I Think I’m a Horror Game Villain - Chapter 54
Chapter 54
***
A dark hallway where nothing was visible except for a sliver of light coming in from outside.
I held Dekir’s hand and cautiously took a step forward.
After three or four steps,
Creak—
With an eerie groan, the light that had been dimly illuminating the hallway disappeared.
“What, what? Why is the door closed?”
I hurriedly ran to where the door had been.
The doorknob was gone?
The spot where the doorknob should have been was flat.
‘The door’s gone.’
Groping in the pitch-black darkness,
Pop!
Suddenly, a bright light blinded me.
Through my squinted eyes, I could make out the interior of the hallway that had been completely dark.
[Follow the footsteps, and the path will be made. The future path lies within present.]
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
A sentence with each character painted in a different color.
In front of it was a rainbow-colored platform with an arrow shape drawn on it.
‘This is…!’
Another room with a solution method.
The solution to this room was to step on the platforms in the order of the colors used in the letters on the floor.
For example, if the letter color was red, step on the red platform closest to you.
If the next letter color was blue, step on the blue platform connected to the red platform.
‘The arrow shapes drawn on each platform are just decoys to trick the players, so don’t pay attention to them.’
There were three platforms horizontally and seven vertically. It was exactly as I remembered.
But there was something strange.
The phrase I remembered was ‘Follow the path and move forward.’
‘It’s different from what I know. There are so many more words!’
***
“Heyna, I think you can save here too.”
Dekir informed me that the save function was activated.
“Wow, really? That’s great. Haha.”
I ignored the useless save function and wracked my brain.
The original phrase, ‘Follow the path and move forward,’ had six words. ‘The future path lies within present’ also had six words*.
*TL/N: 미래의 길은 현재 속에 있다 originally 11 words/characters in Korean, I changed it to fit the english. I hope the changes I made will make sense…
‘The one written in front is a fake.’
“What does it mean, ‘Follow the footsteps, and the path will be made’?”
Dekir, who had finished saving, was mulling over the words on the floor.
“Don’t worry, Deki. Just follow me.”
I confidently stepped forward.
First, the blue platform corresponding to the color ‘The*’ in the hint phrase ‘The future path lies within present.’
*TL/N: Seems like the color is not in order based on the raw. The blue color is used in the first sentence in the raws/possibly, the sentence ‘follow the footsteps, and the path will be made’ in front have colors too.
I stepped onto the blue platform at the far right of the first row.
At that moment!
“Huh?”
The platform turned off with a whoosh. My body was sucked down into the space below the platform, following gravity.
Whoosh—
Beneath the platform, a razor-sharp saw blade whirred into life. The fallen platform was sucked into the teeth of the saw, disappearing without a trace.
“Heyna!”
A hand flailing in the void barely brushed against Dekir. I desperately grabbed hold of his hand. My dangling vision was filled with the relentless spinning of the saw blade below.
Had I missed Dekir’s hand, I would have been sliced apart like the platform that had just fallen.
Goosebumps erupted over my body at the thought, and my head went cold. My hands were shaking so much, I felt like I was about to lose my grip.
‘I don’t want to die!’
Unable to even scream, I was hoisted up with all of Dekir’s strength.
“Heyna! Are you okay?”
‘I almost died.’
“Y, yes. Th, thank you, Deki. You saved my life.”
My tongue felt stiff, perhaps from the shock. I gasped for breath, my lungs burning.
My heart pounded as if I had just run a marathon. My hand still gripped Dekir’s like a lifeline.
[Mental strength decreases by 5.]
[Mental strength decreases by 5.]
The mental strength reduction window popped up for the first time in a while.
Despite nearly being chopped up by the saw blade, my mental strength had only decreased by 10. Was I braver than I thought?
I tried my best to act composed, but my body was still trembling with the lingering fear of having cheated death.
This was not the time to be dwelling on it.
There could be any number of rooms ahead. And just like this one, the rooms to come would likely be filled with unknown dangers and problems.
‘There are so many things that have changed from what I knew.’
Escaping the room was a treacherous path, and I only had one life, so I couldn’t afford to start over.
‘Escaping the room is dangerous. I can’t let my guard down.’
“I’m, I’m okay. We need to find a way out of here, and fast…”
“That’s not important right now.”
“Huh?”
As I blinked blankly, Dekir pulled me into a tight hug. Then, he slowly patted my back.
At the gentle touch, tears welled up in my eyes for no reason.
“You must have been so scared.”
His soothing voice, like that of a parent comforting a child, gently caressed my pounding heart.
“Ye… Yes, really, I was so scared….”
“From now on, tell me before you do something like this. I’ll take care of anything dangerous.”
His words sounded as if he was saying it was okay for him to be in danger. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that ‘he couldn’t do that’…I couldn’t say anything at all.
***
My pounding heart, which I thought would never settle down, gradually began to calm.
Was it because I wanted to erase the recent events from my mind?
Cuddled in Dekir’s arms, I had been sobbing for a long time, but then I found myself saying something completely out of place.
“You know, Dekir.”
“What is it?”
“I have something I want to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to answer me honestly. Do you, do you still think that there isn’t a villain among us?”
From the first moment we met until now, Dekir had been my unwavering support.
I wanted to hear an honest answer from him so that I could trust him completely…
Read ahead eight chapters here.
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