Chapter 35

Six students in total had fallen victim to Kakeru Niki’s AoE petrification spell. Youichi Oono and Takato Sera, who had been near the entrance and had gotten hit by the initial mist. Shouko Ezato, who’d been frozen in fear. Aria Misono, who had entered demon form and had fought back against the intruders. And Masato Takio and Naruo Wakasa, who had been turned to stone in between the display racks while Yuuma wasn’t looking. Takio and Wakasa had been friends with Takeshi Moro, the boy killed by giant caterpillar monsters known as Tabanus Hellfly Larvae. At first, Yuuma assumed they were so demoralized after what had happened to Moro that they had failed to run in time, but he soon realized they were actually facing toward the front of the shelter, not the rear. They must have been trying to sneak up on Niki and his guards from between the display racks. Yuuma suggested they place all six petrified students behind the sturdy cash register counter, but Sugamo refused, insisting on carrying Aria over to the eat-in corner, away from everyone else. Due to the precarious position Aria was standing in, Yuuma thought they should try to lay her down on the ground if possible, but Sugamo was against that idea, too. “What if her hair breaks off?” he said. With no other choice, they secured her to one of the built-in wall racks using four lengths of rope. They carried the other five petrified students behind the counter, piling up large cushions and stuffed animals all around them in order to help keep them safe. Between Sawa’s fire magic and Mami Shimonosono’s wind magic, they were able to forcibly evaporate the puddle of melted Icewall water that Yuuma had been so worried about earlier, with relative ease. This obviously should have increased the humidity in the room, but whether it was because the air was dry to begin with or because the laws of physics inside Althea were just twisted now, the air didn’t feel particularly muggy afterward. Either way, it only took about thirty minutes for them to restore what order they could to the shelter. The remaining students gathered in the open space in the center of the room. There had been twenty-three students in total when Yuuma and the others returned to the shelter, but now there were only seventeen. Seven boys: Yuuma Ashihara, Kenji Kondou, Teruki Sugamo, Kai Kisanuki, Haruki Hokari, Shinta Aida, and Tomonori Tada. And ten girls: Sawa Ashihara, Minagi Sano, Tomori Shimizu, Aoi Soga, Sayu Kenjou, Mami Shimonosono, Chise Tsuda, Chinami Nushiro, Kimiko Nobori, and Mimi Hariya. All seventeen looked exhausted. Yuuma and the others passed out bottles of mineral water, but half just held their bottles in their hands, too shattered to even untwist the caps. Some of the students even began to doze off as they leaned against the display cases. Yuuma could hardly blame them. They had been trapped inside Althea at three in the afternoon on May 13. It was now technically the next day, May 14, fifteen minutes past midnight. They had been fighting to survive this ordeal for almost ten hours already. Yuuma wanted everyone to get at least an hour of sleep, but that would require keeping his explanation of both their attackers and the demons to just fifteen minutes in total. He doubted either of those facts would be easy to swallow…but all he could do was try. “First off, the figures in black who attacked us earlier…,” he began. “That was Niki, Nunono, and Shizu…I mean, Metoki… Right?” Sayu Kenjou said, listing off their names without hesitation. Yuuma stared in amazement. Sayu nodded. Her hair, which was gathered in a side ponytail by a fancy scrunchie, bobbed in time with the motion. “We could hear you the whole time, from the other side of the ice wall… And we could see your HP bars, too,” Sayu added. “The names of the attackers were all glitchy, so we couldn’t read them at first, but they cleared up later… And Chise…” Chise Tsuda, who had her hair in low pigtails, took over when Sayu glanced her way, her hands clasped firmly in front of her chest. “I sit next to Niki in class, so I’m used to hearing his voice every day. That was definitely him… Besides, he always says later instead of goodbye.” “Ohhh…” Several of the students murmured in agreement. Yuuma didn’t know Niki well enough to be familiar with the things he often said, but now that Chise mentioned it, Yuuma was pretty sure he remembered Niki saying “later” when he’d retreated from the shelter earlier. “But…but still…,” said Shinta Aida, scratching one of the shaved sides of his faux-hawk, his voice pained. “Why would Niki want to attack us? I mean, it didn’t seem like Nunono and Metoki were being forced to do it, either, right? Does it have anything to do with