"I choose your damn ass!"
Without even a moment of hesitation, Takumi cursed angrily and slammed his foot into the ground.
A deafening explosion followed as the floor instantly split and collapsed.
Holding Miko, Takumi dropped down to the lower level.
Yoshino Rika and Kobayashi Chiharu, having no one to support them, fell directly and slammed onto the ground, their vision spinning wildly. Because they landed among the rubble that had fallen first, both girls were injured all over, looking utterly miserable.
But there was no time to worry about injuries.
That thing's call was drawing closer.
Rika could even hear Kinoshita Yuka's voice—hear her calling her name again and again, screaming with venom, cursing and insulting her as she drew closer.
Takumi glanced around and realized that this place was just like the observation area on the 7th floor—a hidden corridor built for teachers and researchers.
Not far away, many figures wearing headgear could be seen.
"Move!"
Shouting at the two girls, Takumi took the lead and ran forward. Miko remained in his arms, eyes tightly shut, enduring the increasingly intense mental erosion.
Crack!
A bloodstained cleaver came down, slicing a figure wearing a sheep-head mask clean in half.
Takumi advanced relentlessly, attacking the "teachers" that came at him. Before long, he was drenched in blood, as if he had been pulled straight out of a blood pool.
The flesh mass seeped down from cracks in the ceiling, continuing its pursuit.
The dismembered teachers, temporarily unable to move, were devoured one by one, further slowing the thing's movement.
Before long, its speed dropped significantly, finally allowing the people ahead—especially the limping Yoshino Rika and Kobayashi Chiharu—to catch their breath instead of running for their lives.
But it still wasn't safe.
They still couldn't relax.
Alice had appeared once again.
And this time, Takumi had nothing left to restrain her.
He couldn't see where this new Alice was.
Was she following them?
Or was she right in front of him, invisible?
The uncertainty made it impossible for Takumi to calm down.
The advantage of the second run had lasted only a short time.
Once again facing Alice, he had to confront the fact that he still had no way to restrict this aberration—and that if he encountered it head-on, he would fall into a massive disadvantage.
The only slightly better point compared to the first run was that he hadn't taken out the black umbrella this time.
Because of that, Alice had not shown the possession ability she had in the first run.
Now it seemed that the human-skin umbrella might itself be an Obsession Item born from Alice.
That would explain why taking it out in this Instance caused such drastic changes.
And if that was the case…
Then the suspicious nature of the Women-Face Gang was far from trivial.
Players of that level could not possibly obtain such an Obsession Item.
Which meant—someone behind them must have acquired it.
Being able to successfully clear the [Campus Horror Stories] Instance, survive within the Fujihana Middle School area, and even bring an Obsession Item out from there—players with that kind of ability were bound to be extremely rare.
If that was the case, then perhaps the range of suspects for the person behind all this could already be narrowed down dramatically. Mm... assuming I can leave this place alive. And from the looks of it right now, pulling that off does not seem particularly easy.
Like the seventh floor, the secret corridor on the sixth floor had glass walls on both sides. Behind one side were different classrooms, while behind the other was darkness, with nothing visible at all. No, this floor was slightly different. Although it was also pitch-black behind the wall on the other side, quite a large number of students were hanging suspended in midair there. Among them was even that reckless girl who had stuck her head out the window earlier and then got snatched away.
One after another, the students inside the classrooms turned their heads to look at Takumi.
But the students hanging in midair showed no movement at all. They simply remained quiet and motionless.
They... seem unable to see us?
Takumi keenly noticed this difference. In this corridor, the students inside the classrooms watched him, but those hanged students—the ones who had hunted him down in the first loop—showed no reaction to him at all.
Was there some difference between the two?
And theoretically, this was a secret area that [students] should not have been able to know about, so why was I being watched by those students here? Back when I was in the Teaching Building, those creepy students had completely treated me as a teacher because of the sheep-head hood and had shown no abnormal reaction at all. So why was it that once I reached this secret corridor, they stared at me as I passed? Was it because I am not a real [teacher], so some flaw of mine was being exposed in this place? Or was there something special about this corridor, this secret area itself, that just happened to resonate with whatever is special about me?
While thinking through the reason for all this, he did not forget to stay alert to his own senses, guarding at all times against an attack of hallucinations. Takumi quickly reached the end of the corridor. There was a heavy reinforced door here identical to the one on the seventh floor. Only after swiping a card would it slowly open.
If only there were a keyhole on this door. Maybe the Blood Key could do something.
Because the flesh slurry had already been delayed considerably, Takumi did not need to hurry this time. He set down Miko, who was still a little mentally dazed, waited for the door to open normally, then let the three girls enter first. He himself went in last and swiped the card again to shut it behind them.
Considering that the previous glass wall had managed to block that flesh slurry for quite a while, this iron door should be able to hold out even longer. So after entering this new area, Takumi did not immediately start looking for a way out. Instead, he cautiously observed the place first.
This place... seems to be some kind of processing room?
On one side of the floor lay many black plastic bags, and judging from their size, they were obviously meant for containing human bodies.
All sorts of tools hung on the walls, from things like brooms, mops, and vacuum cleaners, to much less normal items like saws, cleavers, and handguns. There were also several meat grinders in the room, two electric chairs, and three openings for dumping trash, which seemed to connect underground.
"This is where dead students were brought for centralized processing after they'd been played with and discarded. Corpses from both the sixth and seventh floors would be processed here."
