Misaka simply replied with a fake fearless smile on her face. "Because you are a boy."
"I'm Covering our back." Homurwa replied blankly.
Kazumas lips twitched, what kind of convoluted reason was that? He understood Homura's reasoning and he frankly believes she isn't afraid of anything but Misaka, she just hated him!!?.
And Blake...well she was not in a mood to speak, she had a serious expression on her face and seemed to take this mission seriously.
Just as he was about to complain again, Homura saw the entrance outside and spoke "Let's go out."
Blake immediately stopped her. "There are Grimm everywhere outside at this time of night and they aren't the normal ones, it's better we stay inside and not get torn apart by something we can't beat."
Homura turned to her and flatly replied. "I can beat them or just avoid them entirely, it's not like they are immune to time stopping."
Blake raised a brow and questioned. "You can stop time? Is that your semblance?."
"No, it's a curse, the more i use it the more i will accumulate darkness and eventually turn into a witch and seeing as there are no witches in this world for me to cleanse my soul gem, I should be able to use it three times just to be safe."
"Don't worry, if we go into a truly precarious situation, I'll just whip out some Iron sand and chain it with my Railgun to take care of some annoying enemies or just hold them back." Misaka reassured them bur Kazuma was not reassured.
Sure he was the weakest of all of them at the moment and he can't really summon his persona which was quite literally Loki because there was a chance for him to get corrupted....but he can resist that corruption ten times so he could summon him.
Also he needs to form more social links or else his Fool Arcana would be useless. He had already made a social link with Homura who was a Devil Arcana tuned person, Chara who was also a Devil Arcana person, Itadori who was a Fool Arcana and finally Mikasa who was surprisingly of the Justice Arcana.
As he was thinking about how to deepen his Social links with those four truly complex beings a low sound resembling the buzzing of a single mosquito made Kazuma stopped.
He crouched slightly and looked around his surroundings, everything seemed normal but Kazuma would be a Fool to believe such a thing after hearing that single sound in a relatively empty hallway.
Kazuma's eyes swept the hallway slowly, his hand drifting toward his sword hilt. The buzzing had stopped, which somehow made it worse.
Misaka had heard it too. The faint crackle of electricity around her fingertips told him that much. She didn't say anything, just tilted her head slightly to the left, scanning.
Blake's ears twitched beneath her bow.
Then it happened again. Not one buzz this time. Dozens. A sound like static electricity given wings, coming from the ceiling above them.
Kazuma looked up.
He immediately wished he hadn't.
Clinging to the ceiling in perfect stillness was a student. Or what used to be one. Their uniform hung in tatters, their limbs bent at impossible angles, their skin the same translucent bruised purple as the Hoarder. But unlike the Hoarder, this one was small. Compact. And covered in dozens of tiny, vibrating black wings that had torn through their shoulder blades like broken glass.
Their eyes were open. All six of them.
[System Notification: Encountered Corrupted Student — The Swarm.]
[Current Rule: Do not stand still or you will be stung.]
"Oh that's just fantastic," Kazuma whispered, his voice barely audible.
The Swarm's six eyes all locked onto him simultaneously. Probably because he was the one who had spoken.
"Kazuma." Misaka's voice was ice cold and perfectly level. "Do not. Move."
"I wasn't planning to—"
"Don't talk either."
Kazuma clamped his mouth shut.
The Swarm tilted its head at an angle that made a wet cracking sound, its wings buzzing in short, irregular pulses. From between its fingers, tiny black shapes began to detach and float downward like ash. Each one was no bigger than a coin, but they pulsed with the same black-red sludge Chara had described. Little corruption drones, drifting lazily through the air.
Blake's hand found Gambol Shroud at her hip. Her golden eyes tracked the drones with practiced precision. She leaned slightly toward Misaka and breathed the words more than spoke them. "The rule says don't stand still. That means movement is the key, but we can't move erratically or we'll scatter them toward us faster."
"Controlled movement," Homura said from behind them, her voice utterly calm. "Like threading a needle."
Misaka's eyes narrowed, calculating. A dozen trajectories were already mapping themselves in her head. "I can magnetise the drones and pull them together into a single cluster before they spread further. But someone needs to draw the Swarm's attention away from the ceiling so it doesn't release more."
Kazuma slowly raised his hand, already regretting whatever was about to come out of his mouth. "I have an idea. And before anyone says anything, yes, it involves me being bait, and no, I don't want to do it."
Blake looked at him with something that was almost, almost respect. "...What's the idea?"
Kazuma exhaled through his nose. "My Steal skill. I can't steal corruption out of a heart, but I stole a dragon's scales once and a demon king's wallet another time."
He paused. "I think I can steal whatever is keeping those drones connected to it. The source. If I break the link, they dissolve. It worked on the Hoarder's locker logic... sort of."
