Chapter 16

“Well, you kind of look like Star Peach…” Abe whispered, looking slightly ashamed.

“I am her, you bozo,” Patricia retorted, her thin eyebrows coming together in a scowl.

Zack decided to pipe in as well, as he was dreadfully curious about how this black magic was conducted to make her a completely different looking person. He remembered Starry Peach’s appearance rather vividly, as well as the confetti showers of donations that followed her every move on air.

“How come your eyebrows are so thin when Starry Peach’s are fuller?” Zack asked.

“Makeup.”

“And your eye shape is a bit different too…” Abe interjected.

“Contacts and makeup.”

“And your skin…”

“Makeup.”

“Why is your hair so much shorter?”

“Wig and hair extensions.”

…

Zack and Abe exchanged glances once again. Despite not saying anything verbally, their horrified eyes told the story. It’s a scam… it’s all a scam.

“Sis, have you heard of Starry Peach?” Abe asked Poppy.

“I don’t play games too often, so I haven’t,” Poppy replied with a warm smile to her younger brother.

“I’m a variety streamer, not just a game streamer,” Patricia said defensively, but was only met by a confused look from Poppy. The florist was more traditional and less exposed to the online world, which was rare in today’s day and age, Zack thought.

The bucket in the sink was overflowing with water now, and Zack heaved it off as Abe continued to ask questions to Patricia. He hoisted up another bucket and began to fill that one up as well. He had been worried about how they’d deal with the Hamagku now that the little stub of chalk he collected from the lecture hall was used up, so the buckets of water would make do. He had thought it before, but now he was completely sure– The Chronicles of Gakuen High was just a complete cheat for the examinations. It didn’t give all the answers, but the answers that it did give were tremendously useful.

Speaking of which, didn’t the chronicles get updated after he killed the headmaster? Zack took out his phone and checked the newest entry.

It was a week after the first incident when the Headmaster began to act strangely. Some of my friends told me that they saw him walking around the halls of the school after hours, or even during night time when the art club was finishing up their collages for the spring fair.

One of the art club girls went missing that night. Nobody knows what happened to her, but I heard rumors that the Headmaster was walking around with the master keys in his pocket, their faint jingle audible as he trawled the hallways at night.

Another girl went missing the next night. She was last seen going into the art club’s classroom, which was 3-B.

Homunculus.

The entry ended early like usual, but the singular word homunculus was scribbled at the very bottom, handwritten.

“A homunculus, huh…” Zack murmured. He’d heard about those kinds of creatures before, of creatures that looked like humans except with exaggerated features of the facial characteristics that were their primary sensory focuses. In the Headmaster’s case, it was his tongue. Zack didn’t want to think too much more about the implications of that, but he put the word homunculus in his mental bookshelf for future use. Almost everything in the chronicles was a hint, and he’d take this one seriously as well.

He quickly shared his findings with Abe, Poppy, and Patricia, wondering if they knew any more about it than he did.

“I’ve never run into a homunculus in World of Corpses,” Abe mused. “But then again I just barely got through some of the cases without unlocking most of the secret scenes.”

“I see,” Zack replied.

Poppy walked up to Zack and opened her hand. “I can’t help with the game stuff, but Patricia and I collected all the tokens in the bathroom. Here you go!”

Zack nodded in appreciation and took them, putting them into the zipped portion of his lunchbox. “Thank you, Poppy. Let’s head to the next room now, because I need as many tokens as we can get.”

“Of course,” Poppy replied. “The stronger you get, the safer it will be for us. We’ll gladly help you, right Abe?”

“Yep,” Abe responded. “In game terms, this is what we call a bus. We’re also collecting fame points tagging along with you too. I don’t know what those do, but they seem important.”

“What if that monster is still outside?” Patricia questioned. “Won’t we run into her when we leave?”

Zack grabbed a mop bucket filled to the brim with water and handed it to Patricia. “If you’re worried about the Hamagku, be my guest and help me haul this.”

Patricia raised an eyebrow, and quietly mouthed ugh. “If we were back, one of my fans would be doing this for me.” She grabbed the handle of the mop bucket and yelped, nearly falling to the ground when Zack let go of it.

“How were you holding this with one hand?” she cried. “It’s way too heavy!”

Abe and Poppy came over to try as well, and were equally surprised. “Zack, this is a massive bucket,” Abe said. “I can’t carry this either. Should we dump some of the water out?”

