"Are you crazy? The basement is always the most dangerous place to go in a haunted house!" Ryan looked at Jane with a meaningful stare. To him, it was obvious that this damned NPC wanted to kill them now that they had discovered his secret. Jane looked back at him, worried, but so far Amadeus had only helped them. Before jumping to conclusions, she asked, "Is there something you want to do down there?"
"Not really. I'm just thinking about how to end things quickly," Amadeus replied. Since I'm on the run, he added to himself.
"End our lives quickly?!" Ryan yelped, terrified. Amadeus laughed heartily; no wonder he wanted them to win, they were hilarious.
"Whatever, I'll just follow you." Amadeus shrugged his shoulders and fell silent. He realized he shouldn't make himself too noticeable.
In the morning, things seemed easier with no ghosts in sight. However, as players ventured into secret and dark places, they triggered killing machinery; some fell into pits that opened out of nowhere. Every player received a notification whenever someone died, making the survivors even more anxious. If they could, they would have stayed locked in a safe room, but the System wouldn't allow it.
Amadeus wasn't even aware that three players had died that morning. He had his cowardly teammates to thank for his safety, as they had only explored the ground floor again, staying close to the windows for an easy escape.
While his two teammates searched for items in the kitchen, Amadeus examined the keys in his possession. They had tried every key on every locked room they found, but so far, they had no results.
As Amadeus stared at his companions, he began to pity them. He didn't know why they were in this game, but they were doing things half-heartedly, doing just enough to stay out of immediate danger, but not enough to earn a significant reward. He knew they needed to uncover the child's backstory and bring him peace, but it seemed they didn't even care anymore. Amadeus, however, couldn't stand doing just the bare minimum.
"About that ghost child..." he began, catching the attention of the two. "Shouldn't we try to help him?"
"Mmh... it's not that we don't want to." Jane replied. "But this event seems really dangerous. Even if having you as a teammate is a big help, there is... how do I explain it... a monster among us that could interfere with our plans." Jane couldn't quite explain what an Anomaly was. Everyone said they were powerful, hideous monsters; she would never believe it if someone told her that the handsome Amadeus was one of them. To her, he was just a mysterious NPC.
Amadeus, having just been called a monster, had plenty he wanted to say in response. "What if I go off to explore on my own for a while? I still need to find that ring and ask my grandmother about it." He'd had enough of this "safe mode" gameplay. "If you want to come with me, great. If not, I'll come back to you later... assuming I'm still alive, that is."
"And where exactly do you want to go?" Ryan asked. He wanted Amadeus around, especially since this NPC was a fast runner who could practically carry both of them at once.
"The basement."
"Then you can go kill yourself alone." Ryan said, rolling his eyes. He wasn't going to die chasing danger like a fool in a horror movie.
"No, wait wait- Ryan, think about it for a second." Jane grabbed Ryan's collar and dragged him into a corner. "Think about it carefully. This might be dangerous, but look at him." She pointed toward Amadeus. "I have a feeling he's a golden spoon feeding us points for free. It's risky, but he could be our ticket to a much bigger reward. And I'm desperate for those points right now... my mother is sick, you know. I don't have much time."
"What does a mother need if her daughter is dead?" Ryan countered, his voice trembling.
"Then I will go with-"
Amadeus coughed, pulling the two of them apart. "Guys, I don't know what has you both so worked up, but if anything happens, I'll protect your lives before my own."
Jane and Ryan shared one last look before nodding. Ryan was still terrified, but like Jane, he had his own reasons for participating in these kinds of games.
"Great." Amadeus had told himself he didn't want to be noticed, but that wouldn't work if those two did nothing. If things got too dangerous, he would just kill himself... but how? A knife, maybe? That would surely be painful, but it was the only option he had.
While they were searching for the door leading to the basement, they encountered two groups standing before a heavy, dark door. The players were discussing how to force it open. Amadeus's group of three retreated into the hallway to have a brief meeting.
