Chapter 203: Private Qingteng High School Exam Room Order (Patreon)

The teacher's words had barely faded.

The front and back doors of the classroom, along with every window, were instantly sealed by a layer of writhing flesh!

Open eyeballs covered the flesh, turning the whole classroom into an airtight cage.

Every path of retreat was cut off.

The faces of the surviving players turned grim.

A pop quiz?

In this godforsaken place, anything even remotely connected to exams was bound to be trouble!

The teacher hovered before the lectern, looking on with satisfaction at the terror on everyone's faces.

She extended a finger and flicked it lightly.

Nine test papers drifted down onto each person's desk.

The papers were blank, and there wasn't a single pen on any desk.

Just as everyone was growing confused, a new line of rules slowly surfaced from the writhing flesh on the blackboard.

[Please answer on the test paper with your blood.]

Answer in blood?

The players' faces went a shade paler.

Shido Makoto looked at the paper in front of him. Without hesitation, he raised a hand and lightly drew a fingernail across the pad of his thumb. A bright red bead of blood welled up.

He pressed the drop onto the paper.

The blood spread quickly across the surface, forming line after line of text.

When Shido Makoto read the question that had appeared, his eyes sank sharply.

[You watch your sister writhe in agony on her sickbed, powerless to help. Now you are given a chance: what would you give in exchange to save her?]

His sister…

Kasugano Sora.

The frail, sickly sister who had only him to rely on, as he had only her.

Just like the Sunshine Sanatorium, this dungeon could read the deepest memories of a player.

But he was Shido Makoto, after all.

After only a moment of blankness, his eyes turned indifferent again.

"Trying to use Sora to disgust me again, huh…" he muttered.

At the same time, Yukinoshita Yukino, seated not far from him, saw the question on her own paper.

It read:

[Your sister shines brilliantly and is the pride of the family, while you are merely a substitute living in her shadow. When your mother orders you to give up yourself and sacrifice everything to obey the family's arrangements, how should you be a good daughter?]

Sister… Mother… Family…

Every word stabbed into the place Yukino least wanted to touch.

Ever since she was a child, she had lived in the shadow of her sister, Yukinoshita Haruno.

No matter how well she did, in her mother's eyes she never seemed able to measure up to that perfect sister.

She had worked hard, she had resisted, she had tried to prove herself, but all she ever got in return was her mother's arrangements, delivered without a trace of feeling.

Back on Ghost Island, and again at the school festival, she had opened her heart to Makoto-kun and tried to change herself.

But now that these words were before her again…

"Give up myself…"

"Obey…"

Those words made Yukino's breathing turn ragged.

"It's stealing our memories!"

Lin, seated on the other side, had spotted the crux of the problem.

He mouthed the words silently, using lip-reading.

This type of rule was the nastiest kind.

No matter how enhanced your body was, no matter how formidable your ghost item, it could skip right past all of that and attack your mind and will.

The moment your emotions spiraled out of control and your composure gave way, the rule would trigger at once!

"No… no! I didn't!"

Suddenly, a scream rang out from the next desk over.

Mark had clamped both hands over his head and was clawing wildly at his hair, his face twisted with madness.

"I didn't steal the company's money! It wasn't me! And I didn't kill that woman either! It wasn't me!"

He seemed trapped in some horrifying hallucination, shouting incoherently.

His mind had completely collapsed under the soul-piercing interrogation of the test paper!

As his emotions slipped out of control, the Honor Student Badge on his chest flared with red light, and the vein-like tendrils on it contracted frantically!

"…"

Mark's eyes bulged sharply outward.

Rrrip—

The clothes on his back tore open, and several black tentacles burst out of his spine!

He was mutating into a true monster!

The proctor teacher floating in midair drifted slowly over to Mark's side.

She made no move to stop his transformation. Instead she lowered her head close to the top of his, a look of utter relish on her face, and inhaled deeply the aura that poured off him.

"Hehehe… Students who don't answer seriously will be severely punished, you know."

Her voice sent a chill through the other players.

Frank, the closest to Mark, didn't even have time to scream before one of the tentacles pierced his chest.

Squelch!

The tentacle burst out through the back of his heart, hoisting his whole body high into the air.

Blood ran down the tentacle.

"Gurgle… gurgle…"

Something even more horrifying followed.

The tentacle impaling Frank began to drain the life force from his body in a frenzy.

Frank's body shriveled at a rate visible to the naked eye, and within a few short seconds he had become a dried-out corpse.

The tentacle flicked in disgust and threw Frank's desiccated corpse onto the floor.

"Trash with such poor mental fortitude deserves to be eliminated!"

"Damn it!"

A player in the classroom cursed aloud.

"Shut up! Don't make a sound!" Lin's voice was pitched very low.

His warning had come too late.

The discipline of the examination hall had been broken.

The hemp rope around the neck of the teacher floating before the lectern pulled taut.

Creeeak—

The teacher's neck stretched to a horrifying length.

She let out a shrill shriek that seemed able to pierce eardrums. It was more like an attack aimed directly at the mind, and nothing could keep it out.

Shido Makoto felt as though a red-hot iron spike had been driven into his brain. The pain was unbearable.

Beside him, Yukino let out a muffled groan and swayed, two lines of blood trickling from her nostrils.

The other players fared even worse. Mitsuhashi clutched his head and dropped to his knees, while the Korean player Junho rolled on the floor, hugging his head.

With the teacher's shriek, the entire classroom began to change in even more terrifying ways.

The walls bulged with lumps of flesh, and eyeballs opened across them.

Countless eyes rolled and swiveled, staring at every living person in the room.

Rrrip!

Countless bone spikes thrust out of the fleshy walls.

"Fuck!"

Lin swore. He hadn't expected the situation to deteriorate so fast.

Mark had completely lost his reason. His bloodshot eyes locked onto everyone still standing, as though each of them were the cause of his suffering.

"Die… all of you have to die!"

The clothes on his back were torn away entirely, and several more black tentacles burst out of his body.

A bone spike shot out of the fleshy wall behind Yukino, aimed straight at her heart.

Yukino was still dizzy from the mental shock and had no time to react.

At that moment, a hand caught her around the waist and yanked her hard.

Shido Makoto pulled the swaying Yukino into his arms.

Squelch!

The bone spike grazed her scalp and slammed into the desk in front of her, shattering the tabletop into pieces.

But the danger was far from over.

More bone spikes lunged in from every direction.

The mutated Mark was also whipping his tentacles about, attacking everyone near him indiscriminately.

Every player was driven into a corner.

…