Chapter 17

There were still no signs of anyone, or anything, in the spacious lobby. Yuuma and the others glanced around cautiously, just in case, as they made their way toward the elevators. Their party once again consisted of the same lineup as during the playtest: Warrior, Mage, Monster Tamer, and Priest. But this time, instead of Nagi, their Priest was Tomori Shimizu. “Sorry for getting you wrapped up in our spat with Sugamo…,” Sawa said apologetically. The two girls were bringing up the rear of the party. Tomori just chuckled. “You didn’t get me wrapped up in anything. I was the one who chose to go with you. Besides, we’re a party now. You don’t need to apologize.” “Thank you, Tomori—” “Tomori is what strangers call me.” “…Tomo.” “That’s better. No more formalities, okay?” “Okay. Speaking of which…” Sawa faltered for a moment before continuing. “You’re actually a much better communicator than I would’ve thought… Sorry, that came out wrong.” “Ha. Don’t worry—I know I’m always reading books by myself in class. It’s only natural that people would assume I’m socially inept.” Tomori chuckled again. Yuuma knew it wasn’t right to listen in on girl talk, but he couldn’t help eavesdropping. Sawa was pretty shy with new people, in her own strange way. If it hadn’t been for Tomori volunteering herself, Yuuma doubted Sawa would have asked her to come with them. Not that Yuuma would have asked, either. After Yuuma was voted guilty, Teruki Sugamo had delivered Yuuma’s sentence: Leave the shelter and find food. Yuuma almost did a double take when he heard that. Had Sugamo’s whole mock trial just been an excuse to order Yuuma and his friends to locate food? Although on second thought, it was no easy mission. The shelter was much safer now that the barricade had been fortified and the ducts had been blocked. He was being asked to leave that safety in order to venture into the depths of Althea, where who knew what sorts of monsters might be roaming about. What if something even more powerful than the Conehead Bruiser attacked them? There was a nonzero percent chance they would all be killed. Probably more like a 30 percent chance, to be honest. It was unclear why Tomori would want to join them on such a mission. They were taking their lives in their hands. Yuuma felt there was something he needed to say before they ascended the stairs. He stopped in front of the deserted ticket counter and turned to face Tomori. “Um, Shimizu…? If the reason you chose to come with us is because I saved you when the caterpillars attacked, you don’t need to feel like you owe us anything. I was just saving the Priests first, that’s all…” Tomori wasn’t the only one to laugh uncomfortably at what Yuuma had said. Even Sawa and Kenk grimaced. “You know, Yuuma, that was probably something you should have kept to yourself,” Tomori told him. “Yeah, read the room,” added Kenk, nodding sagely. Like he was one to talk! Yuuma nudged him gently in the ribs before continuing. “Honestly, though, you don’t owe us anything. If at any point you think you’re in danger, you should prioritize your own safety. There’s other people who can replace us three, but you and Soga are our only Priests…” “Yes, Dad,” answered Tomori playfully. Her face suddenly grew more serious. “Come to think of it, Sano was a Priest, too, wasn’t she? I remember seeing her in the same starting gear at the beginning of the playtest.” “Y-yes…she was…” “In that case, we should try to meet up with her… Maybe she went up to the third floor, like Fujikawa, Haizaki, and the others.” “…” Yuuma lowered his eyes, not sure how to answer. Neither the outside nor the inside emergency lever on Nagi’s Caliculus capsule had been pulled. In other words, she’d vanished from inside her capsule while its lid was still closed, like some sort of disappearing act. But it was also possible that Yuuma and his friends were missing something. Maybe she had pulled the internal lever to open the lid, closed it behind her after she’d left, and then the lever had somehow reset. She might have fled with the other students up to the third floor… Anything was possible. “Yeah, maybe…” “Then we should go look for her,” said Tomori, glancing toward the east side of the lobby, where the shopping area was located. Her next words caught Yuuma by surprise. “Besides, if she’s with Fujikawa and the others, it might be better if we abandoned Sugamo’s shelter and joined them instead.” “What…?” “It’s just…I don’t think I can forgive them. Not Sugamo or any of the other students who picked yes. It’s sad that Moro died, but obviously there’s no reason to blame you for that.” “…” Yuuma didn’t know what to say. It came as more than a shock to learn that over half of the other students in the shelter blamed him for Moro’s death. In fact, Yuuma felt betrayed. But he wasn’t ready to