The Reaper gripped his chained scythe.

  It was time to end this.

  The boy had crossed every line, exposed secrets that should have stayed buried, and spoken a name that had no place in this warehouse.

  The chain rattled as he let the scythe hang, then slowly began to spin it in measured rotations. Once, twice, and the metallic links blurred into a circular halo, humming louder with each revolution. The sound scraped against the walls, sharp enough to make several participants flinch involuntarily.

  Arata watched him with his hands in his pockets while sweat ran down his forehead in a thin line, dripping from his chin onto the blood-stained concrete. His breathing was slow and measured, his eyes locked on the spinning scythe without blinking.

  He hadn't blinked in over a minute.

  The Reaper noticed. So you're forcing it. How long can you keep that up?

  The scythe spun faster as the air vibrated around them. Arata's eyes burned and his vision began to blur at the edges while his pupils trembled, begging for relief as his body fought him.

  Then he blinked—just once, a reflex, a betrayal.

  Big mistake.

  When his eyes opened again a fraction of a second later, steel filled his vision. The scythe was right there, five centimeters from his face, spinning and screaming through the air.

  There was no time to think. His body moved on instinct alone. Arata bent backward violently with his spine arching at an impossible angle, and the blade screamed past his face, close enough to shear several strands of hair clean off his scalp.

  The air split with the force of the strike.

  "ARAAAATAAAA—WATCH OUT!"

  Takeda's scream came a second too late as the Reaper yanked the chain back with a sharp cling of metal. The scythe snapped back into his hand while his jaw tightened. His grip strengthened until the handle creaked under the pressure.

  How? How did this boy react so fast?

  Before he could launch a second strike, a calm voice cut through the tension.

  "Wait."

  Genda leaned forward in his restraint with sharp eyes. "Let's finish this game by the rules. The timer's still running."

  The Reaper froze.

  Rules were absolute. He hated them but couldn't ignore them.

  Slowly and reluctantly, he sat back down.

  "Fine," he said coldly, eyes never leaving Arata. "Let's finish this game. Then we'll harvest this arrogant fool properly." His lips curled slightly. "I bet the Master would be glad to consume him fully."

  Arata felt a chill that had nothing to do with the warehouse's temperature. Consume? Master? This wasn't just selection like he'd theorized—there was something far darker at work here, something he hadn't fully grasped. The pieces of the puzzle were shifting, revealing a picture more horrifying than he'd imagined.

  It doesn't matter. I just need to survive this round.

  Genda chuckled, forcing a grin despite the tension. "I've never met such an arrogant kid in my life. You're lucky you weren't one of my recruits—I would've made your life a living hell." He laughed loudly.

  Arata ignored him as his eyes drifted across the room. Takeda was on his side now, that much was clear, but the others, the goons—how many were counting votes instead of enemies?

  The timer ticked down to ten seconds as most players had already cast their votes.

  Only two remained: Arata and Genda.

  Their eyes met, and for a moment, Arata felt certainty radiating from the older man. Genda already knew how this would end.

  Five seconds, three—they voted at the exact same time.

  The round was over, and the screen flickered.

  ROUND OVER

  CALCULATING VOTES…

  Numbers flashed across the display.

  The Reaper's eyes widened.

  He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  Takeda turned pale. "N-no... that's horrible..." he whispered. "Arata... don't leave me here alone. You promised we would get through it together..."

  Arata stared at the screen and realized he wasn't the only one eliminated. Another player had the exact same number of votes—ten votes each for him and Genda.

  The room erupted with laughter and relief as one of the goons leaned forward, golden teeth flashing. "Sorry, old Genda, but it would be impossible to beat you in the upcoming rounds. You're too strong, your influence is too big. We can't afford to keep you in the game."

  Another laughed with obvious satisfaction. "It was the perfect opportunity to get rid of the biggest threat and the annoying intruder. No hard feelings, man."

  They celebrated openly. They'd done the math, made the calculations, and betrayed their leader.

  The Reaper's hands crushed the armrests of his throne, his knuckles whitening. He couldn't interfere now because rules were rules.

