Believe Needs No Reason

Sakayanagi Arisu smiled without saying a word, then turned her gaze to Horikita Suzune, who stood nearby with her lips tightly pressed together, staring fixedly at the screen.

"Looks like there's some friction between you two?"

"Yeah. I don't know what happened, but I'm sure it wasn't Su Wei's fault!"

"If it wasn't Horikita's fault, then the only one left to blame is the world~"

Su Wei: "..."

Why are you, a mere spectator, putting on this act?

Horikita Suzune ignored Sakayanagi Arisu's near face-to-face taunt.

Not only did she not want to waste time on such a pointless argument, but her attention was now entirely focused on the radar in her hand.

"Cut the chatter."

Horikita Suzune spoke coldly and pointed at the corner of the corridor ahead.

"There are three in the classroom on the left. The display shows a green dot beside them... Someone's probably trapped inside."

"At the end of the corridor on the right, the radar shows five wandering around."

She quickly made a decision.

"Draw them in and ambush them."

"We'll head left first and rescue our classmate, then use the noise and smell of blood from the Kabane to lure the other five over."

"We can use the terrain and let them come to us. What do you think?"

Su Wei: "...I have no objections."

Kamuro Masumi tightened her grip on the X-GUN.

"Then I'll keep an eye on the radar and watch our backs, in case any stragglers sneak up on us."

"A sensible decision."

Sakayanagi Arisu nodded with a smile, then looked at Su Wei with some anticipation.

Su Wei didn't hold back either.

He stepped forward and took the lead.

"Follow me."

The lights in the corridor crackled.

As they rounded the corner by the fire door, a bloody scene came into view.

Two Kabane had pinned a fallen student in the corner. His throat had been torn open.

Then, just as the Kabane prepared to tear into his flesh, the "student's" body strangely turned into a blue glow and vanished into thin air.

"He disappeared?"

"...He didn't get infected?"

Horikita Suzune paused, sounding surprised.

"Everyone gets one chance to start over."

Sakayanagi Arisu watched the fading speck of light and made a guess.

"He just used up that extra life right away."

"It's a shame we've lost a chance to earn protection points and hunt monsters, but that might not be a bad thing."

"At least we won't have to face our former classmates after they turn into Kabane and come at us with weapons."

Horikita Suzune and Kamuro Masumi were both speechless.

Though they understood Sakayanagi's reasoning, watching a living person vanish before their eyes still left them with a sense of sorrow for someone else's misfortune.

"Grr?"

Perhaps because their target had suddenly disappeared, the three Kabane that had been feeding paused.

At the sound, they all turned their heads in unison, their dull, crimson eyes fixed on the group standing at the entrance to the corridor.

"GRAAAH!!"

With a roar, some dropped to all fours and charged, while others used the wall to propel themselves into the air. Moving in ways that defied all human understanding, they rushed madly at the intruders.

Waiting for them were the black muzzles of guns that had already been aimed and ready.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two muffled shots rang out.

Even intelligent Parasites could be caught off guard if they didn't understand the X-GUN's properties, let alone these beasts driven by nothing but their instinct to "feed."

Two Kabane were hit by the gravitational waves in midair, their upper bodies instantly exploding into pieces.

The last straggler charged close under cover of its companions.

"GRAAAH!"

It roared and lunged at Su Wei, who was at the front.

Su Wei's expression remained calm. He simply swung his blade.

There was no fancy technique—just sheer force, pure stats.

"Whoosh!"

A black arc flashed through the air, and the Kabane came apart at the waist.

Its headless body staggered forward a few steps on momentum, then collapsed at Su Wei's feet.

"An iron heart..."

Horikita Suzune studied the body, which was intact apart from its severed head.

"But decapitation still kills them."

"Does that count as another weakness we've found?"

Sakayanagi Arisu smiled.

"Think about it. Even if we turned into Kabane, wouldn't we pose almost no threat without our limbs?"

"Mm..."

