Chapter 307 The Judgment That Awaits All Dark and Twisted Things

A shrill scream rang beside his ears.

As he fell through what seemed like an endless descent, Takumi could feel the monster still imprisoned within his body letting out a miserable, agonized wail.

"Well, well. Looks like somebody's defenses just got completely shattered."

He couldn't help but mutter the observation.

[Impossible... impossible, impossible, impossible... Alice did nothing wrong! Alice just wanted to make friends! Alice only wanted friends! Alice did nothing wrong Alice did nothing wrong did nothing wrong did nothing wrong did nothing wrong—]

The noise was so loud Takumi felt as though his eardrums were about to burst.

But honestly?

The only thing he felt right now was joy.

Pure, absolute joy.

Joy to the point that his expression had become completely twisted, the kind of exaggerated anime face only a two-dimensional character could make.

Everything around him was becoming increasingly fragmented.

It looked exactly like the final scene of the Red Nut Grey Cave repeating itself.

The once-intact Instance was collapsing violently, step by step marching toward destruction.

The collapse of the Red Nut Grey Cave had happened because one of its core obsessions, Andres, had fulfilled his final wish and found peace.

As for this place...

Judging from appearances, the cause seemed to be the victims themselves.

Takumi could see those victims gradually fading away.

Those who had never found peace.

Those who had been harmed by Alice.

The students of Fujihana Middle School.

As the judgment handed down by the court under the players' control took effect, they were finally freed from their shackles. One after another, they began breaking free from the Instance and obtaining true rest.

[Impossible... impossible... Alice did nothing wrong... Alice did nothing wrong...]

The voice screamed and wailed inside Takumi's body.

The sight of it was truly pathetic.

Though rather than throwing a tantrum after losing, it was more accurate to say that its entire worldview had just been shattered.

To Alice, everything she had done—the torture, the killing—had genuinely been friendship.

Correct.

Beautiful.

Natural.

The way things were supposed to be.

There had always been voices opposing her.

Voices arguing against her.

But there had also always been supporters.

People who told her she was right.

People who told her what she was doing was correct.

As long as those supporters existed, her understanding had never changed.

On the contrary, it had only grown more stubborn and deeply rooted.

But now...

Every part of that understanding had been crushed.

Completely.

Utterly.

Destroyed.

For Alice, this was the first time she had experienced something so thorough.

No...

The second time.

The first time someone had given her such a crushing defeat, there had been only one person.

But this time, she discovered that the entire world stood against her.

Countless voices drowned her out.

Turned her and her supporters into the minority.

Reduced everything she had built to rubble.

Such a failure...

Such a defeat...

Was something she had never experienced before.

Something she could never accept.

[Alice... was a good child...]

[Alice was always obedient... Alice always listened to her teachers...]

[Alice always did what everyone expected of her... so why was Alice wrong...?]

The fall came to an end.

Takumi rose from the shattered ruins.

Rose from the foul-smelling wasteland made of broken buildings and human corpses.

Beside his ears echoed Alice's pitiful voice, still unable to calm down.

"Would you shut up already? What's the point of all that nonsense?"

The moment he snapped back and took a step forward—

He immediately dropped onto the ground.

The ruins were still shaking violently.

As the collapse of the Instance accelerated, Fujihana Middle School was inching closer and closer to complete destruction.

The shadows grew larger.

Takumi looked up.

The school's Teaching Building was falling directly toward him.

"Holy shit—"

BOOM!!!

Amid the explosive crash, Takumi activated his Blessing and burst forward in a sudden acceleration, dodging clear before the building could crush him.

[Alice wants friends... Alice only wants friends...]

The voice of the Aberration in his mind was gradually growing weaker.

Takumi paused.

He could feel its presence fading.

Its power was nowhere near what it had been before.

Even if he stopped focusing on suppressing it with his willpower, Alice could no longer break free of his body.

She could no longer control him.

Nor could she escape from him.

So that's it...

I see now.

After a brief moment of thought, Takumi finally understood the true nature of Alice's existence.

Understood what kind of thing she really was.

She was neither human nor Aberration.

Or rather, she possessed characteristics of both.

Alice was more like an incredibly complex information-based lifeform.

She possessed human intelligence and emotions.

She possessed the terrifying powers and rule-based nature of an Aberration.

But in exchange...

She required the recognition of others in order to continue existing.

Those dead students from before, those victims, had all been capable of providing recognition of Alice's existence. As long as they remembered her, her existence was guaranteed.

But now the Instance itself had been damaged.

More and more Aberrations were breaking free from the Instance and finally finding peace.

