DLMSWSHH Chapter 27

TL: Hua

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Chapter 27: NPC

Perhaps because Zhong Ming had been staring at him for too long, the college student in the white hoodie became a bit shy. A blush rose to his cheeks, and seeing Zhong Ming kneeling on the floor, he asked with concern: “What’s wrong? Are your legs weak?”

He reached out his right hand toward Zhong Ming. “Get up. I’ll pull you up.”

The student knew Zhong Ming was an NPC, and possibly a dangerous one. But looking at the young man’s fair face tilted slightly upward, bathed in the morning sunlight, the caution in his heart instantly dissolved.

Zhong Ming looked at him fixedly, his eyes full of scrutiny.

The student started to break out in a sweat under the gaze, suddenly realizing that the beauty before him might be a lethal “serpent beauty.” The hand he had extended trembled. However, just as he hesitated to pull it back, Zhong Ming suddenly reached out and took hold of it.

The student froze. Feeling Zhong Ming’s firm grip and the remarkably long shape of his fingers, his heart suddenly fluttered.

Zhong Ming used the student’s strength to stand up, then let go. The student’s face was flushed red, and he subconsciously rubbed his right palm as if savoring the lingering sensation of the skin contact. But as he rubbed, he suddenly felt his palm was a bit damp.

He thought it was just sweat from his nerves, but when he looked down, he saw it was blood.

“?!”

The student gasped. “This… what’s going on?”

His eyes widened as he looked up in bewilderment. Only then did he see that the floor in front of his door was covered in varying shades of bloodstains.

Some had already congealed into dark red scabs, while others had just been smeared by Zhong Ming, turning into pale red bloody water that formed circles of stains on the floor following the movements of the rag.

The scene, resembling a gruesome murder, seared itself into the college student’s eyes.

“Ah!”

He let out a sharp, strangled scream. His weakening legs slipped on the floor, and he stumbled directly onto the ground.

“What… what happened?!” The student’s face was a mask of terror, his legs shaking uncontrollably. “W-why is there so much blood?”

Standing before him, Zhong Ming looked down at the expression on the student’s face. He could tell the horror wasn’t faked.

The student breathed in ragged gasps, his eyes darting frantically around the room before slowly focusing on Zhong Ming’s face. “You… what did you do?”

As he looked at the cold, indifferent young man in the manservant’s uniform, it was as if he were staring at the Grim Reaper holding a scythe.

Zhong Ming lowered his gaze. “What were you doing last night?”

“L-last night?” the student stammered. “What else could I have been doing? I was sleeping.”

Zhong Ming frowned. “…You didn’t hear anything at all?”

Seemingly realizing that Zhong Ming had no immediate intention of attacking him, the student stood up, pressing his back tightly against the wooden door. “I-I’m usually a very heavy sleeper. I really didn’t hear a thing.”

Strange. Zhong Ming’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t understand how this player had managed to escape the Spider Duchess’s attack.

“…You were really just sleeping?” he pressed.

At this, the student’s expression stiffened unnaturally for a split second. His gaze flickered away as he nodded. “Y-yeah. Right.”

Zhong Ming watched him for a few seconds before saying, “I see.”

“Um, yeah.” The student appeared flustered. He turned his head and brushed past Zhong Ming in a hurry. “I-I’m going to go wash up first.”

Zhong Ming narrowed his eyes slightly as he watched the retreating figure. Then, he turned and grasped the doorknob. With a light push, the wooden door opened. None of the players’ rooms in the Haunted house were locked. Zhong Ming stepped inside and found the furnishings were identical to the room next door: a bed, a desk, and a window. There were few places to hide anything.

He walked over and pulled open the desk drawer, only to find it empty. Undeterred, Zhong Ming meticulously searched every inch of the room, including under the pillow and inside the duvet, but found nothing.

He paused, standing in the center of the room to think. Then, struck by a sudden inspiration, he knelt and flipped over the rug on the floor.

Sure enough, he found a small glass bottle containing several pills. What is this? Zhong Ming wondered. He rotated the bottle and found a label on the back covered in tiny English text.

Reading carefully, he recognized the name of the drug and suddenly understood.

It was a hallucinogen.

In medieval Europe, the common folk consumed large amounts of rye bread, which often led to poisoning and illness due to ergot toxins. This caused unbearable neuralgia, a condition once known as “St. Anthony’s Fire.” Centuries later, chemists extracted alkaline compounds from ergot and recommended them as treatments for mental illness.

However, the drug was far from the simple remedy researchers had imagined. Much like its ancestor, St. Anthony’s Fire, the mental hallucinations brought on by the chemical spread like wildfire through student and hippie populations, plunging naive youths into a craze of fantasy and addiction.

Zhong Ming looked at the bottle in his hand.

Last night, that student hadn’t been sleeping; he had been high out of his mind.

