Chapter 262: Of Enoch, Two Chickens in the Courtyard (Patreon)

In the end.

Even though Honami Ichinose had been the first to make the suggestion, the fruits of victory didn't end up in her hands.

After sending the Clockwork Spirit Oriana, Koro Sensei, and the rest of the classmates off to the Chainsaw Man world, Chris unfurled the [Mountain-River Map].

He pulled every girl who'd volunteered inside it, then turned and headed for the Backrooms.

The girls who came along were:

Arisu Sakayanagi, Suzune Horikita, Nanase Tsubasa, Kei Karuizawa... and even Hayasaka Ai and Yotsuya Miko, the Intruders who'd formed bonds with him.

Only Ichinose couldn't come with them.

It couldn't be helped.

Chris didn't mind, and Ichinose truly did want to go along. But her gentle, almost punishingly saintly nature meant that when she faced a dilemma, she was bound to lean toward the practical choice, or rather, toward sheltering the weak.

Especially after running into someone as rare and fragile as Tsubaki Kuruoka...

And on top of that, she'd only just promised to be friends with Oriana.

Back when her emotions were running high, she might have been able to ignore those ties. But once the fire in her blood cooled and reason retook the high ground, Honami Ichinose simply couldn't bring herself to turn her back on the people who needed her.

Besides, going by the current lineup.

Suzune Horikita had [Crazy Diamond], and Hiyori Shiina held [Rasiel], which made her practically omniscient...

As a support duo, those two were genuinely a better fit than the "Archangel" Ichinose to travel the Backrooms with Chris.

Luckily, Ichinose wasn't alone.

Her good friend Amikura Mako hadn't abandoned her, and Chika Fujiwara and Shiranami Chihiro were keeping her company too.

Well, that was at least some consolation.

…

Meanwhile, on Chris's end.

Back when he'd drawn up the plan, he'd made it clear that there wouldn't be much point-farming this trip.

But with people on standby inside the [Mountain-River Map], it wasn't impossible to scoop up a few monsters along the way as raw material.

After all, he had the Metro Man Serum now.

Even without flying faster than light and taking the initiative himself, he had plenty of options.

Moving through the yellow, flickering Backrooms levels, Chris could pull up the radar on his Black Sphere Controller to look for the door to the next world. Meanwhile, Hiyori Shiina could use Rasiel to confirm the traces and underlying information that Tengong Society members had left in the current world.

And along the way, he could stuff any monsters dumb enough to wander close into the Mountain-River Map.

It gave the girls inside the scroll some material to farm, and it cleared away potential threats from the world as well. A win-win, really.

So as the two of them sped across the oceans of the Pacific Rim world, bundled up a few Category 5 Kaiju and shoved them into the Mountain-River Map, then headed for other levels of the Backrooms...

The inside of the Mountain-River Map changed too, thanks to the Kaiju's arrival.

"Rumble!"

With the sky tearing open, several mountain-sized Kaiju dropped out of nowhere, slamming down like meteors and sending the ground into violent tremors.

Yet at the sight of these giants falling from thin air, the remaining girls didn't rush to guard against them or charge in to subdue them.

Instead, Arisu Sakayanagi, Suzune Horikita, and the others, as if by common consent, huddled around Yotsuya Miko.

The reason was simple.

Out of everyone present, Yotsuya Miko was the only one who could genuinely "see" Morishita Ai, who'd been quietly following Chris all this time.

"By all logic, our gear has been upgraded so many times that our spiritual power and perception should have surpassed ordinary people long ago..."

Arisu Sakayanagi narrowed her pale violet eyes and said thoughtfully:

"A soul that hasn't fully fallen into a vengeful spirit yet... we shouldn't be unable to see something like that now, should we?"

Hayasaka Ai thought about it, equally puzzled.

"Yotsuya said her 'Spirit Eyes' could see her from the very start... Maybe it's because our power systems are different?"

"As far as spirit sight goes, we may not have gained much of a qualitative leap from getting stronger."

Hayasaka Ai paused, then speculated:

"Or maybe... the souls of people from your world are just built differently?"

Listening to the guesses, Yotsuya Miko swallowed instinctively and turned her head to look.

Not far away, on a slab of bluestone, Morishita Ai sat with her chin propped in one hand, bored, gazing at the scenery beyond the scroll's sky.

Yotsuya said, not quite sure of herself:

"I'm not completely sure about that... but back in your world, I could see Shiranami directly when she was in her ghost state too."

"And even Chris, who has the strongest perception of anyone, and Ichinose didn't notice her right away back then."

