They all looked at the ghost with frightened eyes; they wanted to escape, but there was a worse outcome waiting outside the door.
"What should we do?" Ryan asked as he stood up and moved behind Jane. "Go ask what this kid wants. This is likely a hidden quest... maybe... but from his song, it could totally be a side quest." Jane also hid behind Amadeus.
Then the little boy's eyes glared at them. He threw his head, making it roll until it touched Amadeus's foot. Amadeus immediately kicked it away, and they all ran to a corner of the room. Then a bursting scream erupted from the head as it began to cry. It was so loud that it almost broke their eardrums.
[Warning: The Little Master of the villa is crying. Servants will come to see what is happening. Hide, or you will be killed.]
"Shit, shit, shit!" Jane crouched down, covering her ears. The scream was making her feel dizzy. "We need to calm it down or escape!" she shouted at the others, but the sound of her own voice made the pain even more severe.
Amadeus, who was also on his knees, looked at the head. He had an idea, but he didn't know if it would work since you usually can't touch a ghost. However, he had just kicked its head, and time was short, so he ran toward it and shoved a bar of chocolate into its mouth. Luckily, it worked, and it stopped screaming instantly. The headless body stood up from the armchair and ran toward the head, feeding it the chocolate as the head hummed happily.
Jane read the new notice and reassured the others. "Luckily, we escaped the danger, but now we need to find the backstory of this Young Master and bring his soul in peace." She sighed, desperate over the seemingly impossible mission; she had never encountered a "Main Side Quest" before, but it would give them a lot of points. She took Ryan to a corner to discuss their next plan, leaving Amadeus to stand still, watching the child.
In this story, he was the great-grandson of the housekeeper. He thought that maybe he could use that family history to trick the ghost. Even if he didn't really know how this game worked, he needed to find out more about it.
The only problem was that he felt he was being watched. Since the system had immediately announced that an Anomaly was present, he couldn't just go and talk to the ghost directly. He needed his "little friends" to prompt him, so it would look like he was just following their orders. It was already suspicious enough that he had run all that way while dragging those two along.
So, he walked over to the others while tossing another chocolate bar to the ghost.
"Hey, maybe that kid knows where the ring is? The one I'm searching for, for my grandma?" he asked, sticking to his alibi.
"Ah! You're right! If he realizes you're a family member of someone he knew, maybe he'll give us some hints!" Ryan's eyes brightened as he started to consider the possibilities.
But Jane wasn't convinced. "I don't know... usually, haunted villas are haunted because of dark backstories. The system said the servants would come this way when the kid started crying... So... The real mystery is why the former housekeeper survived while everyone else died." Jane added, her voice full of doubt; she was clearly a fan of thrillers and horror books.
Jane was quite a genius; they wouldn't survive if she didn't have some common sense.
"Yeah... now that you mention it... why would your grandma want a ring that belongs to the Bennett family?" Ryan glared at Amadeus as worry began to fill his mind. What if this wasn't just a normal horror game? It hadn't happened much in the previous games they played, but he'd heard that to make things more intriguing, the System would sometimes put a character inside the story to trick the players. Their main mission was to survive the villa for three nights, but if players stumbled upon a side quest, the time would be prolonged.
Amadeus, listening to these two fools, felt the urge to rip them apart. How the heck was he supposed to know why that woman wanted the ring? Based on their words, it seemed he might be an "Antagonist NPC." If he revealed his identity to the ghost, they might all be killed immediately.
"I—I don't know. I'm just trying to grant her last wish before she dies." He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, looking at them. "Are you saying my grandma could be the one who turned this into a haunted house?" He smirked in ridicule, shaking his head. "A ghost's form shows how they died. Are you saying she chopped that kid's head off?" He continued to mock their remarks, staying on the defensive since he needed to remain with them to continue the game.
"Mmh, it's still suspicious, but we still need you on the team. Just don't reveal who you are to anyone," Ryan said. He still remembered how Amadeus had saved them twice now, and since there was an important side quest involved, they needed an extra hand, especially since Amadeus still had the keys in his bag.
"Amadeus, hand me the picture." Jane had an idea. They could search the entire villa for the 'Wendy' the kid sang about, but it would take too much time. After getting the frame, she walked toward the child, who was eating his chocolate while watching them. She was scared, but she knew it was all a game, so she breathed slowly and cleared her head. "We can't play with you, but if you want, we can ask Wendy." She smiled softly as she showed him the picture. "Is she someone in this photo?"
The headless body pulled the head closer to the frame to look closely. When he saw someone, he started to tap the face of a woman. At first, it was light, but then he continued tapping faster and more angrily.
"AH!" Jane gasped and let go of the frame as the kid crouched down. The light tapping of his finger turned into frightening punches that shattered the glass. Blood scattered everywhere as the kid's body started to tremble with rage, and his head began to scream again.
"Guys, I think we need to run." Amadeus felt the danger of the situation, so he pulled the two closer to the window. "We need to get out!" He opened the window and helped them out; luckily, it was the ground floor. They left the kid as he kept hammering the frame. Jane and Ryan saw the same system alert: the screaming had attracted the attention of the servants.
They ran and ran until they reached the garden and hid inside some bushes. "What the fuck was that! We triggered that kid's rage just with that picture!" Ryan wanted to shout, but he only whispered while pulling his hair.
"I didn't see who he was pointing at... Amadeus..." Jane looked at him with a serious face. "What is your grandmother's name?"
