Gojo Satoru stood at the podium with one hand in his pocket, wearing an expression that said this was all perfectly natural.
Chris propped his chin on one hand. On the surface his face stayed blank, but inside he was practically bursting a blood vessel trying to hold it in.
Only sheer willpower kept anyone else from noticing.
'I will win.' 'You are the challenger.'
Sorry, Lord Sukuna—guess you never got to go all out this time...
He couldn't help it. Gojo Satoru just had too many iconic scenes to his name.
If you swapped in any ordinary anime otaku for this seat and sat them down in front of a living, breathing, practically 2.5D Gojo, keeping a straight face would honestly take monstrous self-control.
But to be fair, setting aside all the dark humor for a second—
In this current timeline, Sukuna was permanently missing two fingers, and with the one Gojo himself had secretly stashed away, even at full revival Sukuna could muster the strength of at most seventeen fingers.
Even with the Living Buddha vessel plus Mahoraga in the mix... it honestly didn't look like he could out-class Sensei.
Purely within the current state of the jujutsu world, Gojo Satoru truly deserved the title of "Strongest."
But the problem was, this wasn't purely a jujutsu world.
Never mind the Darkness Devils they'd run into on earlier exams, or that Godzilla capable of breathing Atomic Breath. Just look at the man standing right beside him—Koro-sensei, his fellow guest instructor—or Jiraiya, pulled in from the neighboring Ninja World.
Hah, stack these teachers' combat strength side by side and it actually looked like a real toss-up.
If it ever came to actual blows, it'd probably be the kind of fight where no one settled it quickly.
That seemed to hold true across the board too—raw destructive power, sure, but also just plain competence as a "teacher."
Chris was in the middle of these rambling thoughts.
Not far from him, Ryuuen had already arched an impatient brow, his defiant gaze sweeping up and down over Gojo Satoru. Strongest?
How many points was that worth... could he even beat a Darkness Devil?
As far as Ryuuen was concerned, if the man couldn't even handle a Darkness Devil, there was no point even talking about the evil god from the Revival Round that had genuinely destroyed an Earth.
Ryuuen hadn't witnessed it firsthand, but Chris and Hiyori Shiina and the others had all corroborated the same account—and on intel like this, there was no reason for them to lie to themselves.
Honestly, in the mere month or so since they'd started brushing up against transcendent power, the strength of the monsters they faced had rocketed from Parasytes and vengeful spirits they could barely scrape by against with swords and guns, all the way up to root-level demons capable of casually erasing concepts and evil gods that annihilated entire planets. That kind of absurd escalation would leave anyone reeling.
And if you went around calling yourself the strongest only to get slapped flat by some monster because your reputation outstripped your actual power, wasn't that just making a fool of everyone watching?
As if sensing the scrutinizing looks mixed in among the students below, Gojo Satoru stroked his chin and gave it a brief thought.
Then he spread his hands.
"How do you even define 'strongest'... that's a real question."
"But at least on the jujutsu front, I was destined to be the strongest from the moment I was born~"
Gojo said this lightly, smile never fading. "As for how exactly I'm supposed to prove it to you all... I'm not sure whether GANTZ has arranged any opportunity for a demonstration. Because let's be honest, just saying it out loud isn't very convincing~"
Hearing this, Koro-sensei—sporting his enormous yellow octopus head off to the side—shot Gojo a glance with his round little eyes.
Looks like this is the type of teacher with absolute confidence in his own strength.
Koro-sensei crossed two of his tentacles over his chest and offered a well-meaning warning.
"Nyoro—... Gojo-sensei, as far as I know, the students sitting down there aren't your ordinary rookies."
"They've genuinely rolled through hell a few times over. If they coordinated well, it's not even impossible that they could kill us~"
"Oh?" Gojo raised an eyebrow behind his blindfold, the smile at the corner of his mouth deepening. "Well, now you've got me a little interested."
Truth be told, the process he'd gone through when the Black Sphere invited him hadn't been much different from Koro-sensei's.
Both of them had been told that the world on the other side faced a looming crisis of annihilation, and so, in the spirit of humanitarianism, they'd come to help out as "guest instructors."
