Clearing the Game at the End of the World Chapter 264

Chapter. 14. One Empire, Three Legends (21)

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A person died. And obviously, he was murdered by someone.

With whispers of a fierce snowstorm engulfing the entire castle, all vassals and servants gathered in the hall on the first floor at the father’s command.

“Emerson Phil. Dona Mala. Kenny Phyllis. “Is it true that there are three people?”

“yes. “They are a handyman, a laundry person, and a kitchen assistant, respectively.”

“…What is the cause of death?”

“In the case of Emerson Peel, hemorrhage caused by a dagger. It’s in front of the back door of the main castle servant. The verb dona ma. “It was found between the women’s dormitory and the main castle, and this person, Kenny Phyllis…”

“Continue, Lord Cedric.”

“….Kenny Phyllis’ body was so damaged that it was difficult to determine the cause of death when it was discovered. hmm. Almers, Botaire. This way for a moment. “Matriarch, this is a rather unholy corpse, but I think it will be important to see it in person to make a decision.”

Sir Cedric seemed to be choosing his words after observing the feelings of my brother and sister next to my mother, then called two large servants and covered the body with a cloth. As his father approached him, he heard the sound of a cloth being carefully walked.

“Ke, Kenny…. Whoop! Wow!

“This….”

If there was one thing that Cédric overlooked, it was that the coachman Botaire was not at all accustomed to such scenes. While his father was drooling, Botaire was retching and bowed down, and I, who was next to his mother, could see the corpse.

A few months ago, I went on a fall hunting trip with my father. My father laughed when he saw that the servants and dogs were herding deer, and that I was unable to hit a deer that was close to me due to my poor bow skills.

What I remembered most that day was the deer. Big, bloodshot eyes. Four legs hanging from a wooden stand. The sharp dagger of the servant who always smiled brightly cut straight through the deer’s stomach, blood and intestines pouring out.

Me and the drivers, who were shocked and unable to speak, smiled brightly when they saw it. Fathers.

Phyllis’ frozen body reminded me of that deer.

Wow!

“Uh, mother?”

“Shh. Let’s stop going in now. “Father and the knights will take care of it.”

“but….”

“hurry!”

That morning’s incident ended for my siblings and I under our mother’s strict hand.

Three deaths. Three bodies. The blizzard was still raging, and the knights found no traces of their entry or exit.

That meant only one thing.

‘Someone among our servants or knights… killed them.’

Among the familiar faces gathered on the first floor, there was one whose face we did not see. And that everyone here knew about it.

The intangible anxiety that filled Teldemire Street was floating through the hallways in the form of fear and distrust.

****

“From that day on, my father tried to keep my siblings and I in a safe place. “We stayed in my mother’s room instead of our own, and knights always guarded the door.”

“Are you on guard for the murderer?”

“…Sadly, after that morning the distinction between murderers and non-murderers has become meaningless.”

Aldrich wrapped a blanket around Lucilla’s slightly trembling shoulders and played with the photo in the locket.

“There was a rumor among the servants. All three dead people were suffering from coughing. Just the day before, Emerson had had a minor argument with the maid because she was spitting and coughing profusely, and Donna had told the lodgers that she found it annoying to have to wash her handkerchiefs. Kenny originally had bad lungs. She was a healthy person with no fever or any special symptoms, although they all had a cough. “I can no longer even notice things like that.”

All it takes is half a day for family members who have been together for as little as a few months or as long as ten years to turn their backs. And all we had was a few words of conversation because we couldn’t stand the silence.

‘The idea was to kill all those with symptoms before the coughing disease spreads further.’

‘…Master, haven’t you been coughing a lot lately?’

‘I was cursed. ‘Now you are paying the price for all the years of insulting and snarling at the temple!’

‘Meh, Ms. Mayna! Don’t come any closer! You stayed next to the fallen master every day! Ha, if you take one more step next to me, I’ll stab you!’

‘Mina, Mina! Mr. Borte! Why, why are you like this! No, don’t leave me alone! please! Please open this door! please!!!’

‘…Hey, Bert. Do you have the emergency storage key? I need to bring weapons and food. Everyone else is already carrying weapons. If crazy guys set fire to our bed or knights come to cut off our heads, we’ll need a sword. Don’t trust anyone. no one!’

‘mina! It’s an order! Drop your weapons and go to your room! ‘Why on earth are you doing this!’

‘Ooh, don’t be ridiculous! ‘Go back to a place full of those cursed people?’

