Chapter 161

Yuji and Megumi step into the Tokyo No. 1 Colony together but are split apart almost at once, flung to far-flung corners of the city. Disoriented and marked as newcomers, both are quickly singled out by veterans who prey on inexperienced players.

Atop a skyscraper, a woman in aviators named Hanyu waits with a walkie-talkie and a boy, Rin Amai, whom she has pressed into service as a spotter. When he complains he can do nothing until someone appears, she shapes her hair into a jet's tail with her cursed technique and threatens to run him down. Outside the barrier, Megumi warns Yuji to be wary of sorcerers incarnated from past eras, who valued life differently and treated death-matches as normal, some even seeking an honorable end in battle. He doubts they can be reasoned with, though he hopes a modern sorcerer like Tsumiki, swept into the game, will be willing to talk.

The pair knock on the wall, Kogane greets them, and Megumi declares his participation, skipping the rules review and reminding Yuji their first task is to gather intel on Hiromi Higuruma. Once inside, they are instantly separated and transferred to different points, one of nine drop locations that lurking players exploit. Rin signals Hanyu with a guiding baton as Yuji falls from the sky. Hanyu rockets through two buildings to ram him, a hit that would pulverize most players, but Yuji is unharmed and counters by hurling a cursed-energy-charged chunk of debris into her abdomen, dropping her, badly wounded, into the structure below.

Hanyu's partner Haba then hovers up behind Yuji using his own helicopter-like hair technique, furious about his fallen woman, and Yuji simply asks him about Higuruma. Elsewhere, Megumi has felled a female player with his cursed tool, unable to find Yuji even with Nue because the colony dwarfs Shibuya and the two may now be kilometers apart. When he questions the girl about Higuruma, she demands he act as her protective knight; he grudgingly agrees, ordering her to walk ahead and warning that he has no qualms about earning points off her if she lies. Unfazed, she smirks and tells him to call her Remi.

This nineteen-page Volume 18 chapter, the first part of the Tokyo No. 1 Colony storyline, introduces Hanyu, Rin Amai, Haba, and Remi, and is adapted in anime Episode 54. It establishes the nine-point transfer mechanic of the colonies and begins the Yuji versus Haba and Hanyu fight while contrasting the two protagonists' attitudes toward racking up points.