...
Morishita Ai, currently in her first Revival Round match under a "Ghost" status, was hiding inside that very Shrine!
With his current strength, Chris could easily have gone in and played around with the stone golems inside, adding a bit of extra difficulty to Morishita Ai's game while he was at it.
But that clearly didn't match the image he'd been building in front of Hiyori.
No need to invite unnecessary complications.
If he really wanted to see Morishita Ai, there'd be no shortage of chances during the next exam.
As the Treasury's massive dome began cracking wide open, chunks of stone and piles of coins came crashing down.
The long-awaited exam-completion tone finally rang out in everyone's ears.
[Objective reduced.] [Exam complete. Beginning teleportation.]
Pale blue teleport light rose from beneath their feet, sweeping quickly up past their eyes.
When his vision cleared again—
Chris turned his head, taking in his surroundings.
The first things he saw were Hiyori Shiina and Amikura Mako, who'd just disengaged from the Mirror World, and off to one side, Hayasaka Ai and Kei Karuizawa, propping each other up.
Everyone accounted for — that much was fine.
But when Chris's gaze swept toward a bench not far off, he froze for a moment.
Two girls, one in white and one in red, sat there in relaxed poses.
"Sakayanagi? Amasawa? What are you two doing here?" Chris asked, puzzled.
Arisu Sakayanagi propped her chin on one hand, a sly glint flashing in her pale violet eyes.
"Great minds think alike, don't they?"
Compared to Sakayanagi's air of mystery, Amanatsu Kazuha sitting beside her was far more straightforward.
The girl flicked her wine-red twin tails and admitted it without hiding a thing.
"Because I've been keeping an eye on your location on my phone the whole time, Senpai! Naturally it wasn't hard to work out where you'd end up."
With that, Amanatsu Kazuha slapped a hand to her chest in exaggerated astonishment.
"But honestly, I never expected it — you guys actually spent over twenty hours in there this time!"
"Doesn't that basically mean the upperclassmen nearly got wiped out entirely this time?"
Hiyori Shiina nodded lightly, her tone growing heavy.
"That's right."
"Of everyone tested this round... only five made it out alive in the end."
"And the Intruders without Combat Suits — they suffered even worse. Almost completely wiped out..."
Hearing those brutal numbers, even Sakayanagi — who'd braced herself for something like this — let her smile fade a little.
She pressed her lips together and spoke up with a reminder.
"By the way, the school put out an emergency spreadsheet last night. They're asking every student to list any classmates they know of who've suddenly gone missing."
"Apparently once the exam ends, the returning survivors themselves are supposed to go cross off their own names for verification."
"Make sure you go into the school system and remove your own names, or the administration might just treat you as 'attrition' and delete your accounts outright."
Chris nodded and reached for his phone, curious to see just how competent the school's spreadsheet was.
The moment he unlocked the screen, a string of notifications popped up in a row.
They were Line messages from Fūka Kiryūin.
[Hey, kouhai. You make it out alive?]
[Did you manage to carry anything out of the Great Tomb?]
Seeing that, Chris lifted his hand and opened the Black Sphere Watch, pulling up his personal item inventory.
He scrolled through it briefly, confirming the state of the items he'd swiped in the chaos, then typed a reply back at speed.
[Nope, nothing except what I already bought from the shop. All those staffs and scrolls I grabbed on the way are gone too. The only thing I actually brought out was a single [Rivers and Mountains Scroll].]
The reply came back almost instantly.
Fūka Kiryūin sent back an "OK" in a flash, along with a sticker of someone furiously slamming a table but ultimately helpless about it.
Beside him, Amanatsu Kazuha noticed Chris staring at his phone screen and leaned in a little, puzzled.
"Senpai, didn't you find the email the school sent?"
"Maybe it's because you guys just got back and your phone signal hasn't synced with the school's base station yet. Want me to... forward you the link instead?"
Chris shook his head and offered a casual explanation.
