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

Slowly, as the singing faded away, the monster stopped moving.

All the heads quieted down, emitting even breathing sounds as if they were asleep.

Kaguya seemed to be able to see that scene, seeing children sleeping soundly in bed, and adults taking care of those children with gentle smiles.

Even in the eerie world mired in despair, those beautiful scenes have not completely disappeared; something still remains.

So now it's time to move forward.

"Ouch!"

The golden retriever that took the lead jumped directly onto the monster's body, flipped over it, and then ran forward.

Kaguya, in her husky form, quickly followed, carefully carrying the old photograph in her mouth, and continued to follow Hayasaka ahead, heading deeper into this shattered space.

Chapter 65: Impossible Solutions and the Moment of the Game

Gao Hai closed his eyes.

At that moment, through that pen—an object of obsession that used blood as ink—he deeply felt the emotions that the girl named Chiyo Hachiya had experienced before her death.

Loneliness, pain, despair...

She had no one left to confide in, no one to care for her or love her anymore, no one to rely on, and no one to protect. There was nothing but deathly silence.

Is loneliness the key issue?

Enduring the intense mental shock, Gao Hai frowned, carefully savoring the emotions emanating from the pen.

At this moment, my thoughts seemed to be distorted to some extent, as if I had become a writer, as if I were observing one tragedy after another, watching what people were forced to reveal in extreme circumstances, and feeling a strong sense of schadenfreude for it.

More……

Let me see more...

Let me write it too… Let me create such a tragedy myself, destroy other people's lives…

It's as if you can hear such a voice resounding in your heart, and feel such thoughts gradually seeping into your brain cells.

But that's all.

Gao Hai remained unmoved, completely suppressing the mental pollution from the blood-stained pen. Apart from a slight nosebleed, nothing unusual happened.

That said, this man named Akira Toyama is really something else.

The Bloodsaw was an obsession object that severely damaged mental strength, and the pen was also an obsession object with extremely strong polluting and mental destructive power. Under the pressure of these two obsession objects, he endured at least two months of torture after being turned into a puppet by Alice before going insane and collapsing, only to be countered by the power of the obsession objects. As a result, after drinking a mouthful of surging blood and recovering some of his mental strength, this guy actually managed to regain his senses, dropped the Bloodsaw, and returned to normal.

Although it seems that he has almost completely lost the ability to stand up and speak, it is incredible that he is still alive after experiencing such torment. Perhaps this is what Red Moon level players are like; no one who can reach this level is weak.

Regardless, he could now finally confirm Chiyo Hachiya's obsession.

After experiencing her intense emotions before her death through the blood-written pen.

After drawing the key items related to the other party.

The path to clearing the pass has begun to unfold before Gao Hai's eyes.

Turned.

Gao Hai looked at the blood-stained painting on the wall.

The picture shows Chiyo Hachiya herself smiling, standing among a group of indistinct people.

Some of the figures looked like adults, while others looked like children. Although their specific appearances were unclear, it was still obvious that they were very happy and excited at the time, perhaps making a ruckus, with smiles on their faces.

It's like a group photo.

This is the key item needed to break Chiyo Hachiya's obsession.

Hmm... combined with what I felt before, I can now confirm that Chiyo Hachiya's obsession is to return to her family, to the moment when everyone in the orphanage is still there, that beautiful moment when she was poor, occasionally hungry, but at least she wouldn't be bullied and wouldn't have to endure pain.

"In other words, even after becoming a monster, even after becoming the core obsession of Hayate Elementary School, Chiyo Hachiya still couldn't reunite with everyone at the orphanage, even though most of her family members had been killed by the researchers and turned into monsters in this instance?"

If that's the case, then Chiyo Hachiya's family must have been hidden somewhere, so much so that even now, as a monster, Chiyo Hachiya has no way to find them.

So, there's only one place left.

Gao Hai immediately thought of the deeper areas of the dungeon, the research base beneath the Black Mud Teaching Building.

It's likely that Chiyo Hachiya's family is hiding behind one of the sealed doors, locked away along with other failed research projects.

