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

How can I get rid of him/her and break free if things continue like this?

Will I be taken away and killed by this monster? Or will I be transformed into one of those stitched-together monsters in the factory? Or will I be thrown into the crematorium?

No... I don't want to...

Mr. Gao Hai...please save me...save me...Gods...save me...I don't want to...

For the first time, I truly felt the fear of being shrouded in death.

All protective measures have become ineffective.

All means of resistance have failed.

A strong sense of fear spread through my heart, but my body remained frozen, unable to move or do anything.

You will... be saved by the doctor... you will become... a happy child...

The terrifying thing in the darkness was still speaking to her in a gentle voice, and she could almost feel it stroking her cheek and smiling at her.

Then, I saw cockroaches falling from above.

The dark yellow figure fell, crashing straight into the monster in the darkness.

The puppet-like creature slammed its rough wooden body directly into the monster, opened its mouth and let out a shrill scream, its twisted limbs tearing at the monster's body. Cockroaches crawled out of its body and wriggled back and forth on the monster's surface.

【Why? 】

This situation seemed to confuse the monster so much that it did not react immediately, but just stood there blankly.

Why... would it come to help me?

Xiaohua was equally caught off guard by this situation. She couldn't understand the puppet's actions at all, especially since it had been chasing her just minutes before. The chilling aura emanating from the puppet back then was undeniable; it couldn't possibly be a misunderstanding or claim that the chase was a misunderstanding or that the puppet never intended to harm Xiaohua in the first place.

Boom!dong dong!

The puppet was attacking the monster shrouded in darkness with all its might.

It kept emitting shrill cries like crying, attacking the dark, indistinct monster with all its might, using its hands, feet, teeth, and forehead, as if it were attacking an irreconcilable enemy, but it never managed to cause any effective damage.

According to the rules, this monster can change the body of the person it touches, but when facing a monster that is obviously much stronger than itself, its ability obviously cannot be effective. Therefore, this all-out attack is just like a child's nonsense and has no effect at all.

Click!

Before anyone could see how the monster made the attack, the doll's waist snapped off, and its lower body fell into the darkness, disappearing without a trace.

The doll continued to let out a shrill howl, reaching out to grab a certain part of the monster, as if trying to tear something apart.

Click! ! !

Then the doll was almost vertically split in two, half of its arm and a small part of its chest were severed, and it fell down again. The doll's head was also cut open, revealing a cavity inside that was flowing with foul blood.

Even at this point, the puppet still didn't let go, still using its last hand to hold onto the monster tightly, opening its mouth to bite and tear at it desperately, trying to rip something off the monster's body.

Why is this happening?

Xiao Hua stared blankly at this scene, her mouth slightly open, but she didn't know what to say.

Then, she suddenly realized that, perhaps because the monster was distracted by the puppet-like creature, the sealing effect that had been on her was beginning to weaken, and she was beginning to regain her mobility.

The superpowers haven't been completely exhausted yet; if they fight with all their might, they can unleash them again.

Never accept the idea of ​​doing nothing and just waiting to die. Since we've already reached a life-or-death situation, let's fight this monster to the death!

"Yaha!!!"

Golden light burst forth from Xiao Hua once again.

As if imitating that doll-like monster, the girl struggled desperately, grabbed the arm that the monster was holding onto, and reached out to grab the monster's body, launching a chaotic attack with all her might, without any rhyme or reason.

Click——click——

The mental fragments protecting the girl's thoughts began to gradually disintegrate, unable to maintain themselves under the overwhelming pressure.

But in this critical moment of life and death, the fragment of her consciousness truly protected Xiaohua's mind, allowing her to maintain her will during this desperate counterattack, and actually reach into the darkness and grab something.

bang——

Something was pulled out by Xiao Hua, flying directly out of the darkness that enveloped the monster and plummeting into the abyss below.

Because the thing flew out too fast, Xiao Hua didn't have time to see its exact appearance. She only vaguely saw the words "Voice Actor Award," which sounded like a trophy or something similar.

【Huh? Ahh ...

The disappearance of this thing caused the monster, which had been indifferent and unconcerned about Xiaohua and the puppet's attacks, to suddenly become frenzied and immediately let out a shrill scream.

In the blink of an eye, the thing vanished, disappearing into the darkness below.

Xiao Hua felt her body loosen and then fell downwards due to gravity. She was then grabbed by the puppet-like creature that only had half of its body left. The creature pulled her over with its last remaining hand and held her in its arms.

It is not attacking itself.

Xiao Hua could sense that her body had not been cursed or transformed, but was maintaining a normal state, so the strange creature's actions were not an attack on her.

It is embracing itself.

It is incomprehensible why a creature devoid of thought and emotion would behave in this way. Mr. Gao Hai clearly stated that such creatures are merely mechanical repetitions of living people, machines that can never transcend their own limitations.

So why did this monster choose to save me? Why did it hug me?

Pata~ Pata~

Xiaohua could feel the other person's palm gently patting her back.

It was incredibly gentle, like a mother comforting a depressed child, patting her back lightly, one pat at a time.

Even the way they hugged was the same, just like a mother holding her child in her arms.

So, is that the reason?

Xiao Hua suddenly understood.

Gao Hai said that when the [Sacrifice Game] opens a dungeon, it will assign an identity to the player. Some monsters will also assign a corresponding identity to the living people who encounter them in a specific way, and take corresponding actions based on this identity. This is the underlying logic of the monsters.

This puppet-like creature will regard the player, or any living person who has strayed into its territory, as its own child.

Because they are your own children, you must keep a close eye on their eating habits. They cannot be picky eaters, they cannot complain about the food that their mother has worked so hard to prepare, and they cannot leave any food uneaten.