Kamuro Masumi couldn't help shivering. She raised the screen of her Capture Gun to warn them.

"Um... they seem to be coming this way."

Su Wei looked surprised. "Though we're following the plan, the X-GUN barely makes any noise when fired. How could they hear us from behind two walls?"

"They've just got sharp senses. They're still no match for Parasites."

Horikita Suzune held her gun sideways, keeping watch, though her expression was more relaxed than before.

"The Kabane shouldn't be much more difficult than those Evil Spirits, and their point value probably isn't high either."

"If we want to pull ahead, it'll come down to that 'hidden monster.'"

"Their point value is definitely low."

Sakayanagi Arisu chimed in unhurriedly.

"But if we don't clear out these grunts early, the remaining survivors will have to face this many Kabane..."

"By the end, we might lose more points than we earn~"

Kamuro Masumi: "..."

People's lives are at stake, and that's what you're worried about?

Ugh, typical point-chaser thinking.

You've been completely twisted by those damn scores!

As for Su Wei, he nodded in agreement.

Indeed.

Aside from the Skill Corpse that could wield weapons and move with agility, the rest of the Kabane were just grunts there to pad the numbers.

The real enemy...

Was that nest of "The Silence," which everyone forgot about the moment they looked away.

Note ①—Skill Corpse: A high-level mutated Kabane. It retains the combat or mechanical skills it had in life, is intelligent, fast, and tactical, and is difficult to defeat.

<p><webnovel, romance simulations should be met with overwhelming force>

Believe Needs No Reason

Third floor of the school building, chemistry lab.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka stood with his side pressed against the door, peering through the crack into the dim corridor.

Aside from a few sensor lights in the distance crackling due to unstable wiring, he heard no footsteps or anything like the sound of a beast dragging its limbs along the floor.

Only after confirming it was safe did he turn away and gesture to the two people behind him.

"We're safe... for now."

Only then did Hirata Yosuke, who had been leaning against a lab bench, dare to take deep breaths.

His face was pale, and his right hand was clamped tightly over his left arm.

A strip of cloth torn from his shirt was wrapped around it, soaked through with blood and turned dark red.

"Sorry..."

Hirata gave a bitter smile as cold sweat slid down his temple. "I guess I was too reckless after all... In the end, I didn't save anyone, and I only dragged everyone else into this."

"Don't say that, Hirata."

Amikura Mako was looking through her phone, trying to contact a teacher. At his words, she tried to comfort him.

"That zombie that suddenly climbed up the wall... It was holding two samurai swords, and it moved more nimbly than a monkey. After running into a monster like that, just surviving means you did all you could."

Thinking back to what had happened, Amikura Mako still felt shaken.

That Dual-Blade Kabane had been incredibly fast and even knew how to block and slash.

If Hirata hadn't risked his life to push it down the stairs, the three of them would probably already be corpses in the corridor.

"But..."

Hirata Yosuke still felt deeply ashamed. He looked up at Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

"If Ayanokoji-kun hadn't pulled me back in time, and even used the fire extinguisher spray to block its vision... I might've become one of those zombies too."

"I only made the most basic judgment."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka shook his head, his tone flat.

"And from what I've observed, things might not be as bad as you think."

"The classmates who were bitten didn't mutate like they do in the movies. Their bodies turned into blue specks of light and disappeared."

"I don't know if that means they died, but at least it shows... this place operates by rules we don't understand."

"Rules?"

Amikura Mako was taken aback. Then, as if realizing something, she looked at the two of them in surprise.

"Wait... You don't know about the 'Black Sphere Trial'?"

"The Black Sphere Trial...?"

Ayanokoji and Hirata exchanged glances, clearly unfamiliar with the term.

"Oh, I mean the 'Special Exam' the teacher was talking about!"

As she spoke, Amikura Mako hurriedly pulled up the long image Ichinose had put together earlier and handed it to the two of them.

Ayanokoji took the phone and quickly scanned the information on the screen.