Under the intense stimulation of the hallucinogen, he likely hadn’t even known where he was, so naturally, he hadn’t felt any fear.

Zhong Ming gripped the small bottle, the image of the student in the white hoodie surfacing in his mind. The youth looked sunny and kind, his speech and behavior reflecting a polite, well-educated background. Looking at his exterior, one would never link him to drug use.

Zhong Ming wasn’t sure how to feel, but he suddenly recalled Li Yizhi’s repeated warning: No one who participates in this game is a good person.

But then…

Zhong Ming’s brow knitted slightly. If the one eaten by the Spider Duchess last night wasn’t this student, who was the victim?

Zhong Ming’s question was answered soon enough.

At eight o’clock sharp, breakfast was laid out on the long table in the main hall.

The mist that had shrouded the mansion the night before had completely vanished. Today was a clear, sunny day.

Sunlight danced on the river flowing from the valley and across the endless flower beds, a beautiful sight that would usually lift anyone’s spirits.

The blood and remains in the hall had been thoroughly scrubbed away. The wooden floors were spotless, covered by clean, soft rugs. Freshly picked flowers from the garden sat in vases, and a faint fragrance wafted through the air. The long table was draped in a snow-white cloth, and the menservants brought out food in an orderly fashion. Fluffy bread in bamboo baskets gave off the sweet scent of wheat. Beside them, a glass bowl held a large fresh salad; the green lettuce leaves, coated in vinaigrette, looked exceptionally vibrant in the morning sun.

Yet, around the table, the players looked deathly pale.

No one reached for the food, for only last night, someone had died right where they were now sitting.

Li Yizhi happened to be standing beside Zhong Ming this time. He glanced at the crowd and sneered. “Who are they putting on this act for?” He leaned down slightly and whispered into Zhong Ming’s ear, “This game offers food, clothing, and all the comforts. If I had to say, the current players—”

He clicked his tongue and shook his head, looking exactly like a high school teacher telling his students, “You’re the worst class I’ve ever taught.”

Zhong Ming was speechless. He didn’t really want to engage with the man, so he turned his gaze away, scanning the faces of the players starting from the corner of the table.

Two players were missing. One was a mercenary; the other was the student who had been whipped to death while kneeling on the ground the previous day.

The student in the white hoodie had only just realized what had happened in the mansion while he was high last night, and his face had turned a sudden, ghostly white.

Next to him, the girl from the couple sat in her chair, looking at her boyfriend with an uneasy expression.

Her boyfriend’s face was a sickly grey-green. His eyes were glazed, staring blankly at nothing, and his body rocked mechanically back and forth as he muttered something under his breath.

Looking extremely distressed, the girl watched him tensely. “Hey, Chengcheng, what’s wrong?”

Normally, this young couple was inseparable and affectionate, but now the man was completely deaf to his girlfriend’s concern. He continued to shake his legs mechanically, chanting incessantly: “Eaten… was eaten… eaten… eaten…”

Hearing this, Zhong Ming raised his eyes slightly.

Case closed. The one eaten by the Spider Duchess was this fellow. He really just had terrible luck.

Just then, Madam Mary, standing at the head of the table, produced a bell and rang it once. “Breakfast is served.”

Following her command, the players, who were still reeling from the previous night, didn’t dare disobey. Even those tortured by the shadow of death and devoid of appetite were forced to reach for food, stiffly compelling themselves to eat.

Meanwhile, the girlfriend was still trying to comfort her partner. She took a fried sausage from a platter, placed it on his plate, and carefully cut it into small pieces.

“Regardless, you have to eat something.”

She used a fork to lift a small piece of sausage to his lips.

However, the moment the boy saw the sausage, he let out a piercing scream. He bolted upright so violently that he knocked his chair over. Then, ignoring his girlfriend’s stunned expression, he abandoned the table and ran off.

“Idiot.”

Li Yizhi sneered. He said to Zhong Ming, “See? He’s the one dying tomorrow night.” He paused, then added, “Though he might not even survive until then.”

Zhong Ming looked at the girl left stunned at the table, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Thirty minutes later, breakfast ended with the sound of Madam Mary’s bell. Naturally, the meal had tasted like wax to the players. As Zhong Ming and the other menservants stepped forward to clear the plates, they found many had hardly touched their food.

However, at that moment, chaos erupted.

Smash!

With a crisp sound, a dinner plate hit the floor, shattering into pieces.

Zhong Ming was jerked upward by a massive force. His eyes widened in surprise as he found himself face-to-face with a pair of eyes like those of a starving wolf. Veins bulged on the blonde man’s hand as he gripped Zhong Ming’s collar, pressing a steak knife against his throat.

