Chapter 201: It's Okay to Make Mistakes, Just Correct Them in Time

Watching the woman in the executive suit slam her palm down on the red alert button, Amikura Mako felt her stomach knot.

A second later, dozens upon dozens of containment doors opened at once.

Werewolves, zombies, xenomorphs, killer clowns… monsters poured out by the hundreds, turning the facility into a slaughterhouse free-for-all of flying blood and meat.

Even through a screen, Mako's palms went damp for her friends.

Anxious as she was, she knew exactly what her job was right now.

As the "coordinator" with the god's-eye view, she carried far too much responsibility to fall apart.

Once she confirmed that Yotsuya Miko and Shiranami Chihiro were safe for the moment, Mako let out a breath, her fingers swiping fast until she found where Nanase Tsubasa and that executive were.

The callouts came rapid-fire.

"Nanase! Three crawler-type monsters are coming up the corridor on your left, and they're fast!"

"The executive is straight ahead of you, under the console. The monsters are tearing into each other indiscriminately right now, nobody's minding her, that's your blind spot. You can push straight through!"

With Mako feeding her intel, Nanatsura Tsubasa pinned down the woman's position in seconds.

Credit where it's due: this entire mess existed because the executive had gone out of her mind and released every last monster.

Tsubasa's reluctant counterattack had crippled the base's security systems, and the escape routes were jammed solid with swarming creatures. All the woman could do now was cram herself into whatever hiding spot she could find.

But was any of it worth it? Knowing full well the girls could fight back, she'd still been that arrogant, without a single thought for the consequences. And look at the damage it had done.

So, furious, Nanatsura Tsubasa cut down a handful of zombies in passing, arrived in front of the executive's hiding place, and drove her blade into the floor right beside the woman.

The usually sunny blonde underclassman stood there with her face gone dark, barely contained rage burning behind her eyes.

"Nanase…" Mako couldn't stand it. She was about to say something comforting, and to swing the feed over to Yotsuya Miko and Shiranami Chihiro to check on them.

"Mako." Beside her, Hiyori Shiina broke in softly. "Chris and Karuizawa are back."

Mako's hands came off the controls before she thought about it, and she turned around.

Chris came first, with Kei Karuizawa shadowing him step for step at his side.

"How's the situation?" Chris asked, his gaze sweeping across the screens, each one mirroring a different world.

"My side… it's hard to say whether it's good or bad."

Mako gathered her thoughts and pointed at the base boiling into chaos on the display. "The Revival Match exam zone Shiranami and Yotsuya are in seems to be set in a world where an Evil God is about to wake up."

"The victory condition the Black Sphere handed down is simple. [Leave the test alive.]"

"They've already grabbed the key figure in the facility, and they're working from the clues they have to find a way into another dimension, somewhere to hide or a route out."

Chris frowned, thinking for a moment, then turned to Hiyori Shiina. "Hiyori, what about the side you're watching?"

Hiyori shook her head. Her small face was tight, weighed down with self-blame. "The exam Akane Tachibana-senpai and the others are facing… it's bad."

"The monster called 'Ainz Ooal Gown' and his subordinates only rate the same as Godzilla in its base state on the Black Sphere system's point evaluation…"

"But the trouble is, that world is full of bizarre resurrection methods and world-class items."

"And they'd already taken Director Tsukishiro…"

"And now they know we exist…"

Chris nodded slowly, then asked, "Did you tell Miyabi Nagumo and the others about this development?"

"Mm. I explained it to the Student Council President and Senpai."

Hiyori's eyes had gone red at the rims. "But they only just found Miss Liana. They're going through the items that refreshed in this exam's shop, so they haven't had time to decide anything about the emergency."

"On the screen, though, I can see that Ainz Ooal Gown has been gathering his Guardians since he noticed us. He looks ready to start moving against us specifically…"

"I really don't know what to do anymore."

"I'm sorry… if I hadn't misjudged it, they could have stayed hidden in the shadows."

The girl's head sank lower and lower, guilt chewing at her until she looked ready to cry.

Chris stepped up and ruffled her soft blue hair like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Don't overthink it," he said gently.

"It's everyone's first time in this world. Nobody knew a thing going in. We're all feeling our way forward."

"If you're going to try something, you take on the risk. There's no reason to shoulder an accident nobody could have prevented, or to be this hard on yourself."

Kei Karuizawa nodded along. "Right, Chris is right."

"It's already happened. Instead of standing here insisting it's your fault, put that energy into finding a way to make up for it."

"Nobody gets through this stupid Black Sphere's exams without making mistakes."

Privately, Kei counted Hiyori Shiina as a genuinely dangerous rival in love.

Watching Chris pet another girl's head did leave a sour taste in her mouth… but Kei wasn't stupid.

After surviving death several times over, having firmly secured her position as the "official parasite," her grasp of the bigger picture was nothing like it used to be.

She knew what each moment called for.

At a critical hour like this, with everyone racking their brains over whether their friends lived or died, throwing an unreasonable fit would only turn Chris against her.

Still, Hiyori's report left Kei uneasy.

