Chapter 15

“Oh no… I forgot that she can open doors,” whimpered Patricia, what little color left on her face leaving quickly as a long, black fingernail pierced through the locking mechanism and began to dig around.

The only sounds that could be heard were Zack’s frantic scribbling on the ground, and the Hamagku digging through the lock, a wet growl coming from right outside. It was a miracle that the other three examinees had not died of cardiac arrest at this point. By god, were they close.

“Can we fight it?” Poppy asked, no longer speaking in a whisper. They had already been discovered, and so any pretenses of stealth were dropped. However, she still had a false sense of hope planted from Zack’s triumph over the headmaster, despite the obvious reality that the Hamagku was on a completely different tier compared to the headmaster.

“No. Don’t even think about fighting it,” Zack replied immediately, still hunched over and drawing the final half moon crescent in the pentagram magic circle with the remainder of his chalk. “I’ve seen her movements. She’s far too strong and fast for me right now. I’ll have to get stronger first to be able to match her.”

The chalk was getting far too short, and Zack was pressing down with his fingertip because there was just nothing left to work with anymore. A click came from the door, and Patricia gasped. The door to classroom 2-B began to slide open ever so slowly… He just needed a bit more powder to finish the diagram… licking his finger, he frantically smudged the very last part of the circle, dabbing his finger into an earlier drawn section that had a more robust line to smear the chalk dust to the line that was lacking.

[You have constructed an Akashic magic circle.]

[The circle will be activated by contact with the blood of the caster.]

“Is that stupid thing working?” Patricia yelled anxiously.

Zack grimaced. Since it needed the blood of the caster, it meant that he needed to bleed himself. Placing his thumb in his mouth, he dug his teeth into his own skin and bit down as hard as he could, until he could taste the saltiness of his own lifeblood in his mouth. He pressed down with his thumb onto the Akashic magic circle, the chalk drawing immediately beginning to glow with an ethereal luminosity.

“Get ready to run,” Zack said, dragging his thumb across the magic circle and leaving a line of blood. Even at this point, he wasn’t totally sure what exactly this spell did. The only clue was the Akashic rune for water.

At that moment, the door slid fully open, revealing a hideous black haired female demon with an evil black aura surrounding her. The paleness of her skin was beyond eerie, and the way that her flesh appeared to be decaying off the bone and yet still staying in place sent shivers down the examinees’ spines. It looked at them, tilting its head as if curious, and then smiled. Then came the hand, the impossibly long spider-like ligament reaching towards them with hunger.

Patricia had taken off one of her slippers and was desperately whacking at the air in front of her in an attempt to deter the Hamagku’s hand, but its vicious nails were advancing undeterred. The disgusting arm and fingernails shot forward with morbid ferocity at her, and Zack swung down on it with his metal bar.

But right before the metal bar could connect with the Hamagku’s slender and clammy arm, the magic circle began to bubble in a way that nobody had expected. All movement froze for a brief moment at the horrendous gurgling that was beginning to appear from the middle of the magic circle, foam spilling out like the tell-tale signs of a tsunami.

And then it began. A stream of water spouted out, starting as a thin but strong stream, before abruptly turning into the likes of a decapitated fire hydrant spewing water in all directions. But it didn’t stop there, and the volume of water coming out only grew by the second, completely blasting all of them.

The Hamagku shrieked, a sound that was so unpleasant that it could only be compared to the equivalent of ten thousand pounds of styrofoam being grated together in some kind of industrial press. The shriek was so terrible that blood dripped down from the eardrums of all four of the humans within classroom 2-B unbidden. However, this was not the time to succumb to the shriek. Zack quickly darted out of the classroom and motioned for the others to come with him.

“Run, now!!!!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and Abe, Poppy, and Patricia followed suit shortly afterwards, completely drenched from head to toe in water.

[You have escaped from a face to face encounter with the Hamagku.]

[You have accomplished a notable feat.]

[Your fame points have increased.]

Running for their lives before the Hamagku could recover, Zack and the rest of the crew ran down the hallway and made a turn. Continuing to run with slippery shoes that squelched with every step, they came across a map of the school posted on the wall.

He quickly scanned the map, only to realize that the school library where the Book of Rituals was contained was on the inaccessible until midnight third floor, and that the roof was one level above the fifth. The cafeteria, however, was just a bit ahead.

