Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

【1.不得在监牢区留下任何守卫，所有进出人员在此地连续停留的时间不得超过1个小时，24小时内累计停留时间不得超过3小时，同一名守卫在3日内进出该区域的次数应少于6次】

2. Do not speak to the detainees in the cell block, and do not respond to anything they say. The detainees are silent and will not speak.

3. Do not access prison surveillance footage, especially cell surveillance footage, without permission from superiors. Do not disturb detainees.

4. Before entering, confirm that the prison area is a concrete structure, a separate area secretly built inside the fill-in area. If you see something you shouldn't see after opening the isolation door, do not enter, close the door, and do not enter the prison area again that day.

5. Use the built-in mechanical mechanism of the cell door to deliver your daily food into the cell. Do not look into the cell when the mechanism is open, and do not try to listen for any sounds inside the cell at this time.

6. Use the cell's vital signs detection system to check for survivors. If any vital signs in a cell disappear, do not send food to that cell that day.

7. New inmates may only be admitted to cells where no vital signs have been detected for three consecutive days. If, while admitting a new inmate, you discover that a designated cell has vital signs detected within three days (i.e., a red indicator light), cease your duties and request your superiors to transfer the inmate to another cell. Do not arbitrarily decide to place inmates in other cell areas; this is an extremely serious violation.

8. Lights out in each cell will be at 22:00 every day and will be on again at 7:00 the next day. No one may enter the cell block during lights-out hours. If any cell's lights are not on when the lights are turned on, do not touch them, and do not open the cell door or use any lighting equipment to observe the situation. Report this to your superiors, who will arrange for personnel to handle the situation.

9. The central detention room in this area is abandoned and the door is completely welded shut, making it impossible to enter. If you hear voices clearly coming from the direction of the detention room after entering this area, you must leave this area immediately. You will not be assigned to work in this area again in the future.

[These management regulations do not set out any penalties or disciplinary standards; please be sure to abide by their contents.]

The simple lines of text, culminating in the final comment, "No disciplinary standards will be set," were particularly striking. Kaguya didn't know how to describe this line; it gave her the feeling that "setting disciplinary measures would be meaningless."

In short, this prison is definitely not normal. This very strange area may be hiding something quite terrifying, so I have to be extremely careful.

That's why Kaguya never communicated with the voice behind the wall, but simply sat silently in place and waited.

What about the others?

Kaguya couldn't help but think about it.

The doll hadn't responded to Kaguya for a while, and she didn't know why. She could only guess and pray in her heart that Maki and Chika were just temporarily busy with something, and that in the end, they would both be safe and sound, and that nothing bad would happen.

hum-

With a muffled thud, the middle of the fully enclosed cell door opened, and a small tray was brought in from the outside corridor, with several bowls and plates on it, which looked like her food for the day.

Kaguya Shinomiya stood up, took the food down and placed it on the ground, but made no attempt to eat it.

She simply watched silently as the control panel closed again, listening to the footsteps of the soldier distributing food passing through the cells.

The food delivery person stopped three times, including in his own cell.

In other words, besides myself, there should be two other people imprisoned here, or at least, hopefully, they are "people." Judging from the distance of the sound, it should be two adjacent cells, possibly D3 and D4, but the possibility of cells D2 and D3 cannot be ruled out.

The footsteps didn't stop in the room next door.

The other person walked right past the cell next to mine, without stopping to distribute food at all.

So, is there no one in the cell next door?

Upon realizing this, Kaguya's mood immediately turned heavy.

What she didn't hear was that after the soldier who delivered the food left the cell block, went up the stairs, and opened and closed the gate leading into the area, the closed gate quietly reopened a few minutes after the soldier left.

With a wary expression, Shijou Maki put away the blood key and carefully stepped into this eerie place.

Behind her, Fujiwara Chika, dressed in a soldier's uniform, reopened the door after it had closed and then walked toward the quarantine area.

At that moment, the invisible doll controlled by Maki had already run out the instant the food delivery board opened, and immediately followed Chika, acting together with her.

Shijo Maki herself was to go find Kaguya and get her out of that cell, so that she wouldn't have to stay in that strange, closed place forever.

There is still a lot to be done.

After confirming the existence of the prototype of the [Black Blood Bullet] in the research area, there are far too many issues to consider.

The Red Nut Gray Hole is a thing of the past century, but the [Black Blood Bullet] developed there became equipment for players of the Amélie Kingdom when the ghost story game appeared many years later. The reasons and causes behind this are a question worth pondering.

Furthermore, what exactly is this "Lost One" that the game hints about but has yet to provide any clues about? Could they be found in the prison area? This is a crucial reason why Maki must come to the prison area to investigate. Kaguya also clearly heard the voice behind the wall, thanks to her doll; she must investigate this issue thoroughly later as well.