"It's not that. Kiryuuin-senpai was asking about carrying items out of the exam grounds."
"From what I can tell, if you want to take an NPC's item out of the exam field, the system has to judge that you hold 'clear ownership' of it first."
"Anything that already has an owner — even if you're gripping it in your hand when you leave — just won't come out with you in the end."
Sakayanagi raised an eyebrow at that.
She looked at Chris, confused.
"That doesn't add up, though?"
"Didn't you use the [Instance Card] together with the [Blank Card Box] to go get a contracted beast in some instance?"
"Are you saying the instance world you went into came with some built-in function to enter someone else's exam grounds too?"
Hearing that question,
Hayasaka Ai let out a helpless sigh, rubbing at her throbbing temples.
"That's a long story..."
"It's not just the Instance Card thing — there's also the Revival Round Shiranami and the others are fighting right now..."
There were far too many details to get into — no way to explain it all in a few words.
Chris glanced up at the sky and cut in directly.
"What's done is done. No point splitting hairs over the details now."
"Let's eat first. We've been fighting for a full day and night — even an iron body can't hold up against hunger."
Amanatsu Kazuha, ever the understanding one, rubbed at the dark circles under her eyes and picked up the thread.
"Senpai's right, eating comes first!"
"By the way, it's been quite a while since you all left."
"The school apparently set up a special comfort meal program just for exam participants. You can go eat for free at the school cafeteria with your exam ID."
"Or if you don't want to show your face, you can just leave a message on the form for canceling Intruder status and ask the administrators to have a deluxe bento delivered instead."
She giggled and mused,
"Hmm... the school's pretty thoughtful about this stuff, huh. Aren't they worried some bold soul might deliberately put their own name down just to score a fancy free meal?"
Sakayanagi gave an unapologetic scoff and shot back.
"Given the state the school's in right now, do you really think the higher-ups care about such a tiny amount of private points?"
"If some ordinary student really wants to impersonate an exam-taker just to save a few points, let them."
"As long as they don't mind their classmates staring at them funny afterward."
Chris couldn't care less either way.
He turned to the girls behind him. "Let's go with whatever you and the others decide, Hiyori. I'm easy either way."
Amikura Mako pressed her lips together and drew a deep breath.
"Sorry, Chris."
"I want to go check on Shiranami, Kanzaki, and the others first..."
"And while I'm at it... I'll go let Ichinose know."
Amikura Mako forced a faint smile onto her lips. "If she hears the news — that everyone still has a chance to come back — she'll be so happy."
Chris looked at her and offered a gentle reminder.
"And about Hoshinomiya-sensei..."
At that name, Amikura Mako lowered her eyes helplessly.
"This world isn't kind enough to go along with everything we want."
"I won't keep it from Ichinose. Better a quick pain than a long one."
Chris thought it over and nodded.
"All right. In that case, pass along an apology to Ichinose for me too. I'd promised her we'd work on popularizing Ki cultivation together, and instead I ended up dragged into an extra instance and made her worry."
Amikura Mako glanced at him and answered seriously.
"Ichinose will understand."
"We didn't have a choice... she won't blame you."
Chris nodded, then turned his attention to the rest of the group.
Over the course of that long day and night, Hiyori Shiina had witnessed the destruction of an entire world, one after another, along with the changes the upperclassmen had shown under such desperate conditions — and it had left her genuinely shaken.
She was in no mood to socialize right now, so she made an excuse about feeling unwell and got ready to head back to her dorm to rest.
Seeing that, Hayasaka Ai offered to walk back with her.
Having grown up in an environment like the Shinomiya family, Hayasaka had learned to read the room early.
She could tell right away that Sakayanagi and Amanatsu Kazuha, waiting here like this, had a pretty clear agenda.
Honestly, in Hayasaka Ai's eyes right now, nothing mattered more than gathering enough points to get back to her own world.
She had neither the time nor the inclination to wade into whatever undercurrents were swirling around Chris in this romantic battlefield.
