Chapter 6: For Some Reason, It’s the School Invasion Cliché

It was the morning of the next day, Tuesday.

Mutsuko wasn’t at the Sakaki breakfast table once again, though that was more or less as expected.

It would probably be awkward for her to come back, considering the circumstances...

Yuichi headed for school and met up with Aiko on the way. They arrived at the classroom together as usual.

They got through morning classes without anything unusual happening. Then during lunch break, Yuichi headed for the roof.

There were a few other people there eating lunch. Yuichi headed to one corner where two young women stood waiting for him. One was Furu Shinomiya.

“Yuichi Sakaki! How could you leave your harem master in such peril? And hanging up without warning? Such impudence is unacceptable in a retainer!” The other one was Chiharu Dannoura.

This slender girl, who carried a large instrument case, was the heir to Dannoura Style Archery. She had been quite overweight before, but she had lost it all abruptly and seemed to be keeping it off.

“So, how’d things go after that?” Yuichi asked.

“Ah. I threw the eyeball at them in desperation, and they left. I proceeded to enjoy the rest of my night zoo tour, and then I went home.”

“You should have gone right home... you never know what might happen,” Yuichi said. Chiharu’s confidence made Yuichi think he shouldn’t have worried about her from the start. “Anyway, that means all the Divine Vessels are in the hands of this guy named Rokuhara.”

Yuichi went on to tell Furu everything that had happened yesterday.

“I see,” Furu said. “I’ve already sent word about the Evil God, and they said they’d dispatch their strongest forces, so I think it should work out. I doubt there’s anything else for us to do.”

Furu sounded extremely blasé about it. She must have had absolute faith in these “strongest forces.”

“Any hints about the ‘sacred territory’?” Yuichi said. “He said it was at the school...”

If there were specialists, he should leave it to them; there was a good chance that an amateur like Yuichi getting involved would probably just make things worse. Still, he had his doubts that this would end without his involvement as long as Mutsuko was working with Ende to defeat him.

“Sacred territory, huh?” Furu mused. “I don’t know its location exactly, but there probably is one here... Remember the specter invasion before? They had to be coming from somewhere nearby, which means there’s probably a passage to another dimension somewhere in this school.”

“Oh, so that’s it...” Yuichi had had an inkling that might be it since he’d first heard talk about the so-called sacred territory.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you should leave the rest to us,” Furu said, then left.

Yuichi approached the fence. Chiharu accompanied him, even though he had no further business with her.

Yuichi had previously jumped from here to enter that classroom from the outside. Inside, for some reason, it was like another world, with a classroom made of wood, and burn marks everywhere. You couldn’t get there through normal means. You had to fall and go in through the window.

The classroom within had been full of specters. He had defeated a lot of them, but probably not all of them. When it came right down to it, he wasn’t sure if he could fight specters without Soul Reader.

“Heya, Yuichi!” a cheery voice addressed him from behind.

He turned around to see a translucent image of a girl waving to him cheerfully.

“Why can I see you?” Yuichi asked.

It was the specter Chie Amatsu. She had led the specter invasion of Seishin High, and even after it’d been resolved, she had apparently failed to move on, so now she just hung around the school.

Yuichi had assumed Soul Reader was the reason he could see the ghosts, but it seemed it was unrelated.

“I’m starting to think that losing Soul Reader hasn’t changed anything at all...” Yuichi muttered, beginning to feel extremely depressed about his future.

“Indeed, I can see her, too,” Chiharu declared. “But of course I can! I am who I am!”

If Chiharu could see her too, then it seemed that once you could see them, you couldn’t stop.

“What’s the matter?” Yuichi asked.

“Nothing. Hey, Amatsu, you lived in the world below for a while, right? What were things like in there? I only got to see what was inside the classroom.”

“I couldn’t go in very far in, either... It felt pretty dangerous.”

“I see,” Yuichi said. “I’d like to have a look, but I probably shouldn’t go right this instant.”

He did want to investigate a little bit, but he couldn’t just go jumping off a building in broad daylight.

“Want me to check it out instead?” Chie asked.

“Sure. It would at least be helpful to know if someone else was there.”

Chie climbed up the fence and fell down. After a while, she returned, walking up from the staircase to the roof.

