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

Incidentally, Gao Hai also tried using the Blood Key to open the courtyard gate during this process, but the Blood Key's effect failed to activate this time. The reason why the Blood Key's effect could fail must be the core obsession of the dungeon or a key obsession close to the core obsession. This directly points out that the courtyard area is extremely important in the Nightfall Mountain Middle School dungeon, which slightly cheered Gao Hai, who had just begun his investigation.

"Did you see or hear anything?"

When they arrived at the stairwell on the left side of the first floor, Gao Hai asked Jianzi the same question again.

"...No, I didn't see anything. It's very quiet here."

Seeing that Zi gently shook his head, he answered with a little nervousness.

"Okay, let's go up to the second floor now."

Gao Hai nodded without hesitation and stepped directly into the stairwell.

Tread-

The next moment, he heard two footsteps that almost overlapped.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Footsteps and Hallucinations in the Stairwell, and the Initial Unraveling of the Ghost Story

There is something else in the hallway.

Gao Hai had this feeling the moment he stepped into the stairwell.

Although the footsteps were so faint that an ordinary person could not hear them, it was enough for Gao Hai to immediately realize that there was a problem.

The thing was getting closer to him.

It was approaching him from somewhere upstairs, from a floor above this stairwell.

A faint chill spread through my heart.

Even though Gao Hai only heard one footstep, he could already sense the danger that followed.

"Hurry up, something's coming!"

Gao Hai, who took the lead, darted up the stairs in one stride and carried Zi on his back. At this moment, the girl subconsciously buried her head in Gao Hai's back to avoid the wind generated by Gao Hai's accelerated sprint.

Goto Ichiri sprinted after her, arriving faster than Takami. The avatar she summoned with her guitar was even faster, already ahead of the two and running towards the higher floors, actively meeting the thing that was coming down the stairs.

1.7 seconds.

This is the time it took Gao Hai and his two companions to get from the first-floor stairwell to the second-floor stairwell.

At this point, Gao Hai could clearly hear the footsteps coming down from upstairs; they had reached the third-floor stairwell. The avatar summoned by Goto Ichiri had lost contact after rushing up to the third floor, and the girl hadn't even noticed when the avatar had disappeared.

Of course, Gao Hai was unaware of this, since he was not the one manipulating the avatar; at this moment, he was focused on another issue.

The footsteps upstairs almost perfectly overlapped with my footsteps.

Judging from the sounds coming from upstairs, Gao Hai realized that the same number of steps he took going upstairs were the same number of steps the thing took going downstairs. Furthermore, even though he was moving quite fast, the thing seemed to be going downstairs even faster. The strange creature probably came down from the fifth-floor stairwell and arrived at the third-floor stairwell within two seconds.

Perhaps this thing in the stairwell will move at twice the speed of the player entering the stairwell?

Wait a minute, if this thing coming downstairs moves in sync with me, what about Goto Ichiri? Could there also be a monster approaching Kopoki in sync with her? And what about Miko, whom I'm carrying on my back? Although her feet haven't touched the ground, she's already entered the stairwell. Will she trigger a monster in this state?

There wasn't enough time to think further.

The pink-haired girl slid in and was the first to enter the second-floor corridor area.

Gao Hai followed closely behind, stepping forward and exiting the stairwell.

Only Yotsuya Miko, who was perched on Takami's back, sensed something at that moment. She subconsciously turned around and looked behind her, at the staircase leading down to the first floor that the three of them had come up from.

She saw something crawling out from the corner of the stairs.

Is that... a person?

In the dimly lit stairwell where everything was blurred, at the end of the stairwell corner.

A pale face peeked out from the corner, looking up at Jianzi who was now casting her gaze over.

A dark red color spread throughout the staircase.

She heard a faint sob, which came from the depths of darkness.

The next moment, Jianzi suddenly tensed up all over.

She saw something.

She heard the students whispering.

They were discussing absurd tales and telling bizarre stories that even they themselves didn't believe.

Hey, have you heard? It's that ghost story about the creature chasing after passersby on the stairs?

[I know, I know. Apparently, if the person being chased doesn't run down the stairs quickly, they'll see a girl in a school uniform covered in blood catching up to them. Then she'll beg for help, but it seems that no matter whether she agrees or not, she'll be killed, and in a gruesome way—disemboweled!]

"Hey, is this the version you heard? I heard a different one. I heard a baby following you, a blood-covered, filthy baby, silently following you. If you don't run out of the stairwell in time, it will grab you, and then you'll never be able to leave."

[Oh—that sounds really scary. But where did this ghost story come from? How come there's both a baby and a high school student in the stairwell?]

Who knows? But I heard someone say that some bad influence got pregnant and was too scared to go home, so she wandered around outside. One night, she ran into the teaching building and gave birth to the baby at the stairwell.