  "Player Six," he said flatly. "Player Twenty-Four. You are eliminated."

  A pause.

  "Happy harvest."

  He pulled the chain, and metal screamed to life as the mechanism above them awakened with spinning blades, serrated arcs, and scythes rotating at impossible speeds. Through simple contact with any metal, the Reaper could exercise absolute authority on it, and by touching this metallic chain, he controlled all of the demonic metallic mechanisms above them.

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  The two restraints shot upward violently, yanking the bodies into the ceiling where the slaughter was immediate. Flesh shredded, bones snapped, and the bodies were torn apart by multiple spinning blades and scythes slicing through the air.

  Blood rained down like a storm, covering every participant in a real bloody shower. Takeda collapsed to his knees, paralyzed and unable to watch, knowing that soon enough, he would face the same fate.

  The goons stopped smiling as one of them wasn't showing his golden teeth anymore. They'd gotten rid of the two most dangerous threats, so why weren't they happy?

  The Reaper couldn't believe his eyes.

  Everything happened so fast and nobody understood what had occurred.

  That's when the voices came.

  "Eh. You had the same idea as me."

  "I'd say you had the same idea as me."

  Silence fell over the warehouse as everyone turned to look.

  "ARATA?!"

  Takeda's scream shattered the silence as he stared in disbelief at two figures standing unharmed beneath the blood-soaked ceiling—Arata and Genda, both very much alive. The mangled corpses hanging above them belonged to someone else entirely.

  The Reaper understood immediately. Both of them had switched their number plates with other participants at some point during the rounds. Genda had probably used his most loyal man to switch plates at the beginning of the game, while Arata had switched with the participant beside him, probably during his long speech while he walked around the neighboring participants.

  They'd tricked everyone, even the game master himself.

  Genda spoke with a flat voice. "Cheating is bad, kid. You won't get far in life with such an attitude."

  Arata smirked. "Speak for yourself, old man."

  The atmosphere in the warehouse shifted as the reality of what had just happened sank in. The goons who had been celebrating moments before now stood frozen, their laughter dying in their throats as terror crept across their faces. The traitors began to tremble.

  Genda's expression turned cold. "Kuroda," he said with dead seriousness. "Break my chain. This game is over."

  The Reaper executed the command. He yanked another chain next to him. With a sharp clang, Genda's ankle restraint shattered.

  "Perfect," Genda said as he walked toward one of the men, who scrambled back as far as his chain would allow.

  "Yamamoto," Genda said quietly. "I always suspected you were the type to betray your companions, but I was never certain. Now I have my answer."

  His fist connected with the man's face, the impact echoing through the warehouse as Yamamoto dropped to his knees with blood pouring from his nose.

  What followed wasn't a fight. It was punishment.

  Veterans cheered because traitors had no place in this world—that was their motto.

  Genda beat him methodically with punch after punch until Yamamoto's face turned into a mess of blood and broken teeth.

  "Pl-please... stop..." he begged through shattered lips.

  Arata and Takeda watched in silence as the remaining traitors realized their turn was coming. One of them panicked and shouted, "Go to hell, Genda!" as he pulled out a knife and hurled it.

  Genda calmly lifted Yamamoto in one smooth motion, using him as a shield. The blade pierced through the man's stomach, ending his life. He dropped the corpse and stared at it miserably.

  The Reaper watched, impressed by his friend's performance, as Genda took care of the other two traitors while the remaining participants who'd voted for him looked away or trembled.

  They thought they would suffer the same fate—seven men waiting for punishment that seemed inevitable. But Genda wasn't like that. He understood perfectly that they had legitimate reasons for their votes. They were trying to survive, playing the game as it was meant to be played. Unlike the traitors who had betrayed their leader out of cowardice and opportunism, these men had simply made a calculated decision. Genda respected that, because in this world survival required difficult choices, and he wouldn't punish honesty when dishonesty was what truly deserved death.

  After Genda finished dealing with the remaining traitors, he turned to Arata. "Let's finish this masquerade."

  He looked up at the Reaper. "Let the final round be a death match—me versus this boy, one versus one."

  He paused.

