Chapter 60: The Ghost Looked Like It Had Seen a Boundary Youkai
A dry, crackling scrape echoed from the hallway, growing closer with each passing second. It was the sound of something immense dragging itself along the stone, a rasping noise that set one's teeth on edge.
Inside the room, the air was deathly still. Haruto deliberately slowed his breathing to a near-silent rhythm. Beside him, Yotsuya Miko's knuckles were white as she gripped the corner of the quilt. And though Lin Xuelao could not see, her world was one of sound; in this moment, the approaching horror was more vivid for her than for anyone else.
Creak—
The floor-to-ceiling window was pushed open from the outside. A cold, damp wind instantly flooded the room, carrying the scent of rain and decay.
Splat… splat, splat…
A wet, slapping sound began to echo on the wooden floor, accompanied by the heavy scrape of something being dragged across the floorboards.
Kaguya's hand vanished into her sleeve, her fingers quietly closing around something hidden there. Yotsuya Miko, meanwhile, squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look toward the source of the noise. Lin Xuelao, guided by instinct, unconsciously leaned closer to Haruto.
The crawling sound slithered nearer and nearer, finally stopping right in front of their bed.
The air thickened with the cloying smell of damp dust and rot, punctuated by the soft, sickening whisper of wet hair slithering over wood. The thing was pacing by the bedside, its presence announced by an occasional low, guttural pant.
At some point, Haruto had already slipped a talisman card between his fingers, his posture subtly shifting. If this thing so much as dared to lift the covers, the paper charm in his hand would fly true, no questions asked.
Just as the tension reached its breaking point—
"Aaaaaah—!"
A piercing scream ripped through the silence, so sharp it felt like a needle in the eardrums. It was immediately followed by a frantic, scrambling crawl; the creature sounded as if it had been utterly terrified, scrambling back toward the balcony in a blind panic.
Bang!
A heavy thud resounded from downstairs. It seemed the thing had been in such a hurry that it had fallen directly from the second-floor balcony to the first.
The panicked crawling resumed, this time moving upward along the outer wall of the castle, its frantic scrapes fading into the night.
The room fell into an eerie silence once more.
After a long moment, Kaguya's hushed voice broke the stillness. "What in the world happened to it?"
Haruto was just as baffled. The talisman card was still resting between his fingers, completely unused.
Yotsuya Miko cautiously peeked her head out from under the covers, her gaze drifting toward the balcony. By the pale moonlight, she could see the floor-to-ceiling window was still ajar, the curtains swaying gently in the night breeze. It was as if the entire terrifying episode had been nothing but a shared hallucination.
"It seems… it was scared away by something?" Lin Xuelao offered, her voice laced with uncertainty.
Just then, the parasol hanging at the head of the bed swayed gently. The many eyes that had previously opened across its surface were gone, leaving only a single, faint purple eye that stared out for a moment before vanishing.
As if sensing a familiar presence, Haruto turned his head to glance at Yakumo Yukari's parasol. By the time he looked, however, it had returned to its normal, unassuming state.
"Was that the work of that person in your family?" Kaguya asked, her eyes fixed on the parasol. She hadn't expected Yakumo Yukari to be capable of interfering with a Death Game instance, something that should have been far beyond the rules. But then she remembered Yukari's unique ability to manipulate boundaries, and suddenly, it all seemed perfectly reasonable.
"Probably…" Haruto wasn't entirely sure himself. He leaned suspiciously close to the parasol and called out in a soft, testing voice.
"Yukari-nee? Mother Yukari? Old Hag Zi?"
There was no doubt the ghost had been frightened out of its wits. And in this situation, the only one capable of scaring it so thoroughly was Yakumo Yukari. Only she possessed the power to peek into this place from all the way back in Gensokyo.
Yotsuya Miko was shaken, but she managed to keep her composure. She'd heard stories about Haruto's elder—who was either his sister or his mother, the details were fuzzy—being absurdly powerful, but seeing it in action was another matter entirely.
