Before he even saw that thing, the overwhelming sense of dread had already driven Takumi into immediate action.
He could not stay on this floor.
He could not truly come face to face with the things on this floor.
He could not come into contact with the things that existed on this floor.
This place looked normal, looked no different from an ordinary dormitory level—but it was fundamentally nothing like any of the situations he had encountered before. In essence, it was already something else entirely.
Even though Takumi could not put into words exactly how this bizarre space differed from the normal Dormitory Building, that chill sinking deep into his bones allowed him to understand without hesitation that if he remained on this floor, then in the end he would undoubtedly meet a miserable death.
[Because that's what everyone thinks.]
Click!
Amid the crisp sound of the lock, Takumi thrust the Blood Key into the lock of the door he had dragged all the way in with him.
Beyond the opened door was the appearance of a dorm room.
Using the Blood Key, Takumi connected this door to a dorm room on the second floor and opened the passage between them.
At this very moment, the dorm room was completely empty, with no human figures inside. It looked completely safe, as if there were no problem at all.
But Takumi had no way of stepping into that dorm room.
Because under the light, inside that clean and tidy room, there stood an inconspicuous broom by the wall.
No—that was not a broom. That was a woman holding a broom.
That woman's eyes were constantly watching everything around her. The floor, the beds, the trash can, the desks and chairs—everything was within her field of vision, everything under her observation. Nothing could escape her eyes. She would find fault with anything, and then it would become a punishment the students had no choice but to endure.
Right now, both he and Miko were dripping wet. If they entered the dorm room, water would inevitably drip onto the floor, and that would trigger that ghostly thing's rules.
But if he did not hurry inside and escape this place, then the thing behind that other door was going to come out.
Takumi's gaze suddenly shot toward the lit lamp on the dorm room ceiling.
He reached down and grabbed at the floor, forcibly tearing a chunk of broken stone out of it.
In the next instant, he hurled it hard, striking the glowing incandescent bulb and smashing it on the spot.
In an instant, the dorm room beyond the door fell into darkness.
Takumi immediately hugged Miko and rushed through the doorway. Then he threw the clothes he had kept tucked under his arm while bathing over Miko's body, yanked out the key, slammed the door shut, turned around—and his blade violently clashed with the head of the giraffe that had burst in through the window.
"Violation... of school... rules..."
Faintly, he seemed to hear a hoarse growl coming from that thing wearing a giraffe head hood.
Twisted phantoms crazily surged through Takumi's mind at that moment. The miserable images of all the students killed by this teacher replayed themselves over and over in his head, as if some force were trying to assimilate Takumi into them, to turn him into one of them as well.
But under Takumi's cold gaze, the sharp cleaver pierced straight through the aberration's head. Then, with a savage burst of force, he carved all the way forward, splitting the entire head clean into two halves before ripping the blade free and bringing it down again to sever it completely.
The violent recoil shot through Takumi's hands, tearing open the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. And just before it was cut through, that thing let out a howl and violently whipped its head, slamming into Takumi and smashing him into the wall to one side. The impact caved that wall inward, and cracks spread outward in all directions.
"Haa..."
Drawing a deep breath, Takumi swept his eyes around the room, confirming that after the lights went out, "Teacher Broom" had already disappeared. Only then did he let out a slight sigh of relief.
Every time I clash with Alice, it feels like I'm walking the line between life and death at any second. Isn't there really no more general-purpose way to pin down that bastard?
Takumi thought back to the second loop in the Teaching Building, when he had successfully locked Alice in place. That time, he had taken advantage of Alice's game rules and made the Rescue Team member obtain the "item" needed to become Alice's friend, using it against her. But that method could not be reproduced here in the Dormitory Building, because the game rules here were entirely targeted at individuals. Even if Takumi had the Rescue Team member pick up the toothbrush that was the answer to the puzzle and walk up to Alice with it, she could simply ignore him and interpret the rule as only counting if Takumi himself was holding it.
And on top of that... when he cut down that Inspector Giraffe, he had felt something deeply ominous latch onto him. Most likely, in terms of identity, he had now already become what was known as a Bad Student.
Not far away, Miko had by then hurriedly put on Takumi's clothes. The clothes, clearly a size too big for her frame, fit her terribly, but at a time like this, she could only make do with them.
