Chương 574: Chapter 565: The Sacrifice

Space distorted, and I found myself in an identical copy of the room we had just entered. I glanced at the clock in the corner of the room. It was now just past midnight, at least according to the clock - which meant that a little over five hours had passed, at least in-story. It felt all the more disorienting to me because all we had actually done was teleport from one story scene to another. The room itself hadn't changed, though.

In other words, we were following the 'story' established in the last scene - probably. I glanced out the window. The moonlight was like bright, liquid silver, streaming into the room and lighting it up even better than the sun had. I frowned. This was not how moonlight usually worked. Moonlight being brighter than sunlight was… odd, to say the least. Strangely enough, my head also pounded with every single breath I took.

I had a headache - which was not natural, considering how ridiculously high my [Fortitude] was. With my runes giving me a solid +110 to my physical and mental stats after my major ability evolution to my absorption ability, along with my normal Grade 11 in the stat, I had Grade 17 in Fortitude, in total. That should have been more than enough to shrug off a minor headache - in fact, it should have been enough to shrug off a regular person hitting me in the head repeatedly with a sledgehammer.

The hammer would break long before my skull did. Why did I feel so terrible, despite my absurd [Fortitude]? A moment later, my friends appeared in the room, before Anise whimpered in pain. A moment later, most of my other companions followed, although Sallia looked notably unaffected.

"Dying starlight and bracken trees, it feels like someone hit me over the head with a bloody hammer," said Kexley. Anise nodded in agreement, and Valeksi followed suit a moment later. I realized that my Fortitude was helping me - whatever was causing our headache was just capable of punching through whatever resistance was causing my headache in the first place.

"Sallia, do you feel anything?" I asked.

"I do when I don't activate my physical boosts, but I instinctively activated all of them once I felt pain," she said.

"As of now, I feel nothing." I scanned the area with my senses. My magical sense didn't turn up anything, and my soul sense didn't turn up anything unusual either. The mansion was filled with maids and butlers, just like before. I had no idea whether they were the same, or lookalikes designed to resemble the maids and butlers from the last room - as disturbing as the idea of manufacturing copies of people felt, it was certainly something the Old Market would have done.

However, through my conceptual vision, I noticed that we were currently right in the middle of some kind of bubbling, churning soup of concepts. Most of them were mundane, but a few of them were quite unusual - such as the concept of 'blood sacrifice' and 'replacement.' Neither of those concepts seemed good to me. I immediately threw a copy of what I was seeing into the communication bracelets.

My companions also looked more than slightly disturbed, but before we could talk about what we were seeing, I heard a piercing scream from another part of the mansion. I had a bad feeling about whatever was coming next. <I'm going to investigate, > I said, before I tore open the door and barrelled out of the room. My companions followed behind me as I dashed towards the source of the screaming.

I moved through a few halls of the mansion, and entered the dining hall where we had eaten a meal less than half an hour ago. Then, I froze. Right in the center of the room was an exact copy of the little girl we had seen earlier. However, her body now resembled the state of the corpse we had seen when we first entered the mansion. Her legs were missing, and her body was covered in bloody cuts and wounds. It looked like someone had tried to flay her alive, before finally putting her out of her misery.

Standing right in front of her was a horrified maid. Her dress was covered in blood, and there was a thick sense of wrongness about the maid, as well. I checked the corpse of Vanessa with my soul sight, and recoiled. There was something in her body… but it wasn't her. It wasn't human, either. It was… something. It was as if someone had just cleanly scooped out the soul of the little girl we had seen earlier today, and then replaced it with some kind of horror, lurking within her corpse.

Of course, I had a sneaking suspicion that this 'corpse' had never actually held a real humanoid soul at all - it was probably a prop specifically manufactured for this adventure. But the sight, as well as the deep sense of wrongness pervading the room, still made for an unsettling atmosphere. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I checked the 'corpse' with my conceptual vision, and breathed a sigh of relief.

