Chapter 71: Save Me... Save Me!
"Who's there?" the middle-aged woman asked, her movements ceasing as she strained to listen.
For a long moment, the only sound was the steady drumming of water from the showerhead. Nothing else.
Could it be... she had misheard?
Right. How could she be so unlucky? She had specifically chosen to bathe in broad daylight, when the castle was at its most active and presumably safest.
She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh and went back to washing her hair.
Her name was Deng Yuan. She had been dragged into the Death Game three months ago and had somehow survived four instances. In her second game, she'd had the fortune of being matched with Zhang Katao. Her instincts, honed over four brutal trials, had screamed that sticking with him was her ticket to survival.
And the facts had proven her right.
As for Zhang Katao being a selfish monster who used teammates as shields and fed newcomers to the wolves?
Perhaps.
But… she had survived.
As long as she didn't have to die, as long as she could live to see her husband and children again, what did it matter? Being scorned, being betrayed, enduring the strange looks from others, even helping him hunt down newcomers for their items—what did any of that matter in the face of survival?
Water splashed against the tiled floor, and the hot steam enveloping her began to soothe the tension from her body and mind.
Thump. Thump.
The eerie knocking sound echoed from her right side once again.
Deng Yuan's hands froze in her hair. This time, she was certain. She hadn't misheard.
Shampoo-laced water streamed down her face, stinging her eyes, yet she didn't dare close them. She didn't even dare to make the simple motion of reaching out to turn off the shower.
'A prank... Someone must be playing a prank on me.'
She desperately tried to reassure herself. It was daytime. The other players were all up and about. Why would she, of all people, be targeted?
But the uncontrollable trembling in her legs betrayed the terror blooming in her heart. In a place like this, who would be bored enough to knock on a bathroom door just for a scare?
Thump, thump, thump—!
The knocking rang out again, faster this time, more aggressive. Each blow felt like it was pounding directly on her heart. Whether from the intense nervousness or the scalding steam clouding the room, her vision began to blur.
Then, the knocking stopped. Another long, silent moment passed. Still no other movement.
Only then did Deng Yuan allow herself a sliver of relief.
'That thing... it can't get in.'
If it could enter, it would have smashed the door down long ago. Why would it bother with all this theatrics?
She closed her eyes, took a shaky breath, and slowly tilted her head up to let the water rinse the soap away. When she opened them again, her entire body went rigid.
The bathroom door… was on her left.
Then the knocking from her right just now… Deng Yuan's head turned with the stiff, jerky motion of a puppet. Her gaze fell upon the window on the right-hand wall. It was large, more than wide and tall enough for a person to climb through.
In an instant, the scene Xie Lin had so vividly described flashed through her mind: a monster with a long, deformed head, clinging silently to the wall just outside.
If she went over, if she dared to pull back that curtain, the next second, she would be violently dragged out into the open.
Wait!
Escape! As long as she could escape, she would be safe!
If the noises had come from the window on the right, then the door on the left had to be the safe path.
With that thought, Deng Yuan hastily wiped the water from her eyes. Ignoring her drenched body and with no time to dress, she snatched a bath towel, wrapped it clumsily around herself, and darted toward the door. But just as her hand closed around the cold metal of the doorknob, she froze.
Something was wrong.
The window on the right had been silent for a long time now. And there was no sound from the hallway outside, either. Zhang Katao was on the second floor; seeing as she'd been gone for so long, he should have come to check on her by now.
Her pupils trembled. She took a deep breath, her hand instinctively tightening around a smooth stone hanging from a cord around her neck—her life-saving item.
Her eyes scanned the bathroom door. A gap, about two fingers wide, ran along the bottom, offering a sliver of a view to the outside. The upper half of the door was fitted with a pane of translucent, frosted glass.
Remembering Xie Lin's warning that the monster couldn't be seen directly, she quietly took two steps back. From a pile of clothes hanging on a rack, she retrieved a small monocle. It was an item she had acquired in a previous instance, capable of seeing through a single layer of material to reveal whatever was within half a meter on the other side.
She pressed the lens against the wooden door panel and peered through. All she saw was a blurry, uniform patch of whitish-brown.
