"Why did you open the coffin? You already touched it…" Kira muttered.
"I opened it so you could observe the corpse. If anything abnormal happens, you can handle it immediately. As for me touching the black coffin… honestly, I don't know. It was pure instinct. My gut told me it was fine if I touched it," Li Mo replied, his tone as calm as it had been for hours, devoid of any emotion.
"Instinct? That's rare. I thought you always operated on evidence. This is the first time I've heard you admit to acting purely on intuition," Kira said, her mouth agape in surprise.
Li Mo stared at the headless corpse inside the black coffin and paused. "I can't explain it either. If I had to give a reason… it's because the headless corpse inside looks exactly like my body."
He stopped there. The explanation sounded flimsy, but in his heart, Li Mo couldn't shake the strange feeling.
Is this funeral for me?
Am I holding a funeral for myself?
"Oh, by the way, I have some bad news for you all," Li Mo suddenly turned his head and dropped a bombshell.
"Is… is the ghost going to start killing people? No! Please, no!" The timid girl clutched her head and wailed.
"Is it the second incense? Don't tell me it's about to go out too! This can't be happening! Why are we so unlucky? Always hitting the pity rate when drawing cards, always being intercepted during missions—do even ghosts have to bully me?!" The Valkyrie grumbled bitterly.
"You… you… just spit it out already! I'm not scared!" stammered the cowardly girl, her voice trembling.
"Stop beating around the bush, gloomy man! Hurry up and say it! You're killing me with suspense here! Don't waste time—what if the bad news comes true any moment? If we're going to die, we deserve to know why!" Kira urged impatiently.
Their frantic reactions brought Li Mo a peculiar sense of satisfaction. The more spirited they were, the less devastating the news would feel.
"I was thinking about something else earlier, but that's not important now. The bad news isn't as terrible as you might think," Li Mo said slowly. "Tonight and tomorrow night, we can't sleep. It's a tradition to keep vigil, and since we don't know whether today or tomorrow counts as the second day, we need to play it safe and stay awake both nights."
"…"
"…"
"Phew, that's a relief," Kira exhaled, relaxing. She had thought some new anomaly had emerged.
Pulling an all-nighter wasn't difficult for a high rank Valkyrie. If she got sleepy, she could use Honkai energy to jolt herself awake forcibly. The other Valkyries, however, weren't as resilient. They were more like students—capable of enduring one sleepless night at most.
"Since you're all in good spirits now, this doesn't count as terrible news. Just make it till 7 a.m., and you can rest. After that, I'll lead those who can stay awake to gather supplies," Li Mo said, scanning the group.
Seventeen students, seven Valkyries including Kira, and himself made a total of twenty-five people.
The convenience store was off-limits—entering meant certain death. It couldn't be their first choice. That left the corpse-strewn school building, where they could search offices and classrooms for food and water left behind by the dead.
Though challenging to find and meager in quantity, it posed no great danger. Li Mo had already confirmed during the day that entering classrooms without using the doors was safe.
In this place, the doors of St. Freya Academy were gateways to hell.
Not just one door—all doors in this place led to death.
The living couldn't enter the underworld; only the dead could. That's why entering a door meant certain death, aligning perfectly with Li Mo's first death.
Unavoidable. Irreversible.
No discernible pattern. Certain death.
Li Mo felt he had grasped some clues about the source of the anomaly. It was only speculation for now, but bold hypotheses were his forte.
The next step would be careful verification.
For now, the priority was completing the funeral. Unraveling the ritual's hidden rules and exploiting them to cause the anomaly to crash was the top objective.
Even if it meant risking another death and losing himself entirely—or sacrificing everyone here, including himself—this had to be done.
It was only a matter of time.
No matter the cost, no matter how many had to be buried, the anomaly had to be purged from this world and sent back to where it belonged.
Li Mo's thoughts were extreme, but he didn't dwell on them.
After dying twice, his rational yet cold personality allowed such judgments, even if they defied common sense.
Unbeknownst to him, this line of thought—if noticed—would soon be dismissed. Unless something unexpected happened, he would never realize it.
Like the behavioral patterns of a vengeful ghost, these instincts were manifesting within him.
The most glaring change was this:
The more deaths he witnessed, the faster his sanity eroded…
Perhaps because the ritual for the first night was carried out perfectly, the preconditions for the second night's ritual had not been triggered.
Nothing strange happened that evening.
The only thing Li Mo noted was a faint breeze carrying the stench of death from the darkness.
Everyone endured this foul odor, like staying awake in a pile of corpses, silently watching the black coffin.
The stench was identical to that of the black blood, its origin unknown. With their current circumstances, there was no way to investigate.
Even Li Mo dared not leave the firelit area until the signs of the second day's anomaly appeared.
In the vast auditorium, the only safe zone seemed to be near the black coffin. The view outside the windows and doors was completely obscured.
In the darkness, a few faint silhouettes stood at the auditorium's entrance, staring silently at Li Mo and the others.
Still and Eerie.
The figures stood perfectly still, their elongated arms brushing the ground.
Their bodies had odd indentations where joints should be, but the darkness veiled any further details.
Li Mo's vision was sharper than the others', allowing him a vague glimpse into the darkness. Yet even he could only make out indistinct silhouettes.
Outside one of the windows hung an inverted human head, its eyes blank and spine grotesquely attached to something.
It stared into the auditorium, alongside the full silhouette at the doorway, unmoving in the darkness.
They seemed aware of the people inside, yet made no attempt to enter.
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