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

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Chapter Four: The Dilemma of Choice Within Alice's Game

[At my most beautiful moment]

People around us are dying in droves.

In factories, on nameless islands, in the ocean.

And I also lost the opportunity to dress up during my youthful years.

……

The sound of reading aloud could be heard.

The candlelight flickered slightly, moving even without wind under the pale light.

The students, seated in their seats, are reading aloud the text in their hands.

Expressive.

Stiff and rigid.

The sound came from the hollowed-out mouth, from the bloody void that remained.

And along with these reading voices, other sounds arose.

His voice trembled.

She was crying and sobbing.

I was on the verge of collapse, but I could only read on with difficulty, sentence by sentence.

You cannot stop reading.

Because that thing was standing right behind them.

The girl who stopped reading, who only stopped reading for a second, had her headless body slumped on the table, her head held in the hand of that thing. Even though she was dead, she was still making mournful noises, as if she were still alive.

You must study hard...

No... you can't be a disobedient, naughty child...

A dull woman's voice came from inside the sheep's headgear.

Fresh blood was dripping.

The students, whose facial features had been removed, continued to read the words in the book.

The students, their skulls shattered, sat quietly in their seats, blood and bubbles gushing from their tracheas as if they were reading aloud.

And the severed head that was being held in someone's hand is still making a sobbing sound.

Teacher...I'm sorry...

I was wrong... Please don't... tell Mom and Dad...

They...work so hard...please...don't...

As she murmured, blood began to flow from the girl's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

The thing wearing the sheep's head mask began to move step by step along the gap between the desks.

It continued on its way.

The severed head it was carrying was crying and bleeding the whole way.

Students with torn and mutilated bodies were also sitting in their seats.

The student with the broken spine who was dragged out of the classroom was also sitting in his seat.

In this brightly lit yet eerily quiet classroom, more than half of the students sitting in their seats are no longer human; they are all dead. Yet, under the light, they rise again and return to their seats to begin reading.

tread--

The high heels made a crisp sound as they landed on the tiled floor.

The thing carrying the severed head slowly walked up to a trembling girl.

[Help me... help me...]

The head that had been crying moments before now began screaming madly.

It suddenly began to struggle violently, and blood gushed from the head, splattering all over the girl.

The girl, her face splattered with blood, trembled violently, yet her reading continued uninterrupted. Even though her face was pale and tears streamed down her face, she persisted.

After slowly coming to a stop, the thing continued walking forward and then stopped in front of the next student.

It's as if it were a truly dedicated teacher, carefully checking each student to see if they were studying diligently.

Gao Hai was also sitting in his seat.

After seeing the person wearing the sheep's head mask appear, after sensing the undisguised and intense malice, and after noticing that the candles on the desks of the strange students in the next classroom had stopped burning, he quickly took Jianzi back to the classroom they had just been in. They immediately discovered that all the strange creatures that had appeared had disappeared, and the messy desks and chairs in the classroom had all returned to normal.

Then, he decisively returned to his seat and found a textbook in his desk. Seeing that Gao Hai and Jianzi were sitting obediently, the other girls followed suit. In the chaos, one girl sat in the wrong seat, in the seat of a girl who was already dead. As for the consequences…

Gao Hai slightly turned his gaze and saw the piled-up objects, which were no longer recognizable as human figures.

The girl who was originally in that seat was torn into seven or eight pieces by something in the corridor. The pieces of flesh, which had been writhing on the ground, suddenly sprang up and landed on the girl who had mistakenly taken the seat, forcibly merging with her. Now, the girl in that seat had two heads, intertwined arms and legs, and writhing internal organs hanging from her body. Her appearance reminded Gao Hai of Tomalia from a certain month, but judging from the reaction of the two heads of this thing, they were probably still in a somewhat disharmonious stage.

That's not the focus right now.

Gao Hai's gaze fell on the candle he had placed on the side of the table.

At this moment, the candle is burning at a very fast speed, at least three times faster than it did in the dark.

When the lights are off, the candles of the dead burn faster, and after they burn out, the dead person will transform into a ghost.

With the lights on, the candles for the dead stop burning, while the candles for the living burn faster, and it seems they won't last much longer.

Once a living person's candle is extinguished, they will immediately be attacked by the eerie creature hidden inside the candle. That thing is extremely fast, and apart from Jianzi, no one else can see its movement trajectory. It is almost impossible to dodge the attack.

Therefore, one must find other people's candles and attach them to one's own candle, otherwise it is impossible to survive.

