Horror Game Developer: My games aren't that scary!

Chapter 761: Gate [1]

“…..”

For several seconds after Seth hit the floor, nobody inside the classroom moved.

Claude’s attention remained fixed on the body lying beside the desk, where blood continued spreading between the floorboards. It disappeared into the narrow gaps in thin, uneven streams, leaving the surrounding wood dark and slick.

He had seen people die before, including people considerably stronger than himself, but something about the death he’d just witnessed set something in his mind off.

‘That’s… That’s…’

There had been no struggle and no opportunity for Seth to defend himself.

One moment he had been speaking as though the entire situation was of no concern, and the next the teacher’s arm had passed through his chest before anyone could properly understand what was happening.

‘This makes no sense… How is this possible?’

Who was the person who had just died?

He was one of the greatest talents within the Guild. Even though Claude believed he was overrated, and not as good as he was made out to be, he didn’t think… he’d be this incompetent.

Unless…

Claude’s gaze shifted to the teacher, his heart palpitating in his chest.

“…What the fuck?”

A soft whisper carried through the air, disrupting Claude’s thoughts. He opened his mouth instinctively, intending to tell him to keep quiet, before catching himself and swallowing the words.

His attention remained on the teacher.

Its burned face remained angled towards Seth’s body, and for several seconds it simply stood there, staring at the corpse as though deciding what to do with it. Beneath the harsh classroom lights, the blackened skin around its face seemed almost glossy in places, stretched tightly over what remained underneath.

Claude forced himself to focus.

His nodes were still responsive. Whatever was holding his body in place wasn’t stopping him from using his nodes, which meant there was still a possibility that they could overwhelm the restriction if they worked together.

His eyes shifted towards Rena.

She noticed immediately.

Claude moved two fingers against the desk as much as the pressure allowed, giving the signal they had used dozens of times during previous operations.

‘Get ready on my signal…’

The nodes inside his body began responding as he prepared to act.

But right as he was about to move⎯

The teacher moved, bending in Seth’s direction.

Claude’s concentration broke.

Especially as a wet tearing sound echoed through the surroundings, the teacher’s long fingers disappearing into Seth’s hair before slowly lifting his upper body from the floor. The movement dragged his clothes through the blood beneath him, leaving a broad smear across the floorboards. The other hand settled against the base of his neck, almost casually, before the teacher pulled.

Cra Crack!

A wet crack filled the classroom.

Rena’s expression changed instantly, red spilling in all directions.

The teacher twisted once, and whatever remained connecting Seth’s head to his body tore apart with a sound that made even Claude’s stomach tighten.

Thump!

The corpse dropped back onto the floor while Seth’s head remained hanging from the teacher’s hand.

Drip! Drip!

Claude stopped preparing his nodes.

So did everyone else.

The teacher turned towards the front of the classroom and began walking, Seth’s severed head swinging lightly from its grip while blood ran along its wrist and dripped onto the floor. Each drop struck the wood behind it, leaving a crooked trail leading towards the podium.

A deep sense of suffocation engulfed the room as the soft dripping continued to echo around them, almost rhythmically.

Drip!

When it reached the main desk, it placed Seth’s head right on the podium.

Then it turned it, making it face their direction.

Claude found himself staring directly into Seth’s half-open eyes. Blood slowly spread beneath the severed neck and ran across the wood, dripping over the edge of the table one drop at a time. His expression hadn’t fully settled after death, leaving his mouth slightly parted as though he’d been interrupted halfway through saying something.

Something brushed against Claude’s ankle.

“⎯!”

His entire body stiffened.

He lowered his gaze as far as the strange restriction allowed, expecting to see one of the children beneath his desk, but there was nothing there. Only the narrow darkness beneath the rows of desks stared back at him.

A moment later, something touched him again.

He felt it more clearly. It… almost felt like fingers.

They dragged slowly across the fabric around his calf before disappearing. The pressure was light enough that, had the room not been completely still, he might have convinced himself he’d imagined it.

Claude’s breathing became shallower.

Across the room, Rena’s chair shifted.

The wooden leg scraped faintly against the floor, and her eyes widened immediately because she hadn’t moved it herself.

The teacher’s head turned.

Rena froze.

For several seconds, the thing at the front simply stared in her direction before eventually looking back towards the register. Heavy tensions engulfed the entire room, each breath seeming harder and harder than the previous. Somewhere amongst the desks, one of the children slowly turned a page, the dry rustle of paper sounding unnaturally loud.

Claude found himself abandoning the previous plan.

‘We… need to understand this anomaly better.’

There was no brute-forcing their way out of this. At least, not yet.

His thoughts still lingered in Seth’s death.

“⎯!”

Suddenly, something tugged against Markus’s chair.

Although Markus didn’t turn or speak this time, Claude spotted the sudden tension in his shoulders as the chair he sat on moved again, moving a few centimeters before stopping.

Skrrr⎯!

A soft, yet ever present scraping sound echoed within the quiet classroom as all heads turned to the teacher, their breaths stopping at once. The sound seemed to travel beneath the desks before fading, leaving the classroom silent once more.

But things weren’t over yet.

Skrr!

Markus’s jaw tightened as he attempted to hold himself still, using what little parts of his body he could move to keep the chair from moving.

His expression tightened considerably, but the scraping sound remained.

It echoed across the quiet classroom, the sound louder than ever.

SKRRRR!

Claude felt his stomach tighten at the sight, his expression twisting as he wanted to stand up from the spot to help Markus, but regardless of how hard he tried, he remained fixed in place, his expression gradually worsening as the teacher’s body slowly turned within the silence. The burned skin along its neck pulled with the movement, producing the faintest dry creak.

‘No, no, no…!’

Step!

The teacher moved.

Claude barely registered the sight of the teacher moving before it appeared next to Markus, his face incredibly pale as he slowly turned to face the teacher. Up close, its featureless, burned face seemed even more unnatural beneath the classroom lights, with no eyes Claude could follow and nothing to tell him where it was looking.

His expression had only begun to change when the teacher’s hand closed around the side of his head.

Rena’s eyes widened.

Claude instinctively forced his nodes to respond, but just as they started working, a soft giggle whispered in his ears, pinning him harder against the chair and disrupting his nodes before they could properly function. The sound was close enough that warm breath seemed to brush the side of his neck, despite there being nobody beside him.

No! No⎯!

Markus tried the same.

His nodes flared as he attempted to force himself free, but the teacher simply pushed his head backwards until he found himself staring at Claude.

All fell silent in that moment.

For the last moments, all Markus could see was Claude’s wide eyes.

Why is he…?

Thump!

His body immediately went limp, falling face-first against the floor.