‘Such foolishness…. There is no such thing as an epidemic!’

‘Dozens of people have already died because of it! Even if you don’t have it, you already have it! ….My hometown is less than a day’s drive from here. Me, I’m going back. Here, if I just eat the food in this warehouse and last until spring, I can go home to my younger siblings! no no! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! If you are going to kill me, you too! Let’s see if we can survive until spring without anything to eat!’

‘Boo, it’s fire! ‘The food warehouse is on fire!’

‘The knight burned Mina, who was suffering from a coughing disease, alive!’

‘The Count is trying to kill us all!!!’

The servants scattered throughout the castle among those who were close to each other, and soon began killing those closest to them first.

‘Gagging! Lord Summerson… Why?’

‘I’m sorry, Captain. The Teldemire family is already finished. Killing and burning everyone who is sick. The castle is isolated due to an infectious disease and a sudden snowstorm! Now I know clearly what that means! To kill and burn everyone who breathed the same air in this damn castle! God isolated the castle to end this damn situation right here! It’s a mission! As a knight, as a human being! ‘I will not allow this terrible epidemic to spread to the village!’

The knights’ beliefs were polluted and tainted, leading them in a strange direction.

4 days. It was only 4 days. Before the killer of the first three people could be found, another murder occurred, and the smell of blood drove people into a corner and madness. A poker was put into the eye of someone who greeted them every morning, knights who swore loyalty to the same lord exchanged swords, and everywhere was burning and thick smoke filled the castle.

“The screams of a person being burned, the death of a maid stabbed with a sword, the sounds of someone cutting themselves while losing consciousness and muttering an incomprehensible prayer… Neria and I hid in our mother’s room and shivered all day. The doors that no one had managed were frozen tightly, and the acrid smoke filled the castle, making me delirious. Everyone was going crazy. My father couldn’t see his face after his first murder, and the knights who guarded the door began to disappear one by one. Sir Cedric struck the neck of the knight who was trying to break through the door, leaving us as the only line of defense left to protect my mother and my siblings.”

“Gwok. Ghostly old man. “I want to ask you something.”

During Aldrich’s story, which filled the carriage like a cold flame, Notum raised his hand and asked a question.

“Ghost teacher, you are a child. He was only in the room with his mother. A vivid story as if you had seen it with your own eyes. What do we do?”

=========

– Jokass: Wow, shit. I couldn’t breathe and I was listening. Come to think of it, I see. How could a kid who was only in his room know everything about what was going on outside?

– Roru Drug: Ugh…. It’s cold… You, it’s so cold, but honey… Shall we sleep together today? It’s because it’s cold… because it’s cold… because they don’t eat it… it’s definitely not because they’re scared…

– Jokass: Yem disease. See you later.

Tiring-!

[Player ‘Jokass’ has left the chat room.]

– Noru Drug: AC. I have to go catch it again. People get tired.

Tiring-!

[Player ‘Noru Drug’ has left the chat room.]

– takealook: They are playing well.

– Heungan Mandu: So, how did Aldrich really know all that?

– Speed ​​Wagon: Let’s listen. Because Notum happened to ask a good question.

=========

It rattled. It rattled.

There was silence in the carriage as it drove through the dark night.

Aldrich, who poured alcohol over the dusty memories, turned his red face to Notum.

“okay. You guessed it very well. If I were just a child, there is no way I would have been able to remember and tell the story so clearly, as vividly as if I had seen it before my eyes. “How did this happen?”

“…Grrr. The teacher is a warlock. “Is it possible that the teacher is the culprit behind it all?”

Aldrich, who was looking at Notum cautiously at his question, shook his head with a sigh.

“Unfortunately, it was a bit off. Notum. Although I held a very important position in that series of events, I was not the culprit. If I had to really ask, I would say it was the most important living sacrifice.”

“Geuwooum. “So, how?”

“…It was a dream. dream. Like Emerson’s dream the day before he died, images of a smoky castle flashed through my mind one by one as I lay down with a fever that was starting to boil again. Nanny Meina is seen locked in her alcove and burned alive by servants. A friendly stable manager is tied naked to the back of a horse and disappears into a snowstorm, and people are watching and giggling. Users going crazy. Knights going crazy! Even the father goes crazy! All those scenes passed before my eyes. A nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from constantly tormented me as a child. and. Finally, the end of the nightmare. “I awoke from a long sleep to the sight of Sir Cedric chopping up a dead knight at the door.”

