"You're the new one." The guard grinned maliciously despite his anger, as if he'd been waiting for something like this to happen. "I'll show you how you behave here, sinner."

  He didn’t waste a second, afraid the opportunity might slip away. He signaled to his comrade, who nodded and stepped toward another guard to relay the order. Within moments, the third guard raised a walkie-talkie, his voice low and urgent as he spoke into it.

  Then the first guard cracked his knuckles and stretched his neck, rolling his shoulders with deliberate slowness. Arata quickly understood despite his weakened state: he was in for a beating.

  A golden-yellow barrier materialized around the guard's body, the same translucent energy that formed Arata's cage now wrapping around the man in a large rectangular prism that covered him completely from feet to head. At the exact same moment, Arata's cage formed an opening of the precise size and shape of the guard's barrier, allowing him to step through without any friction between the two energy fields. The guard smiled as he entered slowly, withdrawing his baton from his belt with practiced ease.

  The barrier immediately sealed shut behind him as he entered fully.

  Despite the threat closing in, Arata did not move. He simply stared at the man entering his cage, his eyes cold and utterly empty.

  "Lemme teach you a lesson," the guard said, having fully withdrawn his weapon. "THAT YOU WILL NEVER FORGET."

  The baton came down hard.

  The sound of metal striking flesh echoed through the Undercroft as the guard swung again and again, his breathing heavy with exertion and sadistic pleasure. The barrier surrounding him wasn't particularly sophisticated—it was a crude rectangular prism covering his whole body rather than something form-fitting that traced the contours of his skin and provided real reinforcement. To actually strike Arata through his own protective barrier, the guard needed an opening, which manifested as a small circular gap on his right side that let his right arm move freely outside his personal shield.

  Arata put his hands up, trying to protect his head as the baton came down repeatedly. He shifted his weight, angling his shoulders to take strikes on less vulnerable areas, tucking his chin to protect his throat, using his forearms to deflect blows aimed at his face. The guard beat him with sadistic pleasure, each strike punctuated by grunts of effort and muttered curses.

  I've had enough.

  Arata's patience left in a single motion—his hand shot out and struck the baton with the back of his palm, sending it flying across the cage where it clanged loudly against the barrier wall. His hand quickly reached for the guard's exposed right arm, grabbing it firmly. The guard's eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen. Arata pulled him strongly forward and seized his arm with both hands, then drove it down to meet his rising knee at full speed, ready to break it in half.

  ***

  Well, that's what he would have done if he hadn't purposely restrained himself.

  Despite his weakened state, Arata could have at least severely damaged the man's arm and made him think twice before hitting him again. The only problem was that such behavior would only put him further in trouble.

  The boy noticed it immediately—the other crew members were looking at him like prey, as if they were waiting for their turn to make him taste his own blood. For reasons that remained mysterious to him, everyone inside the Undercroft seemed to want to harm him in every way possible.

  But his sharp mind gave him at least a coherent hypothesis: something had happened during his three days of unconsciousness that he wasn't aware of, something that had put him in this precarious position.

  Right now the best decision was to stay low and endure the punishments. Showing strength would only paint a bigger target on his back.

  Arata released the guard's arm and lowered his hands, resuming his defensive posture. The guard stumbled backward, momentarily shocked by the sudden resistance before rage overtook his features. He retrieved his baton and resumed the beating with renewed fury, striking harder and faster than before.

  While taking strike after strike, Arata coldly stared at the guard, his eyes never wavering. He swore to himself that he wasn't forgetting this man's face any time soon.

  The guard raged more and more with each passing second because Arata wouldn't lower his gaze, wouldn't cower like a beaten dog, wouldn't give him the satisfaction of submission. The man's hand was starting to hurt from the recoil of each strike—not from hitting Arata's Aura reinforcement, but from hitting his actual physical body, which was unnaturally hardened through years of training and conditioning. Arata hadn't used a single drop of Aura to reinforce himself; he couldn't risk blowing his cover as a Candidate.

  This is what I deserve.

  The thought came unbidden as another strike landed across his ribs, the impact driving the air from his lungs.

  For Takeda. For using him like a disposable piece in my plan. For bringing him to that warehouse knowing there was a chance he wouldn't make it out alive. For watching him get cut in half while still smiling at me, still believing I was his friend.

  Another strike across his back, harder this time, the baton splitting skin.

  For Mika. For failing to protect her when it mattered most. For being too slow, too stupid, too arrogant to see what was happening until it was too late. For holding her corpse in that medical storage room and feeling nothing but the weight of my own failure.

  Blood ran down his arms from fresh cuts that opened with each blow, warm against his cold skin.

  For Kaito. For dragging him into this mess because I thought I was clever enough to handle it alone. For getting his location tracked because I fell for the most obvious trap. For putting the one person who actually trusts me in real danger.

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  The baton came down again and again, each strike a reminder of every person he'd hurt, every choice he'd made that led to someone else's suffering.

  I deserve every bit of this, and it still isn't enough to balance what I've done.

  The guard finally left when he was too exhausted to continue, his arm trembling from exertion. He took several steps back, breathing heavily as he stared at the boy who shouldn't still be standing. Dozens of cuts covered Arata's body with blood pouring from each of them, painting his pale skin in streaks of red. Arata's gaze had never left the man since he'd started beating him.

  The beating had cleared his mind completely. Now Arata remembered everything that had happened these past few days with perfect clarity, each moment reconstructed in sharp detail.

  But then the realization hit him.

