Chapter 32

"Plus one. There's no way it was Beixing." Another Class F student raised a hand.

"Wait, why are you two so sure?" Jin Yuxuan addressed the question to both of them, but his contemptuous gaze fell on Zhou Wei alone.

When he needed help from other esper students, he couldn't afford to offend them. But couldn't he afford to offend Zhou Wei, who had abandoned him the night before? When they encountered an Aberrant last night, Jin Yuxuan had habitually used his money power on Zhou Wei, hoping Zhou Wei would carry him as they fled. But who could have guessed that, faced with the Fourth Level Aberrant attacking him, Zhou Wei would abandon him and run without a moment's hesitation?

His head had nearly been bitten off as a result. Luckily, another classmate had seen the money power and used vines to hoist him up in time, saving him from the fatal blow.

"Because last night, when a Fifth Level Aberrant nearly attacked me, Beixing shot it and saved me. At that moment, I heard the sound of an Aberrant's body bursting apart from this direction." Zhou Wei answered with neither humility nor arrogance. He knew Jin Yuxuan was targeting him because of what had happened last night, but he didn't regret it.

No one knew better than him, a specialist in running away, how fast that Fourth Level Aberrant had attacked last night. If he had carried Jin Yuxuan, his speed combined with Jin Yuxuan's weight would have gotten them both killed.

Qi Yue... had definitely "foreseen something that might happen in the future." That was why, when he gave Zhou Wei advice, he had told him not to succumb to the lure of money and to think more about his own life.

"Beixing... shot one and saved me too."

"Me too..."

"If it weren't for Beixing, I wouldn't have died, but this arm would definitely have ended up in an Aberrant's mouth. Beixing really is... such a good person."

As voices spoke up for Beixing one after another, Jin Yuxuan's expression grew even more awkward.

Beixing hadn't helped him. Was it because... he had gone too far in the past? The more Jin Yuxuan thought about it, the worse his expression became.

But no one was paying attention to Jin Yuxuan now. Everyone was focused on their fear of the terrifying scene Qi Yue's Esper Ability had created and their gratitude for Beixing's help.

"Do you think it's possible that Qi Yue told Beixing to bring a ranged attack item because... he'd already foreseen something?"

Hearing that, Zhou Wei nodded vigorously. "That must be it. Otherwise, Qi Yue wouldn't have told me something like 'life is more important than money' for no reason before the Weekly Assessment began. I'm only alive now because I listened to him!"

Other people present had witnessed Zhou Wei's narrow escape the night before, when he had uncharacteristically given up money and chosen to run.

After a brief silence, Wu Anyi ventured, "Qi Yue... has an Esper Ability that lets him see the future?"

"Qi Yue has t-two Esper Abilities?!"

"Is that possible?"

"If it's Qi Yue..." Zhao Yu said in a faint voice, "what isn't possible?"

No one present could answer their questions. The Class F students decided to wait until the Weekly Assessment was over and then... ask Beixing.

After seeing the terrifying scene Qi Yue had created during the Weekly Assessment, they were even less inclined to approach him.

Underground.

"..."

Only when Lu Zhaobei's voice disappeared from before him did Qi Yue's tense heart slowly settle. Lu Zhaobei surely couldn't have imagined that he was far from the only nervous person at that moment. Qi Yue was nervous too.

Then...

It was time to use the Panel to exploit the comic's visual bug.

He had no desire for the comic's visuals to capture and draw him sneaking along behind Lu Zhaobei.

"Panel, what's the indoor temperature right now?" Though he asked casually, Qi Yue really did want to know the temperature beneath the ruins.

Why did it feel so much hotter than when he had first come in?

[...]

[...]

[The current indoor temperature is 33 degrees Celsius.]

Qi Yue: "?"

The temperature underground was rising far too quickly. No wonder it was so hot. And... this was the second time. It had been two seconds slower last time; this time it was four.

Was the Panel... actually conscious? Qi Yue suspected it was sulking.

As before, Qi Yue had more important things to deal with and no time to worry about the Panel's odd behavior. He simply made a silent note of this second offense.

After the Panel appeared, Qi Yue didn't click "Confirm" at the bottom. He concentrated, straining his ears for sounds from Lu Zhaobei, and followed silently behind him with light steps.

As they went deeper, Qi Yue gained a better understanding of the underground structure.

Apart from cracks in the marble floor, there were no signs of damage to the ceiling or the curved metal walls on all sides, while the buildings above had been reduced to ruins. It was clear that, from the very start of construction, the buildings aboveground had never been the priority. Everything built underground might have been the real YR Research Institute.

Yet the academy's YR Research Institute information booklet Qi Yue had read had made no mention of that.

The deeper they went, the less natural light reached the passage.

