Chapter 236: Hiyori, and... Gojo Satoru!

Advanced Nurturing High School.

After finding Hiyori Shiina planted at the corridor railing, silently gazing off at the sky, Chris leaned against the wall and watched her quietly, keeping her company.

Of course, with Chris’s personality, staying calm for long was never going to happen.

So while he wore a look of tender concern as he watched Hiyori Shiina, he was actually using the god’s-eye view only he could access to keep tabs on Kei Karuizawa and the others, who hadn’t come back to school yet.

Right now, Karuizawa’s group was following Skull Knight into the Backrooms.

Over on the upperclassmen’s side, the advance test had already kicked off.

Before they entered the exam grounds, Ichinose, true to her principle of protecting everyone she could, had briefed Miyabi Nagumo on all the intel she had, keeping it as short as possible.

But time had been far too tight, so she could only pick out the most critical points.

The detailed mechanics of things like the Backrooms and the new items would have to wait until they had time to sort through them properly.

On top of that, the two strongest upperclassmen, Fūka Kiryūin and Miyabi Nagumo, had both been in the earlier batch of official examinees, and had needed to strengthen themselves and buy gear in the Presiding God’s Space before the exam.

So this time, the upperclassmen hadn’t even considered asking the Black Sphere to open an extra test like the Backrooms.

They had simply been dropped, by the book, into the Culling Game colony Kenjaku had set up.

The Culling Game was a massive game Kenjaku ran to force Tengen to merge with all of humanity.

Its timeline was, in fact, subtly offset from the timeline of the Gojo Satoru who had gone to Advanced Nurturing High School as a “guest teacher.”

Chris had actually weighed this from the very start.

Should he carve out a separate, parallel world line? Or should he just take the Gojo Satoru who’d gone through Advanced Nurturing High School and drop him seamlessly into the moment right after his Prison Realm seal was lifted?

As for the difference between the two…

The former would, admittedly, let the students grasp the concept of parallel universes.

But Chris rubbed his chin and quickly dropped the idea.

The setup had no practical meaning. The world was about to be destroyed anyway, so what good was knowing parallel worlds existed? Could they drag one of those worlds over to help with the dead end in front of them?

Tough chance. Practically impossible.

So Chris went with the second option.

He set the timing of this test after Gojo Satoru had returned from teaching at Advanced Nurturing High School, bringing the Ki technique from the Dragon Ball (Earth) world back to the Jujutsu world.

By now, the Shibuya Incident, Itadori’s execution arc, and the Culling Game had all come and gone.

Even Gojo Satoru, freed from his seal, had already agreed with Sukuna on the time of their final battle!

As for why only two days had passed at Advanced Nurturing High School while at least half a month had passed in the Jujutsu world… Chris thought it over and decided no explanation was needed.

Different time flow rates. How hard could that be for the Black Sphere?

In this world line, which he’d nudged just a little, there was Gojo Satoru and Ryomen Sukuna, geniuses born at the very peak of the jujutsu world.

Boosted by the Ki technique from the Dragon Ball (Earth) world, even half a month of study would almost inevitably bring a power-up, if the moment was right.

“Uh…”

Thinking it through, Chris suddenly spotted a problem.

During the midterm exam, thanks to Jikku, most of Sukuna’s fingers had actually ended up in Chris’s hands.

Even if he returned all the rest to Sukuna, excluding the two fingers that were Gojo Satoru’s “salary,” Sukuna would have the cursed energy of seventeen fingers at most.

Even adding the boost from the mummified remains of his past-life body, against a Gojo Satoru who had mastered Ki, was at full strength, or maybe even a step beyond…

Eighteen-finger Sukuna plus Mahoraga didn’t seem like much of a challenge for Gojo Satoru at all, did it?

After all, the gap between those two had never closed, especially with two fingers missing and his soul incomplete. Frankly, Sukuna right now had no grounds to rate above Gojo Satoru.

“Isn’t this just a pure one-sided stomp…”

But on second thought, Chris decided it didn’t matter.

