"So this is what the dorms for Outstanding Students are supposed to be like."
Takumi lowered his head and looked at the so-called dormitory: carpeted floors, all kinds of exquisite paintings hanging on the walls, each student having a single room the size of a small apartment, and every kind of furnishing one could ask for. He could not help but shake his head as he spoke.
"All I can say is, the school really knows how to stir up class antagonism. Sigh. But it's a Red Moon-level Instance, after all. Places like this always come in all kinds of creative flavors of inhumanity. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to form an Instance of this level. See this sort of thing a few more times, and people will probably go numb to it."
With a cigarette hanging from her lips, Mai exhaled white smoke as she answered in an utterly calm tone.
"In fact, every Instance I've been through so far has been pretty inhuman, and the level of inhumanity just keeps going up. It feels like I'm watching the lower limits of humanity get broken step by step. I'm honestly starting to dread what I'll end up seeing next."
Catching sight of certain "decorations" placed inside one of the dorm rooms whose door had been left open, Takumi frowned and sighed again, his words carrying a note of helplessness.
"It can't be helped. This is the world of aberrations, after all. For a place like this to take shape, it usually needs enough hatred and madness behind it to make it possible. And naturally, that means a whole pile of unsettling stuff gets mixed in too. You get used to it. Mm, there's nothing blocking the way up ahead for now. Let's move."
Still rambling on in the manner of someone speaking from experience, Mai took the lead and walked to the staircase first. Only after carefully confirming that there was no danger did she signal for the two behind her to follow.
They passed through the tenth floor and reached the eleventh without anything unusual happening along the way.
Although Fujihana Middle School was full of aberrations, the Outstanding Students, as the key sacrifices, basically did not turn into aberrations. In this Instance, they existed only as complete corpses, so in the dormitory area for Outstanding Students, Takumi and the others actually would not face much obstruction.
Of course, that was not to say there was nothing at all. For example, the thing lying on the floor here—even if they could walk around it—was still extremely unpleasant to look at.
"These are...?"
Miko's little face turned slightly pale. After seeing the inconspicuous thing lying on the ground, the girl was still somewhat shaken.
"This should be one of the 'Brother Pencils' from the rules, right? So that's what it meant."
Takumi did not recklessly approach it. Instead, he observed the thing on the ground from a certain distance away.
That thing barely moved anymore, but it still seemed to be just barely breathing. It had no hands or feet, and it was a mangled mass of flesh, yet it did not seem to give off much of a bloody smell. What could be confirmed was that it really had once been human, and... it really had been used as a pencil.
"Don't touch them under any circumstances. If you do, your own limbs will fall off. The curse on these things will invade everyone who touches them and force them to suffer what they once went through."
At the side, Mai gave a very serious warning to the two walking behind her, while she herself was already heading farther ahead.
Up until now, Alice still had not appeared.
Takumi could sense that the rescue team member on Floor 0 still had not been taken out. It looked like this time he had successfully jammed the movements of those aberrations. Of course, that was only for the time being, and only for those three incorporeal Alices. Takumi had not forgotten that the fourth one—very likely the Alice that was itself an Obsession Item incarnation—had still not shown itself even now.
As for the thing that had chased them up from Floor 0, Mai had discovered through her own Blessing that it was not climbing very quickly. Rather than chasing them, it felt more like it was taking a stroll. Even so, the three of them still could not afford to slow down too much. After all, no one knew the murder mechanism or action rules of that thing yet. Who knew whether, once it got close enough, it might suddenly do something like teleport right in front of them?
"Stay sharp, all of you. We're already close to the top floor. Now there's only the twelfth floor left."
As the group arrived at the staircase between the eleventh and twelfth floors, Mai's expression grew more serious the closer they came to their destination.
"I'm fine. Miko, have you seen or sensed anything?"
Takumi answered at once, while not forgetting to keep an eye on the black-haired girl who had been cautiously following him the entire time.
"I-I'm fine too. It's very quiet here. Since just now, I've only vaguely been able to hear some kind of sound coming from very far away."
Miko hurriedly answered. She was still very nervous, though having changed back into her original clothes made moving around a little easier.
As a side note, because both Takumi and Miko had gone into the bath, their clothes were completely soaked through. And with Miko's school uniform soaked like that... well, it faintly showed the color of the underwear beneath it. How should one put it? Takumi actually felt it was somehow even more provocative than if she had just taken it off.
They went around the few "Pencils" lying on the floor in the eleventh-floor corridor, passed through the staircase, and arrived on the twelfth floor.
