Teaching Building, 7th floor.
At first glance, this place did not seem much different from the 5th floor. It was just as pitch-black, just as dilapidated. Broken wall tiles and wallpaper lay scattered on the ground, and the floor was covered everywhere with trash and odds and ends. Broken desks and chairs, dirty clothes, plastic bags, and similar things were piled carelessly on the floor. At a glance, it looked like a place that had already been abandoned for many years.
Takumi quickly found the map for this floor and confirmed his current location.
"Behind us are the teachers' offices. In front is the chemistry classroom. To the right, where we came from, is the music classroom. To the left is the art classroom. If we keep going forward, we can also reach the elevator and Class 23, Class 24, and Class 1 of the third-year division. That said, this floor's map somehow feels even more abstract than the 5th floor's. What kind of layout puts the chemistry classroom, the music classroom, and the art classroom right next to each other? And does the home economics classroom share the same waste disposal room as the chemistry classroom? And what the hell is that room with no corridor connecting to it at all?"
Looking at the map in front of him, Takumi could not help but keep complaining, and the four girls beside him, looking at this strange map that twisted and turned, very clearly had the same thoughts as Takumi, though they did not dare say them out loud.
A normal teaching building could not possibly be built like this.
But although Takumi had previously told these four girls in the stairwell that "the terrain of this place is completely twisted," now that they were actually exploring it step by step, truly feeling the anti-common-sense geometry of this place and seeing such a bizarre map, the four girls still could not help but be somewhat shaken.
"W-Why did you bring us to a place like this? Is this... is this still the real world?" The girl Yoshino Rika had brought out, the one named Sanada Ai, lost her composure a little and shouted rather loudly at Takumi.
"It wasn't him..." At that moment, however, Miko spoke. Before Takumi could open his mouth, she took the lead in explaining things to Ai.
"Huh? N-Not him? If it wasn't him, then who was it? And he clearly just said he wanted us to cooperate with him to complete some mission..." Ai was thrown a bit off by Miko's words and instinctively asked back.
"Because Takumi-san needs all of us to be obedient. That way we won't run around recklessly in this dangerous place, and our chances of surviving will be greater, and we won't cause trouble for Takumi-san. I know why we came to this place. All of you played that ritual, right? The friendship-making ritual. That ritual brought us in here." As Miko's calm words fell, the expression on Ai's face shifted slightly.
Earlier, when she had heard and seen content related to [Alice's Game] in the broadcast and on that sheet of notebook paper, Ai had already vaguely felt that it was familiar. Now that Miko had deliberately brought it up, she naturally understood at once. The expression of Rika beside her also changed slightly, clearly showing that she too had realized it. As for Ogawa Kyoko, her face had gone deathly pale, and she almost collapsed onto the floor, because she herself had actually been one of the initiators of that ritual. She had actively dragged quite a few classmates into playing it, and it just so happened that everyone who had played that ritual with her had all been brought in.
"Enough with the nonsense." Takumi gave a light cough, then took the lead and headed toward one side of the hall.
The girls, who had just been talking among themselves, hurriedly stopped and all followed at Takumi's side. Although up to now they still did not really understand the exact situation they were in, in front of Takumi—a powerful man who also behaved coldly and cruelly—they instead became even more careful to stay close to him. Even without Takumi saying anything, they took the initiative to keep tightly by his side.
"Takumi-san... um, sorry, for dragging you into this too, and also... about Yuka-san's matter, well, I can understand the necessity of why Takumi-san did that. I'll do my best to help Takumi-san." Miko moved a few steps closer to Takumi and spoke to him in a low voice.
Takumi lowered his head, and what he saw was the girl looking somewhat nervous, doing her best to suppress her fear.
She was afraid of him.
Unlike the trust she had shown in the first loop, Miko in the second loop was very afraid of Takumi—afraid of this terrifying man who had chopped off her classmate's arm, then jokingly chopped off his own hand to demonstrate his regenerative ability.
But even so, she could still see that Takumi's way was the best possible method to ensure that most people survived.
At the end of the day, a group of ordinary high school girls who had grown up in peaceful times, suddenly thrown into such a dangerously Aberration-filled place, had almost no hope of surviving on their own. And everything Takumi had done, although on the surface it made him look completely like some great villain, had in fact protected all of the students.