Oh no, do I have to try them one by one?

Gao Hai was starting to lose his composure.

In his previous playthrough, he had already probed those sealed rooms through the police officers, and to be honest, none of the things inside were easy to deal with. As uncontrollable and ineffective monsters resulting from the research at Hayate Elementary School, these things remained completely sealed off. Therefore, there were no known rules, no effective countermeasures, and every contact was equivalent to a direct confrontation with a completely unknown Red Moon-level monster, the difficulty and danger of which were self-evident.

And there's more to it than just one thing. Trying to find them one by one is practically impossible. Even without the KP's interference, and even with 12 more chances to rewind, Gao Hai didn't think he could possibly try them all by exhaustive search. Frankly, this is something that's purely suicidal; no amount of tools or powerful backup plans can handle it all. He needs to find out if the monster inside the door is actually a member of Hachiya Chiyo's family, not just open the door and be done with it. In this situation, every attempt is tantamount to gambling with his life; there are no shortcuts.

In other words, even if the method to break the dungeon were known, destroying this instance and ending Chiyo Hachiya's obsession would still be virtually impossible. And this near-impossible situation only applies to large-scale Red Moon-level player teams; as for himself, alone and isolated, Gao Hai didn't know how to even begin to describe his predicament.

"That's really your style, you bastard."

Gao Hai couldn't help but curse again.

He had realized that, unlike the previous two instances, the mastermind behind [Campus Ghost Stories] did not want anyone to be able to break through his instance from the very beginning, so he deliberately went in an impossible direction in terms of the conditions for breaking the obsession.

This was already quite evident in the [Fujibana Middle School] instance. Aside from Alice on the surface, the inner Hirano Sousuke is virtually impossible for players to discover as the core obsession unless a specific method is found. Furthermore, even knowing he is the core obsession, breaking Hirano's obsession is almost impossible.

At the time, Gao Hai and his team forcibly created the corresponding scenario by sealing Alice and simulating off-site situations, but this method was inherently a special case requiring special measures. In reality, players would not receive off-site assistance when the instance was officially opened. Gao Hai had considered how players could break through the core obsession in that situation, and his final answer was to [suppress all anomalies outside the victim group to ensure that players would not face any rebuttal during the trial]. This would achieve an effect similar to the trial created by the Red Moon-level players at the time.

It can suppress most of the strange things in a dungeon, and it's even a Red Moon level dungeon.

In terms of the difficulty and suffocation level of this operation, it's honestly no different from the situation Gao Hai is currently facing.

Compared to the conditions for breaking the core obsessions in the Shirakawa Apartment by sending Li Zhaodi's core obsession into room 309, and the conditions for breaking the core obsessions in the Red Nut Gray Hole by handing Andres's core obsession to Hedar and preventing Fol from successfully escaping, the core obsessions in the [Campus Ghost Stories] instance have absolutely no operational conditions for breaking them. It forces players to fight against an impossible monster, giving players no chance of success whatsoever.

It's really funny.

If you can't handle this kind of game, what kind of host (KP) do you want to be?

Putting away the object of his obsession, Gao Hai strode quickly down the corridor and soon reunited with the police officers he had summoned earlier.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the meeting was forced, since the officer who had gone ahead to explore was now facing a situation where he had nowhere to go.

The copy is collapsing.

Even though the core obsession has not yet been broken, the dungeon map has begun to show increasingly serious collapse phenomena.

The police officers who had set out to explore earlier had reached the edge of the map of this supposedly endless corridor, and arrived at the boundary area that was constantly breaking apart. Therefore, they had to retreat and rejoin Gao Hai, who had caught up with them.

That's really true; it looks quite bad.

Gao Hai put the police badge back in his pocket, looked at the wrecked area in front of him, and frowned deeply.

The ground, walls, and ceiling gradually crumbled apart, like some kind of disease spreading, turning into tiny fragments that floated in the air, becoming a sky full of debris.

But beneath the shattered ground, Gao Hai didn't see the same pitch-black void that appeared when the instance crumbled due to the core's resting place, as he had seen before. The background in the shattered area was now completely distorted, a chaotic jumble of multicolored lights, forming a grotesque, disjointed, and utterly distorted scene.