There hadn't been any signs of a fight. It was more like the ghost, a creature native to this third instance, had simply caught a glimpse of something and fled in absolute terror, tumbling off a balcony in its haste.
'Just a single glance can scare a ghost from the third instance that badly?' she thought, her mind reeling.
Although Lin Xuelao was new to the group, she had pieced together from their conversations that the ghost's bizarre retreat was likely the work of an elder in Haruto's family.
But… what level of power did one need to possess to cross the boundaries of an instance and interfere from the outside?
She recalled a former teammate once mentioning that the strongest players on the forums could achieve something similar, but only by relying on specific items and even then, only to a 'certain degree.' As for scaring a ghost away from across dimensions with a mere look? That was the stuff of fantasy.
"It should have gone to the fourth floor," Kaguya said, walking to the open window. She craned her neck to look outside, but she was careful not to step out onto the balcony itself.
Years of accumulated experience had taught her a valuable lesson. That ghostly thing might be silently lurking in a blind spot, clinging to the outer wall like a gecko, just waiting for some brainless fool to step outside so it could snatch them and crawl away at terrifying speed.
"Most likely. At least the last sounds I heard weren't coming from the third floor." Haruto watched Kaguya's back, her posture completely exposed to the open window. The reflexes he'd honed in countless games screamed at him to deliver a flying kick and slam the door shut. He forcefully suppressed the impulse and instead walked over to gently close the French window himself.
Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, he popped a Curry Fish Ball into his mouth. "It's about what I figured," he said, chewing thoughtfully. "That thing is female."
"Female? How can you be so sure?" Kaguya turned to him, confused. Haruto had been standing between her and Miko the entire time. He couldn't have possibly lifted the quilt to peek, let alone get a clear look.
Haruto shot her a look that plainly said, Are you an idiot?
"I have the Gap, you know," he stated simply. "Just because I can't open it wide doesn't mean I can't open a tiny little slit right in front of my eyes."
Kaguya was momentarily speechless. The sheer disdain in his gaze made her temper flare all over again.
"So… if this so-called Butler is actually the Castle Master, then why is he pretending to be a butler?" Yotsuya Miko asked, breaking the tension.
"Not sure," Haruto and Kaguya said in unison, shaking their heads.
"Maybe there are some things that are more convenient to do as a butler," Haruto added with a shrug. "Like killing us, for example."
"It's the blood-word clue," Lin Xuelao, who had been silent until now, suddenly spoke up.
"The blood-word clue?" Haruto was momentarily stunned. "Can the ghosts and NPCs in an instance interfere with the content of the blood words?"
He had considered the possibility before but had quickly dismissed it. If the ghosts could directly erase or tamper with the clues, what was the point of the players even trying? Aside from a cheater like him who could brute-force his way through, everyone else might as well just give up and wait for death at the very start.
"Ghosts can't see them, let alone interfere. Ordinary NPCs can't see them either. But there is a special kind of existence that can," Lin Xuelao explained, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I encountered one before. They aren't pure ghosts, but a kind of half-human, half-ghost entity that is dependent on a more powerful ghost. As long as the ghost they serve—or they themselves—devours a sufficient number of Death Game players, they can perceive the existence of the blood words. However, they can only see them; they cannot erase or change them."
Hearing that last part, Haruto finally let out a quiet sigh of relief. If the blood words could be tampered with, then all their current theories might be based on false information—a trap deliberately set by their opponent.
"Haruto-san," Yotsuya Miko asked, her curiosity getting the better of her, "when did you first realize there was a problem with the Butler?"
"Right at the beginning of the instance."
"That early?!"
Although Yotsuya Miko had suspected that Haruto and Kaguya had reached their conclusions long before she had, she hadn't imagined it was that early. While everyone else was still struggling just to explore the castle, they had already grasped such a critical piece of information.
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