Chapter 237: Water Corpse
Once the initial misunderstanding was finally cleared up, the heavy tension suffocating the group dissipated. The ordinary players collectively let out a long, shaky breath of relief.
In their eyes, Haruto and Sister Kaguya were clearly heavyweights—veterans hovering at the absolute apex of pro-player status. If something were to happen to them, the survival rate of this entire instance, which had just seen a glimmer of hope, would plummet into the abyss.
"To sell this concubine out without a second thought... Haruto, you truly are begging for a beating."
Kaguya grumbled, her dark eyes narrowing as she glided forward. She raised a delicate hand, fully intending to voice a far more colorful threat, before seemingly remembering the presence of the trembling outsiders. She forced her tone into something vaguely resembling polite restraint.
"How is that selling you out?" Haruto replied, his tone the very picture of casual innocence. "I was simply placing my utmost, unwavering trust in your boundless strength."
Without missing a beat, he tucked his glowing neon sign away into the void. He turned his gaze toward the decrepit teaching building looming in the distance, its jagged silhouette half-swallowed by the thick, rolling mist.
"Let's split up and search," Haruto instructed, his voice carrying an easy authority. "Keep your eyes peeled. Pay special attention to the notice boards, the main entrance of the teaching building, the gymnasium... places like that."
"I'll go check the lakeside in the East District."
The player who had just helped de-escalate the previous conflict stepped forward. He was an adult man bundled in a thick black down jacket, his expression remarkably steady for someone trapped in a death game. "The initial instance report specifically mentioned the lake as the primary incident location. If there are core clues, they're likely going to be there."
"Alright. Be careful out there."
Haruto stepped forward, offering a reassuring smile as he firmly patted the man's shoulder.
Taking their cues, the rest of the players quickly fractured into small, nervous groups and dispersed into the fog, leaving only Haruto and his three immediate companions behind.
Yotsuya Miko gently pulled Rin Setsu along, glancing between Haruto and Kaguya. "The two of us are heading to the teaching building. What about you and Sister Kaguya?"
Haruto shot her a flat, deadpan look that clearly screamed, Do you even need to ask?
Kaguya nodded gracefully, her dark hair shifting over her shoulders. "This concubine and Haruto will, naturally, be accompanying you."
Miko offered a quiet nod of understanding.
Beside her, a deep sense of reassurance bloomed in Rin Setsu's chest. Is this what it feels like to be carried by top-tier seniors? she thought, her tense shoulders finally dropping. They were so worried about the safety of the weaker members that they were willing to sacrifice their own search efficiency just to stick together.
As they handled the cracked, weed-choked pavement toward the teaching building, Miko still harbored a sliver of doubt. She glanced back at the two overpowered monsters trailing behind her.
"The lakeside is clearly a high-risk, high-reward area," Miko whispered. "Do we really not need to keep an eye on it?"
"Oh, don't worry your pretty little head over that." Kaguya reached out, lightly tapping Miko's shoulder with a knowing smirk. "Didn't you notice? Your dear Brother Haruto, in all his infinite cunning, patted the shoulder of that brave soul who volunteered for the lake."
Miko blinked, the realization hitting her instantly.
Rin Setsu, however, remained entirely lost. It wasn't until Miko leaned in and quietly explained the terrifying, space-bending mechanics of Haruto's 'Gap' that the girl's eyes widened to the size of saucers, staring at Haruto as if he were a walking cheat code.
They reached the teaching building. The heavy double doors were unlocked, hanging slightly askew on rusted hinges.
As Haruto pushed them open, a foul gust of stale, dust-choked air wafted out to greet them. The interior was a portrait of long-abandoned decay. Sickly yellow paint peeled from the walls in massive, curling flakes, and the floorboards groaned under a thick layer of grime.
Haruto casually reached into a tear in reality, pulling out several heavy-duty flashlights from his Gap and tossing them to the girls. Clicking them on, the harsh white beams cut through the gloom, sweeping over the debris-littered doorway and the rotting walls.
