WTNL Chapter 80

by Aria

Fantasy Amusement Park
Chapter 80: Real horror appeared!

Chapter 80: Fantasy Amusement Park

Under the dim light, Brother Pang’s pale, swollen face was twisted in terror. Large patches of transparent mucus flowed down his skin, dripping onto the ground. Dense clusters of frog eggs were tightly packed deep within his wounds, reflecting a nauseating, sticky sheen.

Trembling, he lowered his head and stared at the long strip of skin stuck to his fingernails, then slowly raised his hand and touched his cheek—

“Ahhhhhhhhh!!”

A shrill, miserable scream erupted from the depths of his throat. Brother Pang’s face looked exceptionally contorted under the intense fear. His trembling fingers touched the frog eggs on his face, and he endlessly let out a frenzied scream that sounded almost inhuman.

“Don’t panic.”

Yun Bilan’s expression was also very ugly.

“Wait a moment, this item should be useful.”

Feigning composure, she took out her phone from her pocket and opened her inventory backpack.

Soon, a bottle of Holy Water appeared in her hand. This was a hidden item Yun Bilan obtained from a B-rank instance, which could clear negative statuses on streamers, including infections.

Yun Bilan tossed the Holy Water over: “Drink it.”

Brother Pang seemed to finally regain a bit of his rationality. He reached out with trembling hands, twisted the bottle open, and gulped the Holy Water down his throat.

The item should have taken effect immediately, instantly clearing the streamer’s negative status, but…

One second passed, five seconds passed, twenty seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

Brother Pang’s skin was still damp and swollen. The frog eggs beneath his skin wriggled, as if they would burst out of his skin in the next second.

“Wh-what’s going on?”

He widened his eyes, his pupils dilating under the intense fear, his voice trembling and changing pitch: “Why, why is there no effect?”

“Why is there no effect!”

Brother Pang screamed hysterically.

Yun Bilan’s face was deathly pale, her expression shaken: “How could this…”

Brother Pang’s live broadcast room also exploded:

[Fuck, what is going on!]

[Doesn’t this item purify negative effects? Why is it useless?!]

[Yeah, I remember this item was obtained from that B- rank insect egg instance! Holy Water should be effective against this type of biological parasitism, right?]

[The person above is watching this Fantasy Amusement Park instance for the first time, right? In this instance, all healing and purification items are ineffective. If it was just a simple biological parasitism, how could it have wiped out so many waves of streamers, and finally be shut down by the system due to the excessively high death rate?]

[I was also terrified when I watched this instance for the first time, it’s really twisted.]

[Fuck… I finally understand why people in the bullet comments previously kept saying that the high death rate of this instance has nothing to do with its difficulty…]

While Yun Bilan was dealing with the parasitic eggs on Brother Pang’s body, Wen Jianyan stood a short distance away, his gaze searching for something on the surrounding walls.

Finally, his gaze fell on a wall not far away, and his eyes paused.

There was a small red button there, with the words [Emergency Button] marked in eye-catching red font next to it.

Wen Jianyan walked over.

He leaned in close, turning on his flashlight to shine on it.

The strong light penetrated the dusty transparent plastic casing outside the emergency button. He saw that the red button seemed to be covered in a layer of sticky, slimy substance, reflecting a bizarre faint gleam under the flashlight’s beam.

Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes, revealing a thoughtful expression.

He felt like he had somewhat grasped the underlying logic of this instance.

Yun Bilan turned her head to look over. Her expression was anxious, her lips pressed tightly together: “How is it? Did you find anything?”

“More or less.”

Wen Jianyan replied ambiguously. He stepped aside, letting Yun Bilan look at the sticky substance on the emergency button.

“This is…?” Yun Bilan was stunned.

“Unclear,” Wen Jianyan shrugged and said concisely, “Brother Pang was probably infected through this.”

“…How could Brother Pang be so careless?”

Yun Bilan frowned, her expression a little ugly.

She had teamed up with Brother Pang quite a few times. Although the other party’s level was slightly lower than hers, he had experienced several instances after all. Logically speaking, he shouldn’t have fallen prey to this kind of trap.

“Earlier when the two of us were trapped in the dollhouse, didn’t you feel that Brother Pang’s voice sounded exceptionally strange?” Wen Jianyan said.

Yun Bilan froze.

…Indeed.

Even though she had explicitly proposed using an item to pull the two of them out at the time, the other party still insisted on using the emergency button to call the staff, almost as if… his mind had been bewitched.

