“Move your feet, all of you!”
The examiners snapped out of their daze, grabbed the little flags at their waists, and blew their whistles to start evacuating the crowd.
But the people who had just been awakened were completely out of control!
Everyone crowded and surged toward the nearest emergency exit, ignoring the examiners’ frantic whistling and shouts.
They couldn’t stop the flood of people from gathering.
“Damn it, stop crowding this way! There are plenty of emergency exits! If everyone spreads out and evacuates in an orderly fashion through the other exits, there’s absolutely no problem.
But if you all pile up here, none of you will make it out! Please, stop pushing… Ah!”
The examiners even tried to block and redirect the crowd, but still couldn’t hold them back.
Some of the examiners were knocked down by the surging mass of people.
Others, standing on temporary observation platforms waving flags to guide the crowd, were toppled by the stampede and swallowed up by the sea of bodies.
The situation was completely out of control.
“Coco!”
Su Xinran’s eyes turned red with urgency.
She saw the timid girl squatting on the ground in fear, clutching her head as the crowd swarmed around her.
Su Xinran felt as if her heart had been gripped tightly by an invisible hand.
There was no way she could reach her by pushing through.
With a twitch of her tendrils, Su Xinran leapt high into the air, flying toward the spectator stands.
“Move aside!”
Su Xinran shouted mid-air without accelerating her descent.
“Ahhh!”
The crowd screamed in panic as they saw the black figure flying toward them.
They scrambled to dodge her, pushing even more people to the ground.
The sudden chaos opened up a clearing in the sea of bodies, finally revealing Coco, who had been buried under the crowd.
“What’s your problem, psycho?! You don’t wanna live, but we do… sob…”
A wave of people had been knocked over by the sudden movement and were now angrily cursing Su Xinran from the ground.
“Who said I didn’t want you to live? But if you all want to survive, you can’t trample over others to do it! If you all crowd together like this and don’t help each other, no one will make it out alive!”
Su Xinran snapped back furiously.
That shut down the complaints.
After all, they’d just seen that terrifying punch earlier…
“It’s okay now, Coco… Can you stand up?”
Su Xinran gently brushed aside Coco’s messy hair and asked softly.
“I-I’m okay… Everyone just accidentally bumped into me. No one actually stepped on me…”
Coco patted the dust off her robe and stood up.
She didn’t seem injured.
“That’s good. Then… would you mind… riding on my shoulders?”
“I don’t mind!”
Coco knew that Horus had come to save her.
Even if she still had lingering discomfort around minotaur-like beings, this wasn’t the time to hesitate — especially since Horus’s actions had long since dispelled the prejudice in her heart.
Su Xinran nodded, crouched down, and let Coco climb onto the thick neck of her suit.
“What the heck… acting all noble just to save your girlfriend? Don’t pretend to be some hero… ugh!”
A female elf, lying on the ground with a sprained ankle from being knocked down, muttered bitterly under her breath.
But the moment she spoke, Su Xinran looked toward her through the suit’s observation slit.
“Eek… W-What are you gonna do? Am I wrong?!”
The elf clutched her injured foot, trembling in fear at the imposing figure of Su Xinran’s suit.
She had seen that devastating punch earlier.
If one of those landed on her, she’d be a pile of mush.
“Your foot’s hurt, isn’t it?”
Su Xinran asked.
She had expected a scolding or a harsh comeback — not this.
She was stunned for a moment.
“You… You’re not mad at me…?”
“Why would I be mad at you? I already said, if we don’t help each other, none of us are getting out of here. I’ll carry you.”
“I…”
The female elf lowered her head in shame.
Su Xinran wrapped a strong arm around her and lifted her up with one hand.
After all, she didn’t have fingers—only her arm to do the job…
“Everyone! If someone near you is injured, pass them over to me!”
Su Xinran shouted to the crowd around her.
A wave of emotion stirred in everyone’s hearts.
Su Xinran didn’t just ask people to do good—she showed them, through real, tangible action.
“Over here! Someone twisted their ankle!”
“This person hit their head!”
…
People nearby began to stop running.
One by one, they lifted the wounded above their heads and passed them toward Su Xinran in a relay.
Both of Su Xinran’s arms were soon filled with over a dozen people.
Some of the injured with lower-body wounds clung tightly to the sturdy waist of her suit.
With so many people holding on, it was hard for Su Xinran inside the suit to even catch her breath—but at last, all the wounded in the area had been gathered.
“Hang on tight!”
Su Xinran bent down slightly, and everyone gripped her firmly.
On her shoulders, Coco clung to her head like a panicked little octopus.
“Taking off!”
Boom! With a powerful leap, Su Xinran shot toward a more isolated emergency exit.
She gently set down the injured and handed them over to the examiners guiding the evacuation at the exit.
Coco also hopped down from Su Xinran’s “neck.”
“Horus-oniichan… be honest. Are your eyes, like, on your chest or something? I covered your eyes just now, and you weren’t affected at all…”
“Pfft!”
Su Xinran nearly spat out blood.
“Ahem… Your big bro here is a master, okay? A real master doesn’t rely on eyes to see. He sees with his heart, silly girl. A real master always sees with the heart!”
Even while saying it, Su Xinran, hidden inside the suit, felt her face flush with embarrassment.
“Hmm… Then how come you weren’t even breathing? Horus-oniichan, are you… a dead Minotaur or something…?”
“That—That’s because… I was holding my breath before using my power, yeah…”
While the two of them talked, they looked back at the crowd.
It was already much better than before.
Many people in the crowd had begun assisting the examiners in evacuating others.
The chaos was gradually turning orderly, and the cries and shouts were starting to fade.
Just as things seemed to be improving, a dark silhouette appeared atop the flagpole.
“Oi, oi, oi… Didn’t I tell you not to run?”
The final word was suddenly raised in volume by Gantz.
On the podium, a group of black-robed figures were pushing blindfolded and tied-up examiners and staff forward onto the stage.
One of the captured examiners caught Coco’s eye—and the light in her eyes dimmed.
It was that winged teacher from before—Yan Xuan.
“Aren’t you all vigilantes? Oh wait, no—trainees, right? Always fantasizing about punishing evil and playing your little ‘heroes’ game…”
“Well then, I’ll give you a chance to play a real hero game.”
“If you stop running and come to me, I won’t kill these examiners. But for every person who escapes this stadium… I’ll kill one person up here on the flag platform.”
“So… what will you do, little ‘vigilantes’…? Hehehe…”