As for Kei Karuizawa —
she was still riding high on the thrill of having secured a powerful contracted beast in such a short time, on top of scoring roughly forty S Points' worth of item value practically for free.
Naturally, she had no reason to turn down this "victory feast."
But that excitement was quickly doused halfway by her returning good sense.
After all, once she actually did the math—
Setting aside the hundred-plus points Chris had recouped,
the points she and Hayasaka Ai had racked up together in this extra instance weren't small either.
Add in the S Points that Shiranami Chihiro, Ryūji Kanzaki, and the others still in the Revival Round were holding...
wasn't this point output running a little over the limit?
Could it be... the Black Sphere system's backend might flag them for maliciously farming points?
Kei Karuizawa swallowed nervously, a little guilty.
Surely it wouldn't come to that...?
After all, they'd genuinely paid a full 100 S Points just to enter the upperclassmen's exam field.
And Shiranami and Kanzaki were among the very few survivors of the Revival Round, given how brutal the difficulty was — however she looked at it, points earned like that shouldn't be tied to their own hidden score.
Though even doing the math that way, they'd still ended up netting at least two hundred-plus S Points, all told.
Just as Kei Karuizawa's mood clouded over and she began fretting anxiously back and forth—
the group arrived at the school's premium dining hall.
They pushed the door open and stepped inside.
It was dinnertime, and a weekend at that.
By all rights it should have been the busiest hour of the day.
But in reality, the sprawling dining hall stood nearly empty — hardly anyone was there eating.
Only the long buffet counters were piled high with every kind of luxury dish that would normally cost a fortune.
Boston lobster, A5 wagyu, top-grade sashimi... it was all there.
At a glance, you'd think you'd walked into some high-end buffet restaurant.
Taking in the lavish spread, Kei Karuizawa rubbed at her own genuinely empty stomach.
She decided Chris had been right earlier.
Nothing in heaven or earth mattered more than food!
What's done was done — no point agonizing over some vague system judgment now. Better to fill her stomach first and worry about the rest later.
With Chris and Sakayanagi holding the front line,
small fry like her just needed to focus on protecting herself and not dragging the team down.
And then, wherever she could, help rescue a few more Intruders to boost point income for the official examinees.
Once she'd worked that much out in her head, Kei Karuizawa immediately felt like the food in front of her smelled a whole lot better.
Speaking of which — people needed to eat to replenish energy.
Did contracted beasts... need to eat too?
Kei Karuizawa piled sweet shrimp onto her plate, her thoughts drifting.
'They did seem to show signs of hunger back in the Mirror World, didn't they.'
If they wanted to eat, would they have to go through the mirrors into their home worlds to hunt?
But for the group right now,
even enjoying a quiet, undisturbed dinner in this lavish dining hall had already become a rare luxury.
Amanatsu Kazuha and Sakayanagi, both operating at an extremely high level, weren't so impatient as to chase Chris with exam questions while they ate — they simply savored the food with elegant restraint.
But Ayanokōji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen, not present with them, had no way of knowing the group was in the middle of dinner right now.
And so—
Before Chris had even finished half his meal, Ayanokōji's call came right on cue.
"Buzz— buzz—"
Kei Karuizawa couldn't help muttering a quiet complaint.
"Talk about no sense of timing..."
Given Ayanokōji's intelligence and his background growing up in the White House, even if he was hopeless at reading social cues, he ought to at least be able to do simple math on physical exhaustion and elapsed time.
The man had been grinding non-stop for a full day and night in another world and had barely made it back alive.
And he couldn't even let them finish a meal in peace, couldn't spare them a bit of rest time?
Of course,
Karuizawa's complaint was purely a case of jumping to conclusions — subconsciously she'd taken Chris's side and gotten indignant on his behalf.
