Chapter 5 – Encounter 【2】

Now then, what should I do from here? I stood in front of the door, lost in thought.

Inside the room, grotesque monsters and tentacles were positioned. Their behavior patterns were extremely simple. The monsters patrolled set territories and would chase Hanako if they spotted her. However, they couldn’t leave the room. The tentacles on the ceiling would attack if you went directly underneath them, but you could easily avoid them by crouching or crawling on all fours.

The problem was that the monsters and tentacles were together. If you crouched or crawled to avoid the tentacles, your movement speed decreased accordingly.

And the monster’s movement speed was roughly the same as Hanako’s walking speed. Depending on the timing, it was entirely possible to get caught.

Fortunately, this room had three doors. Two were positioned on opposite sides of the room, and one was in the center. Therefore, the method to get through this room was as follows:

1. 1. Wait for the monster in front of you to head toward the opposite door.

1. 1. Once the monster reaches the opposite door, run to the center door while avoiding tentacles.

1. 1. Exit through the center door and wait until the monster returns to its original position.

1. 1. Once you’re far enough from the monster, return to the room and run to the opposite door.

If a monster caught you, it would bite your arm. And if your HP reached 0 while being bitten, the next scene would show you getting bitten not just on the arm, but all over your body as you died.

On the other hand, if you were caught by tentacles and your HP reached 0, you’d be strangled to death. When you get strangled to death in this game, Hanako always wets herself. The urine is a pretty yellow color, which is probably caused by excessive vitamin intake.

Of course, if you don’t drink much water and eat nutritious food, you can produce yellow urine even without excessive vitamin intake, but Hanako leaks a large amount of urine, so it must be that. You can really feel the creator’s love and obsession with vitamins.

But let’s get back on track. When your HP reaches 0 in this labyrinth, you die—but you don’t actually die. Instead, you suffer various horrible fates in a state where you can’t do anything, condemned to eternal suffering. That’s not happening.

In the first place, where’s the demand for scenes of a high school boy being attacked by tentacles and wetting himself?

Huh? There’s demand for that? I don’t know that world.

“Haah… Let’s go back.”

I completely gave up and returned to the first room.

I’m not going to clear this. If I keep going, battles with the bosses on each floor are inevitable, and the final boss, the Demon God, has three transformation phases—the last one being a naked bullet hell shooter. Maybe if it were a cute girl, but there’s no demand in this industry for a naked high school boy.

Furthermore, even if I defeat the Demon God, escape is impossible anyway. I already know it’s a bad ending, so there’s no way I’m deliberately fighting the Demon God.

I don’t know why I’m in this world, but if I can’t escape no matter what, I’ll just live here on the first floor, the safest place. And someday I’ll meet Hanako when she transfers here, and we’ll build a happy family.

Well, maybe Hanako already cleared the labyrinth before I arrived, and even if Hanako transfers here in the future, a normal romance probably isn’t possible in an environment like this.

But really, why am I here? I felt like I saw my life flash before my eyes earlier—could this be an illusion created by my brain right before I die?

Maybe the real me was hit by a truck and became a vegetable, lying in a hospital bed. By the way, a “vegetable” isn’t a human who breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen like a plant, but rather someone in an unconscious state due to brain trauma or brain disease.

But if that’s the case, why did my brain create this labyrinth of all things? There are plenty of places more suitable for me than here. Like heaven, for example. No, just kidding.

This place is no exaggeration to call hell. If so, the reason I’m here now is probably the result of my guilty conscience influencing things.

Through religion, morality, and various ideologies, people are taught that if they commit evil deeds, after death they’ll go to hell or a similar place to atone for their sins. They also have a certain image of the afterlife. Perhaps at the moment of near-death, the brain unconsciously shows that image.

Thinking about it this way, you could say that afterlife worlds like heaven and hell do exist. If a certain person believed they would go to hell, they would stay forever in that hell shown to them by their brain on the brink of death.

And if they regain consciousness from a coma, they’ll say: “I experienced the afterlife.” Though that’s just speculation.

… Well, just thinking about it won’t help. To survive, let me thoroughly test the laws of this labyrinth.

◆ ◆ ◆

—One hour passed—

Right now, I’m walking down the hallway connecting the room where I first woke up and the room with the tentacles. The reason I’m walking is because there’s a penalty where if you stay still in one place for too long, you die suddenly.

This is instant death regardless of remaining HP, so I didn’t test how much time had to pass before you die. Strictly speaking, you don’t die but rather become unable to move—but being forced to lie there forever unable to do anything, I think that’s an even crueler torture than death.

I’ve been walking continuously and noticed something. First, I don’t get tired no matter how much I walk.

The distance from the starting position to the tentacle room is about 3 minutes. Assuming a round trip takes 6 minutes, I’ve made 10 round trips, so I’ve walked for an hour. Yet my legs and knees are still fine.