abandon them for it. At the very least, he still had faith in Oono, Sera, and Hokari. He believed they were his friends. And if Tomori was being honest, she probably felt the same. “But…Tsuda and Soga are still in the shelter…” Tomori nodded. “I know. I trust Chi, Aoi, and Mimi, at least. But if we do find another shelter upstairs, maybe we should go back to the original shelter just long enough to let them in on it in secret—” “Hold on a second, Tomo,” Sawa interrupted. However, it wasn’t to poke holes in Tomori’s crazy plan. Not exactly. “Listen. You too, Yu. There were twenty-two students in the shelter in total. Twenty if you exclude Sugamo, who almost definitely pressed yes, and Yu, who I assume pressed no. And I’m pretty sure me, Kenk, and Tomo also pressed no… So if you add Oono, Sera, Hokari, Tsuda, Soga, Hariya—and also Kenjou, since she defended Yu during the trial—that’s ten out of twenty already. Half the students. Do you honestly think it’s possible that every single one of the remaining students pressed yes…?” “Hrm…” Kenk counted on his fingers as he listed more names. “The remaining ten students include the two boys who were injured, Tada and Aida, and Moro’s buddies Takio and Wakasa, and Kisanuki, of course. And then on the girls’ side there’s Ezato, Shimonosono, Nushiro, Nobori, and of course, Mibs—Aria Misono. Well, Kisanuki and Misono probably pressed yes, I guess. And if Takio and Wakasa were still in shock over Moro’s death, I guess they might’ve gotten swept up by what Sug was saying. But would the other six really buy into that sort of nonsense…?” Now that Kenk said it out loud, it didn’t make sense. Shouko Ezato and Chinami Nushiro were friends with Aria. They were a clique. So they might have been on her side from the beginning. But Mami Shimonosono and Kimiko Nobori were more the levelheaded type, and even if Tada and Aida were easy to sway, Tomori was the one who had healed them with her magic when they were so badly injured. It was hard to think that any one of those four would have pressed . “Wait, wait!” shouted Sawa, interrupting suddenly. She lowered her voice and began speaking more rapidly. “I made a mistake earlier. The ISSS voting tool shows if it was a draw. So if ten people had pressed no—eleven counting Yu—then there’s no way yes should have been displayed.” “So then…what happened? Do you think Sugamo messed with the module?” asked Tomori. That can’t be possible! Can it…? Yuuma didn’t care how good Sugamo’s grades were, or whether his dad was the president of a company or whatever—there was no way he had the skills necessary to hack the ISSS. But there were also supernatural forces at play in Althea. Nothing was entirely out of the realm of possibility anymore—and besides, Yuuma remembered how strange Sugamo’s eyes had been. The way they smoldered with a pale red light. “There’s no way to say for sure yet…but we should keep that possibility in mind,” Sawa said, responding to Tomori’s question. “Besides, even if Sugamo didn’t mess with the app and more than half the students really did choose yes, it would be too dangerous to recruit Oono, Soga, and the others and bring them to a new shelter. Not dangerous for us, dangerous for the people left behind.” Tomori blinked several times before finally looking down in shame. “You’re right… I can’t forgive them for picking yes, but that doesn’t mean I want them to die. That’s not who I want to be. Still, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind, Ashihara, and that’s that there’s no reason for us to follow Sugamo’s orders anymore. Do you understand? Absolutely no reason at all.” Tomori’s eyes, which were usually hidden behind her glasses, shone now with steely resolve. Yuuma nodded slowly. “Yes, Mom,” he said, repeating her own joke back to her. Tomori smacked him playfully on the arm before clapping her hands to bring an end to the discussion. “Okay then, let’s go find Sano and some food!” “About that, Tomo…,” said Sawa, glancing furtively around the deserted lobby before opening her menu. She navigated to her inventory and materialized one of the items stored there. An umeboshi onigiri, still wrapped in plastic, appeared in the window. Tomori’s eyes went wide, but she remained silent. Kenk, however, shouted “Onigiri!” way too loud, prompting Yuuma to elbow him in the ribs again. Sawa pressed on the top of the onigiri, sending it back to storage, and turned to Tomori. “Before entering Sug’s shelter, we actually found food and water in the staff rooms in the back, so we could just kill some time here and then head back to the shelter. But I was hoping to use this opportunity to search for Nagi. What do you say? Will you help us, Tomo?” “Of course!” Tomori nodded. She didn’t even have to think about it. After crossing the elevator lobby and entering the stairwell, the