Chapter 225: The Cruel and Sinful World

Ishiki opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by darkness.

His body soon finished forming itself into reality from motes of light and then he noticed the room around him in more details.

There was a single streak of light coming from a half lidded window on one side of the room.

The air here confirmed the fact that this place has not been opened for a very very long time. It was thick, rusty and heavy. He found himself in a sitting position, but there was no chair beneath him… he barely saved himself from falling down.

Ishiki straightened his back and activated [Ghost Blade]. His perception expanded outward, the extended map of the room formed into his mind.

The room was old and long-abandoned, sealed on multiple sides with concrete and tile. Apart from that… it was completely empty.

’This… this is the school building.’

Ishiki remembered that they all had sat down in a room in the school at that time, which acted as a camp.

Three other presences resolved into reality around him — motes of their own blue light completing their own formations. He identified them by their positions and their shapes before any of them could speak.

Just besides him was Kenji… whose body had not yet completely formed.

Yuk’s body was forming near the center of the room, where she had been sited when they all vanished.

Then there was the broad shouldered man, whose name Ishiki didn’t know… nor did he remember. He had survived as well.

Out of the original 10 who sat in this room, only 4 managed to come back.

But that was all something that didn’t matter to Ishiki right now. All that he was looking at was Kenji.

He didn’t think, there was nothing to think actually. The decision had already been made.

His body turned with superhuman precision and his fist hit Kenji, square in the face… the force was all his level 26 physique could exclude and that was not something to scoff at.

The sound of the impact was extraordinary and satisfying.

The other guy didn’t have time to react when the fist hit him… Kenji’s body went flying through the air and through the wall at the back of the room.

He hit the wall made up of concrete blocks that had been aging for decades, weakened by time and moisture. The wall came apart on contract and sunlight flooded in.

Ishiki’s eyes slammed shut involuntarily. His arm came up over his face as he stood at the edge of the broken wall and felt the sunlight on his skin.

’When was the last time I felt the sun.’

The feeling of being under a real sun, Ishiki had experienced it for the first time after he completed his Trial… and now, it felt like he was experiencing it for the first time again.

He lowered his arm and opened his eyes, slowly, letting them adjust.

Outside was the ruin of the town he had grown up in. But he didn’t see much of it… some distance away, Kenji was getting up.

His body had been restored by the system during the transaction as well, but his left arm was still that demonic black and his eyes was a golden slit.

He turned and saw Ishiki at the broken wall.

Ishiki closed the distance with his inhumane speed.

Kenji backed away and his back found the wall before he meant it to… the great barrier wall, the one that rose meters at the edge of the mainland, the massive construction that had been built against the rising water levels.

Kenji didn’t realize they were this close to the wall and now his back was against it and Ishiki was in front of him, there was nowhere left for Kenji to go.

Ishiki closed the distance and punched him again — twice, thrice and then once more.

Kenji absorbed the impacts, but not without damage, blood trickled off his nose and mouth, his head snapping with each contact.

His left demonic arm came up and it hit Ishiki in the chest, pushing him back, but he landed and stayed on his feet.

Kenji straightened and wiped blood from his mouth with his right hand.

“What are you doing, Ishiki.” His voice was rough. “Have you lost your mind?”

The question landed wrong.

Ishiki felt the rage move through him like current through a wire.

“What do you mean have I lost my mind?” His voice came out strange, lower than he intended, tighter and dangerous. “You lost yours. You absolute fucker. You want to stand there and ask me that? After everything? Answer me. Why. Why did you do all of it… Why any of it.”

Kenji was quiet for a moment.

The blood continued down from his nose. The sunlight fell on both of them equally and indifferently.

“I did it,” Kenji said, “to bring Akari back.”

“That’s not—”

“I am not wrong,” Kenji yelled back through gritted teeth. “I am not wrong.”

“How.” Ishiki’s jaw was locked. “How do you even know she’s dead. There was no contact with the outside world.”

Kenji’s expression changed.

It moved through several things, grief, exhaustion, despair, anger and finally settled at disgust. But it was not directed at Ishiki, in fact it was not directed at anyone particular.

“The ring,” Kenji said.

Ishiki went still.

“Do you remember the ring I showed you… before the Scenario.” Kenji’s voice had changed too, the flatness was gone, replaced by something that had been compressed for a very long time and was now being let out through a very small opening. “I gave Akari that ring before we were separated. It was a Vestige. A Vestige that lets you know what the person wearing it was going through.”

He paused and covered his face with his left arm. The corruption seemed to be reacting to his mental state and grew stronger, taking hold of his body.

“She… she was raped by ten people.” He started. “She was left alone In a corner of a room. And she—” He stopped. “She could not live anymore. With what had happened… she could not find a reason to continue existing after that and so she—”

He didn’t finish it… he didn’t need to. Everything he had said already was an explanation enough.

Ishiki stood in the sunlight in the ruins of a dead city and heard what Kenji was not saying and understood what it meant, but it did not change anything that needed changing.

He understood it. He absorbed it. He let it be what it was.

But at the end, it did not bring Nina back… he could not understand what any of it had anything to do with that little girl.

In that moment of silence, Kenji moved.

He dug his left hand’s fingers which had turned into talons into the wall and used it to propel himself upwards and landed at the top of the wall.

Silhouetted against a sky that was too blue and too large, he looked down.

“I never did any wrong to anyone.” His voice carried down clearly. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to anyone. Tell me, was it my fault? Was it my fault that I loved someone?”

“This world,” Kenji said, and now his voice had something in it that was not rage or grief. “is cruel and indifferent to its own sins. What it has taken from us it will not return. What it has done to people who deserved better it will not account for.”

He looked down at Ishiki one last time.

“I will change it. I will change what humanity is and I will make sure that people cannot simply— take, ruin, and walk away. The system will have some way to defy death… I will bring her back.”

“You fool!” The word tore out of Ishiki before he chose it.

He moved toward the wall, he knew he could reach him easily. But he stopped as he heard footsteps behind him.

Not just footsteps, he heard the sound of something approaching them from air.

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