Escape Game

"..."

After figuring out exactly what it was that he had touched, Bai Zhi fell silent for two seconds.

In such extreme darkness, suddenly reaching out and touching an icy-cold hand would make a normal person panic and retreat, or involuntarily scream and fling that hand away.

But clearly, Bai Zhi was not a normal person.

How did that saying go again?

As long as I have no morals, you can't morally blackmail me. By the same logic, after a brief hesitation, Bai Zhi decisively chose to advance by retreating. Not only did he have no intention of pulling his hand back, he even reached over with his other hand.

In that instant, countless seniors flashed through his mind, until finally only two figures remained: Yoshikage Kira, who cherished hands like his life, and a certain perverted Kazuma.

The former was easy enough to understand. As for the latter... the expression Megumin made when Kazuma touched her hand while they were sleeping in the same room had left a deep impression on him.

After all, in matters like this, it was all about who got embarrassed first.

Honestly, after feeling that icy hand for several seconds, Bai Zhi found it rather smooth and quite comfortable to the touch...

Half a minute later, perhaps disgusted by his behavior, the icy hand silently withdrew.

"Damn, what a pity..."

Bai Zhi withdrew his hand, his face full of regret.

Any Anomaly had to follow certain rules. Take the helpful Teacher Chen from last night, for example. Although he was some indescribable mysterious existence, as long as Bai Zhi felt no fear, Teacher Chen could do nothing to him. He had even helped with homework and taken out the trash—a Tool Person in every sense of the word.

By that same reasoning, what were the rules of this Anomaly that had dragged him in here today?

Based on the information he knew so far, that Anomaly looked like a cute little boy with a Backpack, and it liked playing Shadow Stomping alone. Before him, five innocent students had already fallen victim to it, though he had no idea whether they were dead. Yet even though his shadow had clearly not been stepped on, it had come looking for him and dragged him...

The thought suddenly struck him, and Bai Zhi froze.

If this Anomaly's rule was that anyone whose shadow was stepped on would be dragged in here, then his experience clearly did not fit that rule.

But from another perspective, using Teacher Chen from yesterday as a reference, if these Anomalies possessed intelligence close to—or even beyond—that of humans, then this Anomaly had become increasingly brazen even with official professional handlers at the school, perhaps even downstairs... It seemed there was more to this than met the eye.

Shaking his head, Bai Zhi continued feeling his way around the dark classroom.

About a minute later, a deeply bizarre sound came from the flickering corridor outside. Upon hearing that hoarse, grating noise, Bai Zhi unconsciously frowned and half-closed his eyes.

That strange sound was simply challenging the limits of human endurance. To describe it specifically... it was like fingernails slowly scraping forcefully across a blackboard.

Holding his breath and forcing himself to endure the demonic sound drilling into his head, Bai Zhi slightly raised his head and looked out into the hallway.

In the corridor outside, a Long-Haired Woman with only half her body remaining crawled sinuously forward along the floor. A long trail of blood was left in her wake, and that bizarre sound came from her mouth. The scream from earlier had probably been much the same.

After silently watching the Unknown Creature crawl past his classroom, Bai Zhi thought for a moment, then lowered his head and deftly removed a chair leg from a chair. As he did so, he muttered under his breath.

"I thought it would be some kind of Ghost, but it's actually this sort of Zombie-Type Monster that can be touched and physically attacked... Are you kidding me?"

Seeing that the danger had moved away, Bai Zhi had no intention of staying in this dark classroom that Yoshikage Kira might have liked. Gripping the chair leg, he pushed open the classroom's back door and walked out.

He glanced back at the turn where the blood trail vanished, then carefully pressed himself against the wall and headed in the direction the Monster had come from.

This bizarre place had been full of sinister hints from the very beginning: the scream from behind, the pitch-black classrooms on either side, and the flickering Lights ahead. Every one of them urged those who entered to make a choice.

With an unknown Monster about to enter the intersection behind you, would you risk hiding in the dark classrooms on either side, or follow the Lights and run forward?

Most of the time, a normal person would choose the latter. It was a simple Multiple Choice Question, because humans always had an inexplicable fear of darkness.

But what if one condition was added to it—[shadow]?

Bai Zhi had not forgotten that he had entered this place for no apparent reason because his shadow had been caught. It was a very subtle hint: the shadow exposed beneath the Lights represented danger. If he wanted to escape danger, he had to make sure his shadow did not exist as much as possible.

What happened in that dark classroom afterward also proved this. After that hand appeared, the Monster in the corridor had not shown up until a minute later. That extra minute had clearly been time given to those frightened people who fled the classroom to escape.

Of course, these were all Bai Zhi's own deductions. He did not know whether they were true, but in the current situation, choosing the most likely possibility was the wisest course of action.

The corridor was not very long. Before long, Bai Zhi reached the intersection. When he cautiously poked his head around the corner, he saw a door emitting a faint white glow.

At that exact moment, the strange sound came from behind him. Perhaps some mechanism had been triggered, because the Half-Corpse Monster had returned the way it came. The moment it saw him, it let out a strange cry and crawled toward him at an utterly unnatural speed.

It looks a lot like an Abnormal Organism.

With no interest in wasting words on the Monster, Bai Zhi gripped the chair leg, sprang up, and rushed straight through the faintly glowing Light Door.