It took about half a minute for Takumi to turn the suddenly reanimated researcher back into a pile of unmoving flesh.
There was a slight dizziness in his head—probably from reading the man's dying message and suffering a degree of mental contamination. But with the multiple enhancements already reinforcing Takumi, this level of contamination barely affected him at all. So when the researcher-turned-aberration attacked, Takumi reacted instantly, pulled out his machete, and chopped it into pieces on the spot with a few clean strikes.
Although this couldn't truly destroy a non-human aberration, this kind of dismemberment reduced its mobility to almost zero. At this point, it was basically incapable of moving at all.
"Sounds like a pretty good excuse—'I was just following orders, I did nothing wrong.' What should I say, a classic cliché?"
Muttering this, Takumi walked out of the room and looked deeper into the dark research facility.
He was already very close to the location where he had previously sensed one of the gazes of Alice coming from underground.
What would be waiting for him there…?
As he processed the information he had gathered, Takumi continued forward cautiously.
Perhaps… once he reached that place, he would finally uncover what Alice really was.
That said, he already had some vague hypotheses forming in his mind.
Thinking about it, this so-called "Campus Uncanny" seemed, just like the Red Nut Grey Cave, to be another disaster entirely caused by human hands. And the situation here was even worse. At least in the Red Nut Grey Cave, anomalous phenomena had appeared first, and only then did people intervene. But here, this instance was purely man-made hell—an artificially constructed domain overrun by aberrations.
Even after things had begun to spiral out of control, after the situation became increasingly unmanageable, no one attempted to correct it. Instead, they allowed everything to worsen until it ended in total annihilation.
So, to organize his thoughts:
No matter what Alice actually was, it clearly possessed an anomalous nature. And the core rule governing this anomaly revolved around one concept: making friends.
Whether it was the condition that one could only kill after completing the game ritual of "becoming Alice's friend," or the highest-priority attention given to the flesh puppets representing her "friends," everything pointed to this being the central rule of this entity.
A little girl who likes making friends?
Considering that Alice was very likely a specially selected "vessel," perhaps the original, earliest Alice had simply been an ordinary girl. The researchers had used her personality and memories, intending to shape her into a weapon—one that wielded anomalous power, loved making "friends," and absolutely obeyed "teachers."
And in the end, they did succeed. The Alice they wanted was indeed born.
But that anomalous entity was too powerful—it ended up disregarding part of the original rule constraints.
It seemed like a reasonable line of thought… but no, there was a flaw.
Takumi had seen Alice holding a concert in an illusion before. At that time, she appeared to still be alive—and had an astonishing level of popularity, almost like a national idol. And judging from that illusion, the time period was clearly the 60s or 70s, or even later—completely conflicting with the WWII-era experiments.
Meanwhile, the Alices encountered in Fujihana Middle School so far seemed to lack physical bodies. They could only create illusions. To inflict real, physical harm, they needed either to possess something—or for Takumi to use that human-skin umbrella, an Obsession Item likely made from Alice's own skin. Only then could they manifest physically.
Based on what he had learned from the underground research base, the final Alice seemed to have destroyed the entire school, wiping out everyone inside.
Perhaps, at that stage, Fujihana Middle School was still "safe" to some extent. After Japan's defeat, such an abandoned school wouldn't normally attract visitors. Even if a vagrant wandered in, they wouldn't reach the hidden areas.
But then came the seventh principal—the one with no recorded identity. This later figure likely did something. Maybe he restarted the school. Maybe he opened the passage to the hidden areas and entered the underground research base. Whatever the case, this unidentified individual had a high probability of being the reason Alice transitioned from aberration to human—and left the school grounds.
Then later, in the end, Alice turned back into an aberration. She was seemingly dismembered, and that black umbrella was made from part of her body. Takumi guessed that Alice had been split into four parts, corresponding exactly to the four regions of Fujihana Middle School. The black umbrella might belong to the Alice tied to either the sealed swimming pool or the athletic field.
At this point, a question arose:
Alice was not the core Obsession of this instance. So why had she become the key to every area of Fujihana Middle School? Why did taking her Obsession Item lock down an entire area?
That kind of property should belong only to the core Obsession.
Normally, removing a regular Obsession Item would only make the corresponding aberration disappear, and possibly alter the related environment.
For example, in the Shirakawa Apartments, if Takumi collected all the rescue team badges, then as long as he left the instance or sealed the items in his watch, the rescue team members would no longer appear on the first floor, and the flooded environment might disappear.
But here, Alice was absurdly different.
It was almost as if the entire Fujihana Middle School itself was merely an extension of her.
"…Hm?"
Takumi suddenly stopped.
He looked around, carefully scanning the surroundings.
Was that… actually possible?
That the entire Fujihana Middle School… was nothing more than a derivative domain of Alice?
Including this underground base—none of it was the "real" school, just a surface-level façade?
Had he never truly come into contact with the real core of this place?
Everything he had investigated so far… everything he had experienced… was merely superficial—perhaps even partially false?
"…Hah…"
Taking a deep breath, Takumi suddenly broke into a sprint.
He had thought of a possibility.
He had to verify it immediately—there was no time to delay.
He rushed through long corridors lined with pipes.
Aberrations dressed as researchers and teachers appeared one after another, but Takumi didn't even bother with them. He pushed the Blessing to its limit and advanced at full speed.
On the seventh floor, the rescue team had finished searching the principal's office and spotted the strangest room on the map—one that connected to no other area.
On the sixth floor, the rescue team had entered the biology classroom and saw Teacher Turtle slicing open the abdomen of a human model on a desk, seemingly searching for something.
Meanwhile, Takumi finally reached the last door. He swiped his ID card over the panel and calmly watched as the one-meter-thick reinforced door slowly opened.
Beyond the door was an empty space.
A foul stench rushed straight at him.
He stepped through the doorway and looked around, seeing one empty cultivation pod after another, along with piles of rotten flesh heaped across the floor.
A mass of pipes ran in from every direction—along the ground and down from the ceiling—all converging on the very center of the room, on a small platform.
There, Alice lay quietly on it, eyes closed as if she were asleep.
No—there was no Alice lying there at all.
What was placed there was only a cane.
A cane just over a meter long, fashioned out of a spine, ribs, and bones from various other parts of the body.
Beside that cane, on one side of the platform, a corpse lay sprawled on the ground.
The corpse was dressed in a casual T-shirt and shorts, completely different in style from the clothing worn by the Aberrations inside Fujihana Middle School. He looked like someone from a much later era.
Takumi walked over to the body and found that it was just an utterly ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about him at all. The way he had died was simple too—one gunshot to the chest and one to the head. It looked like he had been shot from behind and killed on the spot.
Clutched in the man's hand was a ticket.
Takumi had to use some force to pry the man's fingers open before he could take it.
It was a concert ticket, and there was even a signature on it.
[Perfect Idol Alice - Japan Tour Con■cert]
[Ti■e: 19:40, ■/■/197■]
[Venue: ■■■■ Stadium]
[Seat: Row ■, Seat ■■]
[Please become Alice's best, most w■nderful friend~?]
Part of the ticket had become illegible, apparently from being soaked with sweat.
Takumi frowned as he stared at it for a moment, and then he heard footsteps behind him.
Along with them came that eerie aura belonging to that thing—the one he had already felt many times before.
[That belongs to one of Alice's good friends, so Teacher really shouldn't touch it so casually~]
Amid soft peals of laughter, Takumi turned around and saw Miko standing behind him, smiling at him—and at some point, those writhing masses of dark-red flesh had already begun flowing in from outside the door.
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