Was it merely trying to scare him? Just like with the other students—simply giving him a deliberate fright?
When he saw the human head open its mouth, Takumi considered in his heart what might happen next. He did not act rashly, but continued reading, sitting motionless in his seat as if nothing had happened.
But immediately afterward, he realized that the situation before him was probably not what he had anticipated.
A strong malice emanated from the female student's head.
Those blood-drenched eyes were filled with resentment.
At the same time, Takumi also recalled that this female student was the very one who had first spoken rudely to him earlier, treating him as a kidnapper.
Because she had harbored intense malice toward me while alive, does that mean the Aberration she became after death would treat me in a completely different way?
Whoosh—
Amid a sharp tearing sound through the air, Takumi suddenly tilted his head, yet a long gash was still cut across his face.
The blood spat from the human head's mouth was as sharp as a blade and extremely fast, directly drilling a hole into the wall behind Takumi.
After the first attack landed, that head immediately opened its mouth again, about to launch a second round of assault against him.
Bang!
In the very next second, Takumi's punch flew out, directly knocking the head away. It slammed hard into the classroom ceiling before falling back to the ground. The head, which had still retained the features of a young girl, was smashed completely inward at that moment—like a deflated ball, bones and flesh shattered into a mangled mass.
The Aberration body sewn with the sheep's head swayed slightly, and the lifeless sheep head turned toward Takumi.
Then Takumi grabbed the sheep head and forcefully smashed it onto the desk of a dead student at the side, driving the sheep head completely into the desk. He then hurled the thing—Aberration and desk together—sending it crashing through a window on one side of the classroom and rolling out into the corridor.
A blood-red glimmer flickered faintly in the depths of Takumi's pupils.
From beginning to end, he had not stopped reading. With one hand holding the book as he read, and the other knocking the head away and brutally beating the so-called [Sheep Mom], he stood in the aisle of the classroom and continued reading the text on the page.
Beside him, Miko was completely dumbfounded, so much so that her reading voice stopped for a second. It was only after Takumi turned and pointed at the textbook in her hands that she came back to her senses and hurriedly resumed reading.
After doing all this, Takumi remained still for a moment. Only after confirming that he was not being attacked did he slightly let out a breath.
Not being attacked… does that mean I guessed correctly?
While making his move, he had continued reading the entire time, maintaining the state of "participating in morning reading."
At the same time, his body had remained inside the classroom. He had not left it, nor had he entered the corridor, which could not be entered.
Therefore, under the rules of the [Alice's Grand Adventure Game], his act of violently beating the [teacher] and throwing her out of the classroom was entirely legitimate and would not be punished by the rules.
It was just that… this feeling was truly quite unpleasant.
Takumi stepped forward, and spiderweb-like cracks spread across the floor around the top of his foot.
He could feel an extremely powerful force binding his body, trying to press him back into his seat.
Even though he could not see where this force was coming from, he could so clearly feel its overwhelming strength, almost impossible to resist. And what this invisible force intended to do was to forcibly push Takumi back into his seat, to make him return to [the same state as everyone else].
The same state as everyone else?
In that fleeting moment of daze, Takumi seemed to hear and see something.
That's right.
That was how it should be.
Everyone is like that, aren't they?
You have to act sociable, be the same as everyone else—only then can you be welcomed by everyone.
You must not do things that are different from others. That is something only Bad Kid would do; you have to be a good child.
So under the spotlight, under everyone's gaze, in full view of all eyes, you must not do anything different from everyone else.
Crack!
The top of Takumi's foot had already slightly sunk into the floor.
At this moment, he could clearly sense that at least two tons of force were being transmitted from all directions of his body, trying to force him back into his own seat.
I see. No wonder the rules clearly did not state something like [sit in your seat and read], yet whether human or Aberration, everyone present had no choice but to sit properly. Even earlier, I had not felt anything wrong at all, and had been searching for my seat together with the others, without feeling that there was any problem with being guided by this idea.
The hidden rule of the [Classroom with the Lights On]—that is, the [Classroom During the Day]—is that those who are here must behave in a way that matches their identity and is considered normal by the majority. So now, during morning reading time, the me who stood up and beat the teacher is someone who does not follow the rules, someone who has broken this shared understanding.
If it were an ordinary person—like these students around me—they would have no way to do what I am doing. First, their mental strength is not strong enough; once their thinking is manipulated by this hidden rule, it is very difficult for them to react, and they simply cannot perform contradictory actions. Second, although for some reason this hidden rule does not display an instant-death punishment when violated, continuing to resist this bizarre rule is absolutely not something an ordinary person could do.
Crack—crack—
Takumi's steps left one shallow pit after another in the tiled floor.
He picked up the candle from his desk, then walked to a female student who had already died, her body completely broken apart, and directly pressed his red candle onto the candle on her desk.
The girl's candle flame quickly went out.
And in that moment, the two candles rapidly fused into one, as if they had been a single complete candle from the very beginning.
The girl who had already died showed no reaction to this; she merely sat there blankly in place.