that turning-into-a-demon stuff you mentioned earlier?” The other students began whispering among themselves, saying things like, “I can’t believe this…” or “What the heck is a demon…?” Unfortunately, Yuuma had no more answers than Aida did. While it was true that Niki had used his vires—his demon exploit—it didn’t seem like the demon had taken over Niki’s body or anything like that. Based on his behavior and manner of speech, he still seemed to be acting of his own volition. On the other hand, Yuuma couldn’t say with absolute certainty that the demon might not be interfering with Niki’s decision-making somehow. “…Okay, I’ll explain the demons first,” Yuuma said, taking a swig of bottled water to wet his throat. The students, who had been abuzz a moment ago, immediately grew quiet. “Does everyone remember what happened when we were forced out of Actual Magic’s playtest…? I was in the boss room when I got swallowed up in red light, and then I couldn’t see a thing. The entire room from the walls to the floor disappeared, and I started falling and falling, down into the darkness…” Most of the other students nodded. So far, at least their experiences had apparently been relatively similar. Yuuma steeled himself, getting to the important part. “Between then and waking up in the real world, we were all inhabited by demons. Not just Misono and Niki… Every student in 6-1 is now possessed by a demon. Some of you may have even already heard a strange voice inside your heads…” At this point, Yuuma paused to gauge his classmates’ reactions. More than half were staring at their own hands or into their friends’ faces in partial disbelief. The only exceptions were Sawa, Nagi, Kenk, and Tomori. And Sugamo, who was still making a sulky face. Usually Sugamo was quick to argue with anything that Yuuma said, without even hearing him out first, but he had seen Aria’s demon form and her Lightning Transformation with his own eyes. It would be hard to dismiss the existence of demons after that. In fact, he hadn’t just witnessed Aria’s transformation, he’d held her back with his own hands while she went berserk, so he knew it wasn’t some sort of illusion or trick. Sugamo had sounded genuinely frantic at the time, too. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but even with all his flaws, he honestly seems to care about Misono…, Yuuma was thinking when a student spoke up. “Uh… Uhhh, Ashihara…?” said Tomonori Tada, who raised his hand. “When you say demons, you mean like monsters from Actual Magic…right? We didn’t encounter any creatures like this during the playtest, but RPGs always have enemies like lesser demons or silver imps. You mean something like that got downloaded onto our QRESTs, right? You’re obviously not saying that we’ve been possessed by real demons, are you…?” Yuuma stared reflexively at Tada’s earnest face. A few hours earlier, Tomori Shimizu had asked almost the exact same question—not to Yuuma but to Valac, the demon possessing Sawa. Yuuma could remember every last word of Valac’s answer perfectly. “I don’t particularly care for being called a monster, but I suppose what you’ve described is more or less accurate. I usually remain half asleep inside Sawa’s heart and mind, but I can take over when she calls for me, and I can also grant her my vires—my power.” There was something fishy about that “more or less” part. Besides, Valac proudly referred to herself as a demon. There was no guarantee that everything she said was even true. Right now, though, they had no basis for refuting her nor any real reason to do so. Yuuma nodded, choosing his words carefully. “Yeah… I think it’s safe to think of the demons as high-level monsters from AM. They can speak like humans, and they possess unique powers. The demons refer to those powers as a vires, but earlier Niki called it a demon exploit. That’s what I’ll call it, too, since it’s easier to say and understand.” “A demon exploit…,” Tada muttered, brushing his hair out of the way. His hair was long, though not as long as Takato Sera’s, and he wore it swept to the side. “So when Niki’s petrification magic affected everyone despite being spread so thin…was that also due to one of these exploits?” “…” Yuuma fell silent again for a brief second or two. Tada’s powers of deduction were a surprise, but come to think of it, Tada and Shinta Aida were both huge fans of trading card games. Yuuma remembered them sneaking actual physical cards into school once, which wasn’t allowed, and getting them confiscated by the teacher. Yuuma preferred video games, so he never interacted much with the two boys, although maybe there wasn’t that much of a difference between analog and digital when it came to a game’s rules and wording.