Chapter 313 The Discovered Strange Doodles and Mai's Warning

There was no writing on it.

Not a single recognizable word.

Instead, the page was covered with crude scribbles so messy they looked like the random doodles of a small child.

Is... this supposed to be a person?

Kaguya stared at the drawing for quite a while but still couldn't tell what it was supposed to depict.

Yet for some reason, those chaotic, nearly indecipherable lines unsettled her.

They looked like nothing more than childish, nonsensical doodles.

And yet...

They gave her the disturbing sensation of being watched by something.

An intensely unsettling feeling.

Had Hayasaka left this behind?

And if she had, why would she draw something so strange?

Was it something she had seen?

Had the drawing turned out so crude because the situation had been too urgent, leaving her only enough time to sketch a rough outline?

No matter what, one thing could be confirmed.

Her personal maid, Hayasaka, was still alive.

At first, Kaguya had been so worried that her concern had clouded her judgment. She had been unable to remain calm whenever she thought about Hayasaka.

And after learning that Hayasaka had disappeared from Takumi's house at exactly the same time Takumi had been pulled into the Instance, her mind had become even more chaotic.

But then she realized something.

Her family's servants knew who Hayasaka Ai was.

The people she had sent out to investigate still knew who Hayasaka Ai was.

None of them had lost their recognition of her.

Which meant that even if the worst-case scenario had happened—if Hayasaka had truly been dragged into an Instance—she had to still be alive.

Otherwise, nobody would remember her at all.

Though even realizing that...

Wasn't enough to truly put Kaguya's mind at ease.

After all, in Takumi's account of the grueling loops he had fought through, he had very clearly mentioned the horrifying fate of being sewn into a living doll and becoming incapable of ever dying.

Hayasaka's willpower was nowhere near as strong as Takumi's.

If she had gone through something like that, there was a very real possibility that she had already suffered a complete mental breakdown.

Calm down. Calm down.

Kaguya repeatedly told herself.

She put the drawing down.

Out of caution, she first conducted a thorough mental self-examination. By solving math problems in her head and recalling various pieces of common knowledge she had deliberately memorized beforehand as mental checkpoints, she confirmed that her thought processes hadn't undergone any abnormal distortions.

Only then did she carefully examine the drawing again.

Afterward, she checked the other records and notes, but found no useful information.

Finally, she stood up and left the hidden observation post.

No matter how she looked at it, this was probably no longer something she could handle herself.

Kaguya realized that she needed help.

She needed help from Takumi.

She needed help from players capable of dealing with this sort of thing.

Hayasaka... please be safe...

The young woman prayed silently in her heart.

What nobody saw was that, at some point, the crude drawing seemed to change ever so slightly.

It was as if whatever had been drawn on the paper had twitched.

...

The weather shifted from sunny to overcast with surprising speed.

Just half an hour earlier, warm sunlight had been shining across the city.

Half an hour later, torrential rain was pounding the streets.

Takumi sat by the window of a café, casually sipping coffee while talking with Mai over the phone.

"Yeah, that's right. Miko and I both received the same Blessing."

As he spoke, Takumi noticed a noisy commotion on Mai's end of the call.

It sounded like quite a few people were making a racket.

"Then you'd better make good use of that power. With a Red Moon-level Blessing and your abilities, Dark Night-level games shouldn't be much of a challenge anymore. Hey, hey, stop drinking so much! If you can't handle your liquor, don't try showing off!"

Mai's voice was much louder than it had been inside the Instance.

There were also people around her shouting about drinking and making toasts. It sounded like her team was having some sort of gathering.

"I know. People always say that surviving a great disaster brings great fortune afterward. I've been carefully studying the effects of these Blessings lately."

As for the handgun, Takumi had not mentioned it to Mai.

In fact, neither Kaguya, Miko, nor Chika knew about it.

At present, the only person aware of the item was Maki, who had established a mental link with him.

Aside from testing its power and accuracy on birds on the day he first obtained the Blessing, Takumi had conducted several additional experiments together with Maki.

He designated a pencil as the target.

After visually confirming its appearance, he had Maki carry the pencil up to the rooftop of the Teaching Building.

Meanwhile, Takumi left the school and took a train to a location over ten kilometers away.

Without being able to see the pencil at all and knowing only its approximate location, he fired a single shot.

Moments later, Maki watched as a bullet that seemed to come from nowhere instantly shattered the pencil.

The handgun's power appeared even more absurd than Takumi had initially expected.

Afterward, he tested the switching mechanism between the unlimited-ammunition mode and the ten-bullet mode.

This time, he used the nearly out-of-control Obsession Item, the Faceless Head-Eater, as a test subject.

Finding a secluded location, he released the thing and took aim.

He discovered that switching between ammunition modes wasn't automatic or mandatory.

It was entirely under his control.

So he first activated the unlimited-ammunition mode and opened fire on the Obsession Item.

Within a single second, he unleashed more than three hundred rounds, pinning the severed head against a wall and preventing it from moving.

Only then did he switch to the second form—the limited-ammunition mode.

A single shot was enough to seal the thing completely, leaving it unable to move.

To test the recovery rate of the ten specialized rounds, Takumi fired five consecutive sealing bullets into the Aberration.