"Should we go with them or not?" Jane began.
"If we do, they will find out about the keys." Amadeus added.
"The more of us there are, the lower the probability that we are the ones who die." Ryan pointed out. He was right.
"Then it's decided." Amadeus handed the keys to Jane, pointing out a specific black key among them.
Brief but efficient, thought Amadeus.
Luckily, the other two groups were cooperative. When Amadeus's group politely asked them to turn around so they wouldn't see the number of keys they had, they complied. Each group had its own secrets, and since this was an especially dangerous game, no one wanted to fight. Even if the basement wasn't the best place to be, the other two groups had also encountered side quests that leaded them to the basement.
One group had found a secret map in the housekeeper's room; their mission was to discover why she had it and what she had been doing there. The other group was the one who had retrieved the cursed knife; their mission was to destroy it in lava... They didn't know where the lava was, but the basement seemed the most likely place.
Of course, no team knew the others' quests, but once again, Amadeus received a notification.
[This looks fun.]
Along with the message came the mission details for the other two groups. It didn't give Amadeus a huge advantage, but it was a start. He soon noticed that one of the other groups also had an NPC with them. After observing him for a moment, Amadeus sighed in relief; the NPC looked completely human, expressing his own likes and dislikes just like Amadeus did.
After opening the basement door, there was a spiral stairway going deep in the dark, no light was there, so they all took out their torch light; they were in total ten people, and it reassured them a little.
They descended for what felt like forever.
"We've been going down for twenty minutes... there really might be lava down here." a girl from another team whispered.
"If something happens, remember you have to carry us back up that long stairway. Going down is easy, but going up is the hard part." Ryan whispered to Amadeus.
"You really need to work out more." Amadeus replied dryly.
Ryan looked embarrassed. "I'm a nerd, not a gym bro!"
After a while, one of the men at the back shouted "Stop! It must be around here somewhere. Help me find a pushable brick in the wall." No one questioned how he knew, and everyone began searching until someone pushed a brick. A door magically slid open.
Immense heat blasted from the opening, and as they entered, they were met with a shocking sight. They stood on a wide bridge leading to a circular platform. In the center was a stone altar stained with old red marks. Consumed candles were scattered everywhere, and waterfalls of lava flowed from the ceiling into the abyss below the platform.
Okay... how am I supposed to destroy all this? Amadeus wondered, staring at the hellish landscape.
One of the teams walked to the edge of the platform and threw the cursed knife, wrapped in layer upon layer of cloth, into the lava. They soon cheered, exulting that their mission had gone so smoothly. But the moment the knife touched the lava, hundreds of souls erupted from the heat, shrieking as they began to float around the circular platform.
"What the fuck is happening? What did you do?!" Someone yelled at the group who had thrown the object.
"Nothing! We just finished our mission by destroying the cursed knife!" They shouted back, panicked.
Amadeus realized these must be the souls that had been killed and imprisoned to retrieve the ring. Their mission was supposed to be to free them, but he remembered the lore: his grandmother had placed a spell to keep them trapped within the villa forever.
"I told you it was the worst idea coming here!" Ryan cried, his voice cracking.
In the middle of the confusion, the high-pitched voice of a child began to sing. The headless boy was lying on the stone altar, his body perfectly still while his head rolled along the ground, singing that happy but creepy song about Wendy.
"Amadeus... your great-grandmother did all this?" Jane whispered, terrified. She and Ryan were both huddled behind him, using him as a shield.
Amadeus felt lost. He had thought this would be easy, a simple three-star horror game, but the reality was much harder to face. He reminded himself that he had no special powers; in this world, he was just an NPC. He didn't know how to win this, but then he felt the trembling hands of the two teens gripping his clothes. If he couldn't beat the game, he at least had to save them.
Amadeus had a bold idea. If it didn't work, he could always jump into the lava, but first, he needed to share the backstory with his teammates. One of their missions was to find out why the child had died, and he saw no reason to keep the truth to himself if he was about to die anyway.
