Chapter 4: Fragments of Ruin Left Behind in This Darkness

Chapter 4: Fragments of Ruin Left Behind in This Darkness

Crossing through the pitch-black cave.

Carefully advancing toward the light.

Takakai crouched low, cautiously maneuvering through a tunnel roughly 1.3 to 1.4 meters high, avoiding protruding rocks, hanging stalactites, and stalagmites rising from the ground, before entering a larger cavern.

Under the flickering light of a flashlight, Fujiwara Chika followed closely behind Takakai, bending down and treading carefully.

Before long, the two saw the source of the light.

It appeared to be a guard post.

This type of structure was common in schools or offices—a small building at the main gate, used by guards to monitor entry and exit. Some guard posts were solidly built with bricks and cement, sometimes even equipped with air conditioning. Simpler ones were temporary shelters made of plywood, or even just assembled from basic glass panels. The interior furnishings also varied; some were completely barren, while others had desks, chairs, beds, and wardrobes—sufficient for a guard to stay overnight.

The guard post in front of Takakai and Chika was a makeshift plywood shelter, seemingly abandoned for years.

The windows were almost entirely shattered, and the colored steel plates used to construct the post were rusted and corroded, with some sections already collapsed.

Behind the broken door, a small table was visible. Once wooden, the table had rotted into an unrecognizable state in the damp underground environment, now overgrown with white fungi. Beside it was a single bed, its mattress covered in moss. Aside from these, the small room seemed devoid of any other items.

What was strange, however, was that despite its dilapidated state, the light inside the guard post was still on, emitting a faint, warm yellow glow as if guiding anyone who approached.

"How can something like this exist in a cave like this?"

Chika was utterly perplexed. Although she had already accepted the reality of being in a "supernaturally influenced horror game," when confronted with such an utterly illogical phenomenon, she instinctively tried to rationalize it with her ordinary knowledge.

"Distorted space. This is a common occurrence in horror story rules. Time, space, consciousness... everything we consider normal can be altered in these types of stories. What we need to do is leave this place before things change to the point of no return."

Takahashi Takakai, accustomed to bizarre and illogical phenomena, felt nothing unusual. As he explained the situation to Chika, he simultaneously surveyed the area, meticulously checking every corner.

There were no corpses standing in the shadows, staring at them.

No ghostly dolls giggling, running toward them, and causing mental contamination by making him mistake them for adorable girls.

No sudden footsteps or any other eerie occurrences.

At least for now, everything seemed fine.

"You've got good observational skills. Help me keep watch; I'll examine this place."

After a brief hesitation, Takakai instructed the girl.

"Aye aye sir, mission accepted."

Chika nodded seriously and widened her eyes, scanning the surroundings quickly, almost as if she had turned into a humanoid surveillance camera powered by ramen.

Earlier, in the larger area, Chika had noticed that the voices of Takakai and the other person suddenly lacked a third voice. Perhaps because she was in the cave, at a distance, she couldn't clearly hear what the other person was saying, sparing her from the influence of the strange power. Nevertheless, her quick realization that "something is wrong" and her immediate action to warn him impressed Takakai, earning her his approval of her reflexes, observational skills, and decisiveness—hence their current arrangement.

Thinking back, this was only his second time entering a dungeon, yet his mindset had completely changed.

Reflecting on the three loops in the Shirakawa Apartment and comparing them to his current state, Takakai couldn't help but marvel at how people grow. He also worried about the situation of Shijo Maki and Shinomiya Kaguya but forced himself once more to remain calm, focusing his attention on the exploration at hand.

The decayed guard post exuded an unpleasant stench.

Takakai stepped inside, waving a hand in front of his nose to disperse the stench, and tried pulling open the desk drawer. As a result, he yanked half the drawer out entirely.

Inside was nothing but a pile of unrecognizable, decayed trash.

Approaching the bed, he reached out to lift the filthy sheet.

On the mattress was a human-shaped stain, resembling dried sweat, though it appeared to be mixed with something else.

Underneath the old blanket lay a black security guard uniform, dirty and grimy.

Initially, Takakai hadn't planned to pay attention to the uniform. However, recalling the connection between clothing and identity in the rules for explorers, he decided to take it out, dust it off, and neatly fold it into his backpack.

He didn't find any new rulebooks or readable documents.

That was to be expected. In a place abandoned for an unknown length of time and situated in such a damp environment, paper would naturally not survive.

However, just as he was about to leave, Takakai glanced around the room one last time. He noticed something in the corner of the room, under a collapsed colored steel panel.