However much Sukuna got nerfed, in the end he’d be left for the upperclassmen, Kei Karuizawa, Ryuuen and the rest to fight.

Otherwise, if Gojo Satoru blew Sukuna away in a single hit, the hundred-plus S Points that vanished into thin air would be no small loss for them.

Inside the Culling Game colony, in the Jujutsu world.

When the teleport light faded, Kiriyama Ikuha, Akane Tachibana, and the rest of the upperclassman examinees appeared out of nowhere.

Facing the ruined modern city before them, they didn’t rush off to hunt “Players,” and they certainly didn’t recklessly start the exam.

Fujimaki, Controller in hand, opened it first thing, and Tachibana and the others closed ranks around him without a word, shielding him in the center.

Their top priorities: confirm this exam’s high-score target, locate the Mysterious Merchant Oriana, check whether this world connected to the Backrooms, and…

find out whether Teacher Gojo, the man who’d taught them jujutsu, was still alive.

A three-dimensional holographic map unfolded.

Soon, they pulled up the info on this exam’s top-scoring target.

[Target: Ryomen Sukuna (Megumi Skin)]

[Value: 168 points]

[Traits: The King of Curses of the Heian era. By dividing his own soul and cursed energy into twenty indestructible fingers, he became a Special Grade Cursed Object and revived in the modern age. Unfortunately, due to a few mishaps, and because not all the fingers have been found, he currently holds only cursed energy equal to eighteen fingers. Even so, his only flaw is his incomplete soul, which doesn’t affect his combat power. With his full set of techniques unleashed, his cursed energy reserves fall just short of his Heian-era true self.]

[Lethal Points: Techniques—Dismantle, Cleave, Blaze, Fuga—can all be freely unleashed at almost no cost. Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine delivers guaranteed-hit slashes covering the entire area, the domain’s range can be freely resized, and he can also deploy a domain barrier to cancel out an opponent’s technique. Reverse Cursed Technique lets him easily repair bodily damage in the middle of battle. Also, the shikigami Mahoraga, summoned through Megumi’s body, can copy and analyze every technique… Even more, thanks to having consumed the mummified remains of his past-life body, once Sukuna fully suppresses Megumi’s soul, he gains authority to remodel the flesh and revert to his true form as the King of Curses: a four-armed, two-mouthed monster.]

[Conversely, Sukuna can summon the tamed Mahoraga through Megumi’s Ten Shadows Technique only while possessing Megumi. Once he becomes the true King of Curses, his physical strength and cursed energy ceiling rise another tier, but he loses the authority to summon Mahoraga.]

Looking at Sukuna’s build, the upperclassmen around her all sucked in a cold breath.

But the shock didn’t cost them their composure.

After all, back in the underclassmen’s Hyperbolic Time Chamber, they’d seen a full-form “Darkness Devil” worth two hundred points with their own eyes.

Compared to that kind of unreasonable, concept-level existence, Sukuna, strong as he was, was at least within what they could accept score-wise.

Tachibana looked away and kept searching on the Controller.

Soon, she pinned down a signal.

“Teacher Gojo really is still alive… and according to the radar, he’s less than five kilometers from us!”

Akane Tachibana’s fine brows knit.

“But if he’s still around, how did this Culling Game even happen?”

“Since the Black Sphere picked him to be our temporary teacher, then even if all that bragging about being ‘the strongest’ is exaggerated, it can’t be this bad, right…?”

Kiriyama Ikuha rubbed his chin and spoke after a moment of thought.

“Whether Teacher Gojo is actually the strongest in this world is still hard to say.”

“In fact… at this point in time, we can’t even be sure he’s the same Teacher Gojo we know.”

“Judging by the personality he showed, if he’d known about the Culling Game, there’s no way he’d have had the leisure to go teach at our school back then.”

“Either way, we at least know Teacher Gojo’s character is decent, and that he’s absolutely on the humans’ side.”

Kiriyama Ikuha looked up at the group.

“In this world, Teacher Gojo’s home turf, the most urgent thing is to find him and confirm the situation.”

“With a local heavyweight on our side, our survival odds will go up a lot.”

Tachibana nodded in agreement.

