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

Gao Hai wanted to continue thinking, but he found that after becoming like this, his thinking ability had begun to decline significantly, and he was no longer able to clearly understand his current situation.

His brain, in its current state, is unable to support complex thought patterns, and even remembering the dual forms and mechanisms of this strange creature is extremely difficult.

Only pain remains eternally clear and intense.

Tick-tick-tick-

Amidst the blood-soaked ground, the intact dog skin lay discarded. The few scruffy puppies in the cage cowered and trembled, unable to utter a sound.

Gao Hai felt a cut on his neck and felt more blood gushing out of his throat.

"..."

Unable to utter a scream.

The pain of suffocation and the agony of my flesh being torn apart spread through my nerves.

But the blade didn't stop, it continued to cut, slicing open from the chest to the stomach, then reaching out to tear off the intestines, liver, lungs, stomach and heart, completely emptying all the internal organs.

Gao Hai could feel his body being torn apart bit by bit.

He could even feel the removed internal organs, and feel that after leaving his body, they continued to maintain a connection with him, instead of losing their vitality and becoming things that would soon rot.

What's going on here...?

Hmph hmph hmph~ Hmph hmph hmph~

That thing seemed to be humming a song, and even seemed to be enjoying itself.

Gao Hai felt like he had been placed on a chopping board.

He seemed to vaguely see the blade falling.

Boom!

After a violent tremor, his body was dismembered.

Boom--boom--

With each tremor, the kitchen knife fell, each strike piercing the small dog on the cutting board before finally stopping upon hitting the board itself.

Then, extend your hand.

Carefully pick up the cut pieces of meat.

The man didn't seem to care much about cleaning the food, nor did he intend to blanch it; he simply threw the chunks of meat into the boiling soup pot.

One piece of meat, two pieces of meat, a leg cut into three sections, front paws...

Finally, Gao Hai's head was picked up and moved towards the boiling water on the stove.

He could feel his body, cut apart and thrown into the pot, being burned by the high temperature in the boiling water.

He could also hear some faint sounds.

There were the cries of children coming from the pot.

There were also sounds coming from inside the thing's belly, seemingly the cries and screams of more children, and some adults. The sounds were muffled, indistinct, yet so vividly clear to his ears.

Finally, it was the moment before Gao Hai's head was to be thrown into the water.

His eyes, with their eyelids torn off, saw what was churning in the boiling water.

It was the chopped-up body of a puppy, still tumbling in the water.

Those were the shredded bodies of children, still struggling painfully in the water.

And there was Kaguya, and Hayasaka Ai. He finally saw the blonde girl's face, but unfortunately, her head had been split open, and her body was shattered. Like the boys, they had been cut to pieces, yet they still couldn't die, floating and sinking in the boiling soup.

Ah, that's right.

Although most of his thinking ability had been stripped away, Gao Hai still understood what was going on.

Just like in the story of the Big Bad Wolf, if you cut open the wolf's belly, the grandmother can come back unharmed.

In fairy tales, even if the villains commit acts that are theoretically irreversible, the story can still take a turn. This kind of situation, which would not happen in real-life stories, can happen in fairy tales. So in children's imaginations, the child who is eaten by this thing continues to live inside its body. Therefore, even if the player is turned into a dog, dismembered, cooked, chewed up and swallowed by this thing, he will still not die.

However, there won't be a hunter here who can cut open a hungry wolf's belly, nor will there be any idea that cutting open a belly can save everything.

It is enough.

Gao Hai wanted to close his eyes, but he could no longer do so under these circumstances.

Although he is now unable to control his body, use blessings, or do anything else.

However, he also has a way to end everything and start all over again.

Anyway, this wasn't the first time he'd used this method, and he was already prepared for things to have come to this point.

{I now request that the suicide function be activated.}

Perhaps because it wasn't the first time he had used it, Gao Hai found himself quite calm when using the function this time.

Even as his entire body endured the agony of being torn apart, his body shattered, and boiled in water, he remained calm. Even with his thinking abilities severely limited, he did not seem to be at a loss.

Perhaps it's because such pain is nothing more than this.

55 seconds... 54 seconds...

Gao Hai's vision was completely submerged by the boiling water.

35 seconds... 30 seconds...

His body fragments floated in the soup pot, mixed with other pieces of meat thrown in, making them indistinguishable from one another.

15 seconds... 10 seconds...

A dirty spoon was stuck into the pot, and a tall figure was stirring the soup while humming a song and happily sprinkling in various seasonings.

Having heard enough of the painful cries of the children and his companions, Gao Hai finally counted down to the very end.

At that moment, he realized the crucial issue he had failed to notice and where the flaw originated.

It's that [observation room].

That observation room, where there was no light source left, where there was no light at all.