There are two choices: one is to take the living people's candles and use the female students' candles on top of your own.

If this is done, it is certain that the girl whose candle is taken will die, and because there is no candle to keep burning, the dead girl will turn into a zombie very quickly and become one of the school's weirdos.

The second option was to take away the candles from the students in the classroom. Although he had only observed them briefly, Gao Hai was certain that the candles of the strange creatures were the same as those of the living people and could overlap with each other.

But the problem here is even more obvious. Previously, when no one entered the classroom, all the monsters remained motionless, sitting in their seats without any signs of activation. However, when Gao Hai appeared in the classroom, and those monsters saw him, they all turned their attention to him, and their candles quickly ignited. Clearly, the red candles restricted the monsters' movement; only after the candles burned out or went out could these monsters gain freedom and attack the living.

Therefore, taking away the candles from these strange creatures will activate them all.

At this moment, Gao Hai clearly felt the intense malice of this "Alice Game," even though everything had only just begun, the game had only been going on for about ten minutes, and he hadn't even been able to leave the classroom to check the situation outside.

The [daytime] period has lasted for about 15 minutes. It's unclear how much longer it will last, but after some recollection and calculation, Gao Hai is certain that the previous [nighttime] period lasted about 20 minutes. Therefore, according to the corresponding pattern, the [daytime] period is also likely to last 20 minutes, constantly transitioning between turning the lights on and off.

When the next "night" comes, they must add a new candle to the red candles of themselves and Jianzi. Whether they are looking for living people or ghosts, they must add a candle, otherwise they will have a hard time surviving the next "day".

Gao Hai looked toward the hole in the wall that he had just bumped into.

There were 25 red candles in that classroom, about half of which had burned out.

Now that I've activated the ghost in that room, I might as well go all the way and take away all the candles in that room. Anyway, even if I don't do that, the ghosts in that classroom will be activated soon after the [Night] comes.

But even so, how long can it last?

Moreover, he simply bumped into the wall and entered the next classroom, only to encounter 25 strange students.

So, how many classrooms are there in this school building, and how many students are there in total?

Could it be that every classroom here is filled with these things, and that these things in each classroom will be activated when a living person enters, accelerating the burning of candles and then swarming out to run wildly throughout the school building and attack the living person?

Is it even possible that, even if you don't enter the classroom where these things exist, the candles will still slowly burn, and then at a certain point, all the students in the entire school building will mobilize and attack any living person who has mistakenly entered this place?

Gao Hai had a very bad feeling.

He felt that his speculation was not rigorous and that the chances of it coming true were not very high.

At the same time, he vaguely realized that all of his guesses might actually be true.

At this rate… how are we supposed to find those five items, and how can we break this deadlock without completing the game and becoming Alice's friend? Just dealing with these endless stream of strange things is practically impossible. Keep in mind he's almost completely out of resources now; it's like entering a high-difficulty dungeon naked.

Gao Hai frowned. He kept reading aloud, but he was already vaguely aware that he was starting to feel anxious.

Don't panic.

It's not time to despair yet.

Haven't I always been like this? Struggling endlessly in dangerous and difficult environments, struggling right up to this point.

The current situation is simply that the struggle may become even more ugly.

tread--

As he was thinking this, the high heels stopped beside Gao Hai.

Gao Hai slightly raised his head and looked at the sheep's head hood.

At first, he thought the hood was just a realistic sheep's head doll hood.

But upon closer inspection, he realized that it appeared to be a real sheep's head, a rotting sheep's skull that had been cut off while still alive, with an uneven cut, and was sewn together with a human neck. It was forcibly sewn together with needle and thread, a stapler, wire, and steel nails.

The sheep's head had eyes where maggots could be vaguely seen wriggling under the skin, and huge eyeballs with a black horizontal bar bulged outwards, turning towards Gao Hai himself.

A foul smell hit my nose.

And in that thing's hand, the blood-soaked human head had been slowly lifted up.

As the recitation continued, the girl's head turned, pointing directly at Gao Hai.

Its mouth opened slightly, and a large amount of blood gushed out, splashing onto the floor, onto Gao Hai's table, and onto his body and face.

Chapter 5: Surface Rules and Hidden Rules, and Rule-breakers

Is it just to scare yourself? Like you would with other students, is it just to deliberately frighten them?

When he saw the head open its mouth, Gao Hai pondered what might happen next. He didn't make any rash moves, but continued reading, pretending that nothing had happened and remaining motionless in his seat.