“Let’s check here for some coins first,” Zack said, pointing at the men’s bathroom to the right. He remembered what the Chronicles of Gakuen High had said about collecting water in buckets to throw at the Hamagku, and instinctively thought of the bathroom as a safe place to stay. They entered the bathroom, and sure enough there were two empty mop buckets sitting at the side.

As he started to fill up one of the buckets with tap water, Abe nudged him with his elbow.

“Zack, you’re amazing,” Abe said with a huge smile on his face, his slightly nasally voice full of energy. In a bygone generation his voice and nerdiness may have gotten him bullied at school, but that kind of thing was not as trendy anymore, as everyone played video games and was somewhat nerdy these days. “That was crazy, how you drew that entire magic ritual circle without messing up. I honestly can’t believe how calm you stayed that whole time. I mean, I did that as well in World of Corpses, but it’s one thing just playing the game, and another thing actually trying to pull off a ritual when it really counts… We’re lucky to have met you.”

“You saved us yet again,” Poppy added, a bright smile on her face. The brunette young woman with a kindhearted face showed a remarkable ability to retain her mental composure after such a traumatic event. “We are really in your debt now. Thank you.”

“Thanks,” Patricia said as well. The girl with shoulder length pink hair and a slightly confrontational tomboyish attitude was far less recovered from their close encounter with the Hamagku when compared to Poppy. Patricia looked like she was about to collapse at any moment. “I’ll pay you back once this examination is over. Ugh… this water’s going to ruin my hair…”

The otherwise stoic Zack grinned. “Why do you even care about your hair in the first place?” Her face was rather plain and there were some heavy dark circles under her eyes, although he had to admit that her bone structure was not too bad. It struck him as strange from his very first impression of her that her carefully maintained and dyed hair was so much more fashionable and glamorous than her plain face.

Patricia stared daggers at him as she wringed out her pajama shirt. “You just haven’t seen me with my makeup on, buddy. Trust me, when I have my makeup on you’d be kneeling in front of me begging for my approval. I’ll let that comment slide only because you saved us.”

Zack laughed. It was nice to feel appreciated, and he was happy that he could save some nice people that he came across in such a brutal examination– and by nice he meant Abe and Poppy, that is. But what if he had gone through that window in the beginning of the examination? He never would’ve gotten to the storage room, and he never would’ve found the magic circle diagram for that water spell.

If he’d gone with the rest of the crowd through the window, Abe and Poppy would probably be dead by now. Knowing Patricia, she’d probably still be alive, but not for that much longer. These were the heavy consequences of his actions. He was now starting to understand what the dead man meant when he started so many memories with If only I had known this earlier…

His train of thought was broken by Patricia staring angrily at him with her arms on her hips. “You know that I’m a reaaaaaally popular streamer, right?”

“Huh?” Now it was Zack’s turn to be caught off guard. He looked her over again, not recognizing her a single bit. He didn’t pay too much attention to streamers, but even he knew that there were girls who got famous off of their looks on the popular streaming sites. She didn’t look particularly glamorous like a streamer with her bland face and thin eyebrows, so maybe she was good at playing games? It didn’t seem that way either. Zack would have recognized her if she was a Royal Road streamer, and that was pretty much the only game that was being streamed for the last half a year.

“Yeah, and I have over seven hundred thousand followers on Paprika TV.”

“Whaaaat?” Abe exclaimed. “What’s your name?”

“Starry Peach.”

…

Her answer completely shocked Zack and Abe.

Every single male in the country that watched streaming knew of Starry Peach. She was considered a national treasure, one of the top beauties of the online world, and she even appeared on reality television shows several times. Known for her gorgeous looks, vibrant pink hair, innocent features, and feminine demeanor, she was rated one of the top ten most beautiful and influential stars on Paprika TV.

Zack exchanged looks with Abe, then glanced at Patricia. Her hair was a similar color, but was different than on screen where it was much longer. Her face looked… sort of similar? If you looked really closely? And then that feminine demeanor… was completely absent offscreen. The more that they looked at her, the more similarities they saw, but the differences were just too stark. How could somebody be so different on-screen and off-screen? Was the on-screen persona all a scam?