Property Management Uncle

The two people in the Novice Gift Pack seemed to possess a trait that made them immune to extreme emotional breakdowns.

What Colin had worried about most was that these two servants would lose control under the extreme emotions triggered by the Wailer, unable to distinguish friend from foe and perhaps even attacking him.

But in the end, he discovered something unexpected. Even he himself had nearly lost control and started hacking at people, yet although the two servants seemed affected as well, they still held fast to their bottom line of protecting him. They showed no signs of losing control.

He just did not know whether this was common among all recruited characters, or whether only those from the Novice Gift Pack were like this.

Of course, there was another possibility.

Colin had always assumed that his personal attributes should be higher than those of his two subordinates. But in reality, perhaps they were all about the same. If he could endure it, they could certainly endure it too.

It was simply a peculiar sense of superiority at work.

Shaking his head, Colin stopped dwelling on an answer he would not get anytime soon. He took out some water from his Inventory to replenish his strength, then pulled out the Parchment.

"The mission is about three-fifths complete. Unless something unexpected happens, the rest should all be on the second floor."

Colin rubbed his throbbing temples, dug at his itchy ears, and shuddered.

He could hear heart-rending cries from the second floor as well. When the Aberrations on the first floor awakened earlier, those upstairs had naturally started roaring too.

Fortunately, with walls and distance between them, the sounds did not hurt him much. They were just incredibly annoying.

"Seriously, why does every last one of you have to roar so loudly?"

Colin took a deep breath, rose from the chair, and picked up his iron axe and Hurricane Lamp. Your Property Management Uncle was coming for you.

"Let's go. Once we deal with the Aberrations on the second floor, this will be over."

The stairs to the second floor were near the church's main entrance, spiraling upward.

Colin had seen them earlier while executing the Aberrations, so he did not need to spend much time looking.

A red carpet covered the stairs, buried beneath a thick layer of dust. Every step left behind a clear footprint.

Colin looked overhead, making sure no monsters were hanging upside down above him and watching him.

Then, as he climbed, he looked at the wall beside the stairs. There were deeply religious relief carvings there, along with distinctive patterns woven from vines and thorns.

The reliefs had lost many details, but he could still make out people carrying thorns as they knelt and moved forward, walking barefoot along roads of spikes, or hanging stones from their necks with cords as they bent over and trudged onward.

Even with so many details missing, Colin could imagine that they were performing some alternative form of prayer.

"Suffering."

Colin recalled the Mother of Suffering and Thorns, who seemed to be some kind of higher being. Thorns were everywhere in the reliefs, and the actions of those people corresponded perfectly with the word "suffering."

He just did not know whether this world becoming the way it was had anything to do with that higher being.

Colin was equally curious about this world's history.

But by then, they had reached the second floor, and Colin reined in his wandering thoughts.

The second floor was completely different from the first, which had contained only a single hall. Many rooms lined both sides of a corridor.

Most of the doors to these rooms had been damaged, and the creepy sobs and howls of Wailers drifted out from within.

"Because there are so many rooms on the second floor, the sound is greatly limited. If all these monsters had stayed on the first floor, things would have been much more troublesome earlier."

Colin secretly felt fortunate. When these monsters first underwent their mutations, they seemed to have run and crawled all over the place.

Otherwise, they would not have ended up scattered here and there.

Then, perhaps because they had no food to replenish themselves or for some other reason, they had all gone dormant. That dormancy had lasted until today, when it was broken by him, an Outsider.

Bang!

Colin kicked open a rotten door. His lamp shone inside, revealing a small Wailer roaring at him.

But by now, Colin had become fairly "immune" to such minor crying and fussing. It would not affect him much in the short term.

Without hesitation, Colin swung his axe, returning everyone's world to peace and quiet.

After killing the Wailer, he did not leave immediately. Instead, he looked around the room.

It was roughly twenty square meters in size and seemed to serve as an ordinary office. Colin spotted a desk inside.

The desk was covered in dust, but it had been preserved fairly well. It was dark brown and had a solid, weighty texture.

Colin tapped his fingers against it. It felt far better made and sturdier than the one in his own home.

The only damage was a section of one corner that bore chew marks, but that did not affect its usability.

"This desk and I were meant to be."

Colin noticed a wooden chair of the same material in the corner and added, "This one too."

The tables and stools at home had all been dismantled. Out with the old, in with the new—this was the perfect chance to replace them.

Then Colin opened his [Inventory] and stored them away. The desk and chair took up two slots, their icons labeled [Lightly Damaged Thorn Desk] and [Thorn Wood Chair].

After checking, he found that more than half of his initial sixteen slots were already occupied.

Each slot seemed to ignore weight limits, restricted only by quantity and size. Similar items of the same type could be stacked within a single slot.

Bread, Level 3 Water, Deer Meat, and similar items could be stacked together in one slot, but desks and chairs could not.

Otherwise, Colin would have wanted to carry all the benches downstairs back home.

Those things could be used as beds, and they were much more comfortable than the lousy bed in his Wooden Cabin, which creaked endlessly the moment anyone lay on it.

That bed groaned every time he tried to change positions.

Even if he took too many chairs and had no use for them, he could still sell them to other Survivors for money.

"My mind seems to be getting more and more scattered. I keep thinking about all sorts of random things. Once this round is over, I need to rest immediately. I can't keep going."

Colin shook his head and gathered his thoughts, preventing himself from drifting off too far.

He was aware of his condition because he had seen signs of [Mild Mental Damage] in the servants' status panels.

The prompt said that they were losing their sanity and needed immediate rest. Otherwise, they would become easily distracted and absent-minded, and their ability to guard against surprise attacks would plummet.

At this point, the hunt continued in an orderly fashion.

The only slight disappointment was that Colin entered more than a dozen rooms, and most of them were completely empty, containing nothing valuable.

Even when there was something inside, it was usually badly damaged and not as good as the set already in his Inventory.

"What a pity. Expanding the Inventory costs over a hundred Mist Points. Otherwise, I'd really like to empty this place out."

Colin sighed. Even if the items were damaged and could not be sold, they would still make decent firewood. Denser wood burned longer, after all.

There were clearly so many good things here, yet his Inventory was so small. It truly was a shame.

"Next room. Keep going."

Colin led the way out of the room and was about to head for the next one when he suddenly froze.

There were no more rooms ahead. This was already the end of the corridor. At the end was only a window, beyond which lay ominous Gray Fog glowing with a hazy white light.

There was no way forward.