"Ishigo, do you even know where we are?"
Reika's voice cracked through the silence—low, sharp, uneasy. Her eyes swept the gloom, tracing the towering silhouettes of trees that strangled the light. Their twisted limbs clawed the sky like skeletal fingers, shadows stretched like corpses across the forest floor. The air was thick, heavy with damp earth... and something worse. Rancid. Feral. Wrong.
Ishigo didn't respond. He stood still, muscles tight, every sense on edge. His gaze prowled the treeline, tracking phantom movements that weren't there. The quiet pressed in—not peaceful. Predatory.
"This place…" Reika murmured. "It's like Kuroyami Forest. But warped. Poisoned."
Then came Daigo—his voice too loud, too cheerful.
"Yo, lighten up! Today's gonna be a blast, right?"
He grinned like a lunatic, flashing teeth in the shadows. It was a look so out of place it made the tension worse.
Ishigo glared at him—not in anger. In disbelief.
"Everything here reeks of death," he said, flatly. "And you're cracking jokes?"
Daigo threw an arm around him like they were buddies on a field trip.
"Panic makes you sloppy. Stay loose, stay alive."
Ishigo shoved him off, voice sharp.
"One day, Daigo, you're gonna get someone killed."
Daigo's grin didn't fade—but something flickered behind it. Something sharp.
"Or maybe I'm the reason we survive."
Their banter died as the trainees snapped to attention. Rows of them, motionless. Breathing synchronized in tension. Ahead, the trainer stood like a monument—face blank, eyes colder than the wind. His black uniform absorbed the light like a void.
He raised one gloved hand.
A holographic screen flickered to life, glowing pale blue with brutal clarity:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
KAGESHIKI TRAINING PROGRAM
━ SURVIVAL REPORT ━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▶ TRIAL: KUROYAMI FOREST
▶ STATUS: COMPLETED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
▌TOTAL TRAINEES ▌ 200
▌CURRENT REMAINING ▌ 130
▌DISQUALIFIED ▌ 70
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┌─── DISQUALIFICATION BREAKDOWN ───┐
│ ☒ INJURIES ▌ 33 │
│ ☠ FATALITIES ▌ 37 │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
┌────── INJURY LOG ──────┐
│ ▸ KUROYAMI FOREST ▌ 9
│ ▸ ENDURANCE RUN ▌ 15
│ ▸ FLEXIBILITY TEST ▌ 8
└────────────────────────┘
⚠ SURVIVAL REMAINS THE ULTIMATE PRIORITY ⚠
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The numbers landed like punches.
Thirty-seven dead. Not disqualified. Not sent home.
Dead.
The trainer's voice sliced through the air like a blade.
"This is where we stand. Half of you are gone. The rest? You're here because fate hasn't claimed you yet."
Reika didn't move. Didn't blink. But Ishigo saw it—the slight twitch in her jaw.
Daigo gave a low whistle.
"Brutal. But hey… fewer mouths, better odds."
"You're sick," Ishigo muttered.
The trainer raised his voice.
"Enough. Today, you enter Shinjuku Forest."
Behind him, gates of black steel groaned open. The sound was like a scream. Beyond them: only darkness. Trees so tall they vanished into the clouds, their twisted limbs like the broken ribs of some buried titan.
"The Kuroyami Forest had beasts. Traps. Pain. But this…" His eyes darkened. "This is worse."
He paused.
"This one has Bubi Traps. Reflex-based. Fully automatic. They don't wait. They don't warn. If you hesitate—you die."
Even Daigo's smile faltered.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Then the silence broke with the crunch of gravel—one trainee stepped forward.
Reika's voice was low, almost reverent.
"This forest wasn't designed to test us. It was built to kill us."
Ishigo drew his blade with a quiet hiss.
"Then we kill it first."
Reika narrowed her eyes.
"No. The air. You feel that? It's laced with something… something dull. Something that clouds the mind."
"Paranoia," Daigo muttered. "They want us second-guessing everything."
Reika didn't answer. Her gaze never left the trees.
They stepped into the forest.
The light vanished like a snuffed flame. The air thickened, every breath syrupy and wrong. A sweet, rotting stench choked the space around them. The trees swayed—but there was no wind.
Snap.
A rustle, too deliberate.
"Did you hear that?" Reika whispered.
Then—
"LOOK OUT!" Daigo roared, voice cutting through the stillness like a siren.
Whip.
A cable shot from the canopy like a viper.
Ishigo didn't think—he dove sideways.
CRACK!
A scream. A trainee was ripped upward, cable wrapped tight around his chest. He slammed against a tree, body twitching. Blood sprayed across the dirt in an arc. Then silence. His limbs hung limp.
One heartbeat later—
Click. Click.
Metal shimmered through the air.
Knives.
Dozens. Slicing from all directions.
Reika moved like lightning. A blade grazed her cheek, another tore through her sleeve. She caught a third, spun, and hurled it—
THUD. A scream rang out. Another trainee down.
Ishigo rolled, came up with his blade drawn, slashing at glinting steel. Sparks flew. A trap reset.
Then the ground moved.
Roots twisted underfoot—alive. Snaking up, grasping ankles. The trees groaned like they were breathing.
Daigo barked out a laugh, manic and wild.
"NOW it's a party!"
"You're insane!" Reika snarled, spinning to slice a root creeping toward her.
"Insane's the only way to survive this!" Daigo shouted back, dodging a blade as it tore into a trunk beside him.
Ishigo's breath came hard and fast. His hands ached around his weapon.
This wasn't a test.It wasn't even a trial.
It was war.
"Keep moving!" he yelled, cutting a vine that had snared a boot behind him.
Another scream—someone was swallowed by the earth.
Gone.
The forest didn't care who you were.
It just wanted blood.