Embarrassed, Ellen jolted off Tsutsumi's lap, nearly tripping over a broken chair. Tsutsumi rose just as quickly, dusting splinters from his shoulder as if crashing through a door was something he did every Tuesday.
The students didn't calm down right away. In fact, once the initial shock faded, the room became a pressure cooker, panic squeezed tightly beneath a thin layer of silence.
One by one, they began filing out of the ruined classroom, clustering together near the hall. They were trembling, whispering, gripping backpacks like life preservers. Unlike Ellen and Tsutsumi, they had no anchor. No training. No mental footing. Fear left them adrift.
And yet, humans were strange creatures.
Give them a crisis, and they would panic together.
Give them a minute, and they'd start looking for a leader.
The first to find his voice was the class president.
"Ellen, Nagant…" His voice wavered, but he held himself firm. "Everyone has… different Ether resistance levels. We can't stay here too long. We need to get out."
"That's true," Ellen murmured, steady but tense.
Tsutsumi glanced at the boy. He is the class president, thoughtful, diligent, and reliable. He'd learned that much during his brief teaching career this morning.
But Tsutsumi didn't care enough to remember his name.
In fact, Tsutsumi wasn't close with anyone in the class. He was already planning to drop out of school on his second day, who would have thought that he probably wouldn't even get a day one.
So instead of replying, he went back to the stairwell entrance to look around.
The space there warped instantly, like a ravenous wolf tearing open its jaws. A dim, eerie glow flickered in the dark throat. Tsutsumi already knew there was a spatial rift.
After all, the Ethereal had appeared suddenly. Unless they'd teleported, there was no way they could've reached the third floor so quickly.
Plus, he already walked directly into one.
He turned back toward the class.
"Follow me," he said, cold and decisive. "I'll get you out of here."
Start Up plus Electrification had massively overcharged his speed, letting him do a complete sweep of the school in just 10 seconds; he'd already wiped out the Ethereals in the building. But that didn't mean more wouldn't spawn.
It's better to move now before the enemy respawns.
Just as he began walking, a terrified student blurted out:
"In the Hollow, space warps unpredictably! Only professional investigators can tell what's real and what's a fissure! Traveling outside is unsafe; we should stay here and wait for rescue!"
Tsutsumi stopped and slowly turned his head toward him.
For a second, he wanted to say that he was a professional and even show off his Section 6 badge, but decided not to.
Everyone is currently panicking, and he has introduced himself as Hoshimi Nagant, just a student passing through. Panic made people irrational. They might not believe him. Worse, they might think he was lying to take control.
And his real identity wasn't public. No one in the city knew what the youngest Void Hunter looked like.
Revealing it now would create more chaos than clarity.
Time slipped away like water between trembling fingers. Fear gnawed at the group, dragging rationality down with it. Slowly, almost unconsciously, more and more students shifted toward the class president's cautious stance.
But another rational voice rose against it.
Ellen stepped forward, supporting Tsutsumi. "Everyone's Ethereal Adaptability is different; we can't just sit back and pray."
She could see it clearly: Hoshimi Nagant is actually Tsutsumi Ryoko, the youngest Void Hunter of Section 6. As a Void Hunter, he had the power to determine the group's fate. He had the strength to protect the others.
She also could, but currently, she is unarmed, dropping her combat power significantly.
So Ellen put one hand on her hip and said, "Some classmates can't endure until rescue comes. If we just stay here, the Ethereals might-"
"But this is the Hollow!" the same boy interrupted, fear bordering on anger. "The space is warped! Even if we run in a straight line, we might never escape!"
A few others murmured agreement.
Without a Proxy or an official investigator, wandering aimlessly was more dangerous than hiding.
And they didn't know the boy they were arguing with was Section 6's youngest elite.
Tsutsumi watched them, fear clutching reason, hope slipping away, the Hollow's distortion humming in the walls.
He exhaled silently. And grew disinterested in their debate long before it ended. His attention drifted to the tear in space, stretching wider, pulsing like a heartbeat. More Ethereals spilled through it, crawling over each other in their rush to devour.
After all, actions speak louder than words.
Form Ride: Ruby Rose!