But to be fair,
when it came to something as unpredictable and potentially fatal as the Black Sphere exams,
for a strategist like Ayanokōji, the earlier he learned the intel from the front lines, the better — it made scheduling and resource allocation down the line that much easier.
So Chris, unlike Karuizawa, didn't make a face over Ayanokōji's call.
He set down his knife and fork, grabbed a napkin to wipe his hands, and picked up the call, his tone even.
"Ayanokōji?"
On the other end, Ayanokōji Kiyotaka was quiet for a moment.
As if filtering out background noise, and then that flat, toneless voice came through.
"I heard from Miyabi Nagumo — the place where you all got your contracted beasts this time..."
"Not only can you use it like a surveillance feed to safely check on the corresponding Revival Round and regular exam grounds—"
"you can even go straight through the mirror into the exam grounds themselves?"
At those words, Chris opened his mouth to answer.
Across the table, Sakayanagi and Amanatsu Kazuha both froze mid-motion at the same instant.
Without meaning to, both girls pricked up their ears, staring at Chris with rapt, serious attention.
The burning look in their eyes seemed to say: Tell us, tell us! Come on, husband, spit it out already!
Pinned under their stares, Chris felt the corner of his mouth twitch, fighting back a laugh.
But he managed to keep his expression under control and explained evenly, as if nothing were unusual.
"It's true you can see into other worlds through the mirrors."
"But actually traveling to the exam world directly... that only worked because the [Enma Blade] can cut through spatial barriers."
Chris took a sip of tea and kept dangling the bait.
"And every cross-world transfer costs a varying amount of S Points as a toll."
"That said, I'd guess that even without the Enma Blade, any item with a similar space-based property could pull it off too, using the Mirror World as a stepping stone."
"It's just that right now, we don't have the 'ticket,' and finding an equivalent-property substitute item isn't easy either. There's no rushing this."
"I don't even know yet what Kanzaki, Yotsuya and the others got from the system settlement after finishing the Revival Round — whether they dropped an [Instance Card] or anything like that."
On the other end, Ayanokōji listened quietly through Chris's whole explanation.
He paused, thoughtful.
As if digesting the sheer volume of information.
A few seconds later, he spoke again.
"Understood. Thanks for the intel."
"One last question..."
Ayanokōji's voice dropped a notch.
"Tokinari Tsukishiro... is he dead?"
Chris raised an eyebrow, a little surprised, and answered.
"If he and Hoshinomiya-sensei haven't reappeared at school through the resurrection mechanism by now..."
"Well, to be precise, both of them are currently in a state of 'unknown, alive or dead.'"
Ayanokōji Kiyotaka answered with just one short line.
"Unknown, alive or dead... then let's just treat him as dead."
With that, Ayanokōji didn't waste another word and hung up the call without ceremony.
Listening to the dial tone buzzing in his ear,
Kei Karuizawa bit down on her fork and grumbled, a little put out.
"That guy's got zero manners... use and toss, just like that?"
Chris waved a hand, smiling, not particularly bothered.
"I don't care about that kind of formality. Besides, given Ayanokōji's history in the White House, who knows — maybe he and Director Tsukishiro were actually pretty close behind the scenes."
Chris kept a straight face while spinning nonsense. "Learning an elder's fate hangs in the balance, feeling a rush of grief he can't quite control — that's only human. I understand it perfectly."
Listening to Chris's oh-so-understanding analysis,
Sakayanagi finally couldn't hold it in, clapping a hand over her mouth as a laugh burst out.
If you put any normal-thinking person through what Ayanokōji went through as a child in the White House,
for them to end up feeling anything like "attachment" or "grief" toward that place's administration in the end...
that would make them a heaven-sent case of Stockholm syndrome.
The perfect slave the White House could ever ask for!
Still,
considering Ayanokōji Kiyotaka was, after all, the biological child of Atsuomi Ayanokōji, the White House's founder,
the blood bond between father and son might genuinely be different from what the orphans taken in as disposable assets experienced.