But she quickly seemed to remember something critical.

“Meeting up with Teacher is fine, but what about the Mysterious Merchant?”

“I checked carefully just now. There’s no special dot for the Mysterious Merchant on the Controller’s radar at all… Don’t tell me she’s actually in the Backrooms right now?”

The more Tachibana thought about it, the more panicked she got.

“Without the Mysterious Merchant supplying us and updating our gear, all those S Points and item points we saved up in earlier exams are worthless!”

“Against a monster on Sukuna’s level, the gear we’ve got now leaves way too little margin for error!”

Beside her, Fujimaki’s expression turned grim as well.

“Not having the Mysterious Merchant… really isn’t good for us.”

His gaze moved to the Phantom Mask on Tachibana’s face.

“Tachibana Senpai, how about… sending your Phantom Legion into the Backrooms to look around?”

“They can travel through shadows, so they can search far more efficiently than we can.”

Tachibana sighed helplessly, but she knew she had no better idea for now.

“In that case, I’ll take some Sumo Khan soldiers and go check out the Backrooms.”

Though she was a little scared, she forced herself to sound calm.

“With the stealth of the Kingdom of Shadows, plus the Imperial Arms [Beast King Transformation] Kiryūin left me as a trump card, I should be able to protect myself even if I run into danger in the Backrooms.”

Kiriyama Ikuha nodded, raising no objection to splitting up.

He reached out and patted Fujimaki on the shoulder.

“Then I’ll take the rest and follow the radar to find Teacher Gojo.”

“There are a lot of human jujutsu sorcerers gathered there. If we can get in touch with them and get their help…”

“Whether it’s finding other stray Intruders or getting intel on Sukuna, that’s good for us either way.”

Meanwhile.

On an unnamed floor of the Backrooms, one reeking of sharp disinfectant, Horikita Manabu’s group was following close behind the armored Skull Knight, who held his Sword of Actuation, moving fast through the dim, oppressive maze of corridors.

They weren’t just blundering around blindly.

As a special being who could travel through the Astral World, Skull Knight seemed to have explored this floor well before they arrived.

With him leading the way, they skipped the tedious process of checking monster intel on the Controller bit by bit and hunting for the other doors.

So the team’s pace was astonishingly quick.

Even when they occasionally ran into Backrooms-native entities like Smilers and Skin-Stealers along the way, those monsters, which preyed on fear and brute force, were mostly no match for Horikita Manabu and the others with their powerful gear.

One look, and they were cut into ash by Ripple-coated Black Sphere Combat Blades, barely an obstacle at all.

Just like that, they soon passed through a hidden, rusted iron door and entered the next Backrooms floor.

The light suddenly dimmed.

Damp mist hung in the air, and jagged rock walls surrounded them, like a giant natural cavern, dark and deep, with barely any light.

“Everyone, watch your step and stay alert.”

Horikita Manabu reminded them in a low voice.

Honestly, if the shadow soldiers hadn’t been scouting ahead and helping them avoid so many hidden traps and forks…

with no lighting and no landmarks, they could easily have wasted a lot of time here.

They might even have slipped up and sent Suzune Horikita and the others straight to the ending where they got returned to the Black Sphere Space.

But even with the Phantom Mask under such heavy use, Suzune Horikita, in the middle of the column, narrowed her phoenix eyes sharply behind her General Niga Mask.

Her steps slowed slightly, and her cool voice rang out in the empty cave.

“Wait.”

“I sense… a familiar presence approaching us.”

She pointed toward the dark passage on the front right.

“On this floor, besides the ninja soldiers I summoned, there are other kinds of shadow soldiers!”

Hearing Suzune Horikita’s warning, Horikita Manabu didn’t hesitate.

He raised his wrist and opened the Controller interface.

His gaze locked onto everything displayed on the 3D map.

As his fingers pinched and swiped across the screen, he soon spotted a green dot, marking an ally, in front of a faintly glowing door not too far from them.

He tapped it open.

The name that popped up on the screen sent a complicated look through Horikita Manabu’s eyes.