When she had been forced to shower earlier, Miko had actually brought her own clothes and shoes into the bath area with her. Even if they got soaked, she had not intended to throw them away. But when that thing behind the broken wall grabbed her, she had still only been an ordinary person. Unlike Takumi, she had no way to cling tightly to everything on her body, so those clothes had ended up falling out in the corridor.
She wasn't wearing a bra or panties... this feeling really made it impossible to relax.
Miko didn't dare lift her head and meet Takumi's eyes. Her whole face was already burning red. Every inch of her skin seemed to be trembling faintly, still replaying the intimate sensation of having been held in Takumi's arms.
'Jeez... what is wrong with me...?'
"Are you okay?"
Takumi had already spoken in an even, calm voice.
"Mm, I'm okay. Um... what should we do now?"
Answering him somewhat flusteredly, Miko did her best to steady her emotions, forcing aside the thoughts she shouldn't be having right now before carefully asking the question.
Outside, the lights were still on. Because of the rule that no one was allowed to be in the Dormitory Building during the daytime, leaving this dorm room that Takumi had forcibly made "go dark" would be extremely dangerous. In fact, even if they stayed where they were, the two of them were still facing an extremely urgent crisis.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps were drawing closer to the dorm room.
More and more chilling presences gradually stretched into the room.
On the four beds inside, the flat, lifeless bedding had somehow begun to bulge, as if something were writhing beneath the covers.
Shadows kept shifting under the dorm door. There was no telling how many people were standing outside it, swaying in front of the door.
From outside the window that Inspector Giraffe had smashed a hole through, there also came rustling sounds, as though something were peering in from outside.
They had been surrounded.
The two of them inside the dorm had now been completely surrounded.
"Takumi-san..."
Forgetting all about a young girl's sense of shame, Miko pressed herself against Takumi once again, staring in terror at the movement around them.
She could sense things far more strongly than Takumi could. She could hear the murmuring voices of those students.
It seemed to be some kind of game.
A certain year's Class 1 outstanding students, acting on a whim, had organized an escape game limited to the Dormitory Building.
Those outstanding students, who fancied themselves elites and believed themselves to be a new kind of human, had picked up all sorts of knives and weapons, while the bad students could only flee through the dormitory area in terror, forbidden from going anywhere else. Until the outstanding students had enjoyed themselves enough, none of them were allowed to leave.
At the beginning, those students could do nothing but die in despair and agony. They had absolutely no way to resist or survive.
After all, the Dormitory Building was only so large. Even if they wanted to hide, there was nowhere truly suitable to hide. The outstanding students would always find them eventually. And even if they didn't, they could still force them to walk out of hiding by issuing commands.
Even so, after exhausting every possible idea, those students eventually still came up with one way to stay alive.
That was to throw other students to the outstanding students instead. After all, the outstanding students had made the game rules themselves. With everyone watching, even they had to obey those rules. So as long as someone else was thrown in front of them first, those outstanding students would have to stop and execute that person before they could go searching for anyone else.
And no matter how arrogant those outstanding students were, their physical abilities were still only human in the end. After disposing of a certain number of bad students, they would more or less reach the limit of their stamina and be unable to keep playing.
Using that method, the students had found a path to survival, or at least a way for some of them to survive.
And now, those things gathering outside seemed to be planning to use her and Takumi as targets—to hand both of them over to those outstanding students for execution.
Miko almost couldn't suppress her panic. She was just about to tell Takumi what she had seen, to warn him what was about to happen.
But then, in the next instant, the girl abruptly realized that something was wrong.
During the daytime, weren't students not supposed to remain in the dormitory...?
And when I sense those things, shouldn't it make me feel awful—painful and unbearable? So why is it that this time, after seeing those things, I don't feel anything special at all? It's like I just watched a slideshow, or a short video—nothing more.
If that's the case...
"Takumi-san, Alice is right outside the door!"
Having reacted at once, Miko forced down everything she had just seen and quickly warned Takumi instead.
{Ah, Miko, don't be so clever. Wouldn't it be better if you just obediently said out loud what you saw? Be a good girl and listen.}
Alice's dissatisfied voice rang out at that moment.
And only then did Miko finally begin to faintly feel a stabbing pain, and vaguely see what came after the scene she had just witnessed.