Yotsuya Miko hadn't even finished speaking.

Morishita Ai, who'd been sitting quietly the whole time, suddenly frowned, as if the Kaiju's commotion had reminded her of something.

She glanced down toward the distant spot where four Kaiju were struggling to get back on their feet.

Then she said to Yotsuya Miko, in a faint, drifting voice:

"Yotsuya. If I remember right..."

"Faldeus doesn't seem to have been taken to the safe zone."

"Leaving that guy lying at the feet of Category 5 Kaiju... is that really okay?"

Yotsuya spun around at the words, and exclaimed almost without hesitation:

"Oh no! With Morishita reminding me, I just remembered... Faldeus is still over there, isn't he?!"

Suzune Horikita followed her gaze, her phoenix eyes narrowing.

After a moment's thought, she closed her right hand around empty air, and an extravagantly shaped [Sandalphon] appeared in her grip.

She said coldly:

"They're just Category 5 Kaiju. Forty or fifty points of prey, at best."

"Is there any reason to keep them alive?"

Arisu Sakayanagi raised a hand to stop Horikita's impulse and mused for a moment:

"Let's first see whether we can preserve them intact."

"After all, we have a guest in the Mountain-River Map, and we can't just ignore every monster Chris tosses in here. Even less can we hog it all and leave Chris and Hiyori not a single scrap to farm."

"That would be terribly inconsiderate, wouldn't it?"

As she spoke, the silver-haired girl raised her small hand with elegant grace and aimed it at the roaring Kaiju in the distance.

"Bind."

In an instant, countless golden ribbons of magic burst from the ground and wrapped around the colossal beasts, each nearly a hundred meters tall, dragging them down to the earth!

Before they could even roar in response to the sudden change, a rabbit-shaped puppet appeared in Arisu Sakayanagi's palm.

It leapt high off her hand and shot up into the sky, rapidly swelling into a gigantic, fearsome ice puppet. It opened its mouth and breathed out a blast of frigid cold!

"Crackle, crackle, crackle..."

The frost spread at a startling speed. In just a few seconds, the huge beasts were frozen one after another into ice sculptures.

Bone-chilling cold still radiated off them.

Once she'd finished, Arisu Sakayanagi seemed to feel it still wasn't safe enough. She turned her head toward the girl beside her.

"Nanase Tsubasa, dear junior, try using your [Michael] to seal their movements, in case they struggle free."

"Otherwise, once the ice melts, the racket they make will be unbearable."

Arisu Sakayanagi curled her lips with confidence. "Your Michael can seal even Enkidu's Noble Phantasm. There's no way it can't handle a few uncivilized beasts, is there?"

"Leave it to me, Senpai."

Nanase Tsubasa didn't waste words on explanations.

She tapped her toes against the ground and flew forward.

A giant key shimmering with starlight materialized in her hand, and she thrust it hollowly into each of the ice sculptures in turn.

As fluorescent light flickered around the frozen beasts, it showed that the sealing effect had taken hold...

Once she'd confirmed it, Arisu Sakayanagi turned around to face Hayasaka Ai and Yotsuya Miko and picked up the topic they'd been interrupted on.

"Come to think of it, I honestly never expected you two to follow us without hesitating."

"Sure, you don't need to worry about your safety inside the Mountain-River Map, but purely in terms of point-farming efficiency... this place clearly can't compare to the Chainsaw Man world, where demons are everywhere, can it?"

At the question, Yotsuya Miko tipped her head back and watched the azure streaks of light rushing across the scroll's sky. She answered softly, a little wistfully:

"Of course I know that..."

"But still, what I really hope is that somewhere in the Backrooms levels... I'll run into my hometown, and get to see my mom."

Even if the odds were one in ten thousand, she wanted to see with her own eyes that her family was safe.

Arisu Sakayanagi fell silent at that.

Faced with such a pure emotional bond, she, who was famous for her rationality, didn't try to show off her wit with some teasing remark.

But some things were obvious at a glance to any bystander.

Even if Arisu Sakayanagi chose to stay quiet, the others on the team would have no trouble working it out.

Because Suzune Horikita was a blunt, straight-talking girl who didn't know how to bend.

So the moment she worked it out, she spoke without thinking:

"Setting aside whether they'd even notice your original world while passing through, unless you tell Hiyori about it..."

"Even if you did happen to run into it, in a sense, that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for your family, would it?"

Kei Karuizawa, standing nearby, twitched the corner of her mouth.

