Chapter 197: Private Qingteng High School — Testing the Rules (Patreon)

"What do you mean?" Mark snapped. "Are you trying to break the rules?"

"I never said I'd break them." Lin tapped the fourth rule on the blackboard.

"But I didn't say I'd follow them to the letter, either. Take a good look at these rules. Don't you see a problem?"

"What problem?" Mark snorted with contempt. "'Good students should actively ask the teacher questions.' Isn't that perfectly normal?"

"A school encourages students to ask questions. If you've got a problem, you ask the teacher. What could be simpler?"

"Simpler?"

Lin's sneer deepened. "Then look at the last rule."

[Sixteen. The teacher is always right.]

"Now read those two rules together."

"Actively ask the teacher questions, and the teacher is always right. You still think that's a life-saving clause?"

Mark's brow furrowed. He seemed to sense something, but his tone stayed hard.

"What's contradictory about it? Whatever the teacher says is right. We ask, he gives us the correct answer. Isn't that perfectly reasonable?"

"Idiot."

Lin didn't bother to be polite. "It's a paradox. A trap!"

"Say the teacher answers, 'One plus one equals three.' By Rule Sixteen, he's right. But every one of us knows one plus one is two. So do you believe him or not?"

"If you question him, you've broken Rule Sixteen. If you blindly believe him, what if that's exactly what triggers death?"

"Rule-type dungeons love this kind of wordplay. Not everything written here is true!"

After hearing Lin's analysis, the faces of the other Veterans in the classroom turned grave.

Clearly they had thought of it too, just not as thoroughly as Lin had laid it out.

Mark was left speechless, his face flickering between green and white.

He was a Veteran with five dungeons behind him, and a man with only four had just lectured him in front of everyone. His pride couldn't take it.

"Fearmongering," he said with a cold snort.

"Overthinking only ties our hands. We'd be too scared to do anything, and we'd die waiting all the same."

"I say that until we have a clear danger, following the rules as written is the safest choice."

The air between them turned razor-sharp in an instant.

Just then, the Japanese man called Mitsuhashi put on a peacemaker's smile and spoke up.

"You both have a point. Mr. Lin's caution is necessary, and Mr. Mark's initiative matters too. Perhaps we can find a middle ground?"

"We follow most of the rules, but stay wary of the ones that might be traps. How does that sound?"

His words seemed meant to smooth things over, but in truth he was quietly watching everyone's reactions, trying to read each person's hidden cards and temperament from their expressions and attitudes.

Shido Makoto hadn't taken part in the argument at all.

He stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching it all with a cold eye.

His memory palace had already been running for some time.

All sixteen rules on the blackboard, every character and every punctuation mark, had been imprinted whole into his mind.

He didn't need to analyze them the way Lin did. Inside his memory palace, countless streams of information were cross-referencing at high speed.

Rule Four and Rule Sixteen were pulled out on their own and joined by a red line.

Lin was right. It was a trap.

And a heavily guided, deadly one at that.

It encouraged players to trigger some condition of their own accord, and that condition was likely a one-way ticket to hell.

Just then, the corner of Shido Makoto's eye caught a small disturbance.

In the back right corner of the classroom, Yukinoshita Yukino sat with her head lowered, her gaze fixed on the battered desk in front of her.

Her fingers hovered a few centimeters above the surface, as if tracing something.

The desktop was covered in chaotic scratches, some deep, some shallow, as though someone had gouged them in with fingernails or a knife.

Yukino's brow creased slightly. She seemed to sense a strong wrongness in that jumble of marks.

Shido Makoto noticed where she was looking and glanced down at his own desk.

It was the same. His desktop was crisscrossed with grooves of varying depth.

To an ordinary person, it would look like a pile of meaningless graffiti.

But in Shido Makoto's eyes, those tangled lines were being rapidly reassembled by his memory palace.

Soon, out of countless messy strokes, a few characters took shape.

"Don't ask."

The instant Shido Makoto deciphered the message, the razor-edged tension in the classroom was shattered by a sudden sound.

Creak… creak…

It came from the corridor outside the classroom.

It was a sticky, squelching footstep, each one like a boot sinking into a bog.

Along with the footsteps came something worse, a scraping sound that made the scalp crawl, as if a huge slab of meat were being dragged along the floor.

The sound drew closer, clearer with every second.

The classroom fell silent at once.

Lin and Mark, who had been arguing fiercely a moment ago, shut their mouths in perfect unspoken agreement.

Every Veteran, Shido Makoto included, reached almost at the same moment into a pocket or to their waist, hands settling on their hidden trump-card items.

Something… was coming.

Everyone's gaze snapped toward the classroom door.

There was a square observation window in the door, but it was covered by thick frosted glass, and nothing outside could be made out.