At this point, Miko seemed to have recovered somewhat. She could at least brace herself against the wall and stand as she spoke.
"Did you see this in the hallucination just now?" Takumi turned to look at her and asked.
"...Yeah. That monster chasing us was originally a corpse being processed here. During the processing, some minced flesh leaked out. It was originally just an accident, but after it was discovered, the higher-ups pushing the experiment chose to let it continue, hiding it from the lower-level experimental staff... until those gathered chunks of meat started moving."
"This thing is afraid of fire. Even though normal methods can't destroy it anymore, flames can temporarily stop its movements. If it catches up again, you can try setting something on fire to block it."
Miko's face was pale, and she looked utterly exhausted.
Her mental state was extremely poor, as if she could pass out at any moment. In fact, she had already blacked out once. During their escape through the corridor earlier, she had basically been unconscious the whole time, which was why Takumi had needed to carry her the entire way.
By now, Takumi had already walked over to one side of the processing room and found a notice posted on the wall.
[Notes for Processing Room Personnel:]
[1. The processing room may only process "Bad Students." No student other than "Bad Students" may be processed here.]
[2. For "Bad Students" who have not yet stopped breathing, make sure their breathing has ceased before processing them.]
[3. "Bad Students" who have already stopped breathing but still retain the ability to move are to be processed as a priority, and their class and name must be confirmed and reported.]
[4. "Bad Students" who meet the priority-processing condition in Rule 3, but whose names cannot be confirmed, must be destroyed as soon as possible. Make sure they are damaged to the point that they can no longer move before processing them, and report them immediately after processing is completed.]
[5. If the destruction of a "Bad Student" cannot be completed, activate the emergency plan immediately.]
[6. If an item awaiting processing that is not a "Bad Student" is discovered in the processing room, it must not be processed. It must be reported, and professionals will come handle it.]
There was not much written there, and there was no empty bureaucratic nonsense either. At a glance, it was enough to understand what this processing room had once been like.
"Looks like when this school was still operating, the situation here was pretty serious."
The moment Takumi saw the part about "unable to confirm their names," he immediately realized that while Fujihana Middle School had still been running, those who enrolled among the students were probably already mixed together with some kind of other thing.
"Although I didn't see that much related information, I did hear some things. It seems that after the school had been open for a while, among the students enrolling, there began to be some whose identities and names couldn't be recognized at all—students who seemed to have appeared out of thin air." Miko slowly walked over to Takumi's side and spoke in a low voice.
"I see. If that's the case, then it does make sense." Takumi nodded, not looking surprised at all.
"What exactly do you understand, teacher?"
Seemingly somewhat surprised by Takumi's reaction, Miko raised her head and looked at him as she asked.
"There's actually been something I was wondering about for quite a while now. And the deeper I explored this school, the more confused I became. I simply couldn't figure out one thing—how exactly this school managed to keep operating."
Takumi closed his eyes and continued in an even tone.
"This is a large school capable of holding over a thousand students. And based on what we've investigated so far, every year, from the first year to the third year, I'm afraid basically all the students in this school died without a single one left."
"With losses on that scale, one year might still be conceivable. But two years? Three years? Could that really continue? A thousand students means a thousand families, and behind that are tens of thousands of people affected. I don't believe the organizers behind this school had that kind of power—the kind that would let them pay such a cost every single year while ensuring that nothing ever went wrong."
"So only these "students who appeared out of thin air" can explain it. By the later stages of this school's operation, it was probably no longer really recruiting from the outside at all. Even if it did recruit, it would only take in a very small number of students. Because by then, the school had already gained some method of automatically replenishing the students it lost every year, manufacturing students out of thin air one after another, like generating NPCs in a game with a single click."
A school that gradually became capable of automatically generating living, breathing people, and of automatically carrying out its annual sacrifice of flesh and blood year after year.
Using more and more death and pain, it ultimately gathered together what was called [Alice]—that aberration code-named Pain Idol, which even now remained full of unknowns.
Just what kind of thing had those people back then been trying to create?
He turned his head and looked at the still-intact heavy door.
Then at not-too-far-off Rika, who was crouching against the wall with an obviously withdrawn and dispirited look, and Chiharu, who was curiously looking around.
Finally, Takumi lowered his head and looked at the girl standing before him with her face tilted up toward him.
"That's about enough of that. Are you still planning to keep acting?" Takumi looked at Miko and asked.
"Huh? Takumi-san, what are you talking about?"
Miko froze at those words, not understanding why Takumi had suddenly said such a thing.
"Yoshino-san, Kobayashi-san, time to go. That thing is about to break through the door. Although the sensory blessing I obtained in the Shirakawa Apartments has been quite heavily suppressed here, I can still roughly sense the condition of an aberration that has already been perceived by my blessing at this distance. And also—though you've hidden it very well—your deranged presence is extremely conspicuous to me. I could mistake anyone else, but there's no way I'd mistake you."
Especially not after you already killed me once.
Takumi did not say that last sentence out loud. He merely motioned for the two girls to move quickly, while keeping his gaze locked on the girl in front of him, whose expression was still blank with confusion.
"So, should I call you Alice now?"
Takumi's tone was calm, but his body had already tensed.
And after blinking, the previously confused-looking Miko suddenly curled her lips into a smile, then mimicked Takumi's tone as she spoke: [Do you want me to be?]
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