Saya fell flat on her face. Or at least that's what she thought, because for some reason, the floor felt incredibly soft—soft, slippery, and reeking of something horrid. It carried the stench of filth commonly found in public restrooms, mixed with a sickeningly metallic tang.
Saya head spun. She struggled to push herself up, but her hands sank into the floor, and a warm, viscous liquid spurted out.
She couldn't see anything. Something sticky covered her face, smearing across her contact lenses. She hurriedly wiped her face, fumbling to remove the lenses. After some effort, she managed to take them out and reached for her glasses. Saya had never been fond of wearing contacts, so she always carried a spare pair of glasses.
As she put them on, the scene around her slowly came into focus, but perhaps… she shouldn't have done that.
Flesh.
The entire floor, the walls, the ceiling, even the desks were covered in a pulsating layer of raw, red flesh. Saya staggered to her feet, trying her best not to touch the mass of flesh. She made her way to the sink in the room and turned on the faucet, only for blood to gush out.
Her stomach churned, threatening to empty itself.
Everything was flesh, twitching muscle, shifting sinew. She could even see thick, dark-red veins running along the walls, throbbing in a slow, steady rhythm. They reminded her of veins—thick, wrist-sized veins.
Disgusting. Horrifying. She was trapped inside a grotesque horror movie, and the director was some kind of sadistic maniac with no concept of morality.
Struggling to keep herself from vomiting up her entire breakfast, Saya staggered toward the door. Slimy and reeking of blood, everything around her was unbearable. She had no idea where she was, but one thing was clear: she needed to get out of here.
This was a nightmare, a full-blown nightmare in broad daylight. But the pain felt too real…
She had to escape…
Wait!
Where was Rei?
There was no one else in the room. Had she left already?
Saya kept wondering as she reached for the door handle. Even the doorknob was slimy, oozing blood as she touched it.
The hallway outside was empty. She should have felt relieved, but instead, the silence sent chills down her spine. Damn it, Rei, where are you?
Saya carefully observed her surroundings. The school still looked the same, except everything was wrapped in grotesque, bleeding flesh, and the sky outside was an ominous shade of red. The trees… something was wrong with them. Their branches twisting at unnatural angles, like something out of a bonsai garden. Worse still, they were moving.
No wind. No force acting upon them. Yet they swayed ever so slightly, like they were alive.
"Is that tree… Wait…!?"
As Saya tried to process her surroundings, she noticed something in her field of vision. But when she turned to look at it, it shifted out of sight. However, if she only glanced at it from the corner of her eye, she could see it clearly.
"That's… an HP bar!?"
Saya didn't play games often, but she could still recognize it. There was no mistaking, this was a health bar just like the ones in RPGs. A green bar, and next to it, a few words displaying a level: Lv 1.
What the hell was going on? No matter how she looked at it, this felt just like an RPG game. How could all the terrifying things that had just happened be connected to a game? No, that was impossible. But the thing displayed in her vision was clearly identical to a HUD.
"How... Everything just doesn't make sense!!!"
Saya had the unsettling feeling that her eyes had turned into the screen of a first-person game and her mind began to turmoil. She desperately tried to find a reasonable explanation for her current situation. Everything she was experiencing was too strange, too terrifying and she couldn't calm down without some kind of logical reasoning. Panic was beginning to take over.
"Inhale… exhale… Deep breaths, stay calm…" Saya told herself. But the overwhelming stench of blood only made her more nauseous.
She was surrounded by flesh, above her, below her. With every step, the disgusting mass squelched beneath her feet, oozing blood. From the ceiling, droplets of crimson liquid dripped steadily, like a leaking pipe.
There was no way she could stay calm in this place. Saya felt like she was on the verge of breaking down. No. She couldn't handle this…
Suddenly, a wheezing breath echoed from a corner of the hallway, something was coming.
Every hair on Saya's body stood on end. Whatever it was, she needed to get away from it. In a place like this, anything could be terrifying. She immediately turned and ran, desperate to put as much distance between herself and the source of that sound. But blindly running in such a horrifying place wasn't a good idea—she didn't want to run straight into some unknown monstrosity.
After a brief hesitation, she decided to duck into an empty classroom. Inside, the desks and chairs were scattered about as if a storm had torn through. She quickly found a hiding spot amidst the mess, crouched down, and pulled more desks around her to conceal herself.
Even the furniture was covered in rotting flesh. It was disgusting—Saya felt like a maggot wriggling inside a pile of decaying meat. But no matter how repulsive it was, she had to endure it, because the wheezing sound was getting closer. And then—she heard the voices.
"Help me…"
"It hurts… It hurts…"
"Make it stop…"
A creature appeared in the hallway. A nightmare. The most horrifying thing Saya had ever seen.
It was a monstrosity formed from the naked bodies of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of people fused together. It resembled a giant centipede made of living humans. Its legs were human limbs, and its grotesque body was composed of writhing, suffering people whose skin had turned a sickly green.
It had no head, it just a tangle of bodies merged into one writhing, crawling horror. Countless hands and feet jutted out from its body as it dragged itself along the ground. And within that abomination, Saya could clearly see the twisted faces of those trapped inside. Hundreds of bloodied faces, hundreds of wide, unblinking eyes, and hundreds of agonized moans.
At the front of the mass, where a head should have been, there was instead a glowing red diamond-shaped icon.
And as Saya looked at it, a display appeared before her eyes.
"Envy Avatar, Lv ???"