Out of a girl's instinctive sympathy, and because she was on the same side as Suzune Horikita, she tugged at Horikita's sleeve and lowered her voice.

"Hey, Horikita... when someone's homesick, you don't have to step in and ruin the mood by putting it so harshly, you know..."

Yotsuya merely let out a bitter sigh. She held no particular resentment toward Horikita's bluntness.

She just lifted her head, and together with Hayasaka Ai, who'd stayed silent on the subject all along, gazed at the images streaking by overhead, explaining quietly:

"Actually... Horikita is right."

"In the world I came from, there were already all kinds of vengeful spirits and urban legends."

"If it got captured and assimilated by the Backrooms because of me..."

Yotsuya's voice trembled slightly. "Then apart from satisfying that stubborn little wish in my heart, getting to see them just once, it would definitely be nothing but bad for everyone around me."

Suzune Horikita gave a slight nod, and her eyes softened a touch.

She had once been sick with worry because her brother, Horikita Manabu, was taking part in the Black Sphere Exam, and after his midterm, when his fate was unknown, her mind had fallen into such disarray that even Nanase Tsubasa had worried for her. She'd been through all this herself.

So Suzune Horikita could actually sense the emotions churning in Yotsuya Miko, and in Hayasaka Ai, who still hadn't said a word.

But compared to the gloomy girl she'd been back then, desperate to take part in the Black Sphere Exam, yet forced by her lack of strength to press herself to the brink every single moment...

By the current situation, Yotsuya Miko and Hayasaka Ai were already extremely lucky.

Someone had been willing to take them in the moment they arrived, and now they had plenty of chances to farm points in the Backrooms...

So deep down, Suzune Horikita didn't really understand why these two insisted on coming along.

In her view.

Rather than gazing at the sky and grieving, they'd be better off saving up more S Points.

As long as you had enough points, being ready at all times to exchange them for the revival of a dead family member was the real foundation to stand on!

Still, thinking back on her own state of mind at the time, she might not have been as resilient as these two are now.

So Suzune Horikita didn't lecture them from above as someone who'd been there.

She merely toyed with the edge of her skirt armor and spoke in a calm tone:

"At the speed Chris and Hiyori are traveling right now, they obviously don't have time to check every world connected to you one by one."

"Besides, from in here, we can't act as coordinates and communicate with them in real time."

"Rather than spacing out here, you'd do better to rack up points while monsters are falling in."

"When they finish clearing the outside and come in to rest, use real points to ask Hiyori to take a look for you on a later leg of the trip. That's the most practical approach."

"If you really do run into it, you can ask Chris to take your people into the Mountain-River Map and bring them back to our world, the one without the supernatural..."

"At least that would give them a stretch of peace right under our noses, wouldn't it?"

As she spoke, she spotted Amasawa Ichika up in midair, who had already unfolded her [Metatron] and flown off to meet the monsters Chris had just brought in.

Suzune Horikita pursed her lips. She took off the Controller on her wrist, along with the Black Sphere Combat Blade and the Y-Gun she didn't need anymore, and set them down on the bluestone.

Consider it a gift for Morishita Ai, the ghost classmate without a physical form.

Then she kicked off with both feet and shot skyward after Arisu Sakayanagi.

Morishita Ai looked down at the gear laid out beside her, then turned to Yotsuya Miko, who hadn't gone after them yet, and tilted her head in confusion.

"I'm a ghost with no Black Sphere Watch. Even if I get points with these weapons, I can't be sure the Black Sphere system will record them."

"Why aren't you going?"

Morishita Ai pointed at the sky. "I saw Hayasaka Ai already rush up there. If you're late, there might not be any monsters left for you to kill."

Yotsuya Miko sighed, not the least bit anxious about falling behind.

She slowly began to explain:

"I've positioned myself as an assassin. So most of my points went into body-enhancement potions to boost my Ki, and into upgrading the Servant card for [Ryougi Shiki]."

"Even now, I don't have any large-scale killing methods. All I can do is wait until the monsters get knocked down to the ground, then use my presence-concealing technique to sneak attack them... and hope to kill in one blow with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception."

As she spoke, perhaps because Chris had thrown in a truly huge number of monsters this time...

Even after Amasawa Ichika, Suzune Horikita, and the others had cleared the sky with a round of wide-area AoE damage, quite a few stragglers still streaked toward the ground like shooting stars.

Yotsuya Miko finally couldn't resist the temptation. She bent down and pushed a few of the items from the stone over to Morishita Ai.

