In the pitch-black corridor, that staircase leading underground displayed itself glaringly right before the two of them.
Gao Hai could be certain that before today, he had never seen any stairs leading to an underground area in his own home. Moreover, these stairs were bare concrete, completely different from the stone-tiled stairs of his house; at a glance, it was obvious this wasn't how this house was supposed to look.
"Upstairs."
Merely glancing at that staircase, Gao Hai pulled Miko along and walked towards the upper floor.
This house was constantly establishing a deeper and deeper connection with that instance world; the fact that the living room window view had turned into a corridor earlier already proved this point. If they continued to dawdle, he feared every direction of this building would be completely sealed off, becoming utterly impossible to escape.
Before it was too late, they had to leave this place.
Step—
The sound of footsteps landing on the stairs was exceptionally clear.
It was clear enough that both Gao Hai and Miko could distinctly hear that it was obviously not just the sound of their own footsteps ringing out continuously at this moment.
Gao Hai looked ahead and saw students walking upstairs one by one at the corner of the staircase. He saw the old-fashioned school uniforms they wore, the mottled bloodstains on those uniforms, and their smiling faces turned towards him.
Thud—
A student's head fell to the ground.
The bloody, shattered head, almost completely smashed flat, rolled down the stairs, bouncing until it rolled to Gao Hai's feet.
Thud— Thud-thud-thud—
More human heads rolled down from above.
Along with that dark red bloodwater rolling down the stairs.
Falling at Gao Hai and Miko's feet, rolling past the two of them, and continuing to plummet downwards along the stairs.
They could not continue walking upstairs anymore.
Because the top of the stairs was not the second floor of his home that Gao Hai was familiar with, but a school corridor where headless students stood, where eerie things stood one by one under the light of the sunset twilight, just standing there silently in the high places.
The lighting created a deception, making Gao Hai think the second floor was still normal, and he nearly walked straight into it.
Fortunately, even knowing the situation was extremely urgent, he still retained his basic vigilance and caution. Therefore, after taking the first step down, he realized something was wrong and stopped. The result was seeing the scene just now.
Beside him, Miko was already speechless; she was completely numb, merely following Gao Hai out of instinct.
At this moment, the pitch-black first-floor corridor had changed again. The walls were almost completely covered in blood-red graffiti. Gao Hai could barely make out phrases like [Play with me], [Believe in her], [My guardian angel], [You are my goddess], and [She is pure], but more of it had completely lost meaning, being purely messy smears of blood.
Those headless students who had been following behind them were gone.
But the corpses in the corridor had become more numerous than at the start.
A boy hanging upside down from the ceiling, his head minced by iron wire, blood constantly dripping down.
A girl lying on the ground with her hands and feet chopped off, erasers stuffed into her empty eye sockets, her mouth open, and a stapler connected to her tongue.
A man nailed to the wall with iron spikes, disemboweled, with a skinned humanoid object stuffed inside his belly.
A woman with a hook piercing the back of her head, poking out through her nostrils to hang her, with a bloody, complete human skeletal structure connected to her neck.
...
The scent of blood was spreading.
Every footstep would inevitably land on chunks of meat or internal organs.
Flying flies buzzed around in chaos, and black and yellow maggots tumbled within the rotting flesh.
Miko wanted to vomit, but found she couldn't anymore.
After the hellish imagery breached her mental defenses and caused her to nearly collapse completely, Miko found she no longer had a way to express a normal physiological reaction to this disgusting and terrifying scene before her eyes.
She was led forward by Gao Hai in front with a completely numb expression, stepping through this blood-red corridor one step at a time.
[Do you like it?]
It seemed as if someone had suddenly asked from behind her.
But Miko, who was already in a complete trance, didn't notice this voice at all. Therefore, let alone responding, she didn't even pay attention to or notice this voice asking her from behind in her thoughts.
Step—
The clear sound of footsteps on the wooden floor made Miko's eyes widen slightly.
All the corpses, all the blood, vanished in the next instant.
The corridor was spotlessly clean, with nothing there, no different from when she had first entered Gao Hai's home and passed through the corridor.
What happened?
It was full of those terrible things just now; how did it suddenly return to normal?
Miko felt her mind becoming increasingly chaotic, unable to analyze or think about the scene before her normally.
