"These are… clothes?"
Fujiwara Chika stared at the pieces of clothing scattered throughout the cave before her and spoke softly, almost unconsciously.
In the swaying light of the two headlamps, a slightly damp, roughly quadrilateral small cave was revealed before their eyes.
There was nothing eerie here—none of those enthusiastic corpses. There were only many filthy clothes casually thrown on the ground, and it was unclear how long they had been left here.
The process of reaching the [Heart] was easier than expected.
Compared to the previous [Large Space], this one-way passage leading to the Heart was still narrow, but as long as they lowered their bodies and crawled, they could still pass through smoothly.
Takumi had made a rough measurement of this cave, which was referred to as the [Artery]. The estimated result was that in the narrowest area, the cave's width and height were both around forty centimeters. For the tall Takumi, this height and width were troublesome, but he was still able to get through. As for Chika, her build was much smaller. Although the development of a certain part of her body was indeed quite impressive, no matter what, she would not get stuck in this cave.
Throughout the entire process, they did not encounter any eerie phenomena. Nothing spoke from behind them, and there were no corpses lying overhead. Because he was positioned at the rear, Takumi could see Chika slowly crawling ahead of him the entire time.
How should one put it—this girl did not seem to be developed only in the front; her development in the back was also quite good.
Of course, this was merely a small detail that Takumi had noticed unintentionally. How could a serious person like him possibly focus on such meaningless things during the arduous progress of crawling through a tunnel? Impossible.
In the end, this final advance did not even encounter any spatial dislocation. From start to finish, the Fujiwara Chika crawling ahead of Takumi had always been herself. His blessing had identified her as human the entire time and judged her to harbor goodwill toward him. It could be said that unless the eerie entities in this instance were already terrifying enough to block his blessing, his judgment would certainly not be wrong.
Was it because they had temporarily avoided those four corpses by exploiting the mechanics that these anomalous phenomena had also temporarily disappeared?
Takumi was unable to come up with the correct answer.
In any case, the two of them ultimately arrived smoothly at the location of the [Heart], confirmed that there was no second entrance here, and found the sign located in this area. Unlike the sign in the [Large Space], the sign here merely marked the name [Heart], with no descriptive text at all.
"Why are there so many people's clothes here…"
Fujiwara Chika cautiously observed those clothes. As she muttered softly, she took a step back, with no intention whatsoever of approaching them.
"Don't mind it. As [Explorers], we've already completed the objective—we've already reached the [Heart]. Next, we'll rest a bit, and then we'll go back immediately."
Takumi spoke casually from the side. He stood in place to rest for a moment, likewise with not the slightest intention of approaching those clothes.
Glancing around, Takumi felt that this so-called Heart was, in the end, nothing more than an ordinary-looking cave with no particular features. The same various stalagmites and stalactites, the same uneven stone pillars—there was absolutely no way to tell that this place had any connection to the name "Heart."
Chika, on the other hand, very keenly noticed some fossil traces on the rock wall, and she even recognized that these seemed to be fossils of some prehistoric fish. Because of that, she was a little excited and wanted to take photos as a keepsake or something. Takumi still admired this girl's optimistic spirit, but considering that this was not a normal place, and that if they took photos they might end up discovering that there were suddenly a bunch of extra people in the photos staring at the two of them, he ultimately stopped Chika's action.
"With so many fish fossils, what could this place have been like in the past?"
"Who knows. No matter what it was like before, anyway, it's not a good place now. All right, it's about time to go."
Takumi and Chika did not stay long in this cave, and soon chose to leave.
Those messy clothes thrown on the ground gave Takumi a very bad feeling. Especially after he observed carefully and found that all of these clothes were fairly casual—T-shirts, shirts, shorts, jeans, and the like—he increasingly had the feeling that people were standing everywhere in this cave, all silently staring at him.
They could not stay long.
The sense of crisis in his heart urged Takumi to act quickly.
