Anthony Tovan Bush.
In the process by which the Red Nut Grey Cave gradually degenerated into a Horror Story amusement park, he played a key role—he could be considered the biggest shit-stirrer of the Instance.
As a squad leader of the municipal fire department, Howard Smith naturally did not have the qualifications to come into contact with a figure of this level. He could only think of all kinds of methods and use all kinds of public channels to learn information related to him—roughly knowing where this person went, what meetings he attended, where he gave speeches, and similar matters. Wanting to extract valuable content from such information was obviously extremely difficult, and therefore the investigative process recorded in Howard's notes was basically like a headless fly, completely without direction.
However, after Howard changed the direction of his investigation and began to investigate the mayor's movements, there were some slight differences. Because the mayor himself often had to participate in various activities within the city and appeared in public more frequently, it was possible to discover more clues.
[The Military]
This term was emphasized repeatedly in Howard's notes.
Among the hundreds of various activities the mayor attended within a single year, there were roughly twenty events in which military personnel participated. Their content consisted of seminars and commercial launch events related to the process of converting a piece of military technology for civilian use.
Howard never really managed to figure out what that military technology product actually was. At the press conference, the mayor and the military representatives tossed around all kinds of grandiose and flowery phrases. No matter how much they talked, Howard failed to extract anything useful from it, only seeing the three words: [Buy, buy, buy]. However, shortly afterward, his investigation revealed that a company responsible for operating this product had set up operations in the city, yet one could hardly see anyone going in or out of the company, as if the company itself were nothing more than an empty shell.
Clatter—
Takumi flipped to the next page, swept his gaze around to check the surroundings, and only after confirming that nothing abnormal had appeared outside the car did he continue reading the contents.
Regarding this suspicious company, Howard did not carry out anything like a secret infiltration investigation—he did not have that capability. He simply found an opportunity to install a surveillance camera in a corner near the company. Then, after monitoring it for as long as a month and a half, Howard finally captured footage of people entering and leaving on two occasions. Both times were in the middle of the night, and the vehicles that went in and out of the company ultimately headed toward the same place.
The Red Nut Grey Cave.
[Some of those people were undoubtedly from the military—you could tell from their manner of conduct. As for the others, it was hard to make out what they were about, but they were carrying some research equipment that looked rather strange. Perhaps they were researchers?]
[They entered the Red Nut Grey Cave in the middle of the night. I don't know what they did inside, and I don't have the authority to access the nighttime surveillance of the Red Nut Grey Cave]
[It's just that I've heard that several of the night-shift security guards hired by the Red Nut Grey Cave have gone missing. I originally always thought those guards encountered those bizarre phenomena, but… perhaps they actually disappeared for some other reason?]
[I don't know what those people are really trying to do]
[But… could the abnormalities inside the Red Nut Grey Cave be connected to them?]
In the notebook, the sentences Howard left behind appeared somewhat disordered.
Takumi could feel Howard's complicated state of mind at the time these lines were written.
He could not help but recall the moment during the second loop when, in the process of his group escaping the instance along the timeline where the security guards were located, he had ordered the rescue team members to run into the [Gentle Slope].
At that time, Takumi had not noticed anything other than the white-dress aberration.
But that thing appeared immediately after the rescue team member shouted, "I am human." When it appeared, the rescue team member had not even fully entered the [Gentle Slope] area yet. Then, in the next instant, the rescue team member was attacked by that thing, and Takumi himself was dragged into a side path of the [Blood Vessel].
At that moment, he had not been able to pay timely attention to what was happening from the rescue team member's perspective, but he indeed had not detected any abnormalities.
No—had he really discovered nothing?
Takumi closed his eyes.
Perhaps it wasn't that he hadn't discovered any problems.
It was just that the problem was hidden too deeply—so deeply that he hadn't noticed it right away.
He began trying to recall what he had seen at that moment.
A pitch-black cave.
A cavern shrouded in darkness.
The sound of running footsteps.
The gaze of terrifying, grotesque things.
Other than that—was there really nothing else?
No.
That wasn't the case.
Takumi remembered the scene he had seen back then.
Within the dark crevice, inside the gloomy cave swept over by the beam of a flashlight, there had been a portion of darkness that the flashlight's light did not illuminate.
That was black…
That was black… clothing!
Takumi suddenly recalled it.
That's right.
After the rescue team members ran into the [Gentle Slope] area—after entering the [Gentle Slope] that the security rules stated should not be approached—he had seen black clothing: the pure-black, full-body tactical suits worn by the soldiers of the research base.
Because everything had been happening in such a rush at the time, Takumi hadn't noticed those people's presence. But now, after giving it a bit of thought, he realized what had once occurred.
