It seemed he still had not died.
In his muddled haze, that thought drifted through Takumi's mind.
Unlike the iron rod Miko had endured within illusions during the first run, Takumi had truly taken all twenty blows head-on. Each strike carried the force of a full-power swing from a strong adult man—no, even greater than that.
The fact that Takumi had not been beaten to death by those twenty blows was already the result of his body having been enhanced.
But even so, his current condition had deteriorated to the extreme. The severe injuries his body had suffered had already reached the point where death could come at any moment. It could be said that the only reason he was still alive now was because his willpower had been pushed to its absolute limit.
Can't fall asleep…
If he falls asleep now… he'll really die…
Takumi continued to hold on.
Amid his chaotic thoughts, almost purely by instinct, he struggled on, dragging his body forward across the ground with his already-broken limbs, inching ahead.
"Hah… hah…"
Within his labored breathing, the girl's soft laughter beside him sounded unnervingly clear.
Was that Miko's laughter?
No… that's not it.
That voice belonged to [Alice]—that thing possessing Miko.
Takumi could no longer see clearly, nor hear clearly, what was happening around him.
And yet, [Alice]'s voice seemed to carry some special kind of power, allowing it to still reach him even in this state.
The Rescue Team Badge had been thrown away by her.
Right now, he probably had no way left to survive.
But even so, if he were to give up now, Takumi still felt a trace of unwillingness deep within his heart. He forced himself to continue thinking, to keep crawling forward, trying to figure out whether there was still anything he could possibly do in this situation.
[Teacher, don't you want to talk to Alice?]
Her playful voice rang beside his ear.
[If you don't speak soon, Teacher won't have another chance, you know~]
Along with Alice's voice, the sound of something approaching could be heard.
That sensation…
The flesh-fused monster—had it caught up already? What is this thing, some kind of full-map aggro lock or something? Why does it keep chasing me nonstop?
Takumi wanted to complain, but his mouth and throat were filled with blood—he couldn't speak a single word.
He truly couldn't think of any way to change his current situation anymore.
All four limbs broken, internal organs severely damaged, and his head probably split open as well?
He had to find a way to heal his injuries—only then would he have any chance of survival, any chance to keep struggling.
But right now he was underground, and the Rescue Team Badge had already been thrown outside the Teaching Building. Even if his body were intact, it would have been difficult to retrieve that Obsession Item quickly—let alone now, when he already had one foot stepping into the Blood-Colored City, about to enter his third run.
So then…
At this moment, Takumi's mind became calm like still water.
He felt the flesh-mass monster drawing closer step by step, and in this instant, he understood the final thing he could do.
In the end… it was nothing more than a gamble.
"Hah…"
He drew in a deep, sharp breath.
In the next instant, the one eye of his that still remained intact glowed with a blood-red light. Then, supporting himself with his broken arm, he suddenly leapt up into the air, lunging straight toward the writhing mass of flesh.
[Hey, hey, hey—why are you running off to get yourself killed again? Teacher, can't you just behave a little?]
Alice, who had been knocked onto the ground, sat there in a duck-sitting posture, waving her hands as she called out in a tone that was part complaint, part coquettish protest.
Meanwhile, in the very next moment, Takumi plunged directly into the writhing flesh monster and was instantly swallowed whole.
Pain engulfed his entire body in the next instant.
The countless rotting chunks of flesh continuously assimilated him, trying to turn him into a part of the creature itself.
Without the power of the blessing, there was no doubt he would have been completely absorbed within a single second.
But through Hedda's blessing, even at this moment when he was already on the brink of death, as long as his life force had not yet been fully exhausted, he could still continue to endure—could still push himself to the very limit and keep struggling.
He felt it…
All the Obsession Items he had thrown into this thing, all the aberrations summoned by the Obsession Items he had cast out—everything was now sealed inside this creature. Along with all the students and teachers it had already devoured, everything was trapped within it.
These aberrant powers had no way of escaping the seal of this flesh monster. They remained suppressed, unable to move—even the aberrations summoned by Obsession Items from other instances had been fused into this thing's body and immobilized.
His opportunity… was right here.
Blind, unable to see anything, Takumi struggled and writhed within the darkness. In this moment, he forced out the last of his strength and burst forward in a single direction.
Inside the punishment room—plunged in darkness, lit only by a single old incandescent bulb—[Alice] tilted her head, curiously watching the flesh monster in front of her.
[Is Teacher still struggling? Alice doesn't really understand anymore. Does Teacher want to die, or does he not want to die?]
As she spoke, she began to walk toward the mass of flesh.
The monster that devoured everything seemed incapable of harming Alice—or perhaps simply did not harm her at all. It allowed her to step onto its body without any reaction whatsoever.
And at that very moment—
With the sound of flesh tearing apart, Takumi's figure suddenly burst out from another direction, his entire body drenched in blood. He rolled across the ground, tumbling several times to put distance between himself and the flesh monster, before finally stopping, gasping heavily as he slowly struggled back to his feet.
There was hardly a single patch of flesh left intact on his entire body. He had already become a man drenched in blood.
But those wounds were healing at an astonishing speed. In the span of mere seconds, Takumi's bones had basically finished mending, and more than half the flesh on his body had grown back.