"Ugh… we're leaving again? It feels so exhausting…"
Chika let out a low wail. Crawling in a narrow cave was an extremely stamina-consuming activity, and even with protective clothing and a helmet, Chika's face had still been scraped by the rock wall several times; there were now several blood marks on the side of her face.
But although she was complaining with her mouth, the girl's actions showed not the slightest hesitation. She immediately burrowed into the tunnel they had come through—the one with a damaged safety rope nailed in place—and began to speed up, crawling toward the depths.
"As long as we haven't completely left this place, we still can't let our guard down. There's nothing we can do about that."
Takumi spoke casually from behind. He also crouched down, preparing to burrow into the cave.
Tsk, the sweat on his body felt like it had stuck to his clothes—what an uncomfortable feeling.
Thinking this, Takumi tugged at his clothes, but they would not budge. He did not know whether it was because of the stickiness brought on by sweat, but he felt that this garment—which was already quite fitted to begin with—seemed to be clinging tightly to his body, so tight that he could almost not take it off.
Why had these clothes become so tight?
A trace of puzzlement briefly brushed past his mind, and then he quickly set it aside.
What mattered more right now was leaving this place as soon as possible. Takumi could already vaguely sense that the sound of footsteps from certain people had begun to arise within this cave.
Lowering himself flat, one hand gripping his backpack and holding it against his chest, Takumi slowly crawled into this cave that was only a little over forty centimeters in height, and began to crawl forward into the darkness ahead.
[Where is this place?]
It seemed that he heard someone's confused voice, coming from the cave behind him.
[I was clearly still driving—why did I end up here?]
[What's going on? I just went to sleep, and when I woke up I was already in this place?]
[What on earth is happening? Hey, is anyone there? Help!]
More and more people began shouting and yelling all kinds of things. Every single voice was filled with confusion, and every single voice was filled with fear.
Takumi paid no attention to those voices, and simply continued crawling forward.
[We can only crawl out from here, right?]
[We're trapped here, and there's no signal at all, so there's no way to call the police. We can only try to see if we can crawl out first.]
[Hurry up. I always feel like this place is very strange.]
The voices seemed to be drawing closer to him.
The faint rustling sound of crawling followed along behind him.
Vaguely, Takumi felt that this situation might be somewhat different from before.
But at this moment, he had no way to turn around. He could only continue crawling forward, doing his best to speed up, moving faster and faster toward the front of this dark cave.
...
At the same time, Kaguya was already hiding behind a stone pillar, cautiously observing the structure ahead.
It was a guard booth.
It was a guard booth located on the Plains, blocking the outside of the Big Slide. At this very moment, light from the window made it possible to see that someone was sitting inside the booth, and faintly, the sound of music could be heard. And beside the guard booth, the place that should originally have been the entrance to the Big Slide had now been sealed shut with concrete, almost blending completely into the surrounding rock wall, with no visible difference at all.
Dirty, grimy clothes were scattered all over the ground.
From the moment Kaguya stepped into the entrance of the stone cave, passing through the stone forest path all the way until she reached this place called the Plains, she had seen a great many clothes strewn across the ground along the way.
They were all casual clothes; a few were even pajamas, and in no way did they look like what someone exploring a cave should be wearing.
Among these clothes, she also saw yellow striped uniforms similar to what she was wearing, except that this type of clothing was damaged very badly, as if it had been torn open by something… no, it was more like the kind of damage from scraping or abrasion.
Before her, had many Explorer personnel taken off their uniforms here?
[Confirmation of the "guard booth" has been completed. It is not suitable to enter at present. C1, take your team back to the entrance.]
New instructions had already come through her earpiece.
Because this was only her first time using this equipment, Shinomiya Kaguya had not yet found a suitable opportunity or method to destroy the communications equipment, so at this moment she was still under the command room's control.
"Yes. I will immediately lead the squad back."
As Kaguya replied, she turned around.
For a moment, she felt as if she heard the sound of knocking.
It was like the sound of something forcefully knocking and pounding from behind that sealed concrete wall, faintly reaching her ears.
In response, Kaguya turned and left without saying a word, taking the other two team members with her, and step by step walking back in the direction she had come from.
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