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Chapter 1342: Garden of Seclusion (3)

The maid was neither walking fast nor slow. Rhode followed far behind her and watched as she descended the stairs and entered the parlor. She lowered her head and spoke to the young lady respectfully, who sat on the sofa and sipped on the tea.

“My lady, the guest has gone to rest.”

“Well, it’s late now. We should get our rest too.”

After hearing the maid’s words, the noble lady smiled, put down the teacup, and walked out of the parlor. Soon, Rhode observed as the maid and noble lady arrived at a room located on the other side of the second floor. The maid opened the door, set up the bed for the noble lady, and served her to rest. Shortly after, she walked out of the room quietly, went into the bedroom next door, and closed the door. It was just that simple. She didn’t head to any weird places like Rhode thought she would nor turn into some weird and mysterious figure. Everything was normal... No, not exactly everything.

Rhode lurked in the shadows, staring at the doors in front of him. He clearly remembered that those two doors were the ones he hadn’t opened in the morning. Back then, he kept knocking on them but no one responded. This was apparently abnormal because according to the noble lady, she had been sleeping in the room all night, while his ‘knocks’ on her door were almost equivalent to smashes, where perhaps even the dead would be woken up by him from the coffin. But even so, she didn’t respond, which seemed rather strange.

However, Rhode didn’t act rashly. On the contrary, he remained hidden in the shadows, and even though he was confident that he hadn’t been discovered by them, for safety’s sake, he didn’t move out immediately but waited silently for a few moments instead. After nearly an hour and a half, he emerged from the darkness and arrived in front of the two doors, which didn’t seem to have anything fishy about them but looked very normal instead...

At this thought, Rhode stretched out his arm and took hold of the door handle.

Kacha.

As expected, the door was locked and couldn’t be opened. But this time, Rhode didn’t give up. On the contrary, his body shifted, metamorphosed into a thin shadow and slowly merged with the shadow through the gaps of the door. In the blink of an eye, he used the power of shadows to sneak into the tightly-locked door. Fortunately for him, his abilities were available, and there wasn’t any mysterious enchanted field enfolding the room either, which was why he entered so effortlessly. Despite that, he didn’t find anything unusual in the room. The maid lay on the bed like a corpse; her chest didn’t rise and fall like a breathing human and she looked as if she were dead. As a matter of fact, Shira was actually dead, to begin with.

Rhode strolled closer and observed her cautiously. After a few moments, he reached out his hand, grabbed her neck, and pulled her up abruptly. But even so, she wasn’t startled awake. On the contrary, along with his action, her body ‘clattered’, and with the illumination of the moonlight spilling through the window, he clearly witnessed the radiances reflecting off her joints. This maid who lay on the bed wasn’t a true human, but a puppet who resembled a human instead!

Bang!

Rhode hurled the puppet in his hand and slammed it heavily to the ground. However, there was still no reaction from it. Looking at this scene, he curled his lips, reached out his hand to grab the puppet again, and threw it back onto the bed, setting it up the way she was asleep earlier. But even then, nothing changed.

“Something seems to be really wrong.”

Gazing at the incomprehensible scene before him, Rhode shook his head and mumbled under his breath. He was the best judge of whether or not Shira was a puppet. After all, he had made love with her several times and disliked doing it in pitch-blackness the most. Even though Shira wasn’t vain, Rhode would still clean her from the inside-out to make her visually attractive before doing the deed. That was why he was certain that Shira was definitely not a puppet.

Technically, even though her race was the ‘undead puppet’, the ‘undead puppets’ weren’t man-made objects to begin with. The reason for the creation of ‘undead puppets’ was that the Dark Dragon attempted to produce an undead race with the ability to reproduce (though the premise itself was often criticized). That was why it was safe to assume that ‘undead puppets’ created by the Dark Dragon possessed living signs of life. And if Rhode recalled correctly, he was certain that apart from the fact that Shira didn’t need to breathe and had no heartbeat and body temperature, she was basically the same as other ordinary life forms, be it on the outside or inside.

But now, this maid...

