Heroine-Saving System: Reborn In A Third-Rate Manga As The Protagonist Chapter 165 166: Impostors Among Us [V]

'It was a fake?' Shion's eyes widened as she looked forward at the tab floating above the eting table.

[Tanaka Hiroto is not an Impostor]

It had actually been the Shapeshifting Impostor all along and because of that revelation, they were now down to six people and among these six remaining players, three of them were the Impostors.

It was pretty crazy.

Shion's hand trembled as well as she stared at the notification. She was confused with her mind racing through the implications.

Had the Impostor known that they would fall for the bait? Had this entire thing been orchestrated from the very beginning… the kill, the cara footage, the perfectly executed fra job?

Now with Koji gone, they couldn't get readouts of the suspicion level of at least one of the remaining players each round and that crucial advantage was gone forever.

'They really played their ga well…' Shion thought as she looked around the table at the remaining faces.

It was pretty easy to deduce who the Impostors were now. They were probably Ichinose, Yoru, and Ryouma, with Koya being innocent in all this since he'd been actively trying to find ways for them to fight back against these damned Impostors and though she would like to vote the suspected Impostors out as soon as possible, she didn't have enough people to overpower them in votes.

Three Crewmates versus three Impostors ant they would remain in a tie no matter what so they were stuck.

Yoru thinned her lips and bowed her head becoming the picture of remorse and guilt.

"I'm so sorry for all of this…" Yoru said, her voice heavy with what sounded like genuine regret. "It's my fault that Hiroto got voted out. Perhaps if I had paid better attention to the video, if I had questioned the evidence more thoroughly, then it wouldn't have resulted in us losing another teammate."

The others began to murmur responses, but it was Koya who spoke up first with a reassuring voice.

"It wasn't your fault," Koya said firmly. "The rest of us were fooled as well so we all share responsibility for this."

Everybody nodded their heads in agreent and Yoru looked up, seeming to draw strength from the support.

"Thank you," Yoru said with a determined expression painting her face. "I promise I'll try a lot harder to find this shapeshifting Impost—"

Imdiately, Tech Tube's voice cut in with a burst of mocking laughter that echoed through the eting room from the speakers above.

"AHAHAHAHA!" Tech Tube's voice was filled with sadistic amusent. "Oh man, the Crewmates in this group are really pathetic! You've lost so many people to the Impostors already! This is too good!"

Shion clutched her fist tightly, her knuckles going white. Beside her, Ichinose's jaw clenched in frustration at the mocking tone.

Tech Tube stopped laughing as his voice shifted to sothing more businesslike.

"Alright, alright, let add so spice to this ga~" Tech Tube announced cheerfully. "Attention, Impostors! Any Impostor that kills another Impostor… or indirectly leads to the killing of another Impostor will receive FIVE EXTRA CLASS POINTS upon victory! So you better get cooking with those betrayals!"

He paused for dramatic effect.

"Oh, and just so everyone's aware," Tech Tube added, "if only one Crewmate remains alongside the full Impostor team, the ga is automatically over. Impostors win imdiately as there's no voting needed!"

Another pause.

"Round 3 will begin in one minute. Good luck~!"

The announcent ended and Koya's mind imdiately started calculating.

'Well, Ryouma is the weakest link here,' Koya thought.

Ryouma was the only person who seed to be floating across the field without doing anything particularly noteworthy. He hadn't contributed much to discussions, hadn't made any significant observations and he hadn't drawn attention to himself in any aningful way.

Naturally, he would be the easiest target for elimination… both for Koya and presumably for Yoru as well.

'But I honestly don't care for Ryouma that much.' Koya continued his internal assessnt. 'Instead, I should try to eliminate Yoru imdiately.'

That way, he could make Ryouma think that Koya was on his side as a fellow Impostor, only to eliminate him in the next round and claim all the victory… and all the bonus class points for himself though the other two would know he was the Impostor unless he played it well.

Koya nearly shook his head at his own thoughts.

'I'm thinking like those psychopaths do…' Koya realized with a sigh. All he wanted was to get out of this spaceship simulation and back into the real world… That was it… Nothing more, nothing less.

Shion suddenly slamd her hands on the table with the sound echoing around the room and attracting everyone's attention imdiately.

"I know sothing about the Impostors that I think all of you would want to hear…" Shion declared and Yoru raised an eyebrow, her expression showed she was interested but cautious as well.

"Go on…" Yoru said.

Shion took a breath and laid out her deduction.

"The Impostors probably have kill cooldowns…" Shion explained. The three Impostors… Koya, Yoru, and Ryouma all pretended to be surprised by this revelation.

As for Koya, after killing Koji while disguised as Hiroto, he'd seen his kill cooldown tir appear.