“Remember? The last rule printed on the back of the map.” Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes and repeated in a low voice: “Do not trust frogs.”

He turned his head to look at Yun Bilan, saying softly:

“…Brother Pang trusted the frog.”

Yun Bilan understood what Wen Jianyan meant.

After a brief moment of shock, a chill instantly rose from her feet, making her hair stand on end.

The rules were useful.

And they must be obeyed.

Within the grounds of the Fantasy Amusement Park, frogs must absolutely not be trusted.

But, who is the frog?

Wen Jianyan rubbed the edge of his phone with the pad of his finger, lowering his eyes deep in thought.

Based on all the currently known conditions, all the “rules” he had encountered so far were temporarily true; it was just that there was a discrepancy in their timelines.

After all, the haunted house only switched to an unmanned ticketing system after the real staff were replaced by frogs, and the emergency buttons probably only failed after that as well, which was why the second rule printed on the back of the tickets was derived from it.

This point was actually the most terrifying.

No one was lying.

All the rules were guaranteeing the safety of the tourists.

If one wanted to survive in this Fantasy Amusement Park, they had to obey the rules and trust the rules.

Based on the information revealed by this instance so far, “trust” itself was a death trigger. If you trusted the wrong, distorted rules, even if you yourself didn’t realize it, when encountering a life-or-death crossroads, even if you were extremely cautious, you would still be manipulated by the instance and led to a dead end.

What was worse was… the instance had only just begun.

All the streamers knew clearly that as time passed, the difficulty of the instance would only increase. No one knew what other unforeseen events would happen next.

“Heh… heheh…”

A bizarre, hoarse chuckling sound welled up from Brother Pang’s windpipe, sounding exceptionally grating in the pitch-black, dead-silent corridor.

Supporting himself against the wall, he slowly stood up.

Wen Jianyan and Yun Bilan’s gazes were drawn over.

“So itchy, it’s so itchy.”

Brother Pang murmured in a trance, slowly raising his head.

Under the slightly swaying light of the flashlight, his face was already so swollen that his original features could no longer be distinguished. His entire face looked like a steamed bun bloated with water, continuously dripping translucent gelatinous matter.

He raised his hand, desperately and forcefully scratching at his face and neck. Accompanied by a squelching watery sound, large chunks of skin were torn off. Beneath each piece of skin were even more dense clusters of frog eggs. They wriggled pale and raw, the tiny pitch-black dots resembling pinpricks, making one’s skin crawl just looking at them.

“Water… I want water…”

He sluggishly looked around the corridor, using his slippery hands to support himself on the wall as he stood up bit by bit. His entire body was like a balloon filled with liquid, swaying slowly.

That face covered in frog eggs looked over at the two people in front of him. The eyeballs, covered in transparent jelly, were filled with an extremely terrifying madness.

Brother Pang violently lunged over. His expression was twisted and horrifying, his movements astonishingly fast. As if he wanted to use the other party’s blood to quench his thirst, his water-logged, pale mouth opened wide. Granular transparent frog eggs could faintly be seen in his oral mucosa:

“Water, give me water!”

Wen Jianyan’s eyes sharpened: “Run!”

This guy was probably beyond saving.

At Wen Jianyan’s reminder, Yun Bilan snapped out of her brief daze. She took one last deep look at Brother Pang, gritted her teeth hard, turned around, and kept pace with Wen Jianyan.

Neither of them had poor stamina. Although Brother Pang’s short-term explosive speed was astonishing, his body had after all been parasitized by rapidly reproducing frog eggs. With every step he ran, his body was collapsing, and soon he fell to the ground and stopped moving.

Wen Jianyan and Yun Bilan quickly ran down from the second floor.

The other two were already waiting at the gathering point in the first-floor hall.

Seeing Yun Bilan and Wen Jianyan, Elise’s eyes lit up, but she quickly noticed the number of people was wrong, and she slowly frowned and asked:

“Where’s Brother Pang?”

“…”

Yun Bilan’s expression sank, and she slowly shook her head.

The air instantly fell into a dead silence, the atmosphere turning heavy.

Yun Bilan took a deep breath, seeming to have regained her composure, and asked:

“Did you find the card?”

The other streamer, who called himself Piqiu, nodded and showed the card in his palm to Yun Bilan: “Found it. What about you guys?”

“Us too.”

Yun Bilan nodded: “Let’s go, we’ll head downstairs to the final check-in point.”

