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

Of course, even so, he still had to curse in his heart. Damn it, this broken watch always increases the difficulty of his watch. Can't it be a little more considerate and stop making it too difficult all the time?

"I think I've found something."

As Gao Hai walked up to the podium and looked around it, Kaguya's voice rang out from behind.

"What did you find?"

Gao Hai turned to look at Kaguya, only to find that she was just standing there, looking at the wall on one side of the classroom.

"There, although I couldn't hear very clearly, I could roughly sense that a few children were discussing that there was a place in this classroom that only adults could enter."

Extending her finger, Kaguya frowned and pointed to the wall that appeared to be empty.

Is this a place only adults can access?

Kaguya's words made Takahashi raise an eyebrow.

"I can't quite explain it... Anyway, it seems to be a secret place that only adults can go in?"

Kaguya clearly couldn't articulate exactly what she heard and felt; she only had a vague impression. As she spoke, a confused expression appeared on her face.

Compared to Miko Yotsuya's exceptional perception, Kaguya Shinomiya, even with her new "identity," still occasionally struggles to perceive information effectively, which is quite frustrating. Fortunately, Kaguya can still sense things and provide some intelligence; otherwise, with a teammate who is completely deaf and blind and fails at listening and investigation, Takami would probably be experiencing what it's like to be in jail.

"Stand a little further back, I'll give it a try."

After thinking for a while, Gao Hai glanced at his own podium area as he spoke. After confirming that there was nothing worth investigating, he turned and strode forward, quickly reaching the wall that Kaguya was pointing to.

Reach out and tap.

Nothing has changed.

I pulled out my pistol and fired a few shots at the wall (in unlimited ammo mode).

Still no response.

Gao Hai thought for a moment about whether he should try licking it, but in the end he felt that the idea was too unreliable so he didn't actually do it.

After trying a few more times, I still couldn't find anything wrong. It just felt like an ordinary solid wall, not the entrance to some hidden area.

Is there really something here?

Gao Hai frowned and pondered, considering whether his identity and the props he possessed could be of any use. Then, he suddenly remembered something that hadn't been of much use before, so he took out the magnetic card that he had brought from Fujika Middle School, which still existed and hadn't disappeared.

This card is theoretically valid at Fujika Junior High School, Hayate Elementary School, and Yoruyama Junior High School, so here...

Reach out and gently stick the card to the wall.

With a faint crackling sound, Gao Hai knew he had guessed correctly.

Click-click-click-click

Accompanied by the sound of some kind of mechanism, a section of the wall in front of Gao Hai suddenly caved in, revealing a small, dark room behind it where nothing could be seen.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Strange Always Spreads Silently Where No One Notices

"Is there something there?"

Kaguya asked cautiously.

"Yes, a door, a door that can only be opened with a magnetic card."

Gao Hai shone his flashlight into the room, carefully observing as he answered Kaguya.

"Be careful, I can't see that door from here."

As Kaguya spoke, she moved a few steps, but no matter how she changed her angle, the wall itself remained unchanged in her view. As for Takami's actions of looking into the room, Kaguya only saw him moving around in front of the wall.

Is it an illusion?

Or is it that, because of the different identities we have acquired, the difference in our perspectives has become so great?

Kaguya felt a little uneasy.

This dungeon remains shrouded in mystery. Overcoming the [Rewind] mechanism alone was incredibly troublesome, taking up an entire day. Now, the direct shift in perspective due to different identities has been discovered. Kaguya harbors a growing suspicion that there might be other undiscovered, hidden, and nasty mechanisms within this dungeon.

"I'll go in and investigate. Be careful outside."

Gao Hai had already stepped into the room.

Kaguya, standing in the classroom, blinked, and then she saw Takami vanish into thin air before her eyes. Even Takami's last words were only half-heard by Kaguya because he had entered the room; she only heard half of them before his voice disappeared.

Is there no way for me to observe Gao Jun's state after he enters the room?

Kaguya waited silently for Takami's return from his exploration, while also observing and being wary of her surroundings. The little golden retriever sat beside Kaguya, and seemingly sensing her unstable state of mind, it deliberately moved closer and rubbed its head against her waist.

"I'm fine, let's wait for Gao Jun to come out together."

Although she doesn't have a particular fondness for dogs, Kaguya still smiled at the actions of this half-grown puppy and reached out to pet it.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Gao Hai had already circled the room twice with a flashlight.

Although there is no light source in the room itself, external lighting devices such as flashlights can still work normally, so Gao Hai can clearly see the various layouts in the room.

Hmm, how should I put it? This place really does look familiar. The overall layout of this room is basically the same as the observation rooms at Fujika Middle School. The place Gao Hai entered through was actually a see-through window disguised as an ordinary wall, through which every corner of the classroom could be clearly seen. Various experimental reports and records were placed in the room, although most of them were blurred and illegible, making it impossible to see any meaningful content, but one could still imagine what the researchers must have been like here, observing and recording.

"Experiment, experiment, experiment... It seems like all these crappy school instances are like this."

Gao Hai muttered a few words under his breath as he slowly walked along the small observation room. Soon, he saw a skeleton lying on the ground in the corner of the room.

When Gao Hai first saw this thing, he was slightly startled and instinctively took a defensive stance. After examining it carefully and confirming that it was just a skeleton, and after verifying with dozens of pistol bullets that every bone was normal and fragile, Gao Hai approached it and immediately noticed a diary lying next to it.