At first, Gojo had actually hesitated.
After all, Yuji Itadori hadn't fully grown into his own yet, and there were plenty of old fogeys and sorcerers, both inside and outside the school, eyeing his student like hawks.
Rashly leaving wasn't exactly the ideal solution.
Then GANTZ had dropped one line on him that settled it:
The Special Grade Cursed Spirit Jikku had already been destroyed by this group of high schoolers, and in the process, two of Sukuna's Fingers had been confiscated as well!
If Gojo Satoru was willing to come teach, those two Sukuna's Fingers could be handed over to him as an advance on his salary, his to keep.
Well, if you put it that way, what was there left to say?
Counting the one Sukuna's Finger he already kept hidden away himself, even if Sukuna fully revived inside Itadori on the spot, he'd max out at the strength of seventeen fingers.
Gojo didn't think a mere seventeen-finger Sukuna could reach a level he couldn't handle.
With his worries so drastically reduced, while waiting for the enemies hiding beneath the surface to show themselves, coming to another world to mentor some new faces—and incidentally putting a bit of pressure on Itadori, Megumi, and the rest of that bunch of kids—actually seemed like a pretty decent option.
Of course, Gojo himself was also quite curious just what kind of caliber these high schoolers who could kill Jikku actually had.
Honestly, he'd been undefeated for so long, lonely at the top, that deep down he genuinely craved a real opponent.
If, here at Advanced Nurturing High School, he could guide these students down the right path and train them into something worthwhile, eventually turning them into opponents who could stand shoulder to shoulder with him—or even ones who could satisfy him in a real fight—nothing could be better.
At the end of the day, his job was still that of a teacher.
Watching excellent students grow, win or lose, was a genuinely gratifying thing to him.
That said, unlike Koro-sensei, who believed in teaching without discrimination, everything Gojo could teach, his entire combat system, rested on the fundamental premise of "cursed energy."
The Black Sphere could act as an intermediary and forcibly awaken cursed energy in whoever enrolled in his class, but he still needed to lay out the price up front, clearly.
So Gojo didn't dwell too long on Koro-sensei's warning.
He lifted his head, letting his gaze sweep over the students of every expression filling the tiered lecture hall, and cleared his throat.
"Anyway~ my position in this world right now is 'teacher,' you know."
"So whether it's a teacher one-sidedly beating up a student, or students shamelessly ganging up to beat a teacher—outside of an official teaching exam ground, both count as absolutely forbidden violations!"
"In other words, does that rule simply not apply within the scope of the Jujutsu Class?"
Chika Fujiwara, sitting in the front row, reflexively raised her hand to chime in.
Gojo snapped his fingers.
"You could put it that way, sure."
"But our Jujutsu Class does come with certain prerequisites, unlike Koro-sensei's Assassination Class. It's not something just anyone who wants in can join."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, sitting at the edge of the back row keeping his usual detached posture, frowned at that.
He zeroed in on the core issue and spoke up.
"Is it because your power system is fundamentally different, and our bodies are missing whatever medium is needed to learn jujutsu?"
"Correct." Gojo nodded approvingly. "After all, we're not from the same world, and our power systems don't overlap."
"To cross the barrier between worlds and hook into our sorcerer system, you'd need to spend an extra 10 S Points with the Black Sphere's GANTZ to awaken a 'seed' of cursed energy."
Gojo spread his hands, his tone taking on a subtle edge.
"Though I'm not entirely sure just how much actual purchasing power your 10 S Points translate to over here."
"But if any of you happen to have a special circumstance—say, a soul that already carries something resembling a 'cursed technique structure'—then that 10-S-Point cursed energy awakening might just wake up your cursed technique for free along with it. Do the math that way, and it's actually pretty good value."
"Cursed technique?" Yotsuya Miko, sitting beside Ichinose, asked in confusion. "What's that?"
Gojo explained patiently.
"You can think of it simply as a kind of superpower bound to your innate talent."
"Take Jikku, the volcano-headed thing you all worked together to destroy earlier—its cursed technique was the manipulation of 'flame and lava.'"
