"What is going on?!"
Great Northern Wilderness patted himself down in terror. He watched helplessly as the ghost erged right out of his own body. It was an absolutely horrifying sensation. When the apparition phased through his head, he felt as if he could see his own internal organs and intestines writhing.
He was terrified that he had been hit with so kind of curse, but his status window showed absolutely nothing. His health and stamina bars were perfectly normal. "So she really does possess whoever took the key," Bai Mu noted. "Or, to be more precise, she possesses the key itself. That item is likely a magical artifact that allows a soul to temporarily reside within it. When entering the Script, the Player who uses the key gains a hidden ghost possession status."
"Brother Bai, are you saying this female ghost was possessing from the very beginning?" Great Northern Wilderness asked, his face pale.
"According to the chanics, she attached herself to you the mont you picked up that key in the Village of Mist and killed the Script's boss," Bai Mu explained. "However, the difference between Players in the hub community and Players inside a Script is like the difference between soone playing a mobile ga and the character inside the phone. Because of that, she only exists when you actively use the key."
"If you had handed the key to soone else when starting the Script, she would be possessing them instead."
"This... I'm not cursed, am I?" Great Northern Wilderness asked with a miserable expression. Genuinely concerned for his own life, he feared the Witch might try to hijack his body next.
"You do not need to worry about that," Bai Mu reassured him. "Right now, she is nothing more than a disembodied ghost. If she were actually capable of doing anything significant, she would not have needed to write ssages in blood on the walls to lure us into killing for her."
"I wager that scribbling a few bloody words is the absolute limit of her power."
"But what about those zombies..." Nancheng Port frowned.
"The zombies are her creations to begin with. It is not surprising that she installed so kind of trigger or backdoor chanism in them," Bai Mu replied. "Think of it like a baby pressing a button on a remote to change the TV channel. Manipulating that wall to flip and causing those zombies to go berserk was as simple as clicking a button for her."
The group conversed freely. Given their assigned character identities, this kind of dialogue would have baffled anyone native to the Script. After all, this scenario was set roughly in the Middle Ages, long before the invention of a single electronic device. Terms like television, remote control, or even Player would sound like utter fantasy.
However, ever since his Deserted Island Survival run, Bai Mu knew that Paradise automatically filtered information shared by Players with the outside world.
He had posted about Paradise on the forums back then, and even tried discussing his bizarre experiences with Stephen. Without exception, all of that information had been censored.
No matter what he said, to the characters native to the Script, they just appeared to be having a normal conversation. Any sensitive information regarding Paradise was automatically filtered out. "The one we really need to worry about is that black cat," Yan Yu murmured. "It is the true mastermind behind everything. The Witch, the mansion, the zombies, the ghosts... everything originated from it. That is no ordinary talking cat."
The black cat lazily lowered its body, raising its tail and giving it a few flicks. It treated the group of Players and the ghost as if they were nothing but thin air.
"Give my body back to !" Ellen's ghost suddenly shrieked.
The Witch in Bai Mu's arms tilted her head up. She locked her hollow, pitch-black eye sockets onto the hovering apparition.
Yet, the expression on her small face held nothing but the gentle pity one might show a stray kitten on the street.
"Why aren't you dead yet?!" Ellen raged, utterly furious. "I will have you know that your father turned into a zombie and got hacked to pieces! Your body has already rotted into a pile of mangled flesh! Your village, your friends, your neighbors, everyone you ever knew is dead!" "Hurry up and die already, you absolute fool!"
Hearing those words, the Witch suddenly went rigid. Bai Mu knew that Ellen was not lying; she was telling the brutal truth.
He now had a solid grasp of the cause and effect behind the Village of Mist. The normal ending that Great Northern Wilderness and his team had achieved simply allowed them to escape the village. The village itself was reduced to ruins, and the body of the blonde country girl had been hacked to pieces by Great Northern Wilderness and his crew. He also rembered Great Northern Wilderness ntioning that before they found the final boss, they had killed a male zombie to get the location of the thatched cottage. Unsurprisingly, that zombie was the girl's father.
In other words, through their barrage of actions, the Players had essentially slaughtered the girl's entire family, leaving no survivors.
Bai Mu glanced down at the girl in his arms and gently patted her forehead. "Do not forget what she did to you," he murmured. "She just wants to drive you to despair so she can steal your right to live."
Ellen glared at Bai Mu with venom in her eyes before continuing her assault. "Right up until he died, your father believed I was his daughter. He never suspected a thing."
"He abandoned you in the corner a long ti ago. He never really cared about you. He didn't even notice that his own daughter had been replaced by soone else! Hahaha, while you were sobbing your eyes out in that house, he was busy brushing my hair."
"It's so pathetic! If you hadn't been stupid enough to agree to swap bodies with , your father wouldn't have been killed because of you!"
She kept finding new angles to provoke the girl, relentlessly unleashing a barrage of verbal abuse.
"This female ghost has a really vicious mouth," Great Northern Wilderness couldn't help but mutter. "Does she really have to spew such awful things just to vent?" "She is not rely venting," Bai Mu corrected him. "Her underlying motive is still to steal the body back."
"She can steal a body just by cursing at soone? Is magic really that arbitrary?" Yan Yu asked.
"Strictly speaking, she wants to anger her to death. I am certain of it now," Bai Mu replied. "Chopping off her own legs, gouging out her own eyes, and poisoning her own throat was not just to torture her. The truth is, a Witch can only die from absolute despair."
"So you are saying she is actually trying very hard to stay alive?" Yan Yu raised an eyebrow.
"You could look at it that way. She has to drive the original owner to a despairing death before she can reclaim the body," Bai Mu nodded.
"Hahaha." The black cat chuckled, wearing a mocking expression as it leaped gracefully onto the door panel and stared at Ellen's ghost. "Did you hear what these people are saying, Ellen? How amusing. This is the first ti I have seen you in such a pathetic state. Are you really content with letting them humiliate you like this?" Ellen clenched her fists and glared at the feline. "Isn't this exactly what you wanted?"
The black cat said nothing, simply swishing its tail.
"Kill them! Kill everyone!" Ellen roared in a fit of rage.
The black cat opened its jaws and tapped a paw against its own mouth.
Ellen glanced back at the people behind her, a look of absolute, furious resolve washing over her face.
"You have changed, Ellen. You are not yourself anymore. The old Ellen would never have felt despair."
The mont it finished speaking, the black cat's mouth suddenly expanded into a massive, bloodthirsty maw and swallowed her whole.
Reviews
All reviews (0)