At Yamiyama Kita Middle School, Shizuku met the client, the principal of the middle school. However, he seemed unwilling to talk about the matter and directly pushed Shizuku to a librarian, Chiye Tatsuji. According to the principal, this librarian was the instructor of Class 3, Grade 3 when the incident happened.

But now he is no longer a teacher, but chooses to be a librarian.

Qianye Chenzhi looked to be around forty or fifty years old, but he looked quite haggard, with a head of white hair, and looked like an old man in his sixties or seventies.

"Are you here just to investigate the curse?"

Looking at Shizuku in front of him, Chiye Tatsuji did not hide his inner doubts, but Shizuku didn't care and just smiled slightly.

"Yes, I am the exorcist who accepted the commission to handle this matter, so can we skip this step and exchange some more useful information?"

"……certainly."

In response to Shizuku's question, Chiye Tatsuji nodded, then sat down on the chair and stared at her.

"What do you want to ask?"

"I have learned most of the information from the information sent to me by the principal, but I still want to ask, when you knew that the target of the curse was the third class in the third grade, did you take other measures? For example, leaving only two classes in the third grade? Although it would be crowded to put the students of four classes in two classes, it would also be able to stop the curse."

“We did consider it.”

Qianye Chenzhi smiled bitterly.

"But it didn't work. On the contrary, the curse spread even further... That year saw the highest number of deaths, with all the third graders in the entire school dying accidentally because of it. In the end, we had to compromise and put Class 3 of Grade 3 back... At least this way, the curse can be limited to a certain range."

"I see."

Hearing this, Shizuku nodded, and then she took out the list.

"Mr. Qianye, when I saw this list, I found a problem. Ten years ago, there was a period of time when the rule of one person dying every month was broken. What happened?"

"Ah... that was when someone in the class came up with a solution."

"way?"

"Yes, according to the curse, there is an extra student in Class 3 of Grade 3. If that's the case, then we just need to select a student and treat him as if he doesn't exist, and then we can make the extra student disappear again... and keep the number of students in Class 3 of Grade 3 at the original level. I have to admit that this method is indeed very effective. As you can see, no one died in the first semester."

“But in the second semester, things changed?”

“Ahh…”

Qianye Chenzhi nodded.

"Because the student couldn't stand it anymore, he couldn't stand being treated as if he didn't exist anymore, so he shouted, 'I'm right here, look at me carefully'... Then, misfortune struck again."

"...In other words, if the student who was chosen as non-existent doesn't cooperate, then it will be useless even if everyone ignores him?"

"Perhaps."

Chiye Tatsuji sighed.

"I admit that this is unfair to the child, but there is nothing we can do about it. After that, basically every year, Class 3 of Grade 3 would choose this method to avoid bad luck. Of course, only a few of them were successful..."

Having said that, Chiye Tatsuji stared at Shizuku curiously, sizing her up.

"By the way, Kasugano-kun, people think this is the work of evil spirits, or maybe it's a curse. What do you think?"

“I don’t think it’s either.”

Shizuku shook her head.

"I've already felt it. There are no evil spirits in the school. A curse requires a subject. That student back then... was very popular in your class, right? Would he curse this class, or curse those students?"

"...I don't think so."

"So..."

Having said that, Shizuku sighed, raised her head and looked depressedly at the gloomy sky outside the window.

"Human willpower... really can't be underestimated. I hope it's not what I think, otherwise things will be really troublesome."

To be honest, after coming to Yomiyama and seeing everything here with her own eyes, Shizuku had a bad idea.

That is - this is not a curse, nor is it the revenge of a ghost, but... a bug.

Yes, this is what she is most worried about.

After chatting with Qianye Chenzhi just now, she found that her worry was probably closer to the truth.

As we all know, the world needs a certain order to function.

Birth, aging, sickness and death, the changing of seasons, the blooming and falling of flowers.

This is all normal operation of the rules.

However, once this is violated, problems can easily arise.