True, Hanako had low stamina and would get tired immediately if she ran, but she was fine no matter how much she walked. When I was playing the original game, I’d commented, “This girl is definitely not an ordinary middle schooler. She’s a pilgrimage walker,” but apparently it’s the influence of this labyrinth.

Well then, let’s try the next test. Whether I clear this or not, testing is essential for survival.

—Eighteen hours passed—

Apparently concepts like thirst, hunger, fatigue, and sleep don’t exist in this labyrinth. I forgot to count the number of round trips partway through, so I don’t know how much time has actually passed, but it feels like a day has already gone by. Yet I still don’t feel tired or sleepy. Well, it would be a huge crisis if I got sleepy, so this is more convenient anyway.

I still don’t feel hungry either. This is extremely helpful. Because in this labyrinth, aside from potions, there’s nothing that looks edible.

Not even a single blade of grass grows here, and the only beings with meat are the tentacles and monsters. I definitely don’t want to eat those. Well, I don’t have a way to kill them anyway.

—Seven days passed—

As expected, this body only has the physical fitness of a middle school girl. I tried running to test it, but the speed was too slow.

To examine the possibility of physical training, I tried running, walking, jumping, doing push-ups, and sit-ups. I tried running from the first room down the hallway, but I always ran out of stamina at the same timing.

I feel like I’ve been running for over two weeks now, but there’s no effect at all. Maybe improving strength or increasing stamina is impossible.

No, maybe only a week has actually passed? Ah, no good. My sense of time is warped, and I have no idea how much time has gone by.

… I’ll keep training anyway.

The push-up results were astonishing. I couldn’t do even one. Is this what an ordinary middle school girl’s physical fitness is like? With this arm strength, I can’t defeat the monsters.

I couldn’t do jumping or sit-ups either. No, strictly speaking, the acts of “jumping” and “lying down” themselves were impossible.

I see. “You only lie down when you die,” huh? True, there was no button for Hanako to lie down in the game, but… this is just too much.

—Two months passed—

I’m still walking as usual.

How much time has passed? And how long must I keep walking?

I still can’t do even one push-up, and there’s no change in my running speed or distance I can run. This is penance. Ascetic training for a monk. I feel like I’m about to reach the secrets of the universe.

… Should I just clear this labyrinth?

At the end of my boredom, I entered a room I’d never gone into before. Then I tried talking to the monsters and tentacles. Of course, there was no response.

Slightly annoyed, I approached a monster, and it chased me. I ran away.

After that, I repeated the act of approaching the monster and fleeing, approaching and fleeing. Lots of fun.

Thanks to this act, I’ve gotten thoroughly used to its speed. Since the monsters in this labyrinth all move at exactly the same speed except for special individuals, it’s no exaggeration to say I’ve gotten used to most monsters’ movement speeds.

Sometimes I tried crawling under the tentacles. The tentacle lunged at me, but since I was crawling, it didn’t touch me. However, I could feel the tentacle’s body heat on the back of my neck. It was extremely unpleasant.

—Six months passed—

How long will this situation continue? Until the end of dimensions? There’s nothing left to do but explore the labyrinth.

Tag with monsters and the warmth of tentacles no longer stimulate me. I’ve fallen into ennui. I miss Eri so much I can’t stand it.

At the end of my boredom, I deliberately let a monster catch me. It bit my left arm. The pain was so intense I thought I might die.

I could sense intuitively that my HP had dropped. To recover my HP, I decided to obtain a potion.

Avoiding tentacles, monsters, and various traps, I arrived at the room where potions were placed. In this area, there are three rooms with identical door shapes and internal structures, but only one is a normal room. One of the others is a room that locks you in and burns you when you enter, and the other is filled with tentacles. The creator called these rooms “Oven” and “Lunchtime,” respectively.

Once you enter the Oven or Lunchtime, escape is impossible, and you die instantly regardless of HP. And since they look perfectly fine from the outside and all have potions placed in them, they’re extremely malicious. But I already knew, so I safely obtained the potion.

That said, honestly, it was a bit dangerous. I’m an ordinary high school student, but my memory is pretty good. Yet for just a moment, I couldn’t remember which room was the potion room. If time keeps passing like this, I might forget the strategy.

Should I advance the clear before that happens? While worrying about this, I drank the potion. I tried drinking only half, but it had no effect at all. As expected, the world isn’t that sweet.

Even drinking it with just a little left didn’t work. Since it’s come to this, I have no choice but to drink it all. The moment I judged that and drank it all, I intuitively knew my health had been restored.

I was a bit curious whether drinking half in advance and then drinking the other half after a long time would still be effective, or whether it wouldn’t work because time had passed—but the potion was already gone. Besides, if I tested it and the potion’s effect was gone, that would be the worst outcome, so I won’t try it in the future either. In the first place, to test the potion, I’d need to get injured first, but I can’t deal with that kind of pain again.

I avoided various traps, tentacles, and monsters and returned to the first room again. But to my surprise, there was one other person who had transferred there.