Before turning to leave, she gave Morishita Ai one last piece of advice:

"Actually, you could try going for points yourself, Morishita."

"You're a ghost right now, and with Sakayanagi and Horikita Senpai as a reference, you're probably nearly invisible, a transparent presence, to those monsters."

"It's practically a free, no-damage deal, so go farm some points. If you're lucky enough to meet the Mysterious Merchant when you eventually enter the Revival Round, the points you save now will be a good safeguard."

Morishita Ai listened quietly, watching Yotsuya Miko's slight back gradually disappear into the border between light and shadow.

She weighed it for a moment in her head.

She knew that no Mysterious Merchant had appeared when Shiranami Chihiro and Ryūji Kanzaki fought their Revival Round.

But looking at the weapons in front of her,

Morishita Ai still couldn't help feeling a little itchy.

Right. Only a chump passes up a freebie!

Almost on instinct, she raised a hand and tapped open the [Controller] Suzune Horikita had left behind.

In the 3D image that rapidly bloomed before her, she casually picked two of the nearest red dots.

[Target: Dragon Orphnoch]

[Value: 85 points]

[Traits: The Lucky Clover's combat ceiling, who calls himself the "strongest life form." Possesses the special ability to turn any living thing that touches him into sand. Can exhale red corrosive mist and fire explosive energy bolts. Besides his original Demon-Human form, he has an additional Dragon-man form, in which he sheds his heavy armor to greatly boost his attack and speed.]

[Fatal Point: Arrogant by nature. In Dragon-man form his defense shrinks drastically and he can barely take a hit. Against opponents faster than him, he easily gets impatient and flustered. Currently gravely wounded and on the verge of death from preparing to hunt the Orphnoch King, leaving him in a weakened state. Easy pickings.]

[Target: Orphnoch King]

[Value: 100 points]

[Traits: Crushes the Dragon Orphnoch in every respect. Golden energy whips of terrifying destructive power can extend from his fingertips; Orphnochs turn to stone on contact, and ordinary humans turn straight to sand and die. He can also inject genes into his own kind, repairing the Orphnoch cell-collapse defect and removing the curse of a short lifespan.]

[Fatal Point: Less a king than a gathering of racial instincts: survival, devouring, perfecting the race's genes. He has no reason, and fights purely on beastlike instinct, making him easy to counter with tactics.]

"A hundred points..."

Looking at the point values of the two monsters.

After a moment's thought, Morishita Ai reached out and grabbed the Black Sphere Combat Blade and the Y-Gun that Suzune Horikita had left on the stone.

She was going to join the fun.

…

Meanwhile.

Far outside the Mountain-River Map.

In the world of Kamen Rider 555.

In just a few minutes, Chris had used his faster-than-light mobility to pack every Orphnoch on the planet, apart from those on protagonist Takumi Inui's side, into the Mountain-River Map as farming material.

Once he was done, he clapped his hands together.

He had no intention of sticking around to see what kind of dumbfounded look would cross conflicted Takumi's face when he woke up the next morning and found that the Orphnochs that had been tormenting him had all mysteriously vanished overnight.

With Hiyori Shiina clinging tightly to his neck, he hurried without pause to the door in the Backrooms that led to the next unknown world.

Almost without hesitation, Chris reached out and pushed open the rust-covered door.

As he stepped into the tunnel through the void,

Hiyori Shiina glanced back at the world behind them and murmured:

"In that world, humans have a chance of mutating into Orphnochs after they die."

"That setup is a lot like the vengeful spirits Morishita and the others turned into after they fell completely, isn't it?"

The girl sighed. "And since Orphnochs don't live long, once humans gain power far beyond ordinary people and know exactly when they'll die... under the catalyst of despair, most of them would turn into destabilizing elements in society."

"That's why I had you pack their Orphnoch King in with the rest."

Chris paused mid-stride and explained casually:

"Besides, I've taken most of that world's Orphnochs. Now all we can do is hope that during this rare stretch of peace, humanity finds a solution on its own before a new Orphnoch King is born."

"Come to think of it..." Chris frowned. "The Tengong Society did exist in that world, but when faced with a world where humanity was in a survival crisis, they just passed through without even trying to solve it?"

Hiyori Shiina pursed her lips slightly and spoke gently on behalf of those people they'd never met:

"Maybe in their eyes, the Orphnochs weren't the kind of doomsday crisis humans absolutely couldn't deal with."

"After all, apart from a very few high-grade Orphnochs like the Dragon Orphnoch, most of them can't even withstand a saturation attack from heavy firepower."