Eventually, the four of them came to a halt in front of a massive cork notice board.
The board was plastered with overlapping layers of yellowed, decaying school announcements. But pinned dead center, written in a substance that looked disturbingly like dried, flaking blood, were a few jagged lines of text.
[Hide-and-Seek is starting.]
[The one looking, is me.]
[Scope: The entire school.]
[Time: Midnight to six o'clock.]
[If found, you must stay with me forever.]
Beneath the final line, a simple, crude smiley face had been drawn. The disproportionate curve of the smile made it look exceptionally eerie under the glare of the flashlights.
"Well, it really is a game of Hide-and-Seek."
Haruto raised an eyebrow, entirely unfazed. He casually pulled out his smartphone, the camera shutter clicking loudly in the dead silence as he snapped a photo of the bloody rules. Despite his relaxed demeanor, he let out a dramatic, exaggerated sigh at the sheer cliché of playing a survival game with a vengeful spirit.
"Ahhh—!"
A sudden, blood-curdling scream shattered the silence, echoing from the distant direction of the lake.
"Let's go check it out!"
Haruto hadn't expected the cannon fodder to trigger a death flag quite this quickly. Just as he was preparing to rip open a Gap to instantly bypass the distance, he realized the situation was already escalating. He immediately bolted out the doors, his sneakers pounding against the pavement, with Kaguya and the two girls following closely behind.
The scream had carried far through the dense fog. By the time Haruto's group arrived at the muddy banks of the East District lake, players from the other search teams had already converged on the scene.
But it was abundantly clear they were too late.
Haruto's eyes swept the chaotic gathering before locking onto the surface of the lake. The water was stagnant, dark, and perfectly calm. Not a single ripple disturbed its glassy surface.
His gaze shifted to the man in the black down jacket—the one who had volunteered to come here.
The man stood near the water's edge, his chest heaving slightly, his expression tight but composed. Haruto clearly remembered that this man had paired up with another player during the initial split.
"Where is your teammate?" Haruto asked, his voice cutting through the panicked murmurs of the crowd.
The man took a slow, deep breath, his jaw tightening before he replied.
Before he could finish, the surrounding players erupted into horrified whispers. No one had anticipated a casualty this early into the instance.
The tall boy—the same one who had foolishly tried to clash with Kaguya at the entrance—stepped forward, his face pale and twisted with anxiety. "What exactly happened down here? Explain it clearly!"
"We just saw a corpse floating in the lake," the man in the down jacket explained, his voice steady despite the accusing glares. "And there was a diary floating in the water, not far from the body..."
"You're lying!"
The girl with the twin ponytails shrieked, her finger trembling violently as she pointed at the man in the down jacket. Her voice was pitched high with a mix of terror and furious accusation. "There's no corpse in that lake! And there's no diary! You pushed him in!"
"Why on earth would I push him?" The man in the down jacket furrowed his brow, looking at the hysterical girl as if she had lost her mind. "He was just a random teammate assigned through matchmaking. Even if I harbored some twisted desire to murder someone, I'd target a rival player. Killing him benefits me in absolutely no way."
The logic was sound. Several of the surrounding players exchanged glances and slowly nodded, the tension in their shoulders easing slightly at his rational defense.
Haruto, entirely uninterested in the drama of ordinary mortals, silently reached into his Gap and pulled out his glowing neon sign. Beside him, Kaguya held out an expectant hand, demanding one of her own.
"Boring! Fight, fight!" Haruto chanted dryly, waving the glowing sign back and forth.
"This concubine demands to see rivers of blood! Fight to the death!" Kaguya chimed in, her eyes sparkling with malicious amusement as she hoisted her own neon sign high into the air.
The suffocating, life-or-death atmosphere instantly shattered into a million pieces.
The terrified players slowly turned their heads, staring at the two overpowered beings with incredibly complicated, utterly baffled expressions. Is this... is this just the unique psychological defect of top-tier players?
