Chapter 236: Quest Complete!
Kaguya-sama: [Image] [Image] — Two veteran Reincarnators down. Honestly, these guys feel kind of weak? Not much fight in any of them.
RawrSoFierce: That's because the Chat Group's starting baseline is leagues beyond Sacred Ground's. Sacred Ground typically recruits ordinary people. The Chat Group occasionally pulls in planet-tier existences. The Wandering Earth, for instance.
Wandering Little Planet: I feel like someone's complimenting my handsomeness right now.
Eternally Seventeen: Reincarnator teams usually run three people, if I remember the Admin's earlier explanation correctly. So Little Kaguya just needs to take out the last weakling and the quest's done.
Eternally Seventeen: Unacceptable! How envious — such an easy quest and I didn't even get a slot!
Street-Corner Illustrator: Yukari-senpai's luck today has been unexpectedly bad.
RawrSoFierce: Might be your zodiac year. Wear something red to ward off bad luck.
Eternally Seventeen: Hmph! I'm only seventeen this year — how could I possibly be due for a zodiac year already? That's still several years off!
Kaguya-sama: …Are you certain it's not seven thousand one hundred?
Eternally Seventeen: Little Kaguya, do not challenge the dignity of a Permissions holder! I may only be a moderator, but I am a Permissions Hound wearing the green hat of authority!
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: Green hat? We recall the Admin once explaining what that phrase means. Ahem!
"…"
Kaguya pulled her attention from the chat with a faint, resigned smile. Yukari-nee and the age-denial routine, predictably, in full swing again. Every member of the group knew her actual age was nowhere near seventeen, and she'd still fight anyone who suggested otherwise by even a single year.
To be fair — for all the theatrics, Yukari was probably the easiest person in the group to get along with day-to-day. Her instant familiarity with everyone made that clear. Whitebeard and the Admin had similar reputations.
Kaguya set the thought aside and spread her Observation Haki again, locking onto her next target.
The shallow telepathy she'd used on the swordsman earlier — under genuine fear, his thoughts had practically broadcast themselves, and she'd absorbed everything, including a clear mental image of what the third Reincarnator looked like.
Which made the search for her final target considerably faster.
He was close — under two kilometres, moving at speed.
By her standards, that speed looked roughly like a tortoise racing a car.
"Just one left, confirming the Admin's read — three-person teams, maybe four or five at the outside. Anything larger and you wouldn't call it a 'team' anymore."
She murmured this and accelerated.
A kilometre or two away, in a narrow alley, a middle-aged man with a scarred face was moving fast, expression shifting into something genuinely alarmed.
A bad feeling had taken root in him — and it was getting worse by the second. Years of combat experience told him something was deeply wrong, even without anything concrete to point to.
Why this feeling, out of nowhere?
He kept moving while his mind raced.
Try contacting the other team. See if something's gone wrong on their end. Shouldn't be likely — they bought serious backup gear from Sacred Ground before this run. Shouldn't have folded that easily.
Even against a genuinely strong opponent, with everyone's combined resources, escape should have been viable. Unless the enemy is operating at a level that's simply unfair.
The feeling kept escalating. He stopped, pulled a logo-free communicator from his pocket, and pressed several buttons.
Static.
His face darkened.
"Damn it. Don't tell me the other team got wiped. I told them to keep a low profile — this is a future-tech world, no telling how deep the danger runs. If they walked into this carelessly, what were they even doing surviving past their first dozen worlds?"
He'd just realised he was dealing with at least one liability on his team — possibly more than one.
He tried his own two teammates.
If the other team had been wiped, that was unfortunate but not his immediate problem. If his own people had also gone dark, that was a different category of crisis. He was the team lead. He'd invested enormous Sacred Ground resources and effort building this specific roster. Losing it all in under an hour would be a genuine catastrophe.
Neither teammate answered.
Impossible.
But the rational part of his mind was already supplying the likely explanation: dead. Either mid-fight or already gone, and given the silence, he leaned toward the worse outcome.
Six veteran Reincarnators across two teams. Under an hour. Down to one.
Him.
"Damn it! Am I supposed to clear this mission solo now? That's not happening — there's a time limit on this!"
His expression soured into open fury. He decided the others must have ignored his instructions, brought this on themselves through carelessness. If his plan had been followed properly, none of this would have happened.
He wasn't entirely sure that was true. It was easier to believe than the alternative.
Before he could act on anything, a cool, unfamiliar voice reached him.
"You're the last one, I take it. Under an hour for the full team — is that a new record?"
His grip tightened. He pulled several throwing knives from his belt and flung them toward the voice without hesitation.
The knives cut the air with a sharp whistle, embedded themselves in a wall, handles still vibrating from impact.
Then they detonated. Each blast carried force comparable to a high-yield grenade, possibly more.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
"Missed? How — I aimed directly at the sound."
His face went rigid with disbelief. Whoever this was had already proven their threat level higher than he'd accounted for — and combined with what had been said, this was very likely the one responsible for his entire team being gone.
The voice came again. From behind him this time.
"Lucky for everyone, that building's been abandoned for two or three decades — nobody living there. The fact that you didn't check before throwing those is what bothers me, frankly."
When — when did she get behind me?
His heart nearly stopped. Before he could turn, before he could attempt any kind of counter, a cold sensation bloomed across his chest. Warm liquid followed it, spreading down his skin.
He looked down, the motion stiff.
A wound had opened in his chest — easily ten-plus centimetres across. Even in the dim light, he could make out fragments of what should have stayed inside his body.
Blood left him in a steady, indifferent flow.
A heaviness settled over his thoughts. His vision blurred. He tried to move and found, with rising horror, that his limbs no longer answered him.
"Impossible… this strong… this world's too dangerous…"
He managed the sentence, barely, before his expression settled into something hollow and he went down.
Kaguya looked at the body without expression, tilted her head slightly, and produced a faintly amused look.
"Not dead yet? Decent attempt at playing dead. Doesn't work on me, unfortunately."
She raised her right hand, fingers extended flat — using it as a blade — and cut through the air toward the "corpse" several hundred times in rapid succession, then shifted position several metres away with Shave.
The body let out a sudden, strangled cry and burst apart into a cloud of red mist.
"Recovering the Watch…"
At the same moment, a quest-complete notification surfaced in the Chat Group.
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