[Quarantine Zone Explorer Operational Regulations:]
[Welcome to the Cave Research Base. Your contributions and efforts will become the cornerstone of the United States's progress.]
[During the process in which you participate in experiments as a Quarantine Zone explorer, you must comply with the following operational regulations. Only after completing three exploration missions without error can your criminal record be erased. For the sake of your future, we hope you can make a rational judgment and choice.]
[The following is the content of the regulations:]
[1. Every item in these operational regulations is a key point. After violating the rules, depending on the severity of the violation, you will face different types of punitive measures such as 3–7 days of imprisonment, 1–3 days of fasting with no food or water, an additional exploration operation, or execution.]
[2. You must wear the prescribed yellow, striped uniform for exploration. You must not damage the uniform. Damage to the uniform will be regarded as a serious violation.]
[3. You must carry and use a full set of exploration equipment, including the prescribed uniform, real-time recording equipment, thermal-sensing device, special sensing equipment, environmental analyzer, scouting device, headphones, and so on. Before departure, check and confirm that the equipment is fault-free. If equipment failure occurs during exploration, it will be regarded as a serious violation.]
[4. Instructions from the command room take precedence over these operational regulations. When the operational regulations conflict with the command room's instructions, follow the command room's instructions. Violating the command room's instructions is an extremely serious violation.]
[5. An exploration team uses a three-person standard formation. The expedition team leader must confirm the number of members in the team once every 15 minutes to ensure the number remains three. If a reduction in personnel occurs, you must immediately stop this exploration activity. If an increase in personnel occurs, report to the command room and act according to the command room's instructions. Do not make private contact with the extra exploration team member.]
[6. The target area you need to investigate and explore contains hallucinogenic gas. Inhaling this gas will not endanger your life; it will only cause harmless hallucinations. There is no need to react excessively to auditory or visual hallucinations during exploration.]
[7. When returning from the cavern area to the quarantine zone, you must undergo an inspection period of about three hours within the quarantine zone. Be sure to follow the inspection personnel's instructions during the inspection. If a violation occurs at this time, the quarantine zone inspection personnel may directly execute you.]
[8. If your uniform suffers excessively severe damage during exploration, you may look for other clothes to change into. Various types of clothing are placed inside the cavern for changing, including casual wear, staff uniforms, firefighting gear, and other kinds of clothing. The type of clothing you change into should be chosen according to the command room's instructions. Do not mix and match clothing that clearly belongs to people of different identities.]
[9. Damaging research equipment is an extremely serious violation, especially do not damage the headphones. Ensure that you can receive the command room's instruction information; your actions must be carried out under the command room's instructions.]
[10. When your communications equipment is severely affected and can no longer receive messages from the command room, tear this document open from the side. Under the regular rules there is also one page of emergency rules, and you can use its contents to guide a safe return to the base.]
[The above are the basic rules you must follow during exploration. For more operational guidelines, act according to the command room's instructions.]
[From the moment you chose to sign the experiment staff contract and join this institute, you are a noble person striving for humanity's future. As long as you follow the operational rules and complete a certain number of exploration missions, your criminal record will be completely erased. Please seize your one and only opportunity at present.]
It was a set of rules that was not considered long—only about a thousand words.
Kaguya only took a short time to finish reading it, and tried rubbing this set of rules; she quickly confirmed that this set of rules, which looked like it was only a single page, actually hid an inserted page—if torn open, there should be another document inside.
She was somewhat curious what that other document would be.
But for now, she could not act rashly, because Kaguya had already heard the indifferent voice in her headphones, and heard the hoarse, unpleasant voice of a person—as if something were blocking in the throat—issuing her the order to enter the cavern.
Right now, she had to obey the instructions and act.
Kaguya stepped forward and took the lead in advancing toward the dark tunnel behind the isolation gate.
The monitor at the entrance slowly rotated along with Kaguya's movement; the blinking red dot was like an eye, watching her and the two team members following behind her.
The team member who had been trembling a little at the start had calmed down somewhat by now. Although he was still somewhat timid, at least he was no longer shaking. As for the team member who was not a person, Kaguya did not pay attention to him; she could vaguely sense that if she directed too much attention toward him, something bad might happen.
Maki should be in the command room right now.
Things over there might be far more dangerous, because in the entire command room she was the only player; the other dozen-plus… were not people.
No—maybe not necessarily, because right now all the gazes in the command room were focused on her side. These things should be the obsession of some group of people made manifest, repeatedly reenacting the afterimage of some moment in the past, like that husband-and-wife pair in the Shirakawa Apartments. Then as long as her actions were not too out of line, she should be able to keep the gazes of those things in the command room focused on herself, and keep the situation under a relatively stable state.
Though that was only a hope, after all.
As she thought, the girl had already passed through the entrance and saw a downward flight of stairs behind it, as well as red lettering carved into the rock wall to one side, forming a sign that read [Welcome to the Red Nut Grey Cave Scenic Tourist Area.]
This was the entrance to the Red Nut Grey Cave.
It was the starting area of the instance that the group in the intelligence should originally have reached.
Only, in the original intelligence, the group should have arrived at a proper scenic area, and not this research base like the one in front of them now.
Kaguya knew that this meant the instance was being locked. After the three of them chose this instance and entered it, it suddenly began to enter a fixed phase.
Unlike Maki, the place where Kaguya first woke up was inside the base's [Medical Examination Room].
Her identity seemed to be that of an experiment subject who had "voluntarily" joined a secret research project. From the conversations of the people around her, it appeared that she was also playing the role of a death-row inmate. As long as she could safely complete three exploration operations here, her criminal record would be wiped clean, and she would return to society to live the life of a normal person.
It sounded truly ridiculous. Kaguya did not even need to think to immediately reach a conclusion: absolutely none of these explorers would survive. Even if there really were people who successfully completed three exploration operations, the outcome would still be the same—death would be unavoidable. Considering the identity she was currently playing, Kaguya had no doubt that if she obediently followed the command room's instructions, it would be impossible for her to survive in the end. Therefore, no matter what, she would have to find a way to damage the headphones later and put herself into a "disconnected" state; only then would she have a chance to live.
Even so, that would only amount to self-preservation. As for Maki… how was she supposed to help her escape? Her "identity" seemed to be that of a researcher. Although that was relatively safer than Kaguya's own identity, it would also make it much harder to break free from the current environment and clear this game. Moreover, this research base—never mentioned at all in the intelligence—was filled everywhere with those eerie things that looked like people. That meant something must have erupted inside the base, leading to everyone's death and transformation.
[c1, report your status]
As she was thinking, Kaguya had already walked a considerable distance down the winding staircase descending within the cave, and the cold voice of the command room staff sounded in her headphones.
[I am about to pass through the stairway area at the entrance and formally arrive at the cave. My team… currently consists of three members, with no changes.]
Shinomiya Kaguya recalled the standard response phrases she had heard earlier in the personnel preparation room and answered the command room's order cautiously.
[Received. Please continue forward.]
The next instruction from the command room sounded shortly afterward. Kaguya did not feel any abnormal change; it seemed that the current situation was not too bad.
[Step—]
The stairs beneath her feet had reached their end.
And a vast cave—clearly modified by artificial means, with the ground leveled, roads built, and lighting fixtures and benches installed—unfolded before Kaguya's eyes.
A chill spread through her.
She knew that she had already entered the Red Nut Grey Cave.
She saw, at this very moment, the appearance this cave was presenting.
"These are…"
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