The end of that escape-and-kill game had not come because the outstanding students grew exhausted and gave up the slaughter. After realizing what the bad students were trying to do, the outstanding students had instead pressed harder and harder, refusing to stop until they had killed every last one of them.
And once the bad students realized that, they had fled in despair, running until they reached...
They ran to... underground... no... that's wrong, the Dormitory Building doesn't have an underground floor... they ran to...
"Ugh!"
Intense pain assaulted the girl's nerves.
Her instincts were warning her not to keep looking, not to keep trying to understand what happened after that. But her perception was completely beyond her control, as if those things tainted with pollution and distortion were actively chasing her, dragging her deeper and deeper, forcing her into contact with things she should never touch.
Corpses...
So many corpses...
That floor does not exist... it does not exist there...
Then why did they still reach that place they should never have been able to reach...?
And those things that appeared there... what exactly were they...?
Bang!
With a heavy, bell-like reverberation, the girl's mind snapped awake.
Some kind of power had erupted from somewhere upstairs, driving away all those unsettling and repulsive Aberrations.
Takumi, who had taken on most of the mental corrosion in Miko's place and was now so dizzy he was nearly collapsing to the floor, turned and looked toward the crack he had smashed into the wall earlier. At that moment, he could see a blood-smeared hand reaching out from behind the crack, slowly tearing it wider and widening the opening.
A second rescue team member had appeared at Takumi's side.
Takumi stuffed the doll carrying another Red Moon-level player's presence into that rescue team member's hands.
In the very next instant, that rescue team member charged straight at the wall, smashed it apart on the spot, and rushed into that nonexistent floor carrying the doll.
All the Alices let out shrill screams at that moment. It didn't matter whether it was the three incorporeal Alices wandering through the building, or the fourth Alice located underground... or on the rooftop? Underground? Takumi couldn't tell the exact direction for a moment, but he still sensed the existence of the fourth Alice—the one that should have been connected to the Dormitory Building's key Obsession Item.
"I'd like to see how you plan to snatch that doll out of the rescue team member's hands when none of you even have physical bodies."
Grinding his teeth, Takumi muttered under his breath as he carried Miko and opened the door. Outside, there was already nothing there. Down one side of the corridor, Mai—who looked to be in very bad shape, with half her body covered in blood—was crushing several surveillance cameras underfoot, grinding them to pieces before waving to Takumi and Miko in greeting.
"So you actually managed not to lose any arms or legs. Looks like newbies these days really are a lot stronger than the ones from back in my time."
Mai, who was clearly showing signs of overusing her Obsession Item, now had half her face showing clear signs of bronzing. Those bronze plates had grown straight out of her flesh, leaving her face covered in blood, and the blood that flowed from it had stained half her body.
And yet, despite enduring that kind of pain, there wasn't the slightest sign of abnormality in Mai's expression. If anything, she looked extremely relaxed.
Takumi only needed one glance at the traces on the ground to realize that all those Aberrations that had gathered there had most likely been lured away by Mai alone, which made him admire this veteran player's abilities even more.
"We only barely made it. If you'd come any later, the two of us might really have been finished."
Saying that, Takumi helped the drained Miko over to Mai's side. And at that exact moment, accompanied by a pleasant chime, the lights in the Dormitory Building instantly went out, and everything returned to complete darkness.
The clean, orderly corridor once again turned back into a filthy heap of trash.
At the same time, Takumi sharply sensed an aura so unsettling it made his skin crawl.
He raised his head. Miko also seemed to sense something and lifted her head as well. About half a second later, Mai caught on too and turned to look.
At the far end of the corridor, a figure was standing there.
In the darkness, it was strangely conspicuous—a pale, slender Aberration, cold and carrying a chilling aura.
Something utterly inhuman, something that inspired fear and dread.
Something that, the moment you locked eyes with it, made you instinctively want to run, with no desire whatsoever to fight it.
No...
The thing standing there didn't seem to be something like that at all.
Takumi blinked, and realized that what stood at the end of the corridor was a young girl.
She was wearing a filthy school uniform full of tears and dust, and had long red hair and pale yellow eyes.
Not a monster. Not any kind of monster.
Just a young girl—a bright, lovable girl of the sort everyone would naturally like.
"Hello... you all..."
The girl tilted her head, smiled at Takumi, and took a step forward.
Scrrrk—
Along with it came the sound of something like a blade dragging and scraping across the floor.
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