  He didn't have a shirt—they'd stripped him of his clothes and given him only an old pair of boxers when they threw him into the Undercroft.

  Arata looked down at his chest, at the pale unblemished skin beneath the blood.

  He smirked.

  Expensive makeup is indeed very durable.

  ***

  [Three days ago]

  "Whatever happens," Arata said to Jacob as they prepared to leave, "the only thing they can do is capture me. I believe they'll either use Mika as a hostage or do whatever they can to neutralize me without killing me."

  "Understood." Jacob nodded with confidence.

  "Before we leave, I need to use the bathroom."

  Jacob laughed, thinking Arata was so nervous he needed to relieve himself.

  Arata entered the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

  That means I need to hide it in case anything happens.

  He quickly searched the bathroom, opening drawers and cabinets with practiced efficiency. The space was stocked with an excessive amount of expensive toiletries—French moisturizers, Italian hair products, Swiss dental care items, Japanese skincare serums. Obviously the ship had everything to accommodate any guest, including wealthy women who traveled with extensive beauty routines.

  And there, finally, he found what he was looking for.

  He quickly removed the cap from the foundation bottle and stared at the beige liquid inside, hesitating for just a moment. He'd never used makeup before in his life, had no idea if he was doing this correctly, but the principle seemed simple enough.

  He spread the makeup across his chest and arms, focusing on the areas most likely to be visible, blending it as best he could to match his natural skin tone. The coverage was good—dense enough to hide what needed hiding.

  He looked at the result in the mirror.

  This will do.

  ***

  The guard was breathing heavily, leaning against the barrier wall as sweat dripped down his face. He walked toward his comrades who stood watching from outside the cages, and one of them handed him a bottle of fresh water. The guard drank deeply, still staring at Arata, who stared back without expression.

  Then the guard stopped drinking after several large gulps and turned the bottle upside down, letting the water spill onto the ground in front of Arata's cage. He smiled provocatively as the liquid pooled on the dirt floor, wasted and unreachable.

  The other prisoners turned toward the sight immediately, pressing against their barriers and scratching desperately at the golden walls, trying to get out and reach even a drop of that precious water. Their hands clawed uselessly at the energy fields, their mouths moving in silent pleas that Arata couldn't hear through the soundproof barriers, their faces twisted in desperate hunger and thirst.

  All of the crew members started laughing, some of them grabbing their own water bottles and pouring them out as well, clearly having a wonderful time watching the prisoners suffer.

  ***

  Even though Arata was lucid and fully conscious again, his body was experiencing a strange phenomenon that occurred during prolonged starvation.

  Starvation follows a predictable physiological pattern. During the first twenty-four hours without food or water, the suffering is acute and constant—stomach cramps, burning throat, pounding headaches from dehydration. But on the second day, paradoxically, the symptoms often improve for no apparent reason. This isn't recovery; it's the body's survival mechanism activating, suppressing pain signals and non-essential sensory information that would hinder physical performance. Immediate hunger becomes background noise. Desperate thirst fades to a dull awareness. The body enters a state of hyper-efficiency, burning through its final reserves to maintain critical functions.

  It was the same for Arata now. Despite his dangerous state—three days without food and water—his body had temporarily forgotten its deteriorating condition, and it felt like he was in perfect shape again. Adrenaline and survival instincts were masking the reality of his situation.

  But this state was temporary and deceptive. He had no way of knowing how long he could maintain this clarity before his body finally shut down from complete energy depletion. He had to guarantee his survival within the next few hours, or his body would collapse along with the illusion of strength.

  ***

  Arata looked around him carefully, taking in the full scope of his prison.

  He was surrounded by endless golden cages extending in every direction, an infinite geometric pattern that hurt to look at for too long. But now his mind was running calculations, processing the environment with cold analytical precision.

  The ship's exterior length, which he'd observed before boarding, was approximately 950 feet. The Undercroft appeared to occupy a significant portion of the vessel's interior, perhaps running the entire length beneath the passenger decks. If he assumed the space was roughly 26 feet in height—accounting for the structural supports and the deck above—and each individual cage was approximately 6 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 7 feet tall, he could estimate the capacity.

  With cages arranged in a three-dimensional grid pattern, assuming efficient space utilization with minimal gaps between barriers for guard movement, the math worked out to roughly 2,000 individual holding cells distributed throughout the Undercroft's volume.

  His eyes couldn't see too far into the distance because the opacity of the barriers increased cumulatively as his vision passed through layer after layer of translucent energy fields. Even with his enhanced vision, he could only see clearly about 150 feet before the golden glow became too dense to penetrate, which meant he could observe perhaps 400-500 cages in his immediate vicinity.

  Given that there were approximately 2,000 people imprisoned here, there was a reasonable chance that this uniform pattern stopped at some point and transitioned into another configuration—perhaps different cage sizes, different comfort levels, different privilege tiers.

  That would be coherent with his original hypothesis about the reward and punishment system. It wouldn't make sense if everyone inside the Undercroft was treated equally—people wouldn't behave, wouldn't comply, wouldn't have any incentive to follow the rules. And these people clearly needed their prisoners alive and reasonably functional, which meant they probably wanted them to behave properly for a reason he had yet to discover.

  ***

  Arata coughed suddenly, his vision swimming slightly as his mind started to get dizzy. The combination of severe dehydration, complete caloric depletion, and discreetly using trace amounts of Aura to enhance his cognitive capabilities was taking a serious toll on his body's already dangerously low reserves.

  But he had finally finished elaborating his plan.