You say this is a love game?

Mizutani Makoto stood by the pool, observing the forest of arms growing from the bottom. These swollen arms grew so densely that it was hard not to think...

"The victim?"

"The will mentioned 'you'. Are they referring to these hands?"

"I don't think so. Judging from the last words, it seems like it reached some kind of agreement with some existence. These ghost things don't look like they can communicate. It's too strange to reach an agreement with these arms..."

And, most importantly...

Mizutani Makoto cast his gaze towards the deep water at the end of his vision.

He did not forget that there were different noises coming from the deep water area.

But how can this be done?

Compared with the shallow water area of ​​1.2m, the deep water area of ​​1.6m is an even more disastrous battlefield.

This is even more deceptive than the world in the mirror!

The mirror world simply created a highly toxic environment for him, so it wouldn't be a problem for him to resolve the battle in the short term.

But this swimming pool was never intended to allow him to fight normally.

Mizutani Makoto took a deep breath until he felt his strength gradually replenishing, and then he made a new decision.

Still have to go and see it.

Of course, you don’t walk directly into the water, but walk along the non-slip tiles from the shore to the deep water area.

Trample, tramp...

The sound of empty footsteps echoed.

The journey was surprisingly smooth. Mizutani Makoto encountered no obstacles along the way and entered the deep water area shrouded in shadows.

The dark green tree canopy above the head was so huge and layered that it was almost too thick to be a sycamore tree. Its cast shadows perfectly covered the deep water area of ​​the swimming pool, leaving only a small area in the center empty, allowing the moonlight to shine into the center of the pool.

The cold is even worse here, and the icy air is almost suffocating.

Mizutani Makoto didn't go down.

He stood by the pool, gazing down at the depths. The deep surface was as calm as a mirror. Through the faint moonlight, he could vaguely see blurry figures beneath the surface. They seemed entangled in seaweed, floating in the water, swimming like fish in the spacious pool, or lying on the bottom, as if asleep.

A figure suddenly swam and approached the water surface.

As his vision gradually adapted to the darkness, the scene in Mizutani Makoto's pupils finally became clear.

How could there be any living people under the water?

Those were the bodies of drowned people! They were drowned people!

Its face was pale, its body swollen, and it was barely visible underwater. One of the drowned corpses was swimming towards him, moving freely underwater as if diving, at an extremely fast speed. In the blink of an eye, it was lying under the surface of the pool. Its white eyes were empty and indifferent, staring straight at him through a thin layer of water.

Its expression betrayed a certain malice.

Mizutani Makoto twitched the corner of his mouth, thinking that this guy simply wanted to drag him into the water.

But I remembered the words in the "evaluation", and combined them with the "intelligent" behavior of the drowned corpse in front of me.

Mizutani Makoto took two steps back and stared coldly at the drowned corpse below across the surface of the swimming pool.

"Where did you come from, water ghost?"

This temptation received a response from the other party.

Bubbles rise from the bottom of the pool.

The cold air suddenly surged up, cutting through his skin like a knife. He saw the drowned corpse below grinning with a strange smile.

A slight ripple appeared on the water surface, which was the bubbles bursting.

For a moment, Mizutani Makoto heard a faint breathing sound, or should I say some kind of low whimpering, coming from deep under the water, echoing in his ears.

"Come down."

"Come down together."

The drowned corpse in front of me was whispering.

It wasn't just it whispering, all the drowned corpses under the swimming pool were calling out in unison at the same time. Mizutani Makoto's heart was suddenly shaken. He raised his left hand and the Jingshui sword fell into his hand. A cool feeling came along the handle of the sword, and the overlapping calls of the deep water in his mind stopped.

What the hell, a mental attack?!

Mizutani Makoto retreats violently!

He finally understood.

Right now, the pool looks like a scaled-down version of the school building.

The arms here can be chopped off, and the drowned corpses gathered at the end of the swimming pool are calling him to jump into the water through spiritual means. If he jumps in, he will most likely be killed by this group of drowned corpses and then assimilated together... This ending is exactly the same as the ending in the corridor on the second floor of the school building, but the method is much rougher.

The strange death curse on the second floor of the school building caught him off guard.

But the drowned corpse at the moment only used obvious mental influence, which could be easily broken free from.

Seeing that it failed, the drowned corpse's expression suddenly became ferocious. It accelerated suddenly and crashed into the wall of the swimming pool.

"Bang!!"

In an instant, the water in the pool boiled.

A spider-web-like broken hole appeared on the wall of the swimming pool, and the palm was firmly dug into the tile. Seeing that it could burst out such powerful force underwater, Mizutani Makoto was immediately dumbfounded.

"I have to fight this thing underwater?"

He suspected that Tongzi was joking with him.

The eyeballs of the woman by the window!

Once the strong man identifier was used, the drowned corpse in the swimming pool was marked as a strong man. The drowned corpse was not affected at all, and all the drowned corpses wandering in the deep water area of ​​the swimming pool were not affected either.

These things are actually a whole.

When Mizutani Makoto used the eyeballs of the woman by the window, he locked the gaze with the help of the eyeballs and was horrified to find that there was some kind of connection between these drowned corpses... Unlike the arms before, these swollen drowned corpses soaked in water were now connected to each other and turned into a collective monster.

Just when he was observing the monster with his eyes, a new task pop-up window flashed in front of Mizutani Makoto.