So she could not criticize him. On the contrary, she had to go along with him. After all, protecting a group of burdens like them was, for Takumi, always a burden. If he came to feel that their group was truly of no use whatsoever, then perhaps next he would abandon them all.
Because of that line of thinking, even though Miko was terrified of Takumi, she still forced herself to endure that fear and stepped forward to speak to him seriously, hoping to leave him with a good impression. After all, among all the students present, only she—who possessed special visual abilities—was the one Takumi valued most. She thought that only if she came out to state her stance might Takumi become more willing to protect the students.
Smack!
"Uwah..."
And then he reached out and smacked her on the head.
"Drop the little clever tricks. I brought all of you along because you at least look somewhat useful. You just focus on carefully observing whether there are any abnormal situations around us. As for them, as long as they honestly follow my orders and don't act recklessly, that's enough. Anything beyond that is none of your concern. Understand?"
Takumi casually said this after seeing through Miko's thoughts, while inwardly he also felt a trace of surprise.
In the first loop, when the Aberration attacked the class, under circumstances where she could only protect herself, Miko had fled with him in a miserable panic and had not had any extra thoughts at all. But now, in the second loop, after the class students had been protected, this girl had instead developed some desire to protect them and had deliberately run up in front of him to swear loyalty. The same person changing in different ways under different situations—how to put it, it was rather interesting. Of course, if the prerequisite for triggering this change had not been his being turned alive into a doll, that would have been even better. Honestly, suffering like that was hard to bear even with a will of steel.
They passed through a slanted, narrow corridor that made one feel extremely uncomfortable.
Under Takumi's arrangement, Rika led Kyoko and Ai, keeping watch at all times behind the group and toward both the left rear and right rear. The facts proved that this arrangement had been quite correct. This braided girl did things very seriously. After already realizing that the current situation was wrong, she observed the surroundings with great care and discovered several students sneaking up on them—students whose chests and abdomens had been cut open, as well as students who had been skinned bloody.
Of course, for more concealed things, such as when a teacher wearing a duck head hood approached, she had no reaction at all. It was Miko, who sensed that something was wrong ahead of time and suddenly felt a chill all over her body, who quickly turned her head and discovered that thing drawing near. Then Takumi stepped forward and cut off that thing's duck head with one slash, throwing the huge duck head out through the corridor window and outside the Teaching Building. After that, he cut off the thing's limbs as well, and by relying on the targeting effect that knife had against the Aberrations of Fujihana Middle School, he directly crippled it to the point of being nearly half-ruined. At the very least, it would need about a day to recover.
The attack process terrified the four girls.
After seeing Teacher Duck have its head and limbs cut off, yet the remaining torso still wriggled on the floor and the hands and feet did not stop moving at all, they were frightened even more badly.
Takumi himself, however, felt that it was extremely satisfying. After the frustration of the first loop, the experience of being able to suppress these weird creatures in the second loop felt unbearably enjoyable.
Only, when he thought about whether using this machete would attract [Alice], he felt somewhat displeased. But considering that she was one of the problems he had to face sooner or later, he was not afraid of that thing either.
Step—
After chopping into several pieces the Aberration ahead in the corridor with a searchlight sewn onto its head, Takumi's footsteps continued onward.
The four girls behind him followed silently, even more closely than before, because that Lamp Girl chopped down onto the ground was still wriggling as it tried to approach them. That made it so the little girls truly did not dare slow their pace.
Miko was the one walking closest to Takumi, practically already moving forward pressed against him. If they were not in this hellish place, Miko would never have stayed this close to any man. But after seeing Takumi suppress those two Aberrations, especially after clearly seeing through her special visual ability just how terrifying those two things were, only by sticking close to Takumi could she feel any sense of safety now.
Step—
Amid the footsteps, the flames of the five candles still swayed faintly.
To increase the lighting effect, Takumi had given each of the four girls a candle. Of course, they were all candles belonging to the Aberration students. He had sorted these candles properly and would not take out candles belonging to living people.
This slanted corridor was longer than expected.
After several attacks had passed, nothing approached for the time being, and so only breathing and footsteps remained in the corridor.
