Autophagy

"If we can't find anything, we just leave," one of the officers said.

"Okay..." The other officer muttered. Although he sounded unwilling, he, just like the other officer, was lusting after that promotion.

"But after all... This place is really disgusting."

"It sure is."

"Why don't we advance by searching these rooms one by one?" One of the officers asked. The other sighed and didn't answer. After that, Song Lei heard a door creaking.

'Shit! They're searching the rooms,' Song Lei shouted in his mind. He couldn't get found by the police as that would put him in a very dangerous situation. He turned his phone's flashlight off and laid down on the ground. He rolled under the bed. Although there were a few bugs here and there, they didn't seem to be interested in Song Lei as they stood there without moving. As Song Lei turned his flashlight off, the whole room went dark.

Song Lei couldn't even see his hands at the moment. The only thing he could hear was the officers talking.

"Shit! I wonder when they last cleaned this place..." One of the officers said.

"Never? Probably," the other one responded. Another creaking sound resounded in the hallway as they opened another door.

"Fuck! The dust! It got into my eyes..." One of the officers shouted.

"Don't be a crybaby. Look, It's not muc- Ahh!" The other one also started shouting. Song Lei would laugh if he wasn't worried about alerting those officers.

"I can't see," one of the officers said.

"Yeah me to-" The other one was about to answer as their voices suddenly disappeared. It was an abrupt stop. They didn't sound like they had stopped talking, it was more like a voice recording had been cut in half.

'What the...' Song Lei didn't know what was going on. 'Oh shit,' he thought. 'They closed their eyes for more than four seconds because of the dust...' He started to realize. 'And my eyes were already closed.'

'That means...' Song Lei rolled out of under the bed and got up. 'They disappeared.'

He swept off the dust and the bugs that were on him with his hands, somewhat cleaning himself.

He left the room he currently was in carefully and looked around. The officers were nowhere to be found. Seemingly disappeared into thin air.

Song Lei scratched his head and frowned. 'So the thing that changed wasn't the environment, rather, I was teleported to somewhere else?' He thought. The only reasonable explanation Song Lei could figure out was this.

The stairs had moved somewhere else again, disappearing from his sight. This made Song Lei sigh deeply. He now had to search for the stairs while avoiding the officers. He traced his steps back towards the bathroom to figure out where the stairs had gone.

While on his way, Song Lei heard a thud from a nearby room. This instantly put him on alert. It was either that there was some kind of bug there, or there was someone other than Song Lei currently in this place.

Song Lei didn't dare to make the first move and enter the room, as he instead decided to enter the opposite room silently. Fortunately, he hadn't made any sounds while coming here. So he should've gone unnoticed by the opposite party. Leaving the door just a crack open, Song Lei checked the room for any dangers. Seeing that it was safe, he crouched next to the door and started observing the opposite room.

He didn't have any other choice than to be careful. He had a quarter of his former stats with his most trusted weapon gone. He was in an unfamiliar place and the only trump card he had was Guyaa. He could only use Guyaa once a day so he had to keep it usable for whatever was to come.

After waiting for a minute more, the opposite room's door was opened. Two people came out of the room. Those two people's identities left Song Lei's mouth hanging open.

"Tokiyo... Let's go back..." The blonde-haired girl said in a timid manner. She had Sugihara Tokiyo by her side. She was holding onto Sugihara's sleeve. It was pretty easy to understand that she was incredibly scared. As far as Song Lei could remember, her name was Nishimura Mayumi.

Sugihara Tokiyo, who was walking confidently beside Nishimura, was holding a torch in her hand. She seemed to be pretty satisfied with her current state.

"Why would we go back? Don't you realize how incredible this is!? This place shows macroscopic quantum phenomena! This is the most exciting thing I've ever seen!" Sugihara said. Her voice tone was like that of a little child who had just gotten the present they wanted.

Song Lei frowned and pulled back into the room. He started gathering some dust into his hands. He didn't want to deal with Sugihara and Miyamura in any way.

'I don't even know if they're real or not,' he thought. Assuming that Sugihara and Miyamura weren't malicious, he still didn't know if they were the real ones. They could always be monsters in human disguise.

"Hm? Why is that door open?" Sugihara asked. She started carelessly walking towards there. Hearing her, Song Lei took a deep breath. Just as Sugihara was about to fully open the door, he kicked it open without showing himself and threw the dust he had gathered into Sugihara and Miyamura's eyes.

Suddenly getting attacked, two girls couldn't react. They screamed and took a few steps back while trying to clean their eyes. Song Lei, too, closed his eyes and prayed that his foolish plan would work. Fortunately, the happy-go-lucky Sugihara and timid Miyamura were really careless. They couldn't open their eyes in time.

After four seconds, the noises instantly got cut off. Song Lei opened his eyes back and sighed a breath of relief. He had managed to make the two girls close their eyes and activate the relocation.

'They were talking about quantum or something,' Song Lei thought. Although he didn't know what they were talking about, he still felt like they understood this place more than him. If he could trust them fully, he would've probably gone with them.

Things were getting more and more chaotic as more people entered the dormitory basement. Considering the relatively small size of this place, those two officers should've heard the commotion and come here.

Song Lei looked left and right to see if anyone was approaching however, everything was still the same.

Song Lei didn't ponder about it more and picked a random direction to walk towards. As the floor had reset again, it didn't matter which direction Song Lei walked towards. Hopefully, he would be able to find the stairs without meeting any other problems.

After walking for more than five minutes Song Lei managed to find the stairs for the third time. This was getting really tiring for him.

He started climbing the stairs carefully. Fortunately, he managed to finish climbing. He stared into the hallway of the brand new floor after climbing.

"What..?" Song Lei muttered to himself. As soon as he stepped onto the new floor, he realized that this floor, too, was really rundown and creepy. He cursed at his luck and quickly turned back to look at the stairs. However, just like he thought, he realized that the stairs were long gone, leaving their place to a cold hard wall.

Song Lei sighed in defeat and facepalmed. As he pulled his hands off of his face, a decisive expression had found its place on Song Lei's face.

'Let's approach this in another way,' he thought. From how things were going, he could guess that he wouldn't be able to leave the basement with conventional methods. He had to be creative with the way he was approaching the current situation.

He took a deep breath and entered the nearest room. He rummaged through the room to find himself something that could be used as a weapon. Obviously, he couldn't find any. Things that could be used as weapons would usually be prohibited in dormitories. However, Song Lei kept searching and managed to find a sturdy and sharp pen.

He pocketed the thing and closed his eyes while crouching inside the room. He counted till four and opened his eyes back.

After opening his eyes, he confirmed that the relocation had happened and left the room to check the hallway. Seeing that nothing much was different, he went back in and relocated himself again.

Song Lei kept repeating this action time after time. He would always note down how many times he had relocated and what changes there were, in his notebook.

Finally, after trying more than a hundred and a fifty times, Song Lei managed to find himself in a situation that was really different from before.

He had been relocated into a bathroom on the upper floors.

'I'm out..?' He thought while looking around. He was currently on the upper floors of the dorm which was clean and had a modern design as opposed to the basement. The white and blue paintings of the walls paired with the plant decorations made this place look like heaven as opposed to the basement that Song Lei had just been in.

  However, Song Lei felt an unnerving feeling filling up his heart, slowly grasping it. The hallway suddenly became much colder and darker. A drop of sweat trickled off of Song Lei's head.

When he turned his head to look at the end of the corridor, he saw someone approaching him at high velocity.

'Fuck.'