Anime Crossover: Tokyo Reincarnation Game — Chapter 68

Chapter 68: Iwanaga Kotoko’s Great Contribution

Asagiri nodded noncommittally. He turned the black, blood-stained locator over in his palm, his expression entirely unreadable. “It should be something along those lines.”

Kotoko tilted her head, her brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement. “Inside a Special Infected… how could there be an implanted tracker? Could it be…?”

“Hmm. This city isn’t experiencing a zombie apocalypse crisis in the traditional sense,” Asagiri said, his voice smooth and devoid of any tension. “Instead, it has been systematically purged by some unknown faction. Almost all the ordinary zombies have been eradicated, leaving only these specific Special Infected behind. They’ve even had tracking devices surgically implanted into their flesh. It makes this entire metropolis less of a ruin and more of a massive, controlled scientific testing ground.”

“A testing ground…” Asuna murmured, the scattered pieces of the puzzle instantly snapping together in her mind. “No wonder. That explains everything.”

She looked around the desolate, eerily quiet streets. “No wonder there are no ordinary infected wandering the roads. They’ve already been thoroughly exterminated. And our doubts about the gnawing virus lacking secondary infectivity… that makes perfect sense if the experimenters deliberately engineered it that way to ensure their test subjects remained within a controllable range.”

Asuna turned her gaze back to Asagiri, her hazel eyes wide with surprise. “But how did you figure all of that out so quickly?”

“Read more novels, watch more television, play more video games,” Asagiri replied deadpan. “Combine basic media literacy with the raw data we’ve gathered, and the conclusion writes itself. It is really no big deal.”

Despite his casual dismissal, Megumi, Kotoko, and Asuna certainly did not feel like it was no big deal.

This was undeniably the core hidden plot of the entire survival instance. How long had they even been here? Barely half an hour. In that microscopic window of time, Asagiri had completely deduced the hidden lore of the city and literally ripped the decisive evidence straight out of a monster’s corpse.

As a Player, he operated on an entirely different level. It was exactly this kind of terrifying efficiency that earned him advanced privileges and massive clear rewards. Even the game system itself probably didn’t want to eliminate someone this entertaining.

Megumi broke the brief silence, her soft, flat voice raising a critical point. “Since there is an implanted locator inside that creature, is it possible for us to encounter the actual personnel running these experiments? They… would definitely be hostile to us, wouldn’t they?”

“Most likely not, but we can’t completely rule out the possibility.”

Whether it was just their imagination or a genuine reflection of his twisted personality, Kotoko and the others could swear they heard a faint, inexplicable trace of anticipation in Asagiri’s voice.

“Think about the logistics,” Asagiri continued, casually tossing the bloody tracker aside. “Being able to sweep an entire metropolitan area clean of ordinary zombies, selectively preserving specific mutations, and surgically implanting them with hardware… that is infinitely more difficult than just carpet-bombing the city. The enemy is absolutely not some small-scale mercenary group. At the bare minimum, it would require a battle-hardened, professionally trained regular army to pull off an operation of this scale.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Most Players at this stage of the game would struggle to survive a shootout with amateur street thugs. Throwing a fully equipped military hit squad at them would be a slaughter. Therefore, enemies of that caliber shouldn’t spawn in the first stage of the instance.”

Just as he finished his explanation, Kotoko’s dark purple eyes suddenly lit up with sharp realization.

“Wait a moment. I feel it. There seems to be a strange aura nearby…”

“Strange?” Asuna asked, her hand immediately drifting toward her weapon. Megumi also tensed, scanning the empty street. Had the instance type suddenly shifted again? Were they dealing with bizarre supernatural entities on top of biological mutants?

“Don’t panic. The other party doesn’t seem to harbor any hostility,” Kotoko said.

She stepped forward, her cane tapping softly against the asphalt, until she stopped beside an ordinary, dust-covered black sedan parked by the curb. With graceful precision, she removed her white beret, pressed it gently against her chest, and offered a perfectly standard, polite bow to the empty air.

“Hello,” she said, flashing a sweet smile.

To the absolute shock of Asuna, Megumi, and even Asagiri, the empty air actually responded. A faint, translucent figure slowly phased out from beneath the undercarriage of the black sedan. It was a phantom-like man, his spectral form covered in gruesome bloodstains, his face a ghastly, deathly pale.

“H-hello…” the apparition stammered.

Receiving his timid reply, Kotoko turned her head back to her three stunned companions. “It is perfectly fine. He isn’t an Evil Spirit, just a wandering soul bound to this place.”

Asuna blinked, struggling to process the genre whiplash. “A wandering soul? How can there be ghosts in a zombie apocalypse setting?”

“Of course there would be,” Kotoko replied, her tone perfectly matter-of-fact. “Where people die, wandering souls will inevitably gather. I just wasn’t entirely sure if the fundamental rules of this world aligned with ours, or if people who mutated into zombies still counted as truly dead in a spiritual sense. It seems the mechanics of the afterlife still apply here~”

Turning her attention back to the trembling phantom, Kotoko asked sweetly, “Sir, may I ask if you know anything about what transpired in this city?”

