Ten minutes later, inside the small room.
Takumi closed his eyes, pondered for a moment, then slowly opened them.
"Alright, I've more or less understood the general situation."
In the Japan region—or at least the Tokyo region—the number of players currently active here was roughly under fifty. Most of them were unaffiliated solo players. Of the three existing player organizations, each had fewer than ten members.
For example, the organization [Women-Face Gang] had five members, all of them female. By using a special flesh-type Obsession Item obtained from a Dark Night-level hospital run, they could replace and steal another person's existence, and even substitute the stolen existence for their own to survive in critical moments—an extremely powerful Obsession Item.
This piece of information finally resolved Takumi's confusion about the traitor woman's methods. Now it seemed clear: the traitor woman had probably killed Maeda Miwa and used the Obsession Item to seize her existence, then continued acting while disguised as Maeda Miwa. As for the so-called "Maeda Miwa who died and became a knocking Horror Story" in the first and second loops, that had been the traitor woman releasing the existence she'd stolen so it could take her place and be killed by the Horror Story, thereby covering her tracks.
In a sense, if Takumi hadn't acted immediately in the third loop to eliminate that traitor woman, then once she completed the existence-seizing process, he would have needed to kill her twice to truly finish her off. The variables involved would have been immense. If things had reached that stage, whether he could have ended everything smoothly in the third loop would have been highly uncertain.
And the reason Takumi hadn't found that Obsession Item when he killed the traitor woman was quite simple. Just like its name, [Substitute Flesh], using it required swallowing it and letting that writhing clump of flesh occupy some part of one's body. Even if the host died, the Obsession Item would not separate from the host's existence. Instead, it would gradually hollow the host out from within until only a sheet of human skin remained, then push that skin into a runaway state and send it back into its Horror Story run.
That's right—Takumi had now learned from Gotō Hitori what happened when an Obsession Item went out of control in the real world: it would return to the Horror Story world.
If an Obsession Item used by a player went out of control inside a run, it would summon the corresponding anomaly into that run, greatly increasing its danger. If the Obsession Item went out of control in the real world, then within about five to ten minutes it would vanish into thin air, swallowing the people and objects affected by its rampage and sending everything into the run corresponding to that Obsession Item.
Considering that Obsession Items seemed to distort normal people's perception, this also explained why the real world hadn't experienced large-scale supernatural outbreaks.
Or rather… why such a large-scale supernatural outbreak hadn't happened yet…
Takumi couldn't help thinking of those things floating around in various places.
"It's really hard to believe… that such a disgusting Obsession Item exists. Anyone willing to accept something like that—no wonder they'd be completely unhinged."
Maki, seated beside Takumi, sighed softly, wearing an expression of pure disgust.
The power of [Substitute Flesh] was immense, but its side effects were just as obvious. A user whose flesh had been replaced would develop a craving for fresh flesh of the same kind, their personality would undergo extreme distortion, and the longer they used this Obsession Item, the more severe the abnormalities in their body would become. Even an originally normal person, after using this thing, would inevitably turn into a bloodthirsty, cruel lunatic. And it couldn't be returned or removed—once used, it would accompany the user for life, with no way to undo it except death.
"This is the classic, utterly irredeemable villain-player faction. And they've already formed a grudge against us. These bastards are oddly united—kill one of them, and the remaining four want to come after us. And since they've already killed Maeda Miwa, they've probably gotten a basic grasp of our information. But if they really already have our information, logically speaking, shouldn't they have just come straight for us? Why haven't they made a move?"
Takumi wasn't afraid of this so-called [Women-Face Gang] at all. Killing one was killing; killing five was still killing. As long as they weren't girls like Maki, Kaguya, or little Bocchi—girls who treated him kindly—Takumi wouldn't feel the slightest hesitation about cutting down a few people. What he didn't understand was the current situation. Since the other side had been able to locate Maeda Miwa and kill her quickly, they clearly had capability. Yet judging from what happened earlier in the mall, the members of the [Women-Face Gang] didn't seem to have any information on the three of them—so much so that they'd had to hire someone at the market to probe.
Could it be that a bunch of mentally deranged veteran players couldn't even pry open the mouth of a useless nobody?
Takumi grew even more confused.