“I guess you can’t fly, huh?” Yuichi asked.

“It looked pretty much the same as usual. I think there would at least be footprints if someone had gone in.”

Yuichi remembered the floor, which had been piled high with dust. Fresh footprints would have been immediately obvious.

Still, it was a strange world with bizarre rules about how you could get into it. There might yet be another entrance somewhere.

“Should I wait until after class?” he wondered.

Perhaps he should go now, regardless. But to do that would probably destroy Yuichi’s daily life. Skipping class to save the world was crazy, in Yuichi’s opinion.

“You leave me no choice,” Chiharu declared. “I shall accompany you!”

“I’d like to say ‘don’t bother,’ but you do tend to be pretty useful...” Yuichi muttered. Chiharu could be annoying in a lot of ways, but she was also pretty capable.

“Indeed I do, indeed I do!”

Still, the way she pushed her luck every time was extremely tiresome.

Yuichi decided to go back to the classroom.

As afternoon classes went by, thoughts drifted through Yuichi’s mind over what to do next.

All the Divine Vessels were in one place now, which meant the Evil God’s revival was probably imminent. They would probably act either today or tomorrow.

The revival of an evil god seemed like a pretty bad thing, and it certainly had to be stopped. But he didn’t know what the monster hunter specialists had planned, so his best course of action for now was to watch and act based on how things unfolded. At any rate, he wanted to find out what was going on in the sacred territory.

Just as he was thinking that, there was a commotion among the students sitting by the window.

“Hey! You guys need to settle down! Did you forget you’re in high school?” Hanako Nodayama, who was holding class at the moment, yelled at them.

“Teacher! We know, but something weird’s going on! Look!”

“Huh? It’s just a dog running around on school grounds! I’ll beat you black, and — oh, that is unexpected...”

Hanako approached with the air of one taking up a challenge, but returned to her lectern looking surprised.

“Hey, is one of you guys making your middle school daydreams reality or something?”

“Teacher, the rest of us have no clue what’s going on,” Shota, the student sitting in front of Yuichi, asked. “Could you fill us in?”

“Okay! It’d be a pain in the ass to try to explain, so anyone who wants to look out the window, just go ahead and do it. I give permission!”

The students all crowded to the window.

Yuichi joined them, looking outside.

From here, the athletic fields were visible. There were tanks rolling in, coming in from the athletic field-side entrance. The students and teachers who’d been having gym class on the field were scattering in their wake.

“Huh? What’s going on here?” a student shouted.

“Are they filming a movie?” another cried.

“Wouldn’t they have told us in advance?”

“You don’t think... terrorists?”

“No, no way. Why would they come after our school? It makes no sense!”

The students all seemed at a loss as to what was going on or what to do.

People got out of the tanks. They were men dressed in black kimonos with shaved heads. In other words, monks. As they watched, a number of the monks moved to block off the entrance.

The classroom was filled with confusion. Suddenly, the door banged open, and everyone went silent. A monk entered. He was carrying a clipboard.

The monks on the ground wouldn’t have been able to get here that fast, so he must have come from somewhere else.

“Okay, everyone! Please return to your seats and raise your hands! Let’s have full cooperation, here!” Hanako barked. It seemed like she was acting out of self-preservation, but in this case, that was probably the right move. There would be no telling what might happen if they broke out in a panic.

The students must have trusted Hanako more or less, as they did as they were told and held up their hands. Yuichi did the same.

“Ah, good to see you all so understanding.” The monk smiled as he walked up to the lectern.

Hanako quickly left the lectern to him and moved to a corner of the classroom.

“As you may know from looking outside, we are attempting to seal off this school. Ah, you’re probably tired from holding up your hands. Feel free to lower them.”

The students did as they were told.

The monk produced an ID from his front pocket and showed it to them. He was probably trying to authenticate his position, but the people in the class had no way of knowing if it was real.

“We’re officers of the peace. That means we work with the police. We deal with very specialized subjects, and we’ve been authorized to come here and deal with a situation in progress by any means necessary.”

He seemed to be trying to be reassure them, but Yuichi wasn’t buying it. He couldn’t be sure he really was with the law. He just looked like a monk in a black kimono with a shaved head.

