Chapter 67: Snatching the Main Seat? Tsk, Tsk, Tsk.
"Brother Haruto!"
Seeing Haruto materialize behind the butler, the grim solemnity on Yotsuya Miko's face instantly dissolved into pure joy.
However, the butler didn't collapse from the heavy blow. Instead, his rage only seemed to intensify. He had barely begun to turn his head when the branch struck again, landing with another solid thud.
Haruto glanced down at the Jeweled Branch of Hourai in his hand, then at the butler, whose forehead was now a roadmap of bulging veins. He shot a sidelong look at Kaguya.
"This Jeweled Branch of Hourai of yours isn't all that great, you know."
He decisively tossed the legendary branch back into a Gap and summoned his parasol, preparing to follow up with another strike. But Kaguya beat him to it.
She snatched the branch from the air—
CRACK—!
With a deafening crash, the thick, jeweled branch snapped clean in two under the force of an impossible impact.
The butler's body folded, and he collapsed to his knees.
Half of his skull was caved in. An eyeball, squeezed from its socket, dangled from his face by a few glistening, blurry optic nerves. The floorboards beneath him were splintered, bearing a shallow indentation from the sheer force of the blow.
Under the horrified gazes of everyone present, Kaguya nonchalantly tossed aside the broken half of the branch and clapped her hands together, her tone dripping with triumph.
"That's just because you're incompetent. Besides, this thing isn't pure filth, so the branch's purifying effect is naturally weaker."
Haruto stared at Kaguya with a complicated expression.
He hadn't held back with his strikes; his physical strength was already far beyond any human limit, which was a proof of the butler's unnatural resilience.
But… this girl had brought him to his knees with a single blow?
Then again, he mused, when Kaguya got into one of her brawls with Mokou, it usually involved tearing off limbs or ripping out scalps. Sometimes, they even brought down the ceiling of Eientei. It was probably normal for her to be this strong.
"Then what was with you in the last instance?" Haruto asked, raising an eyebrow. "Were you just acting? I can understand being cautious later on, but there was only one mermaid at the very beginning. You could have easily torn him apart with your bare hands."
"And are the two the same?" Kaguya's gaze turned eerie. "Let me ask you, would you dare to touch those mermaids yourself?"
Haruto was momentarily speechless. She had a point; he wouldn't have dared, either. Things that looked relatively normal, like the butler, were one thing. But if it was something humanoid yet twisted into a grotesque, disgusting shape… he'd run as far away as possible.
"And what if there were other dangers?" Kaguya continued, her point made. "It was my first time in one of these 'instances.' I had to be cautious."
"Alright, alright. Let's get out of here."
Haruto decided against finishing the butler off. After all, he didn't know if the creature still had a role to play in this game. Triggering some unforeseen consequence just wasn't worth the trouble. Given their current combat strength, a single butler, no matter how tough, couldn't cause them much of a problem anyway.
The group jogged all the way back downstairs.
Liu Haoran, who had been waiting anxiously on the second floor, finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them emerge. The other players had already seized the opportunity to flee downstairs the moment the butler entered the secret passage.
"Where's the butler? Did you not run into him?" Liu Haoran asked, his voice tight with worry.
Xie Lin was just about to explain.
But then, the heavy, thumping sound of footsteps echoed from the third-floor staircase. The entire hall fell silent in an instant, every eye darting toward the stairwell.
Yotsuya Miko's eyes widened in disbelief.
His head was smashed in like that, and he's still alive?
"It is lunchtime. Everyone, please take your seats at the dining table. I shall bring out the meal."
The butler's voice was stiff and robotic. Though he maintained a surface-level respect, his tone had turned chillingly cold.
His current appearance was exceptionally terrifying. Half of his skull was a concave ruin, and his right eyeball hung limply beside his nose, swaying with each step.
Every player in the room turned their heads in unison to stare at Haruto and his companions. It was unbelievable. Only they had been upstairs just now; the butler's horrific transformation was undeniably their doing.