Faintly, from far away, came the sound of students singing.
It was impossible to hear clearly what they were singing, but it was possible to hear someone's laughter sounding along with the song as well (only Takumi and Miko could hear it), and at the same time crying and screams were also mixed into the laughter (only Miko could hear them).
No one reacted to this. They only kept moving forward.
But as they advanced further, many more stains gradually began appearing on the walls and the ground.
Black stains, like something's footprints, like some sort of liquid splashing, like black traces left behind by someone being dragged.
From sparse to numerous, until in the end they became densely packed.
"..."
Miko's brows had already furrowed deeply.
She had seen what had once happened here.
Students crying and struggling stumbled and ran down the corridor, then fell and were dragged away.
They could never run very far.
Because either they had already had all the skin stripped from their bodies, even down together with the surface fat and muscle, and as they ran their internal organs would keep falling out, so after just a few steps they would lose strength and collapse. Or their bodies were densely covered in all manner of marks, accompanied by the pungent smell of some chemical reagent, surging and roiling around them and inside them, robbing them of any possibility of survival.
So no one ever tried to stop these students from running.
There was no need to stop them. As long as they ran for a while, they would collapse from exhaustion and die.
At that point, someone would simply walk up, casually say to the other people passing nearby, "Sorry for causing you trouble," and then drag the corpse away, and the matter would be completely over.
Things like this had happened again and again.
"Uh..."
So many times that Miko saw densely packed corpses filling the entire corridor.
So many that she saw every corpse stretching a hand toward her, countless hands reaching toward her, asking her for help.
So many that, though the corridor was clearly empty, she felt as if she were forcing her way forward through countless corpses, each step almost squeezing all the oxygen out of her lungs.
Smack!
A large hand landed on the girl's shoulder.
At that moment, the discomfort faded considerably. Miko lifted her head and saw the sheep head hood Takumi was wearing, while also feeling the calm gaze being cast from within that hood.
Her chaotic heartbeat calmed, and in an instant the girl felt that her emotions had stabilized.
"Feeling awful?"
Takumi himself also faintly felt that discomfort, but seeing the much more obvious reaction from Miko beside him, he had specifically stopped. He did not want something like Alice possessing Miko to happen again as it had before, so right now he was paying very close attention to this girl.
"This place... is this really a school? Why do I feel like we've come to... some kind of slaughterhouse?" Feeling her mood settle, Miko took a deep breath, raised her head to look at Takumi, and quietly asked.
"Instance worlds are all like this. These places are hell twisted to the extreme, everywhere filled with endless malice. Of course, even in a hell like this, good still exists as well. So what we need to do is not be defeated by that malice."
Takumi reached out and adjusted the badge hanging on one side of his chest as he spoke very seriously.
"...Then, can we really leave this place?" The girl lowered her head, her tone sounding rather depressed. At that moment, even her golden eyes seemed to dim along with it.
"Who knows. Just do your best. Things are already this bad anyway."
Takumi said this very casually, not caring much, and merely continued onward.
And Rika, who had silently listened to this exchange from behind them, thoughtfully raised her head to look at Takumi.
This mysterious man wearing the sheep head hood—he trusted Yotsuya-san a great deal.
Although Yotsuya-san herself might not have realized it, in that exchange just now, this man had actually treated her entirely as a junior, as one of his own kind. It was completely different from how he looked at me, Ogawa-san, and Sanada-san. In his eyes, we were only "trash that could barely be of some use," but Yotsuya-san was completely different. In that man's eyes, she was special.
We absolutely have to stay close to Yotsuya-san.
She might well be the real key to our survival.
Rika silently thought this to herself.
Then, at last, the group passed through this corridor and arrived at the corner of the corridor—the place where the supply rooms of the chemistry classroom and art classroom were located.
Ring, ring, ring—
In an instant, the bell drowned out the sound of footsteps.
The lights suddenly flared on at that moment.
And in Miko's field of vision, one after another illusory elephant trunks emerged from every corner of the corridor, each one coiling around a mutilated human head.
They could not stay in the corridor. They had to enter a classroom.
The nearest one—the only classroom they could choose now—was... the art classroom!
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