Chapter 6
Chapter 6
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Purging the Curses
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“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Rachel cracked her eyes open at the sound of the boy’s clear voice. Pumpkin-colored eyes met hers.
Thanks to Enoch gripping her waist and torso as if in an embrace, she avoided tumbling into the rose bushes.
“Yes. Thank you for saving me.”
She offered her thanks in a dazed voice.
Enoch scooped her up just like that and set her down in a safe spot.
“Are you all right?”
“You weren’t scared?”
Evelyn and the Peace priestess asked almost in unison. Rachel nodded as she answered.
“Yes. No injuries. I’m perfectly fine.”
“What a relief. Stay right there—it’s dangerous.”
Rachel glanced at the rat behind her mother, skewered through by the fan and dead.
She nodded and resolved to stay put where Enoch had placed her.
“It looks like the rat corpses were gathered like this all along.”
The Peace priestess spoke while eyeing the dead rats. It seemed the rats collected their kin’s bodies in one spot. Even if it wasn’t a corpse, they’d come biting whenever something took a major wound.
Something’s here. That was the thought on everyone’s mind.
The gardener had passed through several times, the rat corpses vanishing each time, until a massive puddle formed where the rose bushes had stood. And yet…
‘The Danger Level hasn’t budged.’
Which meant removing the rose bushes and rat corpses wasn’t the end of it.
“It’s all done now.”
The dirt-caked gardener wiped away his sweat after digging the pit deeper. He jammed his shovel into the earth—clack.
“Looks like there’s something underneath. Mind working a little harder?”
At Evelyn’s direction, the gardener shoveled a bit more. The shovel head struck something again—clack-clack. Soon enough, the buried object began to emerge.
A circular stone slab, unmistakably man-made.
The gardener hoisted it upward, and Enoch took hold of it.
Only after the slab was pulled free did the Danger Level finally drop.
[Danger Level: 85%]
“No one person could’ve buried something that size alone, right?”
Rachel spoke up. Henri’s face twisted as if his daughter’s words had struck a nerve. No way it was done solo, and certainly not without their knowledge.
In other words, it happened before the family moved into the mansion—back when no roses grew in the yard. And only one person would’ve had reason to do it.
He pressed his lips tight. Not everything had come to light yet. He rubbed his dry face.
Watching him, Rachel pressed to move on to the next spot.
“The outbuilding too?”
“Yes.”
Separate from the mansion, the outbuilding held dorms for the outdoor staff like gardeners and coachmen, along with grain storage, stables, and the like.
It stored garden tools, carriages, and implements dragged out once or twice a year. In the 8th loop, Rachel had died there after a hammer tumbled from a shelf while she poked around.
The five of them headed for the outbuilding. As they passed the adjacent stable, the coachman feeding hay to the horses greeted them.
“What brings you here?”
“Traces of Black Magic turned up in the mansion.”
Henri replied to the coachman’s question, his tone laced with unease.
“So we’re checking the interior with the priestess. You kept the carriage part we fixed a few days back?”
“Yes. Stored it just as ordered.”
The coachman fetched the axle from the storage shed.
“If Madam hadn’t said anything, it could’ve been a disaster.”
The Peace priestess and Enoch inspected the worn axle before shaking their heads.
“This isn’t it.”
“I see.”
Just a regular accident from wear and tear.
‘It was only 6 percent—and just an accident, after all.’
That explained why repairing it alone had lowered the Danger Level.
“Then carry on. No slacking.”
“Yes, sir.”
The coachman, who hadn’t noticed the carriage issue until his employer pointed it out, bowed lower than usual.
They passed the stable and reached the outbuilding. For an outbuilding, it was hardly small.
In the original story, you’d come here hunting tools to unlock a basement door. But then a monster wielding massive garden shears appeared.
Snip, clank. Inside the dark structure, the scissor blades ground together in a hair-raising screech, joined by the splash of soaked footsteps and the creak of warped floorboards underfoot—a terrifying trio.
Enter the outbuilding, and the background music cut out. You had to navigate by sound alone to evade the monster.
Kerosene remained for the lamps, but when the monster drew near, you had to drape a thick black cloth over it—or get too slow, and the scissor blades impaled you.
Rachel recalled the grueling section. Dodging had been a nightmare. Easier to just die and reload.
She’d once shaken it off for over twenty minutes, but when it wouldn’t quit, she’d sung out, *Now it’s time we part, see you next time,* before letting it catch her. Then died to it again barely a minute into the reload.
‘They say words take root—shouldn’t have sung that.’
Lost in memories, Rachel trailed her parents. Monster aside, the spot where she’d actually died lay elsewhere.
A poltergeist hotspot. Poltergeists: eerie sounds or objects shifting with no source.
In the original, stuff here flew on its own—fail to dodge a projectile, and you were dead.
Even knowing the pattern, evasion was brutal. Add the scissor fiend, and it was 99 percent game over. The 1 percent demanded luck and flawless control.
“Here it is!”
