Nikke, something’s seriously wrong with this evacuation point! Chapter 124 124: The Abnormalities of the Campus

Before entering this door, Charon had never imagined that two spaces separated by nothing more than a single doorway could possess such drastically different visual styles.

Yes – visual style.

If the outside of the door was filled with highly saturated azure blue, then the inside resembled the dim yellow hue of a desert at dusk. Compared to the real world, it felt more like a nostalgic mory filter, stirring an inexplicable sense of reminiscence deep within one's heart.

Before him stood a sealed hall with a heavy Egyptian aesthetic, supported by five massive pillars over two ters in diater. A layer of fine soft sand covered the marble floor, and the air was thick with the dry scent of dust and sand. Yet mixed into it was sothing even stranger – a scholarly atmosphere Charon couldn't even rember where he had experienced before.

The ceiling stood more than ten ters high, shaped like an inverted pyramid. Slanted windows on the sides allowed sunlight from outside to shine into the hall at bizarre angles. Under the light, Charon noticed sothing unsettling:

The dust particles floating in the beams of sunlight were completely motionless in the air.

As if ti itself had frozen.

"So this is the academy's entrance hall?" Charon muttered.

Carrying a terrifyingly powerful machine gun into a school would be considered an extrely dark joke in certain countries, but here it was a necessary precaution. No matter how much this place resembled a school, it was still part of Area One. Its true purpose remained the sa:

To eliminate the "player."

As long as he rembered that fundantal fact, Charon wouldn't be deceived by appearances.

Incidentally, if Ana hadn't helped him back then and he had stayed at the Mobius Grand Hotel, the mont he beca "part of the hotel," he would've been forcibly returned to the shelter. And the next ti he entered the map, he might even encounter his own forr body as part of the scenery, endlessly haunting him.

But that was beside the point.

Ignoring every strange phenonon around him, Charon walked straight through the hall and entered the corridor on the opposite side.

「This is the hallway of Abydos Academy. We have officially entered the campus. Stay alert.」

On Charon's right, sunlight stread through rows of windows, casting pitch-black shadows that remained completely motionless on the floor. On his left were empty classrooms.

It was impossible to tell whether anyone had once lived here. The desks and chairs had been piled together into shapes resembling makeshift beds. In any case, it no longer looked like a place where students attended classes.

The silence around him was unnervingly eerie.

Especially for soone like Charon, who already had impressions of places like this, the atmosphere gave him an unexpected chill down his spine.

An abandoned school was already pri territory for ghost stories. And this world was practically built out of ghost stories.

If there's nothing here, I'll eat my gun.

The instant that thought crossed his mind, a soft "Uhee~" suddenly sounded beside his ear.

The voice ca completely out of nowhere. Though it sounded gentle and playful, it still made the hyper-alert Charon break out in goosebumps.

"Rose, did you hear sothing?" Charon asked quietly.

There was no reason to lower his voice, yet he instinctively did so anyway.

Schools truly had an oppressive atmosphere.

Even though he had no mories of ever attending one himself.

「No sound source was detected just now, Charon. What you heard was most likely an auditory hallucination targeting living organisms specifically.」

「Recomndation: from now on, if you suddenly hear my voice, imdiately ask whether I intentionally contacted you. Otherwise, you may fall victim to auditory hallucinations.」

"…You're way too reliable," Charon sighed in admiration.

「Naturally. That is beyond question.」

This Rose really didn't understand humility at all.

But she was cute, so whatever.

For the next stretch of ti, Charon wandered throughout the academy – a campus consisting entirely of indoor environnts with absolutely no routes leading outside.

Just as Rose had warned, he constantly heard the voices of various girls during his exploration. So giggled softly. So let out annoyed snorts. Others sighed helplessly.

And yet–

He never saw a single person.

Gymnasium, cafeteria, convenience store, classrooms, faculty office…

He had already inspected every facility on the first floor.

The windows were completely sealed shut, just like the walls, and couldn't be destroyed. He even tried firing a bullet at one, accomplishing absolutely nothing except wasting ammunition.

Which ant the next destination was obvious:

The second floor.

"I have a question," Charon said while staring at the staircase leading upward. "Is this 'second floor' the second floor of this level… or the second floor of the entire skyscraper?"

「That question touches upon the fundantal underlying logic of this place,」 Rose replied, a hint of approval in her voice.

「If it's the latter, then there would be no need for us to waste ti on aningless 'puzzle-solving.' We could simply keep climbing upward endlessly, as long as we found the proper stairways.」

「What worries is that the world may operate according to the forr rule.」

「In that case, even if we climb one hundred floors using these stairs, we may still remain trapped within the 'Abydos Academy layer.' Only by locating the true exit leading to the 'next layer' could we possibly advance further.」

"Based on my understanding of this region, it's definitely the forr," Charon replied with narrowed eyes. "Last ti I wandered around this world for ages. Sure, I made a fortune, but honestly that was pure dumb luck avoiding every first-ti death trap. Otherwise I probably would've spent days just trying to solve puzzles, never mind extracting. I might not even know where I was anymore."

He really had to thank Ana for that.

After turning around the landing between the two floors, Charon looked up toward the entrance to the second floor–

Only to discover that a yellow warning line had been stretched across it.

The entrance itself was completely blocked shut.

…No, "shut" wasn't even the right word.

At the top of the staircase, an enormous pile of desks and chairs had been stacked together, sealing the path entirely. The furniture was densely interlocked and jamd together so tightly that if this scene appeared in reality, anyone seeing it would instantly feel their scalp go numb.

The desks and chairs were nested and locked into one another so completely that dismantling them piece by piece was practically impossible.

「Wow… can your invincible machine gun solve this problem?」

"Sorry. No."

Now this was interesting.

This staircase was the only route to the second floor. Since climbing in from outside was impossible, he was officially stuck.

But heaven never seals off every road.

Beside the staircase stood an enormous bulletin board. Pinned to it with thumbtacks was a yellowed sheet of printer paper.

The edges of the paper were scorched black, as though burned by flas. The handwriting was neat and delicate, like that of a young girl, yet the darkness of the ink varied line by line, as if the sentences had been written at completely different tis.

At the top was the title:

[Abydos School Closure Counterasures Committee · Student Guidance Manual]

"…Interesting."

After reading through the entire thing, Charon let out an impressed sigh.

"It's all completely incomprehensible nonsense."

「Idiot Charon, these are obviously rules,」 Rose said in a tone full of disappointnt.

「Use your brain a little. The thod for breaking through this place is clearly written on that paper.」