The number of beings capable of recognizing Alice was steadily decreasing, and as a result, she was growing weaker and weaker, gradually losing the power she once possessed.

One thing was certain.

Once the core obsession found peace, once this Instance completely collapsed, and once Takumi absorbed those researchers—the people who could not find peace, those who supported Alice or had helped create her—into the watch...

Alice would effectively lose all remaining sources of recognition.

At that point, she would fade away completely.

The equivalent of death.

Of course, there were still players who remembered her. There were still netizens around the world who knew of a censored and heavily edited version of Alice's story.

But judging from her current condition, recognition from ordinary living people seemed capable of sustaining only a very limited existence. Or perhaps recognition that lacked extremes—neither the fanatic devotion of her fans nor the hatred and terror of her victims—simply could not maintain a twisted existence like Alice.

So even if people continued to remember her in the future, it would not change the fact that she was about to perish.

[Alice... what did Alice do wrong...?]

[Even though Alice always did what everyone told her to do...]

[Even though Alice always tried so hard to make friends...]

The muttering continued endlessly.

Takumi let out another sigh.

For the first time, he genuinely felt irritated.

"Stop pretending, will you? Do you really think I don't know? You've always known exactly what you were doing. You know perfectly well what you are. What's the point of keeping up this act? This ending is exactly what you deserve."

As he spoke, Takumi started walking forward.

It didn't take long before he found Miko lying unconscious among a pile of rubble.

It looked as though she had sensed something when the world shattered earlier. Otherwise, she wouldn't have ended up in this condition.

Come to think of it, they had fallen from an incredible height—the equivalent of dropping from a building more than ten stories tall. Yet Takumi had remained completely unharmed even without activating his Blessing.

And now that he had finally found Miko, she wasn't injured either.

It almost seemed as though some kind of force had protected them.

[Alice... wanting friends... is that wrong?]

Having finally realized that Takumi was actually speaking to her, Alice asked the question in a confused voice.

"Your idea of making friends is torturing people? Making them wish they were dead? Do you really not know whether the people you 'befriended' ever considered you a friend? Just die already. I'm sick of dealing with you."

After checking Miko and confirming she was fine, Takumi prepared to pick her up and carry her away.

But at that exact moment—

A powerful hallucination suddenly swallowed everything.

The surroundings transformed back into the Teaching Building of Fujihana Middle School.

He found himself sitting once again inside Class 015 of the second year.

Students slept at their desks.

The candle flames continued burning.

It was as though everything had returned to the beginning.

As though none of it had ever happened.

Takumi merely sneered.

The entire illusion shattered instantly.

"You can't block my senses anymore."

He spoke quietly.

Immediately afterward, Alice's increasingly hysterical voice echoed through his mind.

[No... no, no, no, no...]

[Teacher! Teacher!]

[Please become Alice's friend!]

[You understand Alice so well—you can definitely become Alice's friend!]

[You definitely can!]

[You definitely can!]

Drip—

A drop of water landed on Takumi's forehead.

The light vanished.

He found himself back inside the narrow crevice of the Red Nut Grey Cave.

Back in the nightmare where he had been trapped between rocks for more than a month, unable to escape.

Yet that scene disappeared in the very next moment.

"Okay, I'll admit it. That one was actually pretty scary. If you'd opened with that, you might've fooled me."

Takumi sighed.

Then he saw horrifying porcelain dolls approaching from every direction.

He saw scalding hot water pouring down from above.

Naturally, that scene failed to last as well.

The Alice sealed inside his body appeared to have merged through some unknown method with the Alice parasitizing his mind, allowing her to create nightmare scenarios based on Takumi's own experiences.

To be fair, for a dying struggle, she was putting up quite a fight.

Unfortunately, Takumi already knew she had reached the end of the road.

There was no way he would fall for any of it now.

Step.

Footsteps approached from behind.

Takumi turned around.

He saw Hirano Sōsuke advancing toward him one step at a time while chambering a round in his handgun.

Alice's shriek became especially piercing.

Countless images and sounds crashed together.

They assaulted his senses from every direction, almost tearing them apart.

Yet Takumi simply stood up.

Simply faced Hirano Sōsuke.

And calmly waited without moving an inch.

The gun rose.

The trigger was pulled.

Bang!

The bullet passed straight through Takumi's body.

Yet he remained standing exactly where he was.

Not a single wound appeared on him.

Alice—with her long, silky golden hair—staggered backward.

Clutching the hole the bullet had punched through her chest, she collapsed to her knees.

Her face was blank with disbelief as she slowly looked up.

At Takumi, who had turned to face her.

And at Sōsuke, who had walked up beside Takumi and was already leveling the gun for another shot.

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