The Monster in the Wardrobe

Lu Ban's bed was spotlessly clean.

There was no clutter or trash, not even a speck of dust. Under normal circumstances, anyone capable of keeping it that way probably had at least a touch of mental illness, much like someone who listened to "Ode to Joy" while murdering people.

There were no spiders under the bed, nor any dolls.

He opened the wardrobe. The clothes inside were simple, and he could see everything at a glance. Good-looking people did not really need fancy clothes to decorate themselves; even a plain T-shirt could look like high fashion on them.

Among the clothes, Lu Ban spotted a doll and took it out.

The doll wore heavy clown makeup, and the corners of its comical yet eerie mouth curled upward into a smile.

Nowadays, a doll like this would certainly not be as lovable as Psyduck, but more than a decade ago, children seemed to like this sort of thing quite a lot. Lu Ban could not say what had changed people's tastes.

"Why are you under my bed?"

Lu Ban questioned it.

But the doll did not answer. It simply lay there in silence.

Lu Ban recalled that when he had first undertaken the mission, his exploration progress had been only 30 percent—mediocre among the mediocre. He had merely completed the mission in an utterly ordinary manner.

In missions within the Silent Land, an exploration progress of around 70 or 80 percent was enough to glimpse the ins and outs of an incident. Reaching over 90 percent generally meant coming into contact with the truth. Anything above 100 percent meant one had glimpsed traces of certain Unnamable Great Beings behind the incident, or had exerted a decisive influence on the course of development in a foreign land.

Then what would he have