"And mine is called Limitless. The core logic behind it takes the mathematical concept of infinitely dividing a distance—the Achilles paradox—and brings it into reality."
Gojo paused, as if trying to give these high schoolers an intuitive reference point for combat strength.
"If we're just talking about the gap in strength between the two of us, I'd say I'm stronger than that Jikku by about..."
"Oh, roughly fifteen or sixteen Sukuna's Fingers' worth, give or take."
He held up a finger and gestured to demonstrate.
Hearing that—
Suzune Horikita couldn't help clicking her tongue. "Fifteen... Sukuna's Fingers?!"
As one of the few who'd faced Jikku's terror head-on during the midterm exam, Suzune Horikita understood just how terrifying it had been better than almost anyone else present.
If they hadn't had the Soul-Release Blade, the item specifically countering it, back then—brand-new to high-tier weapons with zero proficiency to speak of—killing Jikku would have been all but impossible.
And this white-haired teacher in front of them, who looked utterly nonchalant, was claiming to be stronger than Jikku by a margin of fifteen Sukuna's Fingers?!
Fifteen fingers... that was an outright gap in tiers.
Just how absurd would his stat sheet even be?
Converted into a Black Sphere rating, that would probably clock in at two or three hundred points, easy.
No telling how that stacked up against the evil god, either.
Forcing down her shock, Suzune Horikita spoke up.
"Gojo-sensei, since cursed technique awakening depends on the soul's traits... is there any way to check for that trait beforehand?"
"If someone spends 10 points and doesn't get a cursed technique out of it, that's a huge sunk cost for most students."
Gojo shrugged helplessly.
"Well... you'd have to ask GANTZ about that.
"I'm just a teacher, someone your world temporarily hired to do a job. There's no way I'd have access to that kind of tool.
"Everything I said a moment ago was just my own guess, honestly. As far as I'm concerned, an ordinary sorcerer who never awakens an innate cursed technique has a pretty low ceiling going forward. Since GANTZ went to all this trouble to pull me across worlds, there's got to be some sort of screening mechanism to go with it—otherwise having me teach a bunch of talentless nobodies without even a cursed technique day in and day out would be a real waste of my talents."
"As for whether it actually works out, or how you'd go about it—I take no responsibility for that part."
With that, Gojo turned around with a flourish and waved at the whole class.
"Alright, I've said everything I needed to say.
"So, looking forward to seeing you all again in this afternoon's class... I need to go find your director first and hash out my employment terms."
"Sensei here isn't about to work for free~"
He wanted his Black Sphere salary, and he definitely wasn't skipping his Advanced Nurturing pay either!
He turned to glance at the big yellow octopus beside him and teased, "Otherwise, if I end up losing the fight for enrollment numbers to Koro-sensei, it'd be pretty embarrassing for the so-called strongest guy here."
At that, Koro-sensei just pursed his mouth indignantly, the tentacles on his head drooping.
"Nyoro—! However you look at it, there's no way I can compete with you, Gojo-sensei!"
"You're the new guy here, and yet you secretly did a background check behind my back—and you just so happen to have Jikku as a reference point to let the students directly quantify your strength!"
"Oh no, oh no... how sly! It's an enrollment crisis for Koro-sensei!"
Meanwhile, on the tiered seats not far in front of the podium,
Chris and his group paid no mind to the big yellow octopus squatting in the corner, furiously drawing circles on the ground and radiating pure defeated-dog energy.
After quickly running through every purchasable item that had shown up in previous Black Sphere exams, Chris crossed his hands on the desk and set the tone for the discussion.
"I think it's just as Gojo-sensei hinted at."
"If an ordinary sorcerer without a cursed technique is basically doomed to never accomplish much, then these new courses the Black Sphere specially set up genuinely have no practical use for us in our current position. The Black Sphere wouldn't waste effort like that."
Ryuuen frowned, knuckles drumming irritably on the desk.
"Sure, that's true enough. But how are we supposed to figure out whether we can actually awaken a cursed technique?"
