LIGHTNOVELWORLD Chapter 41: Inevitable Coincidence
Bizarre Kiana opened her mouth again, revealing her cute little fangs. A trace of obsession gleamed in her eyes as she bit down on Li Mo's head.
A sudden transformation, as if she was a completely different person.
From a certain perspective, Bizarre Kiana was a purer existence than Kiana.
She was two people, and yet also one person.
She had everything besides Kiana's complete consciousness and habits.
The bizarre entities had contaminated her, thus giving birth to new instincts.
Sharp teeth bit into Li Mo's cheek.
He was injured.
A bizarre entity that was injured would heal gradually according to its own state, and once it was judged to be dead, it would immediately reset.
Li Mo's current state was very special. He could be judged to be injured and needed to heal, but he could also be judged to be dead and needing to reset instantly.
If it was the latter, then his reset would be ineffective in the face of Bizarre Kiana, who controlled time and space.
Bizarre Kiana would lock onto Li Mo's spacetime and not allow him to escape from her side.
And after three days when the curse of the Unlucky ghost was no longer in effect, Li Mo's consciousness would dissipate, and he would truly die.
Therefore, if Li Mo was judged to be dead and started to reset, what awaited him wouldn't be rebirth, but true death.
Fortunately, Li Mo didn't seem to have been judged as dead.
The spine with the bizarre characteristic left behind from his fight with the Upside-Down Ghost, which was connected to Li Mo's head, faintly moved a few times.
Li Mo was not a single head ghost now. He was now a complete, fully formed bizarre entity.
If his body was not in this world, then he would have been judged to be dead and immediately reset.
Then, Bizarre Kiana would have intercepted him. His reset would be ineffective and he would die completely.
But there was a corpse on the ground. A corpse that was identical to him and completely matched all of Li Mo's characteristics.
The corpse didn't have a head and Li Mo didn't have a body. There was no rejection between the two, and there was a way to connect them.
All four prerequisites were perfectly met. Once he was judged to be injured, the restless spine would give him a chance to survive.
And as it happened, Bizarre Kiana wouldn't immediately destroy Li Mo like she did with the other bizarre entities. The moment she took her first bite, Li Mo was judged to be injured and the bizarre remnants that were attached to Li Mo's head from the Upside-Down Ghost would immediately trigger their bizarre instincts.
Bizarre entities were a kind of contamination that couldn't be cured.
They couldn't be killed.
They would reset immediately after being judged as dead.
They were tireless, they had no concept of time.
They strictly followed their own laws and logic.
This "rebirth" ritual, which didn't seem to have a high chance of success, had many coincidences that shouldn't have been there, as if the hands of fate were weaving together a predetermined past and future.
If Li Mo was still conscious, and if he thought about this problem, he would realize:
Everything was being pushed forward by the first page of the notebook, which had brought about this unpredictable outcome…
The bizarre spine that was left behind from triggering the Upside-Down Ghost's killing rule.
The Unlucky Ghost that helped him retain his true consciousness.
The unknown "Li Mo" corpse that appeared in the black coffin.
The fire that countered the moonlight.
The ritual process for the ghost banquet that was consuming the time that Bizarre Kiana had.
Bizarre Kiana's three conditions for being summoned: moonlight, old-world relics, and love.
And the fact that they would rather die here than escape, which affected Li Mo's subconscious bizarre rules.
And there were even more objective factors that Li Mo hadn't noticed…
All of this together created the so-called "coincidence" that would never have another chance of occurring.
In reality, because Li Mo's main body had already been swallowed, the notebook fell to the ground.
Suddenly, without any warning or external force, the notebook opened automatically, and was again showing the first page.
[My name is Li Mo. When you read this, I am dying, and also about to be reborn.]
Its prophecy seemed to have come true. Only the last part, "and also about to be reborn," remained.
[On the first day, the notebook concealed many truths from me. Without knowing anything, I actively entered the door and was killed by the bizarre rule, which stated that someone had to open the door for a living person to enter, which would lead to their death.]
[Before I died, I saw a different Kiana. Her appearance was different from my usual memories, but the world that I was in was a parallel world of the original world. In my seven time-travels, I had once seen more desperate and terrifying versions of "them", so I wasn't surprised.]
[To deal with this bizarre event as soon as possible, I needed to start with a simple wedge. The ghost in the broadcasting room was my main target.]
[I tried asking the notebook. Surprisingly, it gave me the answer very readily.]
[So I immediately went to the broadcasting room. I learned some information about the main vengeful ghosts and rules in this bizarre event and also saved the students who were trapped inside.]
[I didn't have a good impression of them, but I was willing to save them. It wasn't because I was a savior, but rather, because even though I had died once, I still hadn't lost all my human emotions. I couldn't just stand by and watch them die.]
[After spending some time together, I realized that these people were completely useless to me, except for one rather isolated girl, whose gaze seemed very similar to what mine was before. But that still didn't attract my attention or earn my recognition. After all, I didn't need an ordinary person to become my assistant, even if she was very resilient. Bringing them out of St. Freya alive was my final act of kindness.]