He needed a flashlight to see what was happening in the observation room, which meant there was no light inside. Therefore, it was impossible and illogical for him to see Kaguya in the classroom through the observation window of the room.

For a person to see, their eyes need to receive light. If he could see the classroom outside the window, it meant that the classroom lights could shine into the observation room, making it impossible for the observation room to be completely dark. However, the reality was that there was no light source in the observation room Gao Hai entered. In other words, the observation window was fake, and the "Kaguya" he saw at that moment had already transformed from "darkness" into a fake. Later, when he came out of the observation room, he saw two Kaguyas because his perception had been affected at that time.

As for how Kaguya herself saw the other [Takami], which led to the simultaneous appearance of the [dark] versions of "Takami" and "Kaguya" communicating with each other and igniting the entire room, we can probably only find the answer in the next playthrough.

2 seconds... 1 second... Time resets to zero.

Gao Hai, naturally, did not change his demands.

Then, the strange creature that was stirring the soup pot suddenly stopped singing.

It sensed the abnormality, abruptly stood up, and at that moment emitted an extremely piercing, distorted sound, like countless children screaming together.

The next moment, a violent explosion destroyed the soup pot in an instant, scattering shredded meat all over the room.

Amidst the splattering soup, Gao Hai's remaining flesh and blood rapidly dissipated.

In the instant before his consciousness completely faded, he could see the tall monster howling like a child, and he could see it overturn the table and sit on the ground as if wailing loudly.

He could also see, on one side of this filthy kitchen-dining room, the half-open door, the dog kennel outside the door, and a small, expressionless figure standing by the door, staring back at him.

Gao Hai didn't have time to see what the thing looked like.

Because the next moment, his consciousness sank into darkness, and he could no longer perceive anything happening here.

Amidst the broth and chunks of meat scattered on the ground, a black watch, which had appeared at some point or perhaps had always been there, had its hands tremble slightly at that moment, then cleanly and decisively move from position 0 to position 1.

Click!

Chapter Twenty-Five: Time in Blood City and Unreasonable Things

open one's eyes.

What greets the eye is a blood-red color.

It was a city shrouded in a blood-red sky, brightly lit, yet devoid of any human presence, a city of utter desolation.

Since acquiring the black watch, a power-up that constantly boosts his strength, how many times has Gao Hai come to this place? Hmm, I can't quite remember the exact number anymore, was it six or seven times? Anyway, it shouldn't be more than ten times yet, right? But I guess it's getting close.

Death, then returning to the starting point, and beginning anew.

Gao Hai found that he had completely gotten used to it.

Physical pain was no longer able to defeat him, and mental attacks were also unable to break his sense of self.

After going through all sorts of hardships to get to where he is now, Gao Hai has found that he has changed quite a bit. He is almost a completely different person from the one who once stumbled into Bai Chuan's apartment in a daze. He really doesn't know whether he should be proud or emotional about this.

No matter what, people always have to move forward.

All he can do now is summarize the rules, learn from his experiences and lessons, and try his best to keep going. That's all.

"Phew, there's never a moment of peace. But at least I've figured out a few things."

Sitting on the ground, Gao Hai muttered to himself as he carved a name into the ground with his fingernail:

【Haeya Chiyo】

This was the name of a primary school girl that he obtained from his so-called "friend Shangmu" in that diary.

The girl was an orphan, seemingly abandoned by her parents or something like that. In any case, children without parents were not originally within the research group's selection criteria, but due to pressure from the military and the group leader's risky decision, Hayate Elementary School undertook a large-scale expansion of enrollment in its final year, resulting in the admission of this child who did not originally meet the admission criteria.

The source of the collapse of Hayate Elementary School seems to lie with this child. It was this child who did something that researchers failed to discover and stop in time, resulting in an irreversible disaster that turned Hayate Elementary School into the broken, twisted, and eerie place it is today.

Gao Hai was certain that Chiyo Hachiya was the core obsession of this instance, or even if she wasn't the core obsession, she must occupy a crucial position within the instance.

Could the figure he saw at the very end of his self-destruction be her?

In short, I've now obtained a crucial clue and am no longer completely clueless. Next, when I enter the instance, my task is to quickly reunite with Kaguya and use her student identity to gather as much information as possible about Chiyo Hachiya. Speaking of which, I haven't yet seen any concrete use for my teacher identity. Despite entering a hidden area like the [Observation Room], I was caught off guard and died there. I wonder if there's anything deeper to uncover about this identity.

While thinking, Gao Hai stood up from the ground, walked past the collapsed area on one side of the square, and glanced inside at the figures burning in the flames.

Hmm, there are more people now.

There are now several hundred figures in that endless sea of ​​fire.

They were wailing and screaming, desperately trying to escape from the flames, but they could only remain trapped inside in vain.

"Oh, they're all calling out, keep calling out."