"Hah..."
His exhale stirred dust that drifted into his nostrils.
The rock walls were growing increasingly narrow.
He couldn't lift his head.
He couldn't turn around.
Each breath grew more constricted.
It felt less like advancing through a stone cave and more like being wrapped layer upon layer by rock walls, his body immobilized until he couldn't move at all.
"Hah..."
Ahead, the passage grew even narrower.
At first, Takakai could still crawl on his stomach, slowly advancing through the low cave tunnel.
But gradually, he found himself having to keep his arms stretched forward - the tunnel was now less than 50cm wide. At this width, he couldn't pull his arms back and had to maintain this posture to avoid getting stuck.
"Hah..."
Yet the cave ahead grew tighter still.
Bit by bit, Takakai wriggled forward through the pitch-black tunnel.
The sound of his explorer suit scraping against rock echoed dully, one after another - like something being slowly torn apart.
Drip-
A water droplet landed beside his cheek with a sharp splatter.
Takakai's breathing grew heavier.
Each inhalation pressed his ribs against unyielding stone, leaving no room to fully expand his lungs.
The grating friction grew louder.
Clearly, his helmet could no longer accommodate the cave's height.
No sound from Fujiwara Chika.
No sound from anyone but himself.
Only this endless, lightless cave stretched onward, and he was its sole prisoner desperate to escape.
Click!
A crisp snap - Takakai had no choice but to stop.
His helmet was completely stuck. He couldn't advance further.
He estimated the tunnel height was now under 40cm. He could barely lift his head, and the helmet had become a major obstruction. To proceed, he'd have to remove it.
Tch...what a pain.
Removing it proved difficult. Takakai had to wiggle backward slightly, otherwise his head would remain locked in place. Then, arms still extended forward in that awkward posture, he barely managed to bend his elbows, undo the helmet clasp, tilt his head sideways, and painstakingly work it free.
Not being able to retract his arms caused more trouble than expected - he couldn't even wipe dust from his face. Gasping, he slowly pushed the helmet ahead, using its mounted flashlight for illumination.
His backpack also had to be nudged forward incrementally. Each small advance required pushing it ahead before dragging himself after it, repeating the cycle.
The blood-stained doll capable of shared senses lingered at the light's edge. Takakai didn't dare let it stray into darkness - while it could share senses, it lacked night vision. In complete blackness it would provide no warning, and might even attract danger instead.
"Hah..."
Another slow exhale, and Takakai began feeling lightheaded.
A faint, shrill ringing buzzed in his ears.
His strength seemed to be waning.
He recognized this as hypoxia.
He'd been in this cramped, sealed space too long. He needed to exit - fast. Continuing like this, he might lose consciousness, and the next time he opened his eyes it would be Week 3 all over again.
"Hah..."
He had no choice but to keep crawling forward.
His body could barely muster strength now.
The rock walls pressed from all sides, forcing him to grip protrusions just to drag himself along.
His legs were nearly useless too - he couldn't bend them anymore.
This experience was indescribably awful.
But Takakai soon realized: when bad things happen, they rarely come alone.
Bzzzt-
The helmet's light began flickering.
Hey, no way...I just replaced these batteries. There's no way they're dying already.
As Takakai struggled to check, the light cut out entirely.
Darkness.
Absolute, boundless, lightless darkness swallowed his vision.
Now he couldn't see anything - only crawl blindly through the cave.
Claustrophobia.
The term resurfaced in his mind.
In the Visitor's Rules compiled by players before Nutty Putty Cave entered its fixed phase, this was a phrase "tourist" players could never vocalize - or even think. In a way, the rule itself hinted at what happened here.
But Takakai wasn't thinking about the cave's tragedies now. He focused on the term itself.
Medically, claustrophobia meant fear of enclosed spaces - the dread of something terrible happening in confinement, the fear of the unknown. Elevators, train cars, airplane cabins could trigger it. Caves? Rarely mentioned. Probably because claustrophobics would never enter them to begin with.
Takakai always believed he didn't have claustrophobia. Such psychological conditions felt distant, impossible for someone like him...
Until today, crawling through this narrow tunnel.
Could you imagine it?
You're lying in a narrow, damp, freezing cave. Rock presses from above, below, left and right as if to crush you flat, clinging so tightly you can't breathe properly, your ribcage constricted.
You can't bend your legs. Even if they go numb, you can't stretch them - they'll just hit stone.
You can't lower your arms to your sides, forced to keep them extended forward because thick rock presses against you so firmly that eventually your shoulders feel near breaking, until you can't even bend your elbows.
And then - the lights go out.
Absolute darkness.
"Hah..."
Takakai considered himself calm, but even he felt his breathing quicken and heartbeat accelerate for several seconds before regaining composure.
The backpack had spare flashlights.
But the helmet light's failure wasn't coincidence.
