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

The girl's slender body trembled slightly unintentionally.

Kaguya comforted herself that this was only temporary, but she couldn't resist the urge deep inside to throw off the covers and lie on the bed to sleep, just like a puppy.

However, she ultimately restrained herself. After all, this was too shameful and unacceptable for Kaguya, so she could suppress the impulse with her own sense of shame. Even so, she would unconsciously adjust her sleeping position, sleeping in a position similar to that of a puppy.

As for Hayasaka, who went back to her room and took a shower, she walked out of the bathroom naked, jumped into bed, and fell asleep immediately.

Incidentally, she still had the clothes she had secretly changed into while Gao Hai was asleep on the day she returned from the dungeon on the bed.

"Hoo... Master's aura..."

With soft murmurs, the girl closed her eyes and wrapped herself up tightly in the blankets, Gao Hai's clothes, and herself.

Clearly, neither the master nor the servant had truly escaped the influence of the Early Elementary School instance. However, at this level of influence, it would be difficult for outsiders to notice or know.

Time continues to advance, second by second.

There's not much time left before the dungeon opens, and before we can return to the [Campus Ghost Stories] dungeon that brought Gao Hai so many unpleasant memories.

After organizing the information sent by the [Market], and distributing it to Chika, Kaguya Hayasaka, and Miko, Maki stayed overnight at the hotel where Takami was staying. However, because they were about to enter the dungeon, they didn't spend too much time there that night, so much so that Maki was able to get up earlier than Takami the next day, ask the waiter to leave breakfast for him, and then go to school.

"They're supposed to be participating in a death game in a few days, but they still have to go to class now. Japanese high school students are really hard to understand."

After waking up and finding that his bedmate had left, Gao Hai couldn't help but feel a little sentimental. After having breakfast, he went out for a stroll.

The messages from the "Slacking Off Gang" and the "Red Knot Society" weren't particularly detailed, but they were enough for Gao Hai to gain a basic understanding of these people. As for the "Market," Goto Ichiri's complete disclosure still put some pressure on Gao Hai, while Aoyama Nanami's complete lack of information was truly puzzling.

Although the anime series about the working girl was over a decade ago, Takahashi still vaguely remembered some of the plot. Therefore, he couldn't understand why this kind and independent girl in the original work would give such strange information in this cooperative mission, as if she was deliberately not planning to cooperate.

Furthermore, it's important to know that in previous interactions with [the market], Aoyama Nanami had consistently shown goodwill towards Takami's team. From this perspective, it's unlikely she would intentionally try to intimidate Takami's side or engage in any inexplicable pranks during intelligence sharing.

Could it be that because of some blessing or obsession, Aoyama Nanami cannot reveal any information about herself?

Gao Hai pondered possible reasons, strolling casually down the street, when he heard passersby discussing something.

"So that idol named Alice... Good heavens, does someone like that even exist? It's unbelievable!"

"I can't believe something like this still happens in Japan. I think the court and all those guys involved back then should be shot."

"It's terrifying, there used to be absolutely no news about this kind of thing..."

Is this an aftermath of the Fujika Junior High School incident?

Gao Hai stopped and turned to look at the young men and women who had already walked away.

In order to break the core obsession of Fujika Middle School, the players exposed the evil deeds of the idol Alice on the Internet and deleted the parts involving supernatural forces.

For this reason, ordinary people were not shielded from related memories, and thus the aftermath of the Alice incident continues to this day. Although, in Gao Hai's view, such minor setbacks are not worth paying attention to at all.

Although many Japanese officials bowed in apology, many media outlets frantically dug up old news, and countless ordinary people discussed the matter, the streets remained as bustling as ever. Hard-working people didn't stop because of the news, and idle young people simply treated it as a topic of curiosity during their leisure time.

Those victims who have already disappeared will not return because of these twists and turns, nor will the pain they suffered in life be erased by the exoneration of their wrongful convictions.

Even Gao Hai himself, who granted them liberation, only relieved them of their suffering, giving them a chance to forget everything, be cleansed into pure, innocent souls, and start anew in the human world.

But, should we start over?

Gao Hai looked down at his watch again.

The Key to the Unity of All Things—that's what the Faceless Ones (KP) call this thing.

This peculiar watch granted me the ability to rewind time and revive, as well as the power to grant various abilities upon wishing.