She knew that most of their edge in past exam zones came from having the [Controller].

The enemy in the light, themselves in the dark, plus precise radar callouts.

Even outgunned in raw strength, they could play a high-score BOSS to death with information advantage and clever item work.

But now that the other side knew they were there, that information advantage had lost most of its bite.

Naturally, Kei wasn't about to say any of that out loud and shake everyone's morale.

Her eyes flicked to the side, and she offered a different idea instead.

"Since they've already picked up on us… could we roll with it and mislead them the other way?"

"We use these one-way-mirror observation screens to steer their attention somewhere else, and buy Nagumo-senpai and the others time to prepare."

"We can see into their world anyway, so getting intel on their movements shouldn't be hard, right?"

The dullness in Hiyori's eyes lifted at once. "Now that you mention it… while I was scanning through that world's feed, I did spot a native human faction."

"If I heard right, they're the ones who used some kind of special item to take control of one of Ainz Ooal Gown's subordinates, a vampire named Shalltear Bloodfallen."

The excitement lasted all of two seconds before she bit her lip. "But… is it really all right to drag them in as our shield?"

Standing off to one side, Mako started to speak and found she had nothing to offer.

By her own moral compass, deliberately setting two powers at each other's throats to save your own skin, maybe even wiping a whole nation off the map in the process, was genuinely cold.

And in the world she herself was watching…

the classmates she'd been helping might end up destroying that world outright.

Decisions that left countless lives in ruin, even at one remove, were a crushing weight.

Hayasaka Ai took in every flicker of Mako's conflict, and she knew exactly what was tying both girls in knots.

To Hayasaka, it wasn't a dilemma at all.

The faction of The Cabin in the Woods had already marked Nanase Tsubasa and Yotsuya Miko as enemies first.

Which made everything they set up from here on perfectly reasonable self-defense.

No reason to burn themselves out over the ethics of it.

But Hayasaka had no habit of forcing her worldview onto other people.

That said, if she could manage it, she'd rather save time and keep the losses to a minimum.

So she cut in at just the right moment. "From what I saw earlier, Ainz Ooal Gown places enormous value on his subordinates."

"If you can confirm, Hiyori, that this faction called the 'Slane Theocracy' really is the culprit behind controlling Shalltear Bloodfallen…"

"then this isn't dumping our disaster on somebody else. It's the enemy of our enemy being a natural ally."

Hayasaka folded her arms, her expression unchanged.

"Rather than leaving and letting that human faction face that enormous inhuman power alone, we may as well use the fact that everyone's still here to broker a partnership that pays off for both sides."

"I don't see anything wrong with that."

"Just mind your footing during the negotiation. Botch it and we lose more than we gain. Pulling their hostility onto ourselves would be a very bad outcome."

Hiyori thought it over carefully.

Hayasaka really did have a point.

"I understand."

She turned back toward the screens, meaning to contact Miyabi Nagumo's group, nail down more intel on that world, and paint the Theocracy a clear picture of how serious this was.

Seeing Hiyori find her footing again, Chris nodded, satisfied.

Then he looked to Mako. "Since Hiyori's tied up, Mako, let's try the thing we discussed earlier."

Mako straightened up. "You mean… trying to open the barrier from here, straight through to Chihiro's world?"

She looked down at the [Blank Card Box] clenched in her hand, her eyes brightening a little. "If you can cut a passage open with the Enma Blade and pass this card box through to them…"

"They'd not only have the shelter of the [Mirror World], but maybe once that Evil God fully revives and destroys the real world, all they'd have to do is hide inside the Mirror World, and they'd clear the 'leave alive' condition outright!"

Chris rubbed his chin and gave a noncommittal nod.

In the script he'd drawn up, in truth…

the plan had been for Nanase Tsubasa's group to be driven into a corner and banished to Hell by the Hell Lord, clearing the survival condition sideways.

And yes, sending in the Blank Card Box and exploiting the Mirror World's isolation was another way to game the clear.

He had also fully intended to slice open a spatial passage with the [Enma Blade], drop in personally in front of Ainz Ooal Gown, and give that crime against humanity of a character a thorough beating.

But…

the problem was…

if they could skip class this easily even in a Revival Match, what was a revival actually worth?

He couldn't let Shiranami Chihiro's Revival Match play out like a formality, could he?

Victories that come cheap never teach anybody anything.

Then again, the world they were in did carry a special property precisely because a Revival Match was being held there.

And technically, what he held was only a false Enma Blade…

So it wasn't as if he couldn't justify it.

His mind made up, Chris spoke. "Let me see whether I can cut a passage open right here with the Enma Blade."

With that said, and with Mako and Kei Karuizawa watching in anticipation, Chris slowly drew the Enma Blade.

He held his breath, gathered himself, and gave the empty air ahead a light, almost casual flick.

No reaction.

Forget a rift in space. Not so much as a ripple stirred.

Chris frowned, unwilling to accept it.

He dropped his stance hard, circulated the Ki inside him, and swung out a blade of sword light with everything he had.

Clang!

The sword energy sank into the void and vanished like a stone into the sea, raising a single ring of ripples. Space itself stayed perfectly intact.

