Chapter 159: Hide and Seek Unraveled (Patreon)

Kudo Makoto was still cursing under his breath when he got teleported to the open space of the main hall.

Just a minute ago, he'd been crouched in the ductwork gap, analyzing the situation, confident he had everything covered.

But the moment he climbed out to relocate, he ran straight into three people at a corridor corner — Fatty, the Pencil-Skirt Woman, and the middle-aged man.

The three of them were huddled together, their expressions all wrong.

Kudo Makoto's first instinct was to back away, but before he could even ask a question, someone tapped him on the back.

The security guard had somehow slipped up behind him without a sound.

Then his vision blurred, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the open space of the main hall, a message on his phone telling him to start counting.

Kudo Makoto gritted his teeth and began counting.

"Twelve."

"Thirteen."

"Fourteen." He counted while rapidly sorting through what he'd just seen.

Those three... no matter how he looked at it, they didn't seem like normal players anymore. They were most likely no longer part of the game's normal cycle.

"Twenty-one."

"Twenty-two." He was the Ghost now. By his own earlier analysis, becoming the Ghost should be the path to survival — that guess had to be right.

But that path to survival came with a condition.

Time. It had to be time!

The Silver-Haired Girl had found her target in just two or three minutes, and she'd come out unharmed. Fatty had taken over ten minutes.

The Pencil-Skirt Woman had also taken over ten minutes.

The middle-aged man, and the security guard just now — they'd probably taken about the same.

So they'd all gone wrong.

The longer someone spent as the Ghost, the more dangerous it got.

Something would corrode and warp the body, until eventually... it turned into a monster like them.

A chill ran through Kudo Makoto.

"Fifty-one." "Fifty-two."

No. I can't end up like them!

I have to find someone, fast!

But... find who?

The only ones left were the Silver-Haired Girl and the other high school girl.

Where would they be hiding? The factory was huge — finding them in a short time would be next to impossible.

Was his fate already sealed too? No! He was an intelligence analyst for Countermeasures Section 9! He'd studied over a hundred dungeon cases! He couldn't die here! There had to be another way!

Calm down, Kudo Makoto. Calm down.

He forced himself to recall every file he'd ever read.

Survivor reports from high-risk dungeons had mentioned cooperation more than once.

In certain dungeons with especially brutal rules, going it alone was a dead end — only when survivors dropped their suspicions and worked together did they stand any chance at all.

Cooperation... But right now, the others had already...

Just as despair crept in, a girl's voice suddenly rang out from the second floor:

"I'm on the second floor!"

Kudo Makoto's counting stuttered.

"Come find me the moment you finish counting!"

It was the Silver-Haired Girl's voice!

She was deliberately revealing her own location?

Why would she do that? Unless...

His earlier guess had been right?

The key really was time?

She was exposing her position on purpose so he could complete the role-swap in the shortest time possible?

Because the longer you stayed the Ghost, the more dangerous it got!

Kudo Makoto's heart began to race.

He was now certain, beyond doubt, that his hypothesis was correct.

Those who'd taken fifteen to twenty minutes as the Ghost before finding someone must have undergone some irreversible transformation during the search — and the three people he'd just run into were the result of it.

They weren't human anymore.

"Eighty-nine." "Ninety." Almost there. A surge of heat rushed through Kudo Makoto's chest.

So there really was someone smart in this dungeon after all!

"Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!"

Kudo Makoto opened his eyes and sprinted for the second floor. Stairs, corridor, left turn.

At the end of the second-floor corridor, a door stood open.

The Silver-Haired Girl stood in the doorway watching him run up, and behind her stood the other girl, the one in the high school uniform.

Kudo Makoto stopped in front of them, gasping for breath. "Come on," the Silver-Haired Girl said.

Kudo Makoto didn't hesitate. He closed the distance and tapped her shoulder. Role-swap!

The next instant, the Silver-Haired Girl's figure blurred before his eyes, then vanished.

She'd been teleported back to the main hall.

Kudo Makoto's legs went weak, and he nearly dropped to his knees.

"Are... are you all right?" a girl's voice asked from beside him.

Kudo Makoto waved a hand and straightened up to look at her. "I'm fine."

Once his breathing evened out, he asked, "What exactly is going on here? Why would she... do something like that?"

Nanami Aoyama glanced downstairs — Sora had already been teleported to the open space of the main hall, and soon her counting would start. "It's her theory," Nanami said.

"She believes the path to survival in this game really is becoming the Ghost — but only if you find the next hider very quickly."

"Time..." Kudo Makoto murmured, the word matching his own conclusion exactly.

"Then she... is she..." Kudo Makoto looked down toward the main hall.

"We have to stay here and wait for her," Nanami said. "Once she finishes counting to a hundred, she'll come straight up to find us, and one of us has to take her place as the new Ghost."

Understanding dawned on Kudo Makoto at once. It was a bold plan, but a workable one.

Through the three of them taking turns and cooperating, every stint as the Ghost could be compressed to the bare minimum.

By deliberately exposing their positions, the Ghost could find a target the instant the count ended and complete the role-swap.

That way, no one would spend more than three minutes as the Ghost.

Which meant the transformation would never be triggered.

"This... this was her idea?" Kudo Makoto stared at the small figure below, stunned.