Because they are one's own children, one should focus on their studies and hope that they can inherit one's dreams and go further than one's own failure. Therefore, one does not want one's children to spend too much time playing. Thus, one always has excessive expectations for one's children and ignores their feelings.

Because it's their own child, they want the other person to save face for them, so they nitpick about the child's performance when outsiders visit, regardless of whether doing so will put too much pressure on the child, and simply impose their own standards on the other person.

Yes, isn't that the duplicate world formed by the puppet monster ultimately just like that? In the end, when this monster was alive, she was just an incompetent and harsh mother to her child.

So when a child is truly in danger, when her life hangs in the balance, she will fight the enemy with all her might and try her best to save herself?

If that's the case, ah...

Xiao Hua's eyes widened. In the instant she realized something was possible, she sensed something belonging to this strange creature and, despite their already close contact, understood the hidden past.

Yes, we will help you become happier. Yes, everything you are doing is right.

So be strict with your child, and all your expectations for them will surely be met. We will help you.

Everything I want... Is this what I really want? What am I doing...?

[You're lying to me, you're lying to me, why are you lying to me, why did I do this... why... why...]

She was a mother who always complained about life.

She was a middle-aged woman who always longed to return to the life of a wealthy young lady from her childhood, but ultimately adapted to her current ordinary life.

She did have high hopes for her children, but over the years, she has come to realize that her hopes could not be fulfilled, and she can understand that her clumsy child could not meet her expectations. Moreover, she should not let her descendants bear the burden of her failures.

But the sounds came from the darkness.

But those distorted ideas gradually took root in her consciousness.

Her regrets, her pain, her desires—all of these became weapons for those monsters, chains that bound them to control themselves.

Her consciousness was always hazy, like a manipulated puppet, gradually losing self-control, becoming irritable and insane. She began to relentlessly exploit her children, attack her husband and family, and increasingly obsessively craved what she had once let go of, causing irreparable pain to all those who loved her. This continued until her husband decided to divorce her, leaving with their son, while her daughter, unable to bear the torment, chose suicide. Then the darkness laughed gleefully, and she, finally regaining control of her body, collapsed and went insane, completely losing her rationality.

So she wrapped her daughter in thick cloth and mummified her, hoping she could come back to life. Then, terrified of the return of those darkness, she killed her husband, her son, her own father, and murdered all her family members, stuffing them into hollow dolls.

Even though the body was decomposing, even though the stench was unbearable, even though cockroaches were crawling all over the house, she didn't feel anything was wrong. She still thought that one day her child would come back, that life would return to normal. Until the police broke down the door, until they were about to take her family away.

Ultimately, the burning flames took her life, and also took away her already shattered family.

But this was not the end; on the contrary, her death was just the beginning.

As one of the chosen sacrifices long ago, it was this series of twists and madness that shaped her soul into a monstrous form, making her the cornerstone of the [Hospital], and a necessary sacrifice for the [Hospital] to save the world and all of humanity.

It's a pity that she deeply hated the hospital, hated the darkness that twisted and drove her mad. It's truly regrettable; it only caused her and her family's deaths, yet her ungrateful hatred would inevitably save the world—the hospital. No wonder her final soul strength was only at the Twilight level. Ultimately, this soul was a defective product from the start, merely a scoundrel who didn't understand self-sacrifice. Fortunately, the noble, beautiful, and pure hospital saved her; this was the only thing she could celebrate in her life, but sadly, she would never understand.

...After death comes endless suffering.

As a malevolent entity, it hatched from the resonance between divine blood and consciousness, imprisoning an inescapable soul and beginning an endless repetition within the instance.

Her madness could not be relieved.

But if we trace it back to its source and find her true regret, it was simply that she wanted to save her child, to stop her daughter from committing suicide, and to prevent this tragedy from beginning.

All she craved in her final moments was this.

Although she can no longer understand that the girl she saved is not her real child.

"..."

Xiao Hua remained silent in his embrace, unsure how to speak amidst the raging winds that plunged her into darkness.

The broken doll turned around, grabbed the girl by the collar, and suddenly threw her in a certain direction, causing the unprepared Xiao Hua to crash hard onto the roof of a blood-stained house.

By the time the girl stumbled to her feet and ran to the edge of the roof, the doll had vanished into the abyss.

In a place unnoticed by anyone, the cell phone on the conveyor belt moved slowly forward along with the corpses until it reached the end, fell downwards, and landed in a large pit filled with corpses. Even the dim red light flashing on the screen was covered by the corpses falling from above, buried layer by layer.

Further away, the three players who had successfully reunited in the Sunflower Squad—team leader Yu Qingshan, team members Kazama Ren and Shichi—had stopped at the entrance of a dark apartment building that seemed unremarkable and shrouded in darkness.

[Sizzle sizzle... sizzle sizzle sizzle...]

Yu Qingshan stared at the eight bars of signal flashing on his phone screen, then looked at the old apartment building, which appeared to be quite dilapidated and shrouded in darkness. After a brief moment of thought, he took the axe from his waist, turned around, and nodded to the two team members behind him.

"Let's go, time is of the essence. Let's go in and investigate the situation first."

With a serious expression, Yu Qingshan took the lead and walked towards the apartment door.

"We just can't find the other team members' locations, and now we have to actively explore the suspected nodes. It feels like we're courting death. Oh well, we're already courting death anyway, so it makes no difference."

Seeing that her captain had made up his mind, Kazama Ren shook her head and made a couple of sarcastic remarks, but she didn't stop walking and followed her captain forward.