Chris let out a regretful sigh. "Looks like this observation channel, this waystation, holds its space together far more tightly than the real world outside…"

"It won't even let me pull off a Dimension Slash."

"So all that's left now is to see whether I can force a passage open through the screen that's linked to their world…"

Disappointment flickered through Mako's eyes.

She shook it off quickly.

After all, this was a realm of gods none of them had ever set foot in.

Sturdier spatial barriers were only natural here.

Besides, Chris had said there was still another method to try, hadn't he?

So she obediently stepped aside, clearing the space right in front of the screen.

Chris wasted no time. Blade in hand, he walked up to the glassy panel of light showing Nanase Tsubasa.

He leveled the Enma Blade again and drew a deep breath.

The point drove straight at the smooth surface in front of him—

And then, before the tip ever touched the screen, a deep hum rang through the air.

An ice-blue panel of light suddenly hung in front of Chris… or rather, put itself on open display for everyone in the room.

[Warning: the current world has been designated a dedicated exam zone exclusive to the 'Revival Match.']

[To guarantee the fairness of the exam, all non-selected personnel are forcibly barred from entering and interfering.]

[To force an entry regardless, a fee of 200 S Points must be paid as a boundary-crossing charge.]

[Deduct from account balance?]

[Yes/No]

Once she made out the words on the panel, Kei Karuizawa let out a yelp.

"Two hundred? That's enough to buy two whole lives! That's way too expensive!"

Hayasaka Ai kept her arms folded and analyzed it calmly. "Expensive? I don't think so."

"A Revival Match is mostly filled with people who already lost their lives. If it let us stroll in whenever we felt like it…"

"At best that wrecks the balance of the exam. At worst it turns into Chris steamrolling the whole thing and handing them a free pass to the clear."

"Run the numbers that way and spending 200 S Points to guarantee a few lives coming back is worth far more than the 200 itself. However you slice it, it's a sure profit."

Hayasaka spared the panel a glance. "And honestly, the fact that we get to sit here safe and feed them information through this screen is already a bug in itself. We were never supposed to have this chance at all."

Kei and Mako exchanged a look and lapsed into silence.

Kei started to argue, decided Hayasaka made entirely too much sense, and couldn't find a single hole to poke.

Mako, meanwhile, was simply mourning in advance for whatever fate awaited Yotsuya Miko and Shiranami Chihiro.

At this point, all she could do was quietly cheer for them and pray.

Because…

she knew perfectly well that Chris could afford those 200 S Points right now.

But counted as generously as possible, his total was only a little over two hundred S Points!

And going by the intel she'd just gathered on The Cabin in the Woods exam zone…

there were plenty of low-value monsters inside, but slaughtering every last one of them still might not fill a 200-point hole.

Meanwhile, the high-value monsters that could pay out in a single haul were the sort the Black Sphere had flagged as "capable of ending the world with ease" — freaks no weaker than Godzilla or the Darkness Devil!

And that wasn't even the whole of it.

Once the Revival Match ended, would they be teleported straight back to school to rest?

Or would the system dump them right into the exam zone where Miyabi Nagumo's group was fighting for their lives, and make them work overtime?

All of it was an unknown.

If Chris really burned every S Point he had to save Yotsuya Miko and the others…

and then found himself cornered against Ainz Ooal Gown with nothing left to buy a life-saving item…

Mako would never, ever forgive herself.

It was far too big a gamble!

No matter how much she cared about Shiranami Chihiro, no matter how much Yotsuya Miko's situation ached at her, she could never bring herself to ask Chris to make a sacrifice that huge.

And in the deepest corner of the girl's heart…

she simply couldn't bear to watch Chris throw himself into that kind of danger for someone else's sake.

Which was why, from the very beginning…

Mako's own idea had been to go in herself.

Fate, she supposed. It just wasn't meant to be.

Her eyelids lowered on their own, and she let out a soft sigh.

Chris took in every bit of her disappointment and conflict without letting anything show on his face. He'd already done the math.

He turned to Hayasaka Ai and rode the current. "If points can force open a cross-world transfer into a Revival Match…"

"then presumably Miyabi Nagumo and Akane Tachibana-senpai's side is no exception either."

Hayasaka caught on instantly and nodded. "In that case, let's go see how the value of entering over there stacks up against the cost, then decide."

"If there's enough profit in it, or if they've genuinely run into a crisis they can't solve on their own…"

"then those points will have been worth far more than what we paid."

Over on Hiyori Shiina's side, meanwhile…

she'd already gotten a rough breakdown of the power structure of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, the fortress Ainz Ooal Gown had built, out of Miyabi Nagumo.

Right now she was using the system's voice-transmission function to negotiate with a figure on the screen: a gravely wounded old woman lying in a luxurious bedroom, looking as though nothing could save her.

Hearing Chris and the others' footsteps drawing closer,

Hiyori spoke gently to the old woman in the screen before her. "Lady Kaire… I'm sorry, could I ask you to wait for me just a moment?"

"My companions have come over. I need to discuss our next steps with them."

____

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