Chapter 213: The Escape Route Has Already Vanished
Haruto stared at the Circus Troupe Leader's permanently plastered, blindingly bright smile. A slight twitch tugged at the corner of his eye. 'Was it really over just like that?' The exact coordinates of the exit had already manifested in his mind—an Escape Passage tucked away inside the Grand Performance Area. The system's directions couldn't possibly be false. So, was the Ghost Granny at the Kiosk lying to them? Or... was this smiling freak planning to ambush them the second they stepped toward the exit?
Haruto decided not to waste brain cells overthinking it. Motioning for Lin Que's team and Wu Lian to follow, the group of nine swiftly handled the circus grounds toward the Escape Passage. Haruto kept his senses sharp, casting deliberate glances over his shoulder, fully expecting a giant mallet or a swarm of killer clowns to drop from the rafters. Yet, even as they skidded to a halt in front of the designated exit, the Troupe Leader was nowhere to be seen.
The entrance to the passage was distinctly underwhelming. Thick, grimy plastic strip curtains hung over the doorway, the kind you would find in a slaughterhouse freezer. Beyond the plastic lay a suffocating, pitch-black void. Pinned to the peeling wallpaper right beside the frame was a crude schematic. It resembled a maze, yet a suspiciously simple one, featuring only two sharp corners. Beneath the faded ink of the diagram, a line of jagged text was etched into the wall:
[Open your eyes, observe the world, do not look back, do not blink. Cross the passage and return to reality.]
The instructions were brutally straightforward. Walk in, keep your eyes peeled, do not turn your head, and whatever you do, do not blink. Just march straight into the dark and step back into the real world.
The sheer relief of survival washed over the group. Two veterans from Lin Que's squad, their nerves completely frayed, lunged toward the plastic curtains alongside Wu Lian.
Haruto's eyes narrowed. A sudden, visceral spike of malice flared in his peripheral senses.
Thwack!
Without a word, Haruto lashed out, his leg sweeping through the air in a blur. He kicked all three of them squarely in the chest. The trio flew backward like discarded ragdolls, tumbling aggressively across the dirty floorboards until they slammed hard against the opposite wall. They groaned, clutching their ribs, staring up at the Boundary Youkai in absolute bewilderment. The rest of the group froze in shock. Only Lin Que managed to process the sudden violence.
"Is there something wrong inside?" Lin Que asked, his voice tight. These were seasoned survival game veterans. They had witnessed Haruto casually dismantle horrors beyond human comprehension. None of them harbored the delusion that he had assaulted them for fun.
"Something's not right," Haruto muttered. He stepped forward, raising a hand to lightly brush the edge of the grimy plastic curtain. Deep within his soul, the innate, razor-sharp intuition of a Boundary Youkai was screaming bloody murder. The ambient energy here was foul.
Lin Que's brow furrowed into deep ridges. "Not right? But the system clearly designates this entire passage as the escape route. It's an ironclad rule across every single instance—ghosts absolutely cannot enter an escape route. The rules of the game would obliterate them."
Despite his confusion, neither Lin Que nor anyone else dared to doubt Haruto. If the overpowered big shot said stepping through that door meant death, then it meant death. Clinging to his coattails and exercising extreme caution was the only reason they were still breathing. They simply couldn't wrap their heads around the logic. If ghosts were physically barred from the exit, what could possibly be lurking in the dark?
"How about... we send someone in to scout?" Lin Que suggested, his gaze sweeping over his battered team.
"I'll do it." An older, grizzled man wearing a tarnished silver crucifix around his neck stepped forward, his jaw set with grim determination.
Lin Que hesitated, his fists clenching at his sides. "...Alright, Uncle Hui. Be careful."
"If I run into danger, I'll shout to let you know," Uncle Hui replied, his tone heavy, sounding uncomfortably like a man delivering his final will and testament.
Haruto initially didn't bother stopping him. If his own monstrous instincts were warning him of a lethal threat, he certainly wasn't going to play the self-sacrificing hero or risk Kaguya and Youmu. But just as Uncle Hui took a breath to march into the dark, a spark of inspiration hit Haruto.
"Hold on," Haruto called out, raising a hand.
Lin Que and the others whipped their heads around, a desperate glimmer of hope lighting up their eyes. "Is there another way?"
"Yeah. I just remembered I have the perfect disposable trash... I mean, item." Haruto casually waved his hand, tearing open a tear in reality. He reached deep into the void of the Gap, rummaging around for a few seconds before pulling out a shimmering, oversized golden scale.
"Is that... a fish scale?" Lin Que asked, blinking in utter confusion.
The rest of the players exchanged baffled looks. Only Kaguya's eyes widened in sudden realization, a wicked, excited grin spreading across her face.
"Oh! Is that the loot you ripped off from that mermaid incident?!" she chirped, practically bouncing on her heels.
Haruto nodded, flipping the golden scale between his fingers. "Yep. The Mermaid Prince's Illusionary Transfer Order. It allows the user to summon a highly intelligent mermaid to assist them."
"Wait, didn't you complain that the mermaids from this thing are completely uncontrollable and just scream at people?" Kaguya pointed out, tilting her head.
"In principle, yes," Haruto smirked. "But Patchouli helped me enchant a little magic item specifically designed to hypnotize aquatic pests. It works perfectly with this."
Reaching back into the Gap, Haruto retrieved a simple, polished Bamboo Flute. He channeled a surge of dense Demonic Power into the golden scale. The air rippled, and a watery, illusionary figure rapidly began to take physical form right in front of them.
True to his word, a mermaid appeared. However, it was an absolute crime against nature—sporting a scaly, grotesque fish head slapped onto a muscular human body. It swayed back and forth, shaking its slimy head with a blank, deeply stupid expression.