"Even if that Gojo Satoru guy really is monstrously strong, that doesn't mean paying for his class will make you just as strong as him."
Ryuuen snorted. "10 S Points isn't a small sum. Aside from us and a handful of upperclassmen, who else has that many points to burn on trial and error?"
Beside them, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, who'd been staying quiet, suddenly looked up and cut in flatly.
"Actually, maybe we don't need to test for the soul's trait at all."
"We just need to confirm whether something with a particular trait has already been 'fused' into our bodies."
"Trait?"
Ichinose Honami pressed her pink lips together thoughtfully and asked, testing the idea. "Ayanokoji, do you mean... items that act directly and get fused into the body?"
Her eyes lit up as she looked at Chris. "Like, say, the Demon Essence in Chris's possession?!"
Chris raised an eyebrow at that, but before he could get a word in,
Arisu Sakayanagi, seated on his other side, gave a light laugh and picked up the thread.
"If we're following that line of thinking, the vampire bloodline the Stone Mask gave us could probably count as a trait too, in a stretch."
"After all, it changed us on a species level. If the flesh mutates that drastically, the soul's depth and shape should warp accordingly too, one way or another."
Kouenji Rokusuke, listening to this whole exchange, stopped combing his fingers through his blond hair.
He rapidly strung the clues together in his head, clapped his hands, and laughed.
"Heh heh... Beautiful deduction."
"Since this is meant to be a course for the general student body, the Black Sphere can't have set the bar for 'qualification' too high."
"The Stone Mask, being the cheap item that's practically spread school-wide by now, is the optimal solution as a 'trait catalyst,' whether you look at it from value or from logic."
Kouenji said with certainty, "Using it to stimulate the soul into awakening a cursed technique—that's genuinely a real possibility."
Chris nodded in agreement. "Fair point. Worth a try.
"But as an experiment, to rule out coincidence, we'll need several control groups with different traits to compare against."
No sooner had he said this—
Hiyori Shiina, gentle in manner but steely underneath, raised her hand and volunteered.
"Since we need variables... I can try using the Phantom Mask as a control."
"The mask's power is tied to the darker side of the heart. It might produce a different kind of cursed energy result."
Ichinose Honami nodded without hesitation as well, her voice soft.
"Then I'll try going through the awakening while transformed as a magical girl. Let's see whether idealist magic and cursed energy produce some interesting chemistry."
Watching her companions dive in with such gusto, Kushida Kikyo quietly wrung her fingers, cutting in with some worry.
"But... isn't everyone deciding a bit too fast?"
"There's still a third teacher who hasn't even shown up yet. Isn't it a little early to jump to conclusions?"
Ryuuen just sneered dismissively at that.
"What's there to be afraid of? We've got plenty of people here—just split off a few groups to test the waters."
"Besides, it's not just us. The upperclassmen will definitely have people trying it out too."
"That said, for someone like me who's already committed to the path of mechanical ascension via cybernetic prosthetics, studying some mystical cursed energy and cursed technique probably isn't worth the experiment."
"I'll most likely head over to Koro-sensei's class and see if I can pick up some practical skills."
He glanced at the two people beside him. "As for Ayanokoji—you and Yagami can figure it out on your own when the time comes."
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka gave a calm "Mm."
"If I get the chance, I plan to sit in on both the jujutsu and the assassination classes, just to see."
"Then, after comparing them, I'll pick whichever suits my current combat style best."
With everyone's choices more or less settled,
Arisu Sakayanagi, who'd been keeping an eye on Chris this whole time, lifted a hand to twirl a lock of her silver-white hair.
She tilted her head slightly, giving him a look that was almost a smile.
"So... Chris."
"As the genuine strongest one here among us, what's your choice going to be?"
Chris looked up and glanced over toward the corner of the classroom.
There, Chika Fujiwara—clearly unsure how to jump into their hardcore strategizing—had wandered over to Koro-sensei's side, apparently trying to console the big yellow octopus sulking in the corner.
Chris pulled his gaze back and answered offhandedly.
"Today, I think I'll probably go with Koro-sensei's class first..."