Aldrich woke up drenched in cold sweat to the sound of thick smoke and screaming. I was in despair when I heard the sound of pounding on the tightly locked doorknob. That sound didn’t mean he woke up from a nightmare, but that his nightmare had come true.

The final scene of the dream. The scene where Cedric, who hacked up his fellow knights, laughs eerily as he looks at the door where they are, was played out exactly as it was in reality.

****

Knock knock.

“countess. “Can I come in for a moment?”

“…Sir Cedric. “Please step aside.”

“….”

Knock knock knock.

“Lady Mare. That’s me. Article by Cedric Basis. He has been your help since you were a girl and has always had your back. This is Knight Cedric. Don’t you remember? It was like this that day too. “Something goes wrong in the family, and I desperately have to escape the burning castle, carrying you, who doesn’t know what to do…”

“I warned you, Cedric Basis! As the hostess of the Teldemire family, I hereby command you. “Get away from the door now!”

“…..”

Cedric’s words stopped at the sound of his mother’s angry voice, and he heard the knight’s footsteps retreating as he approached the door.

Also, the sound of a sword being drawn.

Quad Deuk!

“Aaaah!”

Instead of cutting the black door, which was full of teeth and covered in blood and grease, he broke it, and the knight’s gloved hand came through the broken door and easily opened the door.

Covered in blood, he was transferred from his mother to Neria. Then he turned his gaze towards me.

“Lord Cedric….”

“Countess. No, Mare. Did you know that? Ever since I swore allegiance to you on that hill. As my article, of course everything. That I even gave my heart to you. That day was just like today. The family embroiled in rebellion was on fire, and I, who had already sworn to give everything to you, jumped into the fire without hesitation. This is how you live and grow into a beautiful woman. “It makes my heart so happy to see them have two children.”

Cedric looked like he was out of his mind as he called out to his mother, me, and Neria and brought the tip of his sword to them one after another.

“…Actually, I’m not happy. It was wrong from the beginning. Everything is so clear. “I regret realizing only now what I should have done and what I should not have done.”

Crash. Crash.

With every step Cedric took, the armor vibrated, and blood leaked through the armor. Her mother, who read that clear murderous intent, blocked the front of her two children, walked backwards, and whispered quietly.

“Aldrich. “Take Neria and go to her father.”

“mother?”

“right now!”

Grumble!

“Kuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

It happened in the blink of an eye without me even having time to think. Her mother, who was standing in front of my siblings, lifted a hot brazier with her bare hands and poured it on Sir Cedric. While Cedric, covered in burning charcoal and ashes, hesitated, her mother’s hand violently pushed my back.

“Uh, Mom!”

Aldrich and Neria saw Cedric clutching his face and moaning, and his mother blocking the door.

A knight with an ugly face glaring at his mother.

Mother’s determined face.

His younger brother’s small hand held in his.

My mother turned to the stairs leading downstairs, opposite my father’s study.

“Mom, it’s okay. Cedric will come after me, and you will go to your father. Understand? Stables on the first floor. If you hide in the straw bale in the stable, Mom will come find you. “Now go!”

At the sound of his mother’s cracked voice, Aldrich ran down the smoky hallway.

I could hear the angry knight yelling and my mother screaming from behind. Aldrich, holding his younger brother, did not stop his steps.

The once beautiful hallway was filled with stale smoke and the smell of burning flesh.

****

“Heo-eok, heo-eok!”

I was dizzy and out of breath. Every time she inhaled the smoke, the hallway seemed to flow and return like candle wax, and the short hallway that led to her father’s study seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon.

‘dream. ‘It’s a scene we all saw in our dreams.’

The mother’s screams and the hallway expanding. An illusion of blood pouring out like a tidal wave, filling the hallway. In the place where countless famous paintings used to be, bizarre arms and legs were swallowed as if they had become one with the wall.

Aldrich was seeing dreams and reality overlap in his flickering consciousness. The dream was now moving forward in step with reality.

“young master? “If you’re here at this hour, you’re a damn, goddamn, useless kid!”

‘You have to avoid to the left.’

Quaaaang!

When Mina, whose skin has melted, appears holding a kitchen knife soaked in blood, a chandelier will fall on her head. Her blade grazed her shoulder, but Mina was pierced from the top of her head by her large chandelier.

Clink, clink, clink!

By the time her dented servant girl rolled down the stairs and cried three times.

“Oooh… Master? Missyi?”