Homura considered this for exactly one second. "Do it. We'll cover you."
"I SAID I DIDN'T WANT TO—"
The Swarm screamed. A horrible, harmonised sound like a dozen voices overlapping, and dropped from the ceiling directly toward Kazuma.
"MOVE!" Misaka snapped.
The hallway erupted.
Kazuma threw himself sideways, rolling behind a toppled bookcase as a wave of drones swarmed the space where he'd been standing. Misaka thrust her hand out and the air crackled, a powerful electromagnetic pulse ripping through the drone cluster and yanking them into a spinning ball of compressed black mass above the hallway floor.
Blake was already moving, her ribbon slicing through the air in precise arcs to intercept the Swarm's reaching limbs as it descended, keeping it off balance, never staying in one place long enough to be stung.
Homura raised her shield, the Time Stone pulsing once with a faint green light. She didn't stop time. She bent it, slowing the drones within Misaka's magnetic field to a crawl, buying precious seconds.
Kazuma scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering, his eyes locked on the Swarm's chest where the black-red sludge pulsed brightest. He could see it now, a dense, knotted core of corruption sitting just beneath the surface of the student's sternum like a second heartbeat.
That was the link.
He raised his hand and activated Steal.
For a horrible moment, nothing happened. The Swarm shrieked and twisted toward him, six eyes blazing.
Then something gave way with a sound like tearing silk.
A dense, writhing mass of black energy ripped free from the Swarm's chest and materialised in Kazuma's outstretched palm. It burned cold and he nearly dropped it, every instinct screaming at him to let go.
He didn't.
[System Notification: Kazuma has successfully stolen The Swarm's Corruption Core.]
[Corruption Resistance reduced by 1. Remaining: 9]
The drones collapsed instantly, dissolving into nothing before they hit the floor. The Swarm let out one last fractured scream, its wings disintegrating, its body crumpling against the hallway wall before going still.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Kazuma stared at the pulsing black mass in his hand. It was trying to worm its way into his skin. He could feel it. A creeping cold climbing up his fingers toward his wrist.
"Get rid of it." Blake said sharply.
Misaka was already there. A sharp electromagnetic pulse from her fingertip hit the mass and it detonated, scattering into harmless black dust that faded before it touched the ground.
Kazuma stood there breathing hard, staring at his hand. His palm had a faint reddish mark on it where the core had been. It faded slowly.
"...That worked," he said, sounding genuinely surprised.
Homura looked at the collapsed Swarm with her usual unreadable expression. Then she looked at Kazuma. "Your Steal skill is more useful than I initially thought."
Kazuma straightened up and attempted to look dignified despite the fact that he was visibly trembling. "Obviously. I keep telling people that."
Misaka rolled her eyes. "Don't push it."
Blake stared down at the motionless corrupted student for a long moment, her expression complicated. Another one gone. Another person this world had failed to save.
She turned away first.
"We should keep moving," she said quietly. "Before something else finds us."
-----
Both teams had cleared their respective threats, though the academy still breathed around them like something alive and waiting.
Chara's team had regrouped near the eastern stairwell, the aftermath of the Hoarder encounter still fresh. Ruby was quieter than before, but there was something different in her silence now. Less hollow. More thoughtful.
Itadori cracked his knuckles absently. "So what are we actually looking for? We can't just wander around fighting corrupted students all night."
"Information," Chara replied simply, his eyes scanning the walls. The corruption sludge had stained the wallpaper in irregular patterns, almost like veins branching outward from some unseen centre.
He had been watching the pattern since they left the dorm room. "The corruption spreads from somewhere. It doesn't just exist, it originates. Like an infection needs a wound to enter through."
Weiss frowned, following his gaze to the walls. "You think there's a source somewhere in the academy?"
"There's a source somewhere in this world," Chara corrected. "But the density here is higher than it should be for a place that's only been infected for however long this has been going on. Which means either this place was hit first, or something here is amplifying it."
Ruby's head lifted slowly. Something behind her silver eyes was working, turning over a memory she clearly didn't want to revisit. "...Ozpin's office."
The name dropped into the silence like a stone into still water.
Weiss went rigid. "Ruby."
"Think about it," Ruby said, her voice careful and low.
"Ozpin corrupted faster than anyone. He's been corrupted longest. His office is at the top of the tower and the sludge on the walls gets thicker the closer you get to the upper floors. I noticed it weeks ago but I didn't..." She stopped. Swallowed. "I didn't want to go up there."
Chara looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned toward the stairwell. "Then that's where we're going."
"That's where Ozpin patrols," Weiss said sharply.
"I know."
"He nearly killed us just by standing in our doorway."
"I know that too."
Weiss stared at him. Then she exhaled through her nose and gripped Myrtenaster tighter. "...Fine."