Of course, from Takumi's personal perspective, being confused due to lack of information was only natural.
What he couldn't possibly know was how furious the remaining four members of the [Women-Face Gang] were right now—and how deeply bewildered they were at being unable to obtain any information.
Maeda Miwa was indeed not someone who kept secrets well.
In truth, after surviving the Shirakawa Apartments, the woman had almost immediately run to a hotel, drowning herself in alcohol and revelry, venting the terror she had accumulated in that death apartment. She even swaggered around bragging everywhere about what had happened in the Shirakawa Apartments—only to be overheard right away by members of the [Women-Face Gang] who happened to be in that hotel.
The details of the interrogation that followed—how bloody it was—didn't matter. What mattered was that the mouth they had assumed would be easy to pry open, Maeda Miwa's, failed to yield the information the [Women-Face Gang] wanted. And the reason it had turned out that way was very simple:
Before being found by the [Women-Face Gang], Maeda Miwa had already taken five times the usual dose of hallucinogens.
This drug, which had recently become popular in Japan and was extracted from a certain poisonous mushroom, induced intense excitement and plunged users into hazy hallucinations. Even though the Metropolitan Police Department had been cracking down hard, plenty of these hallucinogens still circulated through nightlife venues.
After the roller-coaster life-or-death ordeal of the Shirakawa Apartments, Maeda Miwa, desperate to vent, had recklessly swallowed the stuff in excess, driving herself half-insane on the spot. She couldn't give even a single coherent sentence in response to the [Women-Face Gang]'s questioning. On top of that, because of the corrosive influence of [Substitute Flesh], these players were already ferociously violent. The interrogator snapped on the spot and killed Maeda Miwa, leaving in fury and beginning to search for other ways to find the participants of the Shirakawa Apartments run.
While the [Women-Face Gang] had indeed put significant effort into searching for people, even they now felt their chances were slim. After all, players who enter runs come from all over the world, and the reach of their small gang was limited. As a result, they were leaning more toward the belief that an older player had done something, and their main efforts had shifted toward shadowy information brokers. At the market, they had merely hired two people to repeatedly talk about related information in hopes of attracting attention—and maybe, by chance, uncover a clue.
"In any case, we just need to keep a low profile for now."
Takumi ended by saying only this.
In all of Japan, the number of active players did not exceed three hundred, and the number of active players worldwide was around two thousand. At the very least, the number of registered users on that global player network—one that only players could access and that ordinary people would overlook and be unable to click due to the influence of Obsession Items—was roughly a little over or under two thousand. Gotō Hitori conveyed this information to Takumi and Maki, and she also gave them the website to that network, which meant the two of them were now fully connected to the player community.
Just as Takumi had initially guessed, the [Admission Ticket]—the item obtained after players cleared a dungeon normally—was essentially an intangible, floating object that only the holder could see, and could be summoned at any time for verification. It could only be transferred when the two players were face-to-face at a distance of no more than two meters. To use it, one had to wait for the once-a-month dungeon activation window; after being used, it would replace the dungeon assigned by the Sacrifice Game, serving as a method to reduce the unknown and increase the chance of survival.
Veteran players had an extreme demand for [Admission Tickets], especially Dusk-level [Admission Tickets]. Dark Night-level missions were incredibly difficult and could already be described as "nine deaths, one life"; as for Red Moon-level missions, they were terrifying to hear about— even top-tier players could, at best, barely manage to survive them. And the Sacrifice Game did not care about any of that: as long as a player achieved two A-rank evaluations of the same difficulty, the next mission would unconditionally be set at a higher difficulty level. Therefore, [Admission Tickets] had become a lifesaving item for many veteran players.
However, this method also had its limits. Although Gotō Hitori had not experienced it herself, she had learned from the veteran player who had once carried her through a dungeon that, regardless of whether one obtained two A-rank evaluations of the same difficulty, if a player cleared the same difficulty level five times in a row, then upon entering that difficulty again, the targeting would begin. If one still refused to switch to a different difficulty after being targeted, that targeting would only grow increasingly severe, and clearing the dungeon would become more and more difficult.