A whole three minutes of waiting after killing a Crewmate was insane, but it prevented people from just spamming kills one after another.

If the Impostors could kill without restriction, it would take away from the psychological aspect of the test. The entire point was making others trust that you weren't the Impostor and manipulating the voting process.

Shion continued her explanation.

"The first Shapeshifter could have killed everyone in Electricals when they killed Hina, but they only killed her and left imdiately afterward," Shion pointed out. "That's strange, isn't it? And not only that, but if the second Shapeshifter had wanted to, he could have co for us before we could call the ergency eting after finding Koji's body but instead, he ran off."

She looked around the table.

"It's possible that after a kill, Impostors can't directly kill another person for a certain period of ti," Shion concluded. Every person at the table nodded since the logic made perfect sense, not like it would be of use though.

Koya made a show of looking thoughtful then nodded as well.

"I noticed that too…" Koya said, adding credibility to Shion's theory and making her smile slightly however, that eting was interrupted by Tech Tube's voice ringing out again.

"Round 3 has begun!" Tech Tube announced. "May the best Impostor win~!"

Everyone imdiately went their separate ways, scattering throughout the ship. Koya fell into step beside Shion and Miyuki as usual, maintaining his position as their trusted ally and protector.

"I think I have a way that we can get an Impostor out, Shion…" Koya said quietly as they walked. "Are you willing to listen?"

Shion turned to look at him with hope flickering in her eyes.

"Of course I am," Shion said imdiately. "What do you have in mind?"

Koya smiled.

...

Yoru wasn't dumb.

The young sixteen-year-old girl took a deep breath as she moved through the ship's corridors alone, steadying her nerves…

Even if she was among eighteen-year-olds who were supposedly smarter and more experienced than those her age, she knew how to recognize and seize opportunities when they presented themselves.

Once she'd noticed that she could position herself as the captain, as the natural leader of the Crewmate group, she had taken that role instantly and then she'd tried to eliminate Koya early, which was only natural given that she'd already suspected these people would try to pull the "last Impostor standing" trick for those extra class points.

Who was she to refuse that sa opportunity? After all, her class was a bit of a cheat.

She had the class known as Mimic, which allowed her to mimic the abilities of the other Impostors. Right from the beginning of the ga, she'd been able to see what classes the other two Impostors had and had imdiately started thinking about how to use those abilities to her advantage.

'Koya-kun has the class Shapeshifter, while Ryouma has the class Hitman..' Yoru thought as she approached one of the control consoles.

She tried to use the buttons on the console setup to fire an asteroid at a distant target as part of a fake task, but since she was an Impostor, the keys didn't actually work. It was just another layer of the simulation.

Shapeshifter let Koya transform into anyone he wanted.

She'd initially thought that Koya would be eliminated in the first round, especially when she'd shapeshifted into him to kill Hina and fra him but Koji just had to intervene with his scan ability and clear Koya's na.

'I don't know why, but I feel like Koya-kun is the most dangerous person here.' Yoru thought as she moved away from the console.

At the far end of the hallway, she spotted Ichinose entering a room.

During the last round, Yoru had gotten access to the cara room and had carefully mapped out where all the caras were positioned throughout the ship. She'd morized the blind spots which were the areas where no caras could see.

'No caras over here on this side…' Yoru noted with satisfaction.

That made killing Ichinose much easier and since she couldn't see Ichinose's status directly, she had to be a Crewmate. After eliminating her, Yoru would find so way to fra Ryouma and get him voted out in the next eting.

It was perfect.

With that plan in mind, Yoru moved toward the room purposefully and entered.

Ichinose was fixing wires at one of the panels with her back turned to the door. She glanced back when she heard footsteps, but upon seeing that it was Yoru, the young woman visibly relaxed.

"Hey, Captain…" Ichinose said with a small smile. "Have you been doing tasks?"

"Yes, I have," Yoru replied smoothly, moving closer. "I wanted to assist you with this one if that's okay."

"Sure, I could use the help," Ichinose said, turning back to the wires. Yoru glanced at her class tab, switching it ntally.

'Hitman…' Yoru thought.

The Hitman class was brutal and efficient. Once activated for a kill, the victim's body would burn up in flas after death, turning into nothing but ash that could be blown away. No body ant no evidence and no evidence ant no ergency eting could be called.

It was perfect for a clean elimination.

Yoru stepped up behind Ichinose, who was completely focused on matching the colored wires correctly then Yoru struck.

She manifested the Impostor's knife… a wicked blade that appeared in her hand in a flash of red light and drove it directly into Ichinose's back, aiming for where her heart would be.

