Chapter 47

How a Regressor Conquers the Tower of Urban Legends

Chapter 47

When people think of the sea, the first image that usually comes to mind is something refreshing.

The sound of waves.

A cool breeze.

A strange sense of peace.

It used to be the same for me.

Once.

"Phew."

I took a deep breath and looked ahead.

The vast forest of Floor 3 stretched before me.

It was familiar, yet somehow subtly different.

Last time, everyone had crawled into the sea on this floor.

And that really had been the exit.

I had been the only one who thought about crossing the sea instead.

Then this time...

Shouldn't I just go into the sea?

As though reading my thoughts, the mascot tilted its head and tapped my shoulder.

"...?"

"Wait, really?"

"!"

The mascot nodded confidently and marched straight into the water.

"!?!?!!!"

"Grab my hand!"

"!??!!??!!"

Apparently, the mascot could enter the water just fine.

It just couldn't swim.

Hadn't it said it could swim before?

Or had it?

I tilted my head while desperately hauling the soaked mascot out of the water.

"Ugh... heave...!"

"...!"

By the time I remembered how heavy waterlogged stuffing was, I was already drenched in sweat and sprawled across the ground beside it.

"Haa... haa..."

"...!"

"There was nothing there, right?"

"……!!!!!"

You don't have to nod that hard.

"Then this way must be right."

"!!!!!"

I get it.

Anyone watching would think I'd forced you into the water.

I watched the mascot squelch along before looking up.

The dense forest.

To deal with this...

"Haah."

"?"

"Nothing. Just preparing myself."

If I died, I died.

I'd just return and come back down again.

I took a deep breath and started walking.

I climbed the short hill.

"..."

Soon, the dense forest spread before me.

I narrowed my eyes and looked around.

Not long after, I spotted familiar handwriting.

What had frightened me so much about Floor 3?

I kept walking while forcing myself to remember.

Eventually, I found crude writing carved into the trunk of a tree.

[It seems anything written in the notebook gets censored here.]

[I realized that after reading what No. 11 wrote.]

[Ah, for reference, this is No. 24.]

[This place is very strange.]

[Before being trapped here, I genuinely enjoyed walking through forests.]

[Walking through one made me feel calm and helped organize my thoughts.]

[But this place...]

[The farther I walk, the more anxious I become.]

So No. 24 had felt the same way.

Anxiety.

There wasn't even a clear reason for it.

What had No. 24 thought about it?

[There is something I have always wondered.]

[Evolution, fundamentally, occurs in order to survive predators.]

[And one way or another, humanity has existed as the apex predator ever since discovering fire.]

[As a result, countless animals have gone extinct, and many plants have also disappeared.]

[That led me to wonder about something.]

[Prey evolves in order to survive predators.]

[Of course, from the perspective of evolutionary theory and current academic consensus, humanity advanced too quickly for such adaptations to properly appear...]

[But what we see is different.]

[...I do not remember where I belonged, but the organization I was part of already knew a great deal about things unknown to ordinary people.]

[Saying too much would not be good for you, so I will leave only a small amount of information.]

[There were also trees that evolved specifically to resist humans.]

[Of course, the forest I am currently inside and the trees I just mentioned are definitely different.]

[In any case, please be careful.]

Below that were messages from many others.

[No. 77 here. Everyone, hang in there!]

[No. 149. Good luck, everyone!]

"..."

I stared at the writing for a moment before looking away.

Trees that evolved to resist humans.

Would taking off the headset let me notice something else?

I raised a hand toward it.

"!!!"

A damp hand caught mine.

What?

I turned.

The mascot stared directly at me and slowly shook its head.

"..."

Right.

Of course.

I hadn't been through every corner of this insane place, but I knew very well what happened when I removed this headset.

And yet just now, I'd thought about taking it off.

"Thanks."

"!"

I needed to be more careful.

Just like before, even the smallest trigger could make me lose my mind here.

I took a deep breath and examined the surroundings.

Greenery everywhere.

The densely packed trees blocked sunlight that shouldn't even have existed in the first place.

And...

"...?"

Some of the trees had scratches on them.

Scratches.

Or marks.

Whatever they were, they weren't natural.

Then again, nothing in this place was truly natural.

I'd seen countless corpses on Floor 1 without a single fly gathering around them.

On Floor 3, I hadn't seen fish in the water.

And I couldn't remember seeing a single insect in the forest either.

So there was no chance these marks had been made by wild animals.

Which meant...

I narrowed my eyes and examined the scratches.

"You see these marks?"

"!"

"They were probably made by the people who came before us."

"?"

"There's nothing else here that could've made them."

Of course, just like the freezing floor we'd passed earlier, there could be some mannequin-like monster living here.

But common sense told me that there shouldn't be anything willing to live among these trees in a place this insane.

With that thought, I pushed through the brush and continued walking.

Countless trees stood around us.