Take the previous story for example.

Under normal circumstances, when a popular student died, everyone would feel sad and upset. However, the biggest problem was that they had actually imagined that the other person was still alive, and they had completely faked it. In fact, Shizuku suspected that those students might have believed it themselves at the time - this kind of group hypnosis phenomenon was not uncommon.

But this is troublesome.

It was like the system self-checking and then scanning the area. When it scanned the folder of Class 3, Grade 3, the system suddenly found out in surprise: "Hey? Shouldn't the number in this file be N-1? Why is it N?"

Then it checked again... Hey? Wasn't this MISAKI.DLL deleted by itself? Why is it still there as a hidden file?

This is not right!

So when the next round of self-checking starts, the system will automatically search and delete files. If the value of the third grade class remains unchanged at N, then it is a normal value. But once there is one more person in the third grade class, the value becomes "N+1", then the system will automatically think that the MISAKI.DLL was not deleted completely, so it will automatically start to search the folders and find the infected DLL file to delete.

What if I can’t find it?

The file name is wrong, but the folder value is also wrong, so... just delete them one by one.

That MISAKI.DLL is definitely disguised as some other file. You will find out if you delete them one by one!

This is the truth behind the deaths of people in the third shift every month for three years.

Because the Tiandao system cannot determine what file the MISAKI.DLL is disguised as, it may still be DLL, or it may be LAG or TXT, or even EXE or INI, so it will randomly delete files, including "files" of students, teachers and parents, to find the MISAKI.DLL that does not exist.

The reason why Shizuku speculated that there was a problem with the system of the rules of heaven itself was because Chiye Tatsuji told her that when the non-existent deceased disappeared in the second year, the memory of her would also disappear from the minds of other students. They would not even think of the existence of this person, and all records about her, including written records and photos, would also be tampered with.

This involves the law of cause and effect at the root of the world. Ordinary evil spirits and monsters definitely do not have this ability.

After chatting and investigating with Chiye Tatsuji, Shizuku has almost guessed the whole process of the incident.

First, the system deleted MISAKI.DLL in the folder of Class 3, Grade 3 based on the program "Book of Life and Death". This is a routine operation of the system self-check.

However, unexpectedly, the students in Class 3 of Grade 3 were unwilling to accept this fact and actually created a MISAKI.DLL on their own.

Of course, they were just mortals, so they naturally couldn't pull out the DLL file that Tiandao had put into the Recycle Bin. So they just pretended that there was such a file, which caused the file value of Class 3 of Grade 3 to become abnormal, and it was fixed from the original "N-1" to "N".

But the next year, a problem arose. The folder of Class 3, Grade 3, which had a fixed value of N, had an extra non-existent person due to this obsession, and the number N became N+1.

This immediately caught the attention of the Tiandao program, because the value of the Grade 3 Class 3 folder was wrong and needed to be cleaned up, and the culprit was naturally the MISAKI.DLL that should have been deleted long ago. So in order to correct the error, the Tiandao system started to kill a lot of viruses - this is not surprising, Kaspersky doesn't care whether your system will crash when it kills viruses and causes the system to crash.

This formed an endless loop. The value of the folder of Class 3, Grade 3 was wrong. Tiandao wanted to kill the source, but in fact the source had been deleted...

If this is really the system, it would be better to format and reinstall it directly.

But alas, it is not to be.

This is what makes Shizuku most confused.

If the Heavenly Dao of this world had self-awareness like the Type-Moon World, then she could still call out Alaya and Gaia, tell them that the program was wrong, and reset it. But the problem is that the Heavenly Dao of most worlds has no self-awareness, they are like an automatically running system program. In this case, it is impossible to find anyone.

It is even more difficult to solve it. You can't just reinstall the entire system because of an error message that is so small that it doesn't affect your normal use.

Putting it here means destroying the world and creating it anew.

Just because of this Grade 3 Class 3 where one person dies every month?

This commission is really tricky.