“Akane Tachibana…”

But the faint joy of seeing an old acquaintance didn’t even last half a second on his face.

Horikita Manabu’s expression suddenly changed.

Because, almost the very instant he’d opened the Controller!

A red dot on the screen was rushing toward their position.

As if ignoring spatial barriers altogether, it appeared before them almost like a teleport!

“Alert!!!”

Horikita Manabu roared.

In the darkness at the far end of the passage.

A petite figure slowly emerged.

She had the face of an ordinary human girl, but mechanical wings on her back, and her eyes held little life.

And in her hand, she was carrying an adult man who was deep in a coma.

Skull Knight wasted no words, drawing the Sword of Actuation with a backhand flick and pointing it at the newcomer.

Behind him, Amikura Mako, Kei Karuizawa, and the rest, startled by the sudden turn of events, braced for battle.

Because they knew the monster that had appeared before them!

It was the high-score race they’d run into in a previous world: the Ex-machina!

Skull Knight coming along with them to the Backrooms, even guiding them, proved that different anomalies could cross between worlds.

But an Ex-machina actually chasing them all the way into the Backrooms was honestly a bit too terrifying.

Still, to everyone’s surprise.

This Ex-machina girl showed no intent to attack.

She simply stopped, expressionless, five meters from the group.

She let go and set the unconscious man on the ground.

Then Shuvi tilted her head.

“Inquiry. Organizing information…”

“Information confirmed. A distinct scent exists on the individuals present, highly similar to the pheromone signature retrieved on the Disboard.”

She pointed at the man on the ground, as if offering them a trade.

“Determination: you are special observation targets.”

“Request… to exchange this member of your species for temporary observation rights over you.”

Hearing those stiff, halting words, the group exchanged glances, and their tight nerves didn’t loosen one bit.

The Controller’s entry on the Ex-machina from earlier had clearly noted that this was a race with very little intent to attack on its own.

On top of that, if one Ex-machina had found a way into the Backrooms, it likely meant hundreds or thousands more could pour in behind her, flooding the floors.

Suzune Horikita, Amikura Mako, Kei Karuizawa and the rest were only here for the test, and the moment time ran out they’d be teleported away.

They naturally weren’t stupid enough to pick a fight now and needlessly land Horikita Manabu, who still had to stay in this world gathering intel, with a swarm of mechanical monsters scoring over a hundred points each, ones that, in large enough numbers, could pile up and kill even gods.

Amasawa Ichika was one of the quickest minds in the group.

She immediately raised a hand to stop Kei Karuizawa, who was tense and about to ask a question.

The red-haired girl stepped half a pace forward, put on a sweet, harmless smile, and offered:

“Oh my, so you want to observe us~”

“If you don’t mean us any harm, we really don’t mind having an inquisitive companion along.”

Amasawa Ichika’s eyes flicked, and she coaxed gently.

“Since you were able to track us from your world all the way into the Backrooms, you must know a thing or two about this endless space.”

“I believe that when it comes to exploring the unknown, there’s no need for us to be enemies.”

She shifted gears, her tone turning earnest.

“But we’re really pressed for time right now. We have to find our companions who got separated ahead of us.”

“So before we reach an observation agreement… could you please step aside for a moment and not block our way?”

Shuvi tilted her head again at that.

Her eyes flickered, as if weighing whether to agree.

A few seconds later.

She turned and looked straight at the spot on the map where Akane Tachibana and her Sumo Khan were.

“Same-origin pheromone detected. Same species confirmed.”

Shuvi looked back at Amasawa Ichika.

“Determination: the units ahead are the companions you seek.”

“To fulfill the necessity of the observation trade, is assistance from the Ex-machina required?”

“This unit can warp through ‘Accelerator.'”

“Accelerator?” Amasawa Ichika frowned.

Why did that name sound so familiar, and so ridiculously edgy?

Shuvi turned her head back.

Behind her, a faintly glowing spatial channel took shape.

“‘Accelerator’ is a dimensional jump technique developed by the Ex-machina. Currently, due to the progress of analyzing this place’s rules, the maximum range is only five kilometers. Mobility rating: insufficient.”

