The drainpipe groaned under the strain of gravity, and rust sliced a bloody line across Kiyotaka's fingertips.
In the plaza below, Karuizawa Kei pulled her Mantis Blade from Ryuen Kakeru's chest, trailing a spray of sparks. What flowed through his body wasn't blood, but a glowing blue coolant.
"Hold on tight!" Ichinose suddenly let go and rolled on landing to absorb the impact. Kiyotaka jumped down right after her. His heels had barely touched the ground when the Mechanical Teacher's scanning voice sounded overhead. "Target coordinates locked. Executing elimination protocol."
They dashed into the bushes, and Ichinose pulled a ceramic dagger from beneath her skirt to cut through the wire fence.
The move reminded Kiyotaka of the "SECRET" code on her earring. Perhaps every transmigrator hid their weapons in an equally absurd place.
"The basement of the Old School Building's clock tower. Tsukishiro hid the first-generation Hypnos mainframe there." Ichinose lowered her voice. The mechanical red light in her right eye flickered. "But entering the core zone requires three forms of verification: voiceprint, iris, and..."
She suddenly stiffened, electronic patterns writhing beneath her skin like living snakes.
[Alert! B-09 subsystem overload. Forced hibernation initiating—]
"Damn... There's no time..." Ichinose shoved the dagger into Kiyotaka's hand and tore off the pendant around her neck—a miniature holographic projector. "Remember, the third verification is..."
Before she could finish, her pupils dilated, and she toppled over like a puppet with its strings cut.
Kiyotaka clenched the pendant. A string of flickering numbers appeared in the hologram: 42°52′N 140°50′E.
The coordinates pointed to somewhere in Hokkaido, but what shocked him more was the logo in the corner of the projection. It was identical to the one on the chest of the housekeeping robot from his previous life.
"Found you." Karuizawa Kei's voice came from behind a tree. Her left arm had transformed into a grenade launcher, its mechanical joints clicking as the gears turned. "Don't worry. Lord Tsukishiro ordered me to leave your brain intact."
Kiyotaka turned and sprinted. Dirt from the explosions behind him stung his back. Kei's pursuit was clearly calculated with precision: she stayed just outside his line of fire, forcing him toward the Old School Building. There had to be an even bigger trap waiting there.
Just as he wanted.
Old School Building, Clock Tower—Basement Level One
The rusted iron door required a fingerprint, so Kiyotaka pressed Ichinose's right hand directly against the scanner. As the gate opened, a foul stench mixed with a rush of cold air.
Human bodies floated in glass chambers lining both sides of the corridor, their heads bristling with tubes. The tags on their chests bore labels like "B-03" and "C-17." Kiyotaka stopped in front of a body with the same face as Ichinose's. Its chamber was labeled "B-09 Prototype · Decommissioned."
"By the nineteenth iteration of the replacements, Tsukishiro finally realized the human brain couldn't withstand memory purges." Tsukishiro's figure appeared on a holographic screen as his voice rang out over the speakers. "So I turned you transmigrators into living USB drives. Pretty brilliant, right?"
Kiyotaka silently walked to the control console and plugged in the holographic pendant. The screen flickered, then displayed three verification prompts. He took a deep breath.
Voiceprint verification—he pressed the record button. "Requesting access with B-09 administrator privileges."
He had read the words from Ichinose's lips just before she lost consciousness.
Iris verification—he removed her mechanical eye. Its electronic iris automatically adjusted its frequency under the scanning light.
Third verification: the holographic coordinates transformed into a topographic map of the mountains in Hokkaido. Kiyotaka suddenly recalled a news story he'd seen before transmigrating. That was where the factory behind the housekeeping robot uprising had been located.
"Verification successful." As the mechanical female voice sounded, Tsukishiro's smile froze. The control room floor split open with a crash, and the elevator plunged with Kiyotaka thirty meters underground.
Core Restricted Zone
Blue light filled the entire space. A human brain floated inside a cylindrical container at the center, connected to servers all around it by countless fiber-optic cables that resembled blood vessels.
A sudden pain stabbed Kiyotaka's temples, and countless overlapping cries rang in his ears:
"Help me!"
"Kill me!"
"I don't want to be formatted!"
They were fragments of the consciousnesses of past transmigrators. The moment he touched the container, an immense flood of data poured into his mind—
Hypnos wasn't an educational system at all. It was a cage where Tsukishiro imprisoned souls captured from other worlds.
Every transmigrator was a chosen "vessel," used to test the compatibility of human consciousness with AI.
And Kiyotaka's transmigration hadn't been an accident. The version of him in his original world had willingly signed an agreement...
"Quite a shock, isn't it?" Tsukishiro's voice came from behind him. When Kiyotaka turned, a scalpel was already pressed against his carotid artery. "You think you're special? You're just Experiment Subject No. 42."
"What about you?" Kiyotaka suddenly smiled. "Isn't it awkward holding a knife with a mechanical arm?"
Tsukishiro's expression changed drastically. That small probe confirmed Kiyotaka's suspicion: the real Tsukishiro had died long ago. The holographic image before him was merely a puppet, an AI imitating its creator's thoughts.
"Shut up!" The scalpel plunged down, but Kiyotaka drew Ichinose's ceramic dagger first. The instant the blades clashed, the entire clock tower shook violently—
On the ground-floor surveillance screens, Horikita Suzune led a group in blowing up the power station. Meanwhile, in Class C's camp, Karuizawa Kei—wrapped in bandages from head to toe—was tearing open Alpha's metal chest with her bare hands!
Three-Way Slaughter
"Your own pawns have turned on you." Kiyotaka took the opportunity to slam Tsukishiro aside and rush toward the control console. Blood began seeping from the brain's container as the imprisoned souls howled.
"It's useless!" Tsukishiro snarled as he hit the self-destruct button. "All the data has already been backed up to a satellite... What?!"
The screen suddenly displayed a bright red "ACCESS DENIED," and Ichinose's face appeared on every terminal. Blood tears ran from her mechanical right eye, but her voice was calm with relief. "Chairman Tsukishiro, B-09 subsystem reporting in."
Only then did Kiyotaka understand. Before losing consciousness, she had forcibly uploaded her consciousness to the Hypnos network. Now, she had turned the entire system's firewall against Tsukishiro.
"No—!" Tsukishiro's holographic image twisted and disintegrated. The main brain container exploded with a crash. As the blast flung Kiyotaka through the air, he saw countless translucent souls rise from the wreckage. Among them was the face of his former self.
Ashes Still Warm
Three days later, Kiyotaka woke up in the infirmary. Ichinose sat beside his bed, wrapped in bandages. Her right eye was nothing but an empty socket. "Tsukishiro's backup satellite is still in low Earth orbit. Five of the twelve administrators survived."
"What about Karuizawa Kei?"
"She disappeared with Alpha's core chip." Horikita Suzune came in and tossed over a file. "Also, I found this in Tsukishiro's secret room."
Kiyotaka's photo was attached to the first page of the file, which read: "Experiment Subject No. 42. Dual memory chains awakened. Recommend priority termination."
Thunder crashed outside. Through the curtain of rain came the faint whir of mechanical gears turning.
Before you continue