The result was that the Obsession Item's head became completely rigid and lifeless.

Through feedback from the handgun, he then confirmed an important detail:

The moment the ten anti-Aberration rounds began to be consumed, a twenty-four-hour countdown would start.

When the countdown ended, the ammunition would be fully replenished.

It didn't matter how many rounds remained in the cylinder when the timer expired.

The ammunition would still be restored to full capacity.

This led Takumi to wonder whether he could remove all the bullets from the weapon and stockpile them while waiting for the gun to replenish itself, thereby accumulating a massive reserve of ammunition.

Unfortunately, that proved impossible.

The gun's bullets existed only as part of the firearm itself.

The moment he removed a round from the weapon, it immediately vanished.

He also tried storing individual bullets inside his watch.

That failed as well.

Unlike the Rescue Team Badge left behind by Kyosei, this handgun was a complete manifestation of a Blessing.

It couldn't be placed inside the watch's storage space.

The weapon could only appear or disappear according to Takumi's will.

As for where it went whenever it disappeared...

He had no idea.

As a side note, even after all ten special rounds had been expended, the weapon could still switch into its unlimited-ammunition mode.

The ammunition used by the two modes appeared to be completely separate systems.

In fact, Takumi discovered that even if he removed the magazine and held nothing but the empty gun itself, it could still fire.

However, he also noticed something else.

When the magazine still contained Blessing rounds, every shot fired in unlimited-ammunition mode carried nearly the destructive power of a small rocket. It was terrifying enough that even a near miss could literally tear a person apart.

But once all ten Blessing rounds had been exhausted, the power of the unlimited-ammunition mode dropped significantly.

At that point, its bullets were only about as powerful as submachine-gun rounds.

Of course, this was a submachine gun capable of firing over three hundred rounds per second.

In reality, the rate of fire could probably be pushed even higher, but Takumi's body simply couldn't handle it.

The weapon's recoil was far stronger than that of an ordinary firearm, and during sustained fire the impact accumulated almost instantaneously.

Under normal circumstances, firing more than three hundred rounds in a single second was already Takumi's limit.

If he activated Hedda's Berserk Blessing, however, he suspected he might be able to unleash over a thousand rounds in a single second.

This thing is basically a game-breaking weapon of mass destruction. It could wipe out an entire city with ease. I suppose I should be grateful it ended up in the hands of someone with at least a little sense of justice.

That was the conclusion Takumi reached after finishing his tests.

As for why he chose not to tell anyone about it, that decision was actually related to a warning from Mai.

During the destruction of Fujihana Middle School, one of Alice's Obsession Items that ended up in Takumi's possession was the black umbrella made of human skin.

The problem was that the umbrella had originally come from the Women-Face Gang—a group that had never possessed the ability to challenge Uncanny Campus in the first place.

Mai therefore speculated that some Red Moon-level player had deliberately distributed problematic Obsession Items to lower-level players as test subjects.

If that was true, then the owner of those items would almost certainly suspect that Fujihana Middle School's destruction was connected to the group that had wiped out the Women-Face Gang—namely Takumi and his companions.

There was a good chance that person would eventually come probing for answers.

Because of the mental link between them, Takumi could remotely extend the willpower-sharing function of the watch to Maki.

For everyone else, however, that wasn't currently possible.

The ability required Takumi to die once before it could be activated for someone, and at the moment only Chika fulfilled that condition.

So until the hidden player behind the scenes revealed themselves, Takumi felt it was best to keep this outrageously powerful trump card hidden.

"Oh, right. There's something I forgot to ask before. After returning, did you go back to your own house? And what about Miko-chan? She got caught up in all this at school, right? Has she gone back to her classroom? Has she returned there at all?"

The discussion about Blessings lasted only a short while before ending.

Immediately afterward, however, Mai's tone became much more serious as she asked a completely different question.

"I went back once. Miko hasn't returned to school yet. She's been resting at home these past couple of days. Why?"

Sensing that Mai was about to say something important, Takumi immediately focused his attention.

"The chances are low, but if you ever see something that clearly doesn't belong to you—usually things like children's doodles—you need to be careful."

"Whatever you do, don't touch them."

"Don't alter them. Don't take them away. Don't do anything."

"Just leave them where they are. After a couple of days, they'll disappear on their own."

Mai paused before continuing.

"In the few documented cases where Fujihana Middle School manifested in the real world, there were sometimes accompanying anomalies connected to Hayadate Elementary School. They're subtle enough that most people never notice them."

"And that Alice likes throwing people she doesn't approve of into Hayadate Elementary School."

"There was once a player who triggered the Friend Rule. Alice thought he was too ugly, so she somehow tossed him into Hayadate Elementary School instead. That's actually how he survived."

"You might hear that and think Hayadate Elementary School doesn't sound so bad."

"And honestly, the survival rate there really is quite high."

"After all, it's a place that follows the rules."

"But trust me—if you can avoid getting involved, avoid it."

"It may not be the most dangerous place."

"But it's absolutely the most torturous one."

"I can't tell you exactly what happens there, but everyone who's been there once never wants to go a second time."

"Myself included."

There was unmistakable regret in Mai's voice.

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