They had long been dead.
Perished under the school's cruel torment, not even leaving complete corpses behind.
Yet this intense resentment still remained.
Resentment accumulated over long years, continuously piling up, never dissipating.
[Gurgle...oh...sob...]
The voices merged together at this moment.
The indistinct, blood-foam-filled breathing of those with slit windpipes.
The vague moans of pain from those suffering extreme agony.
The final weeping of those awaiting death in despair.
[Oh...sob...Mom...]
They were calling out.
They were wandering.
They had already sensed the presence of the living.
Now, they had arrived.
The Trapped Girl
"No no no please open open open it AAAAAHHH—"
Finally realizing she was in mortal danger, Kinoshita Yuka desperately pounded on the wall, but couldn't smash through it like Takakai had with a single strike. She couldn't even leave a dent.
Takakai made no move to rescue her.
Not because he was unwilling.
But because the moment the anomaly occurred, he knew she was already beyond saving.
The viscous flesh sludge had already reached Kinoshita Yuka's feet.
Though it appeared slow-moving, the aggregated flesh chunks were just its most visible part. The flesh-colored slurry that had already flowed into the classroom and rapidly filled it was also part of this entity. The moment the young girl's body touched this slurry, she was already doomed.
"AAAAAAHHHH—"
Amidst piercing screams, the girl was dragged into the flesh sludge.
Hand after hand reached out from the dark red liquid, followed by fragmented, incomplete bodies.
They grabbed the girl, pulling her completely inside.
Then she resurfaced from the sludge, her clothes gone, her body now a fragmented mass of flesh like everything around her.
Alice's Dance
Alice was smiling.
She stood tiptoe in the classroom filled with flesh slurry and dismembered limbs, spinning and dancing lightly.
The wailing rotten flesh coalesced into child-like forms around her, then shattered apart again into putrid meat.
Then—
Slap after slap of festering hands hit the walls.
More and more intact or damaged eyeballs pressed against the glass.
That enormous, corridor-filling, classroom-engulfing mass of rotten flesh now completely pressed against the wall, pounding relentlessly.
The Escape
Takakai had already swiped the ID card at the heavy door's reader. With an electronic beep, the massive door began slowly opening.
Sensing the approaching presence behind the wall, Takakai didn't hesitate—he grabbed the half-meter-thick metal door's edge, planted his feet, and with all his might pulled to speed up its opening.
They had to leave before that mountain of flesh entered.
They absolutely couldn't be trapped in the same room with it.
His instincts screaming urgency, Takakai redoubled his efforts, forcibly widening the slowly-opening door.
"We're leaving now!"
He roared at the three girls behind him.
Shock and Paralysis
"No...Yuka, I...I..."
Shigeno Rika, never imagining the composed friend she'd chosen would die like this, stumbled back and collapsed to the floor.
"This...this thing..."
Kobayashi Chiharu was equally horrified, but managed to react to Takakai's shout, quickly pulling Shigeno toward the opening door.
Miko didn't respond.
She could no longer see where she was.
Countless voices overwhelmed her.
In this moment, her senses were flooded with nothing but the lingering hatred of those students.
She saw it all.
Saw it with terrifying clarity.
People had died.
So many people had died.
They had been in such pain, such despair.
Until the very end, no one came to save them.
Memories of the Dead
[Can we just throw these corpses into the grinder and burn them?]
[So annoying. Couldn't those brats have been a little neater? Making such a mess is troublesome.]
Being chopped apart, being ground up...
[Someone reported a crack in the grinder—some processed meat got into the sewers. Is that okay?]
[Oh, that's the disposal unit for Classes 3-23 and 24? Whatever, don't bother. You want to go check the sewers for leaks?]
Falling, flowing...
[This doesn't seem right. These things...they might be problematic if left alone.]
[What could happen? Worst case we apologize. That rotten meat will just dissolve in the sewers anyway.]
Coagulating, slowly merging...
Bit by bit, forming a massive flesh conglomerate, becoming something made of countless people.
It began to move.
They began slowly advancing.
Returning from the pipes to the school building, back to the classrooms.
Then moving forward through the halls, devouring everyone encountered, heading toward that final place burned into memory.
The Researchers' Conversation
[What...what is this thing?!]
[No no no please...oh...gurgle...sob...]
[I order you to stop! Damn it, isn't this thing made from students? Why won't it obey?!]
The lavishly dressed "honor students" were trapped in classrooms, completely engulfed by the writhing flesh.