The research base itself had been established after the outbreak of Horror Stories in the Red Nut Grey Cave, once the cave was sealed off.
However, soldiers and researchers had already been entering the cave frequently to carry out operations long before that—back when the Red Nut Grey Cave was still in operation.
[Gentle Slope] had always been a dangerous zone. No matter which timeline it was, it had always been a high-risk area that could not be entered, and this was not entirely because of the white-dressed anomaly. Even if that thing did not appear or launch attacks, players would still face enormous threats there. This was because the anomalies formed from soldiers and researchers would be active in the [Gentle Slope] area, and toward anyone who appeared before them, they were very likely to adopt a policy of total extermination.
"So then, what exactly is in [Gentle Slope]? Paranormal incidents have already started appearing beyond the Big Slide—so why is these people's activity area still restricted to [Gentle Slope] over there? And that thing beneath the rift… does the Great Rift itself have some special significance?"
Takumi had successfully obtained the answer to one question, only to find himself forced into doubts about the questions that followed.
He still couldn't figure out where the problems with [Gentle Slope] and the [Great Rift] actually lay.
That bloodstained, white-dressed woman who had turned into a bloodthirsty anomaly—Takumi could confirm that she had formed during the period of the research base. She was something that had only come into existence during the final stage of the Red Nut Grey Cave. Before her, there should not have been an anomaly of the level of a core obsession within that rift.
But the military and the researchers had begun focusing on the [Great Rift] very early on. If there were no anomalies inside the rift, then what exactly had they been researching?
[The memories of the lost guide an inextinguishable fury.]
Takumi suddenly remembered this hint again.
Among the hints for this instance, aside from the final one—which was obvious: not to reveal the fact that one was [human], thereby avoiding the pursuit of the white-dressed anomaly—the other three hints had actually never had any fixed conclusions.
The usurper of the gods had no leads; the pact had no leads; and as for the so-called lost one… Takumi had originally thought that those tourists might be the lost ones, but their behavior really did not match up with [fury] at all. Could it be that he had not yet found where the so-called [lost one] actually was?
And then… the proof of the pact—this was something he was not entirely without clues about. Although he still could not be completely certain, it should be this.
Takumi lowered his head and looked at the silver ring lying in his palm.
The wedding ring of Andres and Hedda—this was Andres's Obsession Item. This object bore the greatest portion of his longing and emotions. Just as the little girl's Obsession Item in the Shirakawa Apartments was her only toy, Obsession Items themselves are sometimes the answer—they can explain many things.
At the final moment, before Andres's consciousness completely sank into darkness, his wish was not [to leave the cave]. At that time, he no longer believed that he could leave that place alive. Therefore, his true wish—when he realized that death was inevitable—Andres's strongest, truest wish was [to return to his wife's side]. And this ring, as the item that carried Andres's obsession, would allow the obsession to be resolved as long as Takumi could deliver it to Andres's wife, letting Andres finally rest in peace.
Come to think of it, the Andres's wife I saw in the memories was wearing a white dress… hey, hey—no way, right?
Previously, because he had not paid attention, Takumi had not thought along this line. But now, once he began to connect the dots, he could not help but start to realize the similarities between the white-dressed anomaly that had killed him and Hedda, Andres's wife from the residual echoes of his memories.
To be honest, the face and figure could no longer be discerned well enough to tell whether they were the same person. The female anomaly within the Great Rift had already been completely twisted, no longer resembling a human at all. However, that outfit was the same. Although one was pristine white and new, and the other filthy, ruined, and stained with blood, these two white dresses were—without a doubt—the very same garment.
"Is this some kind of a family has to be together neatly thing…? Has the research base really sunk to doing things this inhumane?"
Having already understood many of the issues, Takumi sucked in a sharp breath of greenhouse gas, then put away the notebook he had nearly finished reading and prepared to leave this place to investigate other Land of Regret areas.
The moment he opened the door, however, Takumi felt the anomalous presence closing in from all directions. When he looked up, those bloated figures—firefighters with water continuously dripping from their bodies—were standing all around the fire truck, all of them staring at Takumi expressionlessly, completely blocking every direction he could see.
Come to think of it, this was the second time, wasn't it? Do anomalies all like to ambush people this much?
Takumi complained inwardly. Then, as the anomalies stepped forward one by one, Takumi opened his black umbrella. The anomalies that lost their target turned their heads about in confusion searching for him, and then, unable to find him, gradually retreated.
Not far away, Takumi—who had already slipped away from right in front of them—walked up to a wooden door that looked somewhat high-end. He opened the door and slipped inside in a flash.
And inside that door was…
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