Shizuku thought so, but when she walked into the hospital, she became even more depressed.

There are many wronged souls in the hospital, some of whom died in accidents. Shizuku also found them to talk, but these wronged souls basically said... that they died in accidents, and apart from having bad luck, they hardly felt any curse or involvement of other strange forces.

Since there is no intervention of strange forces, then there can only be intervention of non-strange forces.

The only thing that can do this is Heaven.

"What should I do..."

After walking out of the morgue, Shizuku thought about it and couldn't come up with a good solution. If it was a curse, she would just remove it. If it was a vengeful spirit, she would just kill it. But now there was a bug in the sky, the program had a problem, and the values ​​had changed. What should she do?

Not to mention Shizuku, even Fang Zheng, who had traveled through so many worlds, was unable to come up with a good solution for this thorny problem.

Never mind, it’s getting late.

Shizuku raised her head and looked out the window. She had been so busy chatting with the ghosts that she forgot the time. It was already midnight, so she had better leave the hospital as soon as possible. Otherwise, if she was discovered, it would be a pain in the ass... huh?

Just as Shizuku was about to leave, she suddenly felt something and raised her head to look up. At this moment, the girl's sight penetrated the room and looked up at the sky. At the same time, the strange thing in the sky suddenly shook and stopped as if it was stuck.

Just at this moment, a "click" sound was heard.

not good!!

At this moment, Shizuku's sixth sense as a prophecy mage exploded instantly. She could keenly feel that Tiandao had noticed that the number of people was wrong and started deleting files!

And it’s right in the hospital!

Third floor!

Thinking of this, Shizuku leaped without hesitation and jumped out of the window. Then she stepped on the window sill and jumped up, directly jumping to the corridor on the third floor. Then Shizuku followed her instinct and ran through the corridor like a ghost, and came to a ward, and then she opened the door without hesitation.

"call--!!"

At the same time, a gust of wind blew suddenly and disappeared outside the window.

"Damn, one step too late!"

Looking at the girl lying on the sickbed, Shizuku cursed inwardly. Then she rushed to the girl and turned her around. At this moment, the girl closed her eyes tightly, her face was ashen, and one hand was hanging by the bed. It was obvious that she suddenly fell ill and wanted to call a doctor, but she was "deleted" before she could call a doctor.

But fortunately, it is not impossible to save it.

Shizuku saw at a glance that the girl in front of her was still warm even though she was dead. Her soul had not been taken away, so she reached out her hand and placed it on the girl's forehead. Soon, holy light emerged and enveloped the girl's whole body. The girl's breathing, which had stopped, also quietly resumed.

"Huh...done."

Shizuku put down her right hand and wiped the cold sweat off her face. Then she took out her personal terminal and scanned the girl.

"Leukemia... no wonder..."

Looking at the sleeping girl in front of her, Shizuku frowned - this girl is a good material, just in time, she can see if she can save this girl, then the Heavenly Dao program will delete her again. If Shizuku's guess is correct, when Heavenly Dao finds out that this girl is not MISAKI.DLL, then it should not attack it again.

But what if?

But when it comes to leukemia, there are too many things that can go wrong, um...

Thinking of this, Shizuku raised her personal terminal and fired at the girl, directly curing her leukemia.

Now this girl is just an ordinary healthy girl, she wants to see what the Heavenly Dao is going to do next.

“Woo…”

At this moment, the girl who had fainted groaned and slowly opened her eyes. She stared at Shizuku blankly, and after a long while she asked.

"Excuse me...are you the god of death?"

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

Shizuku put away her personal terminal and looked at her with a smile.

"Because... I just..."

The girl reached out and pressed her chest...then she felt her heartbeat.

"I'm not dead?"

"You are not ready to die yet, so you will not die."

Shizuku smiled again and looked at the girl.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"My name is MISAKI, FUJIOKA MISAKI."

“…”

After hearing the girl's answer, Shizuku's smiling expression suddenly froze.

Did I mess it up?