So this was the supernatural?
So this was the Reincarnation Game?
Yuuki's heart was pounding wildly. He might spend plenty of time in dissection rooms and force himself through every horror and gore movie he could find, but when the images from a screen turned into reality right in front of him, he still had to fight down the urge to vomit.
For a moment, he felt the game's malice in full.
He hurriedly pinched the soft flesh at his waist, using the pain to force his brain back into calm.
Judging from what she said just now, she should have been a player like me. So if I'd acted on my own earlier… would I have ended up like this too?
What kind of beginner's guide is this? No wonder the limit was fifteen minutes instead of fifteen seconds. So this is the real issue.
This game was indeed nothing like the standard套路 he'd seen before. Rather than a tutorial, it was more like an early elimination round. Even with so little information, Yuuki had already reached his first conclusion:
This game was brutally difficult—and malicious to the core.
"What instructions? Oh, you mean telling me to open the door? There was no way I was going to listen to something that weird."
The girl had no idea the boy in front of her was undergoing a full mental storm. She kept coming down the stairs, her flailing blossom-head grotesque enough to scare an ordinary person into wetting themselves on the spot.
Yuuki instinctively lifted a foot, but when it came down, he was still standing where he was.
He had calmed down now, and he could hear that the irritation and madness in the girl's voice were fading.
Does self-perception determine whether she sees you as friend or foe?
He sensed something there.
If this had been a normal person, they would either have frozen in terror—and judging by how this "head-bloomed" girl had developed, that probably wouldn't have ended well—
—or they'd have turned and run. If they were lucky enough and fast enough, they could probably escape. Even if they had to loop around, as long as they reached the red-lit area upstairs, that would count as clearing it.
Fifteen minutes was plenty for a game of hide-and-seek.
Of course, there was also the reckless option: say nothing and just dash upstairs.
Could this game have multiple solutions?
"Why aren't you saying anything? Am I really that scary?" the girl continued, now only two or three meters away.
Yes. Very scary. Most people would have pissed themselves by now. Luckily, I won't.
Yuuki answered in his heart.
After a brief hesitation, he actually moved toward her instead, the corner of his eye twitching as he looked at the swaying fragments on those "petals."
It was disgusting to look at, but if he was right, he could get more information out of her.
With that thought, Yuuki forced out a gentlemanly smile and tried to keep his eyes fixed on her ample chest instead. The cleavage was deep, and there was even a mole there. Good. That gave him something else to focus on.
"See that red glow up there? Maybe it's light coming in from outside."
"Red glow? What red glow?" the girl asked in confusion. All eight fragments of her eyes turned upward at once, swaying back and forth like loose eyeballs being moved by strings.
So she really couldn't see it because she'd already been eliminated?
Yuuki quickly got what he wanted and continued keeping his gaze buried in that deep cleavage, his expression unchanged.
"Hm? Maybe I saw wrong. How about we head downstairs instead?"
"Downstairs? There's no way down there."
Still can't see that either?
Yuuki's expression shifted slightly as an idea began to take shape. He turned around at once and headed back the way he had come.
"Follow me."
"Hey, wait up!" the girl hurried after him, her voice much steadier now, as though she had found someone to rely on. "My name's Linda. I'm from Mexico. What's yours?"
"Sorajima Yuuki."
"Japanese?"
"I guess so."
"How is that possible? Mexico and Japan are so far apart. Don't tell me this is some international crime syndicate?" Linda shook her head with a strangely innocent air, then said weakly, "Ugh… I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel all foggy and heavy. Like my head's getting dumber."
More than dumber. Your brain's sitting in the center like a flower's pistil wrapped inside petals.
Yuuki glanced at the bloodshot white mass and suppressed another wave of nausea. Then he took hold of her slender wrist.
"I don't know either. But relax. I'll get you out of here. Whatever you do, don't panic."
"Really?"
"Right now, you can only trust me."
Yuuki put on the act of an overbearing CEO. Based on what he'd observed so far, the key was to keep her emotions stable.