The moment the words left his mouth,
Koro-sensei, who'd been slumped in the corner like a puddle of despair, caught the line with the very tip of his ear.
He shot upright in an instant.
"Nyoro—!"
He teleported straight in front of Chris, two tiny eyes on his round face practically glowing gold.
"I knew it... I just knew it! In this cold, cruel world, sincerity for sincerity is the only true law!"
"All of Koro-sensei's careful effort hasn't gone to waste... Wah, wah, wah! Chris, don't you worry! I'll pour out everything I know and turn you all into the finest assassins in the entire universe!"
Watching Koro-sensei's exaggerated display of tears of joy,
Chris kept a perfectly straight face and drove the knife in without hesitation.
"You're reading too much into it, Sensei."
"I only picked you because I've already got plenty of high-tier items to spare."
"I have plenty of options to fall back on. I don't need to gamble on some flimsy chance of awakening an innate cursed technique."
"There's no rush—I can just wait and see how things settle before deciding for real."
"..."
At that, all the color drained from Koro-sensei on the spot. He deflated rapidly like a punctured balloon, wilting once more into a frost-bitten eggplant.
"D-Damn it...
"Oh vast heavens, why have you forsaken me so!"
But he was Koro-sensei, after all.
Within mere seconds, he pulled himself back together, clenching a fist with solemn resolve.
"Even so! Whatever your reasons might be, I'll absolutely stick to my resolve!"
"I'll use my flawless teaching to make every one of you willingly admit that I, Koro-sensei, am the best teacher in this entire world!"
"Now... please allow me to step away for just a moment...
Koro-sensei turned around, forcing back the sob threatening to crack his voice.
"If Koro-sensei can't help but shed embarrassing tears in front of his beloved students, then Koro-sensei's teaching career is probably about to be disgraced and finished right then and there!"
With that, Koro-sensei fled the classroom in a tearful blur, leaving nothing behind but an afterimage.
Chika Fujiwara, her hair mussed by the whirlwind of his exit, finally caught on to what had happened.
Still holding a graduation cap in her hands, she rushed to the window and waved, shouting after him.
"Oh no! Koro-sensei, you're running too fast! You forgot your cap!"
"Do you need a handkerchief for your tears? I've got one right here!"
At Chika Fujiwara's utterly guileless shout twisting the knife even further, the yellow blur out on the skyline beyond the window sped up even more, vanishing completely almost in the blink of an eye.
Back in the classroom, everyone left behind traded silent glances, at a loss for words.
Koro-sensei's whole vibe was undeniably bizarre, but the terrifying speed he'd just displayed was worth noting.
After all, his abilities were being suppressed by the school's rules, which meant he'd pulled that off on raw physical stats alone...
While everyone else was busy processing that information,
Arisu Sakayanagi quietly edged half a step closer to Chris.
She extended a slender, fair finger and gave the soft flesh at his side a light poke.
"Hey."
Arisu Sakayanagi lowered her voice, speaking at a volume only the two of them could hear.
"About testing traits earlier—the Darkness Devil flesh fragment should still be with Kiryuuin-senpai, so we can naturally ask her to test the Jujutsu Class on our behalf."
"So... that Demon Essence you're holding—who were you planning to have handle that for you?"
Chris looked down at Arisu Sakayanagi, so close he could practically feel her breath.
Her lips were pressed thin, light ripples of anticipation swimming in her pale violet eyes—the picture of a casual question loaded with unspoken hope, tsundere through and through.
Chris raised an eyebrow, faintly amused.
"You want to give it a try?" "I mean, sure, that'd work..." Chris rubbed his chin. "But didn't you already redeem the magical girl set? I feel like that idealist magical-girl system might have just as much potential as the cursed technique the Demon Essence would give you."
Arisu Sakayanagi tilted her chin up slightly, putting on an expression that screamed you-just-don't-understand-a-girl's-heart.
"I already decided ages ago that I was going to redeem the Demon Essence. You know that perfectly well..."
"Since I've locked in on my target, of course I'm going to prepare thoroughly on every front that might help improve my compatibility and reduce rejection reactions!"
