Why is my journey to the world of anime a strange tale of rules?

So he lowered his head and looked at his left hand.

He looked at the pale, severed hand that had grabbed him and was lying on the ground.

It wasn't until this moment that I realized what was happening that I felt a strong, chilling sensation from that hand.

Gao Hai finally realized that he and Jianzi had failed to notice the extremely fatal oversight from the very beginning.

Jingle Bell--

Jingle Bell--

The bell rang for class.

The blood-red full moon in the distance has gradually faded and disappeared.

This eerie moon, imperceptible to ordinary people, returned to its original world, to the world of the ghost stories, right before the players' eyes.

Gao Hai, who could only sit slumped on the ground with a bitter smile, watched the panicked expressions on Maki and Chika's faces. He waved weakly at them, and then his body was grabbed by pale fingers that reached out from behind him and dragged into the floor and disappeared.

Darkness enveloped everything at that moment.

And that low, sinister laughter already rang in Gao Hai's ears.

The voice was saying:

Welcome to Alice's school!

Come on, let's play games with Alice and become Alice's best friend!

Chapter 1: Come on, let's play games with Alice!

dark.

An endless darkness that seemed to engulf everything.

The chaotic sound seemed to come through a thick curtain.

Is that Maki and the others' voices?

There was no way to hear what was being said.

Consciousness is blurred, senses are blurred, everything is blurry.

Only low laughter could be heard.

Don't know who.

It's like someone standing not far away, staring at you, laughing at you.

Struggling.

Wanting to break free from this heavy darkness.

Yet they can't even do something as basic as opening their eyes.

come down.

Unable to control themselves, they plummeted deeper into the abyss.

All sensation finally and completely dissipated.

The only feeling was the sensation of constantly falling under the endless darkness.

And then, at a certain moment, the intense impact of hitting the ground.

"..."

Gao Hai opened his eyes.

It took about two or three seconds for me to go from being drowsy to gradually regaining consciousness.

Slowly, Gao Hai raised his head, stood up from the desk where he had been lying, and looked at the swaying candle on his desk.

The candlelight illuminated the table and chair where he was sitting, revealing words like "Go to hell," "Trash," and "Idiot" carved on them, as well as the dried, dark red bloodstains on either side of the tabletop, as if dug out by fingernails.

I smelled blood.

It was nauseating, with a stench so strong it felt like blood was being poured directly into the nasal cavity.

There were no starting tips.

There are no game completion missions.

I was merely pulled into this place.

This classroom looks like it has been abandoned for a long time and is dilapidated.

This is a terrifying paradise located in complete darkness, where unknown and monstrous creatures roam.

He looked at his right hand.

At this moment, on his right hand, which was placed on the table, was a piece of paper torn from a workbook, with irregular serrated edges.

Turning the paper over, Gao Hai then saw the words written on it.

Alice's Great Adventure Game!

Unsurprisingly, it was the same rule sheet I had seen on the forum before, the rule sheet about how to play games with "Alice".

Extinguishing the candles will attract the Big Bad Wolf; naughty children can blow out candles but can also shine them directly on others; running around in the hallway will attract Mother Goat; making noise will attract Teacher Duck; Uncle Statue likes to run around and will "hug" anyone he sees; Teacher Turtle is at the stairwell; Sister Flashlight patrols the hallway—run away if you encounter her; Mother Goat seems to patrol and check during class time; turning the lights on and off at the wrong time will attract Principal Elephant and Inspector Giraffe; and you can only leave the school building after finding Alice's things…

Gao Hai glanced at the rule sheet that he had actually memorized, confirmed that the text recorded on it was no different from the version circulating on the player forum, memorized the key points, and then put it down and looked around.

There are 5 rows of seats in the classroom, and each row has 5 columns, for a total of 25 seats in a 5x5 grid. One person is lying on every seat.

They were all girls, all wearing high school uniforms—specifically, the uniforms from Yotsuya Miko's school. Just like the [School Ghost Stories] instance, each time it descends upon the real world, it usually takes away all or most of a class. This time, it seems Miko's class wasn't completely wiped out. Perhaps it's because Miko herself resisted the instance's mental corruption to some extent and found herself, causing the strange power to shift to some degree.

As for now, these students are still in a daze, lying motionless on their desks.

Each student had a burning candle on their desk, which provided light in the absolutely dark classroom where there were no other lights.

