Chapter 238: Hey, I Have a Fishing Rod
"Did you not hear him say just now that the corpse would drag people into the water?" Haruto couldn't help but ask, his brow arching in sheer disbelief.
The tall boy nodded repeatedly, his face pale with lingering hesitation, but the girl with the twin ponytails clinging to his side looked thoroughly impatient. She rolled her eyes, glaring at Haruto as if he were a nuisance stepping on her shoes.
"None of your business! Who even are you?" she snapped, her voice shrill enough to cut through the eerie fog hanging over the lake. "I'm telling my baby to get it. What's it to you?!"
Haruto's eyes widened slightly. A long-lost, deeply suppressed urge to smack someone across the back of the head suddenly flared to life in his chest.
The twin-tailed girl tightened her grip on her boyfriend's arm, raised her chin haughtily, and scoffed with pure disdain. "Besides, who wasn't listening carefully? That guy before was dragged down because he physically went into the water. My baby has long arms; he can reach it from the shore. Why are you worrying so much about our business?"
"You... you're truly amazing," Haruto finally managed to say. He could only utter those three words, shaking his head as he retreated back to Kaguya's side and shrugged helplessly.
As for her logic—that the previous victim only died because he stepped directly into the water and was dragged down—it could indeed be a possibility.
But it was only a possibility.
To force her own boyfriend to take such a lethal risk over a mere 'possibility' left Haruto completely devoid of any desire to complain further. He just felt a deep sense of pity for the guy. If Haruto ever found a girlfriend like that, Mother Yukari would probably hang him upside down from a streetlamp and beat him senseless for having such terrible taste.
Kaguya and the other two girls had overheard the entire exchange, their expressions shifting into something incredibly subtle. They exchanged strange, knowing glances, silently agreeing that this girl was truly a rare specimen of stupidity.
"Just let them be," Kaguya said indifferently, crossing her arms. She wasn't particularly concerned about the lives of random players in this death game, especially those who actively pushed their own teammates into the jaws of danger.
In the end, the tall boy didn't immediately reach out to grab the floating diary. The man in the down jacket couldn't stand the tension anymore and stepped forward to mediate, joined by a few other anxious players who tried to explain the severe risks.
After a lengthy bout of persuasion, the group managed to talk some sense into her, and the twin-tailed girl reluctantly agreed to a safer approach.
The tall boy jogged into the distant woods, returning a few minutes later gripping a long, sturdy branch.
A rusted iron railing circled the perimeter of the lake. Just below it lay a shallow, muddy area paved with slick, moss-covered stones.
He nimbly vaulted over the railing, his boots landing steadily on the stone beach. Taking the long branch from the man in the down jacket, he carefully inched his way toward the water's edge, planning to use the hooked end of the wood to drag the diary back to shore.
But just as he bent his knees and extended the branch over the dark ripples, the man in the down jacket standing on the shore suddenly went pale.
"Come back up! Quickly!" he shouted, his voice cracking with panic. "That corpse is gone!"
"He's right, the corpse sank again!"
"Hurry back!"
The other players erupted into alarmed cries, frantically waving at him.
The tall boy didn't move. His gaze remained locked onto the leather-bound diary, which bobbed tantalizingly just within his reach. His brow furrowed in determination.
"Let me try. I'm fast enough to escape if something happens, and this diary is likely a crucial clue for clearing the instance."
Hearing his resolve, the players who had just been screaming at him immediately fell dead silent. Everyone held their breath, their eyes glued to the murky surface of the water, the tension thick enough to cut with a knife.
The tall boy took a deep, shaky breath. He stepped back with his right foot and leaned forward, adopting a coiled posture so he could spring backward at a moment's notice. He stretched out his arm, the tip of the branch slowly hovering toward the floating diary—
Splash!
The very millisecond the wood brushed against the diary's cover, the water violently erupted. A pair of bloated, deathly pale hands burst from the depths, their rotting fingers clamping around both the branch and the diary with terrifying strength, violently dragging them down into the dark abyss.
Everything happened far too fast.
There was no warning, no bubbling water, no prelude whatsoever.
The tall boy froze completely in place, his posture rigid as his back was instantly drenched in a cold sweat. If he had been holding onto that branch any tighter, he would have been pulled in with it.
"Bao Bao! Are you okay?!" The twin-tailed girl was so frightened her voice cracked into a screech. She stood rooted to the spot, her face drained of all color.
"I... I'm fine..." The tall boy managed to force a strained, trembling smile at her before turning back to the terrified group on the shore. "Could you trouble yourselves to fetch more branches? The diary should float back up again in a minute."
Three players immediately turned and sprinted toward the woods, returning shortly with a bundle of long, thick branches.