It blinked its massive, bulging watery eyes. It slowly turned its head, locking eyes with Kaguya.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"ROAR—!" The fish-man suddenly unhinged its jaw and bellowed aggressively right in Kaguya's face.
BANG!
A delicate foot moving at the speed of sound slammed directly into the creature's ugly snout. The impact launched the mermaid through the air like a cannonball, embedding it waist-deep into the solid brick wall behind them with a deafening crash.
Kaguya smoothly retracted her leg, dusting off her skirt. She pointed a furious finger at the twitching fish-man stuck in the crater. "What the hell are you roaring at, you ugly freak?!"
The sheer, unadulterated violence of the scene caused Lin Que, Uncle Hui, and the rest of the players to scramble backward in sheer terror. They stared at the beautiful, elegant girl in absolute horror. A zero-frame startup! She hadn't even hesitated! For a long, tense moment, the players rigidly stared at the floor, absolutely terrified that if they made eye contact with her, she would ask, "What are you looking at?" and punt them through the drywall next.
If she could casually kick a summoned supernatural entity into a bloody paste, their fragile human bodies would explode on impact. 'Is she actually a humanoid boss monster disguised as a player?!'
"It was totally cursing at me in fish-speak, wasn't it?" Kaguya huffed, turning to Haruto for validation.
Haruto's mouth twitched. He nodded silently.
Seeing Kaguya aggressively roll up her sleeves, fully prepared to march over and stomp the creature into sashimi, Haruto quickly grabbed her by the collar.
"Whoa, easy there, princess. Don't kick it to death just yet. It's still useful."
Hearing this, Kaguya clicked her tongue but obediently stepped back. Haruto strolled over to the wall and effortlessly yanked the dazed mermaid out of the crater. The creature trembled violently, its fishy face contorted in absolute terror. It adamantly refused to even glance in Kaguya's general direction.
While it seemed the creature had already been thoroughly traumatized into submission through blunt force trauma, Haruto wasn't taking any chances. He brought the Bamboo Flute to his lips. A haunting, melodic tune drifted through the dusty air. Within seconds, the mermaid's bulging eyes glazed over, its body going slack as it fell into a deep hypnotic trance.
"Go in there. Report back on everything you see," Haruto commanded, pointing the flute toward the plastic curtain.
The mermaid wobbled to its feet like a drunkard. It shambled forward, pushed aside the grimy plastic strips, and slipped into the pitch-black void. Almost immediately, a series of bizarre, gurgling "wuzi-wuzi" noises echoed from the darkness—the creature's native method of broadcasting its surroundings.
Haruto tilted his head, listening intently to the gurgles, and began translating for the pale-faced players.
"It says it's pitch black inside. Can't see a thing. Wait... it says there are dozens of pale hands emerging from the dark, chasing it."
Haruto raised an eyebrow. He mentally commanded the hypnotized creature to sprint forward with all its might. Those phantom hands were the physical manifestation of the game's rules. Since the mermaid was a summoned supernatural entity, stepping into the escape route violated the ironclad law: 'Ghosts cannot enter.' The hands were the system's automated defense mechanism trying to execute the intruder.
Yet, this realization only deepened his frown. If the system was actively defending the route, then the exit itself was functioning normally. So where was the anomaly?
The "wuzi-wuzi" sounds grew frantic and breathless, echoing off the unseen walls as the heavy footsteps of the mermaid indicated it was sprinting for its life. Haruto continued his grim translation.
"It reached the first corner..."
"There's light ahead... it's blindingly bright... there are eyes... so many eyes... they're everywhere, covering the walls..."
"The floor is carpeted in rotting corpses... and they're all staring at me..."
"So many eyes. Everyone is watching me."
Haruto's voice dropped a fraction. "Am I a human...? A mermaid...? No... I'm a rabbit... I am..."
Haruto's translation came to a dead, chilling halt.
Inside the passage, the frantic gurgling of the mermaid was abruptly snuffed out. It didn't fade away; it was simply erased, vanishing without a single trace.
Dead silence descended upon the circus tent.
Everyone froze. The players stopped breathing entirely, the blood draining from their faces. Lin Que and several of his teammates felt their knees buckle, slumping against the dirty floorboards in sheer, paralyzing dread. If they had rushed in there blindly...
Youmu, however, remained perfectly still, her hand resting casually on the hilt of her katana. Her expression was placid and entirely unfazed. Her only purpose in life was to draw her blade and sever any threat that dared approach her Haruto-sama. The existential horror of the passage meant nothing to her.
Haruto rested his chin in his hand, his eyes narrowing as the puzzle pieces finally clicked into place.
Now he understood. He finally grasped why the Animal Zone logs appeared perfectly normal, documenting numerous players successfully escaping recently, while the Ghost Granny had sworn on her life that no one had left for two years.
The Ghost Granny hadn't lied. The system logs weren't faked. Both were telling the absolute truth.
Those previous players had indeed survived the circus, completed their harrowing tasks, and proudly marched into the escape passage. But they never made it out. They had all been slaughtered inside this so-called sanctuary.
Yet, this couldn't possibly be a trap generated by the escape route itself. An exit was an exit. From the myriad of nightmare instances Haruto had personally dismantled, the deep-dive forums he had browsed, and the intel gathered from veteran players, every single piece of data pointed to one unshakeable, ironclad law of the universe.
The escape route was the ultimate sanctuary for players. If a ghost so much as breathed inside it, the system's rules would instantly tear them into atomic dust.
Therefore, there was only one logical conclusion left.
The ghosts running this twisted circus hadn't entered the escape route at all. Instead, they had found a loophole. They had used some external, reality-warping method... to completely seal the exit from the outside.
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