Amidst screams and wails, flames suddenly erupted, rapidly spreading through the class, consuming both living students and the monstrous mass.
When the fire died, nothing remained in the ruined classroom.
[Another failure then?]
A figure outside the classroom spoke calmly.
[The cultivated flesh amalgam does exhibit some supernatural properties, but remains vulnerable to conventional methods. Completely unsatisfactory. This year's honor students also failed to produce a new "Alice." How many failures is this now?]
A tall, thin figure beside the first added:
[The second-year division already has one success. We'll get there eventually—we have plenty of time.]
[But Yoruyama High has already developed deployable weapons, however unstable. We're falling behind...]
Observing the devastation, the two figures—one tall, one short—continued conversing.
[It can't be helped. Choosing this research direction means accepting slower progress. At least we've confirmed the approach works—with enough repeated trials, we will succeed.]
[But this experiment...I feel uneasy. That flesh amalgam was clearly composed of "students," yet ignored "teacher" commands. If we continue, might something else go wrong?]
[Not an issue if we strictly control experimental procedures.]
[We should be more cautious. We've already had too many anomalies—over half this year's new students can't even be properly identified. We don't even know where they came from.]
[I understand your concerns, but researchers' caution has its limits. We only get three chances a year—one sacrificial ritual per grade level. If we pause now, progress will suffer. Neither of us could bear the consequences.]
[...Fine. Those military idiots only care about deadlines. We should leave—we've observed long enough. Any longer risks exceeding safe exposure limits.]
[Hmm? We've only been here ninety minutes—still well within safety margins.]
As they spoke, the two figures turned and left through a hidden door in the wall, entering the observation area behind the one-way glass.
Dark ashes still rose in swirling smoke.
Faintly, the wails of the dead could still be heard.
Awakening
Then Alice turned her head and smiled at Miko.
[Oh? You can see me?]
Playful laughter that seemed to drown everything out.
But then—
Takakai's voice exploded in her ears.
"Don't get lost in it! We're leaving!"
Along with an intense chilling aura, the words snapped Miko back to reality.
Her eyes flew open to find herself being carried by Takakai.
Ahead, Kobayashi was supporting Shigeno as they ran down the glass corridor. Seeing Takakai lagging behind with Miko, Kobayashi slowed slightly to wait.
Crack—crack—
The glass walls beside them developed more and more fractures, on the verge of shattering.
And in the classroom behind them, amidst the churning flesh...
The Chase
"Hah..."
Red light shone from the ram mask's eyeholes.
The rescue team badge, the ram mask, and Hilda's blessing—three different supernatural enhancements all boosting physical abilities.
Takakai activated all three simultaneously.
His body sank slightly, then he exploded forward in a burst of speed. Protecting Miko's neck to prevent whiplash, he crossed the glass corridor in an instant.
Through the glass, classroom after classroom appeared—each filled with chatting students.
Corridors.
Restrooms.
Specialized classrooms.
Storage rooms and waste disposal chambers.
Every student space was under surveillance, with zero privacy.
Now, as Takakai passed each area, the laughing students stopped and turned expressionless faces toward him—as if they could see through the glass into this hidden passage.
BOOM—!!!
The glass wall behind them shattered.
The surging flesh slurry gave chase alarmingly fast—even faster than Takakai's enhanced sprint.
But Takakai noticed something—the entity wasn't fully focused on pursuit. Much of its mass was occupied absorbing the dismembered teacher-entities he'd created, slowing it down.
This thing attacks everything indiscriminately—living, dead, supernatural!
Takakai instantly grasped the flesh mountain's nature.
He stopped.
A scalpel appeared in his hand—a Relic—then immediately went berserk. Blood gushed from the blade as a doctor's phantom manifested.
"Go on then!"
Takakai kicked it straight into the approaching flesh sea.
The manifested horror was immediately engulfed, disappearing into the mass.
He threw another scalpel. Then the Faceless Skull-Eater. Then the Bloody Scissors. The Blood Puppet.
The writhing slurry consumed each berserk Relic and the horrors they summoned. Though it couldn't destroy these non-derived entities, it kept trying, further slowing its advance.
Seizing this chance, Takakai hurried the girls forward. They soon reached the corridor's end—a lounge area with sofas and amenities. One door led to a teachers' office; another to elevators and stairs.
The stairwell was pitch black, utterly lightless.
The elevator was ascending, about to reach their floor.
On a lounge sofa sat Alice, smiling at them.
Behind them, the flesh mountain continued its pursuit, soon to arrive.
A choice had to be made.