Rhode might have some idea as to why she was so aloof. Perhaps it was that this puppet itself was as emotionless as a robot, which made it a habitually silent being? But now, it was apparent that nothing could be investigated here, which was why after taking a glance at the maid, Rhode returned to the shadows once more. Soon after, he passed through the thick wall and arrived at the neighboring bedroom. Likewise, the noble lady also lay on the bed and had fallen into deep sleep. Although Rhode caused a racket next door, the noble lady looked like she was completely unaware of it. And with the earlier experience, this time Rhode had no hesitation at all. He strode over to the noble lady and carefully groped her from head to toe. Unlike the puppet earlier, this young lady was entirely a human body. After some probing, he was sure that ‘her’ body was complete and there was nothing strange about it. But just like the previous puppet, the noble lady also resembled a corpse and didn’t react to his manhandling.

“What the hell...”

Tossing the noble lady, who Rhode had grown tired of playing in his hands, back onto the bed again, he extended his hand to touch his chin and curled his lips with some dissatisfaction. He was getting a little impatient now. He always felt as if he were stuck in some kind of trap that he couldn’t get out of, but this time, it was different from the traps of the previous mental worlds. Celestina’s mental trap was active, while Gracier’s and Madaras’s were passive. And despite that, he was still able to detect their presence and respond in the shortest possible time.

But now, this trap made him feel like a frog trapped in a pot of warm water. What left him depressed was that although he expected that things wouldn’t turn out normal, he still hadn’t found a way to jump out of the pot. And now, the two Shiras might be mental projections, but they certainly couldn’t be projections of Shira’s original self because her mental health was much more abnormal than Celestina’s. He was certain that there must be a third, strongest, and most terrifying mental projection besides these two. However, where exactly was she? Why did he never meet her once?

“Argh...”

At that moment, the noble lady who was thrown back onto the bed by Rhode groaned. Upon hearing her voice, Rhode was shaken; he shifted back into the shadows hurriedly. And along with the noble lady’s groan, someone knocked on her room door. Immediately after, the maid opened the door and entered the room, arriving by the noble lady’s side and calling out to her softly.

“My lady, please wake up. It’s time for breakfast.”

“Ugh... Is it? I didn’t expect it to be so soon...”

Watching as the noble lady opened her sleepy eyes and replied to the maid as if she just woke up from a dream, Rhode couldn’t help but feel a little weird. Clearly, he just confirmed that she was in deep sleep and had even manhandled her. He never expected her to not realize it at all. Judging from her reaction, she seemed to have really just woken up from her sleep.

And that caused the uncertainty in Rhode’s heart to grow stronger. For some reason, he suddenly remembered a movie from a long time ago called ‘The Truman Show’[1]. He had a bizarre feeling like he was similar to the protagonist in that movie...

The next was the same as before; the noble lady ordered the maid to wake Rhode up, while Rhode followed the maid to the parlor again after putting up a disguise. Then, under the hospitality of the noble lady, they spent another peaceful day; everything was no different from yesterday.

But such peaceful days made him sick. He would rather be caught up in some bizarre event than stay idle all day long. He had pretty much turned the place upside down but hadn’t found even the slightest trace of anything odd. Of course, the only two suspicions for him were that the noble lady and maid were as though corpses after they fell asleep, which also gave him the impression that they were both command-controlled robots that would only act after inputting commands. After the commands were completed, they would return to their original state.

For that, Rhode purposely repeated the story that he told yesterday and found that they didn’t have any memory as if it was their first time hearing it. Not only that, but he was also stunned by the fact that in the impression of these two people, he wasn’t a guest who stayed here for two days, but one who just moved in yesterday instead. In other words, to these two people, no matter how long he lived here, he would always be ‘a traveler who just moved in yesterday’.

This is literally an infinite loop!

This can’t go on.

After once again watching the maid escort him back to the guest room and left in exactly the same manner as yesterday, Rhode made up his mind to find out the key to this mental world. Now, he was aware of the fact that these two mental projections perhaps had no hold on Shira herself at all. Because he could neither see the elegance of a noble lady nor the respect and obedience of a maid in Shira. In that case, it meant that maybe the personalities of these two mental projections were formed by Shira a long time ago and were later abandoned, which was, in fact, a normal occurrence in everyone’s growth.