Tsutsumi vaulted over the railing. His form shifted, turning into a young girl with a red cloak. His body then shifted, twisted into a magenta spiral mid-air, before he crashed down with Crescent Rose already in his hands. The massive red scythe swept in a wide arc, its impact throwing several Ethereals back like ragdolls.
"Tch. Figures a metal scythe's weaker than a lightsaber," he muttered.
Aura surged across the weapon, mixing with Reinforcement.
He swung again. This time, the scythe carved an Ethereal cleanly in half. Tsutsumi rolled aside, narrowly dodging the jagged swipe of another one before kicking it away. His form dissolved back into his regular form as the scythe vanished.
Reinforcement and aura coating worked, but the Faiz Edge was faster and didn't require that much setup. Low-level Ethereals might as well have been paper before photon blades anyway.
With a flick of his wrist, the Faiz Edge flares into existence.
A single sweep cleaved three Ethereals. A backward thrust punctured another's chest. And still they kept coming, crawling, tumbling, dragging themselves through the rift in messy waves.
They were trying to drown him in numbers.
Final Attack Ride: De-De-De-Decade!
His blade flared a blinding magenta. Tsutsumi spun, unleashing a tidal wave of sword energy that roared outward, erasing every Ethereal in its path. Silence rushed in, broken only by the sizzling of evaporating bodies.
Still having Fox Spirit active, Tsutsumi looks around, trying to spot if any Ethereals were in the school building now that some time has passed.
Attack Ride: Electrification!
His hair spiked up, magenta lightning crackles around his body. Tsutsumi vanished in a flash of magenta light and reappeared in front of a different classroom. Throwing a powerful kick at an Ethereal, sending it flying through the window. Before the shards hit the ground, his Faiz Edge cut down two more.
A few seconds flew by, and more and more Ethereals were cut down by him.
Eventually, he found the principal cowering inside his office. Tsutsumi didn't waste time; he ordered him to use the speakers and gather everyone in one place, and he will take them out of the Hollow.
The principal who knew about Hoshimi Nagant's true identity as Tsutsumi Ryoko, the Youngest Void Hunter. The man didn't hesitate for even a heartbeat. His trembling voice echoed through the campus moments later.
By the time the announcement ended, Tsutsumi was already back in motion.
"Azu, have you finished the Carrot route?" he asked, leaning against a wall as students and teachers hurried toward the ballroom.
"Master, the optimal escape route is complete." Azu's voice resonated calmly in his mind.
After switching the target to Fairy instead of Eous, the defense on Eous has dropped, and she was able to snatch the coding that allows real-time communication both inside and outside the Hollows.
And thanks to it, Azu was able to search the Inter-knot and discovered the size of this Hollow, giving her a rough estimate to calculate the size and depth of it.
And with everyone finally gathered, Tsutsumi began guiding them through the warped corridors under Azu's direction.
The group moved tightly, backs overlapping, breaths shallow. The Hollow twisted light and space, making even straight hallways feel wrong, stretched, or shifted slightly out of sync.
Any Ethereal that appeared didn't last long; Tsutsumi erased them before screams even formed.
Exhaling, Tsutsumi could visibly see how hot his breath was; his body was overheating from him overusing Faiz Axel. Unlike Kabuto, whose Rider System has a Clock Up system built in to let them combat the Worm.
Faiz Axel directly overcharged his self and let him move with speed similar to Clock Up, but this gave him a time limit of 10 seconds before it shut off to avoid overheating.
"No wonder Tsukasa switched to Clock Up once he obtained Kabuto..." Tsutsumi murmurs and quietly puts away the Faiz Axel card.
Although he has a lot of different cards with different forms to choose from, Tsutsumi has been curious about what would happen if he overused something like Faiz Axel.
Technically speaking, his Decade Driver is a part of his body, not a Driver like the one in his dream used by Kadoya Tsukasa. So he is curious about whether or not there are side effects from overusing an ability that has a drawback.
Suddenly, a sharp, terrified scream ripped through the group. Everyone turned at once.
A humanoid Ethereal sprinted toward them at blinding speed, its pale skin stretched thin over its frame, spinal bones bursting from its shoulders like a warped flower guarding the core beneath.
Its missing left arm dangled uselessly, as if even nature had given up on fixing it. In contrast, its right arm had reshaped into a long, double-edged blade that gleamed with murderous intent.
