Inside an empty small classroom in the teaching building, Kaguya—who had already changed into a clean school uniform—looked outside the window at Takumi sprinting past the small garden path below. Her cold expression loosened slightly, gaining a faint sense of relief.
"They all survived."
Muttering this to herself, she turned her head to the side, toward the maid who had collected her torn, collar-ripped uniform.
Judging from the worried expression on the maid's face, she would definitely have to think carefully about how to explain the issue of this uniform. However, for now—just for this moment—Kaguya's heart was filled with the joy of escaping disaster and the joy of both Maki and Takumi surviving, and her mood felt lighter than ever.
"This dirty hairband… no, this isn't a hairband. This is just a strip torn off from some T-shirt, right? And it's even from a men's T-shirt. Kaguya-sama, what exactly is going on? I hope you can properly tell me."
The maid with long golden hair stepped forward, holding that torn piece of cloth with suspicious red-and-white stains, and asked.
"This…"
Kaguya lowered her head, looked at that cloth fragment, and her gaze slightly froze.
Then, as if thinking of something, Kaguya reached out her hand and lightly tapped the fragment.
"A slightly different style might be fine as well. Mm. Then, Hayasaka, I will leave it to you to choose a suitable red hairband for me."
...
In the end, the result of the security guards exerting their full strength was that they had absolutely no way to catch up to Takumi, who easily shook them off. They could only stare in shock as he lightly leapt three meters high and landed outside the school, then quickly disappeared into the residential area.
With Takumi's agility and neural reactions already surpassing human limits, unless he had fallen into an encirclement, escaping these security guards' pursuit was nothing but effortless.
Compared to avoiding those eerie things in the Shirakawa Apartments, Takumi even felt a bit of comfort now while slipping out of an encirclement. Mm, of course, during his escape he still remembered to properly wear a mask and hat to disguise himself; before, while searching for Maki, he also had sunglasses for cover and avoided the vast majority of cameras.
But even so, while escaping Shuchiin and shaking off the guards through the residential district, Takumi still noticed a figure following him. The other party's physical capabilities were extremely strong—strong enough to be beyond what an ordinary person could possess, giving him the sense of someone from a two-dimensional world or a player who had cleared a game and obtained enhancements. But even if that was so, the other party's speed was still inferior to the Takumi who had now stepped slightly into the superhuman domain, so after a short while he left that person behind as well.
"Hoo, then, hugging completed, going home, going home."
Muttering this softly, Takumi avoided the cameras at each intersection on his way back home, changed clothes, then straightforwardly lay on his bed, closed his eyes, and slept until dusk.
Sitting up from the bed and feeling the pressure accumulated in the Shirakawa Apartments completely drained, Takumi exhaled comfortably, then looked at his watch.
The scale on the watch was now firmly stopped at the number 2.
There were still 10 chances to start over.
After collapsing the Horror Story core of the Shirakawa Apartments and causing the entire apartment to crumble and disappear, his watch absorbed all derivative existences that had lost the support of the Horror Story core, turning them into nourishment for the watch and restoring 1 tick.
In other words, if he wanted to recover his number of resets, Takumi had to destroy the Horror Story core of the instance and break through the key Obsession Item of the entire instance; only then could he use the power of the watch to absorb those derivative beings and increase his number of resets.
Sounded like it really was not an easy matter.
But now, he could only take it one step at a time.
Takumi again could not help remembering the moment when the watch activated this ability. At that time, he was like he had been influenced by something. The emotion of that moment, and the words he spoke—rather than saying they were something he wanted to say or something he wanted to do, it was more like something had used him to accomplish all of it.
"…Do you actually have self-awareness?"
Takumi could not help looking at this black watch worn on his left wrist and asked.
No answer.
Naturally, there was no answer.
But Takumi grew more and more suspicious that inside this mysterious watch, there existed some kind of consciousness.
He longed to start over, and thus obtained the power to reset.
He wanted to brutally kill those two veteran players and did not want the people he cared about to forget him, and thus he obtained the ability to recover Obsession Items and bring people with him into a reset.
Then, at that critical moment of escaping the instance, his watch gained the ability to absorb the derivative existences of Horror Stories.
Just right.
Everything was just that perfectly fitting.
But why?
Takumi did not believe all of this was merely a story of "deus ex machina."
The moment this watch activated, he knew he would eventually have to pay a price for this power. When the ticks returned to zero again, when the 12 chances given to him were exhausted, he would have to pay the price and remain forever in that city of death. Although he still did not know what would happen upon stepping into that city, Takumi did not think it would be a good thing.
'What exactly are you?'
Thinking this, Takumi could not help remembering that box he picked up in the cabin.
When he woke up, the box was already gone.
Gone along with it was also the note left on the box.
[Do not let anyone know where you came from]
He could still clearly remember the words on that note—so clearly that it made him feel a chill.
Ah, it felt like he was deeply trapped in schemes and plots.
Takumi scratched his head.
And this "Sacrifice Game" did not even have any kind of newcomer instructions. Until now, he still did not know what characteristics the three difficulty levels—Dusk-level, Dark Night-level, and Red Moon-level—each had, or whether this game had any basic rules summarized by players. The only three players he encountered in the instance who had experienced the game—Tanaka and the traitor-woman—were complete idiots, the kind who could not communicate and could only be killed. Green… uh, that guy's various reactions always made Takumi suspect he cleared the game only because he hugged a super strong thigh, to the point that he knew absolutely nothing about any information related to the Sacrifice Game.
There must exist a place where players gather and communicate.
There must be some method to find a place where players interact with each other.
Both Tanaka and the traitor-woman came specifically for the Shirakawa Apartments. They had prior understanding of that apartment and likely obtained the relevant information somewhere. And the system prompt also said that entry tickets could be traded, meaning that a trading market between players very likely existed as well.
'Speaking of which, why did I not obtain an entry ticket after clearing the game? Could it be because I broke the game instance?'
Various thoughts circled in his mind.
Deciding to get up from the bed and search on the computer to see if he could find clues, Takumi picked up the phone he found inside the house, which should have belonged to the former "Takumi." Just as he lit up the screen, he saw several missed calls.
Hm? Whose number is this?
Unable to remember for a moment, Takumi called back. Almost immediately after dialing, the call connected directly, and the next instant a girl's voice, suppressing her anger, came from the phone.
"Takumi-kun, do you know just how much agony I have been in while waiting until now?"
Even without seeing her face, Takumi could feel the girl burning with fury.
"Ah, Maki?"
Only then did Takumi abruptly realize: back at Shuchiin, when he hugged her, before letting Maki go and preparing to run, he had whispered his phone number into her ear—the number of the phone he found at home.
After returning home, because he did not receive a phone call for a while, and also because he was indeed somewhat exhausted, he simply took a nap.
He did not expect that this nap made him miss her call.
'Speaking of which, this phone was originally set to silent? I did not notice at all before. Also, I remember that Japan phones cannot be silenced, right? Or is this phone a special-supply version?'
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