“Uh… uh…”

The spectral man seemed paralyzed by fear. He hesitated, his translucent eyes constantly darting past Kotoko to stare at the spot where Asagiri stood.

Catching the direction of his terrified gaze, Kotoko immediately understood. She offered a warm, comforting smile. “Please don’t be afraid. Those three are my companions. We have absolutely no ill intentions toward you. We merely wish to ask a few simple questions.”

“R-really no ill intentions…?” The ghost cowered like a cornered thief, stealing another terrified glance at Asagiri. The moment his ghostly eyes met Asagiri’s deadpan stare, the apparition violently shuddered. “He… that thing he summoned earlier… and the aura radiating off his body… it makes me want to cease existing…”

“Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Kotoko said, waving her hand dismissively while maintaining her gentle facade. “As long as you answer my questions honestly, he won’t do anything to hurt you. But…”

The temperature in the air seemed to plummet. Kotoko’s sweet smile vanished, replaced by an icy, absolute authority.

“If you try to be evasive, it is very hard to say what might happen to you.”

Seeing the sudden, drastic shift in Kotoko’s demeanor, both Asuna and Megumi felt a jolt of surprise.

Up until now, Kotoko had played the role of the quirky, slightly eccentric girl who occasionally blurted out surprising things. She always wore a sweet smile, acting like a love-struck high schooler. It was dangerously easy to forget that she was not just a normal teenager. She was someone who bore a massive burden, a girl who had danced with the supernatural long before entering this twisted game. She was the God of Wisdom for the spectral world, the absolute authority responsible for maintaining the fragile order between yokai and humanity.

How could someone holding a title like the God of Wisdom be nothing more than a giggling girl without any real teeth?

She only showed that soft, normal side because she was surrounded by Asagiri and the others.

“I… I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything! Just please, please don’t let that guy come over here!” The spectral man wailed, his ethereal form vibrating with sheer terror. Without waiting for another prompt, he spilled everything he had. “Most of my memories from before I died are completely blurry! I only remember dropping my car keys on the concrete. I turned around, wanting to go back and pick them up, and then… there was this agonizing pain, and finally, just cold darkness!”

“Memories are blurry?” Asagiri repeated. He took two deliberate steps forward, his voice perfectly calm and entirely devoid of empathy. “Actually, I happen to know a few highly effective memory recovery techniques.”

Kotoko didn’t need to know the specific internet joke Asagiri was referencing to understand exactly what kind of physical technique he meant. She immediately shot him a warning glare.

“No, leave him be. He should be telling the truth,” Kotoko advised, stepping slightly between them. “Many wandering souls suffer from this condition. After death, as time slowly strips away their humanity, their memories of life become increasingly fragmented. Eventually, the only things left are the memories tied to their deepest obsessions.”

She looked back at the shivering ghost. “You just mentioned dropping your car keys. Do you remember exactly where they fell?”

“Just… just over there…” The ghost pointed a trembling, translucent finger. “Right in front of the front-right tire of that sedan…”

Kotoko walked a few meters down the asphalt, following his direction. Sure enough, wedged in a blind spot directly in front of the tire, a dusty electronic key fob lay quietly on the ground.

“Heave-ho~” she hummed, bending down to scoop it up. She blew on the plastic casing a few times, sending a small cloud of dust into the air, before casually tossing the keys over to Asagiri.

“Aren’t we heading to Mercy Hospital in the city center?” Kotoko asked, her sweet smile returning in full force. “Twenty kilometers is entirely too far to walk. Let’s just drive there~”

“Taking a car is fine…” Asuna started, her brow furrowing in hesitation as she looked between her companions. “But… do any of you actually know how to drive?”

Megumi shook her head slightly. “I don’t.”

Kotoko also shook her head. “I don’t either.”

Under the expectant, highly skeptical gazes of the three girls, Asagiri simply nodded, a faint, arrogant smirk playing on his lips.

“As expected.”

For some inexplicable reason, Asuna wasn’t even slightly surprised that Asagiri, a supposed high school student, knew how to hotwire and drive a car. After surviving alongside him in these brutal instances, her threshold for shock had been permanently broken.

“But if we drive, won’t the engine noise attract the attention of the Special Infected?” Asuna asked, her natural caution taking over as she pursed her lips. “That mutant we just fought moved even slower than a standard zombie, but the system prompt specifically warned me about variants with high speed and extreme agility. That guarantees there are at least two, if not dozens, of different mutation types out there. For the sake of caution…”

“Let’s not be cautious anymore. Our current combat strength absolutely crushes these so-called Special Infected. Besides, don’t you get stronger by killing them anyway?”

Before Asuna could even finish her tactical assessment, Kotoko let out a massive, dramatic sigh. Her face twisted into an expression of deep, exaggerated suffering.

“Also, could you please consider my feelings for just one second?” Kotoko pleaded, gesturing wildly to her legs. “We have been walking for so long, and I physically cannot take it anymore. If you make me march another twenty kilometers, my prosthetic legs are literally going to explode. Please, I am begging you, let’s just take the car, okay?”