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

"okay."

Without the slightest hesitation, Cui Qiushui rolled down the car window, stuck her head out of the car, and whistled at Qin Shou on the roof.

Qin Shou, bewildered, turned around and saw Cui Qiushui's face. His arrogant demeanor instantly changed. In less than a second, he puffed out his cheeks and vomited loudly. He then fell off the car and rolled onto the road, before running up to catch up with the car in a disheveled state.

"Captain, how could you do this! Haven't I shed enough blood for the squad?!"

Qin Shou, still covered in vomit, shouted in grief and indignation. Yan Hui, sitting in the driver's seat, simply tossed a towel at Qin Shou's face, said "Wipe yourself clean before getting in the car," and continued driving forward.

Splash—splash—

The night was still not over, and the incessant downpour had not yet subsided.

In an underground shelter, Hongxia held a cup of hot coffee distributed by the shelter staff. After taking a big gulp, she let out a long sigh and turned to look at the densely packed people around her, most of whom had expressions of confusion and fear on their faces.

This is a shelter managed by the Hayasaka Group, located in the underground parking garage of a commercial building. It has three floors and, after modifications, could store enough basic supplies to sustain 3,000 people for three days. However, due to accidents at several nearby shelters and safe zones, over 8,000 people have actually crammed in here. This means that if the recapture of Tokyo doesn't proceed smoothly, the supplies here will run out in a day at most.

Of course, most people wouldn't know this. Hongxia only found out because Ichiri, who escorted her there, told her. In fact, Hongxia didn't even ask about it herself; Ryo inquired about the situation, and Ichiri just told her without giving it much thought.

I wonder if all of this will end smoothly.

Hongxia, who originally thought she would be safe once she arrived at the shelter, became somewhat worried after hearing this news.

"no problem."

A cold voice suddenly came from beside me.

Hongxia turned her head and saw Liang, who had a calm expression, speaking to her.

"Are you sure it's okay? Those things were so terrifying... and before we were rescued, I saw an entire city reduced to ruins. They really could do that in just one day..."

Hongxia was still somewhat uneasy, although this unease was entirely due to Liang Duo's question. However, she had no intention of blaming her friend. She just sighed, and the worry between her brows remained.

"Of course, no problem. You can tell from Poch's expression that there's no problem."

Liang spoke again with a confident tone, and his self-assured expression immediately eased Hongxia's unease.

"Poch-chan's expression..."

Indeed, although Ichiri told her about the dire situation in the shelter, there was no unease on his face; on the contrary, he was full of confidence.

It must be because of Mr. Gao, right? Mr. Gao Hai, who has become a god, is the reason everyone was saved and able to safely wait for the event to end in the shelter. Many of the players who came to the rescue were also organized by Mr. Gao Hai. It's fair to say that without him, none of this would have happened.

"Phew... I hope everything will end peacefully."

Hongxia closed her eyes and prayed softly.

Mr. Gao Hai, please bless us, please bless everyone.

At this moment, Hongxia, like most people who had been saved and had learned about Gao Hai, regarded him as a god.

While these survivors awaited the final outcome of the battle, and while the players and the monsters of the [Hospital] were still fiercely clashing, Gao Hai opened his eyes once again on the blood-soaked Throne of Mind.

Damn it, why do I have so many different faiths? Who on earth is praying for me?

We must use this power as soon as possible, otherwise, if it really gets turned into a god through prayer, it will all benefit the hospital. It would be ridiculous if that happened, to be prayed for by one's own people and turned into a god under the enemy's command—just thinking about it is tragic enough.

"Has everyone... already left?"

Hayasaka's weak voice rang out; she had woken up. By this time, Takami's other girlfriends had left, leaving only her and Takami.

"Yes, the final stage of the battle is about to begin. In the next 13 hours at most, we and the [Hospital] will determine the victor."

Takami answered Hayasaka softly, his tone firm.

There will never be another playthrough.

After the arduous battles of the first four playthroughs, Yotsuya Miko and Kita Ikuyo gained a local advantage first. Then, Goto Ichiri and Fujiwara Chika fell into the enemy's trap but turned the tables and used the trap with their teammates to break through it, thus truly eliminating one of the enemy's generals. At this point, the accumulated advantage had reached the moment of true reversal.

