Bloody Banquet

The brightly lit corridor stirred a familiar feeling in him.

The sounds of fighting rang endlessly beside his ears. Looking again at the baldhead covered in metallic scales, wasn't this the very same corridor from before?

I crashed out through one window, then crashed back in through another?

Suren turned around and saw that the glass he had shattered earlier had somehow returned to normal. If not for the shards still digging into his feet, he would have thought he had experienced an illusion.

There was something wrong with the manor's space too!

"Illusion Space? Or perhaps the ability of that 'Phantom Species'?"

Suren found this world increasingly bizarre, but he quickly came to a realization. "Of course. If escaping by jumping through a window were that easy, those people earlier wouldn't have been slaughtered by those anomalous puppets."

With that jump, Suren had fallen back into the corridor and crashed into the mass of puppets.

Well, that was just great. He had walked straight into the tiger's jaws.

The puppets might not have been able to hurt the baldhead much, but to an ordinary person like Suren, they were absolutely lethal.

Suren had already resigned himself and stopped struggling, but to his surprise, the puppets seemed to turn a blind eye to him. They drifted right past him and surrounded the baldhead instead.

"Huh? They actually didn't attack me?"

Watching the puppets float past him, Suren felt the joy of surviving a disaster. He secretly speculated, "Was it because I discovered the 'surveillance' earlier?"

He vaguely guessed that the puppets had not killed him because that Phantom Species thought it had found an interesting new toy and was reluctant to kill it so quickly.

That was seriously irritating.

Just then, without any warning, a series of chilling cracking sounds suddenly rang out, like bones snapping.

Looking closer, Suren saw that every joint in Marcus's body had bent and broken backward.

Like a marionette, he was suspended in midair by invisible strings, his head dangling limply.

Marcus was dead!

After he died, the knife-wielding puppets stopped attacking Bald Ivan as well. Like a receding tide, they withdrew and vanished into the far end of the corridor.

Not far away, Bald Ivan looked utterly bewildered at the sudden death of his subordinate. He cursed angrily, "Damn it!"

There had been no puppets around Marcus, so how had he died?

It suddenly dawned on him that the Phantom Species' methods probably went far beyond controlling puppets.

The baldhead had naturally noticed that the puppets had spared Suren earlier and guessed that he might know something.

But before he could ask, a tightly sealed door nearby suddenly opened.

An amiable old man in a tailcoat emerged from the doorway and said in an emotionless tone, "My master invites the two of you to dine with him in the Banquet Hall."

Master? Dinner?

Suren raised an eyebrow. No matter how he looked at it, this did not seem like a good thing.

As he heard those words, he also studied the old man who looked like a butler.

He noticed that the man's eyeballs had not moved at all while speaking. Looking more carefully, Suren saw that his skin had the greasy sheen of waxwork.

Clearly, this butler was not alive either.

Suren remained calm on the surface.

More importantly, even if he wanted to make a move, he could not beat them.

But how could someone as hot-tempered as Bald Ivan endure this?

They had just killed one of his brothers right in front of him, and now they were inviting him to dinner?

"Fuck you!"

The baldhead cursed and fired a cannon shot.

Boom! The butler was blasted to pieces.

But then that deep voice suddenly rang out again, saying sinisterly, "Those who do not follow the rules of the game will be killed."

"Hmph!"

The baldhead snorted, still somewhat unconcerned.

But suddenly, without any warning, his entire body stiffened.

Exactly like Marcus had before he died.

This time, Suren saw it clearly. Transparent threads resembling fishing line wrapped around the baldhead, leaving him completely unable to move.

As the threads tightened, the metallic scales on the baldhead's skin actually shattered. The threads cut directly into his flesh, drawing crimson blood.

Suren's eyelids twitched. "What an anomalous method."

Clearly, that anomaly was far stronger than he had imagined.

Seeing that Ivan was about to be torn into seven or eight pieces, the baldhead lost all of his earlier bravado at the very last moment before his body was ripped apart. He shouted, "Wait! I'm willing to go!"

And so, Suren and Bald Ivan were invited into the Banquet Hall by the butler with half his body blown apart.

The place was just as extravagantly decorated, with soothing music playing from a gramophone.

Many people were already seated at the dining table. It looked lively, and the atmosphere of the meal even seemed rather harmonious.

A maid puppet led Suren to an empty seat.

He swept his gaze over the people at the table and understood the situation.

Although those "people" sat upright in their seats, their faces were expressionless and their bodies stiff.

Clearly, not a single one of them was alive.

They were either puppets or corpses fixed to their seats with threads. The sight was deeply eerie and anomalous.

Still, Suren was not particularly surprised. He would never have believed that the Phantom Species had invited them to dinner out of kindness.

Judging by the expression on the baldhead's face, as though he had swallowed a fly, he probably knew those corpses.

After the two sat down, the maid puppets behind them tied napkins around their necks, then lifted the silver covers from the plates before them.

Suren had smelled a strong scent of blood as soon as he sat down, and he had vaguely guessed what was coming.

When the cover was lifted, the stench of blood rushed straight at him.

On the plate before him lay a reddish-brown liver, still faintly steaming with blood. It looked as though it had been removed from a living body not long ago.

There were probably no living livestock in this manor, so anyone could guess what kind of liver it was.

Suren raised his eyebrows, not particularly surprised.

In this anomalous manor, normal food would have been the strange thing.

He had played plenty of twisted horror games. This kind of scenario was not even especially outrageous.

With a glance from the corner of his eye, he saw that his plate was actually one of the better ones.

In front of the baldhead was a human head. Its eyeballs sat on a small dish, apparently intended as an after-dinner "dessert."

Looking at the green hair beside it, Suren realized that the head seemed to belong to an old acquaintance—the Rooster Head he had killed in the study earlier.

Then that lingering voice sounded again. "The rule of the game is this: you must finish your meal. Otherwise, you will die."

At that moment, every "person" at the table, whether puppet or corpse, turned their heads and stared straight at the two living men with hollow eyes.

The butler beside them urged them in a deeply warning tone, "What is it, honored guests? Does the food not suit your tastes?"

Neither Suren nor the baldhead had any intention of voluntarily eating what was on their plates.

But clearly, whether they ate or not was not up to them.

At that moment, transparent threads silently descended from the ceiling beams and bound the limbs of both men.

Suren sensed them, but he did not feel anything unusual in his body.

The baldhead beside him clearly realized what had happened. His expression turned ugly as he muttered in despair, "Psychic Limb Control... at least a Gold Rank Phantom Species. We're finished."

He had already experienced the power of those threads earlier. He had thought they were merely a physical form of control, figuring that he might still have a chance if he found an opening.

But only after sitting in this chair did he confirm that the Phantom Species was also proficient in Mind Control.

It was an ability that could easily kill him.

"..."

Suren had sharp ears and clearly heard what the baldhead was muttering.

Very quickly, he also understood what Limb Control meant.

At that moment, he found his hands rising out of his control. They picked up the knife and fork beside his plate and began cutting the liver on it, his movements elegant and gentlemanly.

The sensation was strange. It was not simply like being controlled by puppet strings; it was as though his brain had lost control over his body. He could only watch as his hands cut the meat on his plate against his will.

In the silent Banquet Hall, it was especially chilling.