Chapter 94
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 93
Chapter Title: The Cursed Doll
No sooner had Rachel closed the wardrobe door than a deafening crash echoed through the room.
The knocking on the door stopped. In its place came footsteps. Someone had kicked the door open.
Thud. Thud.
Rachel clamped a hand over her mouth and held her breath. Even breathing felt terrifying. Whoever had burst through that closed door so violently couldn't have good intentions.
The footsteps halted. There was the sound of blankets being rustled.
Thud. Thud.
'They're looking for me!'
The unknown intruder seemed to be searching for her.
The footsteps grew louder, approaching the wardrobe. But just as they sounded close, they receded and stopped.
'Can I come out now?'
Rachel hesitated. There were no more sounds, but she had a gut feeling.
Her instincts warned her not to leave yet.
'Just a little longer.'
A moment later,
Thud. Thud.
Creak. Thud.
She heard the door close. The intruder hadn't left right away but had waited to see if anyone would emerge before finally going.
Rachel cracked the wardrobe door open and peered out. No one was there. Only then did she carefully slip out.
"What the hell is going on?"
Where had her companions gone, leaving her alone here?
Rachel's stomach was already starting to hurt.
Sure, she was the protagonist of a horror game, but there were still two years and three months until the game actually began.
So why was she going through this horror experience right now?
"And it's not just some simulated horror—it's the real thing."
Rachel checked her body. The weapon she'd brought for self-defense was gone.
"Damn it."
In horror movies, the person who wanders off alone always dies first—and here she was, unintentionally separated.
Rachel surveyed the room. The door was half-broken but closed. Unlike the dark room, intermittent light came from the hallway side, revealing this.
"Why is only this room dark? Are the windows only on the hallway side?"
Rachel groped the wall opposite the door. Her fingers touched a woolen curtain.
She pulled it aside, revealing a window. Red light glowed outside.
Something far off was burning—not trash, but the entire village ablaze.
"A fire!"
She pushed hard on the window, and it opened. Rachel leaned out and looked down. This wasn't the low floor where she'd been with her companions; it was the upper levels of the castle.
She could jump now—the drop wasn't too far! Rachel started to rush out the door but froze.
"Why is the village, already burned to ashes, on fire again?"
The village ruins she'd seen earlier that day had been completely charred to cinders. Ashes don't burn. So there was no way it could catch fire again.
Whatever it was—an illusion or something else—it was definitely abnormal.
"I can't stay here forever. I have to find the others quickly."
The eerie atmosphere made her mutter to herself. Rachel opened the half-broken door and cautiously stepped into the hallway.
The corridor stretched out like an endless abyss. Dim light flickered through the high, narrow windows. Everything beyond the castle was surely burning.
The hallway was empty. Whoever had been searching for her earlier seemed to have left completely.
Rachel reached the end of the shadow-shrouded corridor, where visibility had failed her. Ahead was a door that presumably led to another hallway. She grasped the handle.
Click. Click.
But it was locked.
"Ugh, why? This is taking horror game tropes way too far."
In horror games, doors were always locked. And you always had to unlock them to proceed.
Rachel felt the need to enter another room.
As she walked the corridor, her eyes adjusted to the dark. Besides the door to the next hallway, there were six doors.
Rachel arbitrarily numbered them. From the left: 1, 2, 3. Right: 4, 5, 6. The room she'd come from was number 2.
She grabbed the handle of the nearest, number 3. It opened. The room's layout was the same as the first.
If the original owner was a child, that explained the many dolls. They were arranged facing the door, which was creepy. Among them was one similar to the Karl-stabbing doll she'd burned.
"Ugh, goosebumps. It's the same kind."
The situation made it even scarier. Rachel rubbed her arms and shoulders as she searched the room.
She felt a gaze from somewhere and whipped around, but there was nothing but dolls.
"Usually, there's something inside dolls like this."
She didn't know why they hid keys or whatever in pristine dolls, but in horror games, dolls never appeared normally. You'd either slice open a perfect one, or assemble one from dismembered parts.
The former chased you for the kill; the latter gave you something as a gift.
"If it's like that, please let it be the latter."
...No sooner had she said it than something caught inside the doll's belly.
"I really hate this."
Grumbling, Rachel grabbed the doll. She wouldn't tear it open yet. The dolls facing the door seemed to have turned toward her, which unnerved her more.
"Did the dolls move? Must be my imagination."
Ignoring the chill, Rachel dashed for the door. Suddenly, the dolls flew at her through the air.
"I said I hate this!"
The dolls tried to block her escape, but Rachel barely slipped out.
