"Fuck me, what the hell is wrong with this place—are they all social maniacs who want to team up at the drop of a hat…?"
Only after shaking those things off by a considerable distance and reaching a spot about one meter high and wide enough for two people to rest did Takumi and Fujiwara Chika finally stop, sitting down for a brief rest in this narrow cave strung with safety ropes.
Cold sweat had already seeped out on Takumi's forehead. He muttered a few curses under his breath before finally recovering.
As for Fujiwara Chika, she had already collapsed face-down on the ground, panting for quite a while. Her delicate face was deathly pale, and it took her some time of trembling before she managed to recover.
"Th-they didn't… follow us, right?"
Even after being away from those things for some time, Chika's voice was still trembling.
"Probably not. As long as you properly reject them and end the conversation, those things won't follow. Wasn't it the same with what we ran into before? So next time we encounter them, you absolutely have to stay calm and tell them we are [Explorers], then refuse their request to go together. Don't respond to any other topics. Even having a rough, nasty attitude is fine—you saw it yourself, I straight-up cursed at them and they didn't do anything."
Takumi let out a long breath and gave Chika a proper lecture.
Honestly speaking, the reason those things had latched onto them just now was because Chika had not managed to hide her expression well enough, letting those things notice something was off.
But then again, expecting a girl from a peaceful era to stay calm in front of four blood-soaked ghostly things pestering her with questions did seem a bit too demanding. All Takumi could hope was that this girl would not let something like that happen again—he did not believe he would be able to handle it every single time.
"I'm sorry. I—I'll try to stay calm next time… um, although calm conversation still seems a bit difficult. At most, I might only be able to stay silent…"
Chika rubbed her cheeks with some distress and sighed as she spoke.
The man and the woman earlier were still manageable. Dennis, who ran out afterward, was also terrifying, but at least there was some distance.
But that bluish-purple boy had come right up in front of Chika. From Takumi's perspective, the thing was only looking up at Chika. But from Chika's side, what she saw was its head continuously stretching upward, stopping only when it was almost pressing against her face, then repeatedly speaking to her and asking all kinds of questions.
The terrifying face of death by suffocation, the overpowering stench, the hoarse and eerie voice, combined with the inherent mental erosion carried by the uncanny itself—at that moment, the girl could only do her utmost to remain motionless and calm by instinct. Even replying with a single word might have caused an immediate mental collapse.
If Takumi had not pulled her into his arms and pressed her face against his chest so she would not have to continue facing those things head-on, Chika suspected she probably would not have been able to leave that place alive.
But come to think of it, the identity he used as an excuse back then… girlfriend?
Although she could understand that it was a reason Takumi came up with on the spot in an emergency, it still felt a bit strange. And this should also be the first time she had ever been held in the arms of a man other than her father, right?
Also, wasn't he actually Classmate Maki's boyfriend? When he held her just now, his movements and tone felt very natural.
Perhaps because they had finally moved away from danger and could relax for the moment, Fujiwara Chika could not help it—her train of thought ran wild, and she subconsciously started thinking about all sorts of things.
"Are you rested?" Takumi asked at that moment.
"Mm… pretty much."
The girl let out a light breath, pulled back those unnecessary stray thoughts, nodded seriously at Takumi beside her, and raised her thumb.
"If there's no problem, then we should continue forward. The place we're going to is the [Heart]. Even though we don't know what it will be like there, as [Explorers], we have to go there at least once, no matter what, right?"
Takumi smiled at Chika, signaling that they could set off.
"Mm-hm. The Chika Explorer Team, moving out."
The girl nodded earnestly once again, smiled at Takumi, then took the lead, crawling forward toward the depths of the cave.
Incidentally, after Takumi and Fujiwara Chika entered this passage, they did not encounter any more branching paths.
That previous chaotic, twisted cave seemed not to exist at all. The difficult exploration they had experienced inside that cave seemed as if it had merely been an illusion.
But the exploration outfit the girl was wearing could not be faked.
Takumi could not help thinking to himself: just like Kyosei of the Shirakawa Apartments, relying on the mechanism of resisting the Horror Story, had done his utmost to leave behind rules and supply crates that could allow survivors to live, perhaps in this lightless dark cave, someone had likewise held on until the very end—and even after becoming part of this Horror Story, was still using their own methods to provide help to those who came later.
The power of the Horror Story might easily destroy countless lives, but had the people who held on never truly been cut off?
Hopefully so…
Lost in thought, Takumi looked at Chika crawling ahead. He did not think further about it and also continued crawling forward.
The cave had begun to narrow again.
Following the damaged safety rope, they advanced toward the pitch-dark front.
The destination was still unknown.
At this moment, the only thing they could do was simply move forward.