Rachel pointed to a shelf overhead. Her 8th-loop death had hit on day eight. Day five today—no way an accident struck now.
Or so she’d thought…
Right beside her came a tiny rattle-roll—like a screw dropping and skittering away.
Rachel looked up. The shelf tilted, the hammer atop it plummeting straight for her.
*Why?*
Her eyes registered it, but her body lagged, too sluggish to evade.
Rachel’s mind flashed to an absurd thought: *This is why people in traffic accidents on TV can’t dodge the car.*
Then, before the hammer met her skull, a pale hand snatched it midair.
“This must be it.”
Enoch spoke, his tone laced with a faint sigh.
“The curse is unmistakably aimed at Lady Evelyn…”
He trailed off, but Rachel read the unspoken: *The curse targets your mother—and it hasn’t triggered yet. So why are you in peril?*
She felt indignant. It wasn’t supposed to fall *now*.
“Thank you.”
As she gave thanks, her eyes fixed on the hammer in Enoch’s grip. Unlike a normal one, both handle and head bore a rusty reddish-brown hue. No mere rust—stark traces of something dried and crusted.
*Blood!*
“That’s another Curse Medium.”
The Peace priestess sounded exhausted. A single household yielding this many Curse Media? A first for her. And purifying them meant channeling Divine Power each time—draining work.
“Still more left?”
“Yes.”
[Danger Level: 84%]
“Enoch, the next one’s yours.”
“Yes!”
Enoch perked up at the priestess’s request. He’d grown bored just spectating; now he had a job and seemed thrilled.
“Leave it to me!”
They returned to the main house and descended to the basement.
The mansion’s basement—remnant of its days as a lord’s residence—held not just wine and food cellars, but a prison too.
Unused now and left to rot, things differed in the original tale. Henri had repurposed the prison as a lab.
In the game, Rachel and Enoch arrived to find corpses warped by Black Magic shambling about.
Monsters of sewn, bluish flesh—the proof of her father’s sins.
Black Magic traces lingered there, the space twisted into a heteroworld divorced from reality.
Recalling it all, Rachel peered ahead. A servant summoned from upstairs led with a lamp.
Past the chill storehouse and wine vault, they reached the prison.
Even the prison, long neglected, lay damp and unmanaged, water pooling on the floor. Humidity bred bugs that scattered at every footfall.
Evelyn snapped open her fan and waved it. Enoch, behind her, strode forward and slammed his sword down onto the floor.
Clang—a sound that stung just to hear.
“What is it?”
“Something’s here.”
“Call people to lift that stone.”
Evelyn dispatched the trailing servant to fetch more hands. Rachel eyed Henri, reduced to a mere bystander. Confusion still clouded his face.
Soon, four burly men descended and, at Evelyn’s command, heaved the massive floor stone aside. Beneath lay a black stone.
A flat slab etched with a magic circle. Enoch emptied his vial of holy water onto it. The liquid traced the grooves, soaking the engraving.
“Judging by the shape, it’s a Demon Summoning Circle—drawn in the blood of a sacrifice.”
The servants murmured at the Peace priestess’s words. *Demon Summoning Circle* carried an ill omen.
“Smash it.”
Evelyn commanded at once.
“Is that safe? What about curses…?”
“With two priestesses here, what’s to fear? Leaving it’s far riskier—destroy it now.”
Cowed but bolstered by news of the priestesses, the servants raised their pickaxes high.
They swung the same tools used to shift the stone, striking the circle as Enoch began to pray.
Radiant light poured from his body. Reassured, the servants pulverized the slab.
In time, the circle lay shattered beyond recognition.
[Danger Level: 74%]
Rachel clenched her fist tight. Never before had the Danger Level dipped this low.
*Bringing the priestess to the mansion was the key!*
“Miss Rachel mentioned up to here, but just to be sure, let’s sweep the whole place.”
Afterward, the Peace priestess inspected every inch from basement to third floor. She declared no further issues.
“There sure are a lot of rats, though?”
Enoch voiced the question first, fresh from the yard’s rat pile.
Rachel nodded wordlessly. She’d looped back countless times, yet these vermin never grew less unnerving.
The mansion’s rat holes kept multiplying; in two years, they’d pattern the walls.
*Even in the game, rat holes were everywhere.*
On the game’s second floor, they rivaled sewer grates. Drop a key? Straight into a hole.
Lose your key to a rat hole in-game, and you’d scour the room for a wire, then probe every corridor gap to fish it out.
*Basement had those monster rats too.*
Remembering the bad end where a giant rat tore her apart, Rachel rubbed her shoulders. Exterminating them was definitely right.
“Let’s wipe out every last rat while we’re at it!”
“Very well.”
Evelyn nodded, accepting Rachel’s proposal. Anyone who’d seen beneath today’s rose bushes would agree.
“Miss Rachel, a word over here.”
Just then, the Peace priestess beckoned her to a corner. Assuming private words, Rachel approached—only for her hand to be seized.
In that instant, her fingertips stung.