He was certain - because he could hear breathing behind him.
Takakai had entered an anomaly-affected zone, one clearly tied to darkness. That's why his light failed.
No flashlight would work here now. Until he crawled beyond this area, until he escaped that thing's range, light was impossible.
[Hah...]
So close.
Close enough that Takakai imagined it could grab his ankle at any moment and drag him into bottomless depths.
But Takakai kept crawling silently, simultaneously recalling the doll from the darkness to store in his watch. Better that than risk losing it to some sudden disaster.
Now he saw nothing.
Only touch remained - fingers tracing rock walls as he inched forward.
How far had he crawled? 100 meters? 200? More? Less? No way to know. Just keep moving. Forward through the dark.
[Hah...]
That labored breathing seemed to come from beside him now.
But there was no "beside" here - the space was too narrow for such concepts.
His blessing's senses suggested the pursuer had vanished, as if never there.
Had he escaped its range? Maybe the helmet light would work now.
As Takakai reached forward, his fingers touched something cold, slightly stiff, yet far less solid than stone.
A corpse.
The lightless tunnel remained so narrow he couldn't lift his head, only worm forward.
But the walls around him had turned to corpses.
Suddenly he wasn't in a cave but a mass grave, crawling through a tunnel of packed bodies.
A stench slowly spread.
Darkness still reigned supreme.
Realizing something was wrong, Takakai tried backing up - but his feet kicked corpses blocking the way. No retreat.
No way back?
After less than a second's hesitation, Takakai kept crawling forward.
In that narrow space, his hands occasionally brushed faces, limbs, torsos - some intact, some not, sometimes clearly touching intestines, bones, or maggots squirming in rotting flesh.
The stench grew worse as the path turned slick.
Like sliding through corpse grease, accompanied by wet squelching as he displaced flesh, he pressed on.
Then suddenly - he was back in the cold stone cave.
No corpses. No filth.
Just the same lightless tunnel ahead.
Now even narrower.
"Ugh..."
akakai's breath hitched for a moment.
The slight upward tilt of his head he'd been maintaining became impossible now.
The cave had narrowed further, the ceiling pressing lower.
To continue forward, Takakai would have to press his face completely against the ground, worming deeper into this suffocating space.
"Hah... hah..."
The new posture made breathing even more difficult.
But Takakai had no choice. In the darkness, he kept struggling forward inch by inch.
Then he realized - even with his face flat against stone, he couldn't advance.
Gritting his teeth, Takakai turned his head sideways, one ear pressed to the floor, the other scraping against the ceiling as he continued his agonizing crawl.
At first, the position felt like it might snap his neck.
But as the ceiling lowered further, his upper ear began grinding against rock until flesh tore away. Strangely, the neck pain faded - the shredded ear hurt far worse.
Screech— screech—
The sound of his explorer suit scraping stone echoed sickeningly.
Blood trickled down his cheek, mixing with grit and dust, leaving a coppery taste on his lips.
Wedged completely in the stone vise, Takakai clenched his jaw and forced himself forward.
A jagged rock protrusion snagged his ear—
—and tore it clean off as he pushed forward.
Half remained on the cave wall. The other half dangled from his head, pumping blood directly into his ear canal.
The pain defied description.
Yet as his blessing activated, Takakai realized the agony was... diminishing? A half-torn ear suddenly didn't seem so bad.
Can't stop. Keep moving.
He reached forward to grip the walls—
—and his right hand met empty air.
What?
This section had widened slightly.
The ceiling still forced his sideways head position, but at least his right arm now had marginal movement.
Drip—
Another water droplet fell ahead.
Fighting hypoxia-induced dizziness, Takakai inched forward—
—then froze.
The right-side gap wasn't just widened rock.
It was a branching path.
A fork in the [Blood Vessels].
Takakai immediately tried retreating—
—when a hand shot from the darkness and seized his wrist.
[Please...]
The whisper slithered into his skull.
[Save me...]
An irresistible yank—
—his remaining ear tore completely free against stone—
—a cacophony flooded his mind:
Sobbing.
Gasping pleas.
The grinding of unseen mechanisms.
"Ugh..."
Takakai opened his eyes.
He sat up in a dim cavern, fingers probing the ragged remains of his ear. After disinfecting and bandaging the injury, the memories surfaced:
I made it through the [Blood Vessels].
Yet... he couldn't recall escaping. Had he passed out from exhaustion?
A strange dissociation lingered as he massaged his temples.
What exactly had—
"Oww... finally... out..."
Chika's pained whimper snapped him back. Emerging from the tunnel, her face bore fresh scratches. His blessing confirmed her identity, and he moved to help as she whimpered:
"Ta-Takakai-san... stuck again..."
Her headlamp's beam stretched their shadows across the walls—
—except Takakai cast no shadow.