Screaming, crying, collapsing to the ground, running about in all directions, standing stiffly in place without moving…
At the instant that blonde girl's head exploded, the postures those girls displayed could be described as varied and vivid, starkly revealing their fragile and weak side.
Of course, they were ordinary people who had never come into contact with the [Sacrifice Game], and from the very beginning had been dragged into a heavyweight Instance like [Campus Uncanny]. Blaming or mocking their frailty and helplessness would be nothing more than idle talk. Takumi had no interest in concerning himself with such matters. He merely watched the blonde girl intently, watching that fleeting instant in which she passed from life to death.
From the candle going out to her head shattering apart, the interval in between was less than three seconds.
Takumi did not see anything.
After the girl stepped on the candle and extinguished it, and at the moment her head burst apart as if crushed by something, he himself did not see any abnormality.
No.
Not entirely.
Lowering his head, Takumi looked at the red candle lying on the ground, already extinguished.
In that moment just now, at the instant the candlelight was about to go out completely, something seemed to surface from the darkness, only to vanish together with the flame.
A shadow?
Was the origin of the attacking thing something like a shadow? When holding a candle, that thing would not appear, so there was no way to see it. When the candle went out, that thing would kill the person without a candle, and because the candle—the source of light—was lost, its attack would be completely concealed within the darkness, making it impossible to detect its traces?
Thinking this, Takumi slightly turned his head and saw Miko standing frozen beside him, her entire body stiff.
A bit of blood spatter had landed on her face.
At the moment that girl's head exploded just now, more than half the people in the classroom were splashed with blood. Takumi was the same. However, being dirtied by blood was something he no longer cared about at all. In comparison, Miko's reaction just now was more worthy of attention.
It seemed she had seen something… Even before that girl died, this child's reaction had already been off. In her eyes, the process of that girl's death might have been different from what the others had seen.
Bang—
With another explosive sound, another girl collapsed to the ground, her head smashed like a watermelon struck apart, spilling everywhere.
This girl had screamed and run off immediately after the blonde girl's head exploded, not even glancing at the candle and paper on her desk. As the class fell into panic and scattered in all directions, a girl overcome with fear knocked over her desk, causing the candle to roll onto the ground and go out. The girl who had already run some distance suddenly stiffened, then died on the spot, meeting the same fate as the blonde girl.
This time, Takumi saw that thing.
It was indeed a shadow—one like a wolf, a massive four-legged shadow crouched on the ground.
Because this girl had run to a relatively distant spot, the light from the other candles cast her shadow, and also cast the shadow of the thing that had followed her. Thus, Takumi clearly saw that thing bite down on the head of the girl's shadow, and then the girl's head was crushed apart, shattering like a watermelon squeezed to pieces.
"Do not knock over the candles!"
Finally snapping back to her senses at this moment, Miko shouted loudly, anxiously trying to stop her classmates.
But after more than twenty people had fallen into chaos at once, her voice alone was far too weak. In an instant, two or three more desks were knocked to the ground. As the candles rolled onto the floor and went out, even more blood blossomed across the classroom.
And this was less than ten seconds after the first girl who had courted death was killed.
"Everyone, be quiet."
Takumi spoke slowly.
A blood-red light flashed through his eyes.
The blessing of Hedda, filled with the intent of slaughter and destruction, brought an extremely powerful deterrent effect. Even the most terrified and frantic girls, those completely driven mad, were in that moment intimidated by the intense chill, standing stiffly in place, unable to move, as if their breathing and every muscle in their bodies had been halted.
A total of four students had died.
Four head-shattered corpses lay on the ground, their bodies occasionally twitching, looking as though they were still fresh.
Having instantly activated and then instantly withdrawn the power of the blessing, Takumi, now restored to normal, merely glanced at the four corpses before slightly shaking his head, feeling a trace of helpless sorrow for these girls.
A Red Moon-level Instance.
Even among players who possessed extraordinary powers, this was an ultra-high-difficulty Instance that only top-tier teams were capable of challenging.
An Instance that required a group of players with extremely powerful enhancements—able to run at supersonic speeds like little green giants, perform inhuman leaps, and, in addition, possess various powerful Obsession Items such as defensive, reconnaissance, and spatial displacement types—and who cooperated with and trusted one another, and yet still faced a high rate of failure. And now twenty-odd ordinary high school girls with no extraordinary powers had been thrown into it.
Other than pitiful, Takumi could not think of any word to describe these students.
Creak—
Accompanied by the faint sound of a chair shifting, Takumi stood up.
"I have no obligation to protect you people, because in this place, even I can hardly protect myself. So I will say this only once. After I finish, what you choose to do is up to you. First, protect your candles. Once the flame of that red candle goes out, something will attack and kill. You saw the four who just died. So now, honestly return to the seats where you first woke up, and hold onto your candles properly."
"Second, when each of you woke up, there was a sheet of rules on your desk. Read that sheet of rules and memorize it—memorize it properly. Following the rules written on it may not necessarily allow you to survive, but if you do not act with reference to what is recorded there, you will certainly die miserably. That is all I have to say. From here on, you can only rely on yourselves."
