They had come looking for him much faster than expected.
To be honest, Takumi was quite impressed by the efficiency of the Women-Face Gang.
Finding their companion dead, on the very same day they killed a surviving player from Shirakawa Apartments, then hired players to investigate any new players inside the market. Whether they had taken further actions was unknown, but it could be imagined that these people must have spent considerable effort searching.
It was a little hard to understand.
Did they really have to go this far?
Could such brazen murderers truly devote themselves so earnestly to their companions, even going so far as to spare no effort to avenge them after their deaths?
Takumi's eyes swept across the woman's face—the face that seemed to be faintly squirming, as though something were hidden inside it.
Boiling malice spread outward.
For the first time, Takumi directly experienced the ability granted to him by that girl's blessing.
He didn't even need to hold a conversation—he could immediately confirm that the woman before him would kill him. Whether he was a "new player who cleared Shirakawa Apartments" or not, she would definitely make a move to kill him.
And precisely because he understood this, Takumi had adopted a hostile stance from the very beginning and simply replied with "You guess." He knew very clearly that the other party would never let him go.
"A tone and attitude like that is rare in a newcomer. As expected, you're a new player who came out of Shirakawa Apartments."
Facing Takumi's reply, the woman only chuckled cheerfully, appearing to be in quite a good mood.
"Can you tell big sis the name of the veteran who helped you clear Shirakawa Apartments?"
"Don't worry, don't worry. As long as you tell big sis the name, big sis won't make things difficult for you. We can even spend a pleasant night together—want to give it a try?"
As the woman spoke, she let out a low laugh and even threw a seductive wink. The skin on her face writhed slightly, as if centipedes were crawling beneath it.
"Before saying that, could you look in a mirror and check out that ugly face of yours? My tastes aren't heavy enough to accept trash like you."
This time Takumi was genuinely disgusted. Seeing a woman this grotesque attempt to seduce him was, to him, far more horrifying than any "sewer-waste-meat-sauce beauty" scenario. It belonged to one of the heavy-flavor categories he absolutely could not accept.
"Oh? So you can see my true appearance. Looks like your mind is quite resilient."
This time, it was the woman's turn to pause slightly, her reaction showing faint surprise at Takumi's response.
Only when she displayed this attitude did Takumi vaguely sense that something seemed to be influencing his thoughts. But its effect was extremely faint—so faint that not only did it fail to affect him, but it was difficult for him to even detect its source.
And in the very next moment, the woman's figure disappeared from in front of Takumi.
One second she was speaking normally, and the next—accompanied by a surge of intense cold—her lethal attack had already reached Takumi.
[Bang!]
Inside the noodle shop, Fujiwara Chika—who had stood up in confusion and was about to pull the door open—heard a loud impact. Through the semi-transparent door, she saw a figure slam into it, then quickly rise again, followed by a suppressed woman's scream echoing from outside.
"Eh? Eh? What's going on? What's going on?"
The girl, completely unaware of what was happening, was utterly baffled. Meanwhile, in the alley, Takumi had already been lifted into midair by a smiling human-head balloon. The printed face on the balloon was slowly transforming into Takumi's own features.
"I already told you, as long as you obediently tell big sis the name of the veteran who helped you clear the game, big sis won't hurt you. Why would you break big sis's heart like this?"
The woman standing in the alley giggled at the suspended Takumi.
Now struggling to breathe, Takumi could only stretch out both hands with difficulty and raise his middle fingers at her.
"Ungrateful thing. Looks like I'll have to cut off your little friend first, then slice you open along your stomach bit by bit."
The woman's face writhed even more violently at that moment.
She pulled a small blood-stained pair of scissors from her pocket, seeming as if she intended to step forward and do something.
But before she could actually begin to act, a large, powerful hand had already reached out from behind and grabbed her shoulder.
[Rescue initiation. Please refrain from making irrational actions.]
A cold voice rang out from behind.
"The Rescue Team? You obtained the badge? No… the instance has been destroyed, so why hasn't the Obsession Item inside it lost its effect?!"
Moreover, with the corrosive influence that badge had on a person, even a player with strong willpower would inevitably have lost their sense of self by the time they were capable of summoning the Rescue Team, and would have been sent into Shirakawa Apartments together with the out-of-control Obsession Item. How could he still—
There was no more time for the woman to think.