The four of them walked forward along the marked path inside the haunted house. After pushing open a heavy iron door, a steep tunnel leading downwards appeared before their eyes.

The air was murky and dusty, and the narrow passageway was permeated with a stale, damp smell.

The walls were covered in scarlet, spattered blood. A giant arrow pointed to the deepest part, beneath which was a line of large, scribbled words written in blood:

“Welcome to my little house!”

The few of them exchanged a glance.

Yun Bilan steadied her nerves: “Let’s go.”

They cautiously walked down the stairs step by step.

Soon, the stairs came to an end.

A pitch-black, heavy iron door appeared before everyone’s eyes. Hung on the iron door were various severed limbs of dolls, snow-white cotton spilling out from the torn seams, and stiff smiles hung on the heads of the dolls.

A blood-red poster was plastered on the wall, featuring the horror font specific to the haunted house:

“Welcome everyone to Felix’s slaughterhouse. This is where he turned his victims into dolls. Every late night, someone can always hear sorrowful weeping coming from here. It is said that their souls are still trapped in this tiny room, wandering eternally at the place where they lost their lives.”

“If you want to escape from here, you must pass through this terrifying place. Are you ready?”

Drawn on the poster was a doll stitched together from severed limbs, with a line of crooked words written next to it:

“Stay and play with me.”

This was the final stop of the entire haunted house.

Yun Bilan took a deep breath and slowly pushed the door open.

Appearing before their eyes was a massive dungeon. Doll limbs hung everywhere, and the ground was full of dried black-red bloodstains. Various murder tools hung on the rust-covered shelves on the walls—knives, scissors, saws, axes, and chains. Countless dolls wearing lace dresses sat on the shelves, every single ghastly pale face bearing the exact same stiff smile.

At the end of the dungeon was a tightly closed large door.

There were three slots on the door; clearly, three cards had to be inserted for the door to be opened.

However, unlike the previous dollhouse, this time in the dungeon, there was no such obvious card prompt.

The four of them walked into the dungeon.

“Why don’t we split up and look around—”

Before Elise could finish her sentence, the next second, with a loud “Bang”, the heavy iron door slammed shut heavily behind the four of them, making everyone’s hearts jolt involuntarily.

What’s going on?

Could it be another haunted house mechanism?

“Creaaak—”

The ground trembled, and an ear-piercing sound, like something being torn apart, came from above.

Everyone raised their heads in astonishment, subconsciously looking towards the direction of the sound.

They saw the ceiling above being slowly lifted off by a giant hand. Following closely, a face covered in fierce folds of flesh drew near. His eyes were muddy, and he let out a “heh heh” laugh:

“Dolls, dolls.”

“!!!”

Wen Jianyan’s pupils shrank.

If the first two check-in points were fake scares created using props and sound effects, then this third check-in point was absolutely a real scare!

The familiar mechanical voice of the system rang in the ears of the four at the same time:

[Ding, condition met detected, hidden side quest opening—]

“Hmm hmm hmm… hmm hmm…”

A low, cheerful humming echoed in the darkness. The voice was gruff and intermittent, humming an out-of-tune melody.

Wen Jianyan’s eyelids twitched, and he slowly opened his eyes.

His vision was entirely dark.

Where… is this…?

He frowned. Some soft fabric was binding his skin. Along with his movements, the slightly rough texture brought an uncomfortable friction.

Wen Jianyan turned his head to look beside him. One by one, dolls dressed in gorgeous clothes were sitting beside him, pressed tightly against him. Each one was the same size as a human, their ghastly pale faces bearing exaggerated, brilliant smiles, their eyes made of glass beads staring fixedly into the far distance.

“Hmm hmm… hmm hmm hmm…”

The humming sound became clearly audible, sounding excessively creepy in the dark room.

Wen Jianyan looked towards the direction of the sound.

A tall, sturdy, obese man had his back to him, sitting cross-legged on the ground. At this moment, he was looking down, carefully polishing the knife in his hand.

“Scrape, scrape.”

The scalp-numbing sound of metal scraping rang out, echoing in the terrifying room filled with the stench of blood.

This must be that Felix.

The murderer who turned his victims into dolls.

However… Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but feel that something was a bit off.

Everything around him carried a subtle sense of incongruity.

The other party’s back profile was simply too huge, and even the entire dungeon had been proportionally enlarged, almost as if…

Wen Jianyan widened his eyes slightly and abruptly looked down at his own body—

Wait.

L-lace dress?

Wen Jianyan’s pupils quaked.

???