As for Fujiwara Chika, she was investigating a different issue, or rather, a different person.

A person named [Xiegela].

The cave research base has two leaders: Professor Furn, who is the researcher, and General Shegela, who is in charge of managing the soldiers.

Many rules in this godforsaken place mention these two people together. According to some information, General Xiegela's authority even surpasses that of Foln, and theoretically, General Xiegela is the true controller of this place. However, after three cycles so far, none of Kaguya's group has seen this general. He seems to have vanished without a trace, leaving no trace except for his name, which is highly suspicious.

Therefore, what Qianhua needs to do next is to try to enter General Xiegela's office as a soldier, and if necessary, she can use force directly.

Because the doll follows Chika, Maki can know what's going on with her at any time and can use the Blood Key to send out support whenever needed, since there are many doors in the research base.

The last person besides Gao Hai, the only one who couldn't enter the research base area, otherwise it would lead to the annihilation of the entire group. He no longer stayed in the small house that could be used as a safe house. In fact, Gao Hai had already torn off Wilbur's message, then directly removed the switch lever and hid it in his backpack.

The backpack is now on Zhenfei's back, and Gao Hai took two homemade explosives from the backpack. Gao Hai has not yet given an explanation for taking these things.

slam-la-

As you move forward, the murky water is broken apart.

Amidst the continuous dripping sound, Gao Hai had arrived at the upper area of ​​the Red Nut Gray Hole, where the [Plains] were located.

He had just been to the guard post and saw Shelby and Ed resting there. He also learned that Lixer had returned earlier, then left again to investigate somewhere, and that Susan had stayed in the guard post for a short while before running away as well.

Gao Hai, who didn't linger there, quickly left. Then, at the junction of the Stone Forest Road and the Plains, he saw a player trembling and struggling to walk towards him. It was a middle-aged newbie player he had encountered before, named Wang Gui, whose specialty was demolition; he used to be a miner.

This skill led Gao Hai to decide to find the other party and guide him to the guard post to rest for a while. After confirming that the rescue team players had been almost completely wiped out after a day, Gao Hai himself went to the entrance area of ​​the [Gentle Slope].

Gao Hai remembered clearly that the gentle slope was a dangerous area that even firefighters could not enter, especially near the large crack.

According to the rescue personnel's guidelines, the reason for not entering the gentle slope is that "there is no need for rescue personnel on the gentle slope," which is quite concerning.

Although doing so could be quite dangerous, it's worth a try!

"Then it's your choice, rescue team. Go in and find out what's going on."

Having made up his mind, Gao Hai directly ordered the rescue team members he had summoned before arriving at the guard post to wade through the murky water into the gentle slope. Gao Hai, as if watching a show, retreated a short distance and then simply found a large rock that wasn't completely submerged and sat down.

Chapter 69: The Man Hidden Behind the Scenes and the Moment of Retaliation

a few minutes ago.

"Are you really sure you want to do this? I always feel that if multiple parties act separately, it's easy for problems to arise."

Sitting on the small sofa in the power distribution room, Maki frowned and questioned Gao Hai after hearing what he said.

"In fact, there is a very high possibility of problems. After all, although we have a certain understanding of the strange tales and mysteries in this cave, we don't have many countermeasures at our disposal. Once we encounter trouble, something bad might happen."

Gao Hai made no attempt to hide this from Zhenfei and readily confirmed her suspicions.

"If you know it's easy to cause trouble, why do it in the first place?"

Consort Zhen was even more confused.

"Because Gao Jun has a reason to do this, right? Working together from multiple sides can gather the widest range of clues in the shortest time, and it should also help Gao Jun achieve some other goal, right? Otherwise, Gao Jun wouldn't choose such a risky behavior. Hmm... Could it be to restrain something?"

Chika, sitting on the other side, spoke earnestly at this moment, her eyes sparkling, as if she were getting a little excited.

"Yes, that's true. To be precise... I suspect we've been guided in some way, that some force is secretly directing our actions and restricting the information we have. Although there's no concrete evidence yet, after reflecting on our experiences today, I think it's necessary to launch a multi-pronged operation to try and break this potential manipulator."

Gao Hai nodded slightly, his expression extremely serious.

If he hadn't known about the existence of the research base and the situation with Kaguya and Maki, Gao Hai, as an ordinary player who wanted to survive, believed that he would have considered turning off the power when he found this power distribution room.

Then, Kaguya was locked in a cell. The man next door, who called himself Howard, talked to himself and mentioned many things, repeatedly emphasizing that someone had stolen something extremely important from a certain woman, and that it had been thrown into a crevice. This immediately reminded Gao Hai of the Great Crack and the pale female ghost, and he couldn't help but start to wonder what the stolen item could be.

