Passing through the corridor outside the art classroom, they came upon an activity room.
This room was empty. Through the window, they could see piles of school uniforms inside—each one dirty, many stained with blood.
Takumi found white chrysanthemums in this room.
They were placed on a desk in front of the pile of uniforms, as if left there deliberately for mourning—white flowers emitting a faint fragrance.
These chrysanthemums were also Obsession Items.
There were 15 in total. Each one had the ability to suppress an Aberration's movements. Based on experience from the first loop, one flower could barely suppress one student-turned-Aberration, and not completely—those with a flower inserted could still move, just more slowly, reducing their threat.
However, if multiple flowers were used together, perhaps even stronger Aberrations could be suppressed.
The only unknown was the side effect.
'Doll, cleaver, mask, candles, flowers… and this is only a quarter of Fujihana Middle School. I've explored less than two floors of this quarter. Dangerous as it is, the rewards are really high.'
If a proper Red Moon-level team prepared in advance, bringing enough Obsession Items and possessing top-tier Dusk-level and Dark Night-level buffs and blessings, then the gains from exploring a Red Moon-level instance would likely be astonishing.
The greater the danger, the greater the reward?
With that thought, Takumi stored all fifteen chrysanthemums into his black watch and continued forward.
Ahead, in another activity room, there were piles of shoes—men's and women's alike—stacked to nearly half the room.
Here, Takumi didn't find intact chrysanthemums. What he found were torn, trampled remnants—flowers that had been crushed underfoot.
From their completely withered, dried state, this must have happened a long time ago.
Takumi picked up one of the fragments.
Vaguely, he felt as though he could see something.
Two figures stood in the classroom.
They faced each other, seemingly arguing.
He couldn't hear what they were saying. He couldn't see their faces. But he could feel their emotions.
One was furious—an uncontrollable, explosive rage like erupting magma.
The other was sorrowful—sinking into a dark, lightless sea, unable to struggle, endlessly falling.
Who were they?
Had they come here to mourn the dead?
Such intense emotions.
And this feeling… it's like… I…
The blurred vision abruptly cut off.
Takumi blinked, then immediately turned to look at Miko beside him.
"Did you see anything?"
He asked seriously, staring into her golden eyes.
"…I think I saw two silhouettes?"
Miko, having just snapped out of a daze, frowned slightly before answering.
"Just that?"
"Yeah. Eh? Did you see something else?"
Unexpected.
This time, he seemed to have obtained more information than Miko.
Takumi observed her carefully and was certain she wasn't lying.
No… it wasn't just careful observation.
At that moment, he had clearly felt his perspective become one of the two figures—experiencing that overwhelming sorrow firsthand.
What exactly was going on?
"…Let's keep moving."
After thinking for a moment without reaching any conclusion, Takumi decided to set the issue aside and focus on the current objective.
The target area he intended to reach was getting closer.
Passing through the long, narrow corridor that twisted in an extremely eerie way.
Very quickly, Takumi saw the light ahead in the corridor, coming from an elevator standing open.
Inside the elevator were dried bloodstains everywhere. One could also see the marks left by fingernails scraping against the inner wall panels. Just standing outside the elevator, one could already smell a strong, foul stench.
Beside this elevator was a storage room holding mops and brooms, as well as a multipurpose classroom. There was nothing much inside either of them, and nothing particularly unusual could be seen.
Continuing forward, the group soon passed by a restroom. Around this restroom, the corridor was littered with many students whose heads had been chopped off, while from inside the restroom came constant sounds of swallowing and vomiting, accompanied by the loud rushing of water, making one strongly suspect what kind of situation was inside.
Miko only glanced at the restroom once, yet she saw many dirty human heads strung together with chains emerging from the darkness and looking toward her. Her expression stiffened, and she quickly turned her head away, pretending she had seen nothing. Yoshino Rika and Kinoshita Yuka didn't even turn their heads, carefully following behind Takumi as they passed by. As for Kobayashi Chiharu, she was slightly curious, but since Takumi, who was walking at the front, had no intention of stopping, she didn't dare leave the group and could only continue forward with the others.
Soon after, the five of them arrived at the location of Class 23 and Class 24 of the third-year division.
On one side of an empty hall, inside classrooms covered in a dark red hue, fragmented and shattered body remains densely covered the floors of both classrooms.
Takumi could not find a single fragment larger than the size of an index finger.
The thick layer of mashed flesh spread across the ground had piled up to a height of more than ten centimeters, almost completely covering both classrooms.
"Ugh…"
Miko was on the verge of fainting again.
She saw what had once happened in these two classes.
These were two classes that had been deliberately selected.
Selected specifically as "toy boxes" for the most distinguished Outstanding Students who had spent three years in the school, for Class 1 of the third-year division.
All the "Bad Students" in the entire school could be gathered into these two classes at any time under the command of the Outstanding Students. These two classes, the ones closest to Class 1 of the third-year division—at any time, as long as an Outstanding Student developed an interest, they could come to these classes and do whatever they wanted.
This place might be the closest to hell—or it could be called one of the most terrifying regions within hell itself.
In front of these two classrooms stood only a single enormous red candle. Takumi could sense that within Class 23 and Class 24 there was only one Aberration. Because too many people had died here, the excessive resentment had fused together. Thus, the sole Aberration here was a monster formed from the countless corpses fused together inside the classroom.
It would be better not to touch that candle.
Takumi had a feeling that if that thing were disturbed, things would become extremely troublesome.
"Keep moving. We're almost at our destination."
In the end, Takumi chose to leave quietly and continue forward.
The final stretch of corridor ahead was a continuously twisting section, one that would hardly be possible in the real world.
The further they went, the more bloodstains covered the walls and floor.