Because that large hand had already yanked her around by force—turning her—and immediately after, a fist smashed into her face.
[Crack!]
The first punch shattered her nasal bridge and fractured parts of her facial bones.
Perhaps due to that flesh-and-blood Obsession Item, the woman's head was far more fragile than a normal person's. This one punch nearly caved her entire face inward. Dark, foul blood spattered outward, making the scene look extremely horrifying for a moment.
Takumi—now wearing the Rescue Team uniform—had already broken free from that balloon. He looked up, watching as the balloon shot swiftly into the sky and instantly vanished mid-air. He couldn't help feeling regretful for failing to obtain that Obsession Item. But immediately after, he acted again—charging straight at the woman, the scalpel thrusting outward and piercing through the back of her head on the spot.
Battles between players often began quickly and ended just as fast. When an Obsession Item targeted a player, its effect, once activated, would leave the vast majority of players either dead on the spot or trapped in an inescapable state. Obsession Items like the Rescue Team badge—which enhanced a player's physical abilities while repelling other eerie forces—were extremely rare, and they carried severe side effects. If Takumi had been carrying some other Obsession Item instead, he would have been strangled to death by that human-head balloon already.
The power he displayed at that moment clearly exceeded the intel the enemy had, and as the price, the woman would have to die here.
However, it seemed things would not end so quickly.
Takumi saw the body of the woman whose head he had pierced suddenly become ethereal, then slowly begin to fade. Before completely disappearing, she transformed into the appearance of what seemed to be a working woman—apparently on her way home from work, looking very exhausted.
He already understood what was going on.
Before coming here, that woman had randomly killed a woman on the street and had activated the Obsession Item's effect to seize the victim's existence. Therefore, at this very moment, the existence of the person she had killed had replaced her and had become the one who was "pierced through the back of the head by Takumi."
"Why do you have a scalpel!? Did Mei die by your hand? You're not a newcomer? Did my adorable little Mei die by your hand?!"
The woman appeared in the alley not far away in a disheveled state, her eyes wide as she screamed at Takumi.
[Rescue operation initiated.]
The figure beside Takumi, the one wearing the Rescue Team uniform, had already rushed forward at high speed.
At this moment, the woman gritted her teeth—not in fear at all—and instead charged directly toward the Rescue Team. Then she vanished into thin air, only to reappear right in front of Takumi, swinging that small pair of scissors toward his neck.
If he were injured by those scissors, something very bad seemed likely to happen.
Even though he was currently in a state of wearing the Rescue Team badge, Takumi instinctively felt that if this woman succeeded, something extremely unfavorable would happen next.
He stepped backward.
Takumi turned his body sideways, attempting to evade the attack.
But at that moment, a pitch-black rotten hand extended from behind him, grabbed the badge he was wearing, and tore it off in one motion.
The physical enhancement granted by the badge disappeared in the next instant.
Takumi slightly turned his head to look back and saw a woman standing by the wall, holding a black paper umbrella.
Another member of the Women-Face Gang—one who had never revealed herself from the very beginning, always hiding in the shadows and waiting for an opportunity.
That black umbrella seemed capable of concealing a person's presence, which had allowed her to silently enter the alley. And that decayed black hand had extended from behind the woman, appearing as though it were directly growing out of her body.
Turning his gaze back forward, Takumi could see the triumphant expression on the face of the woman in front of him—an expression that seemed to say, "Bet you didn't expect there were two of us."
[Swoosh—]
A flowerpot pushed off the windowsill by a blood-red puppet fell straight down in the next moment, smashing onto the head of the woman standing in the corner.
In the next instant, Takumi himself suddenly dodged with a speed surpassing human limits, avoiding the scissors in the woman's hand. The wide-eyed woman moved quickly, yet she discovered that—even with her enhanced speed and reflexes—she was far slower than Takumi. With ease, he dodged and then countered with a kick to her leg, striking her so hard that she was forced into a half-kneeling position. Before she even had the chance to stand up, his scalpel came down in a single strike, severing the hand holding the scissors on the spot.
"No—my Peach—!"
The woman with the severed hand wailed—not because of her own injury, but because of the woman who had been knocked unconscious by the falling flowerpot. But Takumi gave her no chance to continue speaking. The moment she opened her mouth, the scalpel had already pierced through the back of her head again, and Takumi grabbed her severed hand, smoothly taking the blood-stained scissors for himself.