Was the lens broken? Or was she using it wrong?
She didn't have time to dwell on it. The most important thing was to confirm if that thing was truly waiting outside the door.
Deng Yuan decisively crouched down, her heart hammering against her ribs, and peered through the gap at the bottom of the door. With just one look, her pupils contracted into pinpricks.
A pair of whitish-brown toes were pressed to the floorboards, poised rigidly on their very tips, the heels suspended unnaturally in the air. They were definitively not human, and the color was an exact match for the strange patch she had seen through the lens.
She could almost picture the scene just outside: the creature, standing on tiptoe, waiting silently for her to open the door.
What should she do? How could she survive this?
Should she call for help?
No. Deng Yuan didn't believe this flimsy wooden door could stop the monster. The only explanation was that it was temporarily restricted by some rule, prevented from entering. It was waiting for her to make a sound. If she responded, it would be a dead end.
Should she try to force her way out using the Death Substitution Stone?
That wouldn't work either. Zhang Katao had only given her one, and it was only good for a single resurrection.
Deng Yuan took a deep, steadying breath, deciding to play the waiting game. She would wait until someone passed by, creating a distraction, and then she would run. If the creature decided to forcibly break down the door, it wouldn't be too late to use the stone then and make a desperate last stand.
Having settled on a plan, she felt a faint sigh of relief escape her lips. Her chances of survival had just increased significantly.
Screee... scree, scree, scree...
An eerie, grating scrape suddenly echoed through the small room, like nails dragging slowly across glass. Deng Yuan subconsciously looked up.
Her gaze met a flattened, distorted face pressed hard against the frosted glass of the door, and a pair of smiling eyes narrowed into gleeful slits.
In that single, horrifying instant, a chill shot from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. The blood in her veins turned to ice, and it felt as if she had aged ten years in a moment.
BANG!
BANG, BANG!!
The bathroom door began to shudder under a frantic, violent assault.
The Lady of the Castle knew she was inside. The head pressed against the glass grinned wider, its features twisting and deforming as it desperately squeezed against the pane. The entire door panel shook, threatening to splinter and give way at any second.
There was no more time to wait. Deng Yuan yanked the door open and threw herself into the hallway.
Caught off guard by the lack of resistance, the Lady of the Castle stumbled forward, her momentum carrying her into the bathroom as she fell to the floor. Without a single glance back, Deng Yuan ran with all her might.
But she only made it one step before her ankle was seized in an iron grip, and she was violently dragged to the ground. She twisted around to see that the monster's head had somehow detached and wrapped itself around her thigh. Though it was just a severed neck and a head, its strength was incredible, pulling her backward inch by inch.
"Go die! GO DIE!"
Rage, fear, despair—a storm of emotions erupted across Deng Yuan's face. She hammered at it with her fists, clawed at it with her nails, and even bent down to bite savagely into the flesh of the severed neck.
Foul-smelling blood splattered across her face.
Yet, the neck held fast, its grip unyielding as it dragged her back toward the massive, waiting body. And then… she was pulled into a gentle embrace.
Snap—
The sound of shattering bones echoed with sickening clarity.
Deng Yuan didn't even have time to scream before her bones and internal organs were crushed in that fatal hug. Her body went limp, the light instantly vanishing from her eyes.
Plop.
The Lady of the Castle released her grip, and the corpse fell softly to the floor. But in the next moment, Deng Yuan's eyes snapped wide open.
The intense, full-body agony of resurrection had not yet subsided, but the primal instinct for survival sent her scrambling forward, crawling and tumbling away. The Death Substitution Stone around her neck had shattered into dust.
"Save me… SAVE ME!" she shrieked, her voice raw with hysteria. Her towel was long gone. The sheer agony of her recent death had driven her to the brink of madness.
It was only when she burst back into the dining hall, seeing the other players working downstairs under the Butler's direction, that her terror-stricken face suddenly erupted in a mask of wild joy. She stumbled toward them, a desperate lifeline in sight.
"Ryuko, don't look!"
Haruto, who had been lounging in his personal "Young Master's Chair" and watching the show, turned his head with mild curiosity at the scream. But before he could get a good look, Kaguya's hands gently covered his eyes from behind.
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