When he saw the "petals" contract slightly—like a girl growing shy—an extremely strange thought crossed his mind.
Why does this suddenly seem less disgusting? Tch. Don't tell me I'm already being contaminated into developing weird tastes.
As they spoke, the two of them had already returned to the place where Yuuki had come through the door. He deliberately stayed half a step behind, staring at the girl's swaying hips—and at the open doorway ahead.
What would happen if she tried to go through it?
Curiosity filling him, he made his footsteps so light they were nearly impossible to detect.
Then he heard it.
Thunk.
"Ow!"
The girl fell flat onto her backside. Her split-open head flailed and spread apart wildly like convulsing earthworms, exposing the brain in the center.
At the same time, the voice that had just settled down turned irritable again.
"There's that invisible wall again! It's like a nightmare—there's obviously nothing there, but I still get slammed right back!"
She couldn't see it. She couldn't go through it. And if she hit it, she got hurt.
Yuuki stood behind her and watched.
The answer was obvious now. This doorway was a safe zone the game had provided for novice players. That made more sense—there was no way an ordinary person could fight a head-bloomed monster head-on.
So the game really did have multiple solutions.
But would it kill them to give an actual hint?
Yuuki felt speechless.
It was like blazing an unexplored dungeon—every clue had to be discovered by hand.
Still, he didn't use the chance to slip through the doorway himself. Instead, he silently organized the information he'd gained from interacting with the girl.
First: she was an eliminated player, transformed into part of the game's "beginner's guidance." Once her perception became distorted, the consequences were severe. But when her emotions were stable, she was no different from a normal person.
Second: because she was no longer a player, she couldn't see the route provided by the mission, nor could she enter it. Touching it only caused her damage.
Third: the normal way to clear the beginner's guide was probably to hide, or simply ignore her and rush upstairs. But if he made use of the first two points...
With that thought, he walked over and helped the girl back to her feet. As the fragments of her head brushed around in front of him, the pores on his face tightened; he could feel the "petals" brushing his cheek.
They were hard as blades.
Without question, they were more than capable of cutting through human flesh.
"Huh? You didn't run into the invisible wall?" Linda asked, puzzled, though her tone was gradually calming again.
"I did. Back where I'm from, we call that a 'ghost wall.' Looks like we've ended up somewhere seriously bad." Yuuki kept his tone as gentle as possible and chose to skip over the real issue. "But there has to be a way out. Worst case, we just try another route. As long as we spend enough time, we'll get out eventually."
In a place this bizarre, with only Yuuki beside her as someone she could treat as her own kind, the girl had no real alternative.
"Okay. I'll trust you for now."
That for now was used very skillfully.
Was she warning him that once her patience ran out, she'd fall back into a frenzy of cognitive collapse?
Yuuki stored away one more piece of information. Combined with the countdown ticking in his mind and making him increasingly agitated as well, he quickly took a deep breath and led the girl toward the other side of the corridor.
"This way."
He acted as though he couldn't hear the countdown at all.
Sometimes he broke into a light jog, testing the monster's running speed. Sometimes he slowed down, observing the brain hidden in the petals.
Second by second, time passed—and he really did discover some interesting things.
Her running speed was about the same as that of an ordinary adult woman. She showed no obvious superhuman physical ability. Her brain was extremely important to her; when he tossed a cigarette pack at her, it was sliced apart before it even made contact. She herself didn't notice anything and only felt that her scalp was a little itchy.
And what had sliced the cigarette pack apart was part of her skull.
By the time the countdown had about two minutes left, Yuuki finally stepped onto the stairs leading upward. Rounding the landing, he saw that the red glow was coming from the left.
He had spent twelve minutes gathering information.
That was enough. It was time to move the scenario forward.
This thing was getting more and more frenzied, more and more difficult to soothe.
The girl behind him had already gone a full minute and twenty seconds without speaking. Unable to find a way out, she was becoming restless, and the range of motion in her swinging head was getting larger and larger.
She's nearly at her limit. So am I.
Yuuki stepped onto the final stair and looked left.