This round will determine the winner.

hum-

More and more blood gushed from the throne.

At this moment, Gao Hai intensified his efforts to push his own strength to the limit, enduring intense pain, and began to provide more support to the players and rescuers fighting on the front lines.

For all those still fighting on the front lines, the time for a counterattack has come.

Our enemy has shown a weakness; now, it's time to truly end this.

Let us all join me in bringing this to a complete end!

The calm voice reached the ears of every player, and those who were still fighting in the dark and torrential rain.

Then, golden light began to circulate throughout the city, replenishing the strength of all the weary, healing the wounds of all the injured, guiding everyone, seeing through the weaknesses of the monsters, and directly suppressing those low-level monsters.

Splash—splash—

The torrential rain had not yet stopped, but unknowingly, the violent rain had subsided considerably, and the dark clouds covering the sky had also thinned.

The girls, who were also determined to fight, turned to look in the direction of Gao Hai, and then took another step forward, advancing into the darkness that had not yet truly dissipated.

The drama in this city is nearing its final act.

Behind the darkness, unknown and unseen by anyone, in the shadows beyond the real world, a pointer remains rigidly suspended in nothingness, trembling amidst dripping blood, yet bound by something invisible, unable to truly move from beginning to end.

Chapter One: Kaguya Shinomiya's Memories, and the Unextinguished Embers Under the Torrential Rain.

The flames are burning.

Despite the torrential rain, the embers between the broken houses are still slowly burning and have not yet been extinguished.

The city was shrouded in darkness. The border areas that should have existed were now swallowed up by the black fog, making it impossible to cross.

Kaguya remembers this place, and she remembers this memory.

That happened during the first playthrough. At that time, Kaguya, Fujiwara Chika, Shijou Maki, Hayasaka Ai, and Takami—a total of five people—had sensed that something was amiss lately, so they planned to make arrangements to house their families and friends at Alice's House. However, just as they were making their decision, the "Hospital," which had been operating in the shadows, launched its attack first, directly assaulting the group inside the mansion.

As for the method of attack, well, perhaps because supernatural powers are easily detected in advance, the hospital chose a physical attack method. In other words, the mastermind somehow obtained a missile and launched it at close range in a suicidal manner, blowing up the entire mansion and the surrounding buildings.

If Gao Hai hadn't realized something was wrong and immediately used his mental power to protect everyone, perhaps the girls would only have been seriously injured, but the maids and servants in the mansion, as well as the innocent passersby in other nearby houses, would most likely have died on the spot.

After the first attack, as Tokyo began to shift into another dimension, fleshy monsters covered in sharp bone spurs began to appear out of nowhere from all directions and launched attacks on the people in the ruins of the mansion. These monsters were not supernatural beings; although they possessed strong flesh regeneration abilities, their self-healing had its limits. If their heads or hearts were destroyed, they would die instantly. They seemed to be some kind of derivative or mass-produced living weapons.

Despite the extraordinary agility and combat prowess of these monsters, averaging two meters in height, and their ability to launch ranged attacks using bone spikes, Gao Hai, initially unsure of their tactics, was actually injured a few times. However, as Gao Hai became more focused, his strength, exceeding the limits of a player, easily dismantled the monsters' attacks, wiping them all out within minutes.

Unfortunately, it was precisely because of those few minutes that things began to spiral out of control.

From the moment Tokyo entered the alienation phase until Gao Hai began contacting players in various areas of the city, only seven minutes had passed. Within those seven minutes, all Red Moon-level player organizations, including the "Slacking Off Gang," lost contact, Dark Night-level player teams suffered heavy casualties, and Twilight-level players and rescue personnel, who served as support, were essentially out of contact.

Takami and the girls tried their best to salvage the situation, but when the 10-minute mark arrived, as almost all the living people in Tokyo were wiped out, some unknown force began to accumulate on the land and quickly approached everyone who was still unaware of it.

Kaguya estimated that she would never be able to forget what she saw back then, even a long time later.