“A terribly violent armed serial killer is inside the school right now, so we need you to stay in your classroom. As long as you stay in here, you should be safe.”

What’s going on? Is Sis behind this, too? Yuichi thought. At the moment, he had no way of knowing if they were connected. But he had an uneasy feeling about this.

Only one of the monks had come in, but he could sense a number of them out in the hall. He didn’t know why, but it did seem like they were trying to seal the students in their rooms.

Yuichi studied the monk.

He seemed like he knew martial arts, and judging from his center of balance, he was probably hiding a weapon in his kimono’s breast pocket. He was smiling placidly, but it seemed to be no more than a mask; he radiated irritation, as if he’d been tasked with a job he felt was beneath him.

It would be hard to neutralize him from where I am. Though from Takeuchi’s seat, maybe...

Yuichi’s seat was near the back, while Natsuki’s was in the front row. She could probably take him out, but she probably would want to avoid making trouble in front of their classmates.

Well, I don’t want to come off like a freak, either...

Still, Yuichi couldn’t sit back and watch his classmates get hurt, if it came to that.

But even if I beat him, someone else might come in...

Just beating them all might not be that difficult, but the difficulty level would spike with the added factor of having to protect his classmates.

“Excuse me! What about bathroom breaks?” a girl in the first row asked. Yuichi hadn’t talked to her often, but she was a girl named Risa Ayanokoji who appeared to be from a rather wealthy family.

“I’m not taking questions, but I’ll make an exception for this one,” the monk said. “As I said before, our only request is that you do not leave this room.”

“Huh? But then...”

It seemed they weren’t even going to let them go to the bathroom. Apparently feeling like this answered the question, the monk checked the clipboard he was holding.

“Also: this is not a request, but a notification. Yuri Konishi, you are to leave this instant. Your family is waiting for you.”

“Excuse me? What does that mean?” Yuri seemed surprised to hear her name called.

“I told you to go home right now.” He didn’t seem to want to explain any more than that, but of course, no one was going to accept this without question.

“This is ridiculous! Why is it we can’t go to the bathroom, but Konishi can go home?” Ayanokoji complained.

The rest of the students burst out in similar complaints.

“Yeah! This is ridiculous!”

“An officer of the peace is like a cop, right? Just catch the criminal already!”

“And if you can’t catch them, just send us home with bodyguards!”

Just then, the monk’s attitude did a complete 180. “Shut the hell up, you brats! I told you to stay here! You can piss your pants if you need to!”

The monk reached for his breast pocket.

Yuichi sprung into action.

Fortunately, since they were in class, he had a number of objects in his desk that could be used as weapons. He threw the tactical pen he’d been using as a writing tool.

Just as the monk was pulling out a pistol, the pen struck him in the elbow. It was heavier and sturdier than a normal pen, and thrown with strength like Yuichi’s, there was no way it wouldn’t be debilitating.

The monk’s face contorted in pain and he was forced to drop the gun.

Then another of the boys took action.

He hit the monk against the blackboard, ran up to him, and thrust a fist into his solar plexus. The monk let out a short groan, then collapsed.

“Nice one, Kogan!” the boy’s friend called. “Is that Kogan Style?”

“Yeah, right. It’s called Yanagisawa Style.”

The boy who had defeated the monk was named Kogan Yanagisawa, and the praise had come from a friend of his.

Is that cun jin? Maybe more like an old-fashioned atemi...

Kogan cast a glance at Yuichi. Even though Yuichi had been holding back, he may have noticed what he’d done.

“Well, we beat him, but what do we do now? The others outside will probably notice soon,” Natsuki pointed out cool-headedly.

“I’m not sure what to do in a situation like this...” Hanako murmured, seemingly trying to escape responsibility.

“Leave it to me, okay?” The speaker was An Katagiri, who rose. She was the girl who had had the label “Witch” when he’d first looked at her with Soul Reader. “Sakaki, could you join me for a moment?”

“Why me?” Yuichi approached the lectern as he was called.

“His robe is likely a magic ward,” An muttered to him. “It’ll be hard to cast spells while he’s wearing it, so could you take it off for me?”