While the ghosts shrieked and the terrified players were blocked from escaping by the spirits, Amadeus turned to his two teammates. He hugged them tightly, whispering the dark history of Wendy and the ritual into their ears so softly that no one else could hear.
The moment he finished, a success notification flashed in front of Jane and Ryan. They couldn't believe it was that easy to complete a main side quest just by listening to an NPC.
"If you have a gun, please lend it to me. I need one right now." he pleaded. Both Jane and Ryan handed over their golden guns; they weren't much use to them anymore, and since he had helped them win the quest, they trusted him completely.
"Oh, and by the way... I'm the Anomaly. Now, go! I'll distract the ghosts." He winked at them and ran toward the ghost's head on the ground. He snatched it up and asked his question: "Hey, little kid. I'm Wendy's great-grandson. Do you want to play with me instead?"
Why try to discover the truth on your own when you can just ask the victim? He thought.
The child's eyes widened before he burst into tears, drawing the attention of every ghost in the room. They swarmed closer. Amadeus made sure Jane and Ryan had cleared the area before he smacked the kid's face until the screaming stopped, replaced by an angry, piercing glare.
"Listen, kid. I also despise the bitch who did this to you. If you tell me how to free you, I will gladly do it, but I don't have much time!"
His strange, erratic behavior alarmed the people watching over, triggering a red alarm notification.
"Y-your blood..." the kid whispered, a jagged grin spreading across his face.
[Don't! You are not an NPC. Your blood is special.]
Not long after the notification appeared, soldiers materialized from thin air, surrounding him with guns pointing at his head. Amadeus didn't hesitate; he opened fire, diving for cover behind the stone altar.
"This is the game!" he shouted to the ghost child, striking a desperate bargain amidst the roar of gunfire. "If you help me scare them off, I'll jump into the lava! Don't you want to see that witch's grandson die? She wants the ring for immortality. If I kill myself, you will be sure she'll never get it and she will die!"
He spoke to reassure the boy, but in truth, Amadeus wanted the ring for himself. He wondered if an outsider like him could claim it by eliminating the others. It was just a game, after all. Nothing was real except the souls of the players who had died, and even then, everyone reached their end eventually. Souls had to go somewhere at the end of the journey, whether to heaven or hell, a destination Amadeus could never reach. Oh, how he wished he could truly die.
The number of soldiers was exactly what he needed to complete the sacrifice for the ring; there were more than nineteen. As the ghosts swarmed and distracted the troops, Amadeus picked them off one by one. Some were shoved into the lava by mischievous spirits, making his task even easier. Over his many lives, he had taken the time to learn something new in every world to protect himself.
When the last soldier fell, the thousand trapped souls were suddenly sucked into the stone of the altar. The heavy rock cracked in two, revealing a silver ring set with a crimson diamond. Within the gem, Amadeus saw shadows swirling in a constant spiral. He stood firm, lost in thought. He needed to find the truth about himself, but falling into the darkness wasn't his style. He couldn't be that cold-hearted; his adoptive parents had raised him better than that. If he gave in to self-pity and ignored the lives of others, he wouldn't be himself anymore.
Hearing more soldiers appearing behind him, Amadeus stepped to the edge of the platform. As he jumped into the molten heat, he used his final moment to make a wish: for every soul in the villa to be set free.
.
.
.
Outside the mansion, Jane and Ryan stared at their screens in shock. A new notification flashed before them: the mission to free the souls was a success. They gasped, unable to believe their luck. This game had earned them triple their original points. They hugged each other, crying with relief and joy.
...
Amadeus woke up sweating cold, the feeling of the burning lava still in his head as he died burnt. "Fucking hell!" He really had enough of dying so miserable, but he left the terrible experience behind and only curiosity filled his head. He wanted to look around but the first thing he saw as he looked down was a pair of big breasts under a shirt, string of white hair fell covering his vision.
"..."