Chapter 3 (1/2)

“Aya-chan~~ I don’t want to do this anymore!”

It was difficult to breath with the stench of death around us.

Crying on the ground in front of me was a schoolgirl with blood all over her sailor uniform.

Her face was splattered with blood and her gla.s.ses were cracked. The schoolgirl covered in blood hugged the lifeless body of her friend who was alive just moments ago while calling out her name.

And in moments, it turned into a futile scream.

It was like the end of the world. I averted my eyes, but just listening to her anguished voice made me feel depressed as well. That active girl with brown hair was probably Matou Aya.

Maybe she went forward to try to protect her friends. But she took a direct hit from an arrow to her chest. I was close by her, so I could almost hear the skull crunching.

The brown haired girl who had a large arrow pierced through her cheek breathed making a sound like air flowing through a flute, but died soon after. In situations like this, good people who try to save others seem to die first.

It may have been lucky that she didn’t die instantaneously after the arrow pierced her chesthead, but if there was no way to save her, she might as well have died immediately. For us, who didn’t have any doctors or medical supplies, there was no way to save the people who were heavily injured.

I had a scary thought that maybe Sakamoto Ryouma, who died from a cut to the head, felt this way as well. If a pink mixture of brain and blood came out, there was no hope for survival.

I never expected to see such sad sights unfold right in front of me with my very own eyes. I can see a person dying right in front of me, but it doesn’t feel real. It felt like I was watching myself and them from somewhere far away.

Everything looked like someone else’s problems… No, I shook my head. That kind of mindset was no good at all. Wake up. You’re going to get dissociative disorder if you go on like this.

Even a bystander like me was trying to avoid reality. I suppose a half-crazed and crying girl with dishevelled hair who had just lost a friend couldn’t help it either.

No, I had acted coldly from the start and tried not to get involved with them. Unlike them, I chose not to be friendly to anyone because I knew that there would be sacrifices in the future.

Just trying to survive was a ch.o.r.e.

I couldn’t afford to think about others either.

But this group’s leader, Nanas.h.i.+ Shuichi’s charisma shone even brighter despite tragedies like these. He walked over to us, took off his uniform jacket and covered Aya’s corpse with it.

He pulled the blood spattered friend of that girl away from the corpse and hugged her. Nanami teared up as he hugged the despairing girl and squeezed out his voice.

“Sas.h.i.+ki Ena-san, everybody here is feeling the loss as well, but, you need to keep moving forward and survive. Live to the fullest for Matou Aya-san, who died protecting you. Let’s go forward together and we’ll soon reach a safe place. We can’t give up!”

Nanami was charismatic enough to motivate the girl who had just lost her friend to not lose hope and keep going forward. I could almost feel myself getting worked up as well while hearing him say “You need to keep on living!” while at the same time  making some half-crying sound and holding Ena’s hands.

Sas.h.i.+ki Ena, who was filled with despair just moments ago, stood up with those words of encouragement, and just like Nanami said, tried to walk forward.

What kind of mind control magic is this. She swallowed everything Nanami had said! That kind of att.i.tude was dangerous as well. In my mind, I just said ‘what a load of s.h.i.+t’.

It was hard for someone like me who was trying my best not to get swept up in anything, but I suppose it was too much for a girl who just lost her friend in a middle of dire crisis like this. Everyone moved according to what Nanami said.

On Nanami Shuichi’s words alone, 60 out of 180 students voluntarily joined this extremely dangerous and battle-oriented group. This was an extremely high percentage. Plus, even a large number of girls who normally wouldn’t want to do something like this were mixed in.

They say people show their true colours in times of crisis, but Nanami’s charisma that brought people together was beyond words. He might as well have a special skill called “Sympathy”.

Though most of the female students who joined the group, were the ones who hung around him. They were called “Nanami Girls”.

There were many girls who couldn’t confess to the overwhelmingly superior vice-president Nanami, and formed a fanclub saying that he belonged to everyone. Still, they were absorbed so deep into him, they voluntarily joined this death march. Those girls had amazing guts.