But that's not right. He was killed by that strange creature once, so Gao Hai later realized that this idea was wrong.

The strange obsession of the woman in the white dress had nothing to do with "something being stolen." It was simply pure rage, a frenzied desire to kill every living person, especially everyone in the research base. Gao Hai, having personally experienced it, could confirm that the white-dressed female monster didn't want "the people in the research base to return a certain item." She simply wanted to kill, to kill them all, to exterminate them all, as if her reason had been completely shattered, leaving only pure brutality.

To analyze such an obsession, the only possible approach is to "hand over the enemy it hates most" to bring it peace. However, one cannot know this without personally experiencing it firsthand. Therefore, Gao Hai, who later realized this, could be 100% certain that the information Kaguya heard was problematic.

If you look at these two things separately, they're not really a big deal.

But when these events happened one after the other, especially when Chika was being chased by a strange creature and when he returned to the power distribution room after saving her, only to find that Ricci was trying to pull the switch, he couldn't help but start to connect the two things.

I entered the power distribution room, but I didn't choose to turn off the power. So the person who guided all of this realized that I might have somehow learned about the existence of the research base, and that there were other players I knew in the research base, and that the two sides might have some kind of communication method.

Theoretically, only Kaguya could know the false information she heard; it couldn't possibly be passed on to anyone else. However, if we could communicate with each other, this misleading false information could spread to everyone, creating the false impression that "there is some important item beneath the large fissure on the gentle slope, which might be able to put an end to the core obsession." After all, we already knew a lot about Howard before this, so naturally we wouldn't doubt Howard's righteous and kind side and would believe the information he provided.

Next came the forced escape of Maki and Chika. The researcher identity offered the most freedom within the entire research base, but it was also the identity most deeply controlled by Professor Follen. After escaping the research area, Gao Hai had to carefully consider the difficulty of assuming the researcher identity. If an identity meant constantly facing life-threatening situations, then it naturally required careful consideration. Choosing the soldier identity, however, would severely limit their movement due to patrol and guard duties; places like the analysis labs and research areas were completely off-limits, further reducing the area they could investigate and explore.

Could someone be orchestrating all of this behind the scenes?

If there is any, then the one with the most suspicious points so far is undoubtedly Professor Furn, who is somewhat different from the normal and bizarre.

Gao Hai considered whether he should drag this guy out directly and use the power of the object of obsession to throw the doctor into the Great Rift to see if he was the female ghost's enemy.

But Gao Hai quickly dismissed this idea.

If the other party truly was the mastermind behind it all, and had the means to know the situation inside the Red Nut Gray Hole across different timelines, then this thing should have tried to stop me after I arrived at the power distribution room. But instead, I encountered no resistance; in fact, Lixer almost actually pulled the switch.

Perhaps, even if the research base falls and is truly invaded by that white-skirted female ghost, the other party will not be affected in the slightest?

If that's the case, then now we must test every possible avenue.

slam-la-

Amidst the sound of rushing water, the rescue team member that Lao Guo had transformed into had already sunk into the water, swimming deeper into the great crevice.

It would be extremely difficult for a normal person to move forward in this environment, especially since the target is a vertically downward rock crevice that gets narrower and narrower as you go. But for the rescue team members, who are not human, this is nothing. Gao Hai could even feel the thing squeezing into a narrow gap that a normal person could not possibly squeeze into, and it was still swimming deeper and deeper.

found it.

Through the perspective of the rescue team members, Gao Hai found the completely weathered mummified body of an infant in a crevice in the rocks.

The swaddling clothes of the corpse had faded, and it was unknown how long the tiny body had been stuck there.

"..."

Gao Hai frowned and remained silent for a moment.

Meanwhile, in the prison area, the heavy cell doors had already been broken by the scalpel, a symbol of obsession that could cut through iron like mud. Kaguya carefully stepped out, exchanged a glance with Maki, and then they both nodded slightly before heading towards the door.

Under the stark white light, only the clear footsteps of two girls could be heard in the prison corridor.

Instead of heading towards the exit, they walked towards the room where Kaguya had previously determined that the other people were being held.

d5……d4……d3, Kaguya stopped and looked at the heavy door in front of her.

This uniquely structured door lacks a key insertion point, which in a sense counters the Blood Key. However, with the advent of the scalpel, this countermeasure is no longer a significant problem.

Faintly, one could hear voices coming from the sealed-off, welded-together cell, accompanied by sounds of struggle, like someone trapped in a crevice in the rock, struggling futilely and powerlessly.

squeak-

The door to cell D4 suddenly opened at that moment.