“Once analysis yields more advanced skills, system replacement will occur.”

When she finished, everyone present, none of whom had any decent spatial skill of their own, clicked their tongues inwardly.

Still, tempting as the offer sounded, Amikura Mako, who had kept plenty of caution, didn’t agree right away.

She turned to look at Skull Knight, who had been shielding them all along.

She wanted to see whether this veteran guide, who also had spatial abilities, had any better idea or advice.

Skull Knight just poured cold water on it, plain and blunt.

“My Sword of Actuation is forged from Behelit, which is closely tied to the Astral World.”

“In this alternate space, where the very concept of the Astral World has been stripped away, it can only manage short-range blink strikes, not ultra-long-distance leaps that ignore obstacles.”

Hearing Skull Knight’s candid answer, Amasawa Ichika stroked her chin and ran a quick calculation in her head.

Given the Ex-machina’s baseline setting of “never counterattacks unless attacked,” the other side had no need to set a trap and trick them over something like this.

Time wasn’t waiting for anyone.

Now that they’d met the upperclassman examinees, the most urgent thing was to deliver Horikita Manabu to his camp as soon as possible and return the upperclassmen’s items while they were at it.

With that in mind, Amasawa Ichika turned to the others and laid out her whole analysis.

Some of them felt that turning their backs on an unknown monster was a bit of a gamble.

They could easily get there safely using Suzune Horikita’s Kingdom of Shadows, or by slipping through the Mirror World.

But accepting the Ex-machina had clear benefits too.

If they struck a cooperation deal, it would be like Horikita Manabu’s group getting, for free in the Backrooms, a top-quality intel source linked to the entire Ex-machina database, with numbers starting at four digits at least!

The temptation was simply too great!

So, after a brief hesitation.

The minority yielded to the majority, and everyone finally decided to grit their teeth and take the gamble.

Meanwhile, a few kilometers away from them, in front of a Backrooms door.

Akane Tachibana had finally worked up the courage to lead the Sumo Khan into this floor, where you could hardly see your hand in front of your face.

To say she wasn’t scared would be an absolute lie.

The surroundings were deathly silent, with nothing but her own heartbeat pounding in her eardrums like a war drum.

Fortunately, the Imperial Arms [Beast King Transformation] that Fūka Kiryūin had lent her gave her extremely strong senses, and with troll soldiers ready at any moment to drag her into the Kingdom of Shadows, she had just enough nerve to keep moving forward.

But the sense of safety she’d barely managed to build.

Vanished in an instant when the space in front of her suddenly warped and a rift tore open out of nowhere!

“Who’s there?!”

Tachibana’s eyes sharpened, and she raised a hand in a combat stance.

In truth, she had already given the order in her mind, ready to have the troll soldiers take her into the Kingdom of Shadows to escape.

But in the half second before she dove into the shadows.

A dozen or so shadow ninjas of all different shapes suddenly surfaced, without any warning, from the shadows around the rift!

They squared off against the troll soldiers guarding her.

“This… this is?”

She didn’t know why shadow soldiers would show up in a monster nest like this, but Tachibana’s memory wasn’t so bad that she’d make a mistake.

She recognized at a glance that these shadow soldiers corresponded to the Niga Mask, Razor Mask, and Bart Mask held by the underclassmen!

“Could it be them?”

After a quick weighing of the odds in her mind, Tachibana put aside the thought of running.

Two seconds later.

Out of the spatial rift, Skull Knight stepped out first, riding a tall ghostly warhorse.

Right behind him, Amikura Mako, Kei Karuizawa, and the others in the familiar Advanced Nurturing High School uniforms came into view one after another.

Only then did the heart Tachibana had been holding in her throat finally settle back in her chest.

“Phew… you scared me to death.”

She’d thought she had run into a boss…

Then her gaze drifted over and landed on the very back of the crowd.

And she caught, unsurprisingly, the bespectacled man with the steady air about him…

The man she’d longed for day and night, the very source of everything she’d fought for.

Now that she was actually seeing Horikita Manabu, Tachibana instinctively turned her head away, avoiding his gaze.