"They're only troublesome because they can pass as humans and hide in the shadows."

"That kind of internal strife is nowhere near as urgent as an alien race launching a full-scale invasion like the Kaiju. I can understand the Tengong Society choosing not to interfere in domestic affairs."

Chris nodded noncommittally and didn't say more on the matter.

Every civilization is entitled to its own code of conduct, after all.

Soon, with the brief sensation of spatial lag that came from crossing the doorway, the view before their eyes suddenly opened up.

This was the world of A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin' in the Schoolyard, where humanity was nearly extinct and Earth was occupied by aliens.

Chris raised his eyebrows as if puzzled and surveyed the buildings around them.

He deftly raised a hand and went back to the Black Sphere Controller radar interface he'd already pulled up.

Seeing that it displayed a more complete 3D city image than any ordinary Backrooms level, Chris said with interest:

"I'm getting the feeling that the route these Tengong Society members chose through the Backrooms is a little too precise."

"After the Kaiju world... it's another native world that hasn't been fully assimilated into a Backrooms level?"

Hiyori Shiina answered with a soft "mm" and laid her small hand over the pages of [Rasiel].

While she checked the world's basic information with its omniscient authority, she replied absently:

"By the timeline, most of these worlds are... far more distant and ancient than the ones we've met that had already become Backrooms levels."

"I wonder what means the Tengong Society used to keep worlds the Backrooms had its eye on from being assimilated for so long..."

But.

Hiyori Shiina hadn't even finished her sentence when the hand she'd pressed on Rasiel trembled uncontrollably.

Under Chris's slightly puzzled gaze, the girl's eyes widened.

"This is..."

Right at that moment.

As if they'd suddenly spotted something unbelievable on a deserted street.

Amid a chorus of sharp, gasping cries,

countless passersby, tall and short, thin and fat, in every bizarre shape imaginable, all whipped their heads around at once to stare at them.

Feeling hundreds of gazes full of greed and drooling hunger on him,

Chris couldn't help raising an eyebrow.

Because every one of these onlookers had nothing human about them except an upright, walking form.

Apart from the clothes draped on their bodies, there wasn't a single feature left that could be called "human."

Tentacles, eerie purple skin, even a head that was one giant eyeball... they had it all.

"Looks like this is a rare monster world where humans aren't the main species, huh?"

Chris remarked flatly.

Before Hiyori Shiina could recover from the shock of what the book had told her and explain anything, the aliens around them made their move.

The moment they realized exactly what kind of fresh, living creatures were standing before them,

every last alien swelled in size!

They burst right out of their clothes, revealing their true forms, and shoved and jostled each other as they lunged forward in a frenzy, as if afraid of missing a rare feast.

Their mouths babbled in all sorts of senseless languages:

"This human is mine! Nobody take it!"

"Don't be ridiculous! Who do you think I am! Get out of the way, I saw these two first!"

This behavior of pure obedience to predatory instinct.

It was as if they'd already taken Chris and Hiyori Shiina for fish on a chopping board.

Hiyori Shiina finally recovered from her shock too.

This was an appetite, different from simple killing intent.

Clutching her book, she warned him, her voice hoarse and urgent:

"Chris! Don't hold back!"

"The humans of this world... have almost been wiped out by these aliens!"

"The few humans left are being treated as the tastiest, finest food... They really do intend to exterminate us!"

Once again, Hiyori Shiina didn't get to finish.

Partly because these aliens were already so close, and the speed of their predatory rush was anything but slow, with their claws almost touching her face;

and mostly because...

Chris gave these clueless brutes the most direct answer there was.

He didn't take half a step back.

Facing the horde of alien monsters surging in from every direction,

Chris simply raised both hands without expression, crossing his index and middle fingers.

"Domain Expansion."

"Malevolent Shrine."

The instant his words fell, a colossal shrine built of towering white bones and flesh rose behind Chris like a mirage!

It was like the gates of hell flung wide.

Centered on Chris and Hiyori Shiina,

an open domain with no barrier, ten kilometers in radius, swallowed every living and non-living thing around them.

"Hum!!!"

"Shwing, shwing, shwing, shwing!!!"

No wind-up, no trajectory.

These were nonstop, inescapable, absolute slashes with spatial-cutting properties!

"Aaaaaah!"

The aliens in the very front didn't even have time to turn their greed into fear before the invisible blades sliced them into hundreds upon hundreds of chunks of flesh!

Blood sprayed like a rainstorm, but the moment it touched the ground, it was cut to pieces again along with the earth itself.