Excluding myself and the 60 students in the battle group, roughly 120 students and teachers remained in the cla.s.srooms. Another 60 students moved without any sense of cohesion and wandered on their own. Right now, there were three groups: Nanami’s battle group, those waiting with the teachers and those scattered on their own.

The casualties of the battle group, including Matou Aya who just died, were six. Furthermore, those injured so heavily that they couldn’t go any further, were four. Countless had minor injuries. All of the students who died from the arrows that came flying after they had stepped on a trap or roasted from a fireball had all been girls.

The ones who walked at the front of the battle group were the female students who didn’t seem to be very strong. If this was what the leader of battle group, Nanami Shuichi, did intentionally, he was a great manipulator. But he wasn’t the one responsible.

The one who planned this was the gla.s.ses guy close to Nanami Shuichi, Jinguchi Tsukasa. I wanted to nickname him “Deceitful Four-Eyes” since long ago, but he had finally shown his true colours.

His combed over hair that was perfectly split at a 7:3 ratio, high prescription gla.s.ses with a silver frame, and white gloves which came from who knows where. The fact his gloves were still white was evidence that he was making the others do the dirty work.

He was ranked 3rd in the first years’ c.u.mulative grades and he was part of the Student Council’s Enforcement Group. He had always stuck close to Nanami, and right now was no different.

He was short, and wasn’t as handsome as Nanami, but he was still fairly decent looking. His expressions were soft and he always smiled warmly. Just from how he spoke and acted, people would think he’s a regular model student, but in reality he was rotten to the very core. His leering was not because he was squinting due to bad eyesight, but because of his personality.

To put it nicely, he was a Planner, Thinker or Strategist. In reality, Jinguchi was a sucker fish that used vice-president Nanami’s charisma to steal everything good for himself behind Nanami’s back.

The very fact he didn’t even blink despite people dying in front of him made me wonder if he wasn’t just cold but a psychopath. Whoever said that in times of crisis, people show their true colour couldn’t have been more right.

That scheming four-eyes, Jinguchi, had many bad rumours about him. Some said that he cornered the student he didn’t like into expulsion, while others said that he took advantage of some of the girls around Nanami.

There wasn’t any evidence, but there’s a saying that a chimney without fire wouldn’t have smoke coming out of it. It sounded exactly like something that scheming four-eyes would do. The only thing that Jinguchi did was take in the situations around him and lick his lips.

In his cold and calculating sight, there were only those who were useful to him and those who weren’t. There was no way I would miss him placing the weaker students at the front as a meats.h.i.+eld for any traps.

However, I couldn’t say anything because it wasn’t a bad decision either. In emergencies like this, those kind of decisions were inevitable. So far, the group was fine, so I couldn’t do anything about it. Looking at it positively, he was skilled in personnel management, and looking negatively, he was cruel.

A pa.s.sionate leader and scheming four-eyes. It was a perfect combination to control a group, but I didn’t want to get involved in any of that.

“Hey, that’s an obvious trap! Look around your feet carefully and avoid them.”

“Ah! I’m sorry.”

There was a female student who was about to walk into a danger. I just couldn’t let her die and warned her. Somehow, Jinguchi, who was in the middle of the group, keeping an eye on everyone, spoke to me in his small, but resonating voice.

“s.h.i.+njo-kun, don’t go too far forward. Your role is to stand ready for monsters.”

“But this is…”

“I was entrusted with distributing the roles. Are you going to be the one standing in the front instead of her?”

“Kuk….”

“Don’t make that kind of expression, I’m joking. It’ll go smoothly if everybody fulfills their role. If you think you can give commands better than me, I’m open to switching roles.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can do that.”

I wasn’t such a generous guy as to voluntarily step into a dangerous role and step on a trap and knew I couldn’t take over in place of Jinguchi as well. Whipped by his cold stare, I pleaded with the girls standing in the front with torches, who were essentially tasked with stepping on traps, to “Take a look around your feet to see if there’s something strange. Your life depends on it.” and hung back.

There wasn’t anything more I could do. It was just as Jinguchi had said, I didn’t want to risk myself for someone I didn’t even know.