There was no trace of any concept of 'humanity' or 'life' attached to the little girl's corpse. Since those concepts were prevalent in every human body I had ever seen, and tended to stick around for several days after someone died, this clearly wasn't the real Vanessa. I hadn't arrived too late. I also had a better idea why the 'Vanessa' from the last room had been so incapable of opening up or changing. The start of this room was already set.

If I changed the storyline too much in the previous room, it wouldn't connect to this 'cutscene.' I still had no idea how this mansion made the people here follow the plot of the adventure as a whole, but at least the Vanessa from the last room was probably still alive and well. As if in response to me looking at her, the 'corpse' on the ground got up and smiled at me. Her smile was grotesque and nightmarish, like something that had never been human trying and failing to imitate a proper human smile.

All of the muscles in her mouth moved almost correctly, but the final image of her smile just didn't look right.

"Aunt Guest Name! I'm so glad to see you again!" She said. Her void-black, inhuman eyes stared at me like the eyes of a doll. She lurched to her feet, but her movements were wrong. They were like something that had never been human was trying to control her movements, almost like an inexperienced puppeteer trying to control a puppet. Through my conceptual vision, I could see the concept of 'replacement' growing stronger and stronger. I hit her with an extinguish, and she immediately dropped dead.

Slaughter: Kill an inhabitor for the first time Achievement +2, 500 Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured Inhabitor for the first time. New Skill created. Theft: If you are looking into the eyes of another living creature, you may make a 'mental attack' against them, which directly pits your willpower and essence reserves against the willpower and essence reserves of your chosen target. As long as eye contact is maintained for long enough, you may take over their body and consume their original soul.

Note - if the difference in power between this ability and an enemy is too great, this ability may cause backlash for the user. I blinked in surprise. She had died that quickly? I had been expecting a major fight. <Is she dead? > asked Sallia. <Yeah, I got the Achievement for killing whatever was controlling her body, > I said. The uneasy feeling in my chest grew stronger. Most of the proper enemies I had seen in this mansion were around grade 20-25 in my soul sight.

I hadn't had time to check her vitality with my soul sight, since I'd had a bad feeling about this - but if she died this fast, she probably wasn't the real enemy here. The maid that had found Vanessa's corpse knelt beside the young lady. Tears started to leak out of her eyes.

"How could this happen? The lady of the manor was just about to have her next birthday. Things were starting to get better, so why…" her voice trailed off. I also frowned. Something about this scenario was completely wrong. I wasn't sure if this was just some kind of inconsistency in the 'scenario' created by the people who made this adventure or not, but Vanessa was liberally coated in the concept of 'human sacrifice'. That implied that someone had sacrificed her. The only other person nearby was this maid.

Had she killed Vanessa? Or at the very least, was that the underlying story we were supposed to believe in? I narrowed my eyes as I looked at the maid. Perhaps she was a powerful spellcaster in disguise, or had some kind of powerful ability? Her fortitude seemed quite low, but that was nowhere near the entirety of her strength - it was just a good general indicator of how strong she was. General indicators could be wrong. Then, the maid gasped in pain, and started to retch.

Black sludge spewed out of her throat, mixed with faint traces of blood. I looked at her with my conceptual vision. The concept of 'replacement' swirled around her. A moment later, the maid twitched, and her head bent at an angle that should have snapped her spine like a twig. A moment later, she turned towards me, and gave me the same inhuman smile that Vanessa had given me a few moments ago.

"Guest Name, how could you murder Vanessa?" She asked. Before I could reply, I felt the floorboards beneath me splinter and twist, before sharpened stakes of wood erupted beneath my feet. I dodged out of the way, and looked down. When I looked down, I realized things were worse than I thought. The maid wasn't using some kind of magic to control the floorboards beneath my feet. Instead, the entire mansion now had a soul - and it had around grade 20 [Fortitude]. Worse, we were right in the center of its body.