A single dorm room at Linhai University.
The backup phone buzzed with a vibration.
Jiang Shiyu had sent a photo of the cafeteria menu.
["Senior, the fried chicken cutlets in the cafeteria actually went up by two yuan today. The lunch lady said oil prices were soaring, and the delivery van couldn't afford fuel anymore. Isn't that ridiculous? A war breaks out in some overseas oil-producing region, and somehow our school's chicken cutlets get hit with precision sanctions. Boo-hoo."]
Kannazuki glanced at it and tapped out a reply with one hand.
"The butterfly effect. Don't worry.
In a few days, the price won't just drop back down. They'll be on sale."
After replying, he set the phone facedown on the desk and fixed his gaze on the center monitor again.
The international crude oil futures index was in a state of utter frenzy.
The steep red upward curve had broken straight through its all-time high.
Ryuk, the Shinigami, hung upside down from the iron frame of the top bunk.
He crunched through an apple, bite after bite, his huge yellow eyes full of boredom, then spat out an apple seed.
"Light, you haven't written a single name in all this time.
That's not like you. What, those humans are taking nuclear-powered aircraft carriers into that gulf to blast fish,
and you, the God of the new world, aren't going to do anything?"
"I am, but I can't just blunder in like a brute."
Kannazuki picked up a red pen with his slender fingers and casually drew two circles on a sheet of white paper on the desk.
"The earlier conflict on the ice fields was fundamentally about a geopolitical buffer zone. A territorial dispute.
They were fighting over actual steel, soil, and human lives.
So when I killed those six