A green, foul-smelling ocean swept up hundreds of meters high, engulfing the entire city of Tokyo and tearing apart every skyscraper.

Everyone's desperate resistance was futile against this terrifying power. Even the slightest touch of the green tide would cause their bodies to fester and dissolve at an alarming rate, turning into a pool of rotten pus in just a few seconds.

At the very last moment of the first playthrough, Takami personally killed Kaguya Shinomiya before committing suicide to avoid being corrupted by the plague-infested green tide.

Next comes the start of the second playthrough.

Now, the girls have all left their projections in that blood-red city, and Gao Hai has further strengthened the connection between these projections through the power of the black watch and the blood flower. Therefore, there is no longer any need to consume watch ticks; everyone can retain their memories and enter a new loop.

The start time of the new cycle is when everyone enters the mansion and prepares to discuss their action plan.

At this moment, Tokyo seemed no different from usual, except that the incessant downpour was somewhat annoying. But when Takami rushed out of the mansion, he realized that the entire city had been isolated by some unknown force without his knowledge.

Then, just like in previous instances, having already learned the enemy's attack methods, Gao Hai and his group easily thwarted the first wave of attacks and arrived at the city's command center—the abandoned building where [Market] was located—at a speed far exceeding that of their first playthrough. This building, meticulously managed by [Market]'s manager, Xiao He Shu, and modified with his Crimson Moon-level obsession-level insectoid power, could easily connect to any area within Tokyo and monitor the situation in real time. It was the emergency command center chosen from the start.

"Mahime, Kaguya, you two stay here. The rest of us will handle the changes in the city, confirm what's going on, and provide support for Miko, Ichiri, Kita, and the others. I'll leave the command and communication to you. I trust you can do it."

After confirming that there were attacks by strange creatures all over the city, Gao Hai took decisive action and personally led people to put out fires all over the city.

Kaguya and Maki stayed in the command center, busy with other players responsible for communication.

At first, the situation didn't seem too bad. Although various strange creatures appeared on a large scale in the city, and casualties continued to occur, the vast majority of people were successfully protected and evacuated to the refuge area. Among them, Gao Hai used his newly acquired blessed power to protect many people inside the houses. Moreover, in the area under his jurisdiction, no strange creature could withstand a single attack from him, let alone those flesh-and-blood monsters that weren't even strange creatures.

On the first and second days, nothing unusual happened. Everyone united and carried out rescue operations for the victims step by step, defeating and sealing the wandering monsters, and gradually recapturing the various districts. At that time, Kaguya even began to doubt whether the [Hospital] was anything special, otherwise why hadn't it done anything except produce a bunch of low-level monsters and consumables during this period? Maki, on the other hand, vaguely felt that something was wrong, suspecting that the enemy might be lurking in the shadows, but she couldn't find any trace of them for the time being, so she could only keep this suspicion to herself.

Then, on the third day at noon, the doctor appeared.

The three [Doctors] in the second playthrough did not appear directly in front of Gao Hai, but the power of their rules, along with the power prepared by the [Hospital] itself, were activated at the same time, enveloping Gao Hai from all sides, who was unable to make an effective defense.

The blessing failed to provide a timely warning. According to the subsequent investigation, firstly, the hospital may have isolated the space in advance, and secondly, the actions of these guys were actually beneficial to Gao Hai to some extent. Therefore, the blessing's power could not immediately identify the anomaly.

They didn't attack Gao Hai; instead, they channeled some kind of extraordinary power into his body, attempting to further enhance his already gradually awakening abilities. In other words, the hospital was trying to help Gao Hai ascend to godhood ahead of schedule.

This bizarre fact caused great confusion for everyone. It wasn't until Gao Hai, whose body was constantly disintegrating and healing due to the forced ascension, almost turning into a blood-soaked figure, said, "They are trying to elevate me to their subordinate god," that everyone finally understood the hospital's purpose. By then, things had already entered a stage that was almost irreversible.

A power that has never been encountered before, cannot be understood, cannot be used, and cannot be resisted spreads as a certain mystical ritual is performed.