And relying on Hedda's blessing to resist the bizarre force pressing in from all directions, Takumi continued to move forward. He walked past the desks of several dead female students, merging all of their candles with his own, until the candle became somewhat too long and inconvenient to carry, and only then did he stop. He then went to take Miko's candle, merging several dead students' candles into hers as well, ensuring that her candle would not burn out too quickly.
A few students who realized what Takumi was doing looked at him with fear and pleading in their eyes—afraid that he would do the same to their candles, yet at the same time hoping that he would bring candles to merge for them, to grant them more time to survive.
But Takumi did not pay them any attention. He simply stepped through the hole in the wall into another classroom, reached out to pinch out the candle of one of the Aberration students inside, and then directly took that candle away.
To be honest, doing this was quite risky. But after he had chosen to break the wall in order to escape the classroom earlier, thereby activating this group of ghostly things in the room, Takumi no longer had a choice. Even if he did not take these candles, judging by the burning speed of the candles he had seen before, once this place returned to the state of [Night], the Aberrations in this classroom would all be activated and rush out one by one to cause trouble.
So he might as well loot them first.
And these extinguished candles—yes, as expected… they could indeed be stored in the watch space.
After a preliminary test, Takumi confirmed that the candle itself possessed certain characteristics of an Obsession Item, somewhat similar to ashes, Purple Talisman, and Black Blood Bullet. This strange red candle was very likely a type of mass-producible bizarre object.
The origin of Black Blood Bullet lay in research conducted by the upper echelons of the United States. Then what about this red candle, which seemed capable of suppressing corpse Aberration and strengthening the concept of the [living]? What was its source? Could it be a similar situation—something people did before Aberration had developed cognitive shielding?
Takumi did not know the answer.
But that did not stop him from speeding up, extinguishing and taking away all the candles of the twenty-five Aberrations in the entire classroom. Before leaving, he also damaged both doors of that classroom, and finally dragged the podium and the air conditioner to the hole he had smashed open, using them to block it.
And this entire process took Takumi two minutes.
Returning to his seat, having never stopped reading the entire time, Takumi released the power of the blessing. As the red in his eyes faded, he frowned, feeling a wave of intense dizziness and fatigue wash over his body, his breathing growing noticeably heavier.
Although this blessing was powerful, the burden it placed on the body was by no means small. After using it just now, he probably would not be able to easily activate this blessing again for the next few hours.
Thinking this, Takumi turned his head to look at the window he had smashed and saw the sheep-headed Aberration standing silently in the corridor, staring at him without moving.
It didn't come in again?
Takumi silently pondered the possible reason why it was standing there without moving. Then he saw that after standing in place for a while, the sheep-headed Aberration suddenly turned around and left.
At almost the exact moment it disappeared from one side of the corridor, Takumi heard the "ding-ling-ling" of the bell ringing over the broadcast.
In an instant, the lights in the classroom went out, leaving only the candlelight to illuminate the dark room.
From behind the hole in the wall came the sound of desks and chairs being pushed, followed by dense footsteps drawing closer.
The dead students whose candles Takumi had taken collapsed one after another onto their desks, their bodies beginning to twitch slightly. Some of those who still had their heads intact widened their eyes. Though they were clearly dead, the living students could feel themselves being viciously glared at.
"Don't just stand there. Hurry and go. Remember to keep quiet."
Takumi reached out and pulled Miko up. She nodded repeatedly and quickly followed him as they ran toward the window he had smashed.
The group of ghostly things that had blocked the corridor earlier were no longer there.
Without hesitation, Takumi climbed out of the window first, landing steadily on the ground without stepping on any broken glass. He then turned back and directly lifted Miko out, carried her a few steps away before setting her down, and used his foot to scrape the broken glass on the ground toward one side of the wall. It was the least he could do, to prevent the students who might later escape through the window from stepping on the glass and making noise that could attract something that should not be attracted. After that, he led Miko forward along one side of the corridor.
This corridor was long, dark, and deep.
Classrooms lined both sides of it. Within the area visible to the eye, Takumi confirmed the existence of at least six classrooms—this included the one he and Miko had just come out of.
The windows of these classrooms facing the corridor were all covered with curtains, making it impossible to see clearly what was inside.
Takumi merely glanced at the class number on the door of the classroom he and Miko had run out of, then turned his head forward, leading her quickly ahead while trying to ensure that they did not make any obvious noise as they moved.
Second-year Class 015?
He repeated the class designation silently in his mind.
Could there be some hidden meaning in this class number?
Unfortunately, there was no way to verify that right now. He would first have to find a map of this floor.
Takumi still remembered information he had seen on the player forum.
The spatial structure of this building was disordered, making it impossible to compile a usable map for later entrants. However, any map found inside the building was guaranteed to be correct. No matter how absurd the rooms and floor layout shown on the map might appear, it would definitely be accurate and contain no errors.
So the next step was to find the floor map.
According to the information provided by those players, the map was in a very conspicuous location and could be found quickly… ah, there it is!
Takumi's gaze shifted forward. He saw the hall at the end of the corridor, as well as the floor map displayed on a board placed right in the center of the hall, separated by glass.
There was also a mannequin standing in front of the glass panel—one that felt overwhelmingly plastic.
What was that thing?
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