The girl looked as fragile as a porcelain doll, yet she'd worked out such a flawless way to break the deadlock in so little time.

"Yes," Nanami nodded. "She said we can't just keep hiding forever. We have to find a way to survive before the countdown runs out."

Downstairs, Sora's counting had already begun.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

"What do we do now?" Nanami asked.

"We do what she said — take turns being the Ghost, take turns exposing our positions," Kudo Makoto said. "Keep every role-swap under three minutes. How much time's left on the countdown..." He checked his phone. "Fifty-two minutes."

"Split three ways, that's five or six turns each as the Ghost," Kudo Makoto said. Nanami nodded.

Sora's counting continued. "...Eighty-eight."

"...Eighty-nine."

"I'll go wait for her in the corridor," Nanami said.

"Wait," Kudo Makoto stopped her. "Are you sure you want to go first?"

Nanami glanced back at him. "She's already been the Ghost twice, and you've done it once. I haven't done it at all. It's my turn." She walked out into the corridor and stood at the top of the stairs, facing the main hall.

"...Ninety-eight." "...Ninety-nine." "...One hundred." The counting stopped.

Footsteps sounded. Sora appeared at the top of the stairs. She saw Nanami standing there, and the two of them locked eyes for a moment before Sora reached out and tapped her shoulder.

Role-swap complete.

Nanami vanished, reappearing in the open space of the main hall.

Sora walked back into the control room and nodded at Kudo Makoto.

"Your theory was right," Kudo Makoto said.

"I didn't feel anything strange the whole time I was the Ghost."

"Right. As long as it's short, we're fine," Sora said.

Downstairs, Nanami's counting began. "One." "Two." "Three."

Kudo Makoto sat down against the wall and let out a long breath.

"Have you been through the Cycle Game before?" he asked.

"No. This is my first time."

Kudo Makoto looked at her. Her first dungeon, and she'd made a call like that under this kind of pressure...

He'd seen plenty of survivor files at Countermeasures Section 9. Fewer than one in ten people ever figured out the rules on their first dungeon.

"You're something else," he said.

Sora didn't answer. She sat beside the electrical cabinet, knees pulled to her chest, eyes fixed on the floor.

"...I just didn't want to die," she said.

Nanami's counting went on.

"...Thirty-five." "...Thirty-six."

Kudo Makoto stood up. "My turn to wait in the corridor. Once she finishes this count, I'll expose my position so she can find me."

"Then you next round, me the round after that, and we cycle." "Okay."

Kudo Makoto walked to the doorway, then paused.

"By the way, those four people outside..." he said.

"If they show up nearby, ignore them. No need to run, either. As long as we don't break out of this cycle, they shouldn't attack first."

"How do you know that?"

"I don't," Kudo Makoto said.

"But those three didn't touch me when they were standing right in front of me earlier. The other one who tapped me was still a normal Ghost at the time, just carrying out the game's rule. The three who'd already transformed just stood there watching."

Sora didn't ask anything more. Kudo Makoto walked out of the control room and took his place in the corridor.

Over the next forty-odd minutes, the three of them kept the cycle going.

Sora took the Ghost role six times. Nanami took it five times. Kudo Makoto took it six times.

Not once did anything go wrong.

"It really is about time," Kudo Makoto said to Sora after the newest round ended, back in the control room.

"Finish the swap within three minutes and there are no side effects at all." Sora nodded.

As long as they kept up this rhythm until the game ended, they'd survive.

Kudo Makoto leaned against the wall, managing a rueful laugh. "Whew... honestly, my legs are still a little shaky."

"Dancing back and forth on death's doorstep like this is way too intense."

"Let's keep going." He walked out of the control room to wait in the corridor.

This round, it was Sora's turn as the Ghost.

Her counting drifted up from the main hall. Kudo Makoto stood at the second-floor railing, looking down at the open space below.

"...Ninety-seven." "...Ninety-eight."

That was when movement caught the corner of Kudo Makoto's eye.

Four figures. Marufuji Keita, Park Ji-yeon, Chen Jianping, Zhao Tiezhu.

The four of them emerged from different directions of the factory, moving toward where they were.

Sora had already made it up to the second floor first, but she didn't rush to tap Nanami's shoulder. The four true ghosts formed a circle, surrounding the three of them in the middle.

Nanami asked in a low voice, "Are they going to come at us?"

"Ignore them," Sora said. "We keep going. Time's almost up."

Kudo Makoto glanced at his phone. The countdown had ticked down to 00:02:00.

The true ghosts' bodies turned translucent. As time passed, they slowly collapsed in on themselves, then crumbled into ash scattered across the floor.

The countdown hit 00:00:00.

The black phones on all three of them buzzed. The next instant, white light flashed before their eyes, and the world spun.

When Sora came back to her senses, she was sitting on the sofa in her own home.

An empty barley tea glass and two chocolate sticks sat on the coffee table. A game controller lay on the sofa cushion, and the black rabbit plush was on the floor.

Sora bent down, picked up the rabbit plush, and hugged it to her chest.

After a moment, she took out the black phone to check the message on its screen.

[Dungeon: "Hide and Seek" — Complete.]

[Survivors confirmed: Kasugano Sora, Nanami Aoyama, Kudo Makoto.]

[Task evaluation in progress...]

[Rating: A]

[Calculating rewards...]