Chapter 44: Chapter 42

“What do we do? Should we check it out?”
“Whatever we decide, we shouldn’t split up.”

Valeriya calmly responded to Elis, as her steady aura soothed the girl’s nerves. While she was competent and reliable in the midst of battle, it seemed that the cheery gourmet didn’t handle creepy situations well.

Her usual rock, Sidheag, was watching her spirit closely, still absorbed in her own thoughts. She hadn’t said a word since they entered the building, but she was at least keeping watch, and her spirit was acting as their vanguard, so the others let her be.

Hibiki and Wang Bao both turned to Yuuji, who had taken up the role of team leader in these situations previously. Despite not being at the academy long, his experience in demon extermination was almost certainly far above the others - Valeriya seeming to be next after him, but it was hard to judge how much of her knowledge was practical and how much was taught.

“Pajeon. Any luck?”

He held his phone out once more, but the ferret simply shook his head in defeat. The building wasn’t big enough or remote enough for the connection to have taken such a hit, so their radio silence from the base was sure to be the work of whatever they were chasing.

“Let’s head back to the entrance. I have a bad feeling.”

His instinct had been trained for many years, and while he wished it was wrong in this case, once again it was as he feared.

“Where’d the door go!?”

The natural light from the entrance no longer lit the hall, as the double doors they had first walked through were now just another solid wall. Elis traced the cold brick in the place where she remembered the handle, but the shock on her face told them all they needed to know.

“We could destroy it - if we need to.”
“Only as a last resort. If there’s something capable of making an illusion feel this real, it’d also be able to disorientate us into heading the wrong way when looking for where we came in. There’s no telling whether this is really the entrance, or a totally different part of the building that we just believed was the entrance.”

Yuuji had a hunch from the way the demon had acted so far, and this confirmed it. It was some form of trickster demon, but whether its end goal was to trap them for eternity or lure them into a deadly trap was hard to say until they proceeded further.

And further may just mean following the exact path laid out for them.

“For now we’ll just have to play along, though feel free to ruin this bastard’s fun every chance you get.”

Gathering the group once more, he led them towards the other open classroom. Faolán trotted by his side, and the others remained close behind as they scanned the walls for any sign of anomalies that might give them clues.

“Here, for example. Roland. Durandal!”

He stopped a meter before the open doorway, and without batting an eyelid, summoned forth a giant gleaming blade of light, and tore the wooden door into pieces with a single blow. It was wholly overkill, as the sword nearly reached the ceiling as he swung, and was ill-suited for such a cramped space.

“Can’t close a door on us if there’s no door, see?”

With that casual explanation, he stepped into the room and beckoned them to follow.

“Umm… does anyone else get the impression he’s angry?”

Elis whispered to the others, but Hibiki, Sidhead and Valeriya simply entered behind him without a word. Wang Bao, her silent saviour, patted her on the shoulder gently in agreement before entering too, and she scuttled after him so as not to be left alone.

Once again, the contents of the classroom were uninteresting. The once bright and happy wallpaper that was now decrepit and worn bore a creepy juxtaposition, and walking through the rows of small tables and chairs made for children was uncomfortable - but it was only that. By now, they were becoming accustomed to their uncanny surroundings, and they were able to confirm the room appeared to be empty even faster than before.

“..!”
“You fucker…”

Just as they turned to leave, Faolán’s head once again whipped around to the doorway, only for them to find that the open space was in fact occupied once again by a wooden door. Each of the classroom doors looked the same, so there was still no telling as to whether they somehow ended up in a different room, or if the door had magically reformed itself and shut without even a whisper, but to Yuuji it didn’t matter much.

“You can hear me, can’t you? I’ll cut every damn one of these doors to splinters, then we’ll see how funny it is.”

*Slash* *Slash* *Slash*

Once he had finished his rage-filled bout of destruction, he stood on the pile of sawdust, and took a deep breath to calm down, dispelling his unwieldy spirit. He’d somewhat lost his cool, but this wasn’t the time for that - they had a demon to find.

“Yuuji, what should we do?”

This was getting them nowhere, and they hadn’t heard anything from outside. Elis had started to conquer her initial fear, but it was only replaced by concern for their path to proceed.

“Haa. Let’s think for a moment.”

Simply destroying the whole building was a possibility. It was a terrible solution that would only further hurt Phoenix’s reputation and potentially only cause the demon to escape, but it would at least get them out.

