Amamiya Natsuki's eyes turned fierce. "Fujiwara, cut me another handful of chives."
The Beast-girl vengeful spirit lowered her head in defeat, but her mouth kept running. "...I'll remember this grudge!"
"Everyone can share their thoughts and opinions now." Shinomiya Kaguya folded her arms across her chest and spoke up. "Fujiwara, you go first."
"Ahem."
Fujiwara Chika raised her right fist to her mouth and gave two light coughs. Then she spoke in a clear voice. "First of all, the Vengeful Spirits in everyone's rooms are different, and their personalities seem to differ too. Some can be reasoned with, while others are quite dangerous."
"One player mentioned earlier that he'd gotten a skill from a Blind Box that could detect important items... He sensed something valuable on the Vengeful Spirit sharing his room, but he didn't dare ask about it, let alone take it."
As she spoke, Fujiwara Chika looked toward the Beast-girl vengeful spirit. "That player also said that Miss Cow had an important item on her."
"I'm not a cow!" The Beast-girl vengeful spirit bared a mouthful of jagged teeth. "Just look at my teeth! I'm a carnivorous cow!"
Kujo Asuka muttered under her breath, "You just ate a whole lot of chives."
"That's because you despicable, shameless humans forced me to!"
"Sorry."
"..."
Amamiya Natsuki looked at the Beast-girl vengeful spirit and held out his right hand. "Hand over what you're carrying."
The Beast-girl vengeful spirit denied it viciously. "I don't have anything on me."
"In that case, there's nothing else we can do." Amamiya Natsuki sighed and pinned the Beast-girl vengeful spirit against the edge of the bed. "Fujiwara, come over and take off all her clothes. I've always wondered: people are born without clothes, so why do Vengeful Spirits have them after they die?"
"We should investigate that properly today."
"Miss Vengeful Spirit, please cooperate."
"..."
The Vengeful Spirit knelt on the floor with her upper body pressed against the bed. Her position was so humiliating that her voice trembled with fury. "Ahhh! You shameless humans! Let go of me!"
Fujiwara Chika hesitated. "Taking a girl's clothes off and all..."
Amamiya Natsuki's voice turned faint. "She just called you fat."
"I'm not fat!" Fujiwara Chika's pretty face tightened as she quickly steeled her resolve. "I'm coming."
"Kujo, Rikka, you two join us," Amamiya Natsuki added. "Many hands make light work."
"C-coming..."
Kujo Asuka was in a daze.
Was it really right to pin a tearful Vengeful Spirit to the bed and strip her?
Why had she suddenly started to feel guilty?
As Fujiwara Chika began tugging at the Beast-girl vengeful spirit's denim shorts, the spirit finally cracked. "Stop, stop! I'll give it to you!"
"Huh? You're giving it up already?" Fujiwara Chika sounded disappointed. "I wanted to see where your tail was attached."
Amamiya Natsuki helped the Beast-girl vengeful spirit sit up again.
"The thing's on my chest." The Beast-girl vengeful spirit gritted her teeth, her eyes misty with tears. "Let go of me, and I'll give it to you."
"No need to trouble yourself." Amamiya Natsuki fixed his gaze on the deep valley between Miss Cow's breasts and spoke solemnly. "I can take care of this."
"Stare——"
The girls all turned to look at him.
"Natsuki-classmate." Fujiwara Chika crossed her arms over her chest. "Sexual harassment is a crime, you know."
If we're talking about crimes, you barged into someone else's room and forced her to eat grass. You're all accomplices!
"I'll get it."
Fujiwara Chika stepped forward without hesitation, reached into the Vengeful Spirit's cleavage, and began searching for the item.
"Wow, so big... My hand's sinking right in."
"And so soft."
"It's just cold, though. If it were warm, it'd be super comfortable to cuddle while sleeping."
You're overthinking it. If you cuddled something that big while sleeping and accidentally got it pressed against your face, you might suffocate!
"I think I finally understand what the Bible means by 'a land of milk and honey'..."
That's a region in ancient Canaan, not somewhere you're exploring!
A moment later.
"I found it."
Fujiwara Chika quickly pulled her hand out and opened her palm. A small black object of unknown material floated in the air.
"What is this?"
Amamiya Natsuki examined it closely, but the only prompt he could see was "a fragment."
Unable to figure out what the thing was for now, he put the fragment away. Shinomiya Kaguya continued, "I counted earlier. There are only eighteen survey forms in total."
That was right. At Shinomiya Kaguya's request, Amamiya Natsuki and the others had filled out survey forms too.
Amamiya Natsuki's form was simple.
[Roommate: Miss Sadako]
[Danger Level: Unknown]
[Attributes: Shy, social anxiety, beauty mark beneath her eye, makes you really want to bully her...]
"Is there a problem?" Fujiwara Chika asked, confused.
"The numbers don't add up." Amamiya Natsuki raised an eyebrow. "There are twenty rooms on the fourth floor."