"Guests, please take your seats as soon as possible," the butler repeated before turning to descend the stairs, his tone leaving no room for argument.
The group of players finally snapped out of their stupor.
They scrambled toward the dining table. Where before they had actively avoided the main seat at the head of the table, now they were practically fighting over it.
Liu Haoran felt a flicker of temptation, but seeing his own teammates and Haruto standing calmly in place, he suppressed the urge.
"I suggest you pick a different seat," Haruto warned kindly, his voice carrying easily over the commotion. "That seat is actually dangerous."
His words immediately sparked a wave of dissatisfaction among the crowd. But cowed by Haruto's intimidating presence, no one dared to argue to his face, their complaints remaining as resentful thoughts.
Only one male college student couldn't help but mutter under his breath, "Talking about danger… if it were so dangerous, you'd be dead already. Do you take us for fools?"
The people around him immediately cast him looks of both admiration and pity.
The student then realized his slip of the tongue, and his face turned pale. He didn't even dare to touch the chair he had just been fighting for, backing away slowly.
Haruto didn't bother to respond. These kinds of side characters were usually the first to die; he wouldn't need to lift a finger.
He chose the same seat he had occupied on the first night, and his companions sat down on the same side of the table.
The one who ultimately snatched the main seat was a middle-aged man with a face full of stubble, a look of immense relief washing over him as he settled into the chair.
Just then, the butler pushed a small food trolley onto the second floor, his steps unnervingly steady. He walked straight to the dining table, his single remaining eye locked onto the stubbly man in the main seat.
"Guest." The butler's voice was like ice. "You are in the wrong seat. This is the seat of the Castle Master. Please move."
Recalling Haruto's defiant behavior the previous day, the stubbly man steeled himself. He leaned back against the chair, crossed his legs, and replied in a deliberately nonchalant tone.
"I'm sitting here. What about it?"
Though he remained expressionless after speaking, his heart was pounding so violently it felt like it might burst from his chest.
Fortunately, the butler's remaining eye simply stared at him for a few seconds before he seemed to relent. After repeating a final, "Please move, this is the seat of the Castle Master," he turned and pushed the trolley back toward the kitchen to fetch more food.
Seeing this, the stubbly man breathed a massive sigh of relief. He straightened his back, puffed out his chest, and even shot a provocative glance in Haruto's direction.
It seemed the so-called danger was nothing more than a cheap trick to scare people off.
The scene that had just unfolded led most people present to silently agree with this assessment.
"That seat really is dangerous," Xie Lin said, offering a kind, final reminder. "He isn't actually the butler; he's the original Castle Master."
The butler isn't the butler, but the Castle Master?
The words struck the room like a thunderclap. The stubbly man's expression changed drastically. If that were true, his current behavior was no different from courting death.
"When did you get this information? Where did it come from?" he demanded, his voice cracking slightly.
"A little while ago, confirmed during our exploration of the third floor. This intel came from Haruto and his group."
Hearing Haruto's name, the stubbly man relaxed again, assuming it was just another excuse to stop them from taking the seat. But then a sliver of doubt crept back in—what if it was true? Forcibly taking the owner's seat right in front of him and repeatedly ignoring his warnings was the height of recklessness.
But then he remembered that Haruto had sat in this very seat yesterday and was perfectly fine. He ultimately decided to lean toward his initial explanation. It had to be a bluff.
Seeing the man remain obstinate, Xie Lin stopped trying to persuade him. You can't wake someone who's pretending to be asleep, and you can't stop someone who's bent on dying.
The butler reappeared with the trolley; this was the final round of dishes.
The stubbly man waited for a moment. Seeing that the butler still hadn't snapped, his heart finally settled. He triumphantly speared a piece of potato with his fork and put it in his mouth.
He hadn't even started to chew when a cold palm silently pressed down on the back of his head.
Puchi—!
BANG! BANG!! BANG! BANG! BANG!
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