At the same time, goosebumps began spreading across my entire body.

If only I knew where this fear came from.

I was terrified.

Yet I had no idea what I was afraid of.

An instinctive fear of something I hadn't even seen.

I took a deep breath and moved forward, one step at a time.

The deeper we went, the more scratch marks appeared.

I forced myself to stay calm and recalled my earlier idea.

"I don't think we can use that method yet."

"!"

The mascot had been vehemently against my original plan from the beginning.

So when I withdrew it, the mascot visibly relaxed and rubbed its chest in relief.

I looked around the dense forest and continued walking.

There were still too many unknowns.

For now, finding the exit had to come first.

If I could locate the exit safely, then I could figure out the rest afterward.

With that thought, I kept moving.

And no matter how long I walked...

I never found the exit.

"Haa... haa..."

Even if all you're doing is walking, you'll eventually get tired if you never stop.

Obviously, that applied to me too.

"...Haa..."

"??"

"Yeah. We should rest."

I nodded at the mascot's worried look and dropped down onto the ground.

I didn't want to lean against a tree.

Who knew what might happen if I did?

I looked upward.

Sunlight still filtered brightly through the leaves.

Ever since we'd arrived, the sun hadn't moved at all.

I had no idea how much time had passed.

"Next time I go to work, I'm definitely wearing a watch."

"?"

The mascot tilted its head at me.

I ignored it and looked around.

If you walk through a forest long enough, you lose your sense of direction.

I kept thinking I was moving straight ahead.

But for all I knew, I'd been walking in circles the entire time.

I looked at the phone.

Still no call.

Did that mean my life wasn't in danger yet?

Or was the caller saving it because something worse was coming?

I stood again.

"Let's keep walking."

"...?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine."

I avoided the mascot's worried gaze and started moving.

Several more hours passed.

Then...

"..."

[It seems anything written in the notebook gets censored here.]

[I realized that after reading what No. 11 wrote.]

[Ah, for reference, this is No. 24.]

[This place is very strange.]

We'd returned to the entrance.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

"I know I kept moving forward."

Otherwise, there was no reason I'd still be wandering around this place.

"This isn't working."

"..."

I looked at the mascot, which was staring at me worriedly.

It was time to make a decision.

"I'm climbing a tree."

"..."

The mascot didn't lose its worried posture.

But I had no choice.

"At the very least, we need to know which direction the exit is."

"...!!"

"You'll go alone?"

The mascot nodded.

"..."

For a moment, I considered it.

Then I shook my head.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"???"

"If we're checking, we're checking together."

I'd seen this happen too many times.

The mascot went alone to check something.

Then it didn't come back.

If we were going, we should go together.

"I'll climb first. Follow me. And if I look like I'm going to fall, catch me."

"...!"

The mascot nodded solemnly.

Together, we started climbing the tree.

"Whoa!"

"!!"

"Th-Thanks."

"!"

Having the mascot beneath me turned out to be a brilliant decision.

The last time I'd climbed a tree had probably been back in elementary school when I was too young to know better.

So climbing was much harder than I'd expected.

Without the mascot, I might've fallen and shattered a leg ages ago.

With its help, I kept climbing.

Eventually, I reached the top.

"Haaah..."

I raised my head while breathing heavily.

"..."

An endless forest stretched before me.

The exit.

Where was the exit?

I scanned everything around us.

"..."

Nothing.

I stared across the sea of trees, then looked aside.

"You don't see anything either, right?"

"..."

"Hey?"

The mascot wasn't answering.

It was staring somewhere else.

"..."

I followed its gaze.

An empty stretch of forest.

"Do you think we should go that way?"

"..."

The mascot continued staring in silence.

"...Let's go back down."

In the end, I gave up trying to find the way from above.

I went down first again.

Whenever I looked like I might fall, the mascot caught me.

"Ah, thanks."

After finally reaching the ground, I turned to thank it.

"...?"

The mascot that had been catching me moments earlier was gone.

Only the camera and red scarf remained hanging from a branch.

"Of course the bad feeling comes true."

I muttered and picked them up.

With a sigh, I hung the camera around my neck and wrapped the scarf around my wrist.

At the same moment, the phone started ringing.

"Yes?"

<You're not surprised.>

"I figured you'd call if my partner disappeared."

<How fortunate. Even if one partner disappears, another comes looking for you.>

"...Yeah... I guess."

<That was a slow answer.>

"..."

A low chuckle came through the phone.

Then it stopped.

<You've accepted that you're probably going to die, haven't you?>

"That's pretty much always the case."

<Good. Then let's gather as much information as possible.>

There was a brief silence.

Then the caller continued.

<Let's try the method you were thinking of.>

"...Seriously?"

<Yes. Start by making a fire.>

"..."

<The trees already dislike you. There's no reason you have to like them back.>

Amusement colored the voice coming through the phone.

<Let's set the forest on fire.>