four stopped to listen. The building’s air conditioners shouldn’t have been running, but they could hear the faint sound of rushing wind above them. There didn’t appear to be any immediate danger, however, so they began climbing the steps with Kenk in the lead. The second-floor elevator lobby was still littered with large shards of glass and the bloodstains from Yukihisa Miura. Tomori’s face blanched when she saw the blood, but she didn’t seem afraid. The sprawling playroom was visible through the broken automatic doorway. The round-domed outlines of the empty Caliculus capsules rose in orderly formation from out of the shadows, almost like gravestones… Yuuma shook off that gruesome thought and turned toward Tomori. “Shimizu, when the playtest ended and you exited your capsule, did you see anyone who wasn’t from our class?” “Oh… Now that you mention it, that is strange. I didn’t see a single adult player…” Tomori furrowed her brow. It didn’t make sense. There were eighty Caliculus capsules installed in Playroom 01 but only forty-one of them were being used by students from their sixth-grade class. The other thirty-nine had contained adults who had been separately invited. There should have been plenty of adults around when Tomori exited her capsule. Why hadn’t there been even one? A lot of things about Althea didn’t add up, though. Maybe if they explored more of the building, it would help them understand. “Let’s go farther up,” Yuuma suggested. “There could be monsters there, so if we do get attacked, remember, don’t try to be a hero—just run.” “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day!” said Kenk. Yuuma just rolled his eyes and shoved Kenk forward. They returned to the stairwell and began climbing to the third floor. The ceilings of the playrooms were about three times as high as the classrooms at Yukihana Elementary School, so even going up just one floor involved around sixty steps. The old Yuuma would have been out of breath before climbing even half that height, but thanks to his class upgrade, he wasn’t even breathing heavily. If they didn’t escape Althea soon, Yuuma was going to have trouble getting used to his old body again once they finally turned back. They hurried up the stairs, arriving at the third floor. Before going any farther, they scouted out the elevator lobby from the safety of the stairwell. The automatic doors here had been smashed in, just like on the second floor, and the ground was littered with countless shards of glass. Not a peep could be heard. They nodded at each other wordlessly and exited the stairwell, Kenk in the lead, being careful to avoid the glass as they crossed the elevator lobby. Playroom 02, which they were seeing for the first time, differed very little from Playroom 01 on the floor below. The room was lit only by dim emergency lighting, and more than a few of the Caliculus capsules had been broken. Debris from the capsules littered the walkways. Yuuma checked once more for any unusual sights or sounds before stepping out into the curved walkway. Glancing around, he saw a flat steel bar lying on the floor, similar in size to the one that had been bent by the Conehead Bruiser earlier. He picked it up for himself. Next he discovered an aluminum bar, about a meter long and probably weighing around three hundred grams. He passed it to Tomori. “Could you use this in place of a staff?” “Yes…I think so. Spells have a longer range when using staves, so it will make it easier for me to cast from cover. Thank you,” said Tomori, gripping the pipe with glee. She looked less like a Priest at the moment and more like a bookworm who had just discovered a newfound taste for violence. But this time, Yuuma knew better than to say that part out loud. “Okay, let’s circle the outside perimeter first,” he suggested. They began proceeding counterclockwise along the walkway, Kenk once again in the lead. There should have been eighty playtesters in this playroom as well. It was hard to believe they would have all gone upstairs instead of down toward the first floor, where the exit was. The bodies of several adults, killed by the Conehead Bruiser, had covered the lobby floor, but Yuuma didn’t think there had been more than a dozen bodies. He would’ve expected more adults—hundreds even, considering that there were nine playrooms—to have made their way down to the lobby. Where had they, or their bodies, all gone? The group had traveled approximately half the length of the outside walkway, with Yuuma lost in his thoughts, when suddenly— Kenk stopped on a dime, directly in front of Yuuma. Yuuma nearly ran face-first into him. “Hey, what’s the big—” …idea? Yuuma was about to say. Before he could finish, Kenk hushed him. “Shh!” Yuuma quickly motioned for the girls to stop. He stepped forward to Kenk’s left. A scream of shock