"So… I finally found a way."
With every scrap of clothing on his body already torn to shreds by that flesh monster, Takumi simply rose to his feet and looked toward the flesh monster moving in his direction not far away, as well as Alice, who was sitting atop it with a curious look on her face.
He had a medicine bottle in his hand. It was an Obsession Item he had snatched inside the Red Nut Grey Cave Instance, something that could rapidly heal injuries after swallowing a single pill.
This Obsession Item was Dusk-level. It was extremely easy for it to spiral out of control, and in practice it could only be used once per Instance. A second use would cause the user to be possessed by the Aberration attached to it. It was, in other words, a life-saving tool with extremely severe restrictions.
But just now, inside that flesh monster's body, Takumi had downed five pills in one go.
The damage from the brink of death had already completely healed.
And the Aberration that should have triggered the rule-based backlash against Takumi remained completely motionless. Of course it could not possibly move. Right now, that thing was lying inside the flesh monster's body, firmly suppressed by its power, with no possibility of making any move at all.
Only at this moment did Takumi realize that he had actually fallen into a misconception, a mental trap that any player who had never truly encountered a Red Moon-level Instance could easily stumble into.
Dusk-level Obsession Items were basically unusable in a Red Moon-level Instance, because the moment you took one out, it would lose control and summon the corresponding Aberration into the Instance.
But in fact, that line of thinking could be reversed. Red Moon-level Aberrations were far stronger than Dusk-level Aberrations, so as long as a Red Moon-level Aberration suppressed the Aberration summoned by a Dusk-level Obsession Item, then those Items that should have been so easy to lose control of would instead become tools with no side effects whatsoever, harmless items that brought no danger at all.
Of course, the fact that Dusk-level Obsession Items themselves were too weak in a Red Moon-level Instance could not be changed, so even with this method there would still be limits. But that usually referred to trying to use a Dusk-level Obsession Item against a Red Moon-level Aberration. The medicine bottle Takumi had taken out was a healing item meant to restore players. Once its side effects were erased, it truly became a life-saving treasure for him.
There were four pills left. When he first opened this thing in the Red Nut Grey Cave, didn't it have at least thirty or forty pills inside? Ah, right. The Aberration tied to it was currently in a suppressed state, so its power had definitely weakened a great deal, which meant the number of pills had decreased as well. But that was fine. The fact that this thing could still be used at all was already a huge surprise.
Clap, clap, clap—
Alice, not far away, gave Takumi a very earnest round of applause.
The flesh monster she had originally been sitting on had now vanished without a trace, and there was no telling where it had gone.
The light around them had also completely disappeared. Clearly, Takumi had once again fallen into a hallucination, and this time he had no way at all to deal with it.
He had escaped mortal danger, yet still failed to escape danger itself.
Takumi stood calmly where he was. While continuing to use Takeda Saori's blessing to confirm the flesh monster's position, he thought about his next move, and then suddenly heard Alice's voice sound directly behind him.
[Teacher is amazing. You actually managed to snatch something away from everyone. Did you already have that planned, or did you only think of it on the spot?]
Alice's voice was full of curiosity.
"Of course I only thought of it on the spot. I'm not especially smart. I can only manage the occasional flash of inspiration in situations where I'm fighting for my life."
Takumi's tone did not change. He answered Alice very calmly.
[Then has Teacher found a new way to survive now?]
Alice's voice drifted around him, then seemed in the next instant to stretch far, far away.
"Mm. I just found one, but I'm still not sure whether it'll work."
Takumi gave a faint nod, the corners of his mouth curving slightly upward.
[What is it, what is it? Can you tell Alice?]
Like an eager child bursting with curiosity, Alice appeared in front of Takumi, raising her hand as though she really were a student asking a question.
"You can't let me die, Alice."
Takumi calmly looked at Alice's face, a face with a beauty no human could possibly possess, already bordering on something uncanny and seductive, yet his heart did not waver in the slightest as he spoke slowly.
[Why not? Alice really wants Teacher and Miko-chan to become good friends, you know~]
Alice blinked, looking even more curious.
"Because your friend is in my hands. I stole two of your friends. You got one back. The other one is still with me."
The moment Takumi said that in his calm voice, the expression on Alice's face froze slightly.
"If you kill me, you'll never get that friend back. If you make me suffer a fate worse than death, it'll still be the same. You still won't be able to get your friend back."
"That friend of yours… let me think. Her name should be Kumagai Mai, right? You wrote her name on the doll, after all. I hid her in a place that only I can find, a place I can only reach while I'm fully conscious and mentally sound."
"So you can't let me die. The moment I die, your friend will disappear along with me. You'll never be able to see her again."
The Alice standing in front of him had gone expressionless, merely staring at Takumi with those blue eyes.
Within his perception, the flesh monster that had been advancing toward him suddenly stopped moving.
A violent malice was surging in from all directions, so intense that it made his nerves feel as if they were about to convulse.
For an instant, Takumi even had the feeling that he was standing on the edge of a bottomless abyss, and that one wrong step would condemn him to eternal ruin.
But he knew that once again, he had gambled right.
And so the smile on his face deepened, even carrying a trace of delight as he spoke to Alice in front of him: "Alice, you don't want your friend to disappear forever, do you?"
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