Chapter 98

 is the ninety-eighth chapter of the Dead Mount Death Play manga.

Official Blurb
When searching for a way out of the basement, Yumeji runs into civilians who entered the hospital on a corpse hunt! The question is, what would a regular person do…?

Synopsis
At a warning shouted by Yumeji Agakura, Momoya Agakura slashes the chest of a beast approaching behind him. The wound regenerates. Kana Agakura instructs Dahlia Agakura to join the two beasts together before lassoing them with wire that she anchors around a support beam and a pipe. Dahlia springs off the wire with such force that it cuts into the beasts, upon whose heads she dances with skull-piercing stomps. What would be fatal for normal humans, however, only slows the beasts down.

Momoya tells Yumeji to search for ascending stairs and intercepts a beast when it tries to take chase. Yumeji successfully escapes the room and sets off down a corridor, wondering how long the beasts have resided in the hospital since previous police investigations had not discovered them. It occurs to him that the police could be involved in some way. He shines his flashlight down another corridor and spies two discarded cartons lying outside what proves to be a storage room for emergency supplies.

At least four boxes have been opened and another torn, their contents—water bottles, food packets, and sealed meals—having been consumed and discarded like the cartons outside. The bottles are of the latest design, which means they had to have been brought to the hospital sometime this year; Yumeji speculates that they have something to do with his predecessor. They are presumably not for the carnivorous beasts, at least, so a question still remains: Who are these for?

A barefoot, grimy young woman groans in the dark recess behind the shelves, lying face-down outside a hidden door. In a halting tone, she says that somebody is still inside. Yumeji wonders whether a normal person would continue searching for the stairs or stop to help her, then remembers how Polka Shinoyama stopped out of concern for Yumeji's well-being when they were children. Polka was probably abnormal himself, Yumeji thinks, but he nonetheless asks if the woman is okay.

Upon slinging her arm over his shoulder he advances into the concealed corridor and discovers an injured young woman in one of its rooms: this, unbeknownst to Yumeji, is the missing daughter of Takeru Shinoyama's client. Slightly reassured when Yumeji introduces himself as a normal high schooler, she tearily explains that she and her friend came to the hospital on a corpse hunt. Don't worry about your friend here, Yumeji replies, for she called me to help you.

The girl wails in horror. "Y-You can't! Don't! She's...! She's not...! Sh-she's..."

A smile creaks its way across the friend's face, revealing pointed teeth, and splits into a gaping maw.

Meanwhile, Corpse God says that he will trust Katashiro for the time being and asks him to turn around. The second Katashiro does, Corpse God resumes converting the hospital into a sanctuary (temple). Katashiro supposes that the magic circle-esque thing he saw before could have been a shared hallucination or a Solitaire-eque magic trick. He belatedly questions why Corpse God needs him to turn around, concerned that Corpse God may have booked it due to the bounty on his head. 500 million yen is an awfully large bounty for a mere magician, though, so Katashiro cannot help but wonder if Polka really could be an "honest-to-God sorcerer."

Why, then, would somebody want an honest-to-God sorcerer dead and not captured alive? Tantalizing larger-than-life scenarios along the lines of mysterious powers, supernatural battles, and political conspiraces flit across Katashiro's mind.

Corpse God completes the sanctuary, which expands to envelop the hospital in a ripple of magic.

Right now, am I... thinks Katashiro, ...getting involved in something really freaking cool?

Referbacks

 * To the flashback of a young Polka and Yumeji in Chapter 88.