A massive wave of chaos was sweeping across player communities all around the world.
As a relatively famous low-difficulty, high-survival-rate Instance, demand for entry tickets to the Red Nut Grey Cave had always been extremely high. Many player organizations would deliberately stockpile tickets for this Instance, using them for veteran players with specific needs or promising newcomers. In a certain sense, these Instance tickets could even be said to carry a degree of strategic significance. It was precisely for this reason that Kogawa Shu, who was optimistic about Takumi's group, traded this Instance ticket to them.
But now, this so-called "tourist-level beginner Dusk-level Instance" no longer existed.
Of the more than twenty players who entered this Instance, the vast majority were either people who had barely survived their very first Instance, or veteran players who had experienced a certain number of Instances but were not particularly strong. In the end, however, these players were almost completely wiped out, with only a handful surviving. For example, Shelby and Ed from the Americas region, as well as a newcomer player from the Japan region, Sato Takao. As for the rest of the Japan region, it was said that players had also managed to survive, but no one had appeared so far.
If it were only that, it actually wouldn't have caused much of a stir. After all, an unfixed Dusk-level instance suddenly becoming fixed was rare, but not unheard of. Aside from lamenting how unlucky the players who had entered it were, there really wasn't much else for people to say.
The problem was that, according to the surviving players, by the time they fled the Red Nut Grey Cave instance, the entire instance was already shattered and on the verge of total collapse. And what this phenomenon implied was something many players could readily understand.
Had some players entered the Red Nut Grey Cave after it became fixed and, without any intelligence at all, destroyed the instance on their very first encounter by resolving the Obsession Item!?
Was something like that really possible?
Many players instinctively had this thought the moment they heard the news.
A completely unknown instance—utterly different from the limited early-stage intelligence that could be obtained before entering—where, under conditions that were practically a total information blackout, someone avoided all the various lethal threats of the rule-based Horror Story on their first run, successfully confronted the core Obsession, identified the regret at its heart, and fulfilled it. Was such a thing truly achievable? One had to know that directly facing the core Obsession was the most dangerous and deadly part of any instance. Without sufficient experience and powerful Obsession Items, very few veteran players would even dare to make direct contact with such an existence.
Just what kind of overwhelmingly powerful expert would it take to accomplish something like this?
Someone worth looking into. Someone worth trying to recruit.
Many players began to take action. Some were driven by curiosity, others by considerations of profit, and of course there were also those who moved for other reasons. Regardless, with the destruction of the Red Nut Grey Cave instance and the invalidation of its related entry tickets, Takumi's group had already begun to be drawn into undercurrents.
...
"Regarding the matter of me giving you the entry tickets, I won't disclose it publicly. If anyone asks, just say that what I gave you were tickets to Yamazaki Amusement Park. Trust me—this situation won't be as good as it looks. Once the fact that you destroyed the Red Nut Grey Cave instance is exposed, there will definitely be many people who start having ideas about you. Some might merely try to recruit you, but others may pose extremely serious threats—for example, using mind-control–type Obsession Items to directly turn you into obedient puppets."
On the second day after the game was cleared, the veteran player Aoyama Nanami called, very seriously informing Takumi's group of this matter.
From her tone, it was clear that although Nanami had only just finished clearing an instance the day before and was in fact extremely exhausted, she still called at the first possible moment after learning of this, which was enough to show how much importance she attached to Takumi's group.
"By the way, how did you know it was us who achieved a perfect clear?"
At the time, Takumi was still somewhat puzzled.
"The number of surviving players was very small, and your presence was repeatedly mentioned by those survivors. With just a little attention to what those survivors posted, it's easy to understand what happened. In short, you should all keep a low profile for the time being. Mr. Kogawa and I will do our best to help cover things up, and for this next month, you personally shouldn't show up in the player market."
Nanami replied with some helplessness, then followed up with careful and repeated warnings.
Takumi turned to check the United States section of the player forums and ended up finding a thank-you post made by Ed, one of the survivors from the instance. The other party's attitude in the post was quite good—he kept going on about how capable Takumi was and even described Takumi's general appearance, stating that he hoped to find Takumi and meet him in person to express his gratitude.