“Yuuji? Can you hear me?”
“Ji-Hye!”

At the time they needed her most, she returned. The students all relaxed slightly knowing that they could communicate once again with their friends and companions beyond the walls, and Yuuji most of all welcomed her calling out to him.

“Yuuji, come and find me!”
“Find you? What do you…”

His voice trailed off as something struck him as amiss. He slowly turned his phone over to view the screen once again, only to see Pajeon furiously typing messages into a notepad for him.

Not her! Not her! Not her! Not her!

“Yuuji, let’s play hide and seek!”

The voice called him once more. It sounded exactly like Ji-Hye, but the way she spoke wasn’t normal. Even when on official missions, she’d always call him by the nickname she loved, and he kicked himself for not realising something was off immediately. It was only when he saw Pajeon’s frantic messages that he realised, and his soothed anger returned tenfold.

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“Hide and seek? What does she-”
“Listen here you little shit. You better hide well, because when I find you you’re dead!”

At first, there was confusion, but the others quickly realised what had happened. Another chill ran down Elis’s spine as she thought about how easily the demon’s voice had made her drop her guard, and she was glad that she wasn’t in this alone.

They waited for a moment, but the voice didn’t return. Pajeon breathed a sigh of relief and soon returned to troubleshooting the demonic interference keeping them from communicating with the real Ji-Hye.

They stood there in silence, waiting for something to happen.

*Creeeeaaak*

There it was again. This time, the sound wasn’t from the room directly across the way which they had already visited. Instead, it was further down the same corridor they were in currently.

“W-Well, at least it’s a different part of the school, right? Maybe the demon is trying to show us something?”

Elis, who had now taken the unfortunate role of orator of the group, tried to show reason. Whether it was to calm her own nerves or to try and sate Yuuji’s ire, only she would know - if it was the latter, it didn’t seem to work.

“Not this time! New plan, we stay right here. It can’t do anything if we just don’t move. What do you think about that, demon!?”

He shouted into the darkness like a lunatic. Elis desperately looked around for someone to help her guide this insanity back on track, but Valeriya dodged her gaze, and Wang Bao only returned a wry smile. It seemed that nobody else had a better idea, so they would play along with Yuuji’s increasingly paranoid schemes for now.

…

…

…

“GUAAAAHHHH”
“Hah! I knew it!”

Everyone jumped to alert as a fierce roar reverberated down the passage before them, shattering the silence. Wherever the next room was, the creature was surely waiting, and it was a terrifying beast.

“Hold!”

Yuuji held his hand out to stop the others from going any further. As he turned his head, he wore a smug grin and puffed out his chest as if he had calculated everything from the beginning.

“It’s getting desperate. Well, we’re not going to fall for it, you conniving bastard! We’re staying right here!”

Deranged as he had become, he had a point. So far the doors had only led to dead ends, and the moment they’d stopped and refused to continue, there was some tangible progress. If there really was some horrific monster at the end of the corridor, they’d likely have heard it by now, and even if not it wasn’t like there was much of a loss if they waited for it to come to them instead of rushing ahead.

The demonic activity fell quiet once again as if it was planning its next move. And sadly for them, that was exactly what was happening.

*CRACK*

“Hmm?”
“What… was that?”

*CRACK*

“Is that the floor?”

They felt a slight tremble as they looked towards their feet. The smooth stone surface hadn’t particularly caught their attention as they had been walking around, but now it didn’t feel as undoubtedly sturdy as they had first thought.

*CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK*

Starting from the wall at the back of the classroom, giant cracks rapidly formed in the ground, and suddenly the huge chunks of concrete began to fall away into a deep abyss below them.

*RUMBLE* *RUMBLE* *RUMBLE*

“Oh shit, RUN!”

Everyone was of the same mind, as all of them began to sprint at full speed down the corridor. Their footing was uneasy, and they didn’t need to turn back to know that the floor where they had stood moments ago was no longer there, and the dark void underneath was closing in.

*SLAM* *SLAM* *SLAM* *SLAM*

The doors to classrooms swung open as they approached, unsubtly beckoning them inside in order to survive. Yuuji ignored them as best he could, but through the wildly dancing spotlights of their torches, he saw that the floor at the end of the corridor was crumbling as well.

No way forward, and no way back.

“Get inside!”

He cast away his caution, and leapt through the nearest doorway, only for the cursed wooden door to slam shut behind him as his torch clattered to the floor, and switched off.

He was alone.

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