Chapter 222: Private Seitou High School Second Question (Patreon)

"Question Two. The rules are as follows.

"Each examinee has a scalpel in front of them.

"Sacrifice the organ of one deskmate to advance with a perfect score.

"Refuse to sacrifice, and two of your own senses will be stripped away.

"Three minutes on the countdown.

"Begin."

In a single instant, Shido Makoto's mind had stripped the question down to its essence.

A prisoner's dilemma.

No, something even more disgusting than a prisoner's dilemma. This was a zero-sum game.

The three of them were each other's deskmates, and each had a knife in front of them.

You could sacrifice someone else to pass with a perfect score. Or you could refuse, at the price of two of your own senses.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.

Take two away from the five basic senses, and in this dungeon you were practically crippled.

And if all three refused, all three would be crippled.

If even one person chose to sacrifice another, that person passed with a perfect score, and the one sacrificed…

Shido Makoto's gaze swept over the blade.

An organ.

The question said organ.

But in a hellhole like this, what was the difference between losing an organ and losing half your life?

That was the Principal's aim.

In the first question, Shido Makoto had used muttering and tapped codes to carry all three of them through, showing off formidable teamwork.

The Principal had stopped smiling after the first question.

So for the second, the Principal meant to tear them apart.

With the most direct conflict of interest possible.

Do you trust your companions?

Do you believe they won't stab you in the back to save themselves?

The corner of Shido Makoto's mouth twitched.

Playing that game?

He raised his head and looked through the thickening blood-red mist toward Yukino.

Thirty meters.

The blood mist formed a translucent curtain between them, and sound still couldn't cross it.

But Shido Makoto's eyesight was good enough. He could make out Yukino's silhouette.

And then he saw something that turned his blood cold.

Yukino had gripped the handle.

She had picked up the knife.

His heart lurched.

No. She wasn't aiming at him.

Yukino was pointing the tip at her own left eye.

His mind went white with a hum.

He understood in an instant what she was thinking.

The rules said "sacrifice the organ of one deskmate." If Yukino gouged out her own eye and counted it as "sacrificed to Shido Makoto"…

No, that logic didn't hold.

The rule said the deskmate's organ, not one's own.

So what was she trying to do?

Shido Makoto stared hard at the blurry figure in the mist.

She was fighting the rules with self-harm.

If she destroyed her own organ first, then even if someone wanted to sacrifice her, there would be nothing left to sacrifice.

No.

A far more terrifying possibility struck him.

Yukino simply didn't want to hurt anyone. She would rather go blind herself than point a knife at another person.

That idiot.

Shido Makoto whipped his head around to the other side.

Lin.

Beyond the mist, something was happening in Lin's direction too.

Lin, blind, groped until he found the boning knife in front of him. His fingers slid from the handle to the blade, and then…

He pressed the blade against his own wrist.

Right over the artery.

Shido Makoto saw Lin's lips moving.

He couldn't hear a sound, but he could read the shape of the words.

"…Don't sacrifice her… cut mine…"

Two of them.

Both of them were trying to protect him through self-harm.

Something surged in Shido Makoto's chest.

Rage at this fucked-up rule, at that revolting Principal's face in the sky.

From the first second he had entered this dungeon, every rule, every trial, everything had pushed in the same direction.

Make people kill each other.

Make people betray their companions.

Make people drive a knife into the hearts of those beside them.

From the trolley problem on the first day to the organ sacrifice now, the underlying logic of this dungeon had only ever been one thing: absolute self-interest.

But absolute self-interest didn't mean you had to hurt the people around you.

Shido Makoto glared at the rusted boning knife in front of him, breathing heavily.

A third of the red liquid in the hourglass had run down.

One minute of the three-minute countdown was gone.

He had to choose.

Option one: sacrifice Yukino's or Lin's organ.

Perfect score.

Impossible.

Option two: refuse to sacrifice.

Lose two of his own senses.

Acceptable.

But if all three of them were weakened by two senses each, they would be as good as dead in the third question.

Option three…

Shido Makoto's gaze left the knife and settled on the desk.