Gao Hai, however, remained silent, completely unperturbed by the current situation, and simply continued moving forward.
He quickly led Miko to the other side of the corridor and reached out to open the door, whereupon dim sunlight shone in from behind it.
Outside the door was the backyard of Gao Hai's house.
At least for now, the entire backyard looked completely normal, with nothing eerie about it.
But Gao Hai did not step out of this door.
He lowered his head to look at his feet, at the gap beneath the door.
Distinct light was clearly projecting down from outside the window.
Yet beneath the gap of this door, it was pitch black, without a single sliver of light to be seen.
In the next moment, Gao Hai raised his hand and fired a shot. The dim sunlight vanished instantly. Accompanied by the sound of shattering glass, everything outside the door changed abruptly. There was no backyard, nor was there any sunlight; there was only a gloomy, eerie room—a bare, empty room with a concrete structure, where rows of white cloth-covered corpses lay on the floor.
The shattered incandescent bulb fell to the ground.
In the instant the light vanished, Gao Hai saw a thin, small figure flash past inside the room.
A torch was still burning silently.
When Gao Hai turned his head to look behind him, what he saw was a dilapidated corridor covered in cobwebs and dust, scattered with various debris.
On the wall on one side of the corridor, the characters [-1] were painted in bright red paint.
"We've walked to the first basement floor."
Gao Hai spoke to Miko in a low voice.
"Eh?"
The young girl paused slightly, then turned to look at the writing on the wall, unable to comprehend what was happening.
"I think I understand. From the beginning, our senses were being influenced; what we saw was a mix of truth and falsehood. That step we took 'upstairs' was actually 'downstairs.' Then, when we realized that going 'upstairs' would lead to an encounter with those things, and we started going 'downstairs,' we were really starting to go downstairs."
So, the headless students who were originally following behind them suddenly ran above them.
At that time, he and Miko were actually already standing on the stairs leading downstairs.
And after that, the extremely disgusting corridor he and Miko saw was actually the result of their senses being impacted most intensely, to the point where they couldn't distinguish that they were walking downstairs step by step. Then came the disguised first floor, that scene attempting to trick him into walking into the room.
Gao Hai shook his head slightly. Having figured out what happened, he had nothing to say in his heart right now other than motherfcker*.
{Hai-kun! Hai-kun! Are you still there?}
Maki's voice was transmitted into his mind through the mental link. Judging by the panic in her voice, she had probably been shouting for quite a while.
{I'm still here. I almost fell for a trap just now. How much time do I have left?}
Gao Hai brought Miko along as he moved forward, marching toward the front of this dark corridor, all while replying to Maki.
{There are 12 minutes left. You lost contact for a full half-hour. We've already found Koikawa-san and Aoyama Nanami, but those two don't have experience contacting the [Campus Horror Stories] instance. Now, Mr. Koikawa is asking: are you still in your own home? Have you entered any unusual places?}
Maki asked with extreme nervousness; Gao Hai could almost imagine how she looked right now.
{Regrettably, I've already entered a strange environment. It looks like a place that has been abandoned for some time. Ask him if I still have a way to return. By the way, teleportation can't be used anymore, right? Otherwise, with your personality, it's impossible you wouldn't have tried to come over.}
Gao Hai replied as he advanced. By this time, he had already seen the stairs not far away.
{...Yes, the power of the Blessing cannot be used because we are now... separated in different instances. That was the response I got when I tried to use the Blessing. But Mr. Koikawa says you still have a way to come back. As long as you find the place where you entered and ensure you don't bring out [things that shouldn't be brought out], you can leave normally. There isn't much time; you have to hurry.}
Just as Maki's words fell, Gao Hai arrived in front of the stairs.
{I got it. Don't worry, I'm very amazing; I won't fall due to this kind of difficulty. Trust me.}
After saying this last sentence, Gao Hai looked at the corridor extending downwards into the darkness before him and felt his head starting to ache.
Turning around, he looked at Miko Yotsuya, who hadn't let out a single scream or cried aloud the entire way, merely having red-rimmed eyes. He looked at her hand reaching out from her sleeve to grip him tightly, and her body which was almost curled into a ball. After hesitating and thinking for a moment, Gao Hai finally asked her:
"Right now, in your eyes, is there anything existing beside me?"
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