As the highest floor of the Dormitory Building, the scene here was completely different from below. It was filled with a pungent smell of blood. Blackish-red stains covered the walls, the floor, and the ceiling everywhere, as though the entire floor had been soaked through with blood.
In the middle of the corridor on this floor stood a tall blood-colored stone pillar, almost completely blocking the hallway and leaving only a very narrow passage that one had to squeeze sideways through.
"Looks like we've found the creative workspace of those Outstanding Students."
Mai compared the width of those bloodstains with her gaze and quickly confirmed that the marks had been made using the "Pencils" downstairs.
"There are also some inspiration notes here. Mai-san, is that thing still far from us? If it is, I want to investigate here for a bit and see if I can find any useful information. Uh... Yotsuya-san, maybe you really shouldn't look at this stuff after all?"
Inside a small room with an open door, Takumi found a desk piled high with documents and notes. After discussing it briefly with Mai, he stepped forward and began investigating there. Just as expected, the contents were basically all the kind of insane material that really should not be shown to children. And while Takumi was flipping through this sanity-shredding stuff, Miko also moved closer, apparently intending to help.
"I-it's okay."
The girl gently shook her head. Her face was still pale, but her attitude was very firm.
"I also want to help as much as I can, instead of always being protected, so let me take a look too."
Saying that, Miko took a deep breath and reached out to pick up one of the records.
What she got was a creation record for a stone sculpture. The work had been filled using a pair of siblings, and the way they had been used to fill it was...
After reading less than two sections, Miko already felt like she was going to vomit.
"You've already helped us a lot of times. Honestly, you really don't need to force yourself to read this trash. And I'm reading this stuff to see whether there's any information here that actually has value. Don't just get sidetracked by all those freakshow gore records."
Seeing that the girl was already unable to continue but was still stubbornly holding on, Takumi could not help but remind her again. Then he quickly flipped through the records spread across the desk.
He planned to look here for information related to "Floor 0." That aberrant floor gave him a very bad feeling, and vaguely, he could sense that "the students" should know about that floor. If so, then there ought to be related records left somewhere in Fujihana Middle School.
When Mai saw that Takumi was investigating for information here, she searched through several other unlocked rooms. From one of them, she found a bloodstained iron chain more than three meters long. She wrapped it around her hand and treated it as a makeshift bracer. Then she found some rope, took it out, and tied it across the corridor to block off the staircase they had come from. She dripped some of her own blood onto the rope, setting up a simple warning measure.
And it was at that moment that Takumi found what he had been looking for.
[Casual Note Record: ■Year ■Month ■Day]
[Today, the school leadership from Yoruyama Middle School came over for a visit, and they even insisted that students like us from Class 1 had to go greet them. What a bore. Couldn't they have made people from the other classes do it instead?]
[My train of thought got interrupted… this is seriously uncomfortable. The graduation works from Class 1 of the other two grades might already be close to completion—what if they manage to finish ahead of me? No, I absolutely can't let them become the first to enter the "new world." I'm the best. I won't lose to anyone!]
[I have to find a way to further perfect my work. There must be something I've overlooked.]
[Now that I think about it, starting this afternoon, those "raw materials" have been spreading rumors—saying there's a nonexistent floor in the Dormitory Building? How ridiculous. Those pieces of trash who don't even know how long they'll live still have the time to care about something this pointless?]
[Could it be that the school or Yoruyama Middle School did something… I just hope it doesn't affect my graduation work. There aren't many "raw materials" still alive now—I don't want to end up competing with other classmates over materials. Sigh… if I'd known, I should've used them more sparingly back then.]
This was a set of notes—clearly a casual diary entry left behind by a Class 1 student from back then.
Yoruyama Middle School… that name appeared again.
As expected, he had already felt that the "nonexistent 0th floor" carried the flavor of an urban legend, bearing considerable similarity to the research projects from Yoruyama Middle School.
Hayadate Elementary School, Fujihana Middle School, and Yoruyama Middle School—these three schools clearly weren't merely in competition with one another. They were cooperating at the same time. Yoruyama Middle School's research projects had even manifested to a certain extent within Fujihana Middle School. If that was the case, then the aberration that had possessed Ikuyo being able to wander into Fujihana Middle School—could that also be related to this? The connections between the three schools were even tighter than he had anticipated. It made him wonder whether the aberrations from the Hayadate Elementary School area might also manifest here in some form…
"So, did you find what you were looking for?"
