"Slacking off at work will result in a salary deduction, you know. I caught you~"
Outside the window, the pink-haired young girl winked at Gao Hai, even extending a finger to mimic a pistol gesture and making a shooting motion.
"Chika?"
Not expecting the other party to return to school at this time, Gao Hai hurriedly stood up.
The other two security guards in the security booth showed no abnormal emotions regarding this, sitting honestly in their seats motionless as if they couldn't see Gao Hai and Chika at all. Seeing this, Gao Hai didn't say much more; he simply put away his mobile phone and walked out of the security booth.
"Is your body okay now?"
Gao Hai walked out of the security booth and looked at Chika Fujiwara standing not far away, whose complexion was still somewhat poor, and couldn't help but ask.
"Walking is basically no problem. It seems to be due to the physical enhancement brought by the A-rank evaluation; the body's recovery speed is much faster than before."
Chika Fujiwara nodded in response, walking very naturally by Gao Hai's side, moving forward shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
The two walked forward for a distance, arriving near a small gazebo within the school, and walked in to sit down. At this time, the students were still in class, so the surroundings of the gazebo were completely quiet, with only Gao Hai and Chika sitting there.
During the process of walking over and sitting down, Gao Hai actually wanted to try holding Chika's hand, but he was rejected by the girl without hesitation. The other party expressed that the daytime should be reserved for Maki as much as possible, and in a place like school where they could easily be seen, it was best for the two of them not to be too intimate to avoid causing gossip. Seeing her resolute attitude, Gao Hai could only let it drop.
"How is Little Maki doing?"
The moment they sat down in the gazebo, Chika looked at Gao Hai and asked with great curiosity.
"She's alright, I feel there are no issues. But are you really okay? It's better not to push yourself."
As Gao Hai spoke, he carefully observed Chika's reaction. He knew he had gone a bit overboard yesterday. He originally thought this girl would rest for about a day, but he didn't expect her to only sleep for the morning before running back to school in the afternoon.
He had heard that after girls undergo a rite of passage into adulthood, their walking movements undergo subtle changes. Would she be noticed by others?
Thinking of this, Gao Hai's gaze couldn't help but shift to Chika's legs. He hadn't paid much attention to Chika's walking posture just now, but it did seem like there were some slight differences compared to yesterday.
"When I say I'm fine, of course I'm really fine. Don't underestimate me too much. Ugh, anyway, no matter what, I still feel somewhat sorry towards Little Maki, so let's leave the daytime to her for this period. As for me, it's better if I don't appear to provoke her for the time being."
The pink-haired girl furrowed her brow, and after thinking briefly, she shook her head and spoke.
At least for now, she needed to give the other party some more time.
As for the time further in the future, Chika couldn't think too far ahead for the moment, though she tentatively had a corresponding plan for a two-day hot spring hotel trip next weekend. If the situation went smoothly then, it should be possible to make the relationship dynamics between the three of them a bit more harmonious.
Speaking of which, shouldn't this kind of thing be done proactively by the man? Ah Hai, this guy, really is lame.
Thinking this, Chika looked up at Gao Hai with a somewhat resentful expression, only for the other party to reach out, grab her waist, and pull her directly into his arms.
"Relax, I know what to do. You don't need to think so much."
Lowering his head, he buried his face into the girl's soft, smooth pink long hair.
Gao Hai took a deep breath of the clear fragrance lingering between Chika's strands of hair, and only then, under her incomparable flushed expression, did he let her go.
"Idiot Ah Hai, doing this is a foul..."
The girl muttered in a low voice, reaching out to pinch Gao Hai's arm.
It was also at this moment that the dismissal bell rang out from the teaching building. Thus, Chika bid farewell to Gao Hai and headed toward the teaching building. The way she moved had a rather high-spirited feel to it; perhaps this was because she wasn't here to attend class, but rather to play games at the Board Game Club she was a member of.
This time, Gao Hai carefully observed Chika's walking posture, confirming that her legs were indeed a little uncoordinated when she took steps, and the area from her thighs to her hips was obviously somewhat stiff.
That she became like this is still my fault.
Transmigrating into a mixed anime otherworld, being forced to participate in a death game, winning the beauty and starting a harem. This process, which only an online novel protagonist would possess, was something he had basically completed now. The only things remaining were to thoroughly conclude the [Sacrificial Game] and find a way to return to the real world carrying this body of extraordinary power.
But does that kind of method really exist?
Gao Hai had investigated various rumors among Players, and among them were methods on how to break away from this horror world.
This information basically had no valid sources; after all, Players didn't know what exactly needed to be done to truly break away from this monthly journey of death. Among all the speculations and conjectures, the answer considered to have the highest possibility was to obtain an A-rank evaluation in a Red Moon-level instance twice, thereby gaining the qualification to participate in a higher difficulty instance that surpassed the Red Moon-level.
Many Players believed that within that legendary game instance lay the method to truly escape this hell.
However, in the two years since the birth of the [Sacrificial Game], no Player had ever met this condition yet. Even those top-tier Red Moon-level Players, not a single one had successfully obtained an A-rank clearance evaluation twice.
Thinking of this, Gao Hai returned to the security booth, took out his mobile phone, and logged into the Player forum once again.
