PLAYING DEATH GAMES PUT FOOD ON TABLE NOVEL SC (2025)

I woke up in an unfamiliar western-style house, wearing a maid uniform and lying on a luxurious bed. I soon found five more girls, all dressed the same as me. This was the Ghost House, and the only way to survive was to make it through all the traps waiting for us--deadly games full of blowguns, buzz saws, locked rooms, and weapons. It was a hopeless, terrifying situation for all of us...well, except me. After all, this is my career at seventeen. Do you think that's odd? I agree. But that's how some people are--and some of us make our living playing death games.

Three months after the events of Candle Woods, Yuki plunges back into the world of death games. This time, she's participating in Scrap Building, a race to escape an unstable, abandoned structure. But to make it out with her life, she must contend with Mishiro, a haughty, pretentious player intent on getting in her way. Time goes by, and Yuki finds herself in a game called Golden Bath, staring down the Wall of Thirty-a curse in the industry where misfortune befalls players around their thirtieth game. Whether the effects of the curse are real, or her awareness of the phenomenon is tripping her up, one thing is for certain-Yuki is in bad shape as she contends with her toughest game yet.

Having overcome the Wall of Thirty, Yuki restores her lost fingers and makes a full recovery. Not long after, she achieves her next milestone of clearing her fortieth game, and it seems like it's smooth sailing from here. But everything changes during Cloudy Beach-Yuki's forty-fourth game, one packed with veteran players who have also overcome the Wall of Thirty. On the game's isolated island venue, Yuki stumbles upon a dismembered body reminiscent of the work of that sickening psychopath from Candle Woods...

After overcoming Cloudy Beach, Yuki learns that a different game that took place around the same time ended in catastrophe, with only a handful of survivors. While investigating alongside Keito, a player she met in a previous game, she finds out about the rise of another psychopath. Amid this dilemma and more, Yuki takes on a game in which the living and dead meet: Halloween Night.

Reeling from the events of Royal Palace, Yuki comes face to face with another version of herself standing outside her apartment, a hallucination created from her extraordinary skills of perception. The encounter spurs memories of her first game, Maiden’s Race, where her younger and more foolish past self sailed to victory. But the other Yuki isn’t content with taking her on a trip down memory lane; she’s dead set on seizing control of Yuki’s body and relentlessly attacks her in pursuit of that end. Unable to strike back against her spectral foe, Yuki attempts to level the playing field by asking Rinrin to set up a mock game for her and her doppelganger to compete in: Snow Room. Yuki has overcome countless foes in her career as a death game player…but does she have any hope of defeating her very self?