Of course, all these lofty justifications were just the surface-level excuses.
What Arisu Sakayanagi left unsaid was this:
Deep in her subconscious, she stubbornly believed there was something between the Demon Essence and the Demon Possession Chris wore.
An inexplicably strong sense that they were "meant to be a pair."
She'd felt that same sensation once before, with the Romantic Cannon.
Granted, the bonds between these various pieces of equipment felt awfully subtle right now—there was even a hint that Chris was scattering his affections wide and thin across the board.
It all looked very delicate, admittedly.
But still... what did it matter?
As long as she, Arisu Sakayanagi, was strong enough—strong enough to bear the full weight of all his pressures and secrets from start to finish—wasn't that all that mattered?
Every consequence, she would shoulder; every danger, she would permit; this heavy bond, she alone would carry, all of it!
It was, in its own awkward way, a resolute declaration of feeling from the girl famous for her arrogance—Arisu Sakayanagi—about this relationship.
This was the possessiveness Arisu Sakayanagi kept buried deep down.
Thanks to the shared ordeal from last night, Amanatsu Kazuha—who'd been quietly keeping tabs on the situation over here—was, arguably, the first one to catch on to what was going on.
But she had no intention of interrupting or calling it out. She just stood off to the side, hands clasped behind her back, watching with a quiet, satisfied smile.
After all, even though Sakayanagi was obviously smuggling in her own agenda, the suggestion she'd raised really was proceeding under perfectly legitimate logic on the surface.
In front of Chris—her already-designated future "owner"—Amanatsu Kazuha knew exactly where she stood.
As the latecomer, she obviously shouldn't be stirring up jealousy at a time like this.
If anything, from Amanatsu Kazuha's twisted, chaos-loving point of view, the more proactive and busy Sakayanagi made herself, the better.
After all, didn't Sakayanagi have connections to the school's top brass, letting her pull up surveillance footage and dig into people's backgrounds whenever she pleased?
So by all means, please keep right on being your haughty, high-and-mighty self, busy scheming your grand ambitions.
While I just need to hide in the shadows, watch you march forward all self-assured, and then, at the most critical moment, leave you far, far behind...
Honestly, just imagining the twisted, shattered expression on Sakayanagi's face the moment disbelief gave way to her becoming the loser of this contest made Amanatsu Kazuha shiver with excitement from head to toe.
This was, without a doubt, the tastiest seasoning she'd found in this whole tedious life on the exam grounds!
Meanwhile, beside Amanatsu Kazuha, Ichinose Honami's attention, after a brief lapse in thought, drifted back to whatever was happening between Sakayanagi and Chris.
As her gaze happened to sweep past Amanatsu Kazuha, catching the faintly eerie curl at the corner of her junior's mouth,
for some reason, Ichinose Honami felt an inexplicable, faint twinge of pain deep in her soft heart.
Her gaze toward Amanatsu Kazuha grew, just slightly, sharper in an instant.
"Ichinose..."
Shiranami Chihiro, who'd been standing behind Ichinose the whole time playing background scenery, immediately noticed her friend's faint tremor.
She quickly reached out and rested a hand gently on Ichinose's shoulder, her tone full of worry.
"Are you overtired? Or is something wrong with your body?"
Ichinose Honami snapped back to herself, blinking rapidly and smoothing away whatever strange color had flickered in her eyes.
She shook her head lightly, turned to give Shiranami a reassuring smile, and explained softly.
"It's nothing, Chihiro. I'm fine.
"I was probably just concentrating too hard on the discussion and zoned out a little."
"Let's get back to business, though."
Hearing this obviously half-hearted excuse,
Shiranami Chihiro sighed inwardly, helpless.
As someone who had once been trapped in the living world as an earth-bound spirit, and someone who had personally witnessed just how brutally cold the monsters on the Black Sphere exam grounds could be,
Shiranami Chihiro didn't even need to think hard to know that Ichinose, holding steady on her promise not to abandon anyone even under such a brutal rule where everyone struggled just to save themselves,
had even gradually spread that kindness further, trying to make life better for Class B and beyond.
