Chapter 218: Private Qingteng High School Thirteen Carving Knives (Patreon)

The moment the door opened, a wave of heat hit them in the face.

In just over ten minutes, the temperature in the corridor had climbed sharply. The blood vessels in the walls throbbed even harder, and the fleshy tissue had started to secrete a clear mucus. The vesicles on the ceiling were bursting, and the strongly acidic fluid inside ran down the walls.

"Don't touch the walls." Shido Makoto tossed out the warning and slipped through the door, keeping his body low.

The Inner World's rules were still in effect: walking upright in the corridor was forbidden. The three of them could only crawl or move in a low crouch.

Shido Makoto took the lead. He carried the fire axe in one hand and braced himself against the floor with the other, moving fast in a half-crouch, half-crawl. His enhanced physique showed its full advantage here.

Yukino was in the middle, one hand supporting Lin and the other pressed to the ground. Lin couldn't see the way, so he relied on Yukino to guide him.

"Left corner. Three of them," Shido Makoto's voice came from ahead.

He had stopped and turned an ear to listen. Heavy footsteps were coming from the direction of the left corner.

"Go right." Shido Makoto changed course.

Yukino dragged Lin after him. The three hugged the right-hand wall and moved forward, making as little noise as they could.

At the end of the corridor was the fire door leading to the stairwell. Shido Makoto crawled up to it and pushed.

The door didn't budge. Flesh on the other side had sealed it shut, and he could feel the door panel faintly pulsing.

"No way through," Shido Makoto said in a low voice.

"Then how do we get upstairs?" Yukino asked.

Shido Makoto's gaze swept both sides of the corridor. On the left was the corner blocked by monsters, and on the right a row of classroom doors. Then he looked up.

Among the fleshy tissue on the ceiling was a ventilation duct opening, mostly hidden from view.

"The duct." Shido Makoto made his decision.

He stood up—no, he couldn't stand. He crouched on top of a desk instead, reached the duct cover, hooked his fingers around the edge and yanked hard. The whole cover came away.

A gust of hot air rushed out of the duct.

"I'll go up first and scout," Shido Makoto told Yukino. "If it's clear, I'll pull you two up."

He gripped the edge of the opening with both hands, hauled himself up and wriggled inside.

The duct was narrow, just wide enough for a grown man to crawl through. It was pitch black, and Shido Makoto could barely make out a few meters ahead. A thin layer of membrane coated the inner walls, slick and slimy to the touch, but passable.

He crawled about three meters, confirmed the duct's structure was sound, then turned around and reached a hand down.

"Lin first."

Down below, Yukino lifted Lin up. Lin couldn't see, but his arms still had strength. Shido Makoto caught his wrist and hauled him into the duct in one pull.

"Stay low and crawl forward."

"Okay." Lin's voice still trembled, but his movements were much steadier.

Yukino came next. She was much lighter, and Shido Makoto pulled her up with one hand.

The three of them lined up inside the cramped ventilation duct: Shido Makoto breaking trail at the front, Lin in the middle, Yukino guarding the rear.

"Where does this duct lead?" Yukino asked.

"The ventilation system runs through the whole building," Shido Makoto said as he crawled. "Once we find a shaft going up, we can reach the top floor."

They crawled for about five minutes and passed several forks. Shido Makoto judged the route from the campus building layout stored in his memory palace, choosing a direction at every fork without hesitation.

"The shaft going up is ten meters ahead," he said.

After a little more crawling, the duct suddenly tilted upward. Shido Makoto looked up. It was a vertical ventilation shaft, about four stories high.

A ladder ran along the inner wall, but most of it had rusted through, and some of the rungs had snapped clean off.

"I'll go first." Shido Makoto didn't waste words. He grabbed the ladder with both hands and started to climb.

Before stepping on each rung, he pressed down hard to test its load. Where rungs were missing, he skipped them and pulled himself up on arm strength alone.

