Modern Monster

“A dead end?” Hana gasped. “That’s not possible. This is the only way out!”

“Aw man..." Baru whimpered. "I need to take a shit too.”

“Thanks for the information…” Hana covered her face in embarrassment. “Seriously, how can you just say that without thinking a thing?”

“Because…” Baru paused, thinking deeply about his answer. “I need to take a huge shit?”

Hana blinked. “I genuinely thought I would hear a serious word from your mouth.” She glared. “Even in these situations? Really? Do you understand how bad this is for us?”

“Of course I do, and it's unfair!” Baru complained. “The other tunnel, dungeon, whatever you like to call it, was also a dead end but with a monster, so this has to be the right one!”

“That’s the million-dollar question, Baru! If we knew, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be here!”

“Well, sorry, it's my job to say the obvious in case anyone is confused!” he countered Hana.

“I knew it was a bad idea for you to join our team,” she whimpered in anguish.

Baru winced as he stood up. “You know damn well I’m a reliable person! Look how much I helped you guys already!”

“With what?” She rolled her eyes. “The only thing you helped with was making a bunch of sounds!”

“And what did you do? Miss’s, oh miss, I couldn't fight the monster!"

“Huh? I was the only one fighting you, little shit!" Hana jumped and tried to punch him.

But Baru was quick. He swiftly dodged her attack, and instead of getting completely annihilated by her punch, she missed him and hit the wall. The tunnel shuddered from the strength of her attack, but as the masked man said, the walls were engineered to deflect Senses.

“Why did you have to dodge? What, you scared?” Hana challenged.

“No, I’m not scared. Come on, I'll try to punch you next; I'm not scared of a woman! Equal rights mean equal fights!”

“You–” Hana exclaimed while attempting to punch Baru again. But like before, it ended in her vacantly punching another wall.

Curiously, Sen assessed the damage Hana did. Hmm, no dent again. Just like before, Hana’s super sense did not affect the wall’s durability.

“And also, I wouldn’t use your Super Sense to smash your way through our Walls. It’s made of materials that cancel out super senses,” Sen recalled what the White Storm stated at the start of the challenge.

It only took him a few seconds for Sen to come to a conclusion. I see, that’s what they did. Clever. I guess there's only one way to test it out.

Sen suddenly pulled Baru to the side before Hana could get ahold of him.

“Baru, you have a moment?” Sen murmured in a hushed manner.

“UHH, I can’t right now; I’m currently dodging for my f*cking life!” Baru panted.

“Doesn’t matter, come here, remember what you promised me, right?”

“What? I don’t know what the hell you're talking about—oh no…”

It appeared Baru’s promise regrettably dawned on him. Sen couldn’t help but find it a bit funny. It's not my fault you promised to follow my orders like a dog.

“Now get behind me,” Sen ordered him.

“Are you trying to protect me? Aww, I always knew you were a great friend!” Baru blushed.

“Sure. Anyway, okay Hana, I’m holding him down. Punch him as hard as you want!” Sen called out to her.

“You’re my hero— Wait, what now? Punch him as hard as you what now!?” Baru attempted to scramble away from the approaching demon woman, but Sen pinned him to the wall.

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” Hana grinned, her knuckles cracking menacingly while sauntering to them.

“LET ME GO!” he cried.

As Baru was wailing in fear, Sen pulled close to his ear–

“Okay, I want you to dodge right when she’s about to hit you,” Sen whispered.

“Wait, what? You mean you’re not doing this for her—Ah she's coming!!”

Just as Sen had hoped, right when Hana was about to punch, Baru dodged, making her fist drive into the dead-end. However, this time, the wall didn’t simply ricochet her sense. Instead, cracks slowly formed, and it began crumbling altogether!

Hana pulled back in surprise, pondering how she managed to break a wall that supposedly canceled out senses. Thought so, Sen thought, shielding his eyes from the dust. It's pretty simple...

A little while ago, I noticed something unusual when Ayame was fighting the monster. She attempted to attack with her sword, but the monster dodged it. As a result, her weapon missed the target and went straight into the wall. It should have been fine, knowing the wall is Sense-proof, but a junk of it broke off. No one noticed it, and I can’t blame them either. They were either too terrified or full of killing intent to care.

I could have investigated the wall and attempted to break it, but it was simply too dangerous, even though the academy wouldn’t let the monster kill us.

Now, the question somebody would propose is, how did Ayame break the wall in the first place? Ayame didn’t have Touch, an offensive Super Sense. She had Sight, which was practically the polar opposite of Hana.

The answer to that question lay in her weapon. Some expensive weapons can transfer kinetic energy from someone’s Sense into an object. It doesn’t matter what sense you have. As long as you have one, it’ll work. It’s similar to Sense Guns that many Knights carry. It merely transfers the energy of a Super Sense and turns it into physical, destructive bullets.

In Ayame’s case, it was quite similar, except instead of a gun, it was a sword. Something important to note is that not any weapon had this capability. Weapons that Ayame possessed were only available to Knights who proved their status or wealthy individuals. It was also considerably hard to master. Being able to channel the power of one's sense into a weapon was a tedious process on its own.

If his observation was correct, both Ayame and Genkai were on the same strength level as a silver-ranked knight.

But, neither their skill nor the weapon's nature caused the wall to break.

Although the special weapon granted Ayame immense power, that still wouldn’t quite explain why the wall broke in the first place.

Ayame’s weapon stores and transfers Sense Energy into a physical vessel, which grants the weapon supernatural capabilities. In other words, reverse engineering the energy from a sense and translating it to a psychical vessel.

Due to those actualities, the wall should have theoretically stopped any attacks from Ayame’s sword because it was still the same energy a Sense had. That meant the actual reason the wall broke down was because of… the wall itself.

The moment the Whitestorm said not to break the walls, it piqued my interest. No one would do that under normal circumstances, in fear of being disqualified. But it turns out he wasn’t exactly lying about the wall’s nature either. Throughout the tunnel, the walls are built to cancel out Sense’s, but some are the polar opposites. It's weak against them.

That meant any individual, regardless of 'which sense' they had, could break the wall under the pretense that they could channel their sense while throwing a simple punch. That way, the challenge wasn’t only directed toward people with Touch as their sense.

That’s what he meant when saying they only accepted those with talent. An average person would barely pass the first obstacle and most likely fail when faced with the monster. Now, what can be next?