The dense fog that had enveloped the entire school finally dissipated on the thirtieth hour after St. Lian Girls’ Academy was transported to this异world—the evening of the second day.
Without this pervasive, grey-white shroud, those who still dared to venture outdoors could at last discern the paths around them.
Yet, it also meant that the predators lurking nearby could see them with equal clarity.
“Shhh… be careful!”
After spotting a group of bizarre insects, resembling a cross between water striders and scorpions, scuttling past on their slender legs from a distance, Shirley instinctively pressed down on Xia Hua’s head, which was encased in a baseball catcher’s helmet, forcing the perpetually curious girl—who often blurred the lines between genuine inquiry and reckless endangerment—back into the holly bush where they were concealed.
Thankfully, the grotesque creatures failed to notice them and simply moved on.
“Wow, they didn’t see us!
I can’t believe your idea actually worked, Shirley, I really admire you!” Alice exclaimed excitedly from beside them, only to be met with a sharp glare from Shirley.
“Shhh… keep your voice down.
We’re not safe yet,” Shirley whispered.
“Besides, my idea wasn’t anything remarkable.
If you knew a bit about insects, you’d understand why this was necessary.”
“Everyone, spray a little more.
Don’t let the scent fade.”
As the patrolling bugs moved further away, another swarm of flying insects, akin to mayflies but sporting the massive mandibles of hellgrammites, flew overhead, yet showed no intention of attacking the group.
Once these winged creatures also departed, Eileen immediately produced a bottle of perfume and began liberally dousing everyone.
These perfumes were all exorbitantly priced luxury items, contributed by Alice, whose family primarily dealt in high-end fragrances and incense, so she naturally carried such things.
However, the designers and manufacturers of these exquisite perfumes had surely never imagined that their painstakingly crafted creations would ultimately be used not in elite social gatherings, but in a place such as this.
“Alright, keep moving!
Go! Go! Go!”
Seeing the immediate vicinity clear of bugs, the group, like an assault team advancing under fire, swiftly leaped out of the holly bush.
They traversed the bluestone path, stained with what appeared to be either blood or vomit, and quickly ducked into the greenery on the opposite side of the road.
Under the cover of peach trees laden with unripe fruit, ginkgo trees, and clusters of geraniums and holly, they rapidly approached the junior high dormitory building located on the north side of the campus, halting their advance at Shirley’s hand signal.
“Back up, quickly, back up!” Shirley urgently whispered when a staggering figure suddenly emerged from Dormitory No. 5, not far away.
That bald, middle-aged man was one of the few male faculty members at St. Lian Girls’ Academy, originally serving as the gardener.
However, the day before his sixtieth birthday, he had been so overjoyed that he accidentally fell and injured his leg while pruning branches, subsequently being reassigned to the leisurely post of equipment storeroom keeper.
Due to his impaired mobility, his movements were habitually slow, even earning him the nickname “Sloth” from a few sharp-tongued girls behind his back.
Tragically, after the school’s transmigration to another world, his lack of agility meant he couldn’t escape the initial attack.
Of course, unlike the mystical zombie viruses in movies that can bestow immense strength or even the power of flight, these parasites did not appear to significantly enhance the host’s physical capabilities.
Thus, Mr. Sloth’s current mobility remained at a sloth-like level, appearing quite harmless, yet it still unsettled Shirley.
When deciding to risk leaving the kitchen to search and rescue survivors across the school, Shirley had meticulously devised a plan to maximize their safety outdoors.
First, she located several dark green raincoats in the kitchen staff lounge, distributing them among her companions to serve as makeshift camouflage, and even used found spray paint to green-coat their baseball catcher helmets.
Next, she “requisitioned” Alice’s ever-present perfumes, instructing everyone to douse themselves liberally with the liquid.
Initially, her companions were quite puzzled by her actions.
Consequently, Shirley had to take some time to explain: judging from the grotesque substance expelled by the previously infected shooting team girl, these parasites themselves evidently lacked complex organs.
In other words, their movement, sensory perception, and even their cognitive abilities were primarily dependent on the host’s “hardware.”
While the insects scuttling about the school were larger and more terrifying than ordinary insects, they were still insects.
With the exception of a few acrobatic hunters like dragonflies and giant hornets, most insects possessed rather poor, if not abysmal, eyesight; a green raincoat was more than sufficient to deceive them.
Their primary reliance was on their sense of touch, hearing, and smell.
Deceiving their sense of touch and hearing posed little challenge: by treading lightly on the soft soil of the plant-covered greenbelts, the probability of detection could be significantly reduced.
Their sense of smell, however, was slightly more problematic.
Fortunately, while insects were generally adept at detecting airborne scent molecules, their tiny, pitiable brains severely limited their capabilities.
Due to insufficient “processing threads” in their brains, most insects could only specifically identify a limited number of scents representing “food,” “mates,” and “danger,” effectively ignoring any odors not on their pre-programmed list.
Therefore, the crude but effective method of liberally splashing perfume to mask their body odor, though it nearly obliterated Shirley and her companions’ own sense of smell, proved highly successful.
After all, since the scent of synthetic perfumes did not exist in nature, upon detecting this odor, the insects’ small brains would instinctively filter it out as “invalid information,” rather than following the scent to investigate.
