The surroundings were almost perfectly quiet; high above the highest wind, at first only the sound of a rhythmic, pulsating groan etched its way through the space. This was then joined with an infrequent scraping. From above, were there a place higher to observe the happenings below, it would look like a crowd in anxious wait for a concert. The hush that seized them was inevitably broken by incoherent calls for sustenance, for food, for drink, for another inch to move.
The scraping gained momentum. Somewhere, within the ranks of the idle masses, an shadow darker than the perpetual night sky began to inch its way forward. It was past the emaciated man, with his ribs out and his gut sucked in; it was past the woman whose eyes were squeezed dry and red; it was past the children constantly scratching at themselves, for some sort of relief. The scraping reached a crescendo, and one of a woman toppled, with a scream.
Those around her made no motion of sound. Their eyes flickered, but they dared not make another motion. Then another scrape—another dropped in near silence, but the crowd went on as though nothing had transpired.
"We lose a lot of students on the first day of class."
The shadow emerged, in front of a man in full white collar attire. Contrasting him was this figure, in a tattered cloak, the ends of which disappeared into wisps of quickly-fading smoke. In one gloved hand dragged a scythe; in the other, a large knife was pressed against the man's suit.
"This is how we… weed out the ones who do not deserve to be here…"
A distorted chuckle escaped the golden gas mask, under which was the face of god.
"Some might call this selection random, but there is actually quite the formula behind it."
After taking a swift step back, Takao Hiyama raised his knife to the throat of his target. He was about to slash across the jugular, when he suddenly pulled himself away, voluntarily disappearing into the crowd once more. Where he had stood just before, the man in the suit fell to his knees, struggling for breath.
A ring composed of human skulls continuously rotated above a teacher's desk and chair. Underneath the desk was a fountain of blood, which broke into four paths: one stream going North, the others going the other cardinal directions. These streams poured off the sides of the Cathedral of Causality, which floated high above the new world. The blood never ceased to rain down upon those below.
Takao appeared at the stairs that led up to the desk. He was given great clearance to pass on ahead, uninhibited. The moonlight was directly upon him, and while earlier he had appeared as merely a shadow, now the golden luster of his mask, goggles, and massive crown was brilliant. His red hair flowed past the crown, which covered most of his head, and fell past his shoulders.
Everyone in the crowd before him had heard the rumors. They had heard of how, when attempts were made to kill Takao, bullets were swallowed whole by his black cloak. They had heard of how great bombs could explode in the killer's face, only to leave the target unmoved. More so than details of Takao's invincibility, however, they had all heard of the gruesome fate of those who had attempted to kill god.
Takao stood before the desk. "Class is now in session," he announced, through his mask. He pulled his chair out. "Today's lesson is the most rudimentary of all: Survival." With a casual wave of his hand, a cord attached to the ring of skulls snapped. A knife, which had been suspended above the crowd, plummeted into a student's skull. The ring kept circling at a slow pace, several more weapons able to be dropped at any given time.
Taking a seat, Takao resumed, "Today we will have a pop quiz. It will be, as it should be, a fight to the death." He folded his hands professionally on the table. "The average one of you will last three hours. The mode—a modest five hours, at best. Anyone caught cheating will face strict penalties."
He held his glance over the vast audience before him—which filled up every inch of the Cathedral of Causality, before settling his eyes on a figure squeezing its forward. From between two muscular men popped out Murumuru. She was totally exasperated, bent forward and with her hands on her knees. "I don't—" she began, between quick breaths. "Understand why—you have to fill—this entire floor with stinky people!"
She straightened out her back and blinked hard in Takao's direction. The instructor, with his elbow on the desk, leaned his face into his right palm. "Murumuru," he explained, flatly, "This is my new class. We are at full vacancy, but spots are opening up quite quickly."
He seemed to gesture, although his body made no movement in any direction, toward the far-off sight of some of the people scrambling to stay on the floating Cathedral. With each passing second or two, another body was forced off.
"If s is taken to indicate approximate distance in feet, and t is the variable of time spent in free fall… Then, the formula is s=16t^2. Using conservative figures, we are at 20,000 feet. In other words, anyone who falls from this height will fall for, and this is a very rough estimate—two minutes. Two minutes is quite a long time, Murumuru. One can think about a lot of things in two minutes. All the things he will never see again, how one's body can be so painfully crushed along the way. The conscious mind will not last that whole time, of course, but it's still a very long fall."
Murumuru gulped. "Well, when you put it that way," she said, "Maybe I don't mind it being a little crowded around here." She hopped up the stairs and then allowed herself to levitate onto his desk. She sat on the edge of it, kicking her feet, as she looked on in the same direction Third's goggles were fixed.