Just how much pressure had she shouldered along the way?
But... watching Ichinose put on a brave face right now despite the pain clearly weighing on her,
Shiranami Chihiro found, to her sorrow, that besides offering a few words of comfort, there wasn't a single practical thing she could actually do to help!
After all, when Ichinose had needed someone to stand shoulder to shoulder with her most, through her hardest moment, the one at her side hadn't been Shiranami Chihiro.
Right now, she was purely and simply an added burden and source of pressure on Ichinose!
Given how little she'd actually contributed,
Shiranami Chihiro figured that if she tried to offer some grand, righteous words of comfort now, it would come off as nothing but hollow, self-righteous posturing—the kind of thing that's easy to say when you haven't actually suffered through it yourself.
Maybe... I should go ask Miko for help.
Have her pass along a message, asking Chris to find time to take Ichinose out somewhere, to unwind and ease her frayed nerves?
The idea flashed through Shiranami Chihiro's mind.
But the very next second, she realized the idea felt a little off, somehow.
Well, fine—she didn't even have the standing to feel jealous or get cheated on in the first place...
Shiranami Chihiro sighed again and pushed the bitter thought out of her mind.
She turned her gaze toward Yotsuya Miko, who was asking Chika Fujiwara—just back in the classroom—about something, and was about to go over and ask for help.
Hayasaka Ai, who'd been watching the whole scene from a corner, suddenly drifted over without a sound.
"Shiranami, sorry to bother you..."
She looked at Shiranami Chihiro and asked earnestly.
"I have a question. Mind if I ask you about it?"
Shiranami Chihiro stopped in her tracks, helpless, and swallowed the words already on the tip of her tongue.
"Sure, Hayasaka. Whatever your question is, I'll tell you anything I know."
Hayasaka Ai nodded and got straight to the point.
"It's about the Black Sphere's exam mechanics."
"I want to know what things looked like for you all, on the Black Sphere exam grounds, after you died and turned into that ghost state."
"Besides not being visible to us living test-takers, were there any other hidden rules? How did you all... manage to sneak past so many monsters right under their noses without a hitch?"
This question mattered a great deal—it was about her fallback strategy if she ever met with disaster in the future.
Shiranami Chihiro thought it over for a moment and explained quietly.
"Well... honestly, it wasn't as dangerous as you might think."
"Before the official Revival Round kicked off, apart from the second trial giving us one chance to appear before a living person, we were absolutely invisible to anyone."
"But while we were hiding... I noticed something really strange.
"The monsters on the exam grounds didn't seem to pay any attention to us at all. There were even a few times I nearly ran straight into one, and it just ignored me, as if I was thin air—or some kind of default ally."
At that, Hayasaka Ai's deep blue eyes brightened slightly.
She turned to Ryūji Kanzaki, who'd also come back as a revived survivor and was standing not far off, to confirm.
"Kanzaki, was it really like that for you all back then?"
Ryūji Kanzaki rubbed his chin, thinking back for a moment, and agreed.
"Yeah, I felt that too."
"Though, I'd say it wasn't so much that the monsters treated us as allies—more like... those monsters never registered our existence at all."
Ryūji Kanzaki pushed up his glasses and offered his own analysis.
"It's possible that, as ghosts, only people with 'spirit sight' or some special ocular technique could see us at all."
"And in a formal exam, every proctor and official test-taker is granted basic spirit sight by the system, which is why they can see and interact with one another."
"That amounts to a line the monsters simply can't cross.
"Of course, it's also possible this is just a plain rule—or maybe the Black Sphere's last scrap of mercy toward pitiful people like us who've already died once."
Hayasaka Ai gave a thoughtful little nod.
"I see. Thank you both for the explanation."
While Ryūji Kanzaki's analysis wasn't a hundred percent confirmed answer, for someone like Hayasaka Ai, accustomed to surviving off scraps of information, it was already more than enough to extract real value.
