Chapter 87: The Final Step, Failure?
The Hour of the Tiger.
The sky was a uniform, dreary gray, not yet touched by the dawn. On the second floor, everyone was already gathered around the dining table. More accurately, they hadn't slept all night.
On this final day, the exhaustion that should have been weighing them down was nowhere to be found. The night had been blessedly quiet, free from the Butler's haunting presence and the Lady of the Castle's wall-crawling horrors. It was a rare, almost unnerving peace.
Their logic was simple: as long as they dealt with the Lady of the Castle, the instance would be as good as finished. The remaining three days would be a simple matter of using the castle as a hotel, a brief vacation before their exit.
The deadline was tomorrow at the Hour of the Rabbit, when the sun rises. The Butler had been specific—sometime between five and seven in the morning, just as the first light broke the horizon.
Everyone was present at the dining table, but naturally, there was an exception. Haruto was conspicuously absent, comfortably nestled in his blankets and sleeping soundly. With faces etched in sorrowful resignation, Lin Xuelao and Yotsuya Miko departed to perform their daily ritual of coaxing him awake.
But the group wasn't entirely without its heavy hitters. Kaguya sat at the table, holding the fort. She was boredly playing with a pen, which spun in a dizzying, seamless loop between her fingers. A closer look would reveal the delicate engraving of a swallow on its side.
The moon gradually faded from the sky. The time ticked to 4:50 AM.
The group decided it was time to move, planning to get downstairs early. Just as they rose from their chairs, they saw Haruto's trio approaching, and a collective sigh of relief passed through them. It was always for the best to have another powerhouse anchoring the team.
"You and that person in your family are far too similar," Kaguya said, her tone laced with resentment. "This habit of oversleeping must be a trait passed down through the same lineage..."
"I think so too," Haruto replied, not only feeling no shame but nodding in earnest agreement. "It must be inherent in the Boundary Youkai genes. Otherwise, how could I get sleepy so easily?"
Kaguya's lips twitched. She desperately wanted to retort, but he had left her with no opening.
Trailing behind them, Yotsuya Miko and Lin Xuelao looked physically and mentally drained, their silence speaking volumes about their morning ordeal.
The other players walked alongside them, quietly digesting the information from that brief exchange. Their expressions were a mixture of shock, awe, and dawning comprehension.
'Boundary Youkai?'they thought.'A legendary youkai?'
Suddenly, Haruto and Kaguya's various superhuman feats seemed to have a perfectly reasonable explanation. While the idea of youkai existing in the world was difficult to swallow, the Death Game itself was a reality. In a world with such horrors, the existence of youkai didn't seem so impossible after all.
They had assumed the two were just humans who had pushed past the limits of the possible. It turned out they weren't human to begin with.
No one spoke up to ask for confirmation. This was the most critical moment of the instance; completing the task was the absolute priority. Only by surviving would they earn the right to explore the world's secrets and satisfy their curiosity.
The group ascended to the third floor and slipped into the secret passage leading to the basement.
The moment they reached the entrance, they were greeted by the sight of Zhang Katao's corpse. It was covered in dark, spreading cadaveric spots, a gaping, bloody hole torn right where his heart should have been.
At the end of the hallway, the Butler stood silently before a heavy iron door, which now hung wide open.
Peering inside, they saw that the room was completely covered in dense, white filaments. In the very center, a giant white sphere had formed, wrapped so tightly it looked like a solid mass.
A pupa waiting to become a butterfly.
The phrase surfaced in everyone's mind at once, and a cold wave of unease washed over them.
It couldn't actually succeed, could it?
Their task, they remembered with a jolt, was to "kill it." If the Lady of the Castle successfully evolved into a so-called "Pseudo-God," and this was a mandatory objective, wouldn't that create a dead end? A guaranteed failure?
No one acted rashly. All the clues they had gathered pointed to one conclusion: the Lady of the Castle's transformation was destined to fail. Their task was to strike at that precise moment of failure.
Time seemed to crawl by in the suffocating silence, every second stretching into an eternity. Everyone held their breath, their focus absolute.
Suddenly, the giant white pupa began to tremble.