However, humans, even parasitic-infected humans, were likely a different matter entirely.
“Ugh, why isn’t Mr. Sloth moving on?”
After quietly hiding for several minutes, the impatient Ji Bingyao was the first to lose patience.
She had initially thought Mr. Sloth was merely passing through and would leave in a minute or two.
Yet, to their surprise, since his appearance, he had been tottering back and forth along the same stretch of path, showing no signs of departing.
“What if we take a detour?” Eileen suggested.
“Or we could just cripple him!”
Shijō Yurizumi unslung her bow, preparing to nock an arrow.
“At this distance, hitting his knee precisely with an arrow would be no challenge at all!
I’ll show you the archery passed down by my cultured, valiant, and extremely handsome ancestor…”
“No,” Shirley shook her head.
“Why not?” Ji Bingyao asked, puzzled.
“Judging by Mr. Sloth’s movements, he seems to be patrolling,” Shirley explained.
“This suggests that others might be doing the same elsewhere.
A detour might not solve the problem.
Furthermore, incapacitating him is equally dangerous: many insects and other invertebrates can release special pheromones to communicate with each other.
We cannot be certain if infected humans do the same… if the answer is yes, then doing so would only expose us immediately.”
“Uh…”
Upon hearing the word “pheromones,” Ji Bingyao, Eileen, and Xia Hua immediately recalled the terrifyingly odorous substances Li Nini had suddenly vomited when they left the dorm, as well as the strange smell emanating from the equally infected Miss Huang, and collectively nodded.
“What should we do then?”
“I’ll lure him away,” Shirley said after a moment’s thought, dipping her right index finger into her mouth to moisten it, then testing the wind direction.
She then deliberately ran upwind.
“You all take the opportunity to pass!”
As she had anticipated, shortly after she reached the upwind position, Mr. Sloth caught a scent carried on the wind—a smell so potent it was less a fragrance and more an acrid stench.
Though a significant portion of his brain had been replaced by the parasite, he still recoiled with a pained expression, akin to a zombie encountering garlic, and began to limp towards the source of the odor, emitting a series of low grunts.
Not long after these sounds, his new companions—those giant insects also controlled by parasites, and even a few ragged, drooling female students whose lower bodies continuously leaked waste—immediately gathered, joining the search for the strange scent source.
Soon, a girl leading the charge, wielding a baseball bat, found the source of the pungent odor.
…It was merely a green raincoat, stuffed beneath a bush and thoroughly drenched in high-end perfume.
“Phew… it worked!
Everyone, quickly!”
Seizing the moment while all the unfortunate infected around them were temporarily gathered in one spot, Shirley, nimble as a weasel, darted across the most perilous stretch of hardened pavement and into the greenbelt on the opposite side.
“I used an entire bottle of perfume for this chance!
Don’t waste it!”
“For human hosts with stronger cognitive abilities, you chose to directly disrupt their sense of smell with a more concentrated perfume, preventing them from noticing our fainter scent?
What a brilliant idea!” Xia Hua exclaimed as she ran.
“Indeed, you possess the insight and adaptability a researcher of the occult should have!
I definitely want you to join—”
“That’s assuming there’s a ‘later’,” Shirley interjected.
“We’re fortunate that the parasitic hosts in this area seem rather unintelligent due to brain damage.
But this trick won’t fool the ‘hybrids’.
I have a premonition that Dianna isn’t the only ‘hybrid’ in the school.”
“I agree,” Ji Bingyao said, leading the way with her double-barreled shotgun.
After passing through another cluster of citron trees, which were already bearing fruit and emitting a rich, fragrant aroma, the group arrived beside the junior high dormitory building… and then stopped.
“Awful…” Shirley swallowed hard.
As she had said.
Just like the situation they had witnessed earlier in front of Alice and Shijō Yurizumi’s dormitory, the main entrance of this dorm building stood wide open, the ground littered with footprints, abandoned items, and even stains of blood and excrement.
This could only signify one thing.
“…This dorm probably wasn’t held either,” Ji Bingyao muttered.
“Otherwise, the door wouldn’t be left open like this.”
The group did not approach the dormitory building but instead, using the cover of the greenbelt, visited another junior high dorm, with identical results.
Over the next twenty minutes, they visited Dormitories No. 2, 3, and 4, belonging to the elementary school section, but only met with utter disappointment: all the dormitory buildings stood wide open and were in disarray.
Through the windows of some, non-human figures could even be seen crawling and writhing within the rooms.
The only silver lining was that, while they encountered some unfortunate female students who had succumbed to the parasites on the way, their numbers were merely a fraction of the total occupants of these dorms.
“Look on the bright side, perhaps most of our classmates simply relocated to a safe place… right?” Shirley said, half-guessing, half-reassuring herself, after leaving the last elementary dorm building.
“At least so far, we haven’t found too many infected people.”
“Theoretically, that is possible,” Xia Hua nodded in agreement from beside her.
“However, there aren’t many safe places left within the school.
And the reason we haven’t seen too many infected people so far might not be because most classmates have escaped, but rather… hmm?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Uh… Lu Ying just contacted me!” Xia Hua pulled out a cute, orange, cat-paw-shaped radio from her pocket.