To Hell with Your Escape Room Rules!

Morikawa Kiyoshi

The archives mention the Japan school doctor who secretly released eleven prisoners of war in 1944 and was shot on the spot.

He turned the brown paper bag upside down and shook it twice, and several rolls of black and white film and a stack of musty-smelling paper reports fell out.

Sing Sing pulled out a piece of film and looked at it in the dim light of the control panel.

The scene freezes in the Western-style restaurant of the mansion.

The deformed monster with a head the size of a water tank and blue-purple skin was curled up on a dining chair that was too small for its size.

Those empty, Black Sky eyes stared blankly at the table, a pair of chopsticks held between two thick, tree-trunk-like fingers.

It was trying to put a pinch of white rice into that mouth that stretched to its ears.

In the next frame, the monster's grip was slightly off, and the chopsticks fell onto the table.

In the third image, two thick, high-voltage electrodes hang from the ceiling, and the monster is writhing in agony on the ground.

The label corner reads: 1944, Blue-Type Adapted Body A-01

Electric shock punishment.

To test whether it retained any human eating habits, these beasts were taming it using the most primal sense of pain.

Like the black bear in the circus learning to ride a bicycle by being whipped, but it's clearly a person!

Sing Sing turned to the second page of the stack of paper reports.

A black-and-white ID photo is clipped to the upper right corner with a paperclip.

The photo shows a young man in his early twenties with a buzz cut, wearing a coarse cloth jacket commonly seen in northern China.

His features were upright, revealing a down-to-earth quality honed from farm work.

Name: Gu Qingshan

Place of origin: Zhili

Age: 22

Rating: Exceptional Chosen One

Looking at the vibrant faces in the photos, and then thinking of that gliding blue monster outside...

A sense of absurdity and anger welled up inside me.

Turning to the next page, the shocking experimental records completely exposed the dirtiest side of Toyo High School.

The main title reads "The God-Making Project".

Sing Sing sneered. These rats from the gutter dare to talk about creating gods?

The first line is Gu Qingshan's ability assessment: absorb biological tissues and briefly replicate life characteristics.

Sing Sing read line by line, biting his way through the inside of his mouth.

He said something during his first trip out, when he was looking for the Toad in North America.

There are no useless abilities in this world, only HR personnel who don't know how to assign positions.

749 Bureau took those marginalized Mutants back, gave them special positions, paid social security, and allowed them to use their abilities to build dams, plant trees, and live normal lives.

But it's different here.

To those beasts in the East Asia Specially Qualified Persons Investigation Unit, ability users weren't even human; they were just a piece of useful meat.

They didn't need Gu Qingshan to fight; they only needed his body as a garbage can that could hold an infinite amount of trash.

Kurokawa Sōichi ordered that the cells, blood, and bone marrow of the other thirty-two compatriots be forcibly injected into Gu Qingshan's body.

Even the removed organs and tissues were sutured back in batches.

They were trying to create a super bioweapon capable of using thirty-three different abilities from this young China man.

The experimental results were disastrous.

After being injected and fused with each other, the thirty-two compatriots who had been drained of their resources died tragically one after another due to genetic collapse, rejection reactions, and endless torture.

Their remains were treated like medical waste by these so-called researchers; they were covered with lime and sealed in the isolation zone on the B7 underground level.

Gu Qingshan, the only survivor, endured endless torment as thirty-three genes fought and devoured each other within his body.

His bones were broken and then reassembled, his skin turned a morbid bluish-purple due to rejection and necrosis, and his head swelled to the size of a water tank as his cells proliferated indefinitely.

Reason was erased, and in the end, it was transformed into a Stitched Monster that had lost the ability to feel pain and its memory, leaving only instinct.

At the end of the report, Kurokawa Sōichi wrote a line of annotations with a pen dipped in ink, looking quite pleased with himself.

"This hideous appearance, resembling a demon from hell, was thus named 'Blue Oni'."

This living adaptation observation area is a breeding ground for treacherous creatures, a testing ground.

Researchers are observing whether this super-Sketchup still retains faint human memories.

If it shows any signs of losing control or attempting to resist, the electric shock system embedded in the wall will activate, ruthlessly erasing its last vestige of humanity.

The last few pages of this report are accompanied by a document titled "Blue Oni Observation and Prevention General Rules," stamped with a blood-red seal.

Sing Sing scanned the text quickly, his eyes growing increasingly menacing with each glance.

[General Provisions]

1. There are no weapons in this mansion that can harm it; all those who try to resist eventually become a new version of it.

2. Remember the appearance, voice, catchphrases, and walking habits of each companion who came in with you. They are very good at preserving the characteristics of the deceased in life.

3. The only warning sign that it is near you is when you hear a sharp string sound.

Sing Sing recalled the jarring string music from earlier; it turned out to be the automatic warning from the alarm system inside the wall when it detected the creature's mutation.

Below that are a series of complex rules for passage and the use of hiding spots.

No wonder the Blue Oni just stood outside when I hid inside the closet.

These researchers created an uncontrollable monster themselves, and were then forced to write this humiliating escape manual.

They drove Gu Qingshan into a mindless killing machine, and he now hides like a rat in this so-called Western-style mansion, guarding the ghosts he created.

That's incredibly ironic.

Sing Sing Chow carefully folded the "Rules" document, which was full of absurdities, and stuffed it into his Mini Dimensional Box along with the other documents.

This is not an escape room game.

Every rule was tested with human lives.

In the corridor outside the monitoring room, a sharp string melody rang out.

"Smack... smack..."

Those long, bluish-purple legs stopped outside the wall of the monitoring room, which was disguised as a bookshelf.

"Huff... huff..."

Its enormous head, as big as a water tank, was pressed against the wall, and its uneven eyes peered through a crack in the wall.

Sing Sing didn't hide in the metal cabinet next to him; he slowly pulled out the Pig Butchering Knife.

"The rules state that no weapon can harm you?"

Sing Sing's eyelids drooped, and his voice showed not a trace of the slick, mercenary nature he sometimes displayed.

He raised his eyes, his gaze piercing through the gap to meet those eyes.

Endless heartache and overwhelming killing intent lingered in his chest. "Fellow villager... I've always been stubborn since I was a child, I just won't believe in evil."

"I'm taking you home, taking those thirty-two fellow villagers from the basement home. Who dares to stop me..."

The Blade flipped, its cold light illuminating the contours of his face.

"I chopped him into minced meat."