Situation Takes a Sharp Turn

The voice came out of nowhere.

Colin was crouching before the statue, his back to the doors. The instant the voice sounded, his entire body tensed.

He could sense an individual filled with malice behind him.

The two Servants' faces had visibly gone pale.

They seemed to want to say something, but Colin stopped them with a look to avoid any further accidents.

After a brief hesitation, Colin half turned and looked behind him. On the carpet, which should have been empty, a Little Girl had appeared at some point.

A Little Girl as exquisite as a doll.

Her figure was somewhat illusory and translucent. She wore a long white dress, her hair was pale, and her face was expressionless.

She stood at the edge of the candlelight, head tilted, staring at him with distinctly black-and-white eyes.

The room fell silent for a moment.

"Big Brother, are you looking for me?"

After a short silence, the Little Girl spoke again in that childish voice, airy and drifting, with a warped quality to it.

"Big Brother, I think I saw you wake up all the other children."

"I saw you chop them into pieces, one by one."

"I was so scared. I kept hiding."

"Big Brother, none of us ever hurt anyone. We only wanted to live. We were only waiting for someone to save us."

"Paper, clothes, scraps of cloth, rats, cats, birds, hair, blood, chunks of flesh. We ate everything we could eat. We kept desperately trying to survive."

"Father Grandpa said he would bring people back to save us soon. Everyone was doing their best to wait."

"I can feel it. Father Grandpa is about to come back. We were clearly all about to be saved. Why?"

"Big Brother, we tried so hard to live. Why did you kill us?"

The Little Girl questioned him again and again, as though passing Judgment on Colin's "crime." Her voice was full of pain and coldness.

And with every word she spoke, the aura emanating from her grew more terrifying.

Those clearly black-and-white eyes changed bit by bit, shifting from ink-black to a bloodlike crimson.

She walked toward him step by step, radiating an irresistible, inviolable pressure!

"I'm so scared."

The Little Girl stopped before Colin and raised her face. Crimson tears spilled from her eyes, streaked down her slightly lifted cheeks, and dripped onto her chest, staining her white dress red.

At that moment, she seemed to recall the suffering of the past. Her delicate face twisted slightly, and an almost tangible aura of pain spilled from her body.

"Little girl, I'm the one who should be scared!"

Colin's scalp prickled as he watched the Little Girl slowly drift closer and enter the light. Yet his body seemed frozen in place. He could neither move nor speak.

Otherwise, he would definitely have tried to explain to her that things were not as she thought.

Like Colin, the Servants behind him were equally motionless. Colin did not know their condition, but it was probably no different from his own.

Otherwise, given the Servants' personalities, they would have rushed over and stood in front of him.

Feeling the increasingly violent aura in those red eyes, Colin's heartbeat sped up. Terror flooded his face, impossible to suppress.

But he could not move!

From the moment he turned around and saw the Little Girl, everything in the surrounding space seemed to have frozen.

The only individual capable of moving in this space seemed to be that despair-inducing Little Girl.

She stepped through the shadows toward him, her expression becoming increasingly unhinged and crazed.

Calm down, calm down, calm down... Colin screamed frantically in his heart as he stared at that obviously inhuman, grotesque being.

[For some reason, you seem unable to see through the "Little Girl" before you or obtain her specific information. But even without thinking, you know that she came from among the dead and is a terrifying evil spirit.]

[You believe that, with your current strength, you are completely incapable of facing such a situation. But it is already too late to escape.]

[But you feel that this mission should not be so hopeless. You...]

Rip—

"Ah!"

The prompt was cut off at its most crucial moment!

An immense, tearing pain came from his shoulder.

Only then did Colin realize that, during that brief moment when he had concentrated completely, the Little Girl had reached out and forcibly torn a chunk of flesh from his left shoulder!

Blood sprayed out. Pain twisted Colin's face, made the corner of his eyes twitch, and drenched his coat with sweat in a short time.

Holding that small chunk of flesh, the Little Girl put it into her mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed it.

The sight made Colin's scalp go numb.

No one could remain calm after watching someone eat their flesh right in front of them.

Tsk. The Little Girl sucked the fresh blood from her fingers, casually wiped the blood from her face, and looked at him again. The blood-red pupils no longer held the "rationality" from before; they were filled with grotesqueness and madness.

"Big Brother, I'm so hungry. You look really delicious." She sounded delighted, as though she were tasting a cake.

Colin took a deep breath, trying to force himself to calm down and focus on reading the prompt, but it was simply too difficult.

It hurt too much!

Colin felt as though the left side of his neck and his brain were cramping.

When his body and mind had suffered a Heavy Wound and his emotions were too chaotic, extreme, and tense, it was difficult to receive prompts. That was a drawback!

At this moment, that drawback was especially fatal!

It caused Colin to miss the most crucial information.

That information concerned his life and death!

Adrenaline surged wildly as Colin watched the girl reach out again, seemingly intending to eat him clean.

Behind him, where he could not see, the two Servants' eyes were bloodshot. They glared furiously at the evil spirit before them, wishing they could suffer in Colin's place.

The unwillingness and anger in their hearts had already overwhelmed the fear they felt.

But before absolute power, even boundless rage and unwillingness were not worth mentioning.

Just like Colin, they could not move beneath some invisible pressure. They could not even open their mouths to speak!

This power differed from the emotion-triggered control used by the Confessor Priest and the Wailer. It was another Unknown method.

Calm down! Calm down! I have to calm down! I can't rely too much on the prompts. The information it gave just now was already enough. It said this mission should not be so hopeless, meaning it hasn't truly reached a dead end yet.

That's right! Think carefully. She seemed to have noticed us long ago. When we entered, the doors shut on their own. I thought it was just a "game" setting, but now that I think about it, it probably wasn't.

She looks very cautious, but now she seems to be going mad. This is my chance!

She definitely isn't invincible! Otherwise, with such overwhelming methods, there would be no reason for her to wait until now to attack!

We must have fulfilled some condition of hers?

Under the pressure of death, Colin's brain worked faster than it ever had during college entrance exams. What did I miss? What did I miss?

Rip—

A slender, pale little hand plunged into the wound and tore away another piece of muscle. The veins at Colin's temples bulged hideously, and cold sweat poured over his body.

And at that very moment, Colin discovered how she was controlling him!