Amadeus, of course, didn't reply since he didn't know.
"We need to know. It would be a big help in finishing this. Even if she was the culprit, we need to get out of here safely." Jane was desperate. She started to think Amadeus could be a killer NPC, but since he had saved them so many times, maybe that wasn't it.
Amadeus then remembered something. He took out the letter his great-grandmother had sent and looked at the name of the sender.
Wendy Ketlyn.
Fuck... this was a massive plot twist.
He didn't know what to do. He considered the possibility that each NPC had a storyline they were supposed to follow, and that he should be acting based on his NPC's characteristics, but he knew nothing about them.
If this was a game, they were being watched. If he was an important NPC, he shouldn't make any wrong moves, yet he didn't even know his own part. If that Wendy woman was the culprit and had sent her great-grandson to do her bidding, then he was likely the antagonist of the game. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Maybe he should just kill himself this time to escape. It would be dangerous if they realized he was the Anomaly; those golden guns looked lethal.
Jane and Ryan looked at each other, already certain that Amadeus was no normal NPC.
"Guys, it was-" Amadeus was about to say his goodbyes when a red notice appeared right before his eyes.
[Want some help?]
The notice floated directly in front of him as he faced his two teammates. He wanted to look surprised, but he held back and simply closed his eyes. "Guys, it was my fault for not saying anything at the very beginning."
He wanted to cough up blood and die immediately.
After he saw the notice, an immense amount of information flooded his head, revealing the entire backstory of the game. He was indeed the Antagonist. His mission was to kill every player. Luckily, his decision to save his teammates while leaving the other team in danger had already led to the deaths of two people, so his actions looked "normal" to whoever was watching. By making the kid scream, he had sent everyone inside the mansion into a blind panic.
And about that woman, Wendy that had been the head housekeeper and had earned the trust of everyone, she was actually a witch. She knew the Bennett family possessed a ring that granted any wish, so she had enrolled to work for them. She stayed for five years searching for the ring, only to discover the dark side of the Bennett family: beneath the house lay an underground sanctuary dedicated to Satan. The ring would only appear through a blood sacrifice. One night, she dragged the child, the most valuable sacrifice, to the sanctuary and chopped off his head. However, she only heard the mocking voice of the devil; one soul was not enough for a wish without limitations. It needed one thousand.
Wendy, whose greed drove her to seek eternal life, had a calculated plan. That night, she handed a cursed knife to a servant; anyone stabbed by it would immediately be consumed by bloodlust and compelled to kill.
The player they had seen earlier, the one covered in blood who had gone mad, was in that state because he had touched the cursed knife.
After everyone in the mansion had died, Wendy trapped their souls inside, allowing negative energy to accumulate. Now, anyone who enters the villa becomes a target for the tormented spirits who want nothing more than to kill.
Once the initial slaughter was complete, Wendy returned home and began organizing events for the curious and the brave. She marketed it as a thrilling game: people would explore a "haunted house," and whoever stayed the longest would win a large sum of money. She invited her victims carefully, instructing them not to spread rumors or tell anyone where they were going, claiming the villa was a "secret" location.
That was how Wendy accumulated the souls she needed. It took her many years, but when the time was finally right, she sent her favorite great-grandson to sacrifice the final souls and retrieve the key from the sanctuary.
It was the perfect plan, but unluckily for Wendy, Amadeus had appeared and ruined everything.
Now that he knew how he was supposed to act, Amadeus was more at ease. He wanted to continue the game because he was curious about how his power seemed to be traveling from world to world, and this was clearly a game governed by a System. He had no intention of following the script to kill everyone; instead, he decided to help his two teammates survive, as he didn't know if being "killed" in this game was lethal for them in reality.
"My grandmother's name is indeed Wendy, but I don't think she is the one who did this. I know her...she wouldn't hurt a fly." he said, putting on a sincere face. "I didn't want to tell you because you seemed so worried about my backstory, but I know just as little as you do. If I were up to something, I never would have shown you my items or revealed anything about my history."
Jane and Ryan considered his words. Amadeus hadn't hesitated to show them the frame or the keys, after all. They nodded, though they couldn't quite shake their lingering worries.
"What do we do now? Shall we stay here for the night?" Ryan asked. The bushes felt relatively safe for the time being.
"I think we should rest. It's too dangerous inside the villa for now." Jane replied. She could tell by the distant, echoing screams that the carnage was still ongoing.
They took turns keeping watch throughout the night. The next morning, they learned from other players about the chaos that had unfolded. After discovering that the cursed knife was the reason the "red player" had gone mad, someone had managed to kick it from his hand but unluckily, that player was already long dead. Between the cursed player and the angry ghosts who had pushed the players to their limits, nine people had died.
Only 22 players and 9 NPCs remained.
Amadeus wanted to fast-forward the game to its end. He wondered how he could bring peace to all the souls without being discovered; if there was a curse to imprison them, there had to be a way to break it.
Since he was the descendant of the witch, and she trusted him enough to retrieve the ring, he assumed his character was supposed to be a capable person with some type of power.
He waited to see if the notification that had helped him before would appear again, but it didn't.
Should I just destroy everything in the mansion? he wondered. Usually, if you find something cursed, you destroy it, right?
Having settled on his plan as an outsider to the game's rules, he smiled and told the others they should keep moving.
"Does this villa have a basement?" he asked.