That place... something's very wrong, you absolutely mustn't go near it!

Just one glance at the chaotic colors gave Gao Hai an instinctive, strong sense of danger, and he realized that he must not try to jump into that thing.

He began to realize that the instance had developed serious problems. In order to kill Gao Hai, the KP first secretly modified some of the specific implementation details of the ghost story rules, and then went further and messed around in the instance. He even used some unknown method to stuff out-of-control players into the instance (Gao Hai suspected that the KP gave some kind of hint to the people in Takamagahara so that they would tamper with the instance). These actions were undoubtedly destroying the stability of the Hayate Elementary School instance. They were randomly adding new things to the originally normal code and then running it without testing.

Therefore, this instance is now unable to sustain itself and has begun to self-destruct.

Unlike the normal self-destruction of the first three instances, this abnormal self-destruction is pushing the entire instance into an extremely dangerous state. The ominous, distorted colors made Gao Hai truly feel a sense of impending annihilation; he even felt that if he fell into those things, not even this mysterious black watch could save his life.

Tsk... I need to find a way back to the upper level, no, I need to find Chiyo Hachiya, I need to find Chiyo Hachiya hiding in this area!

After a brief moment of thought, Gao Hai decisively moved away from the gradually spreading collapsed area and returned to the intricate, endless corridor.

"Haeiya Chiyo!"

Gao Hai shouted in the corridor filled with countless entrances and exits.

no respond.

There was no response, as expected; the girl hiding there wouldn't give Gao Hai any reply.

"I have no interest in wasting my time with you, Chiyo Hachiya."

But Gao Hai didn't care about this matter; he no longer reacted to something he had expected.

We cannot cover it up, and we cannot have any intention of concealing ourselves.

Therefore, just be yourself and show your true attitude.

"I'll throw the butcher's body into those colors, so you'll never get it back."

Gao Hai then spoke again, his voice cold and devoid of any emotion.

"You've suffered a lot, you've endured a lot of torment, you're miserable, I sympathize with you, but I also say it's none of my business."

He noticed that the collapsed and twisted area was getting closer to the area he had retreated from, so he took the butcher's corpse out of his watch and moved toward the collapsed area.

“I am willing to fulfill your obsession and grant your wish, and I do indeed know how to do so. I am willing to help you, that is my honest opinion. As for the benefits I gain from this, that is none of your business. I have no obligation to do free labor for a stranger like you. I am not your family, and I do not love you, so if I help you, I should receive compensation from you. I do not believe that the person who adopted you would not have taught you this simple principle.”

Gao Hai's footsteps had reached the collapsed area, and he picked up the corpse he had brought with him.

"So let's put away our sentimental nonsense, stand up, and face me, or you can say goodbye forever to the corpses of your last remaining friends."

With just a flick of his wrist, Gao Hai could toss the butcher's stiff corpse into a chaotic, distorted array of colors.

Every word he uttered was sincere, without a trace of falsehood.

Given the current situation, Gao Hai was simply too lazy to play any more boring games like hide-and-seek.

He knew that Chiyo Hachiya, who was hiding in the orphanage area, likely retained a certain degree of humanity and cognitive abilities, making her different from the purely monster-like Chiyo Hachiya wandering in other areas. Therefore, he chose to threaten her directly, and it was a more straightforward threat than in the previous playthrough.

Then he saw a small figure appear at the end of the corridor, a girl carrying a machete with a cold and sinister expression.

He could feel the intense killing intent locked onto him at that moment. It was the same chill he had felt when he was killed by Chiyo Hachiya in the previous playthrough. This was an absolutely fatal blow that he could not dodge, a doomed moment that even if he was prepared, it would be futile.

blink.

Chiyo Hachiya had vanished from her spot and instantly reappeared in front of him.

This outcome was entirely unsurprising; that's just how this child is—he'll ruthlessly eliminate any threat.

Therefore, Gao Hai did not take any defensive or evasive action.

He simply let go.