Simultaneously, the other mercenaries stood up almost at once, quickly seizing the nearest manservant. Li Yizhi raised an eyebrow in surprise, glanced at the knife at his own throat, then slowly looked up at the mercenary behind him. That man’s eyes were sunken, his face pale, and his eyeballs shot through with red veins. He looked less like a human and more like a cornered beast. Seeing Li Yizhi look at him, the mercenary bared his teeth in a grimace.

The others were in a similar state. A murderous, heavy silence fell over the hall.

The blonde mercenary’s eyes were deeply recessed, the dark circles beneath his blue eyes heavier than in previous days. His breathing was labored, and his pupils constricted to pinpricks as he stared at Zhong Ming, yet the hand gripping the knife was exceptionally steady.

“Little beauty,” he rasped, “tell me, how do we beat this game?”

The mercenary had one arm hooked around Zhong Ming’s shoulder; his strength was immense, leaving Zhong Ming completely unable to move.

Zhong Ming frowned and spoke. “I don’t know.”

The blonde man’s gaze lingered on his profile for a moment. Then, he turned his head, snatched a fork from the table, and with veins popping on the back of his hand, slammed it with such force that it embedded itself deep into the wooden table.

Zhong Ming’s eyes widened slightly.

“See that?” the low, raspy voice came from above him. “If you don’t start talking, that knife goes into your neck.”

Zhong Ming looked at the cold blade, his eyelashes trembling.

Thinking the youth was terrified, the blonde man turned and shouted at his subordinates: “We have to squeeze the clues out of them!”

He looked grimly at every mercenary holding a manservant. “They’re servants, they aren’t like those monsters! They’re humans, too. We don’t need to be afraid of them!”

After the events of last night, these mercenaries hadn’t been idle. Having witnessed the madness of the haunted house bosses, they realized they stood no chance against those monsters. Consequently, they had targeted the servant NPCs as their breakthrough point.

However, in the next instant, a gloomy and hoarse voice came: “You are courting death right now.”

Thud!

With a loud impact, the pressure on the back of Zhong Ming’s neck vanished. He straightened up and looked back to see Jack grabbing the blonde mercenary. Jack’s massive frame was like a brown bear’s, the muscles in his arms bulging beneath his shirt as he raised his right hand high.

In the next heartbeat, blood sprayed.

“Ah—!!”

The scream was cut short. Zhong Ming watched as Jack slit the blonde man’s throat with a single stroke. Crimson liquid gushed from the artery, instantly staining the wallpaper behind him.

“Heh—ugh—”

With his vocal cords severed, the mercenary didn’t die immediately. His eyes bulged in disbelief as his right hand reached behind him.

“Argh!!”

The next second, the tendons in his wrist were expertly slashed. A dagger clattered to the floor.

Jack looked down and kicked the dagger away, his lips curling into a mocking sneer.

“…All these years, and you lot are still using these toys.”

He scoffed, reaching out to grip the spurting neck of the blonde man. The tall, sturdy mercenary was utterly powerless before him. With a cold expression, Jack drove his blade into the man’s abdomen. White steel went in, red steel came out. Soon, the blonde man’s body was riddled with a dozen gaping holes, bleeding profusely.

Finally, Jack stopped, a smirk playing on his lips. He withdrew the blade and stepped back.

Thump.

With the dull thud of flesh hitting the floor, a blood-red head rolled to a stop by Zhong Ming’s feet.

The man’s pale blue eyes were still wide open, staring directly at Zhong Ming.

Zhong Ming frowned. Looking at the spreading pool of blood on the floor, he felt a wave of revulsion and took a careful half-step back.

On the other side, Jack slowly looked up at Zhong Ming. He suddenly grinned, stepped over the corpse, and walked up to him. He tossed the blood-stained dagger to Zhong Ming.

“Clean it for me.”

Then, he shifted his gaze past Zhong Ming. “How much longer are the rest of you going to wait?”

As his voice fell, a light chuckle erupted from among the menservants.

“Ah!!”

Accompanied by the crisp sound of snapping bone, the red-haired manservant named Ryan twisted around, snatched the knife from his captor’s hand, and slit the man’s throat in one fluid motion.

Almost simultaneously, Li Yizhi withdrew his hand with a faint smile, and the mercenary who had been restraining him fell to the ground at his feet. Turning to Archie, who was standing next to him, he saw him pull a bloodstained fork from the corpse’s eye socket.

“Ugh, disgusting.”

He frowned, waving a hand in front of his face in a gesture of loathing.

“Why use a fork? It’s like pulling a radish and bringing up all the dirt—”

Archie gripped his fork, his brow furrowing. “…It’s not like I chose it.” The mercenary had attacked him with the fork, so he had simply used what was at hand.

In less than a minute, every mercenary had been killed by the menservants.

The elite team hired by a massive corporation was as helpless as toddlers before these servants.

Zhong Ming slowly lowered his eyes.

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