The twin-tailed girl opened her mouth to scream another accusation, but her tall boyfriend quickly clamped a hand over her mouth, offering the surrounding crowd a desperate, apologetic grimace.
Ignoring the absurd peanut gallery, the man in the down jacket continued his report. "At the time, we wanted to climb down the bank to retrieve the diary. But the moment we stepped close to the edge, the floating corpse suddenly submerged and vanished. I told him to back up immediately, but he didn't take the warning seriously. He waded straight into the shallows. The absolute second his fingers brushed the cover of that diary, a pale hand shot out from beneath the dark water. It clamped onto his wrist and dragged him under with immense, unnatural force. I tried to grab him, but I was nearly pulled in myself."
As if the lake itself were listening to his testimony, the previously dead-calm water suddenly churned.
Gurgle... gurgle...
Massive, foul-smelling bubbles erupted from the depths, bursting on the surface and releasing the sickening stench of rot.
"There's something in the water!" a player shrieked, scrambling backward in the mud.
Haruto grabbed Kaguya's wrist, casually dragging the immortal princess forward until they were standing right at the very edge of the muddy bank, completely unbothered by the potential danger.
The man in the down jacket and another brave player quickly drew their flashlights, crossing the harsh white beams over the churning center of the lake.
Under the intense light, the water took on a sickly, murky green hue.
For a few agonizing seconds, there was nothing but the rising bubbles.
And then... a pale, bloated silhouette slowly ascended from the murky depths. It breached the surface with a sickening slosh. It was a humanoid figure, lying face up. The body was grotesquely swollen from prolonged immersion, the skin a translucent, waxy white. Long, tangled black hair fanned out across the water like a net, completely obscuring its bloated facial features.
It was the textbook definition of a drowned corpse.
The twin-tailed girl let out a choked gasp, her knees knocking together as she scrambled behind her tall boyfriend's broad back, burying her face in his jacket.
The corpse bobbed gently, floating terrifyingly close to the surface, before it suddenly stopped moving altogether. It simply 'lay' there, suspended just inches beneath the water, its hidden face angled upward as if it were quietly staring at the living through the murky green lens of the lake.
Plop...
A small, leather-bound diary breached the surface nearby. Caught in a phantom current, it slowly drifted toward the muddy bank, eventually coming to a dead halt about a meter and a half away from the shore.
Rin Setsu let out a quiet whimper. Blinded by fear, she subconsciously reached out and grabbed the hand of the person standing next to her for comfort. A second later, she looked down, realizing she was tightly gripping Haruto's hand. Her face instantly flushed a violent shade of crimson. She snatched her hand back as if she had been burned and practically dove behind Miko's shoulder.
Miko, to her credit, barely managed to maintain her composure, her knuckles white as she gripped the hem of her skirt.
"Is this... is this the student who drowned in the lore?"
The tall boy's voice was stretched thin, trembling under the weight of his fear. He squatted down in the mud, nervously calculating the distance between the shore and the floating book. "Does anyone have something long and thin?"
The surrounding players silently shook their heads, their eyes glued to the floating corpse.
The tall boy scowled, his gaze shifting toward the dark, ominous treeline in the distance. "Then we have no choice. We'll have to go into the woods, find a long, sturdy branch, and see if we can hook the diary over here."
"Baby, can't you just reach for it?"
The twin-tailed girl suddenly peeked out from behind his back, her voice entirely serious. "It's really not that far, and your arms are super long. You should be able to just lean over and grab it without actually stepping into the water, right?"
The tall boy froze. His entire body went rigid as he slowly turned his head to stare at his girlfriend.
The surrounding players were equally stunned, their jaws practically hitting the mud.
Even Haruto and Kaguya lowered their glowing neon signs, turning to look at the twin-tailed girl with expressions of deep, subtle awe.
In a death game, it was common for malicious players to trick random strangers into triggering traps. But this girl... this girl was actively, effortlessly trying to feed her own boyfriend to a water ghost.
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