She had apparently chosen Yuichi thinking he’d be the type to follow orders.

“Fine. But why can’t you touch magic wards?” He was reminded of how Aiko was weak against Buddhist sutras.

He removed the monk’s kimono, stripping him down to his underwear. An crouched next to him and grabbed the monk’s head in both hands. Suddenly, the monk’s eyes snapped open, and he began murmuring something.

Wow, she really is scary!

“That should do it,” she said.

“How are we gonna explain this to the others in the class?”

“Just tell them I persuaded him to assist us.”

“I doubt that’ll work.”

The monk put his robe back on, stood, and wandered out of the classroom, swaying on his feet. There was no sound of commotion outside, so it seemed it must have worked.

“Wow! Katagiri cast a spell on him or something!” Shota shouted. The other classmates seemed to find this plausible, so that was one problem solved.

But we probably still can’t leave the classroom... The others are still on watch outside. They’d solved the immediate problem, but the fundamental issue hadn’t changed.

Yuichi approached Yuri. “You were told to go home earlier. Any idea what that was about?”

“No, none at all. But if they are officers of the peace, it was probably out of consideration for my family situation.”

“Hmm, but in that case, wouldn’t you be okay if you followed the order not to leave the classroom?”

They couldn’t necessarily trust the monk even if he was a real officer of the peace, but it seemed like their main priority was not having any students wandering the halls.

“Hey,” Yuichi murmured to her. “Could you get people to wait here for just an hour or so? You could say there may really be a killer on the loose, so it’s best if nobody leaves, or something.”

The class trusted Yuri a great deal, so Yuichi thought she could probably keep them under control, at least for a while.

“Certainly, but what will you do?”

“I’m going to investigate.”

Yuri stood up at the lectern and began to speak.

With all attention on her for now, Yuichi moved unobtrusively to the back of the classroom and glanced out the window to check the situation outside. There was a line of tanks on the athletic field, but not many people.

Aiko walked up to him and began pressing him for information. “Sakaki! What’s going on? Did you do this?”

“Why would you assume I’m the one behind it?” Yuichi scratched his head idly.

“So it has nothing to do with you?”

“It might, actually, which is why I’m gonna go check.” Yuichi pulled out his smartphone to try to call Furu Shinomiya. They’d been visited by a monk with a magic-warding kimono, so Yuichi suspected he might be connected to the monster hunters.

But his smartphone had no signal.

“Must be jamming them or something...”

“Ah, you’re right.” Aiko checked her own phone.

“Nothing to be done about it. I’m gonna head out for a bit.” Yuichi returned briefly to his seat and scavenged his bag for whatever might be useful.

“Where are you going?” Aiko asked, having followed, curious about what he was doing.

“The next class over. There’s a girl called Furu Shinomiya there. She may know something.”

“Huh? But you can’t get out, can you?”

“Not through the door, no.” Yuichi approached the window and opened it.

“Huh?! ...Actually, I guess this is what I’d expect from you...” Aiko seemed surprised at first, but moved immediately to acceptance.

He checked the athletic field again. They must have completely secured the area, because there were no monks there now.

Yuichi climbed out the window and steadied himself with finger strength alone. Then he jumped to the next classroom over, grabbed the windowsill, and stabilized himself again.

He peered into the classroom. Inside there were only the students and the teacher.

They seemed a little rattled, so the monk must have just finished his explanation.

Yuichi checked inside the classroom, but Furu wasn’t there.

If she was working with them, did they take her out somewhere?

He wondered what he should do. If this situation was related to the Evil God, his best move would be to head for the sacred territory, so he decided to move toward the roof.

There were plenty of handholds on the school’s exterior walls, including pipes, making it easy for someone with Yuichi’s prowess to climb, with the only snag being the lip around the edge of the roof.

Yuichi poked his head over the edge to size up the situation.

There was a large crowd of people there. It wasn’t just Buddhist monks; there was a diverse crowd of people in religious attire.

A large altar-like object had also been assembled on the roof. Yuichi couldn’t make out all the details, but the monks seemed to be moving restlessly around it.

The other thing that stood out was that part of the fence had been cut open, and an escape chute attached to it. The cloth tunnel was linking the roof to a window on the second floor.