Gao Hai had always suspected that this thing's power was similar to something like "Hell" or "Yama's Palace," and he even wondered if a Shiki Eiki might jump out of the watch. But now that he knew it was called the Key to the Unity of All Things, well, how should he put it, he felt that this name didn't seem to fully connect with the watch's function. After all, based on what he knew about the One Who Unifies All Things, it didn't seem to have anything to do with punishing evil or granting the innocent rebirth.

Or is that title only representing one aspect of the watch? Or does the watch itself hold a greater secret?

I can't think of which scenario it might be, but it's not my style to get hung up on things or insist on getting an answer right now. I'll just let things take their course.

While he was thinking, Gao Hai had already walked quite a distance down the street.

Then, he saw a young girl.

A girl wearing a baseball cap, thick black glasses and a mask, and a heavy winter coat, stood cautiously at the street corner, seemingly hesitating about going somewhere, yet unable to take a step forward.

That figure... hmm, it matches, it's Goto Ichiri.

Although the other person's clothes could effectively conceal their impressive figure, Gao Hai was a man of great skill; he could see through such a disguise immediately and discern the other person's true appearance.

So Gao Hai's steps slowed down and became silent.

He slowly approached Goto Ichiri from behind, getting close to the girl who seemed to be in a state of high concentration and completely oblivious to her surroundings.

As he slowly approached, Gao Hai noticed that there was a downward staircase not far from where the girl was standing, which seemed to lead to an underground music bar. This reminded Gao Hai of the starting point of the musical journey of the four girls in Goto Ichiri's original work, "Lonely Rock".

Is this the place?

Speaking of which, Pochi-chan carries her obsessive guitar around all day long, and I've never seen her play a normal guitar.

And you can find her almost every time you go to the [Market]. Has this girl completely joined that player's team now? In this situation, has her original music career, the "End Band" she formed with her friends, been discontinued?

With just a little thought, Gao Hai was able to grasp the cruelty of it all.

Kita Ikuyo has been possessed by a strange entity and is lost in the dungeon, trapped in a state between life and death.

In other words, the girl has disappeared under supernatural forces, so ordinary people who are not players will definitely not remember the girl and will definitely forget the existence of Kita Ikuyo.

So the band that Goto Ichiri once belonged to was forever reduced from four members to three, and the other two members would forget the missing member and believe that the so-called fourth member never existed in the first place.

As for Goto Ichiri herself, how could she face such a reality when it was right in front of her?

While he was thinking, Gao Hai had already walked closer and closer, and was now only about ten meters away from the girl.

But at this moment, Goto Ichiri, whose senses were still quite sharp, turned around alertly and looked directly at Takami behind him.

Faintly, one could hear voices coming from below the stairs.

But before Gao Hai could hear clearly what was going on below, another voice drowned out everything.

"Alas!!!"

For a moment, Gao Hai thought he saw a frightened cat.

thump—

The next moment was the vibration coming from the billboard.

It was Goto Ichiri who, startled, took off from the spot and crashed into a billboard more than three meters tall behind him with a loud bang.

Interlude 3-36: The members of the "End Band" and the socially awkward girl who collapsed.

To be honest, although it wasn't the first time he had witnessed Goto Ichiri's powerful physique as a Red Moon-level player, seeing the destruction caused by this girl, Takahashi couldn't help but marvel at the comic book-like unfolding of events and increasingly felt that Pochi seemed to have some comedic talent.

However, the metal billboard that was hit probably wouldn't agree with Gao Hai's opinion.

The girl, half-stuck in the billboard and having been blasted through, was frantically kicking her legs in an attempt to break free, but only managed to make herself look like a comical salted fish thrashing about on a cutting board.

Gao Hai did have the idea of ​​helping her out, but as a Red Moon-level player, although Xiao Boqi's performance so far had been extremely embarrassing, her physical abilities were undeniably superhuman. Gao Hai seriously doubted that even if he activated the power of his berserk blessing, he might still be kicked away by her and unable to get up for a long time.

Of course, compared to going back to the past, Gao Hai also has a better way to help the girl get out of her predicament.

"They seem to have heard your voice."

Gao Hai spoke to Goto Ichiri, who was struggling and stuck in the billboard.

!! ?

For a moment, when he saw the girl's legs tense up instantly, Gao Hai felt as if he saw a bolded "!?" punctuation mark appear next to her.

Then, with a tearing sound as the billboard finally broke under its own weight, the large metal billboard was snapped in two. With half of his body still stuck inside the billboard, Goto Ichiri, his face pale and trembling, rushed forward without looking back and disappeared at the end of the street.