Each person also had a rule sheet on their desk, just like the one Gao Hai had. The rule sheets were made from papers torn from their notebooks, and all the contents were handwritten. Each rule sheet was also decorated with various cute cartoon animal drawings, which looked quite adorable.

Most of the windows on one side of the classroom were shattered, with broken glass scattered on the ground, reflecting the faint glow of the candlelight.

Outside the window, it was a dim, dark night. In the dim light, a crescent moon hung in the sky. There were no stars or clouds, only the red moon emitting an unsettling blood-red light, illuminating the lifeless, dark campus.

Gao Hai turned his head and looked at the other side of the classroom.

The two classroom doors, painted red, were both closed. Incidentally, there were also two windows installed on the wall on the same side as the classroom doors. One of these windows was completely covered by a curtain, obscuring the view outside. The other window was not completely covered by a curtain, so Gao Hai could see the dilapidated corridor outside, with tables, chairs, and bricks scattered around, and most of the walls peeling away, as well as the window of another classroom.

At the front of the classroom are the lectern and a large podium, and on one side is an air conditioner cabinet.

Behind the podium, on a huge blackboard, were rows of chalk marks left by someone.

Alice's adventure is about to begin!

[In this game, Alice has hidden 5 items inside the school building! Find just one and you'll win!]

These five items are:

1. A red ballpoint pen

2. A red eraser

3. A red exercise book

4. A red ruler

5. A red compass

These are all very simple items that you can easily find. Let's all cheer each other on and play the game together!

After playing the game, everyone will be Alice's good friend!

The handwriting was so childish, like a little kid's, and there were illustrations of flowers and small animals drawn next to the words—basically, anything cute.

I wish I weren't seeing this kind of text in a pseudo-Red Moon-level horror game.

Gao Hai silently memorized the basic structure of the classroom. Then he noticed some students sleeping on their desks, their bodies subtly moving, as if they were about to wake up.

These ordinary students have no blessings or obsessions; they are all completely ordinary people, and it's impossible for them to wake up early like Gao Hai. Therefore, their awakening means that the strange power within this instance has awakened them, which means... the game is about to begin.

"Woo..."

A girl's mournful cry came from the seat next to me.

Gao Hai turned his head slightly and saw Yotsuya Miko sitting next to him. The girl with the strange visual ability had a slightly blank expression at the moment, and it seemed that she hadn't woken up yet. She sat blankly in her seat for a while before she suddenly woke up and looked around with fear.

At the same time, the other students in the classroom also woke up one by one, sitting up and looking around with confusion, bewilderment or fear.

"W-Where is this place?"

"Wasn't I performing a ritual? Why did I suddenly end up here?"

"Could it be... could that Alice game be real?!"

"Where am I?! I want to go home, I want to go home right now!"

"Hey, you guys are here too? What's going on?"

Is this a reality show? Is this some kind of performance?

"Have we been kidnapped? No, no..."

Twenty-odd high school girls, aged sixteen or seventeen, who had never experienced any strange events and were not exceptionally capable or temperamental like Kaguya Maki, suddenly found themselves in an unprecedented and unfamiliar environment, in a very strange and abnormal place. Their noise almost immediately drowned out Takami's hearing.

More than half of the girls didn't even glance at the rule sheet in their hands, nor did they pay any attention to the candle on the table. They simply sat up from their seats, ran to the door, and tried to open it to go out, only to find that the front and back doors of the classroom were locked and could not be opened.

Some of the more timid girls burst into tears on the spot.

Several girls, who seemed completely lost, quickly huddled together, but after standing together, they did nothing, leaving everyone puzzled as to why they were forming a group.

"Mr. Gao, this is..."

Seeing that Zi was still relatively calm, she noticed the words on the blackboard, looked down at the rule sheet that her palm was pressing down, and after quickly reading the contents, she looked at Gao Hai with a pleading look.

"It's a pity we couldn't escape. Now we have to figure out how to survive here."

Gao Hai shrugged helplessly at Jianzi, but couldn't help feeling a pang of emotion in his heart.

Is it true that being a riddle solver will bring retribution?

Next time you encounter an important character like a female protagonist from an anime, it's best not to approach her. If you accidentally trigger some side quest and get yourself into a trap, you'll really have to swallow your tears and not laugh.

However, let's put those lessons aside for now and focus on surviving the current crisis.