Creaaaak—

The rusted steel panel groaned as it was lifted.

Takakai reached out and pulled the object from underneath, then stood it upright.

It was a map.

A framed map with the title "Nutty Putty Cave Tourist Map," which must have once been mounted on the wall.

Takakai didn't immediately examine the map.

He vividly remembered from the information he had obtained from the man named Ogawa that after an area called "Big Slide," all zones were highly dangerous, completely uncharted, and even unknowable. Any players who ventured into these zones could never return to the Nutty Putty Cave dungeon. The information they obtained would bind them to those mysterious zones, causing them to start the game in the most perilous areas from the outset.

This map looked ancient.

It might very well be a complete map, showing all the zones within Nutty Putty Cave.

If he looked at its contents, it could potentially bring him significant trouble.

Takakai placed the map back where he found it.

Straightening up, he turned to glance at Chika, who was diligently scouting not far away, and noticed a figure dressed in a black firefighter's uniform with yellow stripes. The figure was slowly walking past her with their head lowered, not saying a word.

"..."

Takakai did nothing, acting as though he hadn't seen the figure at all. Maintaining a completely normal demeanor, he walked over to Chika's side.

"Hey, hey, Takahashi-kun, did you find anything useful?"

The girl blinked at him, curious as to why he'd finished exploring so quickly.

She hadn't seen anything unusual.

Takakai, on the other hand, hadn't felt any malice or goodwill emanating from the silent firefighter. He couldn't confirm whether it was a person or not.

Could it be that the blessing wasn't working because it was just a non-existent illusion?

"We should keep moving. We need to find a path to leave… to find a way to the Heart," Takakai said, deliberately choosing a direction opposite to where the firefighter figure had gone. He led the way into another cave.

According to the 19-point rulebook—which seemed intentionally overwhelming to make remembering everything impossible—Takakai and Chika, as "explorers," had to successfully reach the deepest part of Nutty Putty Cave, known as "the Heart," in order to return to the normal surface world.

But with the cave system now complex and bizarre, far removed from the original Nutty Putty Cave's layout, figuring out how to find the exit was proving to be a daunting challenge.

Takakai had traversed several caves, spending over ten minutes, yet he still hadn't found anything resembling an exit from this area.

Instead, unsettling traces began to emerge more frequently around him.

Dark bloodstains clung to the rocky walls—some streaked across surfaces, others splattered as if from violent impacts. There were scratch marks that looked as though they had been clawed into the rock, along with handprints of various sizes, smudged with dried blood.

Shredded pieces of clothing, torn by stalactites and jagged rocks, lay scattered across the cave's nooks and crannies. Most were bloodstained.

It seemed that the deeper they went, the more these caves revealed an eerie and unnatural side.

"Takahashi-kun… this place…"

Even the steeliest of nerves would find it hard to remain calm in such a setting.

Chika, who had been trailing close behind Takakai, shrank in fear, unconsciously moving closer to him.

Takakai caught a faint whiff of her shampoo, a scent entirely different from what Maki or Kaguya would use.

Unfortunately, he wasn't in the mood to pay attention to such details. His focus had shifted to the dark red, scribbled writing that was beginning to appear on the cave walls—words that seemed like the desperate final messages of those trapped here.

"I want to leave. I want to get out of here."

"Don't leave me here."

"What have we done?"

"None of this should have happened."

"Even if you can't hear me anymore, I still love you."

...

The blood had long since dried, turning black.

Many of the messages were warped, riddled with spelling errors, as if the writers had been consumed by unbearable despair and agony in their final moments.

Chika, who could read the words clearly, fell silent, while Takakai's frown deepened further.

He felt a growing sense of foreboding, as though they were heading into a place they should never have entered.

Yet, no matter which direction he chose, the bloodstains, tattered clothes, and twisted messages continued to appear without any sign of letting up.

When Takakai tried to retrace their steps, he found that the path behind them no longer resembled what it had been before.

Could the entire layout of this chaotic cave system be constantly shifting?

With that thought, Takakai pressed forward through yet another segment of the cave, eventually arriving at a place he had not seen before.

While it was new to him, it still appeared to be just another cave—a rocky tunnel no different from the others they had traversed.

The only distinguishing feature was a faint yellow safety rope.

The rope stretched an indeterminate distance, anchored by metal spikes that created handholds along the way. It ran parallel to the ground, disappearing into the darkness without any visible endpoint.

In the dim light, Takakai peered in both directions along the rope. It extended endlessly into the void, offering no clue as to where it led.