"We need to figure out the situation around here. Let's go."
Mono's voice drifted over.
Sixth Master's expression returned to normal.
She nodded.
Her mental state was quite good now.
Mono led her along the corridor and out of the building once more.
Mono looked up at the sky.
"Is it day or night right now?"
The light in the sky was no different from before.
On the contrary, it even seemed to have become a bit deeper.
Dark clouds weighed heavily over the city, as if a storm could break out at any moment.
Darkness still shrouded the city.
The earth was surrounded by fog, and everything appeared eerie.
This city didn't seem to have a daytime.
The two of them walked forward along the pitch-black alleyway.
Everything around them was quiet, silent and secluded.
After walking for a while longer, a massive building suddenly appeared ahead.
The building was enclosed within a sturdy iron mesh fence; from a distance, it looked like a giant beast crouching in the darkness.
Its entire form emitted a soul-devouring, gloomy dark glow.
In the darkness, it was impossible to see the entire complex at a single glance.
One could only see the front, where two buildings met at a ninety-degree angle to form an L-shaped facade.
On the walls of both sides, rows of neat windows were etched into the dark walls.
A large clock hung right in the center.
The sharp hands pointed exactly at 12:00, motionless, as if time itself had stopped inside.
Everything was silent, permeated by an inexplicable eeriness.
The plaza below was blocked from the light by the towering facade, making the ground appear dim.
Many tattered dolls and boxes were scattered across it.
The smell of dampness and decay wafted from afar through the iron bars.
Looking at this familiar building, Mono instantly remembered what this place was.
A school?
Yes, the massive complex crouching inside the iron mesh was a school.
Mono had a very deep impression of the school.
Because he remembered that inside the school, there seemed to be a teacher who looked quite good.
By 'looked quite good' here, he meant... her neck.
The teacher's neck, perhaps because it had received enough nutrition, had developed exceptionally robustly.
Mono still remembered the image of her head, winding through dozens of kilometers of corridors, chasing after him to bite him.
Even now, just thinking about it gave him goosebumps.
Mono shook off the goosebumps on his body.
"Forget it, let's check out some other places first."
He wasn't ready for a chance encounter with the Beautiful Teacher yet.
...
Mono pulled Sam along as they wandered outside other surrounding buildings.
The shadows of the two stretched long in the alley.
The sky grew even more somber.
There were still no pedestrians on the road.
They bypassed one desolate street after another from a distance, circling around the school in an attempt to head toward the city center.
...
But after walking along the alleys on the city's periphery for half the day, their path was blocked by a wide chasm.
Mono sized up the chasm before them.
The chasm ran north-south, and the two sides were at least thirty meters apart.
Furthermore.
Mono looked into the depths of the chasm.
The bottom was shrouded in layers of mist, pitch black and seemingly bottomless.
This forced him to abandon any thought of climbing down.
And if he wasn't mistaken, this was likely the deep trench from the game.
There might be a suspension bridge nearby that they could cross, Mono thought to himself.
"Let's go~"
He then led Sixth Master along the edge of the chasm, heading upward.
However, to his disappointment, they didn't find any suspension bridge that could cross this chasm along the way.
Moreover,
Mono looked around once more.
He found that the north-south chasm still showed no sign of ending.
"Could it be that the only way to reach the other side is through the school?"
Mono remembered that behind the school, there seemed to be a suspension bridge leading to the other side.
Now, this massive chasm had divided the city into two parts: the inner and the outer.
If he wanted to enter the Inner City, he might only be able to do so via that suspension bridge.
Mono couldn't find any other way, as the city's layout seemed to be a concentric circle structure.
His current location was the outer city, cut off by the chasm—there were no people here, no monsters, no food, no water, nothing. Aside from silence, there was only silence.
And the school sat right on the only bridge connecting to the Inner City.
If he wanted to keep moving forward, he had to enter the school.
Mono felt a headache coming on just thinking about it.
He really didn't want to have a chance encounter with the Beautiful Teacher so soon.
But the famous survival food show host and expert, Bear Grylls, had said that in a survival situation, one must make the best plans while their strength is still good.
Mono knew he had to do it.
Otherwise, once his condition declined, things wouldn't get any better.
Hesitation is sometimes a fatal poison.
So, acting on impulse once in a while isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Mono led Sixth Master back.
Soon, they were back in front of that building radiating a terrifying atmosphere.
The school.
Speaking of this word, Mono felt that most people should speak of it with a sense of nostalgia.
But now, Mono didn't feel a shred of nostalgia at all.
At the very least, absolutely no one would like the school in front of him.