  "If he beats me, the seven remaining who voted for me will be free. Call yourselves Team A. For the rest, you are Team B, and together we shall end this fourth edition of the Harvesting Game."

  "WOHOOO!" Spectators and Team B members shouted at the top of their lungs. This truly was a marvelous way to finish this edition.

  The Reaper, looking at Genda's confident expression, agreed to his terms, but inside, he wasn't sure if Genda was really a match for the boy.

  Genda turned toward Arata and noticed the boy staring at the metallic chain restraining him. A slight smile crossed Genda's face. "Don't worry," he said. "This will be a perfectly fair fight. Hey, Kuroda—remove his chain."

  The Reaper nodded and turned to look for a chain to release Arata's restraints—

  BOOOOOM

  He whipped around. Arata's metallic chain hung empty and broken, the restraint shattered even though it wasn't the Reaper's doing.

  The Reaper's eyes widened as he looked for Genda, but the man was missing. There was only Arata, standing at Genda's spot and staring toward the back of the warehouse.

  The Reaper followed his gaze to find a giant crater in the wall.

  Genda's body was embedded in the concrete.

  Dead.

  Takeda's thoughts echoed in the silence. Is this really the guy I fought yesterday?

  Arata had broken his own chains, dashed forward at impossible speed, and kicked Genda across the warehouse with enough force to kill him on impact.

  Since when was he so strong?

  ***

  The Reaper stood paralyzed by absolute shock, his entire world crashing down around him as his mind refused to accept what his eyes had witnessed. How did the boy break the chain? How did he move so quickly? How did he kill his friend—the only one who remained from his past?

  The other goons started shouting and withdrawing weapons.

  "GET HIM!"

  "YEAH!"

  "FOR GENDA!"

  "KILL THIS BOY!"

  Since they were still restrained, they could only throw their weapons and fire their guns toward Arata as chaos erupted.

  Surprisingly, Arata didn't move. He knew what would happen. He'd unleashed something much worse than what he'd anticipated.

  A metallic scythe spun through the air at tremendous speed, slicing through five goons in rapid swings with perfect, precise cuts. The Reaper threw his scythe, pierced a few more, then withdrew it in a curved motion that finished the job, slicing through the remaining ones in its path.

  Every single heart was sliced clean through as the Reaper gripped his scythe so hard the handle started cracking.

  The spectators stared, shocked at the quick succession of events, and one veteran whispered, "He killed Genda. Now the Reaper is furious."

  The pressure intensified and the temperature dropped even further as men gasped for air while the invisible weight crushed down on them.

  Kuroda Shigure descended from his throne slowly and deliberately with each footstep echoing through the warehouse like a death knell. The chains above him moved in concert, swaying like serpents responding to their master's rage.

  "You killed him," the Reaper said quietly. "The one person I've known longer than anyone else in this rotten world."

  Arata said nothing.

  "Do you understand what you've done?" The Reaper's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the silence like a blade. "Genda was the last connection I had to who I used to be, before I became this." He gestured to himself, to the throne, to the machinery of death surrounding them. "And you took that from me."

  The scythe began to spin again, faster this time, as the chain links screamed through the air.

  Takeda pressed himself against a pillar with tears streaming down his face. "Arata... what did you do?"

  Arata's eyes never left the Reaper. "What I had to."

  "HAD TO?" The Reaper's voice cracked. "You think killing him was necessary?"

  "He would never have let me win," Arata interrupted. "And I need to win. Not for me. For everyone you've fed to these blades. For all the innocent people who died screaming in this warehouse because you decided their lives were worthless."

  The Reaper laughed with a horrible sound that was empty and broken. "You still think this is about winning? About justice? About saving people?" He stopped spinning the scythe and held it perfectly still. "This is about feeding the Master. That's all it's ever been. That's all it will ever be."

  The chains above them began to move—all of them, hundreds of metal links shifting and grinding, creating a symphony of metallic screaming.

  "And now," the Reaper said, "you'll feed him too. Slowly and painfully. I'll make sure of it."

  He raised his scythe as Arata's muscles tensed.

  The final battle was about to begin.