"This is a common trope in horror games. You can often find small notes or diaries next to corpses. Well, generally the next trope is either the corpse suddenly stands up, or the player turns around and bumps into something."

Gao Hai, who made this comment, did not flip through the diary. He simply held it in his hand, then quickly got up and turned around to carefully check that there was still nothing unusual in the room.

Everything seems normal.

Gao Hai took the flashlight and shone it across the pitch-black room, where nothing could be seen without a light source. Then he looked at the other side of the transparent wall, at Kaguya sitting in her seat in the classroom, looking rather bored.

It seems that nothing has happened on her end yet.

Thinking this, Gao Hai put the diary into his backpack. He didn't plan to read it, because he was worried that there might be a name on it. The situation in that small bedroom had already been troublesome enough for Gao Hai, and he didn't want to gain another friend after reading this diary. Therefore, he decided to just carry it with him for now, read it when the time was right, and then continue deeper into the observation room.

Soon, three or four more corpses appeared in front of Gao Hai.

The bodies were concentrated in the area not covered by the transparent glass wall, lying haphazardly on the ground.

Beside the body, Gao Hai saw a broken syringe, and on the innermost wall of the observation room, there was a strange sentence written in blood: "What did we observe?"

There's a slight problem.

How did these researchers die here? Did they commit suicide after being trapped? Did they use syringes to kill themselves?

Sensing something was amiss, Gao Hai bent down and began checking the various cabinets and drawers in the observation room. Soon, he found many reagent bottles under a table on one side. The names on these reagents were often blurred due to the passage of time, but Gao Hai could still barely make out drug names such as sevoflurane, fentanyl, and propofol.

These drug names... uh, what are they for again? I think they're anesthetics? Hmm... that's right, they should be anesthetic drugs. Why would these researchers prepare these drugs?

Gao Hai himself didn't have much medical knowledge, but because he gained knowledge of Lin Xusheng after the Baichuan Apartment instance, he was able to recall some information about these drugs after some time of reflection. However, since Xusheng's expertise lay in emergency care, Gao Hai could only determine the general uses of these drugs; he couldn't confirm anything more specific.

In any case, a large portion of these drugs are for anesthetic purposes, and the rest, even if they are not anesthetics, are at least related to them.

Using this drug on children at Zaoli Elementary School... for surgery? Have these researchers been performing some kind of surgery on children? Could it be that the mechanism for turning children into dogs was actually that some students were sewn onto dog skins back then? No, no, no, that's unrealistic. It wouldn't be very meaningful to do that and it would be easy to expose the deception. It shouldn't be for that purpose.

So, perhaps the purpose itself is anesthesia?

These researchers must have some means to put the students into a coma at any time? That seems a little more plausible, but there are still many things that are hard to explain. However, at least it provides a direction and clarifies the cause of death for these researchers, so it's not entirely nonsensical. In short, these guys were probably trapped in this place for some reason and ultimately chose to commit suicide with drugs. In that case, I'll have to be careful when I go out later, since I never know what I might encounter.

While thinking, Gao Hai searched the observation room more carefully, but in the end he only found a few things that were already blurry, such as student ID cards, and two documents whose handwriting was not particularly blurry, but whose content was also difficult to identify.

[Experimental Image: ■■■■]

[Reverse Strength: ■■]

[Cognition: Informed]

[Memory Clarity: Medium]

[Recorded abnormal matters: ■■]

【When■tilt■：dog■】

[Test Image: ■■]

[Anti-Strong: High]

[Recognition Stage: ■■]

[■■ Clarity: Low]

[■■Related■Frequently Occurred■: 9 times]

[When: Teacher]

To be honest, Gao Hai still couldn't quite understand what was written on either document. Both documents had a lot of blurry marks, making them almost impossible to read. But this was the clearest document Gao Hai could find in this small observation room. In comparison, the other documents were basically just a mosaic, making it impossible to identify or interpret them at all.

On another note, could these two documents be describing me and Kaguya Shinomiya?

Gao Hai couldn't help but think of the time he found his own records in the archives of Fujika Middle School.

Turning his head, Gao Hai's toes bumped against a stool because the flashlight's light didn't reach him. The stool then hit the table, causing the water glass on the table to shake and almost fall off.

Reaching out, Gao Hai caught the cup in the next moment and put it back in its place.

He took the flashlight and swept it one last time across the pitch-black room. Then, as he turned, he glanced out the observation window at Kaguya Shinomiya sitting in the brightly lit classroom before finally walking back to the door he had come from.

Throughout the entire exploration, Gao Hai did not encounter any phenomena that could be described as "strange".

Everything is normal.

Although not many clues were found, the exploration process was indeed very smooth.

So, was my investigation really going smoothly? Or was it actually not? I didn't find any unusual phenomena at all. Does this mean I've been affected by some strange force, and that's why I failed to find anything again?

Standing at the door, Gao Hai took out the 20-sided die after a moment of silence.

Place the dice on the table and gently spin them, watching them settle down and reveal the top number.

Gao Hai stared at the numbers for a while before letting out a soft breath, picking up the dice, putting them back into his watch, and then walking out of the room.

tread--

Hearing footsteps, Kaguya turned around and looked at Takami, who had appeared out of nowhere by the wall.

"You're back? How did the investigation go?"

[You're back? How's the investigation going?]