[Side Quest: Since ancient times, young people have been full of chivalry]

[Task Description: The smudged ink from the fountain pen, like a young man's lingering blood, spreads across the contract paper in a dazzling speck of blood. But the naive young man doesn't know that the man in a suit and tie across the table is nothing but a hollow, rotten tree, and the malicious intent wriggling within the contract clauses is far uglier than a cockroach. So, for the sake of justice, use "Terminate" on him!]

[Quest Requirements: End the agreement between the "Contract" and the people in the world, and kill the "Contract."]

Mizutani Makoto had turned a blind eye to the fact that Tomoko's consistent descriptions and requests were completely inconsistent.

He stared at the word "contract" and his brows slowly furrowed.

"I think I've heard this somewhere?"

"Is this... a strange story?"

……

……

late at night.

Mizutani Makoto didn't go crazy enough to fight the contract physically underwater, but just made a final exploration near the swimming pool and tried to go to the shallow water area with his physical body for the second time to kill monsters. He confirmed that the speed at which souls came from that place was even faster than when he was killing monsters in the kendo club's dojo.

Moreover, after he killed the second round of monsters, the number of arms in the entire pool did not decrease much. The density of monsters here was unimaginably high.

But fighting with a swollen arm in the pool was very exhausting.

If we take into account the time he spends ashore to recover his strength, the efficiency of soul farming is not as outrageous as the numbers show.

"Even so, this is still the place where I get souls the fastest, almost as fast as the monster tower... If you want to get souls in the future, you can consider this place."

As for why it is a consideration but not the first choice... the reason is simple, it is just too disgusting when brushing souls.

Countless arms densely clustered around you, even if they were cut off, they would still tightly wrap around you. After a long time, Mizutani Makoto even felt that he was not like a wandering soul knight, but rather like a female knight or nun entangled by leeches in some mysterious little yellow oil...

These swollen arms are really disgusting!

Shaking such thoughts out of his mind, he went straight to Kurosawa Yoshihito.

He wanted to confirm something with Kurosawa Ryohito.

"Pool weird talk?"

"That strange story is called 'Contract'."

Mizutani Makoto: "How can we defeat it?"

"Brother, you should have noticed too, right? It's not a single entity, but a combination of many individuals, forming a collective strange story... Every drowned corpse in there is a part of it. They are bound to the water by a contract and cannot come ashore, but underwater, the abilities that each drowned corpse can exert are far beyond imagination."

This means that the swimming pool is a huge amplification venue for them.

If Mizutani Makoto goes down, he will probably be torn to pieces.

"How do you want to deal with the contract?"

"With all due respect, there's no particularly effective way to handle this kind of strange story... Although the contract itself is a low-level strange story, it's probably much more difficult for you, young man, than for the woman in the gap. This is related to the underwater combat environment. Your swordsmanship is completely useless underwater, right?"

"The only solution I can think of is for you to crush it with your absolute strength and finish it off underwater."

I have this ability, so why do I need to ask you for advice?

Mizutani Makoto looked at him with dead eyes.

OK, I understand—Dung Monster +1.

After paying Kurosawa Ryohito for some relevant information, Mizutani Makoto temporarily logged off and opened his eyes on the tatami.

A small, cheap apartment with no room for computer equipment.

Mizutani Makoto didn't need a computer to look up information. He just got up from the bed, turned on the lights in the apartment, sat cross-legged and started a search engine.

--contract.

This is the name of this strange story.

This was one of the strange stories that circulated in many schools more than ten years ago.

According to legend, there was a young boy who went swimming near a beach during the summer vacation. While swimming, his ankle was suddenly entangled by something. He thought it was seaweed, but when he looked down, he found that there were a large number of drowned corpses hidden under the sea.

They dragged him into the deep sea, wanting to assimilate him into one of their own.

"I don't want to die!"

The boy just shouted like that.

So the drowned gave him a chance.

"As long as you sacrifice your classmates to us, we will let you go."

Driven by the desire to survive, the boy agreed to the drowned corpses' request.

The summer vacation ended soon after, and the boy narrowly escaped death. He wanted to escape the agreement he made with the drowned corpses, but a strong premonition arose in his heart that if he violated the agreement he made with the drowned corpses, he would definitely die in a very miserable way.

So, driven by extreme fear, during the swimming class the next week, the boy stood by the pool and trembled as he summoned the drowned corpses.

"I, I offer you all my friends."

The water in the swimming pool is shallow.

Even in the deep water area, the water level is only 1.5-1.8m.

There are professional teachers watching over them, so drowning is impossible.

But even in such a safe swimming pool, the entire class of students drowned and cried for help at the same time... The beings that caused them to drown were the drowned corpses that followed them from the ocean.

These drowned corpses are called "contracts".

This is also a typical horror story.

Driven by fear, the boy sacrificed his entire class to the drowned corpses for his own life. The entire swimming pool became a purgatory in an instant. Dozens of lives were exchanged for one person's life. This was the "contract" between the boy and the drowned corpses.

But can we expect ghost stories to have a spirit of contract?

That is impossible.

"In this urban legend, a young boy witnessed his classmates struggling in a pool, their cries for help ringing in his ears... He felt extreme fear and terror, and his last shred of conscience made him extremely desperate, so he shouted and canceled the contract with the drowned corpses."

"The students were rescued."

"But the boy is already dead."

"He didn't die on the spot, but died more than ten days ago. His body was pale and swollen, like a drowned corpse."