After the first instance clear, they had attracted the Women-Face Gang. After the second instance clear, it looked like another pile of troubles was coming their way.
A bit of a headache.
But that wasn't the most headache-inducing thing.
Takumi's gaze shifted to the left.
"Hmph!"
Maki immediately turned her face away, puffing out her cheeks like a small, bristling kitten.
Takumi's gaze then moved to the right.
"Hehehe~"
Chika revealed a somewhat silly smile, meeting his eyes with a faint blush.
The next moment, a hand reached out from beside him and grasped the hand Takumi had resting on the table.
"What are you looking at, and what are you laughing about? We're not done talking yet."
Maki's deeply displeased voice followed immediately.
Unacceptable.
The girl's brown-violet eyes kept sweeping back and forth between Takumi and Chika.
No matter what, she simply could not accept something like this.
Takumi-kun—actually developing mutual feelings with another woman? What kind of situation was that supposed to be? And thinking back on it now, this Fujiwara Chika—this fat woman—was clearly a newcomer, yet she had performed with such ease when dealing with Horror Story Aberrations. That made it obvious she possessed memories from a rollback. In other words, during the second run, she had already gotten together with Takumi-kun? Had this vixen started acting early on, already ensnaring Takumi-kun?!
She had even made Takumi-kun consume one rollback opportunity just to preserve her memories—something like that… something like that…
The other hand Maki had beneath the table was already clenched tightly into a fist.
"Yes, it really should be made clear—about our current situation, about what we should be doing now. All of that ought to be clearly explained, shouldn't it?"
Chika paid no attention at all to Maki gripping Takumi's arm. She merely smiled faintly, wearing a calm expression like a queen who had everything under control.
Takumi still said nothing. He genuinely did not know what he should say at this moment. Sure, he had joked before about opening a harem and being a pandering male protagonist, but how could he possibly have any real experience dealing with two girls who both had feelings for him at the same time? Saying things like "you're both my wings" was fine as a meme, but asking him to seriously say it now—he truly could not. And as for abandoning one of them, that was something he was even less capable of doing.
At the end of the day… from the moment their group became players and began acting together, the normal development of interpersonal relationships had already completely fallen out of sync with the rhythm of their lives. In real life, how could someone like him—who had transmigrated into an obscure, insignificant shut-in—possibly have had the chance to simultaneously meet the daughter of an international financial conglomerate and the daughter of a top-tier political family, let alone experience life-and-death adventures with both of them and develop mutual feelings along the way?
On this side, Takumi had no idea how to open his mouth to resolve the situation in front of him. And sitting across from Takumi, facing the spectacle of the three people on the other side as though it were a stage play, she likewise did not know what to say, her whole body stiff and her mind in utter chaos.
It was already the second day since the mission had ended.
Originally, after an entire afternoon and evening of rest and reflection, Kaguya had believed that she had adjusted her state of mind and that there would no longer be any major issues.
But once the four of them gathered again in this small private room, and Chika and Maki sat down on Takumi's left and right with striking tacit understanding and immediately began clashing head-on, Kaguya had to admit that her thoughts had once again become a tangled mess.
Trying to persuade the two of them not to compete was simply impossible. The family backgrounds of all three had already determined that none of them were the type to back down easily. Someone they had set their sights on was not someone they would ever casually give up. In matters like this, persuasion would be nothing more than a futile effort.
Helping one side secure victory and directly end this dispute was also unrealistic. Not only was it hard for her to take sides, more importantly, doing so would inevitably lead to the team splitting apart. Right now, in order to improve their chances of survival in death instances, this team absolutely could not be divided. She could not do something like that.
But just sitting there and doing nothing didn't seem right either. Judging from the way those two were acting, there was simply no possibility of proper communication, was there?
They had clearly said that they were meeting to discuss the next course of action.
Kaguya's mind grew even more chaotic.
