When Natsuki Subaru saw those words.
The turmoil in his heart, which had only just settled, surged once more into a raging storm.
He stood there as if struck by lightning, his expression constantly shifting between shock, confusion, suspicion, and fear... Like a fish out of water, he opened his mouth wide yet could not breathe, crushed by a suffocating pressure.
"Subaru?"
Rem beside him noticed something was wrong and asked curiously, "What's wrong with you?"
"The book... This book..."
As if caught in a nightmare, Natsuki Subaru stared fixedly at the scarlet garbled text on the page. He was so agitated that he could barely speak coherently.
"Is there something wrong with this book?"
Rem glanced at the page in confusion. It contained only ordinary folk fairy tales, with nothing unusual about it. "Isn't this just a storybook? Why are you making that face?"
"Wha... what..."
Natsuki Subaru froze, then tremblingly pointed at those lines. "Y-you can't see this garbled text?"
"Garbled text? What's that?"
Rem found this even stranger. "Isn't this just a perfectly ordinary fairy tale?"
"..."
Hearing that, Natsuki Subaru fell silent for a moment.
After all, he had died dozens of times. Though his heart was reeling, recalling Fang Mo's earlier teachings allowed him to force himself to calm down.
He had nearly concluded that this was a real otherworld, that those players had crossed here from another world, while he himself had crossed over in his physical body. That was why he was fundamentally different from Xie Dongwen, and Return by Death was likely the same.
Because he and they did not belong to the same power system.
But the appearance of this garbled text had directly overturned all his previous guesses.
Had he really been unconscious for years? Had he been hit by