The driver, looking like a monster, with yellow blisters all over his body, will appear and grab his ankles.

“Hehehe…. Well, master. There are a lot of wood chips and broken debris everywhere, and those thin slippers won’t work. It would be much better if you put in a sturdy and safe horseshoe. I have only eight pieces of poles, only eight pieces of my feet ….

Suddenly!

By the time the yellow blisters burst and the little spiders crawling out from inside crawled up his ankles and up to his knees.

“You’re safe.”

“Ah, father!”

“dad!”

okay. At exactly this spot, his father appeared and decapitated his coachman.

I couldn’t tell if this hell was an illusion or reality. Just seeing his father again gave him hope.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“There is a passage under the castle that no one knows about. This place was created just in case. The exit may be blocked because of the snow… but at least we can hold out until everyone here kills each other and there is no one left.”

After wiping the sword on his bloody robe, my father strode forward. Aldrich did not follow right away, but paused at the sight.

eye. My father’s eyes were strange. For a moment, as if the two pupils were moving separately, I saw the illusion of the open iris moving around inside the eye like a living creature.

“Do I really have to go underground?”

“then. Are you planning on dying here? If you want to go crazy and die, then at least hand over Neria. “You can’t break the family line.”

“Oh, no.”

Aldrich shook his head at that frosty voice. Because of the heat. I can only see things because of the heat. In our castle there are no hallways made of flesh, no eight-eyed maids, no circular staircases twisted like intestines. My head went crazy because of the heat and the smoke.

Shake!

Deep inside the stable. Aldrich kept repeating this as he walked down the stone steps beneath the planks his father had built. Because there was nothing he and Neria could do together. Although the endless downward stairs were so ominous and scary, Aldrich had no choice but to follow in his father’s footsteps.

My father went down the underground passage without a single light without losing a single step.

Step by step. Step by step. Step by step. Step by step.

“slowly. Come down carefully. Don’t get hurt. Yes, as undamaged as a speck of dust. good. You’re all here. ”

“father? “This isn’t a passageway, is it?”

“No, it’s a passage. Inside, not outside. “It is a passage leading to the deepest part of this world.”

A room without a single light made of natural rock. In the middle of the stone wall, there was a stone structure that shed a soft red light.

The father, who introduced the small stone room with open arms as if in ecstasy, approached Aldrich with a noble gait and stabbed his sword into Aldrich’s chest. I can’t imagine the hand of a father killing his son. It was a natural movement, like taking a walk or picking up fruit to eat.

Phew!

“Ugh! Huh…”

“Shh. Yes, it hurts a lot. Hot as a flame, cool as winter. It will pass soon. “It’ll be soon.”

The moment the word [altar] crossed my mind, I felt a hot skewer digging into my stomach. The pain was so bad that I couldn’t even scream, and no matter what I tried, my legs were so weak that I couldn’t do anything.

“Oh, brother! Oppa! Argh!”

“Shh. Neria. You have to be quiet. I still need to learn etiquette harder. In this precious place, keep your body and mind in order. “Like a butterfly flapping its wings, lightly.”

I could hear Neria crying and the stone structures rattling. Aldrich could not raise his head, but the vision in his mind clearly illuminated a room filled with gloomy light. Her maddened father placed her Neria on her altar, and when Neria, seeing the ropes like her hair, resisted with all her might, her father’s clumsy hand struck her delicate belly, causing her to faint. I ordered it. and. and….

“….mom?”

In a gloomy and blurry video. Aldrich cried out involuntarily at the silhouette reflected in the entrance of the stone room.

Suddenly!

Tuk. Degurrr….

“Stupid. “Don’t hurt me.”

And then, without any warning, my father’s head fell off.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

“mom?”

His mother, barefoot and without any wounds, came and picked him up as he fell. Blood began to flow along with his steps, and disgusting flesh and bones began to grow on the gray stone wall.

“My son. Did you hear what Mom said? I also met my father. “He also brought his younger brother to the stable.”

It was unmistakably my mother’s face. Even after giving birth to two children, she still has a pretty and beautiful face.

But his vision reflected something completely different.

“oh. After all, he is my son. I knew he had good eyes, but…. did he ‘see’ his mother? Aldrich?”

He nodded.

What caught his eye was not an illusion.

Aldrich nodded towards the tower-like being made of white bones that swallowed up torn souls with each breath.

“Feel so good.”

The mother met those eyes and smiled brightly.

****

fantasy,