A Thanatos.
It lunged directly toward the group at blinding speed.
Final Kamen Ride: OOO! Super Tatoba!
Tsutsumi vanished in an instant, air warping where he had stood, and reappeared directly in the creature's path. His long tiger claws flashed once.
The Thanatos didn't even have time to scream.
It simply fell apart, collapsing into neatly cut segments that hit the ground in staggered before fading away.
These Ethereals weren't strong. Clearing them was the easy part.
The problem was everything around them.
Tsutsumi was forced to protect a massive group of civilians entirely on his own. And the Ethereals had realized it. They stopped trying to overwhelm him directly; now they were sprinting for the weakest points in the crowd, forcing him to ping-pong across the entire formation.
"Ellen!" he barked, summoning her giant shark-scissor weapon into existence and tossing it toward her. "Stop slacking off! And help out a bit!"
Ellen stiffened in shock when she saw it, her weapon. Or rather, a replicated version indistinguishable from the real thing. She grabbed the handle and gave it a sharp tug, confirming its weight and balance.
If she hadn't personally witnessed her actual pair left behind at Victoria Housekeeping, she might've accused Tsutsumi of breaking in and stealing them.
No time to process that.
Another Ethereal closed in. Ellen leapt forward, swinging the oversized scissor in a wide arc. The impact hit the creature square in the chest, pushing it back several meters.
Not a clean kill, but enough.
It bought the group precious seconds to fall back. And that was all Tsutsumi needed to appear behind it and finish the job in one fluid motion.
Ellen didn't look disappointed. She wasn't a Void Hunter like him. The gap in raw strength and precision was simply reality. Accepting that didn't hurt her pride.
She focused on what she could do: keep pressure off the group. Tsutsumi, meanwhile, continued his ruthless pace, mowing down every Ethereal that dared show its face.
The crowd moved carefully, following the route Azu had plotted, twisting corridors, shifting walls, and warped floors that bent at unnatural angles as the Hollow distorted reality around them.
Then they emerged into a wide atrium.
And all the breath in the room froze.
A colossal Ethereal was rising from a crouched position, vertebrae cracking loudly as it straightened. In its massive grip was a brutal axe-like blade carved from metal and concrete.
The Dead End Butcher.
They have learn about this Ethereal from books and reports about it. Technically, it shouldn't even be here, but right now, everyone was too panicked and afraid to care. They all knew just how dangerous the Dead End Butcher really is, but before anyone could react.
Final Attack Ride: De-De-De-Decade!
Lines of massive golden cards appeared before it, and Tsutsumi directly passed through each card and kicked the Butcher's chest, sending it flying back a good distance, and forcing it into its second phase.
Everyone: "..."
Tsutsumi's eyebrow twitched. Annoyance radiated off him like heat. He didn't want to come to school. He got forced to anyway. Now he was escorting civilians through a collapsing Hollow. And Ethereals kept throwing themselves at him like they had a death wish.
He is running on a timer right now; who knows when the people behind him will fall to Ether Corruption? It's best to get them out before they start turning into Ethereals and forcing him to kill them.
The Dead End Butcher groaned as it rose again, its body starting to split as it shifted into its second phase.
Tsutsumi also spotted movement in the distance: Public Security Bureau agents. Zhu Yuan's figure stood out clearly.
Backup had finally arrived. He exhaled deeply, relief loosening his shoulders for the briefest moment.
Then the Butcher roared.
Tsutsumi's expression soured again.
Final Attack Ride: Fa-Fa-Fa-Faiz!
Unlike some idiots who waited for enemies to finish powering up, Tsutsumi launched forward immediately. Sending a crimson photon drill directly toward the Ethereal's chest.
Attack Ride: Illusion!
Tsutsumi suddenly split into five, as four more photon drills stabbed into the Ethereal's body from all sides.
They all jumped up and drove a kick straight into their photon drill, burying the drills deep into it, shredding it from the inside, obliterating the Butcher before Phase Two even completed.
The massive body split apart and exploded.
The original Tsutsumi landed with a sharp exhale, dust scattering around him; his clones had disappeared.
When he looked up, the Public Security Bureau team was closing in, shock written across their faces.
They wanted to ask questions, but right now, they knew that they needed to get the civilians outside the Hollow first.