The desk.

A desk made of flesh.

Its surface was covered in throbbing veins, and the tabletop squirmed faintly.

Every few seconds, a heartbeat sounded from deep within it.

The desk was alive.

His pupils contracted sharply.

He replayed the original wording of the rule.

"Sacrifice the organ of one deskmate to advance with a perfect score."

Deskmate.

Deskmate.

The two words turned over and over in his mind.

What did "deskmate" literally mean?

The person sitting at the same desk.

But in this exam hall, each of them was bound to a separate desk.

The three sat at three different desks. They weren't each other's deskmates.

So who was his deskmate?

The answer was right beneath his backside.

This desk was alive.

It had a heart, veins, breath.

It was a living thing.

And Shido Makoto sat before it.

That made it Shido Makoto's deskmate.

The liquid in the hourglass was past halfway.

A minute and a half.

Shido Makoto hesitated no longer.

He seized the boning knife.

He raised it high, point down, aimed at the dead center of the desk.

He gave himself no room to think.

The instant the knife plunged in, black blood spurted from the wound and splattered across his face and body.

The desk let out a scream that made his scalp crawl.

Shido Makoto bore down with all his strength, driving the blade deeper into the surface.

He could feel the tip slicing through some soft tissue, like cutting into a beating heart.

Because that was exactly what it was.

All the throbbing veins collapsed.

Shido Makoto let go of the handle and stepped back.

He was drenched in black blood and pus, his hair plastered into clumps, only his two eyes showing through the muck.

Those eyes were fixed on the Principal in the sky.

The exam hall stayed silent for about three seconds.

Then…

"Examinee Fang Si.

"Question Two, perfect score. Passed."

Shido Makoto let out a long breath.

He turned toward Yukino and Lin.

On Yukino's side, the knife was still raised in her hand, its tip less than two centimeters from her left eye.

But she had stopped.

Because she had heard Shido Makoto say, "The desk counts as a deskmate too."

The knife fell from her hand.

Even across thirty meters of blood mist, Shido Makoto could see her whole body shaking.

On Lin's side, the knife at his wrist was set down as well.

He couldn't see, but he had heard Shido Makoto's voice.

He understood.

Thirty seconds later, the boning knives in front of Yukino and Lin crumbled into dust at the same time and scattered into the air.

The system's voice rang out again.

"Examinee Tabby, Question Two passed."

"Examinee Lin, Question Two passed."

Question Two.

All three alive. Zero casualties.

Shido Makoto's mouth curled.

Then he raised his head and looked at the Principal in the sky.

The red clouds overhead began to spin.

The blood rain suddenly stopped.

"You're clever.

"Far too clever.

"So clever that I want to…"

The voice rose abruptly, like a thunderbolt crashing down.

"Crush you with my own hands!"

The sky split open.

The churning red clouds were torn apart down the middle, and the Principal's face leaned out from behind them.

"Question Three."

The Principal's voice came from every direction at once, with nowhere to hide.

"The final question.

"Begin."

There was no exam paper.

No pen.

No text appeared before Shido Makoto at all.

A crushing physical weight fell from the sky.

Ten times gravity.

Shido Makoto's knees buckled in an instant.

He dropped to one knee on the flesh floor, his spine creaking as if it might snap at any moment.

Blood welled up in his mouth.

He braced both hands against the ground, barely keeping himself from being crushed into a pulp.

But his arms trembled violently, the muscle fibers tearing every second under ten times his own body weight.

He twisted his head toward Yukino.

The blood mist had cleared.

Ten times gravity had pressed all the floating mist down to the ground.

His view was suddenly sharp.

He saw Yukino sprawled on the flesh floor thirty meters away, limbs splayed, unable to move.

Her face was pressed to the ground, her hair spread out in the blood, a thin thread of blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

She was alive, but clearly at her limit.

Lin had it worse.

His body had simply been flattened, pinned to the floor as though an invisible giant hand were holding him down.

The Principal's voice rang overhead.

"The final question.

"Hand in a graduation piece that satisfies the teacher.

"Or all of you die!"

…