Chapter 1 A Familiar Corridor

A sense of familiarity arose in the brightly lit corridor.

The sounds of fighting echoed in his ears. Looking at the bald head covered in metallic scales, this wasn't the corridor from before?

"I'm back?"

Suren's eyelids twitched violently.

Did I crash out of one glass pane, then crash back through another?

Looking back, the shattered glass had miraculously returned to its original state. If it weren't for the glass shards crunching under his feet, he would have thought he'd experienced a hallucination.

There's something wrong with the spatial layout of this manor!

"A phantom space? Or is it the ability of that 'Specter Kind'?"

Suren felt the world was increasingly strange, but he soon realized, "As expected... if escaping by jumping out the window were so easy, those guys wouldn't have been killed by these bizarre puppets."

With that one jump, Suren fell back into the corridor, crashing into the pile of puppets.

Now that's just great, like a sheep thrown to the wolves.

Don't think that the puppets don't do much damage to the bald guy, but for an ordinary person like Suren, they are definitely a deadly threat.

Suren was already resigned and prepared to give up struggling, but to his surprise... these puppets seemed to ignore him, floating straight past him and surrounding the bald guy.

"Huh... they're not attacking me?"

Suren looked at the puppets floating past him, feeling a surge of joy after surviving a disaster. He speculated inwardly, "Could it be because they discovered the 'surveillance' before?"

He vaguely guessed that the puppets didn't kill him because the "Specter Kind" thought... adding a fun toy wasn't worth killing so quickly.

That's just a pain in the ass.

......

Just then, without warning, he suddenly heard a chilling series of "crack" and "crunch" sounds of bones breaking.

Looking closer, Marcus' joints were all bent backwards.

Like a marionette, he was suspended in the air by invisible threads, his head hanging limply.

Marcus was dead!

After that guy died, the knife-wielding puppets also retreated like a tide, disappearing into the end of the corridor, no longer attacking the bald Ivan.

Not far away, the bald Ivan looked at the sudden and tragic death of his subordinate, his face clearly bewildered, and he cursed, "Damn it!"

There were no puppets near Marcus, so how did he die?

He suddenly realized that the "Specter Kind's" methods were probably not limited to controlling puppets.

The bald guy naturally noticed Suren, who had been spared by the puppets earlier, and guessed that he might know something.

But before he could ask, a closed door not far away suddenly opened.

At that moment, an amiable old man in a tailcoat walked out of the door and said in an emotionless tone, "My master invites both of you to the banquet hall for dinner."

Master, dinner?

Suren raised an eyebrow. This didn't seem like anything good.

As he heard these words, he also sized up the butler-like old man.

He noticed that the guy's eyes hadn't moved at all while he was talking, and upon closer inspection, his skin had a waxy, oily sheen.

Clearly, this butler wasn't alive either.

Suren remained calm.

The main thing was, even if he didn't want to be calm, he couldn't win a fight.

But where could the bald Ivan's violent temper endure this?

You just killed one of my brothers in front of my face, and now you're inviting us to dinner?

"Go to hell!"

The bald guy cursed and fired a shot.

"Bang!" The butler was blown to pieces.

At that moment, that deep voice suddenly sounded again, saying in a sinister tone, "Not following the rules of the game will get you killed..."

"Humph!"

The bald guy snorted coldly, still somewhat unconvinced.

But suddenly, just as unexpectedly, his whole body stiffened.

Just like when Marcus died before.

Suren saw it clearly this time. Crystal-clear threads, like fishing lines, bound the bald guy, preventing him from moving at all.

Moreover, as the threads tightened, the metallic scales on the bald guy's skin cracked, and the threads cut directly into his flesh, causing scarlet blood to flow out.

Suren's eyelids twitched. "What a bizarre method..."

Clearly, that bizarre power was far beyond imagination.

Seeing that Ivan was about to be dismembered into seven or eight pieces in the next second, just a split second before his body was torn apart, the bald guy lost all his previous toughness and shouted, "Wait, I'm willing to go!"

.......

Just like that, Suren and the bald Ivan were invited into the banquet hall by the butler, whose body was half blown apart.

The decorations here were equally luxurious, and a gramophone played soothing music.

Many people were already seated at the table. It looked lively, and the atmosphere seemed quite harmonious.

Suren was guided to an empty seat by a maid puppet.

He glanced at the people at the table, and he had a good idea of what was going on.

Although these "people" were all sitting upright in their seats, they were expressionless and stiff...

Clearly, not a single one was alive.

Either puppets or corpses fixed to the seats with threads, looking very eerie and bizarre.

However, Suren wasn't too surprised. He naturally didn't think that the "Specter Kind" would be so kind as to invite them to dinner.

And seeing the bald guy's expression as if he'd eaten a fly, he probably knew all of these corpses.

The two of them sat down in the empty seats, and the maid puppet behind them put on napkins and then uncovered the silver-covered plates in front of them.

Suren had smelled a strong smell of blood when he sat down, and he vaguely guessed what it was.

When the cover was opened, the smell of blood was even more overpowering.

In the plate in front of him was a reddish-brown liver, still slightly steaming with blood, looking like it had just been taken from a living body not long ago.

This manor probably didn't have any living livestock, so you could guess with your toes what kind of liver this was...

Suren raised an eyebrow, not too surprised.

In this bizarre manor, it would be strange if there was normal food.

He had played many perverted horror games, and this kind of plot... wasn't too outrageous.

A glance out of the corner of his eye showed that his plate was pretty good.

In front of the bald guy was a skinned human head. The bloody eyeballs connected to the nerves were placed in a small dish, seemingly as an after-dinner "dessert."

Looking at the green hair on the side, this head seemed to be an old acquaintance—the mohawked guy that Suren had killed in the study before.

At that moment, that persistent voice sounded again, "The rules of the game are: you must finish eating. Otherwise... you will die."

At that moment, everyone at the table, whether puppets or corpses, turned their heads and stared straight at the two living people at the table with empty eyes.

The butler also urged in a very warning tone, "What's wrong, esteemed guests? Is the food not to your liking?"

.......

Suren and the bald guy certainly didn't plan to eat the things in the plate voluntarily.

But clearly, whether they ate or not wasn't up to them.

At that moment, transparent threads had already quietly fallen from the ceiling and bound their limbs.

Suren noticed it, but he didn't feel anything unusual in his body.

The bald guy on the side obviously realized what was happening, his face turning very ugly, and he muttered desperately, "A mental-type 'limb control', at least a 'Gold-rank' Specter Kind, it's all over..."

He had already experienced the power of these threads before, and he thought they were just a simple physical control, thinking that he might have a chance to fight back if he found an opportunity.

But he didn't expect that sitting in this chair, he realized that the "Specter Kind" was also proficient in mental control.

This was an ability that could easily kill him.

"..."

Suren's ears perked up, and he clearly heard what the bald guy was muttering.

Soon, he also understood what that "limb control" meant.

At that moment, he found that his hands were uncontrollably raised, and then he picked up the knife and fork placed next to the plate, and began cutting the liver in the plate, behaving elegantly and gentlemanly...

This feeling was very strange. It wasn't a simple marionette. It was as if the brain had lost control of the body, and he could only watch his hands, uncontrollably, cutting the meat in the plate.

One cut, one cut... the plate was full of blood.

Not far away, the bald guy had already swallowed a burst-eye eyeball, crunchy and crisp.

The sound of chewing was particularly eerie in this quiet banquet hall.