Just as the tall boy predicted, the leather diary soon bobbed back up to the surface, but the swollen corpse was nowhere to be seen in the murky depths.
The man in the down jacket vaulted over the railing, landing on the stone beach beside the boy. He bent over and scooped up several heavy, smooth stones from the mud.
His plan was simple: throw the stones far out into the lake to distract the lurking corpse, giving the tall boy a brief window to hook the diary back.
"Are you ready?" the man asked, weighing the stones in his palm.
The tall boy stared fixedly at the water's surface, his jaw tight, and gave a hard nod.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
Three stones arched through the air, splashing into the distant waters of the lake one after another.
The tall boy acted immediately, thrusting his new branch toward the diary.
But it was completely useless.
There wasn't a single ripple where the stones had landed. Instead, the moment his branch tapped the diary, those horrifyingly pale, swollen hands burst out of the water right in front of him again. They snatched the wood and the book, ruthlessly dragging them back into the lake's embrace.
Failure again.
A heavy, suffocating silence reigned on the shore.
Yotsuya Miko turned her head, looking up at Haruto with hopeful eyes. "Brother Haruto, do you have a solution?"
Rin Setsu also looked over, her hands clasped nervously in front of her chest.
"Yes, I do." Haruto nodded confidently.
The girls' eyes lit up with immediate relief, but his very next words made them freeze completely in place.
"Just have Kaguya go down there and get it. Let her fight the thing at the bottom of the lake. Whoever wins gets to come back up."
"You absolute jerk—!" Kaguya's eyes widened in outrage. She immediately rolled up her sleeves, baring her pale arms. "Come on! Let's fight right now! Whoever loses goes down into the lake!"
"No fighting," Haruto flatly refused, waving his hand dismissively while stating his case with perfect, shameless justification. "It's precisely because I can't beat you that I'm giving you this precious, heroic opportunity. Don't tell me you, someone who can single-handedly flip the ceiling of a building, can't beat a soggy corpse?"
Kaguya's eyes widened even further. It felt as though ten thousand alpacas were stampeding wildly through her mind, leaving nothing but chaotic speechlessness in their wake.
Especially when she noticed Miko and Rin Setsu staring at her—their gazes a complicated mixture of genuine expectation and deep worry—she immediately took two large steps backward and firmly crossed her arms over her chest.
"Don't even think about it. I am not going down there."
She could easily win the fight, of course. But willingly letting herself be dragged into freezing, dirty water by a bizarre, rotting corpse? That was far too much for her delicate nerves to handle.
"Wait a minute," Kaguya suddenly blinked, a memory surfacing. "Don't you have a Fishing Rod?"
A Fishing Rod?
Yotsuya Miko and Rin Setsu exchanged bewildered looks, directing their confused gazes back toward Haruto.
"Oh, right. I almost forgot about that." Haruto clapped his hands together as he remembered he actually possessed such a convenient item.
Reaching his hand out into the empty air, a dark, ominous rift adorned with eerie red eyes tore open in space—a Gap. He casually reached inside and pulled out a sleek, modern Fishing Rod.
Immediately after, he strolled right up to the edge of the rusted railing and casually motioned for everyone to step aside.
When the other players saw the Fishing Rod suddenly materialize in Haruto's hands, their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
Where the hell did he pull a Fishing Rod from?!
Meanwhile, the two men down on the stone beach had failed a few more times and were just turning back to ask for another batch of branches. When they looked up and saw Haruto casually fiddling with a Fishing Rod on the shore, they froze entirely, their faces twisting into expressions of deep existential doubt.
Since someone literally had a Fishing Rod, there was absolutely no need for them to risk their lives poking at the water anymore. Feeling incredibly foolish, they quickly scrambled back up over the railing.
After adjusting the reel and checking the line, Haruto pulled his arm back and swung the rod hard.
Whoosh!
However, his aim was completely terrible. The hook flew backward, nearly snagging the collar of a nearby player and scaring the absolute life out of them.
"Cough, cough... my mistake, my mistake. Just warming up," Haruto coughed twice, completely unfazed by his near-miss, and cast the rod again.
This time, the translucent line cut a perfect, graceful arc through the foggy air. The hook dropped down and precisely caught the thick leather corner of the floating diary.
Splash!
Those ghastly pale, swollen hands erupted from the water, arriving exactly as expected to claim their prize.
But they were far too late.
With a swift yank of Haruto's wrist, the diary flew high into the air, completely leaving the surface of the lake. It unhooked mid-air and landed with a heavy thud on a patch of empty dirt a safe distance away.
Yotsuya Miko, who was standing the closest, immediately ran over. She picked up the damp book, wiped off the dirt, and handed it straight to Haruto.
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