[The time when the bizarre entities in the school would revive was approaching. I asked the notebook again, and it told me…]
[The auditorium was safe for a short period of time.]
[I took the surviving students into the auditorium and found the source of this bizarre event—a funeral for someone unknown.]
[I don't know whose funeral it was, because…]
[This was a funeral that I had personally organized for myself.]
[On the first day, I had no idea about the process of the entombment ritual. When the head ghost horde attacked, I used the gold coins that Pardo, from the bizarre entity that had been stored in Elysia's room, created to temporarily delay the attacks of the head ghost horde.]
[But I still died and reset for the second time. At this time, I only had one reset left. If I used bizarre powers afterwards, and pushed my human body too far, then I would become an unknown bizarre entity the next time I reset.]
Bizarre Kiana's speed of devouring was increasing. Li Mo's body had become unidentifiable, and the speed of his healing was gradually becoming unable to keep up with Bizarre Kiana's speed of devouring.
Her teeth seemed to have some kind of bizarre power that slowed down the speed at which the bizarre entity could heal.
At this moment, the spine under Li Mo's neck suddenly began to move.
It started to look for the other half of the spine. It grew longer and longer, extending outwards...
And the notebook, which no one was paying attention to, continued its narration.
[After dying for the second time, I had already lost most of my human emotions. My thoughts became agile, my physique surpassed the limits of humans, and as a price, my body started to decay…]
[But I was able to find a way to safely get through the first day.]
[I had thought that I, in this state, would be able to beat this in one go…]
[On the second day, I went out with Shigure Kira, and learned about the third day's ritual.]
[The rituals for both days would take place tonight at the same time, but they would be in conflict with each other.]
[Keeping watch at night meant I couldn't go out, but the death announcement required someone to go out and notify them.]
[So I split up with Shigure Kira, and believed that she wouldn't fail my expectations, because she wasn't the kind of person that couldn't make judgments.]
[I defended the broadcast room by myself, temporarily dealing with the newly appeared Upside-Down Ghost with the rationality and calmness I had acquired after dying twice.]
[The Upside-Down Ghost had come up from downstairs and… was able to move before 7:00 PM. It was unreasonable, but I didn't have any extra energy to think about it. As long as I could deal with it, there was no need to worry.]
[I didn't know that the Upside-Down Ghost was actually a head ghost.]
[Something went wrong on Shigure Kira's side. The watch ritual failed. To turn the desperate situation around, I once again opened the bizarre notebook.]
[I would never have known that the first time I used the notebook, the notebook released a ghost…]
[A particularly complete head ghost, or I should call it: the Cognitive Ghost.]
[It wasn't incomplete and had a complete body. It was a child who could arbitrarily alter the memories and perceptions of the people around it. It didn't need to kill someone and take over their head like a head ghost to alter memories.]
[The Upside-Down Ghost was originally a head ghost. The first page of the notebook controlled the Cognitive Ghost in the moonlight. It altered the perception of a head ghost and made it think it was an Upside-Down Ghost.]
[And then, it came to me before 7:00 PM and caused the bizarre malformation of my spine.]
[Afterwards, as the moonlight shone on them, the first page of the notebook controlled the Cognitive Ghost, altering the perception of everyone in the auditorium. This led to the Cognitive Ghost, under the control of the notebook, eating a grave incense stick, forcing me to use it one more time.]
The notebook's content was still only appearing on the first page…
[Using the notebook's hints, I learned some of Bizarre Kiana's rules and used them to resolve the current predicament, successfully completing the third day's ritual.]
[But before it gave me the real hints, it displayed a bunch of meaningless text, dragging out my time.]
[By the time I returned to the auditorium, Shigure Kira was on the verge of death, and all of the righteous and honorable Valkyries had fallen in battle.]
[The student Valkyries who I had rescued and were truly brave and righteous had also died in the head ghost attacks…The rest, except for Saori Tsuruyo, who was forcefully stuffed into the black coffin, the people who were still alive were all selfish, fickle, and only cared about themselves.]
[That's reality. In one disaster after another, the only ones to survive were the "bad guys." The law of survival of the fittest. I had nothing to say. To me, even if they were "bad people," as long as they hadn't crossed my bottom line, I would still keep my promise and protect them. And it wasn't just an excuse to find people to help with the burial.]
[On the fourth day's mourning, I encountered my true desperate situation.]
[Not only was there mourning, there was also the ghost banquet.]
[I sat in a seat that only a ghost could occupy, destroying myself, constantly intensifying the bizarre revival inside me, but this wasn't the worst result.]
[All the ghosts that had received the death announcement poured into the auditorium, preparing to compete for the seats.]
[Having died twice and constantly using bizarre powers, I had already lost the chance to reset for a third time.]
[I had once again entered a dead end… everything seemed like a pre-arranged script. Everyone was being controlled by invisible threads, performing clumsy and ridiculous plays.]
[My every attempt to think and struggle seemed incredibly laughable and absurd.]
[I opened the notebook one more time.]
[Like every time, the notebook only displayed its content on the first page…]