'It's coming!'
Xie Lin's hand tightened around the iron nails he clutched.
The next moment, the filaments began to snap, layer by layer, with an eerie, tearing sound. Fine cracks spiderwebbed across the surface of the chrysalis, and a hazy, ethereal glow shone through from within, as if a god were truly about to be born.
The Butler's eyes flared with a manic light. He stumbled forward two steps, his entire body trembling with excitement as he reached a hand toward that cluster of light.
"It succeeded! Wan'er, you succeeded! As I expected... as I expected! None of it was in vain. Everything was worth it."
However, just as the Butler's hand was about to touch her fair face, the figure within lunged. Her expression twisted into a hideous snarl, her mouth splitting open to an extent impossible for any human. The Butler had no time to react. With a wet crunch, his entire palm was bitten clean off.
He stood there in a daze, blood pouring from the stump of his wrist, yet he showed no reaction to the pain. As his eyes focused on the scene inside the broken pupa, the brilliant light of hope in them gradually dimmed, then extinguished completely.
The pupa had broken open. But what emerged was not a beautiful god, but a monster even larger and more indescribable than the one they had fought before.
"Do it," Haruto said calmly. "He won't stop you anymore."
Liu Haoran, another player, had been about to apply another layer of dust fragrance to himself as a precaution. But seeing that even the Butler, her own husband, had been attacked so viciously, he immediately abandoned the idea. Gripping an iron nail in a reverse hold, he charged forward, aiming to strike while the monster was still struggling to free itself.
Clang—!
A dull, metallic ring echoed through the basement. A hunched figure had appeared from nowhere, blocking the path to the monster and stopping the blow cold.
A sudden, unexpected change!
Everyone's pupils shrank. They had no idea who this person was.
Liu Haoran felt a massive, immovable force travel up the nail. Before he could even process what was happening, a foot slammed into his chest. He was sent flying backward, the iron nail slipping from his grasp and into the opponent's hand.
The group froze, not daring to act rashly. This was clearly a character who had remained hidden for the entire instance, completely evading their detection. They had searched every conceivable place. The only explanation was that this person had been deliberately avoiding them.
Suddenly, a memory surfaced, and one of the players' expressions changed drastically.
It was those footsteps. The footsteps they had heard on their very first night in the ancient castle. They had assumed it was the Butler, but neither he nor the Lady of the Castle had ever demonstrated such stealth.
"Are you... that Barefoot Doctor?" Xie Lin's tone was heavy with dread.
His words sent a shockwave through the others. Their eyes filled with disbelief. If this truly was the Barefoot Doctor from the diary, then just how long had he been alive?
The hunched old man did not answer. He simply tucked away the half-broken iron nail and walked slowly toward the Butler.
The Butler looked up, his eyes burning with a venomous, bottomless resentment. "You lied to me."
"If I said I didn't, would you believe me?" the hunched old man replied with a sinister, grating smile. "Do you still remember what I told you at the very beginning? Besides a large amount of blood food, one must finally consume the heart of their closest kin."
"You still want to lie to me!" the Butler roared, staggering to his feet. His eyes blazed with the madness of a man bent on mutual destruction.
Just as the group sighed in relief, thinking the Butler wouldn't be so easily fooled, they noticed that the expressions on Haruto, Kaguya, and Xie Lin were anything but relaxed.
Haruto pinched a Perception Talisman Card between his fingers. With a soft flash of light, the card quietly dissipated into motes of energy. Only then did his expression soften slightly, his posture relaxing once more.
"Do you have another choice?" the hunched old man asked, his light tone carrying an immense weight.
The question made the Butler's body go rigid. A broken, self-mocking laugh escaped his lips. Then, with a sudden, horrifying motion, he thrust his right hand into his own chest. When he pulled it out again, his palm held a still-beating, bright red heart.
"Not good! Stop him!" Xie Lin shouted.
No one needed the reminder. The moment they saw his movement, they had already brandished their ghost artifacts. But it was already too late.
Without the slightest hesitation, the Butler stuffed the bloody, twitching heart into his wife's monstrous mouth.
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