nearly escaped his lips, but he managed to swallow it just in time. There was someone sitting there, against the walkway, where the wall gently curved out of view. More than one person; there were ten—no, twenty—people, sitting there on their haunches with their arms around their knees. From the looks of it, they were all adults, each wearing different clothes. There was one man in a rough hoodie, another in a suit. A woman in a stylish dress. Another in the Althea uniform. But regardless of how they were dressed, they were all stuck in the same pose, staring with dull vacant eyes at a single point in space. Sawa and Tomori must have also spotted them. He heard them both inhale sharply from behind. The scene was so eerie that it was strange that no one in the group had screamed. Maybe the room had been attacked by monsters, and these were the survivors. Maybe they were all just too shell shocked now to move. Gathering his courage, Yuuma took several steps forward and whispered to the closest man. “Are you…are you all right…?” At first there was no response, but eventually the man turned his head stiffly to the left to stare at Yuuma. He looked to be in his thirties and was dressed in jeans, a hoodie, and a baseball cap. His jaw was covered by a neatly trimmed beard. He looked fairly active and in shape. His face, however, was utterly blank. The man’s lips trembled, and a strangely distorted voice came from somewhere deep in his chest: “So…hungry…” “You’re hungry…? We have some snacks, but we should really get out of here first and go back down to the lobby…” Before Yuuma could say anything more, the man spoke again. “So…hungry…” The exact same words, again and again. “So hungry…” The third time he spoke, his voice had doubled in volume. It hurt Yuuma’s ears. It took Yuuma a moment to realize that the woman next to him had also spoken, saying the same words, in the same tone, at the same speed. “So…hungry…” “So…hungry…” “So…hungry…” It spread like a game of telephone, from one person to the next. Soon, all twenty of the adults were listlessly repeating themselves, over and over again. “Yu…I don’t like the looks of this. I think we should get the heck outta here,” Kenk whispered from behind. “Agreed,” Yuuma replied quietly. What had Yuuma told them earlier? Don’t try to be a hero? This definitely seemed like one of those times. He and Kenk slowly crept back the way they’d come. They had just reached Sawa and Tomori’s position when suddenly— —a sea of red lights, both dazzling and dark, flared into existence. “Ngh…!” Yuuma shielded his eyes, trying to make out the source of the light. It was coming from the left hands of the adults sitting on the floor—from their QRESTs. All twenty of their QRESTs had flared to life at the same moment with the exact same color. But how was that possible? Players chose their QREST color at the time of purchase, and there were over a hundred options available. Statistically, it was nearly impossible that all twenty of those people would have the same QREST color. The truly unbelievable thing, however, was what happened next. The line of adults began to shrink before Yuuma’s very eyes. The distance between one adult and the next grew smaller and smaller as they drew closer and closer together. Soon the row, which had been nearly twenty meters long to begin with, was only ten meters long, and then it was only five. Five hundred divided by twenty was twenty-five. The gap between each adult was only twenty-five centimeters. Yuuma stared on, dumbfounded, while his brain did the math. That was when he noticed what was happening. The adults were beginning to fuse together inside the red light. Their clothes and bodies melted like Play-Doh, mashing together to form a single mass. “…Run!!” Yuuma screamed as loud as he could and began racing back down the walkway toward the elevator lobby. The four of them made a confused dash for it, Sawa and Tomori in front of Yuuma and Kenk beside him to his right. Behind them, the red light started to rapidly fade. Suddenly, the light disappeared entirely. All was quiet, and then— —the floor beneath them shook violently. Tomori stumbled and fell. Sawa immediately pulled her back up, but before they could begin running again, a huge shadow passed over their heads. Thwump—!! Something landed in the middle of the walkway in front of them with a huge crash. It was a ghastly, ashen-colored clump of meat, at least two meters wide and two meters high. Its spongy, fleshy texture looked familiar. Not this—not again! Two bizarrely plump arms sprouted from each side of the fleshy lump, as if to mock Yuuma’s denial. Next, two legs thrust out from the bottom of the lump, like something from a bad dream. Finally, the top of the lump began to rise upward into a sharp point, stretching to form an oblong head that