Magic Manor 9

He Shengguang hadn't died.

He sat silently on the sofa in the hall, not responding when anyone called him. Only the pair of butterflies over his eyes slowly opened and closed their wings.

"It must feel awful to be shoved into danger by someone you like."

The speaker was a girl named Mo Yu. She usually kept a low profile and barely made her presence felt, but she was smart and had survived several instances.

She cast a sympathetic glance at He Shengguang, then said to Lu Mi, who was resting beside her, "It's pretty strange, too. He actually survived."

Lu Mi replied, "He didn't trigger a death condition, after all."

"Why do you look so miserable, too? Don't tell me you like Jin Bi as well?"

Roman answered for him, his expression solemn. "Impossible."

Lu Mi lowered his eyes and stared at the flames dancing before him.

He had always thought Jin Bi was the kind of friend Ning Zhuangzhuang had said was worth making.

The remaining players could now be counted on one hand.

Under the butler's chilling scrutiny, they forced bowl after bowl of dog meat into Noel's mouth, kept her awake at night, locked her up before she went berserk, then scattered to hide.

Some had grown accustomed to this routine and simply carried it out mechanically. Even when Noel was so stuffed that she couldn't eat another bite, they forced her to keep eating, ignoring her pained expression.

In this way, three more days passed without anyone dying.

Someone asked in confusion, "Does this instance even have a time limit? It feels like we could just keep going like this."

Lu Mi had just returned from familiarizing himself with the castle's corridors and rooms for the umpteenth time. Hearing the question, he answered, "It does."

He looked out the window. The snow was already halfway up their calves-the weather was getting worse, and riding lessons and all other outdoor classes had been canceled entirely.

From his observations over the past few days, the butterflies over Noel's eyes were flying away earlier and earlier.

At first, he had thought it was just a discrepancy of a few seconds, but soon it had shifted to several minutes, then more than ten. Once, it had almost ended in disaster.

Now, he had no choice but to lock Noel in a sealed room ahead of time.

Meanwhile, the time it took for Noel's frenzy to peak and for her to break down the door was also growing shorter.

Mo Yu punched the person who had asked the question. "You're just sitting there waiting for him to explain it to you? Have you even noticed who's been handling all this dangerous stuff these past few days?"

As they horsed around, Lu Mi managed a faint smile, hiding the anxiety weighing on him.

This couldn't go on. Sooner or later, they'd be worn down to death here.

What distressed him even more was having to lock Noel up himself each time while she was still lucid.

A pair of hands straightened his scarf. "You should relax a little. Being too tense makes your brain stupid."

After lunch, Lu Mi and Roman went for a walk. The snow outside was too deep, so they could only wander around the castle.

Though it was supposed to be a leisurely stroll, Lu Mi still found himself unconsciously recalling the layout of every passage.

He pointed to an inconspicuous little door on the right. "Through that door, you can find the stairs to the west tower."

He had stumbled across this place during his first two days in the instance.

But the west tower had been ravaged by war and badly damaged. He had taken a quick look around without finding anything.

Now, looking at that door, Lu Mi suddenly remembered something.

The night he had entered Noel's dream, he had followed a maid into the room at the top of the tower and met Noel's mother, whose beauty was unparalleled.

And there had been an olive wreath that he thought would suit Roman very well.

Noticing the change in his expression, Roman asked, "Want to go up and have a look?"

"Sure." Lu Mi had never properly looked down over the manor from the top of the tower. "Being somewhere high can help you forget your worries for a while."

They climbed the spiral stone stairs and opened the battered little wooden door to the top-floor room.

A landscape blanketed in white snow came into view. Most of the tower had been destroyed, and even from the doorway, they could look straight down at the pasture, now reduced to a desolate realm of snow.

Lu Mi walked to the spot where Mrs. Bart had sung in the dream and felt the cold wind sweep across his cheeks.

Compared with everything in Noel's dream, the scene here seemed all the more bleak.

Roman came up beside him. "What are you thinking about?"

"Her mother was an opera singer who captivated everyone. Her family was wealthy, happy, and loving... Noel's life should have been like a fairy tale."

Lu Mi gave a self-deprecating smile. "Feeling sorry for a man-eating NPC sounds stupid, doesn't it? But after seeing the world in her dreams, then looking at all this, I really can't help feeling awful."

"It's not stupid," Roman said. "Didn't you clear your last instance by helping 'Mom' fulfill her wish?"

Lu Mi didn't answer. He leaned against the ruined wall and tried to empty his mind.

But their current situation was so unfavorable that, even when he tried to relax, all sorts of images and details kept surfacing at random in his mind.

Mr. Bart's arm sticking out of the carriage, the butler's deathly pale face, Jin Bi's terrified expression as she pushed He Shengguang toward Noel, the story of Magic Manor...

His eyes snapped open. "We've overlooked something."

"What?"

Lu Mi was a little excited, and he spoke much faster than usual. "The butterflies."

"Ever since we figured out that Noel becomes dangerous when the butterflies fly away, we've been doing everything we can to prevent it. Then the butler backed us into a corner."

"But we forgot to stop and think about why Noel goes berserk when the butterflies fly away."

Roman nodded. "Have you thought of an answer, then?"

"During her first riding lesson, we discovered that Noel saw a different world from the one we saw."

The foul weather and withered vegetation the players saw looked entirely different through Noel's eyes.

"And..." Images flashed rapidly through Lu Mi's mind. "She couldn't see things like corpses. We came to all those conclusions while the butterflies were resting over her eyes. Right, why did it never occur to us that once the butterflies fly away, she might be seeing reality?"

He pointed at the snow outside. "The gap between the past and the present is so huge that even an outsider like me feels sorry for her. Imagine how heartbroken she herself must be."

Roman understood what he meant. "You're saying that once the butterflies fly away, she loses control because she can't bear to face the tragic reality?"

Lu Mi nodded excitedly, but soon calmed down again. "But even if that really is the reason, it doesn't seem to help much..."

"Not necessarily. I think this is a crucial detail," Roman said, gently rubbing Lu Mi's drooping head.

"At heart, she's a very sweet little girl. The day He Shengguang's eyes were eaten, she tried desperately to control herself. It was just that the butler kept provoking her..." Lu Mi murmured, then suddenly thought of something-