"Those deaths are not the most interesting," Takao quietly admitted. "They are not enough of a challenge. A good death takes time, takes intellect. It might have many possible solutions, many possible ways of getting to that ultimate conclusion—but like a good equation, it is a challenge. Killing harmless women in alleyways satisfies curiosity, satisfies me for a little while, but this… I find this even more fascinating."
Murumuru shrugged. "I don't see what the big deal is," she chimed. On the desk was a bright red apple, which she eagerly took into her hand and bit a chunk out of. "You humans have such a weird habit of killing each other for the dumbest reasons, but at least you seem to know why you're doing it."
Third went silent for a while, before resuming, "After Yukki, Yuno, and Fourth were killed during the attack at the school, tracking down the others was relatively easy. Twelfth eliminated a few of my competition for me, but when it was just he and I as the remaining Diary owners, he became much more of a nuisance than anything else. His blind spot was easy to deduce, however. He let his code of justice guide him, instead of his unbridled, calculative mind. Justice is an illusion. What's real and measurable is the thrill that exists only when life is on the line, when all that stands between this world and oblivion is a matter of seconds and cold steel. I continue to find it peculiar how Twelfth survived so long as he had. The odds should've been stacked against him, from the start."
"I could say the same about you," Murumuru mentioned. "You still wear a mask, although you are indestructible. You are constantly paranoid, thinking that somehow, your life will be as quickly destroyed as the lives you take. That isn't stable. You shouldn't have become god, but you did. You humans really are funny."
She turned herself around and asked, "If you like the thrill of killing so much, how are you so satisfied with watching from up here? You could always hand over your power to me, and join them—"
"No," Takao answered, firmly. He swiped the apple from Murumuru's hands. "I've yet to be bored. The completion of the survival game marked the completion of an invaluable set of data. I have plotted out each point; I am in the works of testing so many new theories. I have discovered all the variables that can make for the proper killer. I may not be down there myself, but I live through these experiments in data alignment. Look at the world I've created…"
Takao tossed the apple into the crowd and grasped the knife, which he had earlier set on the desk. With a quick swipe, he cut through the fabric of time and space, creating a window through which the world below could easily be viewed. It was a narrow view, narrow as the Murder Diary's own scope, but it gave a fabulous view—it showed the events below, through the eyes of any chosen person below.
Via this lens, both Murumuru and Takao could watch as a trained killer began to creep up on an unsuspecting victim. They could hear the crunch of leaves under the feet of the one being followed, and they could observe in conjunction the careful steps taken by the assassin.
"The Survival Game was not big enough in scope," Takao commented. "This is not just an aspect of the world below; it as much a constant as breathing. Murdering is as natural for the body as eating or drinking. All through towns, cities, open spaces—landscapes of all varieties—nowhere is one truly safe. The hunters are hunted, as are the innocent fodder I create to test the blades and bullets of my products. I compile a list of attributes, and once the variables are adjusted, I assemble a new killer. Each is unique in its properties."
"With the goal of creating the perfect killer?" Murumuru presumed, looking back at the crowd. "I don't think you'll find it among these guys… They look like they're all about to fall apart."
Takao slammed his fists on the table, causing enough of a startle in Murumuru to make her jump. He followed with a reveling laugh. "Those are but integers, to be subtracted! These are nothing but points on the scatterplot; through which ones a line can be drawn—through which ones any modest amount of success will be found—I remain in anxious anticipation to find out. That is the thrill here that you are not comprehending. This perfect killer, this killer x, remains for now an unknown value, but in suitable time will be solved for."
The crowd remained silent still, but in response to Takao's words, there was an increase in the trembling among them. They knew that, in a moment, they would be released into the world below, to be swiftly struck down and tortured if they did anything other than comply with these new natural laws of human living and killing.
"Observe, Murumuru," Takao now insisted, drawing the servant closer to the tear in space-time. "I have been watching this one closely… I think he may be, if not x, one on the evolutionary path to revealing x's identity."
Murumuru squinted her eyes—through the vision of someone inside the world, an alleyway could be seen. It was entered, and soon after, within the darkness, something sprang upon the viewer—a bear trap seized his leg. The eyes could be seen looking downward, and in that given moment, the killer emerged out of the corner of the eye—a murderer in a green hooded jacket. In one hand was a machete, and in the other, a handgun. A playful laugh went shrill in the audience's ears. What was most peculiar is what held the weapons; the killer had each hand concealed inside a puppet.
"He is one of the elite, the sum of my many calculations!" Takao boasted, as the machete was raised—"He is my teacher's pet, my very best student!" The rip in space-time was sealed up, and Takao stood with thunderous energy. Murumuru took to the air, in fear that he might actually do something reckless.
"And his is the score to beat," the god declared, raising his scythe now above the massive crowd. "Aim high, students. I want you all to succeed… Some of you will inevitably fail, but please, do try. After all, it is only going to get much more difficult after today. This is only your first day of class."