was nearly a meter long. A giant, fat, coneheaded monster. It was probably at least three and a half meters tall, from head to toe. A full two to three times the size of Yuuma, who was only 152 centimeters. Tomori must have taken damage when she’d been knocked down by the tremor, because the creature’s HP bar was already visible over its head. Its monster name, displayed underneath the HP bar, was Conehead Demolisher. That eliminated any remaining doubt—this creature was a stronger version of the Conehead Bruiser that Yuuma had killed earlier. The massive monster was already blocking the walkway. There was no way they would be able to defeat it. A long, slit-like mouth appeared at the base of its eyeless, noseless head, just like with the Bruiser from before. “BWUHRUHRU…” It breathed heavily, almost as if it was laughing. A chill ran up Yuuma’s spine. But not only from fear. The Conehead Demolisher. He knew what it was made of: people. Twenty different people. He’d seen them melt and fuse together before his very eyes, clothes and all, and become a lump of meat that was the exact same color as the Demolisher. In which case, the Conehead Bruiser had probably been made of people as well. That was why there had been so few adults in the lobby. Some of the adults who’d fled there from upstairs must have been turned into a monster and then killed the others. Those bloodsuckers, the Tabanus Hellfly Larvae, had also probably been people. How many…? How many people have I killed? Yuuma stood frozen, unable to process the question. He heard a voice. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. “Yu…!” It was Kenk. His voice shook as he yelled Yuuma’s name. Looking up, Yuuma saw Kenk gripping his hammer with trembling hands. Despite his fear, Kenk took a step forward, his feet moving like lead. Sawa and Tomori were still about a meter ahead of them. Kenk was trying to protect them. Think later. Right now, you have to move!! Somehow, Yuuma managed to kickstart his brain again. He shouted hoarsely at Kenk and the girls. “Go back…! Run the other way…!” Immediately, Sawa and Tomori spun around and began running. As soon as the girls passed them on either side, Yuuma and Kenk spun around on their heels as well and followed. The walkway made a full circle around the outside perimeter of the playroom and connected with the elevator lobby on the other end. Even if the giant creature chased them, as long as they got to the elevators first, they could still flee via the stairs. It took only three seconds before those plans fell apart. A giant, gaping hole awaited in the middle of the walkway. The floor must have been destroyed by the Conehead Demolisher earlier, from the opposite force created by its almost ten-meter-long jump. The floor before them had been turned into a crater, with the edges of smashed floor panels sticking up like spikes. It wouldn’t be easy to make their way through— Thud. Thud. The floor shook with each stomp as the creature approached. Yuuma could feel his skin vibrate from the force of the creature’s low-pitched growls. “Haah… Hyaaaaaa—!!” Kenk suddenly screamed, brandishing his Bruising Hammer and turning back the other way to charge at the monster. “Kenk…” …don’t! Yuuma wanted to shout, but he never got the chance. Kenk swung his hammer downward as hard as he could, aiming for the Conehead Bruiser’s left leg. But before his blow could connect, the creature’s massive, boulder-like left fist whipped forward in a scooping motion. Wham! Kenk shot through the air with incredible force, whizzing past Yuuma on the right and crashing into the wall far behind them. Yuuma could see Kenk’s HP bar in the upper-left-hand corner of his vision. Nearly 90 percent of it disappeared instantaneously. “Ah…ahhhh…!!” A scream of rage erupted from Yuuma’s lips. He couldn’t let Kenk’s foolish act of bravery go to waste. At the very least, he needed to buy Sawa and Tomori enough time to escape. Yuuma charged, heading straight toward the creature. He doubted the steel bar he was holding would even scratch the creature. What he was really hoping to do was to bait the creature and draw it away. The Demolisher was much bigger than the Bruiser had been, but that also meant there was plenty of space between its legs. If Yuuma could just slide in between them, he might be able to lead the monster back toward the entrance. Yuuma’s mind was made up. Summoning what little courage he had, he charged toward the creature’s feet. The Demolisher towered over him. Maybe he was seeing things, but for a moment, Yuuma thought he saw it grin. With perfect timing, almost as if it had seen through Yuuma’s plan, the creature drew back its right leg and kicked, batting Yuuma away like a fly. The force was incomprehensible. Once, when Yuuma was little, he had fallen off the wall surrounding