Doll Castle (6)

The moment that eyeball looked at him, the shouting man's already precarious mental state collapsed.

"Die, die, die, die!!!" His eyes were bloodshot as he stomped on the eyeball by his feet. With a wet squelch, red and white fluid splattered across the floor, leaving the original tissue unrecognizable. Yet he seemed to feel nothing, continuing to stamp frantically on the same spot.

"All right, all right, that's enough..."

Zhao Yi pulled the shouting man, who was still panting heavily, aside and left him in another middle-aged player's care for the time being. Then he picked up the doll from the floor. Perhaps because it had been thrown down, numerous cracks had appeared across its face and body.

He carefully dusted it off and held it out to Bo Yi. "What you mentioned earlier... was this what you meant?"

Bo Yi lowered his eyes to look at it and nodded.

"But what does this doll mean?" Zhao Wen Shan asked in confusion. As soon as she finished speaking, a slender hand extended toward her, its jade-like fingers holding a doll.

Zhao Wen Shan waved a hand. "No need, I've already looked at it... Huh?" She snatched the doll from that hand and turned it over in her own. "It's actually different?"

The doll being offered to her wore a long dress covered in so much brown grime that its original color was impossible to make out, completely different from the clothes on the doll found in the room earlier. Its hair was also very long, the black strands covering its face completely and leaving only its mouth exposed.

Zhao Wen Shan cautiously lifted a little of the doll's hair with her fingertips. "!"

Beneath the black hair, dark red, worm-like scars densely covered its face. Its eyes, however, were tightly shut. Unlike the other doll, it did not have a pair of terrifying eyes stuffed into its sockets.

As for why it had no eyes, she looked up at the man standing opposite her... The fact that he was still standing here was answer enough.

"What did you encounter last night?" she asked tentatively.

"A woman. A..." Bo Yi extended a finger and tapped the doll in Zhao Wen Shan's hands. "...woman like this."

At those words, the Veteran Players all looked thoughtful. None of them were tactless enough to keep asking how Bo Yi had escaped. After all, the clues he had already given them were enough to reach a conclusion-

"Don't touch those paintings!"

Zhao Yi spoke with absolute certainty.

He was now immensely grateful for Bo Yi's "reckless" behavior earlier... No! How could that count as reckless? It was clearly foresight! With Bo Yi, a surviving "eyewitness," giving them a firsthand account, they had been able to identify the first death trigger so quickly, right after the first player died! They even knew what kind of ghost they would encounter after touching those paintings!

In previous instances, several players had to die before they could achieve that!

Everyone's gaze toward Bo Yi immediately changed.

This was an expert who could survive an encounter with a ghost without a scratch! No wonder he had reached out without hesitation earlier. He had the strength to back it up!

At that moment, both the newcomers and the Veteran Players began thinking about befriending him.

"What should we call you?"

As they left the blood-reeking corridor and carefully made their way through the eerie gallery lined with portraits, everyone struck up conversations with Bo Yi, belatedly getting acquainted with their fellow players.

"Bo Yi."

"I'm Zhao..." Zhao Yi had barely begun when someone interrupted him without ceremony. "You two don't need to introduce yourselves again, Zhao." The middle-aged player squeezed forward as well, eagerly introducing himself to Bo Yi. "My name's Zheng Rong! I'm a Veteran Player."

"Bo Yu." The female player dressed in black also nodded to Bo Yi.

Seeing this, the other newcomers hurried to speak up as well:

"My name is Pan Lulu." This was the female player in the pretty dress, whose eyes had stayed red as she kept sniffling. "She's Tian Xiuyun." She pointed to the other new female player beside her, who wore a vacant expression.

Tian Xiuyun was the unlucky newcomer who had discovered the dead player that morning.

"This is the first time playing this game for all three of us," Pan Lulu explained quietly when everyone looked over. "Xiuyun came to wake us up this morning." Since they were the only women among the newcomers, the three of them had banded together, but they had never expected... As she spoke, Pan Lulu's eyes reddened again, looking ready to start "raining" at any moment. The other players quickly averted their gazes and looked toward the remaining two.

They had no interest in comforting anyone.

"Wang Xing." The shouting man still had a blank stare. After Zheng Rong gave him a nudge, he merely uttered his name in a daze.

"My name is Zhang Songhao," the bespectacled man, Zhang Songhao, said quietly.

At last, all the players knew one another's names.

"Then what do we do next?" Having finally made it through the gallery, where a single careless move could cost them their lives, Zhang Songhao breathed a sigh of relief and asked quietly.

"Explore the castle." Seeing that Bo Yi had no intention of speaking, Zhao Yi answered on behalf of the Veteran Players. "There will be information hidden in the instance about how to clear it. We need to find it ourselves."

"D-do we have to explore?" a timid voice questioned. It was Pan Lulu, her eyes red. "Can't we just wait until three days have passed and go straight to the banquet? Sob... I'm scared..."

"Exactly..." Zhang Songhao, the bespectacled man, chimed in. "Didn't you say we could leave the instance as long as we completed the mission? Then why should we waste time exploring? Especially..." He glanced around nervously. "...when this castle is so dangerous..."

"You can choose not to go," Zhao Wen Shan said coldly. "But in that case, we won't share any clues we find while exploring with you."

Looking at the sudden resentment on the bespectacled man's face, she said sarcastically, "After all, you said it yourself. Exploring this castle is dangerous."

"If we risk our lives to get those clues, why should we share them with you for free?"

Zhang Songhao immediately fell silent, and the atmosphere between them grew awkward again. Zhao Yi had no choice but to smooth things over once more. "All right. If you're worried it's unsafe to be alone, find someone to team up with."

"This world isn't that simple. You could easily trigger a death condition without realizing it. If you do nothing, you probably won't even know how you died. We're exploring the castle to find clues and see whether we can work out the death triggers."

"Of course," Zhao Yi said, changing tack, "there is another way to learn the death triggers without exploring."

When several newcomers looked over expectantly, Zhao Yi smiled faintly. "Didn't we work out a death trigger this morning?"