Chapter 194: Kaguya's Sinister Smile
Rock… against paper.
The final winner was Haruto.
A quiet sigh of relief escaped his lips. If he had actually lost five rounds in a row, he would have started to seriously question his own existence—and probably would have pulled out the lucky four-leaf clover Eirin had given him just to cheat.
Kaguya, on the other hand, clenched her fists in triumph. A faint, excited blush returned to her cheeks, a stark contrast to her usual pallor, making her look like a predator about to finally claim her revenge.
Her abnormal reaction deeply puzzled the group of players watching from the tent's entrance.
'Could she really have a trump card?'the woman with the high ponytail wondered.'Something the monster is incapable of imitating?'
An absurd guess flashed through her mind, but she immediately dismissed it as impossible.
Every eye in the tent was locked on Kaguya.
She raised her hands, her movements slow and deliberate, and wrapped them around her own neck. Her slender, jade-like fingers pressed into the pale, delicate skin. The sight caused the Long-necked Woman to lean forward, a flicker of confusion in her monstrous eyes.
The next second—
Crack.
A sharp, distinct snapping sound echoed through the silent room.
With a final, decisive twist of her hands, Kaguya's neck broke. Her head separated cleanly from her body, thudding softly as it rolled across the floor.
Those beautiful black eyes remained wide open. They even blinked once in Haruto's direction, a gesture so unnerving it sent a shiver through him and earned a reflexive glare in return.
Blood gushed from the stump of her neck like a fountain.
Silence.
A dead, suffocating silence.
No one spoke. No one moved.
At the entrance, the pupils of the woman with the high ponytail constricted into pinpricks. Her entire body froze in place, her breath catching in her throat.
The suspicion she had just dismissed… had just become a horrifying reality.
The team members behind her looked as if they had been struck by lightning. Some stood with their mouths agape, unable to form a single sound. Others instinctively scrambled backward, bumping hard against the canvas wall. One man's legs gave out entirely, and he collapsed to the dusty floor in a heap.
"Is… is she dead…?"
"Suicide? Why would she kill herself?!"
From their perspective, even if she possessed a rare artifact that could substitute a death, the fact that she hadn't resurrected after several long seconds meant it had clearly failed. Besides, what good was such an item when your head had been completely removed from your body?
For the first time, an expression of near-bewilderment appeared on the Long-necked Woman's face. Her twisted features went rigid as she stared, transfixed, at the headless corpse sitting limply on the floor inside the glass room.
"It's your turn now," Haruto announced, clapping his hands together to draw her attention back.
The Long-necked Woman opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She glanced down at her own hands, then back at the headless body in the glass room.
"That… I can't imitate that…" For the first time, a raw terror bled into her raspy voice. "That's irrational… You can't play like this! That's wrong!"
It was quite obvious—if she were to remove her own head, she would not be surviving the experience.
"Hurry up," Haruto urged, genuinely confused by her hesitation. So what if she couldn't do it? The punishment was just the removal of an organ.
But the Long-necked Woman didn't move toward the glass room. Instead, she lunged, not at Haruto, but toward the players huddled at the entrance.
The crowd scattered in terror, only to realize her target wasn't them. She was making a desperate charge straight out of the tent.
'Running away? She wants to escape?'
The others were just as puzzled as Haruto. Wasn't the penalty for failure just losing an organ? For a monster with such potent regenerative abilities, that shouldn't be a death sentence.
However, the instant the Long-necked Woman's foot crossed the threshold of the tent, pairs of giant, pale hands emerged from the canvas walls once more. They shot out in unison, grabbing her and forcibly dragging her back from dozens of meters away.
The creature's previous madness was gone, replaced by a mask of pure fear—whether from the giant hands or the imitation that awaited her, it was hard to say.
In that moment, Haruto finally understood. The rule about "depriving an arbitrary organ" was merely the punishment for the players.
For the Long-necked Woman, imitation was mandatory. Failure meant a penalty far more severe than losing a heart or a lung. It meant death.
The woman with the high ponytail arrived at the same conclusion. She had initially thought Haruto and his friends were just messing around, but now she saw the truth. They had seen through the game's hidden rules from the very beginning, and one of them had just risked their life in a one-for-one trade.
Suddenly, everything made sense. She understood why both the boy playing rock-paper-scissors and the girl in the glass room had worn expressions of absolute victory after winning a single round.
Their goal was never to win three consecutive times. It was to kill the monster.
Thinking of this, the woman's gaze toward them filled with a deep admiration.
'What a heavy, bitter victory,'she thought.'To be willing to sacrifice oneself just so their teammates could win…'
The giant hands dissipated, having deposited their captive back in front of the glass room. The Long-necked Woman, barely able to stand, stumbled her way inside.
Click…
The glass door sealed shut again.
That face, once a canvas of manic glee, now held nothing but dread. Trembling, she mimicked Kaguya's earlier actions, placing her hands around her own neck.
She squeezed. Hard.
Her eyes gradually rolled back into her head, her lips parting in a silent gasp. Veins bulged on the backs of her hands, along her neck, and across her entire body. As the pressure mounted, the fear on her face seemed to recede, replaced by a seep of twisted, masochistic pleasure.
CRACK—
With a final, monumental effort, she succeeded.
Her head snapped off and rolled onto the floor, spinning a few times before stopping, face-up. The headless body immediately crouched, fumbling blindly through the wild spray of blood that was rapidly staining the floor crimson.
After three seconds of frantic searching, her hands found it. She snatched up her head and slammed it back onto the stump of her neck. From the severed edges, countless tiny, flesh-colored tentacles sprouted, writhing as they began to rapidly stitch the flesh and bone back together.
A moment later, she slowly let her hands go.
The head was fused back onto her neck.
"I… I survived! I won!" the Long-necked Woman shrieked, slumping into the growing pool of her own blood. The fear vanished from her face, replaced by a morbid excitement. Her body began to wriggle on the slick floor like a maggot, an unstoppable, broken smile spreading across her lips.
The expression on the face of the woman with the high ponytail turned grave. She hadn't expected this. Even with the sacrifice of one of their own, these kids still hadn't won.
The Extreme Imitator game required at least two people. If the person inside the glass room died, someone else had to take their place.
But these children… they only had two people left.
She quickly weighed her options. There was no fixed team setting in this instance, which meant her group could join the game midway. Right now, the monster was in an extremely weakened state. There would be no need to risk her own life with a deadly imitation; she could just step up, land a few decisive blows, and the creature would likely die right here. And she would get half the rewards for her trouble.
She addressed Haruto, who was still seated at the table. "I can be the imitator."
Hearing this, Haruto turned his head, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
Just then, a familiar, melodic voice drifted from the direction of the glass room.
"Wait, is someone actually trying to snatch this job from me?"
The moment that voice rang out, every person in the tent—save for Haruto—felt their pupils constrict as they whipped their heads around in terror.
When they saw Kaguya standing perfectly fine at the door to the glass room, their mouths dropped open wide enough to fit a fist.
"She's… alive!?" one of the players stammered.
"Nonsense," Kaguya retorted with a dismissive wave. "How could I possibly die?"
She then turned her gaze to the Long-necked Woman, whose manic smile had frozen on her face. A slow, deliberately sinister grin spread across Kaguya's lips.
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