For example, other players who play normally would be assigned an identity by the dungeon, and could use that identity to determine their own role and the rules they needed to follow. But veteran players who were targeted would enter the dungeon with a state of [No Identity] or even [Identity Disorder]. For instance, Tanaka would be unable to obtain the [Tenant] identity the way Kaguya, Maki, and the others could, and the corpses in the house would directly regard him as a hostile target and beat him up.
And if Tanaka survived the Shirakawa Apartments dungeon and continued entering it repeatedly, he would be subjected to even harsher targeting for repeatedly participating in a Dusk-level dungeon. He might appear directly on the third floor surrounded by the Porcelain Doll and footsteps, or he might start out seated in the living room of 109 with the opened diary right across from him and the little girl's name facing him directly, or he might even be thrown straight into 304 at the start and end up face-to-face with those beastly parents who had already become fuel.
There was only one way to lift this kind of targeting: enter dungeons of other difficulty levels, such as Dark Night-level—or, of course, he could attempt Red Moon-level. But for most players, the danger of Dark Night-level dungeons was enough to make them shy away. Thus, unless they were targeted to the point of an unwinnable dead end right at the start, veteran players would rather endure all sorts of malicious targeting and still stay in Dusk-level.
As for why Dark Night-level made veteran players so reluctant…
Takumi looked toward Gotō Hitori, hoping to seek guidance from her.
The pink-haired girl nodded earnestly and then once again took out her guitar.
"Wait—can you explain it in a normal way?"
Takumi raised his hand to suggest that; he really did not want to hear that strange singing again.
And so Gotō Hitori, tearful, put her guitar away.
This kid—although she did constantly have a gloomy face in the anime, she was not that quick to cry, right?
In any case, after spending a bit more time, Takumi finally learned from Gotō Hitori what the three difficulty levels of the Sacrifice Game specifically differed in.
First, like all games, each one had four game hints, and these hints were often related to the core Obsession.
In the Dusk-level games, which were the simplest within the Sacrifice Game, the dungeon's core Obsession would always be singular, and all four of its hints would definitely be true. In other words, the origin of every Dusk-level game always stemmed from a single person's Obsession, and players would receive four hints related to it right at the beginning. As long as they confirmed information about that core Obsession, they could use it to deduce methods for clearing the dungeon—or even attempt to seize the core Obsession Item.
As for the second tier, the Dark Night-level games, apart from the characteristic that one of the four game hints would inevitably be false, three different situations had been summarized so far.
In the first of these situations, a Dark Night-level game, like a Dusk-level game, had only one dungeon core. However, the temporal progression within such a dungeon often spanned several decades, causing the Obsessions of countless dead individuals to intermingle within it, making it extremely difficult to locate the core. This situation was the most common among Dark Night-level games and was also the simplest type.
The second type of Dark Night-level difficulty contained two to three core Obsessions. These dungeons were no longer constructed from a single core and began to show the hidden stacking of different Obsessions. This already qualified as a high-risk difficulty that could be called "Dark Night-level fixed-frame," and every known two-core or three-core Dark Night-level dungeon was a terrifying existence that players avoided at all costs.
Beyond that, there was a third type of Dark Night-level game. In most cases, this type was no longer regarded as a true Dark Night-level game, because in reality, this kind of Dark Night-level game had been downgraded from Red Moon-level. When a Red Moon-level game had one or more of its core Obsession Items taken away for various reasons, causing the dungeon's difficulty to drop, that Red Moon-level game would be demoted and reclassified as Dark Night-level. But although its difficulty had decreased and it had been downgraded, the rule difficulty and the complexity and danger of such dungeons were still essentially Red Moon-level. Even extremely powerful players struggled to survive in these dungeons, so players referred to this type as "pseudo–Red Moon-level."
As for true Red Moon-level games, Gotō Hitori knew very little. She had never come into contact with that tier of game, and even among the veterans she knew, there was no one who had ever come out of such a game alive. The only known information was that a Dark Night-level dungeon called [Campus Uncanny] had once been classified as Red Moon-level, and that dungeon had been discovered to contain a total of eight different core Obsessions. Later, some players managed to take away three of its core Obsession Items, which caused that dungeon to be downgraded into Dark Night-level.
And when the subject of core Obsession Items came up, Takumi finally learned that in the current player network, the Shirakawa Apartments Dusk-level dungeon had already been noticed as showing signs of becoming fixed as early as three months ago, and that it was the only dungeon during this period that was about to become fixed. Therefore, once Takumi and the others, who had cleared the dungeon but did not have an Admission Ticket, were exposed, anyone observant would immediately associate it with that dungeon.
