Once the door opened, Bai Mu retrieved the cloth bear from the ground and walked inside, holding the candlestick high.
Scattered Fireflies and Nancheng Port followed close behind him. The place resembled a dungeon. Withered bones lay inside rust-mottled iron cages. The damp, freezing floor and the corridor walls were encased in copper plating. Bloodstains covered the walls, and the steady drip-drip of water echoed in the silence.
Back in the living room, Great Northern Wilderness and Misty Rain Traveler, who were keeping watch over the zombies, suddenly heard a system notification chime.
[Side Quest "The Witch's Diary" has been updated.]
The quest log indicated that they had already collected two diaries. It seemed their three teammates had found something inside the room.
At that moment, Bai Mu had just obtained a book from the cell area. It had been resting right outside one of the iron cages. Before he even had a chance to open it, he received the quest update notification.
Bai Mu flipped through the pages to examine the contents.
The entries detailed how the witch had lured humans into the Witch's House, one after another.
Using her witchcraft, she caused nobles and villagers who wandered into the forest to lose their way and end up at the mansion's front doors. Faced with food and hospitality, most of the starving lost souls would let their guard down. The witch would then seize the opportunity to lock them in cages, sacrificing their souls to demons in accordance with her contract.
"I sawed off the legs of those young girls to replace my own diseased ones."
"But not a single attempt succeeded. I thought it was because the legs weren't fresh enough, so I began operating before their souls were devoured. The surgeries still failed." "Magic is not omnipotent. I still cannot leave this house to see the sun and the flowers outside."
"The people I imprisoned—the phrase they uttered the most was begging me to let them go home."
"They claimed they were willing to trade everything they had, as long as I let them return home."
"But money and wealth are utterly meaningless to me. I don't understand. Are their homes truly such wonderful places?"
"I despise my home. Father never looks me in the eye, always treating me like thin air."
"He never embraces me with affection, nor does he reprimand me out of concern. He definitely doesn't view me as a person. I even feel that Father tries very hard to pretend I don't exist."
"When my parents shut themselves in their room, doing the things a man and woman must do to maintain their relationship, I can only stare blankly at my surroundings or pick at the labels on my medicine bottles to pass the time."
"It is as if I deliberately try to project an attitude of: How wonderful, I have some free time now."
"In reality, I have been abandoned here, but forcing myself to acknowledge this truth is just too agonizing."
"I hate my home. To me, a home is not a place worth abandoning everything to return to."
"When those people begged me to let them go home, that same feeling of hatred surged in my heart."
"Why were they born without having to suffer the torment of illness? Why can their homes provide them with the feeling of love?"
"The more they pleaded with me to let them go home, the harder it became to suppress my fury and resentment."
"Only when they bleed and scream do I feel a sense of thrill and pleasure. Look at you all. No one is coming to save you. You should all experience the exact same agony that I do."
"I have become abnormal. No, my past self was the abnormal one."
"It doesn't matter anymore. I am a witch, anyway, and this is exactly what a witch is supposed to do."
"Let those people remember me, fear me, and hate me in their suffering. Only then can I truly feel alive."
These were the final words penned in the diary. If the previous volume recorded her experiences right after becoming a witch, then by the time she wrote this one, she had devolved into a complete lunatic. Deriving twisted pleasure from torturing others, she had completely lost all human empathy.
After the three of them finished reading through the journal, Scattered Fireflies felt a chill run down her spine. She glanced at the empty cages, almost able to picture the cold, apathetic witch torturing young girls in this very spot.
"The events described in the Script's summary closely mirror the process detailed in this diary." Unfazed, Nancheng Port calmly analyzed the intelligence and clues. "Looking at it this way, we were indeed lured here by the witch."
"Logically speaking, killing the witch in the second-floor bedroom should clear the Script. But why did she guide us into the house only to never show herself?"
"It might be because of her illness," Scattered Fireflies suggested. "Hasn't she been constantly trying to replace her legs? Since the transplants failed, her condition must be continuously deteriorating. Perhaps it has reached the point where she can't even get out of bed to walk."
"But that still doesn't explain the bloody words on the walls," Nancheng Port countered. "She locked us in this house; her goal should be to kill us."
"Yet those bloody words are giving us hints? Could she be trying to earn our trust first, only to feed us false information at a critical moment?"
"Hard to say," Scattered Fireflies replied.
At this point, they found themselves somewhat stuck.
The biggest problem was that they still hadn't figured out a way to deal with those zombies.
Two choices now lay before them: one was to follow the bloody text's hint and kill the zombies, and the other was to completely ignore the undead and continue exploring the mansion.
The only places they hadn't explored yet were the basement and the second floor.
According to the chef's intelligence, the second floor was where the witch resided. Going there would likely trigger a boss battle. As for the basement, following standard progression, Bai Mu estimated they had to resolve the zombie situation first before they could obtain the key to unlock it.
Ever since they entered the mansion, it felt as though they had stepped into a single-player game with a fixed progression route, where beating the current stage was a prerequisite for entering the next. Bai Mu felt a faint sense of incongruity. If only he had participated in the "Village of Mist" Script. He believed that many key pieces of information could be answered in that main storyline Script.
Great Northern Wilderness and his group had only achieved a normal ending back then, leaving far too many mysteries hidden beneath the surface.
Bai Mu took out the cloth bear doll to examine it again, but the situation suddenly took a drastic turn. A chaotic uproar erupted outside the living room.
Through the vision of the Guard Mushroom, Bai Mu observed the zombies. The undead creatures, which had previously been clawing at the front doors, suddenly spun around and let out a blood-curdling, terrifying wail.
Billowing clouds of black mist shrouded them. Those emaciated husks suddenly twisted together like braided cords, morphing into a massive sphere. It was as if a terrifying suction force existed at their center, pulling dozens of dried corpses tightly together.
"Holy crap, they're entering the second phase!" Bai Mu heard Misty Rain Traveler's voice.
"Brother Bai, come out quick! Something's happened!" Great Northern Wilderness shouted as well.