He wondered why they couldn’t just set up a ladder from below, but maybe it didn’t work that way. Maybe you couldn’t reach the sacred territory unless you came at it from above.

The monks were piling into the escape chute one after another.

Are these the Evil God specialists?

If so, Yuichi didn’t mind leaving it to them, but he was concerned about the school being locked down like this. About half of the people who had been on the roof had ended up going down in the escape chute. The rest seemed to be preparing a ritual of some sort.

Yuichi spotted Furu Shinomiya among those still on the roof.

She was standing a ways away from the others, looking a bit like a loose end.

Yuichi slipped onto the roof, silenced his footsteps, and approached Furu from behind.

“Hey,” he addressed her in a low voice.

“Huh?” Furu spun around quickly. “How did you get here? I thought there was strict security all the way up to the roof...”

“Can we talk?”

“All right. Let’s go somewhere they won’t see. I’m not in charge of anything, so they probably won’t notice I’m gone...”

Furu headed to the other side of the stairwell block, and Yuichi followed.

Once they were in a blind spot, Furu bowed to him. “I’m sorry.”

“So this does have something to do with you?”

“It does, in that they are the top-class monster hunters I called to seal the Evil God.”

“So what’s going on?” he asked.

“Um, sealing the Evil God requires a powerful spell, which in turn requires a huge catalyst...”

Yuichi inferred the rest from Furu’s hesitant behavior. “So they’re gonna sacrifice the people in the school? That’s crazy! There are over a thousand people in this school!”

“What else are they supposed to do? A thousand people isn’t much against the entire population of the world...”

It was such a huge issue, he could barely comprehend it. But Furu seemed to believe it, and they clearly were preparing for some kind of big ritual here on the roof.

“So what happens next?” he demanded.

“One group is going to invade the Evil God’s sacred territory. If they can stop it before it’s revived, this all ends without incident. But if it does revive, they’ll use the sealing ritual...”

She probably had no obligation to tell Yuichi this, as an outsider, yet she was being completely honest with him. Perhaps it was guilt.

“Well, he probably will revive,” Yuichi said.

Mutsuko would make sure that would happen. She was probably gleefully playing the villain role right about now. Yuichi could be sure of that.

“This is probably going to be really inconvenient to you, so let me apologize in advance,” he said. He’d just have to enter the sacred territory. Yuichi steeled his resolve and began walking forward.

“Hey, what are you doing? The entrance is heavily guarded!”

“I’m going to force my way through. If they’re willing to kill a thousand people, they can’t complain if I punch them a little.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! They aren’t ordinary monster hunters! An ordinary high school student can’t possibly hope to—”

Furu apparently had no intention of trying to stop him by force, so Yuichi just ignored her and broke into a run. He didn’t want to get reckless about it, but he couldn’t afford to take his time, either.

There were three men standing guard over the chute. They were all wearing monk’s habits, which probably offered defense against magic attacks. They were also holding shakujo, ornate staves topped with brass rings.

Yuichi ran, his footsteps silent. They didn’t even notice him until he was in range.

The nearest monk tried to ready his shakujo, but Yuichi hit him with a forceful kick, hoping to send him flying.

The monk did indeed fly back, hit the other two, and send them sprawling.

Before they could recover, Yuichi dove into the escape tube.

* * * * *

Around that time, Mutsuko was walking around inside the sacred territory with two others.

Yuichi had been right that there were other ways to enter it.

The entrance they had used was available only to one who had collected all the Divine Vessels, and it took less effort to enter than jumping down from the roof.

The entrance was located among the trees in a park close to Seishin High. It would be hard to notice just at a glance.

The three were walking down a wooden hallway that seemed to go on forever. To the right were classrooms; to the left, windows. There seemed to be countless numbers of them.

It looked like Seishin High’s old school building, but there was something odd about the layout.

The hallway kept turning right. It felt like they were walking in circles. It seemed hard to believe that such a structure could exist in reality, which suggested that they were definitely in some sort of alternate dimension.

“Hey! Hey! What are you gonna wish for? I wonder if he can really grant anything! The usual wish is to wish for more wishes, of course!” Mutsuko walked out in front of Hiromichi and peered into his face.