Mai, who had removed the room's door entirely, had already noticed that Takumi had paused after picking up a document. After waiting for a moment, she spoke up, her legs slightly bent, ready to deliver a flying kick to Takumi's head at the slightest sign of trouble.
In a Red Moon-level Instance, investigating clues and gathering information was an extremely dangerous activity. A single mistake could lead to contamination or distortion. As such, how to snap an information-gathering player back to their senses as quickly as possible was knowledge every Red Moon-level player needed to master. At this point, Mai had almost no Obsession Items left, so the only thing she could rely on was the most basic method—"physical awakening." She took great pride in her control over the force used in this method, confident that she could wake someone up without knocking them unconscious or killing them.
However, this time, the situation was clearly different.
Although reading the information had indeed imposed a considerable mental burden on Takumi, after finishing the contents on the page, he showed no abnormal reaction at all. He had even been extremely cautious not to read the final line of the note—[As an Outstanding Student, I command you who reads this text to dig out your own eyes]. He even had enough leeway to help Miko, who was also reading nearby, share the burden of mental erosion—raising his hand to block her eyes whenever she accidentally came across a dangerous passage.
This guy's mental strength… could it be that he was actually some veteran player pretending to be weak?
Watching Takumi's calm demeanor, Mai couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
"The connection between Fujihana Middle School and Yoruyama Middle School is probably extremely tight. The so-called 0th floor that appeared in this Dormitory Building is actually a project developed by Yoruyama Middle School. The reason that aberrant floor has rules like 'breaking walls or taking the wrong path will lead into it' and 'any living person who enters will be targeted by the aberration within, and once contact is made, death is almost certain' is likely because, when that floor was first formed, it was deliberately constructed in that way."
As he spoke, Takumi picked up the most dangerous note among the scattered documents on the desk—the one that radiated overwhelming malice even without being read—and inwardly marveled at Miko's luck. At the same time, he grabbed her and began heading out.
Mai's expression, however, changed abruptly at that moment.
"It's coming. It just passed through the trap I set with blood and rope. That thing should hold it for a bit—move, quickly, Room 1207!"
As she spoke, Mai rushed in front of Takumi and leaned the door she had removed against the wall.
"A trap?"
Takumi froze for a split second, but his hands didn't slow down at all. He immediately took out the Blood Key and inserted it into the keyhole of the door Kumagai Mai had brought over.
"Players who clear a Red Moon-level Instance, whether they obtain the Red Moon enhancement or not, undergo some kind of change in their bodies—they become more attractive to aberrations. So by using an appropriate amount of blood combined with items that possess aberrant properties, you can create traps that lure those things in. It's kind of like… we become more delicious, more desirable for them to kill and devour. But these traps can't be used often, because the aberrant power might use the blood to exert some kind of effect on us. Alright, is the door open yet—what the hell—?!"
While Mai was explaining, Takumi had already successfully opened the door.
But what lay beyond the door was not the expected location—instead, it was the interior of a dorm room. Inside, seven or eight aberrant students with disheveled clothing turned their heads to look at them.
"Don't mind us. Carry on."
Bang!
Takumi slammed the door shut, pulled out the key, reinserted it, and opened it again.
This time, a stairwell appeared on the other side of the door. At the same time, Takumi could hear the sound of another door opening in the corridor.
It seemed that while Takumi and Miko had been investigating, Mai had dismantled two doors. One had been placed at the stairwell leading from the 12th floor to the rooftop, while the other had been kept with her at all times, to prevent situations where they might not be able to escape in time.
Damn, she's seriously reliable. Why the hell didn't I run into a veteran like this in my first and second runs?
Without a single unnecessary word, the three of them passed through the door and rushed straight toward the stairs.
The footsteps of the thing chasing them from the 0th floor echoed—tap… tap…—slow, yet closing the distance at an astonishing speed.
But faster than that thing were Takumi and Mai, who crossed the stairs in less than two seconds and reached the rooftop entrance, along with Miko, who was being dragged along between them like a kite for a full second.
The rooftop door was locked—but aside from a key, it could also be opened with an access card.
Beep—beep—
Takumi took out a keycard and tapped it against the sensor. With a sharp, grating sound, the door slowly opened, revealing the concrete surface outside—and a sliver of the crimson moon in the sky.
Takumi stepped onto the rooftop first, followed by the protected Miko, and finally Mai, who stayed behind to close the door. She then drove her fingers straight through the thick metal door, destroying its internal structure and rendering it completely inoperable.
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