Vol 1 Chapter 9 (1/2)

Chapter 9

When I walked through the bent and torn-apart ain There was no wallpaper and the floors and walls werethrown into a giant sink

It was just like that tunnel

The area no longer seemed lived in

Both Archeneh the previous rooiven to that fact But this was different It felt like this place had been created “only” for the undead like Erika and Ayumi

“Now things are finally feeling like a secret lab,” said the Swimsuit Class Rep

“It isn’t often you find a lab that feels too open”

There were a few doors along the hallway

When we checked inside, we found a roo one wall They were far thicker and sturdier than coin lockers The silver ital counters that flashed with a red light

“Minus forty degrees”

“You could hammer a nail with a banana”

“No, Maxwell When you’re saying that with the Class Rep’s voice, you have to say it would ‘make your banana rock hard’”

“Sure Once the simulation is complete, I will use every recorded address I have to share that valuable opinion with everyone”

“I get that you want to kill ?”

Yes, I had finally remembered

This too was based on , but these rows of sues I had seen on police dramas

To be honest, I was hesitant to open them

But I was the only one around to reach the truth The ret it later

I turned the lever to unlock one door and then opened it

So white burst out and the contents were sent out by an electric slide

At first, it looked like a transparent glass coffin

But it wasn’t

“Is that…ice?”

“User, that is not the surprising point What has been frozen is what matters”

I knew that

My brain was trying to run away I was afraid to look directly at it

A girl even younger than own and it barely hid her body at all She was lying on her back, her eyes were closed, and her hands were clasped in front of her chest Due to her pale skin and the abnorht did not inspire any lust But I had a feeling that was the greatest insult to this girl

Just looking at her, I could not tell how she was different from a human

I checked the small nameplate above the door It said Scylla

“What’s a Scylla?”

“A fes and six heads and it is said to have killed and devoured six voyaging heroes”

“You’re kidding, right? But this girl’s body looks perfectly normal”

“There are various theories as to the Scylla’s origin, but one of theirl was turned into a monster by a witch’s potion”

So was she the Scylla itself that could switch back and forth using potions? Or was she the witch who could mix the potion to create a Scylla? There was no way to tell now that she was on ice

I looked away from her and checked the rows of doors

The nameplates were small and hard to read, but I could see several other names: Yaksha, Harpy, Troll, Aka Manto, Leanan Sidhe The temperature display had vanished frooth, and Berserk What did thatme with no hint

“This reminds of the stories of coin locker babies”

“It would certainly be unprecedented if every last locker had a baby in it”

The edges of the nameplates had small scratches on them And they were not there by accident They seen or tally marks, but for what, I couldn’t tell

I started looking away fro and quickly looked back

“I found it…”

“Found what? …Oh”

“Zombie and Vampire”

“There are likely more specimens than just those two”

Those two doors also had no temperature display

I opened them and found no one inside

I had a bad feeling about this

The edges of those two nameplates were covered in small scratches It was far more than any other specimen

A computer sat on a work desk I moved the mouse to cancel the screensaver and it displayed sos there The name fields had entries like Harpy and Troll and the numbers were also familiar I checked back and found they really did match the number of scratches on the nameplates

The lowest number was one

And they all cleanly came to a stop at five

But the Vampire and Zombie entries rose above that

It looked like an error that caused sonore the set upper limit

But what did the graph mean?

“Thinking about it isn’t going to give me the answer”

I left the room and found there weren’t h I was approaching the truth of Level 4 The Swimsuit Class Rep and I could only follow the path We passed some zombies or vampires in lab coats or protective suits, but they had al

We cae door

It had likely been solidly locked Perhaps even more so than the round shelter doors Unlike the metal bars before, this had not been destroyed with brute strength There were bloody handprints around, so it had likely been unlocked with the fingerprint and iris of whoever was in charge, just like Ayumi had done at the hospital

And this was a double door

I could tell soulped

Levels 1 through 3 had been bad enough And Level 4 was bound to go far beyond that But I could rid h that door Whether it was by coincidence or whatever else, I had to see it after co this far

“Maxwell”

“Sure”

After our brief exchange, we hesitantly slipped through the gap in the double door

And we found…

A round space even larger than a gym

“…”

There were no strange torture tools and no pile of sinister weapons The large open space may have looked like an anticlimax

But it was not

A prickling pressure assaulted my entire body This was a place of concentrated death, where ret and sha to me like heavy oil Even if it had been scrubbed clean, even if all the splattered blood and flesh had been wiped away, and even if 999 of the germs had been killed with antibacterial sheets and silver ion spray, there was so that could never be cleaned away And this place was inundated by that unknown factor

It wasn’t set up to reas, or to becoiant microwave

There was nothing here

And that hat e

This was Level 4, the deepest level with soit So the lack of any obvious

This should not have happened

After co”?

“Eh heh Eh heh heh I guess I shouldn’t be surprised ound up here in the end”

“Yes This is the best place to settle things once and for all We sould escape here ere trapped in this spider web, but if we’re going to settle things between us, maybe this was the only real option, Onee-chan”

Near the center of the round space, my sisters faced each other like a quick draw from a Western

Neither one had any pawns left It was only the two sisters facing each other with their bloody clothing fluttering in the air It was an extremely primitive style of battle

And after I saw that, it finally clicked into place for me

Levels 1 through 3 were used to dispose of Archenemies ere deeher the nuhly they would be destroyed

So as Level 4?