At the moment Takumi finished speaking, he was already holding his candle as he walked over to the blonde girl who had died at the very beginning.
He did not look again at these girls who had grown up in a peaceful era and, until today, had never experienced anything bloody or cruel. Although he noticed that quite a few girls were carefully holding their own candles, proving that there were still cautious newcomers who knew how to protect themselves, he still did not pay attention to them.
To be honest, even if it were a Dark Night-level Instance, he might still try to protect these newcomers. Just like Sato Takao in the second Instance— that old man who understood explosives— in the third cycle Takumi had directly sent him into the guard booth, where he stayed safely until the Instance ended and was rescued, practically winning by lying down the entire time.
After all, even in a Dark Night-level Instance, it was still possible to find a safe zone, to find a place where one could hide safely. But in a Red Moon-level Instance, whether it was the extremely special Aberration that had previously invaded the real world and deceived his perception blessing, or the words in the rules sheet and the game objective description that seemed to conceal malice no matter how one looked at them, all of it made Takumi feel that finding a safe zone in this Instance would likely be very difficult—perhaps even impossible.
So even if there were newcomers with talent and ability, unless they were like Miko, who possessed extraordinary perception from the start, Takumi would not pay them excessive attention. Because he knew that, for the people in this class, there was basically only one ending: total annihilation. Even for himself, he could not say for certain how many times he would have to die in this place, nor whether he could successfully survive and leave.
In Takumi's view, intimidating this group of helpless students and telling them what they most needed to do right now was already a sufficiently great act of kindness from a stranger. But these girls clearly did not think so. The expressions with which several girls looked at Takumi had already become somewhat off.
"You did this, didn't you?"
One girl stepped forward and spoke to Takumi somewhat agitatedly.
"These people were actors you hired, weren't they? You're filming some kind of reality show, right? I'm warning you—my father knows a senator. Let me go immediately!"
The more the girl spoke, the more agitated she became. The way she looked at Takumi was filled with anger, as though she had already decided that he was the one controlling everything.
"Th-that's right. We're all from the same class, and you're the only one who isn't. It was you, wasn't it? What exactly did you do to Rei-chan and the others? Are they… are they really dead, or did you use some kind of trick on them!?"
After the first girl took the lead in attacking him, a second girl immediately stood out as well, joining in the suspicion and accusations against Takumi.
"What the hell are you trying to do? I'm not going to be some reality show actor!"
"Yeah! Hurry up and open the locked door—we're leaving this place!"
"I'm calling the police. Damn it, why is there no signal? Once I get out of here, I'm definitely reporting you and having the police throw you in prison, you kidnapper!"
More and more girls began to accuse Takumi, some even insulting him on the spot.
However, no one dared to step forward.
After Takumi had previously used the power of the blessing to intimidate them, no matter how fiercely they cursed, they did not have the courage to approach him and physically confront him.
"That's not it! Takumi-san was dragged into this because of me. He's a victim too!"
Unable to bear her classmates' words any longer, Miko stepped forward to defend Takumi and tried to explain the situation.
She attempted to explain matters related to the [Alice's Grand Adventure Game] to these students, letting them know that it was the game itself that possessed spiritual abilities, which had caused them to be brought to this place, and that Takumi had been implicated by her, brought here by the "make friends" characteristic of the [Alice's Grand Adventure Game].
However, for those who had already decided on the "truth"—or who sensed that something was wrong but, unwilling to believe in the existence of Aberrations, chose self-deception and defined Takumi, the only anomaly among the students, as the "culprit" in order to deceive themselves—there was no way they would listen to what Miko said.
"Nonsense. I think you're in on it with him."
"Come to think of it, Yotsuya-san's dark circles have been really bad lately. She clearly hasn't been sleeping well. Did she already do that with this man…?"
"Ugh, that's disgusting. She's still in high school and already doing that kind of thing. Could it be she's working in that line of business…?"
Although her relationship with these students had always been rather ordinary—she had only one friend in the entire class, Yurikawa Hana—Miko had to admit that she had never expected the classmates she saw every day to say such things to her.
At this time, some students also tried to ease the situation. For example, the vice class monitor, Yoshino Rika, stepped forward to explain that Miko could not possibly have done such shameful things, saying that the current situation needed careful discussion. Others signaled for Miko to quickly move away from Takumi, who was crouching beside her studying the corpse. It seemed that even the students who were relatively more willing to believe Miko still could not place trust in Takumi, the only male present, and were filled with vigilance toward him.
"Y-you all…"
Having never dealt with a situation like this before, Miko pressed her lips together and clenched her fists, yet did not know what else she could say.
"What's the point of talking so much? Even if you explain it clearly to them, what can it change?"
As for Takumi, who fundamentally treated the words of these students as nothing but nonsense, he didn't even bother listening to what they were saying. He simply picked up the extinguished candle lying on the ground, took a lighter out of his pocket, and tried to relight it.
Snap—
As the flame flickered, the extinguished candle lit up again.
Takumi frowned, carefully observing the candle with its dark red hue. Just as he was about to try blowing it out to test the effect, he noticed the headless girl's body lying beside him twitch. Then it abruptly sat up and, unbelievably, stood straight up.
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