If, in some future exam, she ever found herself truly cornered with death certain...
just this ghost mechanic that seemed to "block monster aggro" entirely—and given that Ichinose and the others had already picked up on this, even quietly starting to plan out secret signals with these so-called "dead ghosts" for the next exam, using it to exploit the information gap—
looked at from a certain angle, becoming a ghost and running the Revival Round might actually carry a far higher real safety margin than simply being chosen as a living Intruder dropped straight into the exam grounds!
The only real concern was... whether, after dying, she'd actually be able to make it back safely to her original world.
And whether the Black Sphere's future Revival Rounds would even keep using this unspoken rule favoring ghosts going forward.
Those were unknowns dangerous enough to be fatal.
What was this, then? True "fortune favors the reckless"?
It really came down to this—if she wanted to play it safe and keep her fate in her own hands, she could only rely on herself, in the end—
as much as possible, fighting for S Points on every exam ground she could?
Hayasaka Ai took a deep breath and pushed all these tangled backup plans down into her heart.
The next moment, she saw that Shiranami Chihiro, having finished answering her question, immediately hurried off toward Yotsuya Miko, apparently to ask for some kind of favor.
But just like when she'd gone to talk to Shiranami Chihiro a moment ago, before Shiranami could even get a word out, the scene was interrupted all over again.
Yotsuya Miko, it turned out, hadn't even noticed Shiranami Chihiro coming and had already gone straight to Chika Fujiwara, who'd just come running up from below.
Yotsuya Miko lowered her voice, asking carefully as if grasping at a lifeline.
"Um... Fujiwara.
"When you got teleported here to Advanced Nurturing High School, did you notice anyone else nearby who was like you—someone who was obviously not from this world?"
Hayasaka Ai silently watched the scene unfold, and for some reason, a strange tightness settled in her chest.
An absurd, groundless sense of kinship with a fellow sufferer welled up in her.
They were all strangers in a strange land, all struggling to survive in this garden box stuffed with monsters.
And they all had people back in some other world, far away, weighing on their hearts night and day.
Worse yet, the two of them right now were both, pitifully, down to their very last safety-net life...
Just then, Arisu Sakayanagi, having just successfully wheedled the Demon Essence capsule out of Chris, strolled over in high spirits.
Noticing the faint dejection on Hayasaka Ai's face, she offered a rare moment of concern.
"That's a classmate of yours from your original world, isn't it... Want to stay here and catch up with her a bit?
"I was planning to head off ahead of you, myself."
Hayasaka Ai gave a small shake of her head, reeling in any excess emotion, and answered calmly.
"No need.
"Secretary Fujiwara seems to be settling in well in Ichinose's class, and Ichinose is looking after her nicely too. Let's just leave them to spend more time together."
"Since I agreed to be your companion, I should keep my focus on the task at hand.
"So, is there anything you need me to help prepare right now?"
Arisu Sakayanagi pressed her lips together and paused for a moment.
Then the girl smiled faintly, turned, and grabbed the shoulder of Kamuro Masumi, who'd been standing beside her, bored out of her mind and zoning out.
"Kamuro, you're not doing anything right now anyway, right?"
"Perfect timing, actually—I've got some things that need recording coming up. Come lend us a hand."
"Eh?!" Kamuro Masumi stiffened all over, pointing at herself in disbelief.
When did I ever say I had nothing to do?!
I hadn't even finished listening to Chris and the others sort out who's taking which of the three classes this afternoon!
This was pure forced conscription!
But... after taking one look at Sakayanagi's sweetly smiling face, with those eyes that brooked absolutely no refusal—black-hearted schemer that she was—
Kamuro Masumi opened her mouth, but in the end didn't dare voice her protest, resigning herself to trailing after the two of them.
Meanwhile, walking out in front, Arisu Sakayanagi clutched the capsule holding the Demon Essence tightly in her hand.
Inwardly, though, she was already itching with impatience to go check the morning's surveillance footage.
She was genuinely dying to know whether Koro-sensei, who claimed he could blow up the Earth, and Gojo Satoru, who called himself the strongest, had let slip anything noteworthy while around the school.
"Heh heh..."
She couldn't help but marvel at it, really.
Here at this school,
having access to privileged information once felt great.
But having it all the time? That was an absolute, permanent delight!
____
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