Slam!
She shut the door so hard it nearly broke. Scratching came from the other side, but they didn't follow into the hall.
"Huff, huff—what the hell were those?"
No answer came, of course.
"I'm gonna lose my mind. I can't even remember how I got through horror games back then."
They hadn't scared her then, but now her stomach ached with fear.
"Whatever's inside that doll is probably a key, so I guess I have to tear it open?"
To unlock the hallway door, she needed the key from the doll. But the fabric was tough.
"Of course nothing works on the first try. Usually, you find scissors in cases like this, right?"
No one was around, but Rachel muttered like she was narrating a game stream. Talking kept the fear at bay.
After a deep breath, she grabbed the handle of room 6, opposite number 3. It was locked.
Rachel skipped 6 and tried number 5. It wasn't locked; she could enter.
Room 5 looked twice as big as 2 or 3. There were two doors—one led to the locked room 6.
The furniture and items seemed more antique than the previous rooms—likely the baron couple's bedroom.
"Haniye the baron had an eldest son and two daughters, right?"
If this was the couple's room, the earlier ones belonged to the daughters.
"Then one of 1 or 4 is the eldest son's room. The other would naturally be a study."
Guessing about the remaining rooms, Rachel searched. Noble ladies embroidered, so there had to be thread, needles, scissors somewhere.
As expected, she found a sewing kit.
Rachel immediately used the scissors to slice open the doll's belly a bit. Out came a small note and a key.
[I hate oppa. He left at dawn without telling me. When he gets back from the academy, I'll hide the key so he can't enter his room. Dollie, guard the key well.]
The childish scrawl and content suggested a young child wrote it.
"This key must be for the eldest son's room."
An intermediate key to find the hallway one. If this were a game, it wasn't a great one.
Rachel hesitated, eyeing the slit-open doll. It might move too—better to sew it shut for safety. Her gamer brain suggested that option.
"I should get out quick. But if I don't sew it, I'll probably die."
The hesitation was brief. With the sewing kit handy, she decided to stitch it up.
"Huh?"
As she sewed, holding the needle, Rachel noticed something odd.
Her mana was automatically sucked into the doll, then swirled wildly inside it.
"What—what is this?"
An uneasy feeling hit her. In panic, she hurled the sewing doll at the wall.
It hit the wall, fell to the floor, and stood up. Then it flew straight at Rachel.
"Eek!"
She grabbed a pillow from the bed to block it. The pillow burst, sending duck feathers flying.
Through the pillowcase, the doll writhed. Black mana churned visibly inside it.
"I don't know what's going on, but!"
The doll's power source seemed to be her mana. She didn't know why it absorbed her mana and attacked its owner.
But knowing mana was the cause greatly reduced her fear.
"You're just a stuffed doll anyway!"
Right. It wasn't like the Karl-stabbing doll wielding a knife and chasing her.
The original Rachel might have lost to a doll due to her weak, exercise-lacking body, but not her.
"If a bunch flew at me like before, it'd be scary, but you're just one!"
Rachel grabbed the writhing doll. It went limp in her grasp. The mana sucked into it calmed down.
"So what the hell are you?"
The doll had rampaged on its own, then stopped on its own. Rachel's will hadn't intervened at all.
She warily checked if the still doll would move again, but once stopped, it stayed put.
Rachel picked it up to inspect the inside.
"Ah, shit!"
She flung it away. A curse escaped her lips.
She recognized the curse circle.
"Paris Emporus—this guy's meddling everywhere."
The same curse circle from the curse medium in her house was drawn inside the doll.
Seeing it, Rachel cursed Paris Emporus and arrived at a hypothesis.
"Anyway, did my mana get sucked into the curse medium? Activating the curse?"
If so, it explained a lot of recent events.
"All the curse mediums I've seen put me in danger. What if the death curse activates using my mana?"
She couldn't see mana before, but now she could verify.
"And unlike before, it stopped suddenly because my divine power made the curse vanish."
Unlike before, Rachel now had divine power. Even if she couldn't control it well, its presence in her body might dispel curses on contact.
"Still, I should verify safely with Enoch around."
For now, she'd move to rejoin the group, but once she did, she'd play it safe.
"They won't find me in a locked hallway, so I'll just unlock it. And staying too still is dangerous too."
They say if a child loses their parent, stay put.
But in horror games, it was the opposite. Staying still could lead to a bad end.
In one game, if you didn't move long after starting, the protagonist turned into canned food.
"Yeah, I need to move just enough—not too recklessly."
Her self-justification complete.
Rachel searched the room more and found something useful.
"Acquired machete!"