Caught completely off guard by this power, Takahashi didn't have time to commit suicide before his body disintegrated and turned into twisted flesh and blood. His soul was nearly extracted by the power of the "Hospital," and was directly taken from the real world and sealed away. At the critical moment, Fujiwara Chika jumped out to block the "Hospital's" attack, sacrificing her life to buy time for Takahashi to regain consciousness and resist the power of the "Hospital."

However, even if Gao Hai's consciousness was successfully awakened, the mutation of his flesh and blood had already entered an irreversible stage. The person behind the scenes at the hospital seemed to have confirmed the blessing of life force on Gao Hai through observation over the past two days. Therefore, when the power of ascension acted on Gao Hai, his extremely strong regenerative ability had the opposite effect, turning what was originally normal wound healing into an infinite expansion like the proliferation of cancer cells.

The power of the ghost stories began to spread. Under the power of the gods, even players could easily lose themselves, turning into broken flesh and blood, and then being absorbed by the infinitely expanding body of Gao Hai.

As more and more people's flesh and blood merge together, the power of the [Hospital] continues to grow, constantly extending its tentacles from the instance into the real world.

Far greater numbers and more intensely powerful hordes of bizarre creatures and flesh-and-blood soldiers than previously discovered have entered the real world, exacerbating spatial fragmentation in Tokyo and causing many areas to lose contact almost instantly. This is especially true for various command nodes; the enemy has somehow figured out these key locations and can strike with lightning speed.

The safe zone was easily breached, and powerful players began to be killed one by one by the roaming Medics. Kaguya saw Xiongmi's head severed in the ruins, and the Red Society members all perished in battle. Later, when the enemy reached the command center, Kogaki led the elite of the Market to engage the enemy, resulting in their complete annihilation; not a single member survived.

Kita Ikuyo then brought bad news: the Starry Night Livehouse had been attacked because the windows were not properly closed. By the time Kita and Ichiri found it, all that was left inside was blood and flesh debris covering the stage.

In just a few minutes, most of the city was plunged into darkness.

Later, the hospital even used Gao Hai's out-of-control body as a foundation, transforming it into steps and a throne, in order to complete the final sacrifice.

Having realized that there was no way to reverse this loop, and that the enemy was highly likely to know about his ability to rewind time, Gao Hai ultimately chose to commit suicide once again. Furthermore, in order to start a new loop as quickly as possible, he chose to have Alice directly devour his consciousness, destroying his soul from the inside out.

Then, something terrible happened that Takahashi didn't tell anyone, but Kaguya, having survived to the final stage of the second loop, vaguely guessed. The ascension power the [Hospital] exerted on Takahashi wouldn't disappear with the time rewind. This extremely uncontrollable power had completely activated Takahashi's own godhood. His path to godhood, which was far from stable and hadn't even had time to find its chosen direction, was forcibly started under the [Hospital]'s conspiracy. It was like forcibly delivering a four- or five-month-old fetus via cesarean section; even with the time rewind, the fundamental changes in Takahashi's own nature couldn't be stopped, since the essence of ascension was a change within Takahashi himself.

So, on his third playthrough, Takahashi made a decision.

The Throne of Mind, this bloody machine, amplified Gao Hai's mental power almost infinitely, while simultaneously devouring his flesh and blood and consuming his life force, forcibly maintaining his out-of-control ascension process in a balanced state, giving him the possibility of a stable ascension.

Of course, this is also a trap, because the majority of the objects of the [Throne of Thought] originate from the [Hospital]. Therefore, the result of using this device to ascend to godhood is that Takahashi himself will truly become a lower-level god within the concept of the [Hospital]. For this, he has to endure a difficult struggle, leaving behind hidden wounds that are difficult to heal. By the fourth playthrough, in order to help him, Hayasaka Ai even chose to connect herself to the [Throne of Thought] as well. After some maneuvering, Takahashi himself voluntarily reverted to a previous state, and thus the situation finally arrived at the fifth playthrough, which is the current timeline.

The market's command center has been destroyed again.

There was no way to defend it; it was too obvious. The enemy had already laid an ambush, and there was no way to hold onto that place.

As for Kaguya herself, she couldn't remember how many people she had saved, how many buildings she had entered and exited, or how many monsters she had fought against.