Various weapons were scattered carelessly across the ground—bloodstained blades, sharp awls, machetes, handguns, and even things like chainsaws, the standard tools of horror films.
All of them were stained with blood.
From these weapons, Takumi could hear the shrill screams of victims at the moment of their deaths.
Miko could directly see the final moments of those who had died by these things.
Her steps became increasingly unsteady.
Amid the countless wails, the girl could hardly walk normally anymore. She could only grab onto Takumi's arm, almost completely pressing herself against him just to keep moving forward—she was practically being dragged along by him.
"It's alright. Don't be afraid. They're all just illusions."
Knowing that the girl beside him was in a very poor mental state, Takumi softly comforted her while slightly slowing his pace, continuing forward step by step.
There was a faint sense of dampness on his sleeve.
Under the relentless assault of those excessively brutal and bloody scenes, although Miko did not cry out loud, tears had already begun to fall.
Takumi remained silent, continuing forward without any intention of stopping to let her recover.
There was no way around it—he did not have time to let Miko adjust.
Alice had finally been restrained, and the sheep-head mask was still continuing to erode his mind. He had to seize this opportunity—at the very least, he needed to reach the location indicated by the watch and obtain the item that could help him clear this Instance.
"Ugh… ugh…"
Miko sobbed quietly.
The further they went, the more twisted and insane scenes they saw.
Those beings that could no longer be called human—the so-called Outstanding Students—what those Outstanding Students who once existed in this school had done was displayed before the girl scene after scene. Even though she desperately did not want to see it, even if she closed her eyes, these images continued to appear without pause, giving her no chance to escape.
No…
The girl cried out silently in her heart.
I don't want to… see anymore…
These terrible things… these horrifying things…
I don't want to see them… I really… don't want to see them anymore…
No matter how much she begged, nothing changed. She did not even know who she could beg for mercy from.
"Sorry, but try to endure it. Get used to it."
Takumi's voice suddenly sounded at that moment.
"Although others may not see as clearly as you do, this is how it is for everyone at the beginning. These torments, this pain—there's no way to avoid them. As ordinary people who have already been dragged into this kind of situation, the only thing we can do is force ourselves to adapt, survive, and become stronger. That's the only way."
It wasn't really comfort—just a calm statement of fact.
Yet at that moment, it seemed to calm Miko somewhat.
Had she… already begun to rely on Takumi-san?
For an instant, Miko felt slightly dazed.
Then, the images and sounds suddenly faded away.
She had already passed through that horrifying corridor.
The group of five now stood at the entrance of Class 1 of the third-year division.
Just like Class 1 of the second-year division, the decorations here were extremely luxurious, full of a noble atmosphere, clearly distinguished on purpose.
And just like that class, this classroom also contained only corpses—no Aberrations.
Inside the classroom lay 23 students with bluish-purple faces, lying quietly on the ground as if they were asleep.
Creak—
Takumi pushed open the classroom door and stepped into the pitch-dark room.
He did not sense any Aberration.
Instead, he felt a strange calmness, as if his mood had settled down, and even the erosion from the mask had slowed.
This place seemed to retain some kind of trace—like… like the people in this classroom had died very peacefully. Each of them had calmly faced their end and accepted their fate, to the extent that the power of resentment could not affect this place at all.
Takumi walked to the seat in the middle of the classroom.
There lay a sheet of paper from a notebook, neatly spread out, with tidy handwriting on it—it seemed to be the students' final message.
[Those who yield to madness can never become true new humans]
[We rose above animals and became humans who built civilization precisely because we cast aside beastly nature and embraced humanity]
[Returning to cruel bestiality will never turn us into new humans, so we choose to refuse]
[We will not become your sacrifices, we will not slaughter each other, and we will not harm other students]
[If you want to kill us, then go ahead. One day, your lies will be exposed. When that day comes, you will pay for your sins with your lives]
[Class 1 of the ■■th third-year division, all 23 students, final testament]
Below the message were the signatures of the 23 students, along with what seemed to be a reply left by someone from the school. The reply was simple—only two words:
[Failed Products]
Takumi and Miko could see the scene that had once occurred.
At first, it was just one child who refused to go along with the corruption, yet still became an Outstanding Student. In the end, he persisted, gathered others, and used the school's reward system to expand his group step by step. As a result, that year's Class 1 had reached as many as 23 people, and almost no incidents of torment against delinquent or bad students occurred that year.
It was not an easy thing, yet these children persisted until the end. Even if there might have been deliberate leniency from the school for observation and research, these young people truly held on and were not assimilated by the madness accumulated in this place.
And so, in the end, these students were… locked inside the classroom. After refusing the school's order to kill each other, they were directly killed by poison gas.
Although the expressions on their corpses now seemed peaceful, the scene at the time was likely not like this.
'So you just watched this child gather companions, watched him clumsily try to resist you, then in the end tried to destroy their beliefs—and when you failed, you simply killed them all and stood here watching everything, didn't you?'
Putting down the final testament, Takumi turned around and walked step by step toward the wall at one side of the classroom.
He had already found the "important location" marked by the watch.
And he had already realized what kind of place it was.
He raised his hand and clenched his fist.
The next moment, Takumi slammed a punch into the wall.
Crack—crack—
Though it was a concrete wall, the impact sounded like glass shattering.
Cracks spread out in all directions.
Takumi took a deep breath, clenched his fist again, and struck once more.
Boom—!!!
The entire wall of the classroom exploded apart.
Cold-colored light shone from behind the shattered glass.
Takumi saw figures wearing sheep-head masks, duck-head masks, and turtle-head masks standing behind the wall.
Wearing teachers' clothes, wearing white coats of researchers, standing there casually and at ease, watching everything happening inside the classroom.
Just like back then—standing in places the children could not see, places they could not reach, coldly observing them, watching them walk toward madness again and again.
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