Suddenly the frosted glass blurred, as if something outside had smeared against it.

A dark red streak slid slowly down the outer surface.

Then a hand shoved the classroom door open from outside.

A tall figure walked in.

The "thing" that entered could barely be called a man.

He stood over two meters tall, his body lean as a bamboo pole.

The most disturbing part was his neck. A gash ran from beneath his left ear all the way to his right collarbone, the flesh at its edges curled outward, as though his head might drop off at any moment.

His eyes were a dull gray-white. He stood on the lectern with a lesson plan in his hand, his dead-fish eyes sweeping back and forth over the twelve players in the room.

"The first evening self-study session begins now."

As his words fell, an invisible pressure settled over the entire classroom.

It was the suppression of the dungeon's rules.

The man called Frank, seated in the back row, broke out in a cold sweat across his forehead.

He wasn't a newcomer, but his mental resistance was clearly the weakest among these Veterans.

Everyone present was an old hand, and no one dared to make a sound.

They communicated through glances and subtle hand signals.

Lin sat in the front row with his back to the others, lightly tapping a few times on his desk with a finger.

It was Morse code, clearly, and the message was: hold still, observe first.

The teacher paid no attention to anything odd among the students below. He opened his lesson plan and began to patrol slowly along the aisles between the desks.

He started from the first row, and every time he passed a player, the sharp smell of formaldehyde grew even more pungent.

This psychological pressure was far more terrifying than a monster jumping straight out at them.

You knew he was dangerous, but not when he would strike, nor what would set him off.

Shido Makoto sat in his seat, body seemingly relaxed, but every muscle was taut and ready to react.

His eyes followed the teacher's movements.

The teacher walked slowly. One row, then another, then another.

In the second row, Mark's eyes darted restlessly.

Sweat had beaded at his temples too, but what showed most was an itchy, eager irritation.

As a Veteran of five dungeons, he had a survival philosophy of his own.

In a rule-type dungeon, he believed, waiting passively meant handing your fate to someone else.

You had to take the initiative, probe the limits of the rules, and seize control.

He glanced at Rule Four on the blackboard: [Good students should actively ask the teacher questions.]

Then at Rule Sixteen: [The teacher is always right.]

Lin's warning still rang in his ears, but Mark's arrogance wouldn't let him admit he was wrong.

He figured Lin was just a coward who overthought things and spooked himself.

What paradox, what bullshit. How would you know whether it was a trap or an opportunity unless you tried it yourself?

What if asking a question really was the key to a clue for clearing the dungeon?

The first one to try the crab always gets the biggest reward.

Once the thought took root, it grew wildly in his mind.

Shido Makoto watched Mark's back with icy eyes.

He could practically guess what was going through the American's head.

What an idiot, rushing to be reborn.

Shido Makoto silently sentenced him to death.

He had no plans to stop him, and couldn't be bothered to.

In a place like this, someone always had to spend their life clearing the mines for everyone else.

It was the most efficient way.

The teacher's footsteps stopped.

He had halted right beside Mark's desk.

The sharp smell of formaldehyde grew ten times stronger, almost suffocating.

Mark's body stiffened for a moment, but he recovered quickly.

This was the best chance.

The eyes of the whole classroom were faintly, unmistakably gathered on him.

Mark drew a deep breath and raised his hand.

The teacher's stiff head turned slowly toward him, eyes fixed unblinkingly on Mark.

Mark forced out what he thought was an ingratiating smile and said respectfully, "Teacher, I have a question."

Several people in the classroom sucked in a sharp breath at those words.

You actually dared to ask?

In the front row, Lin clenched his teeth and cursed "lunatic" with all his might in his head.

In the corner, Yukino couldn't understand either. With such clear warnings, why would anyone do this on purpose?

The teacher looked at Mark. On his ashen face, the muscles seemed to twitch, as if he were smiling, but it looked worse than weeping.

"Speak."

Granted permission, Mark was elated. He felt his judgment had been right.

He casually flipped open a textbook on his desk, of what subject he had no idea, and pointed at an exercise he couldn't make head or tail of, putting on the air of an eager, inquisitive student.

"Teacher, I don't understand how to solve this problem at all. May I ask for your guidance?"

He deliberately made his words extremely humble, in perfect accordance with Rule Four.

Everyone's hearts leapt into their throats.

The teacher stopped and slowly lowered his head, that precariously dangling head almost touching Mark's face.

A putrid stench of rot washed over him.

Something eerie seemed to flicker in those dead-fish eyes.

Then he let out a soft laugh of unclear meaning.

"Heh heh… a good student… should ask questions."

Hearing that, the stone in Mark's heart finally dropped, and a smug look spread across his face.

See? It was never a trap.

But the teacher's next words froze the smile on his face.

"Then tell me, how many points is a pound of conscience worth?"

…