Four drones hovered around her. They were on autopilot, programmed to maintain a certain distance around her at all times.

“My wish... is to... become a god... and destroy all of humanity,” Hiromichi said as he continued moving, stiffly.

It must have been hard for him to walk. His form had been warped, the result of his taking in all of the Divine Vessels.

The instant all the vessels had been collected, they had been absorbed into him, likely to signify that the war had ended and things were moving on to the next stage. He now had four eyes and six arms; he had grown wings and horns and even sensory organs that humans normally didn’t have; his skin was black and scaled.

“What the heck? That’s boring,” Mutsuko said coldly.

It was impressive bravado before the monstrous Hiromichi, whose entire body seemed to writhe.

“I mean, what’s the deal? I know he hates his classmates and all, but it’s a little twisted to try to destroy all of humanity just to get rid of them. Am I right?” Mutsuko added to Ende, the third member of their group.

“The more Divine Vessels he takes on, the more the Evil God encroaches upon his body and mind,” Ende explained. “When you’re in that position, your wish ends up turning into ‘become the Evil God and destroy the world’... which means the pitch isn’t a lie, see?”

“What?! That’s total fraud! It’s a con game!”

They said you could get whatever you wished for, but then they changed your wish. They’d make you want to destroy the world, so that would be all you could wish for. Which meant there was basically no point at all. Monika’s wish to save her friend and Yuichi’s wish to return Soul Reader never would have been granted from the start.

“The Evil God has revived many times before, but the world hasn’t changed that much,” Ende said. “You could have predicted that, don’t you think?”

“Well, fine! Let’s just revive him and see what happens! Come on, chop-chop! If you take too long, you’ll get beaten before you transform!”

“Would you shut up?!” Hiromichi finally exploded.

“Well, look at that!” Mutsuko said triumphantly. “Up ’til now, you’ve been all looming and impressive and talking in a halting tone of voice, but the minute you have a complaint, you suddenly talk normally! So, what about the ritual? Shouldn’t we be doing something special?”

“No. This path is laid out in a spiral, so we’ll just keep walking until we reach the center,” Ende explained. “That’s all it takes. This school building is steeped in long-seated grudges, so we’ll bathe in those as we walk.”

“That’s boring, too! Couldn’t you carve out someone’s heart like the Aztecs did, or light a big bonfire on an altar or something?”

“If that was what it took, it would be your heart that got dug out.”

“By the way, what’s with this school building?” Mutsuko said. “It doesn’t seem like a part of Seishin High...”

“It was a while before your time, but quite a lot of people died here,” Ende answered. “The incident wasn’t made public, but if you’re interested, you can try to read up on it. Knowing you, you could probably uncover it.”

“Assuming you survive,” she added in a whisper.

The three of them continued walking, but the scenery was so monotonous that Mutsuko eventually began to complain again. “I’ve gotta say, I’m getting pretty sick of this. I’m gonna feel like a big idiot if Yu doesn’t come.”

“Yuichi is heading this way right now. Though it may take him quite a while to get here.” Ende had a paperback in her hand that she was reading from. This was Ende’s ability: she could read about all kinds of events, summarized for her in book form.

Obviously the books couldn’t write down literally everything, so some things did get omitted. But it was a useful ability to watch large transitions taking place.

“But another event is about to begin, so I don’t think you’ll be bored for long,” Ende continued. With that, she pointed ahead of her.

A dead end could be seen at the end of the curving hallway. There was a sliding door there which looked just like one of the classroom doors.

“Finally!” Mutsuko was about to run eagerly out, but Ende grabbed her hand and stopped her.

“There are enemies waiting for us inside. I’ll be fine, but they can easily kill you.”

“Enemies?! What kind? Allies of justice who’ve assembled to stop the Evil God’s resurrection?! Ura-koya? The Burial Agency? Vatican Section XIII? The Gamboze? The Taimanin? I love it! Okay, Rokuhara! Run in there and give ’em hell!”

Mutsuko wasn’t sure if he had heard her, but Rokuhara, whose body was still changing, proceeded forward, nearly dragging himself.

With trembling hands, he opened the door.

The moment he did, gunshots rang out.