【Huh? Is it really that disgusting?】

[Yes, yes, not only that, but after giving birth, I heard she suffered severe bleeding. Apparently, the woman was bleeding profusely as she walked, the baby, still attached to the umbilical cord, trailing behind her. She seemed to be so lost in blood that she couldn't feel any pain anymore, and thought she had abandoned the baby. She was trying to find someone to help her. After walking down the stairs for a while, she turned around and saw blood everywhere and the baby. She was terrified, thinking the baby was following her, and then she fell down the stairs and died.]

[Ugh, what a disgusting story! Seriously, can anyone really walk around on the stairs after bleeding so badly? The person who wrote this story has absolutely no common sense. So, from then on, there's always a girl covered in blood and a baby chasing people down the stairs—is that the ending?]

"Of course! Aren't all the ghost stories at Yelu Mountain Middle School like this? No matter how it starts, the ending always involves something lingering somewhere at some time, and if you go near it, you might lose your life or something. But this ghost story is a bit bizarre; I think the ghost story club might include it in the next issue of their magazine!"

"Ugh, that's enough! It makes me feel utterly disgusted. And stop reading that club's magazine all the time. I always feel like the people in that club are a bit abnormal."

[Hehehe, just killing time]

……

Close your eyes.

Open your eyes.

The girl was slightly taken aback, and then she saw the thing crawling out of the stairwell again, a strange creature that looked like a baby or a doll.

It was watching her too, though she couldn't see its expression because the hallway was too dark. But Jianzi was absolutely certain that it was staring at her, its gaze fixed on her face.

Then, Jianzi raised her head and looked at the other side of the corridor, at the staircase leading up to the third floor.

A girl walked down from up there.

A girl, swaying unsteadily, covered in blood, with what looked like intestines falling from her skirt and dragging on the ground.

The smell of blood assaulted the girl's nose and nerves.

But the next moment, she could neither see nor feel any of these things.

Because Gao Hai had already carried her away from the stairwell and into the area on the second floor.

The moment she left the stairs and entered the corridor, Miko discovered that everything she had seen earlier had vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.

However, there was no trace of relief on the girl's face, no sign of having escaped danger.

"...This is a trap."

After getting off Gao Hai's back, Miko spoke softly after a long silence.

"What did you see?"

Takami was well aware of Miko's extraordinary perception, so after putting her down from his back, he quickly asked her a question while Goto Ichiri was directing his avatar to begin exploring the second floor.

"What's inside the staircase... is chasing the person who entered from both upstairs and downstairs at the same time."

With a pale face, Jianzi took a deep breath. Although she didn't look well, she still explained the situation very seriously.

"The thing coming down from upstairs is very fast, and it's easy to get caught if you can't dodge it in time. The thing downstairs moves much slower, at least not as fast as you guys, which is why we were able to reach the second floor safely when we started from the first floor."

"However, this thing downstairs was moved up from the first floor."

"In other words, unless we can find a way to leave this school building from somewhere other than the first floor, we will inevitably run into that thing as long as we try to go downstairs to leave. This ghost story can be regarded as an elaborate trap in itself."

As she spoke, Jianzi's face grew even paler.

Even now, she can still recall the feelings of endless despair and hatred she evoked from those two things she saw on the stairs.

If Gao Hai had been any slower, the two of them might have actually died on the spot in the stairwell.

"Don't worry about it, we're still alive. There's always a way out. There's no such thing as an absolutely effective trap."

Gao Hai reached out and gently rubbed Miko's head.

Watching the girl subconsciously close her eyes and her head sway unintentionally with his hand, he smiled, his face showing no sign of tension or unease.

After all, from the moment he decided to act at night, he was prepared for danger.

Or to be more precise, it was this feeling of being in danger, of possibly dying at any moment, that made him feel more familiar and at ease, since he had always gone through this in his previous dungeon runs.

In contrast, the long and tedious investigation process during the day at Yeluoshan Middle School was something Gao Hai couldn't get used to.

"Um, I... I've discovered something."

Goto Ichiri's weak voice rang out from the side.

Gao Hai turned around and found her standing in front of the bulletin board on the second floor, the same place where he had previously found the survival rules for the main teaching building.

The two quickly walked forward and then discovered that a notice had appeared on the bulletin board at some point.

No, that wasn't a notice; it was a poorly formatted magazine, seemingly produced by students themselves, entirely handwritten.

The magazine was spread out and pasted on the bulletin board, and its name was written in three huge, blood-red characters:

Ghost Stories Report

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Acquired Fragments of the "Strange Tales" and the Investigation of the Dark Land

Ghost Stories Report.

As the name suggests, this thing looks like a newspaper that was created by the Ghost Stories Club and circulated within Yelu Mountain Middle School.

Like that recruitment poster, which was so ugly it lacked any aesthetic appeal, this newspaper was extremely rudimentary, seemingly made from folded paper used in art class. The content was entirely hand-drawn, with no trace of printing in either the text or the illustrations. One wonders how many copies of this thing the Kaidansha printed a day when it was in use.