Chapter 8
BOOOOOM!
A massive sound of something shifting thundered nearby.
I turned my head toward the source of the sound.
The shop interiors that had been at the same level as my eyes suddenly dropped away beneath my sight.
…Don’t tell me the entire floor of shops is sinking?
The boundary was no more than five meters away from me.
“What the hell is happening?!”
“The ground’s collapsing!”
“Wh-what’s going to happen to us now?!”
“We’re not going to be eliminated just like this, right?!”
From the sinking side, people’s frantic voices echoed like a chorus of panic.
BOOM!
The rumbling stopped.
No way…
The wide expanse of shops that had been there moments ago had transformed into a massive sinkhole whose depth I couldn’t even begin to guess.
[Shops marked with red bands have been removed.]
[4 people have died.]
As expected, everyone who had been there was gone…
I’d held on to a sliver of hope, but that too had been wishful thinking.
“…If we’d moved just a little further to that area, we’d have been wiped out along with them, huh?”
No one answered Kenta’s remark. Not that he needed an answer—he already knew it.
We simply stared silently down at the sinkhole. Ray sniffled softly, as if voicing everyone’s grief.
[The Runner begins running again.]
[In 40 minutes, the Runner will stop.]
[Currently surviving participants: 12.]
Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee! Kekeke!
The Runner suddenly burst into eerie laughter, turning its head 360 degrees as if searching in every direction.
A grotesque grin stretched its mouth all the way up to its ears.
“I will find you. And I will kill you.”
Just two lines.
That’s all the Runner said.
Strictly speaking, it laughed once and spoke once—so it really only made one clear statement.
But that one line was enough to shake everyone.
Why?
Because it meant there was a monster capable of communication.
And what it said was a direct death threat.
“Hey, you think more things like that will show up?”
“Well, if it appeared once, there’s no reason another couldn’t.”
“Ugh. A talking monster… in some ways that’s even more horrifying. Things were already bad enough, but now? It’s only going to get worse.”
I agreed.
If it could speak, it meant it had intelligence.
Which meant future stages might not just be filled with the dumb, brute beasts from the tutorial. They might deceive us, manipulate us—the difficulty would skyrocket.
Still… none of that matters unless we clear this current quest first.
Like Kenta had said earlier about abilities—it’s all meaningless if you’re dead.
“So, what now?”
“…We’ll need to change the plan.”
“Yeah. I was thinking the same. We can’t waste time culling small fry when the entire floor might collapse under us any moment.”
Right. The moment the Runner stops, an entire section and everything on it disappears.
Securing a safe zone meant nothing if it could just be erased in an instant.
“Still, the eight people who died didn’t die for nothing. We learned a lot from it.”
Like how the monsters didn’t react to sound but did react to bright light.
How the passageway was basically a giant board game track.
How the Runner’s stopping point marked which section collapsed.
How the allotted time increased by 10 minutes for every person who died.
And that while there was supposedly no time limit, realistically, the maximum survival time was 190 minutes—if you were the last one alive.
I jotted the information into my notebook and showed it to the others.
“Hey. We knew they didn’t react to sound, but when did you figure out the bright light thing?”
“Remember when the first four people died?”
They hadn’t made any noise, nor had they faced the monsters head-on.
Sight and sound could be ruled out. That left smell, taste, or touch. But taste and touch made no sense in that situation.
“Couldn’t it have been smell?”
“I might’ve thought so too—if not for the smartwatch flashlights.”
“The smartwatches? Oh, right. Those guys were waving the lights around when they died.”
“Exactly. Unlike us—keeping our lights low—they were shining them around at eye level. The monsters, whose eyes were at the same level, reacted to that light.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. And if it really was smell, do you think the twelve of us would’ve lasted this long without being hunted down?”
“Alright, I get it.”
I turned to Ray. “Any questions?”
Ray shook her head.
Fair enough.
The math was straightforward. Both times, four people had died, and the extra time was 40 minutes each. Anyone could deduce that the limit was 190 minutes if everyone else died.
“…But there’s still something bothering me.”
“What’s that?”
“What the Runner said.”
“Oh. You mean when it said it would find and kill us? What about it?”
“It felt like it was talking to someone specific. Like it had a particular target in mind.”
Yeah. Almost like it was addressing a specific person for revenge.
“…Now that you say it, I kind of got that impression too. But how would a monster like that have a grudge against anyone?”
That was the problem. The Runner had only appeared with the start of this stage.
When could it have met someone long enough to develop hatred?
Even if there really was some vendetta… usually it’s humans who resent monsters, not the other way around.
Maybe it was just flavor text. But if it was real, then who exactly was the monster aiming at?
“Well, either way, that’s not something we need to solve right now. Our priority is figuring out how to stop it.”
“…True.”
“So I was thinking: what if we get onto its track? The rules say only testers and the Runner can be on there. That means no small fry to interfere. We could gang up on it and overwhelm it.”