As for the Spirit's Blessing that Takumi and the other two obtained, this was actually a system different from core Obsession Items. Players who took core Obsession Items were still following a normal method of clearing the dungeon—they had simply taken the core Obsession Item. After a core Obsession Item was taken, before that Obsession Item lost control, the dungeon from which it had been taken would remain in a [Locked] state and could not be entered. But receiving the Spirit's Blessing required satisfying the dungeon's core Obsession, finding its flaw, and destroying the entire dungeon. In that situation, the Admission Ticket would directly become invalid, rather than showing that it was temporarily unusable. Therefore, whenever a dungeon was breached by having its core Obsession Item taken, it was very easy for other players to find out—unless it was a newly appeared dungeon that no one had entered before.
"Although that's how it is… the Shirakawa Apartments had long been suspected of possibly becoming fixed… and being promoted to Dark Night-level, so hardly anyone wanted to go. You… um… how exactly did you clear it?"
Even though speaking was always a torment for her, Gotō Hitori still could not help but ask out of curiosity.
"Well… effort?"
After thinking for quite a while, Takumi attempted to give that answer.
"If I really had to say it, it was just giving it our all, and then a bit of good luck. Something like that."
Maki nodded beside him, thought for a moment, and followed with that answer.
And in the next moment, Gotō Hitori vanished again.
Ah—no, she had just shrunk back into the cardboard box again.
Where on earth did that cardboard box come from, anyway? How could it pop up just like a prop from a comedy anime?
"In any case, thank you very much for your valuable information today. I hope we'll have a chance to meet again, Ms. Gotō."
After clarifying all the information players had summarized so far, Takumi and Maki did not continue disturbing Gotō Hitori, who was already curled up nearly into a ball. They left the small hut and then left this underground marketplace.
They had originally planned to see whether there were suitable Obsession Items they could use for an exchange, but now it seemed that the Obsession Items from Tanaka, the traitor woman, and the dungeon were all unsuitable to bring out, so they had no choice but to give up on that matter.
However, they had already learned the start time of the next marketplace—it would roughly begin three days before the new mission started—so they could come again. If they made preparations ahead of time, things should go much more smoothly than they did this time.
"Ms. Gotō, do you know what the normal clearing method is for Shirakawa Apartments during its fixed phase?"
Just as they were about to leave, Maki suddenly turned her head toward Gotō Hitori, as if something had come to mind, and asked again.
Gotō Hitori, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, instantly tensed up. After being nervous for quite a while, she finally managed to recall the information and answered Takumi and Maki.
Judging from her expression and attitude as she answered, it seemed that although Gotō Hitori herself was not very interested in these things, she had a rather strict friend who had forced her to memorize quite a lot of dungeon details.
"According to information sold by players who participated in the dungeon during its fixed phase, the former rescue team had already managed to evacuate most of the residents on the second and first floors. The problem must have occurred during the evacuation of the third floor. So, one can disguise oneself as a resident by swapping clothes with a corpse, then have other players disguise themselves as members of the rescue team using the chest badges, and escape the apartment by re-enacting the events of the past. But the premise is that you must identify the residents who were successfully evacuated back then, and any player wearing a rescue team chest badge is absolutely guaranteed to die no matter what."
After summarizing the information provided by Gotō Hitori, Maki raised an eyebrow and glanced at Takumi beside her.
"Looks like we chose a harder route back then?"
Only now fully realizing that their beginner dungeon path had been one ordinary people would never take, Takumi gently shook his head and let out a sigh.
"In a sense, I guess we really brought this upon ourselves."
Maki lightly shook her head as well, speaking as she walked up the stairs, gradually leaving that dim underground plaza and returning to a place touched by sunlight.
Whether it counted as bringing it upon themselves depended on whether the final reward was worth it.
That was what Takumi originally intended to say.
But after glancing at the girl walking ahead of him—her right hand tucked into her pocket, deliberately leaving her left hand free and lightly swaying—he smiled, said nothing at all, stepped forward, and gently took her hand.
Then, the two of them walked forward together just like that.
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