Especially when she recalled how, back in the Red Nut Grey Cave instance, she had pondered her own weight in Takumi's heart compared to Maki's, and whether she should find some way to increase her own importance in his heart. At that time, Kaguya had even experienced a kind of mental illusion—an image where, if she were to take action, one day she might replace Chika or Maki sitting here now, confronting another woman head-on and even coming to blows over Takumi.
That kind of scene would be far too ugly. But thinking about it carefully, it didn't seem entirely impossible either…
"What exactly did you do with Takumi-kun inside the instance?"
Just as Kaguya's thoughts became increasingly tangled, Maki had already bared her claws and launched an attack toward Chika.
"I sacrificed myself to save Takumi and died right in front of him."
Chika answered with a smile on her face, her tone utterly calm.
"Huh?"
Maki froze in place. Chika's words instantly solidified all the various counterattacks she had imagined in her mind.
"But Maki-san, you don't need to get too worked up either. I know—Maki-san is a very, very important person to Takumi. After all, you once saved his life, and he saved yours as well. To Takumi, you were the first person he met in the Horror Story game who treated him kindly. I won't deny that at all."
Chika clasped her hands together, resting her fingertips beneath her chin, and continued speaking in a gentle tone.
"Ah—you know about those things? You…"
Maki subconsciously shrank back a little, already unable to make sense of how things were developing at this point.
"So, Maki-san, if you grip Takumi that hard, you're going to hurt him. No matter what, Takumi hasn't done anything to wrong either you or me. He's been fighting desperately this whole time, doing everything he can so that all of us can survive. We don't really have the standing to accuse him, do we?"
As she spoke, Chika reached out and took hold of Maki's hand.
"W-Wait, you—you jerk, fine, I get it already! I wasn't accusing Takumi-kun at all! And why are you calling him Takumi anyway? You've only known him for two or three days, and you're already using such an intimate tone? Just what are you trying to do?!"
Blushing as she spoke, Maki let go of Takumi's arm, then couldn't help but retort again.
She was completely flustered now.
Watching this scene from the side, Kaguya couldn't help but let out a sigh.
Like a beloved toy about to be snatched away, the current Maki was utterly unable to calm down—her urgency and irritation were plainly written all over her face.
"Because Takumi really treats me very well, hehe. After all, Takumi is tall, he gently helps guide me, works hard at searching for ways to crack the instance, and he's also very interested in the game. We have lots of common topics we can really talk about. With someone that good, of course I really want to develop a good relationship with him. Could it be that Maki-san doesn't want her relationship with Takumi to improve, and doesn't want to grow a little closer to him?"
Chika's face flushed slightly as she spoke, twisting her body shyly in embarrassment, looking just like a bashful girl nursing her first crush.
"I, I… this kind of thing…"
Almost instinctively, Maki was about to blurt out something like, "I don't want to get closer to Takumi-kun at all," but immediately afterward she remembered the trap Chika had dug for her during their earlier conversation. The line—"Didn't you say you don't like Takumi and don't plan to date or marry him?"—was still lodged in Maki's throat like a stone, making her feel so uncomfortable that she didn't know what to do.
"All right, all right, Maki-san. The thoughts between the two of us actually aren't that important. What matters most right now is that after clearing the Red Nut Grey Cave instance, we've effectively drawn a great deal of outside attention and have also become enemies of some players. Although the players using Black Blood Bullets are concentrated in the United States, the possibility absolutely exists that they'll discover that we, who are in Japan, were the ones who cleared the instance and caused the Black Blood Bullets to fail. We have to be prepared to deal with that, don't we? So let's not talk about small matters of romance for now, and instead put our energy into the important business, all right? Kaguya-san has been watching us this whole time as well."
Yet it was precisely during Maki's moment of silence and hesitation that Chika continued speaking without the slightest pause, effortlessly crushing the words Maki hadn't yet managed to organize back down into her mouth, leaving her no chance to counterattack.
And Takumi, seated between the two girls and watching their sharp confrontation—how should he put it? It actually felt pretty good. It was like personally experiencing the strange sensation of a true love-triangle battlefield…
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