Only then did the sound from under the stairs on the other side of the street finally approach.

"I think I heard a loud noise just now, like a car accident, but there's nothing here when I got up here."

"...No, the billboard for the health-preserving soup on the street is gone; it may have been moved."

"Hey, did a driver crash into that billboard and then just take the damaged part of it? What's the point of doing that?"

"Perhaps we could sell it as scrap? If this is a viable emergency measure, maybe in the future..."

"No, absolutely not! Stop this now! This is a crime!"

Amid the slightly noisy chatter of the girls, a short girl with long blonde hair and a relatively tall girl with short blue hair came up the stairs together and looked in their direction.

Their gazes didn't linger on Gao Hai; they merely looked around the street with a puzzled expression before quickly returning to the stairs.

As for Gao Hai, he had no intention of interacting with the two girls. Instead, he stood still for a while like a passerby, observing the two sixteen or seventeen-year-old girls, who were in the prime of their youth, out of the corner of his eye.

He knew perfectly well who the two girls were, and their relationship with Goto Ichiri, as well as Kita Ikuyo, who was still wandering in the dungeon.

Ichichi Hongxia.

Ryo Yamada.

In the work "Lonely Rock", she is one of the other two members of the high school girl band, along with Ichiri Goto and Ikuyo Kita.

Nijika Ijichi is a short, blonde girl with red eyes, standing at 1.54 meters tall. She has a very slender figure, and although she is over 18 and of legal age, she looks more like a high school freshman or even a junior high student. Incidentally, Nijika is a classic example of a petite mother figure in Japanese works. She is a very gentle girl who is always attentive to others' emotional changes and takes care of them. She is also an excellent housekeeper and a caring person, hence her nicknames "Nijika Mom" ​​and "Shimokitazawa Archangel" in the original work.

This gentle girl was the drummer in the band, which Gao Hai found rather odd. Shouldn't the drummer position be more suited to someone passionate and energetic? However, he himself knew nothing about music, so this was just a small prejudice of Gao Hai's.

The other girl, Yamada Ryo, is a tall, somewhat aloof girl with blue hair and yellow eyes. She's about the same age as Nijika, but at 1.63 meters tall, she's considered quite large in Japan, where petite figures are often admired. She's about the same height as Miko and Hayasaka. This girl plays bass and provides backing vocals in the band. Like Goto Ichiri, she's a gloomy, eccentric person with few friends. However, she's not socially awkward; rather, she deliberately isolates herself, only interacting with people who interest her—the kind of lonely oddball.

Although she appears cold and expressionless, Yamada Ryo is actually quite emotional, just not very expressive of it, so she can't be considered a typical emotionless character. Incidentally, despite being from a wealthy family, Ryo's excessive spending on her hobbies led to her eating wild vegetables and weeds on several occasions in the original work. She also frequently borrowed money and treated people to meals; Goto Ichiri was borrowed money from her several times. Therefore, in a sense, this girl also possesses some "despicable" qualities.

In short, both of them are beautiful girls with a score of over 90. Speaking of which, after I transmigrated to this world, the men said they were not good, but I rarely saw any women who scored below 60 (50 is the normal average, below 50 is considered ugly, and above 50 is considered beautiful). Is this the beauty of the two-dimensional world?

Gao Hai subtly admired the two girls' looks, and then he quickly realized that he had now met all four members of the "End Band". If this were a game, he would probably have gotten an achievement by now.

Of course, he only entertained these wild thoughts in his mind for a while; Gao Hai had no intention of approaching them. Although they were both stunningly beautiful girls, each with their own shining qualities, and on a completely different level from the parachuted soldiers of the real world, they were ultimately ordinary people who hadn't experienced the sacrificial game or the other side of the world. Given his own situation of being chosen by the black watch, Gao Hai strongly suspected that if he got too close to these two girls, they might be chosen by the Red Moon-level dungeon for some reason and thus become entangled with the strange and supernatural beings.

While they were thinking, the two girls had already entered the underground concert hall that seemed to be run by Ichiji Nijika's older sister.

After pausing for a moment, Gao Hai also turned around and prepared to leave.

Then he saw the "Perfectly Ripe Mango" cardboard box that had appeared in front of him at some point. It looked exactly the same as when he last saw it, but it seemed to have gained a bit more presence. Incidentally, the middle of the box was noticeably deformed, as if someone had forcibly stuffed an advertising billboard inside.

They clearly escaped just now, but why are they coming back? And is this box so powerful that it doesn't crack even after transforming like this?!