Chapter 219: The Eve of the Exam at Private Aotou High School (Patreon)

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

Shido Makoto's legs felt like they'd been filled with lead. He clenched his teeth and braced himself on the fire axe, refusing to kneel.

He lifted his head and stared straight at the enormous face in the sky.

He couldn't beat this thing by force.

This was the final boss of a Full Moon-class dungeon.

Death Rollback? No. It wasn't time for the reset yet.

Fight it head-on? That was suicide.

Beg for mercy? That was an even surer road to death.

The Principal's pressure kept growing, and Shido Makoto's knees began to bend.

Under that crushing weight, his mind sank into an absolute, icy calm.

The Principal was the abuser.

The thirteen failing students were the victims.

That was the lowest-level logic of this dungeon.

At the level of the rules, abuser and victim were absolute opposites.

The Principal could make rules. He could wipe out players. But he couldn't wipe out the thirteen vengeful spirits themselves, because those spirits were the very foundation of this dungeon.

What if…

What if those two forces could be made to collide head-on?

A mad idea took shape in Shido Makoto's mind in an instant.

He glanced at his backpack.

The carving knives, stained with the blood of the thirteen failing students.

Shido Makoto yanked the backpack in front of him, tore open the zipper, and dumped everything out at once.

Clatter—

Thirteen carving knives scattered across the ground.

"Twenty seconds."

Yukino turned her head with difficulty and watched what he was doing, her eyes full of confusion.

What was he planning, at a time like this?

"Ten seconds."

Shido Makoto didn't hesitate for a moment.

He snatched up the first knife from the ground.

He looked at his free left arm without a flicker in his eyes.

Squelch!

He drove the first knife viciously into his own left arm!

Blood sprayed out at once.

"Makoto!"

Yukino's eyes went wide with horror, and the cry tore out of her.

But Shido Makoto seemed not to feel the pain at all.

Without the slightest pause, he picked up the second knife, then the third, his face expressionless…

Squelch! Squelch! Squelch!

One after another, the knives caked with dried blood were plunged mercilessly into his body.

Arms, shoulders, chest… He avoided every vital spot, yet made sure each blade sank deep into the flesh.

"Five, four, three, two, one…"

"Midnight. Zero hour."

As the midnight bell tolled, the thirteenth knife was driven into his own chest by Shido Makoto's hand.

In that instant, the Erasure Rule descended!

The blood moon in the sky flared bright, and a thick beam of blood-red light plunged down, aimed straight at the three people on the rooftop!

At that very same moment, Shido Makoto's body became a medium.

With his own blood, he fully awakened the resentment that had slept in those thirteen knives for over a decade!

Hummm—

A skyward surge of resentment erupted from Shido Makoto's body!

It was so thick, more than ten years of accumulated hatred.

Thirteen figures appeared out of thin air on the rooftop.

They were drenched in blood, their faces unrecognizable, some missing arms, some missing legs.

The vengeful spirits of the thirteen failing students were fully awakened!

As one, they raised their heads and fixed their eyes on the blood-red light falling from the sky!

The next second, the thirteen spirits turned into thirteen streams of black qi, shot skyward, and met the Principal's rule head-on!

BOOM!!!

The pillar of blood-red light and the black barrier collided in midair with a violent impact!

The whole world seemed to freeze in that moment.

In the sky, the Principal's refined face twisted for the first time.

He roared in fury and poured on more power, trying to crush the barrier of spirits by force.

But he failed.

As the direct victims of that year, the spirits' very existence was a denial of the Principal's authority.

The Principal could kill players, but he couldn't get past the resentment of these thirteen spirits to erase them directly.

Shido Makoto had made himself the fourteenth failing student.

He had made himself a part of the rules.

After flickering violently, the glow of the blood moon slowly faded.

The Principal's giant face grew blurry.

He was forced to withdraw his terrifying pressure.

"Very… very…"

"Day Seven. Final exams. Just you wait…"

The voice dissipated.

The crisis had passed, for now.

Shido Makoto's taut body went slack at once.

Agonizing pain and the dizziness of heavy blood loss swallowed him whole.

He couldn't hold himself up any longer and toppled stiffly backward.

With the blood moon gone, the night sky showed behind it.

Their duty done, the thirteen spirits gradually grew faint, and at last scattered into the air as specks of black light.

The thirteen carving knives lodged in Shido Makoto's body vanished with them.

As if they too had fulfilled their final purpose, they crumbled into fine powder and slid out of the wounds.

Yukino forced herself up from the ground. Her insides ached from the Principal's pressure, and every breath pulled at the pain.

But she didn't care about herself.

She stumbled over to Shido Makoto and saw the bloody holes all over his body.

The wounds had missed the vital spots, but every one of them was still pouring blood.

"Wake up!"

Just as Yukino thought he'd passed out, Shido Makoto's eyelids twitched, and then slowly opened.

His gaze was as calm as ever, as if the man who'd just stabbed himself with those knives was someone else.

He struggled upright and glanced at the wounds on his body without so much as a frown.

He fished a roll of spare bandages from his pocket, dug first-aid spray out of his backpack, and began treating himself.

He was horribly rough about it.

He sprayed the mangled wounds directly, then wrapped bandages around them tight, layer after layer. It was less bandaging than plugging the holes.

Watching him treat his life so cheaply, Yukino felt anger and worry tangle together in her chest.

"Are you insane?! You've got wounds on your back too! How are you going to deal with those yourself?"

Fighting down her own pain, she knelt behind Shido Makoto, snatched the bandages from his hand, and tended the wounds he couldn't reach.

When her fingers touched the curled-back flesh, they trembled in spite of her.

How could this man be so merciless to himself?

Yukino gritted her teeth and bandaged him in silence.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Lin was slowly coming around.

He groped his way up from the ground into a sitting position, his face still streaked with blood.

"What… what happened… Where's the Principal?"

"He's gone." Yukino's voice was hoarse.

"We… we survived."

"We survived?"

Lin repeated it, then touched his face, then the hollow sockets where his eyes had been.

He couldn't see anything.

So what if they'd survived?

There was still the final exam on Day Seven.

How could a blind man possibly survive a hellish exam like that?

He'd definitely be the first one eliminated.

…