Maki, how are you doing right now, exactly?
The worry in Takumi's heart could not be easily set aside.
…
"Takumi…"
With a soft sigh, Maki turned her head and looked toward the corridor ahead.
The girl wore a slightly ill-fitting white lab coat and held a stack of documents filled with completely unrecognizable garbled symbols, walking slowly through a white corridor under stark-white lighting.
It seemed as if dark-red blood droplets were splattered across the walls, but when one looked closely, one would find there was nothing at all.
In the silent corridor, only the girl's own breathing and footsteps could be heard. Yet as she walked, faintly, it seemed as if she could hear something following behind her.
Maki's gaze swept across the white wall beside her.
A simple map labeled [Cave Research Base] hung on the wall, roughly marking the functions of each room in this small laboratory that was not very large.
This was not the Red Nut Grey Cave entrance where she should have been.
In the player information she had obtained in the past, the existence of this base had simply never been heard of.
However, this place was indeed closely related to Red Nut Grey Cave.
After taking the rules sheet placed on the bed in the dormitory where she had awakened, and after managing to decipher a few experimental documents that could be deciphered, Shijō Maki could confirm that this strange research base had been built directly on top of Red Nut Grey Cave. The area around the cave entrance had been backfilled, leaving only an entrance that was now completely enclosed within this building—an entrance under strict control, located within the [Quarantine Zone].
"No! This is completely wrong—where exactly have I come to? Bastard, could it be that the information he sold me was fake?!"
A despairing roar rang out from one of the rooms.
An even more violent, piercing noise quickly drowned out that person's voice.
Maki could only hear a faint scream; then all sounds vanished, and everything once again returned to silence.
The third one…
Maki counted silently in her heart.
From the moment she walked out of the second-floor dormitory to when she arrived here, she had already discovered three veteran players who had entered this instance using entry tickets, reacted abnormally after discovering that the scene had changed too drastically, and exposed a side they "should not display".
Without exception, none of them survived.
There was some kind of force—something—watching every single person here.
All players who failed to correctly play their "identity" would be swiftly identified and then eliminated in ways that defied common understanding.
[Creak—]
Maki pushed open the rust-covered metal door.
The white lights flickered once.
Inside the command room, one figure after another—some standing, some sitting—were all expressionlessly staring toward the front of the command console, at the three people wearing pale yellow, striped uniforms who were on standby inside the isolation zone beyond the thick protective glass.
Maki walked past the already dilapidated, empty abandoned rooms, over the broken floors riddled with cracks.
She came to one side of the pristine command room, placed the documents in her hand onto the desk, and cast a covert glance toward the people beside her.
Everyone was motionless, like statues.
In the dead silence, only the sound of Maki's footsteps—she alone wearing a white lab coat—echoed through the spacious room.
She was the only living person in this room.
[Preparing to begin the 16th exploration experiment, code name "Cavern-16." Explorers c1, c2, and c3, please prepare yourselves. The isolation gate will open shortly.]
A hoarse voice sounded from the broadcast, mixed with what seemed like someone suppressing a scream.
And through the thick glass, Maki could already see inside the isolation zone the successive protective gates leading to the Red Nut Grey Cave slowly opening, along with the gradual lighting up of the lamps.
This place was repeating something that had happened in the past.
The players who entered this place seemed to have replaced the identities of some of the "people" within it—or rather, joined in under extra, false identities.
Before reaching the command room, Maki had seen a total of five players. Three of them had died because their acting was too poor, while the other two were barely managing to play their identities, without revealing any particularly major flaws.
The girl thought about whether Takumi and Kaguya might also be here, and what identities the two of them would play.
But what she had not expected was that the first companion she found would take on such an identity to participate in this game.
"Prepare to set out. Begin exploring the cavern."
Inside the isolation room, Kaguya—wearing the yellow, striped uniform of an experiment staff member—said in a low voice. Without looking at the two "companions" behind her, she simply walked forward step by step, entered the inspection room in front of the Red Nut Grey Cave entrance, and slowly put on, one by one, the real-time recording equipment and various sensing instruments.
She did not put them on quickly; her movements were clearly somewhat unskilled. And beside her, another experiment staff member dressed very fast—very standard, very rigid—like a corpse that had repeated this process countless times, or rather… yes, that thing could indeed be directly regarded as a corpse.
There was one more experiment staff member who was also a player, but judging from the trembling movements, he was probably also a guy who did not have sufficient understanding of the situation at hand.
[Humm—]
At the front of the inspection room, the last heavy door leading to the Red Nut Grey Cave had already slowly opened.
And after taking a deep breath, Kaguya had pulled herself together, switched on the scouting device, turned around, and faced the pitch-black cavern entrance ahead.
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