It seems I was to be part of the group fighting monsters at the back with Kujo k.u.miko and Seki, so it didn’t seem we were expendable yet. I don’t think he would pay much attention to someone from Cla.s.s F, but it would be annoying if that scheming four-eyes marked me out. I decided I would lay low.

Ah, d.a.m.n it!

I told that girl it was dangerous, but that careless girl was impaled at the stomach with a blade coming out the floor. It might not have been immediate death, but it was only a matter of time.

The girl who was caught by the trap was screaming in pain and threw up something like blood and the contents of her stomach, but others only tried to avoid her instead of helping. It was dangerous to touch the blades in that trap and they were now exhausted from all of the previous traps. It was clear in their eyes that they knew it was too late for her even if they tried to help her.

It was impossible to survive if you became heavily injured. Knowing you might be next, the safety of others was already included in thought process. This group’s compa.s.sion had already dried up. Everyone simply dragged their tired legs and walked forward in a search of a safe route without traps.

I kept trying to convince myself that what the Nanami and Jinguchi combo was doing wasn’t a bad decision. Even if there were some casualties, we would all die unless we continued forward. If the command of the group were to fall to me, maybe we could go forward with fewer casualties… However I didn’t have the courage to say that.

In situations like this, where a single wrong step could mean death from a trap or a monster, the sheer fact this amount of people were working together as a group was only possible due to Nanami’s charisma. Every time a girl or boy who was deemed useless got sent forward and was killed by a b.o.o.by trap, I thought it was a distasteful method, but I didn’t want to be the one who complains all the time. I simply held it in.

Nanami, who was keeping the group together, and Jinguchi, who was commanding everyone at the centre, were all doing the right things for the group.

Forward, let’s go forward, let’s all go forward. If we stop, it was only going to get worse and the casualties would continue to increase.

The only possibility was to go forward despite the dangers.

Plus, if someone needed to be expandable, using the weak ones who were no good for combat was not wrong in theory either….

But the strangest thing was that those students who didn’t have an inkling of courage in their heart all went forward to die whenever Nanami or Jinguchi told them to. If it was me, I would have run away the moment they told me to stand at the front.

Don’t they understand the danger they’re in right now? Or perhaps they truly didn’t understand. That sent a chill down my back.

Perhaps my a.s.sessment that he was using the useless ones as expendables wasn’t wrong. Was Jinguchi sending the ones that were clueless and would die anyways to the front on purpose? For the weak hearted students, it might be easier to act as ordered than to defy the group in this stressful situation.

Manipulating group dynamics like this to send people to death, I could almost feel the deceptiveness of people like Mao Zedong or Pol Pot leading a group of guerillas. It made me afraid whether those two who were controlling the group were really highschool students.

They were Machiavellian and not the best, but next to the best choice. Still, their method was so political, I truly despised them. Even if they were right, there was no way to wash this bad taste from my mouth.

I probably wasn’t the only one who thought this way. But there wasn’t a better alternative so far. The others were probably keeping quiet because they didn’t have a better plan in their minds.

“Seki, did you memorize the path we have taken and the locations of the traps?”

“Yea, I’ve remembered it all.”

I walked beside Seki and confirmed with him. Smartphones would be useless without electricity soon and I didn’t bring a notepad either, there was only memorization.

“There’s another monster.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore…”

Despite letting out a weak and tear-filled voice, Seki fought on with his knife. He was more courageous than I gave him credit for. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of your share of monsters. I managed to get my hands on a pretty useful weapon in the form of a battle axe. I pumped myself up to swing my arms and cut the pig faced monster.

I slashed at the pig’s shoulder and its thick veins spurted blood. I slashed horizontally at the screaming orc that was standing still like an idiot. Its guts spilled out and the screaming orc collapsed in its own pool of blood.

The pig’s blood was red, so it was hard to bear, but I delivered a blow to its head just in case. Its head exploded and pink mixture of fat, blood and brain became visible. The pig’s blood was still better than a goblin’s sticky green blood.

I started getting used to killing creatures in shape of humans. I didn’t feel anything about killing something with my own hands nor the screams of the monsters that I killed. It was a simple slaughter. I couldn’t feel anything about people dying in front of me, so there was no hesitation in killing the pigs either.