That made sense. The rules didn’t say it had to be one-on-one. Numbers would be our advantage.
“I thought about that too. And yeah, swarming it might work. But there are still risks.”
Like the quest condition: stop the Runner.
What exactly did “stop” mean?
Permanently? Temporarily? And if temporarily, how long?
And was the Runner really just running?
Even the tutorial monsters were lethal. It was hard to imagine this special one had no offensive ability.
“Exactly. We’ve never seen it attack, so we don’t even know what it can do. Jumping in blind would be reckless.”
“Right. No way they’d make the clear condition that easy.”
“…Would be nice if someone else tested it first, huh?”
And then—
“Survivors! Hear me! I believe I’ve discovered how to clear this quest!”
The tense silence shattered as a booming male voice rang out.
The confidence in his tone was enough to make people lift their heads in hope.
“He’s shouting like that… guess he figured out the monsters don’t respond to sound.”
“Still, yelling in a place like this takes guts. Not just anyone could do that.”
“…Yeah. I’ll give him that much.”
I calmed Ray, who was looking uneasy, and listened.
“As you all know, the goal is to stop the Runner. And the rules state only testers and the Runner may enter its track! Which means if we testers unite and attack it directly, we can subdue or kill it, yes?!”
…So someone really was willing to take the plunge.
And his logic wasn’t wrong. It was convincing.
But if the solution were really that simple, I doubted the game would have made it this far without anyone figuring it out.
This wasn’t the tutorial anymore.
And if it were really that easy, they wouldn’t have unlocked status windows and abilities for us.
Games never hand out perks for free. If they give you something, it’s because you’ll need it.
“I intend to subdue the Runner myself, here and now! Any who wish to join me, step forward!”
As he finished, a flashlight beam moved toward the track.
Grrrrhh…
The monsters reacted immediately, swarming toward the light.
But when the beam entered the track, they stopped. They couldn’t go in.
So it blocks physical entry but not awareness… yeah, just like the rules said.
Still, no one else stepped up.
His argument was sound, but who’d willingly risk their life when only one survivor was needed for everyone to clear?
Unless they had a personal reason…
“One more thing! I intend to claim the First Clear and Fastest Clear rewards! Surely you all know how crucial special rewards can be!”
Ah. So that was his bait.
“There’s nothing in the rules about that! What proof do you have?!”
“Think back to the tutorial! They never said there’d be special rewards then either, yet someone actually got one!”
He was right. And I was living proof.
“No one has cleared the 87th floor yet. And less than an hour has passed since the quest began. If we manage both first and fastest clear, the chance of a reward is very high!”
His bait worked. A ripple of murmurs spread.
“Not impossible… Fine! I’ll join you!”
Another flashlight beam lit up inside the track.
“M-me too!”
“The tutorial rewards were already that good—imagine what the main game’s would be!”
One by one, people gave in.
So greed really could make you forget about the possibility of death.
In the end, five people—including the instigator—joined him.
Five out of twelve survivors. Nearly half.
“I thank you all for your courage! With our strength combined, success is assured! No—we will succeed!”
In the glow of their flashlights, I finally got a good look at the man who’d spoken.
Chinese, by the look of him. About 190 cm tall, huge build, muscles to spare.
That physique could put most Westerners to shame.
He cracked his knuckles and strode to the front.
“I’ll face it head-on! The rest of you, support me!”
He shone his flashlight forward.
There, unchanged, the Runner kept dashing down the track.
“You brought it? You brought it?”
The Runner tilted its head at an impossible angle and spoke.
“The hell are you babbling about, you freak?!”
The man pulled a golf club from his inventory.
“Bad luck for you. I’m your first opponent. You had your fun earlier, but from now on, it ends here.”
…Damn. That’s what they call the pride of the mainland, huh?
“You brought it? You brought it? You brought it? You brought it?”
“Shut the hell up, you damn parrot! What the hell would I bring you?!”
He swung the club once through the air, then leveled it at the Runner.
The Runner’s expression twisted into something even more grotesque.
…Wait, it could look worse than before?
“I’ll kill you! Kill you!”
“Bring it on. I’ll crush you fast.”
…What?
Suddenly, the Runner’s eyes turned gray.
Then it sprinted forward—faster than ever.
If before it had been running 100 meters in 20 seconds, now it was under 11.
The man’s body flared with blue light in response. His arms and torso swelled larger—clearly activating an ability, probably physical enhancement.
“I’ll end this in one blow—make it painless!”
“End it end it end it! Kehihihihihi!”
The man’s golf club closed in on the Runner’s head as it charged.
Despite being a monster, it still looked human enough—like a young woman. Aside from the gray eyes, there were no signs of mutation.
Which meant its skull would shatter under that strike.
And then—the golf club and the Runner’s head collided head-on.