If the previous cooking equiph to fully destroy the in this underground world of theirs?

Would they use a cross or holy water?

Would they detonate a nuclear or therround?

No A cross or holy water wouldn’t work against a virus-created zoirl like my little sister and a nuclear bo like my older sister To be absolutely certain, Level 4 would need aforce

I just had to remember what I had seen

The Scylla had been sleeping in soue But was that really a corpse? If they wanted to dispose of her, ould they preserve her? And would anything be left over to preserve?

Also, this round space had been protected by an abnorate meant to ensure no one could escape once they were placed inside

In other words…

“Is this a colosseum where the captured undead are made to kill each other!?”

It was a truly horrific idea

I started to think I was a crazy sadist just for co up with the idea

But my sisters reacted differently

Instead of expressing disgust or scorn, they laughed

“Yes, I was the colosseum’s ht in a row and no ave my opponents, I would always survive, so they were at their wit’s end trying to find a way to dispose of this vaht”

“Yes, I was the colosseum’s master of escape I would remove my stitches so I would fall apart and pretend I was defeated And when they would throw me out, I would escape from this spider web as a zombie of the day”

The thick door would never open until one or the other was dead

By continually dividing the total number by two, this round space would reliably reduce the nu battles, victory earned thele defeat meant death Those days had to have been true hell

“Just like a casino’s win rates are fine-tuned to profit the house, ere doomed to destruction Yes, in just five battles, the des”

“But we survived We told statistics and probability to eat shi+t and aps of the supposedly absolute parameters We clenched our teeth and held onto our lives We were stained with blood and crawled pathetically forward, but we had to use every means available to us”

But in that hell, they had survived

They had done whatever was necessary

All while praying they would one day be freed froore

“…Why?”

I could not suppress my voice

Why had they never given up hope? The words in my mind were terribly inappropriate and seemed to reject the lives they had lived Itat strahile they drowned

But the question still came to mind

How had they maintained hope in a space so steeped in cruel malice? Even if they had been released into the outside world for soht they could adjust to and blend into hunorant smiles?

This was a disaster environment simulator

The paraiven had been ridiculous, but Erika and Ayu in the real world

So why hadn’t they destroyed the world in their despair?

The ansas simple

With a save their answer

“Because I met you, of course”

“Because I met you, Onii-chan”

That acted as a trigger

Their first step sounded like an explosion and they charged straight toward each other At this point, they did not bother attacking with a large group or cleverlythe normal people

It was one-on-one

They grabbed each other’s thrusting hands, pulled at their hair, opened their mouths, and tried to bite the other The zombie went for the vampire and vampire for the zombie They knew they could not just conveniently turn the other to their side, but they did it anyway They knew the risks and they showed no fear of their own destruction They did not have the luxury of neatly and elegantly facing each other One pushed the other down, the other spun around, and they rolled along the ground, trying to come out on top

“Ahh, ahh!! It’s all co me off! I had set up the perfect escape plan, but on that day, you decided to rush in and bite me for some reason!!”

“You were the one that had set etting so out of it for myself!?”

They sounded as carefree as girls hitting each other with stuffed anih their clothes and soft skin

The sisters shouted at each other even as they were soaked in red

“But, Onee-chan, you got careless and they found us right away!! If it had only been me, I could have escaped to the outside world and lived in hiding!!”

“Oh, dear But isn’t that your own responsibility for looking aftersister, I thought that kind memory made for a nice story”

“Fuguu…!!”

“Oh, my, my☆ It makes you that embarrassed?”

They had gone beyond normal injuries They hadout

I saw pink things, white things, soft things, and hard things So much was visible in their wounds that I was amazed the human body contained all that

“But there’s one thing I can never forgive you for!!”

“I’m so jealous that you can be so honest about this”

“If I had escaped on my own, only I would have met Onii-chan there!! But then you and your boobs had to interfere!!”

“Hee hee But it was so obvious where Satori-kun was looking, so I couldn’t help but tease him a little”

“You boob monster!!”

“Oh? Well you’re a…a…u, Ayumi-chan?”

“Fuguu!!”

Had I met them somewhere before?

That would have been before the re about how they had been “quickly taken back” and yet they had never vanished since they started living with us

“What’s wrong, Onee-chan!? Is your belly so full you can’t move!?”

“What about you, Ayuth!?”

Which meant…

They see, so they looked over attheir death match

“That e gained hope”

“If the outside world had someone like that, it seemed like a shame to destroy it”

“So we bore with it when they brought us back to this spider web”

“We worked to score a perfect 100 to delight those villains who forced the disgusting huood people”

What had I said?

When I hadtheir situation?

If I restarted the sies and entered the necessary parameters, it was possible I could find the answer

But that wasn’t necessary

As ether

“This is what you said☆”

“ ‘Then if you bite ether?’ ”

They were not horrific monsters

They did not need to be disposed of just because they could not adapt to the spreading human society

Those sparkling eyes had see