It wasn’t because she felt ashamed of the snarling Phantom Mask on her face.

It was because… deep down, the girl felt a profound shame over her earlier “change of heart” and “wavering.”

That guilt of having betrayed her original resolve left her wanting to crawl into a hole when facing Horikita Manabu.

Fortunately, though the Phantom Mask amplified the darkness inside her, it now made the perfect cover.

She could blame this awkward feeling entirely on the mask’s darkening side effect.

Of course, in a time-pressed situation like this, everyone’s nerves were taut.

Apart from Chris, up in the god’s-eye view, watching Tachibana’s little awkward feelings with great interest, nobody probed into her small change.

“Senpai.”

Amikura Mako spoke up, breaking the silence as she watched Tachibana.

“Was your test this time in the Backrooms too?”

Tachibana came back to herself and shook her head to explain.

“No… our test arena this time is Teacher Gojo’s world.”

“The only reason I’m here is that we couldn’t find the Mysterious Merchant’s location even with the Controller.”

“I happened to spot a door leading to the Backrooms, and as a long shot, I came in to try my luck.”

Horikita Manabu pushed up his glasses, his gaze resting on Shuvi for a moment, and said thoughtfully:

“In that case, take us to your test arena first.”

“By Black Sphere rules, you should still have quite a few S Points left over from the last exam that you haven’t spent, right?”

Unless they were at their wits’ end, or like Ryuuen had already settled on the direction of his future upgrades.

Otherwise, keeping a portion of your S Points in hand was the wise move.

Waiting for the Mysterious Merchant to refresh stronger, better-matched items in the new exam was the optimal play.

Tachibana nodded without wasting any words.

She turned, and with the troll soldiers clearing the way, led everyone toward the door to the Jujutsu world she had left not long before.

…

The Jujutsu world.

Thanks to Gojo Satoru having once taught for a while at Advanced Nurturing High School.

When he noticed clumps of shadows suddenly beginning to squirm around him, and several humanoid shapes starting to rise out of them.

He used the observation power of his Six Eyes.

Gojo Satoru compared the faint cursed energy coming off those shadows against what he remembered.

He just kept his hands in his pockets, making no move against these uninvited Advanced Nurturing High School students.

But Yuji Itadori and Yuta Okkotsu, standing beside him, braced as if facing a mortal enemy.

The two instantly dropped into fighting stances.

After all, Itadori had seen that pretty girly guy next to Sukuna with his own eyes!

At a critical moment like this, right before the final battle, who knew whether these strange shadows were some sneaky trick arranged by Uraume or Sukuna, purely to wear down Teacher Gojo’s stamina!

Seeing his two students on edge like that.

Gojo Satoru waved a hand, amused, and pulled off his blindfold, revealing eyes as brilliant as a starry sky, the Six Eyes of the heavens.

“Yuji, Yuta.”

“No need to be so tense. Relax, these are all those adorable students I taught back when I was working odd jobs in another world!”

He kept his hands in his pockets and boasted lightly.

“That Ki technique I gave you guys to train with… that’s the ‘teacher benefit’ their world gave me~”

“But…”

Gojo Satoru’s lively voice suddenly caught slightly.

He lifted his head, as if looking at something that didn’t exist in this dimension.

“I really didn’t expect it. After not calling me over to teach for so long, the Black Sphere would go and make a call on its own and turn the very world I live in into a training dungeon for you guys?”

“Looks like I’ve really been underestimated!”

Kiriyama Ikuha, who had just stepped out of the shadows, heard this and came forward to explain respectfully.

“Teacher Gojo, on our side… it’s only been two days since you left Advanced Nurturing High School.”

“In other words, by our calendar, today is Sunday…”

“If nothing goes wrong, by the time our exam ends tomorrow, we’d probably go straight into the extra lessons you promised us.”

Kiriyama Ikuha paused, then continued.

“It’s just that, from the look of things now, the time flow between our two worlds… doesn’t seem to be fully in sync.”

Gojo Satoru, hearing this, said “Oh?” with great interest.