Around the third floor, his right hand closed on a rung.

Crack.

The rung snapped. Shido Makoto's body dropped, and his entire weight swung onto his left hand. He gritted his teeth and snapped his right hand up to catch another rung above.

He caught it. He kept climbing.

A minute later he reached the duct exit on the top floor. He kicked off the cover and found the top-floor corridor outside.

Things were better here than below. Perhaps because it was the highest floor, the Inner World's flesh erosion hadn't fully spread this far. Only a few scattered blood vessels clung to the walls, and the floor was mostly normal.

Shido Makoto leaned out and looked around. No monsters in the corridor.

"Come up." He reached a hand down into the shaft.

After he had hauled Lin and Yukino up one by one, the three of them stood in the top-floor corridor.

No, they couldn't stand. Shido Makoto was about to warn them when he stopped short.

He tried straightening his back. Nothing happened. No backlash from the rules.

"The Inner World's rules only apply to the lower floors?" Yukino tried standing too, and found she was fine.

"Or only in the main area of the teaching building," Shido Makoto said. "The top floor doesn't count as part of the main teaching area."

"That makes things a lot easier." Yukino steadied Lin on his feet.

Shido Makoto strode toward the end of the corridor.

The art room.

A faded poster was still stuck to the door beside the nameplate, showing a few brightly colored fruits. Shido Makoto pushed the door. It wasn't locked, and he went in.

The art room was a mess. Plaster casts, easels and paint buckets lay scattered across the floor. Shido Makoto's gaze swept the room.

At the deepest part of the room, against the wall, stood a large plaster statue in the pose of Venus. Its head had been smashed off, leaving an uneven break.

Shido Makoto walked around to its back. There was a crack in the statue's abdomen, patched with plaster powder, but the patch was old and had split open again.

He swung up the fire axe and brought it down on the statue's belly. The plaster shattered, revealing a hollow cavity.

Thirteen craft knives were neatly stacked inside. The blades were thick with rust, but the dark brown stain on the edges was blood. Human blood, dried for over a decade.

Shido Makoto took out all thirteen knives and packed them into his backpack.

"Got them," he said.

"What now?" Lin asked.

"We find the Principal." Shido Makoto glanced at the time.

23:41. Nineteen minutes left.

Just then, the floor beneath their feet began to shake violently.

Boom—

A crack opened in the middle of the art room floor and widened rapidly. From its edge, an enormous hand reached up. It was half the size of a desk, and it had punched straight up through the floors from below.

"Run!"

Shido Makoto seized Yukino's wrist with one hand and grabbed for Lin with the other. The three of them burst out of the art room. Behind them, the giant hand ripped the entire art room floor apart.

More hands were reaching up from below, as if something were thrusting the whole building upward from its foundation.

The rooftop. Only the rooftop was left.

Shido Makoto drove the other two on in a headlong sprint and found the iron door to the rooftop at the end of the corridor. He kicked it open. Night wind rushed in.

The three of them charged onto the rooftop. A cold wind howled across it. There was nothing up there but bare concrete and a waist-high railing around the edge. They had nowhere left to retreat.

Shido Makoto turned to look at the night sky.

A blood moon hung there, a red moon filling half the heavens and lighting the whole campus as bright as day. Then a slit slowly split open in the very center of the blood moon.

It was an eye. No, the blood moon itself was an eye.

Lin's knees buckled and he dropped to the ground, coughing up a mouthful of blood. Yukino doubled over as if a mountain had been pressed onto her shoulders, a thread of blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.

Shido Makoto's legs sagged too, but he forced himself to stay up and refused to kneel.

In the night sky, the space around the blood moon began to warp. A gigantic human face surfaced from behind the moon.

It was the face of a middle-aged man. His features were regular, even somewhat refined. His bearing resembled the Dean's, but he was of a different rank entirely.

This was the Principal.

"Interesting."

"To think my school has produced a few rats this troublesome…"