Zack sighed. This was nothing compared to the bags of coal that he used to carry on his mining job, or the weight of the broken fridges and coolers that he had to pick up by himself all the time.

“Let me do it then,” he said, hauling a bucket in his left hand and a bucket in his right. Right now, he was actually quite a bit skinnier than usual due to his six month break from manual labor. He needed to do some more heavy lifting to get back into his previous form.

“You know, it doesn't look like you have a lot of muscle, but you’re really strong,” Patricia commented with a smirk, placing her hand on his arm. Starry Peach fans would call for his head on a platter if they knew about the preferential treatment that Zack was experiencing right now.

But Zack wasn’t all that particular about the plain-faced tomboy, all of his fantasies about Starry Peach having been shattered in the span of a day. The weird thing was, her facial structure looked exactly the same, but without makeup she just looked plain, like a slice of bread or a bowl of rice without anything on it. It was in stark contrast to how glitzy and celebrity-like she looked with makeup on.

His ambivalence was certainly not limited to just her appearance either. The fact that her whole cutesy on-air demeanor was a lie was the biggest kicker. Just how could one person be so fake and still be so comfortable in their own skin?

Thank god he was not that much of a streamer fan in the first place. He knew that there were some die-hard fans who would probably never recover from a revelation like this one.

“Just open the door for me, will you?”

“Tch.” It was clear that she wasn’t used to being treated like a rag, as she had spent quite a few evenings as a guest star on celebrity programs and in reality television shows.

The door creaked open, and Zack advanced outwards like a tank with his water cannon buckets at the ready in both arms. Luckily, the Hamagku did not seem to be there at the moment.

“Let’s go here.”

Backtracking to a nearby classroom, Zack and his helpful bus minions quickly scoured the classroom of tokens, finding several before they moved onto the next classroom. The next classroom was scoured just the same, and Zack’s vending machine token stash grew once again. So far, so good.

After sweeping several more classrooms including the recently vacated 2-G, he had thirty seven tokens in total. Unfortunately, whoever was inside 2-G had already taken the tokens from there, but had left the chalk. It was a half-sized piece, and Zack quickly took it and tied it around his neck.

Thankfully, the heat in the school was drying them out so they no longer had to walk around soaked from head to toe.

Zack was quite pleased with their progress. At this rate, they’d be able to grab as many as possible. And because he’d shown Patricia and the siblings just how good he was at fighting, they were more than willing to surrender all of their tokens to him. This was like token farming in a horror video game, with three collection minions.

“That’s the gymnasium, right?” Patricia asked while looking out the window from their second floor classroom vantage point, pointing in the distance to a large building across from the school yard, where dozens of examinees were walking towards, some limping, others carrying their injured friends. It was at the direct opposite end of campus from where the entrance to campus was.

“Yeah,” Zack replied.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t just head there now…” Patricia droned on.

Zack shook his head. “It’s just like Abe said, this is an item collection period. Rushing to the gymnasium is the last thing we should be doing.”

“Yeah.” The determination on Abe’s face was mixed with the fact that he looked like he was about to burst out crying.

The time was getting late. A few hours had passed since the beginning of the exam, and the time remaining to collect as many tokens as he could was starting to become more limited.

He tried to access his constellation communication function, only to be greeted by a system notification.

[Due to interference with the examination, constellation communication has been limited.]

[You will be assigned a communications manager, Red Demon, to assist with your constellation communications. Your manager will arrive shortly.]

Huh. They didn’t like the fact that he used the sponsors’ reactions to figure out what to do, did they? A smug smile appeared on Zack’s face, the collection pervert within him awakening. He took this as a challenge, and game exploiting for abnormal rewards was one of his specialties. Just how much could he exploit this system before they stopped him? And could they even stop him? All he was doing was well within the rules, with tools that the gamemakers themselves granted him.

Bwwwaaaaaaaarrrr…

The sound of the intercom’s grating dissonance as it screeched into operation grinded the eardrums of all examinees in the school. Zack covered his ears in pain, as did the other three.

Attention all examinees. Starting from seven p.m., a hound will be released onto school grounds at the start of each hour.

Zack glanced up at the clock in the classroom they were currently in. Just ten seconds until seven o’clock. The four of them looked expectantly outside, down towards where the gymnasium was. Someone seemed to have locked the gymnasium from the inside, and there were many examinees banging on the door, undoubtedly protesting to be let in.

Right as the clock’s second hand reached its zenith, a loud roar came from the other side of the fence surrounding campus, sending the examinees in front of the gymnasium scrambling in panic.