“I see. So it works like that?”

“Two days for over half a month… now that’s an interesting setup.”

Beside them, Yuji Itadori took a deep breath.

He reined in his cursed energy and looked at these visitors from another world with a completely serious face.

“So, what you’re saying is, you came this time… specifically to help us deal with Sukuna?”

Kiriyama Ikuha nodded, then shook his head, explaining with a wry smile.

“Rather than helping you…”

“It’s more that this is a mission the Black Sphere system forced on us.”

“If we can’t take him out and clear it… we really will die.”

Gojo Satoru burst into laughter.

He stepped forward and slapped Kiriyama Ikuha hard on the shoulder.

“Relax!”

“With your teacher here, it’s all good! You’ve got nothing to be afraid of!”

“Because your teacher is the invincible strongest!”

Gojo Satoru’s smile faded, and he turned an icy gaze toward the center of Shinjuku.

“Before, I was tied up by some boring little accident, which let those rabble hiding in the gutter drag out their lives until today.”

“But now, that ends.”

“Since you guys are here, today I’ll let you see with your own eyes how I put a final end to this farce!”

But then.

Before Gojo Satoru’s confident words had even finished echoing.

“Hmmm—”

A deep-blue spatial array formed beside them.

Horikita Manabu’s group, using the Ex-machina’s [Accelerator], leapt straight out of midair and landed steadily in the area.

It was lucky, too, that they were out on open ruins.

Otherwise, with this many people suddenly pouring in, they might not even have fit in a small room.

Gojo Satoru narrowed his eyes slightly and looked over at the group of students who had popped out of nowhere, his mind full of questions.

“Oh? Why are you underclassmen here too, Amikura, Nanase Tsubasa?”

“Did you get dragged in as Intruders?”

He shrugged helplessly and teased.

“Rotten luck, running into a bloodbath like this… but lucky for you, your teacher’s here!”

“Just hide behind me and enjoy the show!”

Amikura Mako, the one he’d called out, was in fact just as lost.

By rights, once they’d accompanied Horikita Manabu to find Tachibana, entered this Jujutsu world, and finished handing over the items…

they, who had come only to deliver things, should have run out of test time long ago and been sent back to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber by the Black Sphere!

So why were they still standing here, perfectly fine?!

Unable to work it out, Amikura Mako decided to raise her wrist and ask the system directly through her Black Sphere Watch.

But someone reacted faster than she did.

Hayasaka Ai, brow furrowed just the same, asked the void directly.

“Our exam time clearly ran out. Why haven’t we been teleported back to the Black Sphere Space?”

“Is something wrong with this world? Gantz.”

Before long, the Black Sphere’s usual cold, mechanical voice appeared together with its interface.

[This is not a malfunction.]

[The initiator of the Culling Game, Kenjaku (Suguru Geto), used the game’s rules to add a rule changing the Culling Game’s final termination condition to:]

[The game can end only when every Player other than Suguru Geto and Megumi has died.]

[As outsiders with cursed energy in your bodies, you were automatically classified as ‘Players’ the instant you entered this barrier.]

“So… we’ve been forcibly bound by this world’s rules, which basically means we got dragged into another extra test we can’t escape?”

Shiraishi Asuka propped her chin on one hand and thought it over calmly.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka paid no attention to the formalities.

“Now that it’s come to this, digging into the cause is pointless.”

“We should accept reality as soon as possible.”

He cut straight to the heart of the matter.

“Gantz, since our original test time has already ended…”

“then on the principle of fairness, the clear rewards we’re owed, the S Points, and even the Mysterious Merchant’s shop refresh should be settled with us as promised by now, shouldn’t they?”

“These are two separate tests, so by rights they should refresh accordingly.”

Faced with Ayanokōji’s challenge, the Black Sphere system didn’t make things difficult for him.

[Your advance test has indeed ended, and the distribution of rewards is only proper.]

[The winners of your advance test are: Chris, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, Ryuuen, Honami Ichinose.]

[S Points have been credited to your accounts, and the Mystery Shop has been refreshed.]

[Please… spend freely.]