At the same time, thanks to the unstoppable Dismantle and Cleave slashes, whose spatial nature guaranteed a hit,

even the very few in the alien army who were strong and could recover at superhuman speed...

under that endless barrage of slashes, relentless as death by a thousand cuts, even the strongest recovery was futile.

Before their cells could even reform, they were wiped out of existence.

"Rumble!"

When the slashes stopped and the Domain Expansion ended,

Chris slowly lowered his hands.

The city blocks, once crowded with high-rises, no longer existed.

With the spot where Chris stood and Hiyori Shiina sheltered behind him as the center, a giant basin as smooth as a mirror had appeared in a ten-kilometer radius.

Not even the rubble of a building was left to help them identify a location. All matter had been ground evenly into powder.

A hundred times more terrifying than a force-12 typhoon passing through.

Yet for the alien coalition that had come from the far reaches of the universe to build colonies on Earth and wipe out humanity like so much livestock, such widespread damage was not enough.

They reacted quickly, too.

Almost the instant the Malevolent Shrine's duration ended,

"Human... you're asking to die!!!"

With a furious roar, the sky seemed to split open.

A gigantic fist, big enough to cover them both and blot out the sky until only shadow remained, slammed down from beyond the heavens!

"Boom!!!"

Before the massive fist's pressure even hit the ground, it had already whipped up a spiraling storm of dust.

Clearly it meant to crush these two tiny humans in a single blow!

But when a strong wind blew the dust away,

that fist had stopped dead in midair, failing to smash into the ground as intended.

Beneath the giant fist, Chris simply held a one-handed pose, pushing upward.

"Crack, boom!"

The next second, with a casual punch from Chris in response,

the fist of the alien police officer above his head shattered into pieces like brittle glass!

And the force of the blow didn't fade; it surged back up along the arm!

"No... this is impossible! A mere human!"

With a cry of alarm, half of the ambushing alien cop's body was blasted apart, and the clouds behind him parted to reveal blue sky.

He staggered back two steps, said "impossible" once more, and crashed to the ground with a thunderous boom, kicking up towering clouds of dust.

It had all happened so fast that even Hiyori Shiina hadn't gotten a good look at what the creature really looked like.

But right now, this was no time to regret that.

Hiyori Shiina pressed her dry lips together and asked Chris hesitantly:

"Chris... all this commotion is too big. The rest of the Alien Coalition's space police will surround us soon."

"Using Rasiel, I've already found the coordinates of the [Space Gate] that the 'Galilean' left through... but this world still has a very few surviving humans..."

"Should we just leave?"

Chris turned around, his deep gaze fixed on the more distant outline of the city.

He shook his head and cut her off.

"Hiyori, did you forget?"

"When the Black Sphere first pulled us in and forced us to face those man-eating monsters,"

"wasn't it to save our own world, to protect humanity?"

"I think that even if this isn't our original Earth, right now is when we, as humans, should least be backing down."

As he spoke, Chris raised his right hand and flung it open in midair.

The [Mountain-River Map] flapped and snapped in the wind.

He had no intention of taking in any monsters this time. He simply released everyone inside the scroll...

every companion from Advanced Nurturing High School, except for the Death Devil and Faldeus.

Flashes of light followed one after another, and Suzune Horikita, Arisu Sakayanagi, Amasawa Ichika, and the rest all appeared on the leveled ruins.

He looked at the girls, all braced and ready.

Chris said in a clear voice:

"I never turned off the outside-view function in the scroll."

"I trust you've already heard what Hiyori and I just said in there, and seen how dire this world's situation is."

His gaze swept over the group:

"Whatever side you stand on, and whether it's righteous or not, purely out of empathy as fellow humans..."

"Not one of the monsters here gets to live."

Suzune Horikita, fully armed, stepped forward.

She tightened her grip on Sandalphon, looked up at the alien warships rapidly closing in, and said without expression:

"Understood."

"Consider this our revenge as humans."

On the other side, Amasawa Ichika exchanged a tacit nod with Arisu Sakayanagi.

"Heh heh~ though I've always held that the noblest revenge is forgiveness."

The corners of Arisu Sakayanagi's lips curled, but her eyes showed no trace of delight.

"But I'm only a petty little woman, an utterly ordinary human."

"After all..."

"I just can't stand watching this Earth, which should belong to us humans, being trampled by a bunch of alien vermin from who-knows-where!"

"Kill them all."

Nanase Tsubasa, who was just as saintly as Ichinose, said it plainly.