their house and hit the asphalt below. That felt like nothing compared to this. Yuuma had lifted his arms up reflexively to block. He felt his bones shatter as he was catapulted through the air at an acute angle, colliding with the wall at a point high above the ground and then crashing to the floor on the other side of the crater. Yuuma’s vision swam. The one thing that remained clear was his HP bar: It was silently withering away. He didn’t care. Instead, he turned his head toward Sawa and Tomori, willing his eyes to focus. They stood a few dozen meters away, their backs turned to him. …Run! …Run! He was too weak to make a sound. All he could do was pray. He saw the shadow of the creature shambling closer. Its long, black tongue flicked at the streams of drool that ran from its jagged, slit-like mouth. …RUN!! Everything was fading. Yuuma clung desperately to consciousness. Suddenly—Sawa raised her right hand high into the air and shouted: “Come, Valac!!” What was she saying? Yuuma didn’t understand. It seemed to be some sort of keyword; Sawa’s body erupted with crimson light. Her short hair fluttered wildly, and her windbreaker whipped free from her body. Two long, thin protuberances began to grow from her head. Horns. The short, three-centimeter nubs that had been sitting over her temples were transforming into sharp-pointed horns nearly twenty centimeters long. The wings on her back also began to change. With a flapping sound, like the unfurling of a sail, her two wings—which had previously been tiny and bat-like, more like clothing accessories—unfolded to a meter wide. “GWUHARRRR?!” The creature froze in surprise and then immediately began to charge at even greater speed. It thrust both hands forward as it approached, as if to snatch both girls at once. Sawa wrapped her left hand around Tomori, who stood rooted to the spot. Sawa then gave a single flap of her wings. The two girls rose weightlessly into the air, soaring across the crater that blocked the walkway and landing in front of Yuuma. Sawa set Tomori down and then was airborne again. This time she hovered about three meters off the ground, pointing her left hand at the creature as it continued to thunder toward them. “Infernus!!” Sawa’s voice seemed to echo slightly with power as she cast her spell. The first word was the element. It was how all magic spells began—but Yuuma didn’t recognize the one she had just used. The circuitry pattern of Sawa’s QREST, which stretched from her left hand to barely below her elbow, flared to life with a fiery magenta glow. A single point of crimson light appeared before her left hand. In a moment, the ball had expanded into a massive, beach-ball-sized orb of fire. It was raw magical energy; she had yet to chant the form. The Actual Magic guidebook had included video of the most powerful fire spell in the game, Bolide—and this was already much larger than the form for that spell. “Magnus Hasta!!” The form. The swirling ball of fire suddenly transformed into a long, narrow great spear, around three meters in length. The Conehead Demolisher staggered sideways, its feet caught in the crater that it had created. As if Sawa had been waiting for that opening— “Ignis!!” With a maelstrom of fiery sparks, and a deafening roar that seemed to shake the entire building, the massive spear shot through the air. It struck the Conehead Demolisher squarely in its massive chest before burrowing deeply into the creature’s flesh and disappearing. The Demolisher threw both arms out wide. Seething black patches began to blister and bubble up all along the surface of its three-and-a-half-meter-tall frame, as if it were being boiled alive from the inside—a moment later, it opened its mouth wide, and a column of flame shot forth. Shoulder, stomach, back; flames erupted across its body, one after another, until finally the Demolisher was completely engulfed in a vortex of flames. “GWAURRGGGHHH!!” The creature’s death cry, a mixture of rage and possibly fear, was lost amid the tremendous explosive roar. The crater had now grown even deeper and wider. The raging column of fire that shot upward reached nearly to the ceiling. The Conehead Demolisher’s massive body crumbled in upon itself, incinerated inside the crimson flames. Even the last remaining fragments of charcoal were eventually consumed in pyrotechnic brilliance. Sawa floated silently to the ground, lit from behind by the pulsating glare of the crimson flames. Her hair had turned a purplish red color that closely matched her QREST. Sharp, tripart horns extended from her scalp, while dark, obsidian wings unfolded triumphantly from her back. And her eyes—her eyes shone with a reddish gold light. As Yuuma’s consciousness began fading, a single ancient word floated up from the deepest recesses of his mind: Demon. (TO BE CONTINUED)