It was like all teenagers in elementary school fantasizing about being able to turn into Ultraman[2] and save humanity. However, no one would ever see a man in his thirties wearing a suit and holding his right hand up in anticipation and screaming: ‘Transform!’. That was what normal meant and Shira’s ‘growth’ probably fell into that category as well. That was why Rhode was sure that nothing good would come out of the situation if he stayed here any longer.

But... Since there are no clues inside, the only thing to do next is to go outside and look for them.

Rhode clearly remembered the noble lady warning him that it was dangerous on the outside and it was best not to head out. And before that, Rhode was just focused on the indoors only. After all, most secrets were carried out in shady places like this. But now, since he had no luck in the western-styled manor house, he had no choice but to go outside and take a look.

Squeak...

The heavy entrance door wasn’t locked as he had expected, so he pushed it open effortlessly. He walked out of the hall quietly and took a look outside. The place had barely changed from when he arrived earlier; the bright moonlight shone on the woodland and lake around him, as well as the forest in the distance. Everything seemed so peaceful and serene. There were neither mysterious monsters haunting the area nor wolves or dogs heard howling and barking.

But now, there was nothing he could do but to continue his exploration. In the spirit of movies where the culprit would either be in the secret chamber or back garden, Rhode first went to the latter, which was overgrown with weeds, to check things out. But to his disappointment, although there was indeed a dilapidated shed that looked like a clue to the case, after digging around in the dust and dirt, he found to his dismay that it was really just a dilapidated shed with nothing hidden in it, and there was also no strange presence around. As a result, his efforts were in vain after searching for clues for half a day. What made him even more depressed was that at that moment, rain also began to pour.

Pitter-patter...

Upon hearing the sound of the rain pouring on the outside all of a sudden, Rhode sighed helplessly, pushed open the door of the shed, and walked out. But at that moment, he raised his eyebrow and looked toward the place where the sound of rain came from. Then, an incomparably bizarre scene appeared before his eyes.

Half of the manor house was enveloped in a rainstorm, including the location of the parlor, while the rest of the place was devoid of even the slightest trace of water. Even the shed where he stood was the same; it was dry, and there was no sign of rain at all!

“This is...!”

Upon looking at that scene, Rhode remembered the noble lady mentioning that it was raining heavily outside. But he recalled when he woke up, he didn’t feel any traces of rain at all. And now, it seemed like this was all because of the ‘location’ as the guest room was located on the other side, so he didn’t notice the heavy rain in the slightest. In addition, the soundproofing of the western-styled manor house was also wonderful, so much so that he didn’t notice anything unusual before.

But now...

Rhode raised his head, looked at the direction of the rainstorm, and saw an incomparably massive watering that covered the entire sky. At that moment, the watering can poured water out of its spout from above, creating a rainstorm-like presence that drowned the manor house. Upon witnessing this scene, Rhode was speechless. He went silent for a moment, before taking a few deep breaths and yelling out.

“I know you are there, Shira!”

“Shira...”

“Shira...”

Rhode’s call echoed far away and vanished quickly. But at that moment, the ground rumbled, and immediately before his eyes, a bizarre scene appeared. A gigantic female head, occupying half of the sky, emerged from the other side of the horizon. She widened her mouth into a fanatical smile. Her messy and disheveled hair draped over her shoulders, while her pair of eyes were filled with wildness and insanity.

Along with the emergence of this massive head, Rhode felt the scenery around him changing quickly. In just the blink of an eye, the deep, dark night was gone, while the bright moon turned into a fluorescent pebble. The entire manor and its island transformed into a small and delicate model, and he became a part of it. As he looked up, he saw a dilapidated, cobweb-stained tomb, as well as piles of white bones around it. Clearly, this was the place that fit the image of Shira.

“Hoo-hoo-hoo... Hoo-hoo-hoo... Is this fun, Master?”

Just like that, Shira opened her mouth wide and raised a question to Rhode.

[1] A 1998 American psychological science-fiction comedy-drama film.

[2] A fictional superhero and the first ‘live-action film’ hero launched by the Ultra Series.