He pulled out the scalpel and kicked the woman aside.
Takumi did not step forward to search her, because her face had already begun to change violently, as though something hidden inside it had been agitated.
He simply turned around and quickly walked toward the unconscious woman leaning against the wall. It appeared that although the Flesh Substitute could give these people a terrifying second life, something like losing consciousness could not trigger the Obsession Item.
He took the black umbrella.
He reclaimed his Rescue Team badge.
The severed hand growing from the woman's back made Takumi hesitate for a long moment, but in the end he still chopped it off, deciding to see in a few days whether he could sell it.
After searching her body, he found no additional Obsession Items—no wonder this woman had chosen to attack from behind.
Then, without hesitation, he drove his blade into her temple, stirring her brain a couple of times for good measure.
Once again, an afterimage appeared, showing that this woman had killed a high school girl on her way home from school and had seized the girl's existence. And when the revived woman opened her eyes, Takumi wordlessly plunged the blade into her forehead again, drew it back, and left—followed immediately by the Flesh-and-Blood Obsession Item falling into rapid instability due to the death of its host.
When Takumi returned to the entrance of the ramen shop, the two women had already disappeared.
It seemed that the Obsession Item's loss of control was not as terrifying as imagined. That flesh had merely squeezed out from the two women's faces—like popping pimples—overflowing from their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, then devouring their entire bodies, and then disappearing.
However, this might also have had something to do with Takumi immediately running away after killing them, instead of sticking around to watch the commotion.
"From the start, I knew there were two of you. My blessing is made specifically for dealing with bastards like you."
Muttering a casual insult, Takumi walked to the side of the alley, stretched out his hand, and caught the Blood Puppet that jumped down from above—the one he had quietly thrown out when he was entangled by the head balloon—then slowly let out a breath, relieved that he had managed to take out those two players smoothly.
He picked up his phone and dialed Maki.
Before the call connected, Takumi leaned against the wall and exhaled; his heartbeat had already returned to normal.
This Women-Face Gang did not seem to have very strong frontal combat ability. Their Obsession Items were relatively average, unlike Tanaka who had all sorts of things. Takumi guessed that this group of players was actually only so-so in strength—just gathered together, and perhaps their style was a bit twisted, so they were disliked and feared.
However, the way they treated each other looked just like genuinely loving family.
Takumi recalled the expression and tone of the woman who had confronted him head-on just now and felt something slightly off.
Could it be that this Substitute Flesh made them close to each other, made them treat each other as family? If that was the case, then it could explain this unreasonable, reckless revenge action. If one thought of it that way, this flesh-type Obsession Item became even more disturbing.
Moreover, if that truly was the case, then might there be other Obsession Items with this effect of unknowingly changing a person, even completely turning someone into another person, while no one—including the person themselves—could notice?
[Beep—]
The call connected at this moment.
Takumi hurriedly picked up the phone, and then heard a girl's voice from the other end.
"Are you okay?"
This sentence was spoken simultaneously by both Takumi and Maki on the other end of the call.
"I'm fine. Two came to my side, and I've already taken care of all of them. What about you?"
Takumi, finally relaxing, slowly explained his situation.
"Two on my side as well. They caused a lot of damage, but… they've been dealt with too."
Maki did her best to maintain an even tone; otherwise her voice would tremble.
Right now, before the girl lay a wrecked living room: the sofa overturned, tables and chairs shattered, blood splattered everywhere.
As for the two Women-Face Gang members who had broken in—one had already been reduced to barely half a body under the Faceless Head-Eater's gnawing. The other was sitting against a nearby wall, with a kitchen knife buried halfway into her skull.
And her parents were huddled on one side of the room, their expressions already numb after witnessing their own daughter and the two bizarre women who broke into their home engage in a B-movie-style brawl.
"I'm going over to find you. Be extremely careful."
Takumi had already hung up. While contacting Shinomiya Kaguya, he sprinted out of the alley and stopped a taxi.
He lifted his head and looked toward the sky under the night.
Takumi couldn't help feeling that tonight might turn out to be a sleepless one.
Speaking of which… wasn't he forgetting something?
Now already far from the alley, Takumi naturally had no way of hearing the knocking sounds inside the ramen shop.
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