A Horror Game Steeped in Immorality - Volume 2 - Part 9

“Ack!”

 

 

 

Thuk….The weight of the torso shifted entirely onto me, and it was significantly heavy. The thought of having to carry it around made me sigh.

 

 

 

As I was exiting the room with the torso, the bodies left hanging began to shake violently as if alive, just as the door was closing. The sound of the torsos bumping against each other sent shivers from my toes to the top of my head.

 

 

 

“……”

 

 

 

Ignoring what I saw and heard, I quickly made my exit.

 

 

 

I fished out skulls from a bathtub filled with heads, looking for the notably decomposed head of Selena. The blackened tongue hanging down to the jaw made it inconvenient to carry. The feeling of it tapping against my thigh was… Ugh… I rolled the tongue and stuffed it back into Selena’s mouth.

 

 

 

Finding the arms was the hardest. Like bouquets, arms with red-manicured nails were stuck in vase-like containers. Among them, excluding the ones with large muscles attached, I sifted through the tangled female arms for the decomposed ones.

 

 

 

“Now… just have to find the legs.”

 

 

 

Carrying the torso, head, and two arms, sweat poured down my body. It was sweat from heat and exhaustion, not cold sweat. I used the rope given by the system to tie the torso to my back and wrapped the arms with the rope, fashioning them like a backpack.

 

 

 

“This is somewhat better.”

 

 

 

Having searched all the way up to the third floor of the main house, I proceeded to the fourth floor, checking the remaining time.

 

 

 

[Mission Time Remaining: 0 hours 41 minutes 09 seconds]

 

 

 

“What the f*ck, where did the time go…!”

 

 

 

I hurried up the stairs two at a time, without a moment to catch my breath. But despite my resolve to quickly find the remaining parts, my legs suddenly stopped.

 

 

 

“…What’s that now?”

 

 

 

The corridor was… filled to bursting… with a mountain of human heads, arms, legs, birds, cats, dogs, and so on.

 

 

 

“Ha…haha. Pfft…! Hahaha!!”

 

 

 

I burst into insane laughter.

 

 

Are you kidding me right now? How am I supposed to find two legs in a pile of corpses that looked to be over a hundred? With only 40 minutes left!

 

 

But I couldn’t give up now, with only the legs left to find. I gritted my teeth and steeled my will.

 

 

 

“Game clear, game clear, game clear.”

 

 

 

Despite wanting to collapse right then and there, I walked toward the mountain of corpses. I stepped on a dead rat with a long tail under my foot without even thinking to avoid it. Squelch. The sensation of flesh and guts bursting was palpably felt.

 

 

 

Upon opening the curtain, I was met once again by a head with an unnaturally elongated neck staring at me. Having seen so many corpses in just a few hours, I was now unfazed by such sights. It seems humans truly are creatures of adaptation. With indifferent eyes, I flung the window wide open and struck at that head. The night wind rushed in, cooling the heat from my face. I leaned Selena’s arms and head against the window frame, placing her torso just below.

 

 

 

Then, with my shirt sleeves rolled up past my elbows, I dove into the mountain of corpses.

 

 

 

“Kughh, ugh…”

 

 

 

As soon as I touched the corpses, it caused them to tumble towards me like water streaming down. I was slapped by someone’s hand, headbutted, and felt blood rush into my mouth. Unyielding, I bit down hard and continued to dig through the bodies.

 

 

 

After a while, memories of digging for clams in the mudflats as a child came to mind. I would toss stones aside and only keep the clams in my basket.

 

 

 

I dismissed these dismembered corpses as mere stones, throwing them aside without feeling. Arms, legs, and heads flew overhead in chaos. Then, I found a leg with flesh so rotten the bone was exposed. I was about to celebrate when someone’s big toe got pushed into my mouth, causing me to scrape my tongue with my front teeth several times.

 

 

 

[Mission ends in: 0 hours 19 minutes 20 seconds]

 

 

 

“Found them!”

 

 

 

Luckily, the left leg wasn’t far from the right. I grabbed one in each hand and emerged from the pile of bodies. I laid them out in the hallway according to their proper place: head, torso, arms, legs.

 

 

 

Kneeling on the floor, I took out a needle and thread. But despite my solemn determination, the physical exhaustion made my hands shake. The thread kept missing the eye of the needle.

 

 

 

[Mission ends in: 0 hours 11 minutes 56 seconds]

 

 

 

I moistened the thread with saliva and proceeded with utmost care. Finally, the thread grazed the edge of the needle’s eye and slipped through. The satisfaction was indescribable.

 

 

 

“Done!”

 

 

 

But there was no time to revel in the joy. I immediately started sewing the head and torso together. The thread lived up to its promise of stitching anything together. It passed through the decaying tissue as easily as a needle through a thin cloth.

 

 

 

Maggots crawled up my hand from the rotten corpse, but there was no time to be disgusted. They were just protein struggling to live. I consoled myself. The stitching was erratic, at times as long as a finger, at others as short as an eyelash. I moved mechanically, driven solely by the task at hand.

 

 

 

The timer blinked red and sounded an alarm. My impatience turned to outright frustration, and unfiltered curses spilled from my lips.

 

 

 

I finished the neck in two minutes, and the arms and legs in a similar time. I tied off the last knot and threw the needle down as if discarding it.

 

 

 

[Mission ends in: 0 hours 0 minutes 6 seconds]

 

 

 

“Huff, uff, haaa…”