In the forum nowadays, there were still quite a few people discussing the mysterious Players who had cleared and destroyed the Red Nut Gray Hole instance. Despite Ed releasing some information regarding Gao Hai himself, the vast majority of Players still believed that this instance couldn't possibly have been cracked by the power of Gao Hai alone; he definitely must have had a powerful team as his backup. Some Players even guessed that it was achieved by a top-tier Player team about to charge into the Red Moon-level executing an operation to crack the instance.
Some Players' guesses were actually quite accurate, but Gao Hai temporarily had no interest in paying attention to the thoughts of these Players scattered all over the place. He simply found a few posts that had been specially marked as 'essential' and preserved by the forum administrators, digging out the board for [Campus Horror Stories] from within.
Rather than worrying about what if he got dragged into this high-difficulty instance, it was better to simply understand the relevant information clearly first. That way, even if the terrible situation he predicted really occurred, at least he wouldn't be completely ignorant of the situation and forced to investigate from scratch with his eyes completely in the dark.
After clicking open the board, Gao Hai quickly saw the five different posts that had been specially pinned at the top of the section.
The titles of the first four posts were [Zaoli Elementary School], [Fujihana Middle School], [Yeluoshan Middle School], and [Baidos Academy]. These were the names of four different schools discovered within the [Campus Horror Stories] instance, summarized by Players who had successfully survived it.
Among them, Zaoli Elementary School, as the name implied, was an incomparably anomalous elementary school; Fujihana Middle School was an abandoned junior high; Yeluoshan Middle School was a high school; and Baidos Academy was a university college.
According to what Players said, these four schools existed independently yet intertwined with each other within the instance. Players could travel to any of the schools at will. Within the instance, there existed two different types of rules: [Public Rules] and [Area Rules]. Depending on the environment the Player was in, the rules they needed to observe would undergo various changes. The specific situation was extremely complex, not something that could be explained clearly in just a few casual sentences.
Among these schools, Yeluoshan Middle School was considered to house 3 different core obsessions, making it the place with the most core obsessions found in the instance regions so far. Of these core functions, two core Obsession Items had already been taken by Players; therefore, Yeluoshan Middle School had fallen into a semi-locked state, and there was almost no way to enter this school area anymore.
Fujihana Middle School was the only school in the instance that presented an abandoned state. Its interior was already a field of ruins, and spatial dislocation phenomena occurred there; it was said that there were still living Players lost inside who could not break free even now.
Zaoli Elementary School was an extremely mysterious place with almost no valid intelligence leaking out. For some reason, almost none of the Players who survived there were willing to share intelligence, and many had developed severe self-destructive tendencies. The only Player team willing to share intelligence merely stated "Under no circumstances should you enter here," and was unwilling to discuss anything more.
Baidos Academy was an outlier among the four discovered schools. Judging from various characteristics, the previous three schools were all schools of Japan, but Baidos Academy was a Western-style university college. Furthermore, it occupied an extremely large area with an extremely high density of buildings. This academy seemed to exist in a multiple dislocation of both time and space. According to a Player who successfully raided this place and took away one core Obsession Item, this academy should have existed through three main periods. Two of these periods operated as a school and were seemingly normal periods. The remaining period, however, was situated in a war era, a period where it was used as a concentration camp and execution ground.
According to the information revealed by that Red Moon-level Player team specializing in raiding this academy, they believed that from the establishment of this massive academy to its disappearance, and from the real world to the process of being dragged into the world of horror stories, at least 1.6 million people had been transported here and ultimately executed and killed. In [Campus Horror Stories], only Baidos Academy was filled with nearly endless anomalies; it was a land of despair where a Player could almost never survive even if they didn't violate the rules.
This Baidos Academy was confirmed to have possessed two cores. After that Red Moon-level Player team took away one of the cores, they did not attempt to return to the instance again. And it was also after the loss of one core Obsession Item that not a single Player who entered Baidos Academy ever left that area alive again.
Clearly, before this, although the academy was fraught with danger, there were still barely methods to escape or temporarily survive. But now, this academy area had become an abyssal deadly ground with a 100% death rate within [Campus Horror Stories].
And, excluding these four academies, there was the final academy.
A school area that Player teams who had explored this instance firmly believed existed, but for which there were absolutely no clues so far, and whose name and location were impossible to know—a place that existed only in legend.
Many Players stated that they had seen that school. In the darkness, under the dim night, when they cast their gazes toward the distance, they saw that school located extremely far away, amidst the mist.
These Players claimed to have seen the lights lit up in that school, and even heard the bells and the sound of reading ringing out from inside. But the search investigations up to now had not made any progress. That school seemed to exist only in the Players' fantasies; no one had ever truly touched it, or rather... touched it and then left the instance alive to successfully record information related to it.
Gao Hai casually clicked open the post for [Fujihana Middle School] and carefully examined the situation within.
This post summarized the 12 different game hints heard by Players situated in Fujihana Middle School at the start of [Campus Horror Stories]. Yes, unlike Twilight-level and Dim Night-level instances, the opening hints of a Red Moon-level instance would change almost every time. Even though this instance had now been downgraded to Dim Night-level, Players descending into it would still hear completely different hints due to their different starting locations.
Aside from this, Fujihana Middle School contained a total of four different areas, which could be roughly divided into the [Teaching Building], [Dormitory Department], [Playground], and [Swimming Pool]. These four areas all had completely independent rules—independent game rules.
"Alice's Game? Why does that sound like a game of assembling figures?"
Upon seeing the unified title format on the four different rule tables, Gao Hai couldn't help but speak up to roast it.
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