All the other children gathered into the place were orphans abandoned by their parents, or kids sent in for reasons too shady to see the light of day.
Those children's parents were hardly decent people to begin with — she'd even heard that some kids the White House had discarded as failures had actually been auctioned off on the black market by their own guardians.
In that kind of dark environment where not even basic survival was guaranteed, put bluntly — getting into the White House to be raised as a test subject, at least not having to worry about starving to death in the street...
That might genuinely have been the best outcome someone of their background could ever hope to reach.
Come to think of it,
that was probably exactly why, once Amanatsu Kazuha had gotten a firsthand sense of what the Black Sphere exams actually entailed, she'd decisively seized the chance to break free of the White House system.
As for Amanatsu Kazuha, sitting across the table quietly sipping her soup—
she caught the loaded look Sakayanagi was throwing her way.
She had no idea exactly what tragic backstory Sakayanagi was cooking up in her head,
but the air of condescension in it, even tinged with a hint of pity, wasn't hard to notice at all.
Honestly, Amanatsu Kazuha genuinely didn't get what Sakayanagi thought she had to feel superior about.
Sure, Sakayanagi came from a prestigious family, had spent over a decade living comfortably as a hothouse flower without a ripple of trouble.
The moment the Black Sphere descended, she'd gotten extraordinarily lucky, chosen as an Anchor and granted two extra lives as a safety net;
then, just as fortunately, she'd racked up enough points early on to cure her congenital heart condition;
and could even use her ability without any restrictions when dragged into an extra instance...
Fine, Amanatsu Kazuha admitted it.
If you laid out every one of those factors, Sakayanagi did have some grounds for a little pride and superiority.
But in this death game run by the presiding god,
family background, past history, even a stroke of luck — none of it counted for much.
Only the person who kept living and could still smile at the very end was the real winner.
Before that point, no matter how prominent your status or how brilliant your mind in the real world, none of it meant a thing against a truly overwhelming force.
As for right now...
she'd just have to hold back for now and steer clear of the sharp edge.
Amanatsu Kazuha gave a cold snort inwardly.
After all, Sakayanagi's intelligence and skill weren't anything to scoff at.
As an opponent worth taking seriously, now wasn't the time to turn hostile.
Thinking it over, Amanatsu Kazuha couldn't help feeling a little regretful that she hadn't fought for a spot on the trip to the Mirror World to get a contracted beast earlier.
Otherwise, with her own strength, farming monsters in that instance to earn a mid-tier item worth forty or fifty points would've been no problem at all.
Guess it was just a matter of timing and fate.
One wrong step, and you fall behind at every step after.
Just then, Amanatsu Kazuha seemed to suddenly remember something important.
Cupping her juice glass in both hands, she looked up, eyes bright, and asked Chris.
"Oh, right, Senpai!"
"Since this round had not just the extra Intruder event but also a dedicated Revival Round mechanic..."
"what kind of clear rewards do they get once the Revival Round wraps up?"
The girl tilted her head, curious. "For a special exam where you walk right up to death's door and back, the Black Sphere can't be so stingy as to just toss out a few points and call it even, right?"
Chris rubbed his chin, putting on a fittingly curious expression himself.
"Honestly, I haven't paid attention to that."
"We were pressed for time in the exam field, and everyone was busy just trying to survive — no time to ask about the details."
Chris thought about it and suggested, "Though Nanatsura Tsubasa from our class is one of the survivors who fought her way out of the Revival Round this time. When we've got class tomorrow, maybe we can ask her about it."
"As for right now..."
Chris glanced at the sky, which had been gradually darkening.
"Let's just give them some time to rest and decompress first."
"After all, it was her own choice that indirectly influenced the whole original world's fate and its destruction... with a personality as overflowing with justice as hers..."
Chris sighed, exasperated.
"Ugh, I think I'll get Horikita to go talk some sense into her. Otherwise she'll just sit there beating herself up and stewing until she makes herself sick."
____
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