It was another windowless corridor, identical to the floor below. At the far end stood a double wooden door, exactly like the one he had opened before, and the red glow was spilling through the crack between the doors.
"Over there," Yuuki said, pointing ahead. "Maybe if we go through that door, we can get out."
He could feel the girl edging closer to him.
"What door? That hallway has no end!"
Just as he expected.
She couldn't see it.
Yuuki relaxed a little and began adjusting his original plan—but in the next instant, every muscle in his body tensed.
At the back of his neck, he felt something soft, wet, and slick.
Like a tongue gently licking across his skin.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to lick you. Huh? What's wrong with my head?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuki saw the girl trembling as she raised a hand to touch her own head. Her split-apart face was growing more and more twisted.
Naturally, she couldn't actually touch her face.
But she kept trying, stubbornly, like someone trying to gather scattered sand back into a single heap.
"My head—my head—no!!"
Her voice shifted from confusion to fear, from fear to rage, and finally into a shrill scream so piercing it made his eardrums ache.
Now!
Yuuki didn't hesitate. Nor did he waste time trying to gently explain the truth.
He simply spun around violently and yanked out the left hand he had kept tucked inside his coat the whole time.
A gleaming scalpel flashed in his palm.
Clang!
The blade slashed at those petals—and sparks burst out.
Those stalks, no thicker than fingers by the look of them, were hard as reinforced bone.
The shock numbed his wrist.
As Yuuki turned his head, he saw that Linda was no longer speaking. She had fully opened all of those petals and swept them toward him like a rotating circular saw.
Fast—far too fast.
Yuuki dropped instinctively into a crouch. A harsh skrrt-skrrt rang out as deep gouges were carved into the wall behind him, a spray of pale dust spilling out.
Twenty meters to the door.
Was this sudden rampage an accident—or deliberate?
Yuuki forced himself to stay calm, bringing every bit of preparation from the past ten years to bear as he scrambled backward with both hands and feet.
Thup. Thup.
The carpet was shredded into strips beneath the attack, leaving deep cuts around his shoes. Yuuki retreated several meters in one breath and saw the girl leaning forward, her split-open head lashing about like tentacles and shredding everything around it.
Its movement speed wasn't that fast.
But the splitting was still continuing.
Those "stalks" had already spread down to her towering breasts. Naturally, that meant more and more petals were blooming open.
Yuuki sprang upright in one fluid motion, turned, and bolted while flinging scalpels behind him.
Ting.
The sound of the blade being knocked away reached his ears.
The red-lit door was right ahead.
His instincts were screaming, driving his body with a single command:
Run for your life. Open the door. Get inside and hide!
Yuuki could feel the frenzy at his back. He turned his head just slightly and saw a huge mass of writhing "vines" lashing madly about. It looked like a rolling ball of yarn. Even if her legs weren't running that fast, that was still a supernatural force his current self had absolutely no way to fight head-on.
Ten meters.
Five.
Three.
The monster was getting closer and closer, apparently so enraged that it had begun sprinting at full speed. Yuuki hurled himself forward, his hand shooting out first to seize the golden door handle—
And then—
He straightened his body and flattened his entire back against the wall.
Boom!
Sharp edges sliced several tears across the chest of his coat as the writhing mass slammed straight into the door. In Yuuki's narrowed gaze, those petals—more than sharp enough to carve through flesh—failed to leave even the slightest mark on the door. Instead, the instant the thing struck it, it exploded apart like a heavenly maiden scattering flowers.
This wasn't simple impact damage.
It was the rule itself injuring an eliminated player.
Far more severe than the damage from crashing into the earlier door ten minutes ago.
A shriek of agony ripped through the corridor.
At that exact moment, Yuuki lunged forward.
It was like stepping into a thorn-filled flowerbed. Ignoring the stinging pain stabbing into his flesh, he looked straight at the pale milky-white "flower core" in the middle of those scattered petals and, without a word, drove the scalpel down with all his strength.
General Rule #2: High risk, high reward!
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 31
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 27
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 26
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