Kujo Asuka guessed, "Could two players be trapped in their rooms and unable to get out?"
"Right at the start, a hapless player was jabbed by the nurse's needle and knocked to the floor. He was eliminated early," Amamiya Natsuki said. "That leaves one last room whose information is unknown."
Shinomiya Kaguya pondered. "Once the hallway lights come back on, let's go to the nurse's station and check the room information sheet."
"..."
The darkness lifted.
The hallway lit up again.
Amamiya Natsuki let the Vengeful Spirit off for the time being, then left the room with the girls and headed straight for the nurse's station.
"Kaguya-classmate and I can go over," Amamiya Natsuki said quietly. "You stay here."
This time, they were only checking the room list. Two people were enough.
"Be careful," Fujiwara Chika said, covering her mouth. "Make sure you don't make a sound."
Amamiya Natsuki nodded, then quietly went with Shinomiya Kaguya to the nurse's station.
The Swollen-faced Nurse was still daydreaming. As long as they didn't interrupt her slacking off, she didn't care how many times players came and went.
"Found it."
Right in front of the Swollen-faced Nurse, Amamiya Natsuki gently picked up the room information sheet he'd looked at earlier and finally spotted what was wrong.
The numbers didn't add up.
Every room had two occupants: one player and one Vengeful Spirit.
The players' names were the nicknames assigned by the game, such as [Cancer of the Earth] for Fujiwara Chika, [Evil Eye Wielder] for Rikka, and others like [Crimson Lotus of Karmic Fire] and [I'm Really Not a Loli-con]. The Vengeful Spirits' identities were listed as strings of black squares and couldn't be checked.
However, the last room on the list had only a string of black squares in its registration information. There was no player.
"So... there's no player in the last room?"
"Open up! Anti-pornography and illegal publications campaign!"
"This room is suspicious."
Amamiya Natsuki and Shinomiya Kaguya exchanged a glance, understanding each other without a word.
Everyone else had a double room, but you were living in a single suite. What was this stray dog doing here?
That was obviously suspicious.
"Let's keep going." Shinomiya Kaguya held up a slender finger and wrote out a message. "We should try to find the actual medical record."
Amamiya Natsuki nodded slightly. "Understood."
"..."
Since they didn't know the last room's patient details, Amamiya Natsuki and Kaguya had to use the most tedious method: search through the records one by one, eliminating the known roommates by comparison.
A moment later.
"Found it."
Amamiya Natsuki's eyes lit up slightly as he pulled a paper medical record from the file.
"This is it." Amamiya Natsuki signaled to Kaguya with his eyes. "Let's get out of here."
The two of them carried the medical record away from the nurse's station as quietly as they could.
The nurse who wanted to quit was still enthusiastically slacking off.
"You're finally back." Fujiwara Chika breathed a sigh of relief. "We might as well have just grabbed the nurse."
Grabbing her wouldn't be a problem. If they said she was Zhang San, and she said she wasn't Zhang San, she'd still be Zhang San.
The problem was that the other Vengeful Spirits couldn't leave their rooms, but the nurse wasn't restricted. If she chased them straight from the hallway into a room, who knew what might happen?
"Fujiwara-classmate, hurry up and get stronger." Amamiya Natsuki sounded hopeful. "Once you've changed everyone in the world's name to Zhang San, our team will be invincible."
"Impossible. Give it up," Fujiwara Chika cried out. "There's no way that could ever happen!"
"If you don't have dreams, how are you any different from a salted fish?"
"That's a fantasy, not a dream."
"The hallway's about to go dark again." Shinomiya Kaguya folded her right arm across her chest and interrupted them. "Let's get back to the room first."
"..."
Feeling guilty for going too far with Miss Cow earlier, Amamiya Natsuki led the girls back to his room.
At some point, Miss Sadako had crawled out again. She stood silently in the corner of the room with her head lowered, looking utterly creepy.
The girls, including Shinomiya Kaguya, all stopped in their tracks.
Only Amamiya Natsuki remained completely calm. He even raised a hand to greet her.
"Miss Sadako, we're back."
"..."
At the sight of Amamiya Natsuki, the "source of all evil," Miss Sadako's black hair trembled slightly. Without a word, she turned around and tried to crawl back into the television.
Just as expected, her breasts were too large, and she got stuck in the television again. The sight was enough to make anyone anxious.
"Natsuki-classmate, aren't you scared?" Fujiwara Chika asked curiously.
Amamiya Natsuki answered frankly. "Of course I am."
"Liar. You were smiling just now."
That was because none of them had seen Miss Sadako's true face. Next time, he'd part her hair down the middle and let them see for themselves. Then they wouldn't be scared.
She had a meek, wife-like face.
And a beauty mark beneath her eye.
Aside from her skin being too pale, she was the perfect wife.
As long as she was cute, being a Vengeful Spirit didn't matter. Xu Xuan, the hero of the common folk, and Ning Caichen, the ghost-riding knight, were perfect examples.
Before you continue