When it was almost completely dark, Qi Yue still didn't take out a light. Stingy Qi "Iron Rooster" "Skinflint" Yue used the Panel's faint green glow to illuminate the way ahead.

If the Panel were conscious, it would probably sigh, "Spending this lifetime with Qi Yue was worth it."

In the dim glow, Qi Yue looked down at the marble floor. Besides dried bloodstains and rotting scraps of dried flesh, there were shoe prints left by human feet.

After all, the limbs of the test subjects who had already undergone aberration had long since twisted and changed beyond the scope of human limbs. Human feet had stepped onto the marble floor, where much of the rotting flesh and blood left by passing Aberrants had not yet dried, and the unusually abrupt high temperatures in the passage had baked the resulting shoe prints, making them easy to see.

All of this pointed to a single truth.

On Katebis Island, where Aberrants appeared endlessly, the academy students selected for the monthly Weekly Assessment were not the only ones who came. The founders of the YR Research Institute came too.

Underground lay enormous benefits they could not abandon. And for some unknown reason, those benefits could not be moved.

Or... they had created a monster they could not control at all.

No wonder the instant teleportation devices on the island had not been completely destroyed. There had to be many more of them. Of course, the assassins targeting Beixing this time couldn't be the only people to come through the instant teleportation receiving devices. There were also people connected to the YR Research Institute, who took advantage of the island's temporary lull in danger after the cleanup to come and collect the "benefits."

Rounding it off, that meant that after the cleanup, the "benefits"... or "monster" hidden underground would enter a "weakened period."

Lu Zhaobei, who had once been one of the test subjects here, had earlier told Qi Yue to "watch him." That was the best corroboration for all of Qi Yue's conjectures.

What secrets did the YR Research Institute actually hide?

The more Qi Yue speculated, the more curious he became about what lay underground.

Wait... secrets meant danger.

Qi Yue snapped back to his senses and quickly shook off his wandering thoughts. He pulled his gaze away from the succession of human footprints on the floor and focused once more on Lu Zhaobei's footsteps.

Without stopping, he followed behind Lu Zhaobei.

Was Lu Zhaobei walking a little slowly? Keeping up was ridiculously easy.

As Qi Yue followed, his mind refused to stay idle.

Ah, right.

He had been so busy thinking about the overlapping, orderly dried footprints on the floor that he had almost forgotten to ponder Lu Zhaobei.

Before he had kicked open the collapsed entrance, he had seen light coming from inside through a gap between the concrete slabs. It hadn't come from a smart device; it had looked like firelight.

He had seen Atas use firelight like that once in the Class F cafeteria.

Was Lu Zhaobei's Esper Ability related to "fire" too?

Being able to play with fire just by raising a hand... wasn't just easy to show off; it was also cool and badass. It was more than "a hundred million points" better than his abstract Call from Ancient Times Esper Ability.

Qi Yue: "..."

Damn brain, that was what he got for letting it wander.

Now look what had happened. The more he thought about it, the more envious he became. He had better give some thought to his own...

Wait...

When he was just one corner away from catching up with Lu Zhaobei, Qi Yue belatedly stopped. His crimson eyes lowered, and he stared in disbelief at his legs, which had developed an abnormality without his noticing.

Chapter 32

To the naked eye, his legs looked perfectly normal on the surface.

But Qi Yue was familiar with every part of his body, so once he noticed something was wrong, he, as the owner of those legs, knew that the way they felt when he walked was completely different from before.

Then...

Was it possible that it wasn't at all what he had thought when he first started following Lu Zhaobei? It wasn't that Lu Zhaobei was walking slowly, but that he himself—

Had gotten faster.

In this other world, where a moment's inattention and a mistaken judgment caused by carelessness could cost him his life, Qi Yue absolutely did not believe in "illusions." How could he not know his own speed? Something had definitely changed about it without his noticing.

Once he noticed the abnormality, Qi Yue quickly started walking again to test it.

Five seconds later.

The corners of Qi Yue's mouth were harder to suppress than an AK.

His walking speed really had increased. Not only was he faster, but his footsteps were also so quiet they were barely audible. It was completely different from the "lightness" he had deliberately faked during combat in his academy classes.

Given how abstractly the Panel described his Esper Ability, his walking speed couldn't have changed for no reason.

Qi Yue readily thought of the Aberrants whose speed had been extraordinary when they attacked him the night before.

The Aberrants had red health bars.

That at least meant "they" had something in common with the Class F students whose health bars he could also see.

But...

He had killed so many Third Level Aberrants yesterday, yet the Panel had never once displayed "100 percent copy successful." And the Aberrants he had killed hadn't all been Third Level; there had been Fourth and Fifth Level Aberrants among them too, which didn't match the Panel's description of "strong against the strong, weak against the weak" either.