The blade punched through Ichinose's body suit, through skin and muscle, between ribs, and pierced straight through her heart in one brutal thrust.

Ichinose's entire body went rigid. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, but instead of sound, blood ca out in a thick spray that splattered across the wire panel she'd just been working on staining the colorful wires dark red.

Yoru twisted the blade and yanked it out. The wet, sucking sound of steel pulling free from flesh was sickeningly loud in the small room.

Ichinose's legs gave out and she collapsed to her knees, blood pouring from the wound in her back. More blood bubbled from her mouth as her punctured lung filled with it.

Her hands scrabbled weakly at the wire panel, trying to hold herself up, but her strength was fading fast. Yoru stepped back, watching clinically as Ichinose's body began to slump forward but then sothing unexpected happened.

Instead of the body bursting into flas as it should have with the Hitman ability, Ichinose's corpse began screeching.

A high-pitched, chanical alarm sound emanated from her body that was impossible to ignore and Yoru's eyes went wide in shock and horror.

'She has that Alerter class that Ryouma talked about?!' Yoru thought in alarm but that was impossible!

Ryouma was the one who lied… about the class, so it had been a real one all this ti?!

Yoru backed toward the door with her heart pounding but before she could escape, the door slid open automatically.

Everyone who remained stepped into the room.

Shion… Miyuki… Koya… Ryouma…

All of them looking directly at Yoru, who still had the bloody Impostor knife in her hand, standing over Ichinose's screeching corpse that lay on the ground to her right, blood pooling beneath it.

Everyone had caught her killing.

She still had the knife in her hand, after all and even if she didn't, she would have looked guilty as hell anyway, standing alone in a room with a freshly murdered body.

Yoru smiled. It was a strange smile… not one of victory, but of resignation and acceptance.

"I knew it," Shion said. "You were the Impostor all along."

She took a step forward.

"Just report the body," Shion continued. "We'll have to vote you out, Yoru."

Yoru's smile widened slightly.

"So you can give that very painful death?" Yoru asked in an eerily calm voice. "Suffocating in the vastness of space, choking on nothing as my lungs freeze and my blood boils simultaneously? Drifting in the void until I die in agony just like Hiroto did?"

She shook her head.

"I'd rather not…" Yoru said simply and then, without hesitation, without even a mont of doubt, Yoru angled the blade toward herself.

"Wait—" Shion started.

It was too late…

Yoru drove the knife directly into her own head.

The blade entered through her left eye socket with a wet crunch, punching through the orbital bone and driving deep into her brain. Blood exploded from the wound, spraying across her face. Her right eye went wide for a brief mont in a flash of pain before it glazed over completely.

Her body remained upright for a heartbeat longer with the knife still embedded in her skull then Yoru collapsed.

She fell forward like a puppet with cut strings, hitting the tal floor face-first. The impact drove the knife even deeper, the handle pressing flush against her ruined eye socket as more blood pooled beneath her head, mixing with Ichinose's on the floor.

The screeching from Ichinose's body finally stopped and silence fell over the room.

'I guess there aren't any laws involved for people committing suicide…' Koya thought, staring at Yoru's corpse with the urge to sigh then he looked at Ichinose's body, rembering what had brought about this plan to eliminate Yoru in the first place.

...

[FLASHBACK - Before Koji's Death]

"Ichinose."

Koya spoke the na quietly as he sat in one of the ship's lounge rooms. The space was empty except for the two of them.

Ichinose sat beside him stiffly, uncertain of why he had called her here.

"Yes, Koya-kun?" Ichinose answered while looking down at the floor.

The girl didn't even know why they were here in the first place… Perhaps Koya wanted to kill her or sothing, Not that she would mind, really… at the end of the day, it was all for Class 5's benefit but if he was going to do it, he should at least make her death painless.

That was what she was thinking.

"I wanted to ask you for a favor," Koya said calmly and Ichinose looked up at him with serious eyes and Koya t her gaze directly.

"Would you die for ?"

There was a small silence between them as the question hung in the air. Ichinose's expression didn't change imdiately. She processed the question, thought about what it ant, and considered the implications then her lips twitched into a small smile.

"Yes," Ichinose said simply. "Yes, I would. Maybe with a bit of hesitation, but I would die for you, Koya-kun."

Her smile widened slightly.

"After all," Ichinose continued, "You helped … when I was about to kill myself, you were the one that stepped in and helped taking a bullet to the head for , even though it didn't hurt that much, I still feel sorry about that. I don't know why you saved or why you let around your apartnt especially since all I bring is pain with my dishonesty…"

She looked at him with clear honest eyes.

"So yes," Ichinose repeated. "I'll die for you. Just tell when and how."