"Mr. Yan...!"
"...Yuki?"
"What was that sound?"
"It should be my missing friend...! Mr. Yan and I came here to find her. This... it can't be..."
"...Mr. Yan!? Mr. Yan!"
Seeing Yan safe and sound, Akane Tsunemori finally relaxed. She also saw Funahara Yuki, and the two girls embraced. Funahara Yuki burst into tears, but this was not the time to let their guard down completely. Izumimiya Toyohisa was definitely not the only criminal.
That was Yan's intuition.
"The incident isn't over yet!"
"This is Hound 1. Can anyone hear me?"
"Did you find something?" Ginoza caught up as well. He had made a wrong judgment earlier, yet his expression remained so calm that no one knew what he was really thinking.
"Blood reactions... It's practically a battlefield... Not just three or four people... Dozens... no, perhaps nearly a hundred people have died..." The Automated Machine detected a massive amount of blood. Such a quantity could only mean a great many deaths.
Ginoza's brows drew tightly together. What kind of bloody, brutal person would commit such a frenzied atrocity?
"You were lured here...?"
Tomomi Masaoka pressed.
"Mass murder... torture? What was the criminal's goal?"
"Wasn't it a game?" Yan's words left everyone stunned. She continued, "This is a hunting game. Rather than saying I was a target meant to be killed, it would be more accurate to say I was prey lured into a hunting ground, about to be hunted. This isn't an ordinary crime scene. It's a hunting game, and everyone here is prey in the hunting ground..."
Yan shared the same view of that bold speculation. He thought for a moment before saying, "Yeah, no... I could feel it ever since we arrived underground. Doesn't this place feel like the stage of some war-themed game?"
"Virtual imagery would