Chapter 216

Chapter 212: Opening

Underneath the King Campus, deep within the underground ruins.

Manipulating the zombie puppet carrying a kerosene lamp to lead the way through the darkness, Dorothy continued walking down the dark and spacious corridor. While she managed to escape the dangerous bat man, her path back was sealed off, leaving her no choice but to continue forward and explore deeper into the ruins.

From the sixth level onwards, this ruin only had a single long corridor that extended further downward, with no side paths in between. Dorothy could only keep moving forward.

After an unknown amount of time wandering down the dark, narrow corridor, Dorothy finally reached its end, entering a room through a stone door. This room was wide and empty, similar to the rooms she had seen on the upper levels, which were all square and bare, with even the wall plaster chipped away, making them uneven.

‘What the hell? That’s it? Is this the end? The deepest point of the ruins is just an empty room?’

Dorothy thought bitterly to herself as she scanned the surroundings. She confirmed that this room only connected to the path she came in from, with no other exits. This meant Dorothy couldn’t move forward and had nowhere else to go.

It was clear that this room had been thoroughly looted, even the murals were gone. Not only was there nothing left, but there was also no way to proceed further.

‘sh*t… This isn’t good at all… If I can’t move forward, then I have to go back, right? But the way back is blocked, and that bat man is probably still out there waiting. I can’t go back…’

As Dorothy pondered what to do, she sensed something amiss from another location.

Next to the rubble-blocking path, Dorothy had left a sentry zombie puppet to watch for any sudden breakthroughs by the bat man. While exploring, she kept an eye on the situation via the puppet’s senses.

At this moment, Dorothy noticed through the puppet’s vision that a purple-red mist was seeping out from the gaps between the rubble and spreading across the ground. Seeing this unusual gas, Dorothy felt a chill.

‘What’s going on? Why is this stuff seeping over here… Is the bat man behind this?’

Watching the increasing purple-red mist seeping through the cracks, Dorothy became wary and had a bad feeling.

‘Could this be poison gas? Maybe he can’t get through himself and is trying to use gas to k*ll me?’

Dorothy speculated, growing more convinced. The gas was too strange and coming from the opposite direction of where the bat man was, indicating it was likely poison gas.

‘Oh no… If the gas spreads to my side, I’m done. There’s nowhere for me to run.’

Watching the distant scene, Dorothy thought anxiously. With a dead end ahead and poison gas spreading behind, she needed to think of a solution quickly.

“What should I do… Is there anything in this room that can block the gas? Everything is empty…”

Dorothy muttered to herself as she controlled herself and the nearby zombie puppet to search the room for a way to resist the gas.

Suddenly, Dorothy frowned, sensing something odd.

‘Tsk… Something feels off… There’s something strange about this room, but I can’t pinpoint what’s wrong…’

Noticing the oddity, Dorothy and her puppet observed their surroundings again. Though nothing seemed obviously wrong at first glance, the sense of misalignment and unnaturalness persisted.

‘So, what’s off… What’s the problem?’

Thinking this through, Dorothy closed her eyes and used her knowledge to review her previous searches of the room, trying to find the source of the odd feeling. Meanwhile, the poison was spreading down the corridor toward the final room.

‘I found it!’

Suddenly, Dorothy opened her eyes and quickly walked to a corner of the room, approaching a wall that hadn’t been chiseled and was relatively flat.

Standing by this wall, Dorothy first turned her head to one side and had the puppet observe the wall. From the puppet’s perspective, the wall appeared normal.

Then Dorothy made the puppet close its eyes and viewed the wall herself. The overall appearance was the same, but there were additional details.

In Dorothy’s own view, several dense, tiny white marks suddenly appeared on the wall. These marks looked ordinary, like regular scratches that she wouldn’t normally pay attention to. However, their peculiarity lay in the fact that they were visible only to Dorothy, while the puppet couldn’t see them.

The difference between the two perspectives caused the dissonance Dorothy felt. These “scratches” on the wall were the cause of this dissonance.

‘So… Is this my problem or the puppet’s?’

To accurately determine the issue, Dorothy created several more puppets and had them all observe the wall. In their perspectives, Dorothy found that she couldn’t see the scratches at all.

“How interesting… Only my perspective can see this. If the puppet can’t see it, does that mean ordinary people can’t either?”

Dorothy mused, having an idea about this peculiar phenomenon.

“This might be… a secret left by the Star Number Repair Association, something only an ‘Enlightenment’ Extraordinary Being can see…”

Continuing to mutter, Dorothy reached out to touch the scratches, and suddenly, an idea struck her.

After being touched by Dorothy, the scratches seemed to come alive, twisting on the wall and constantly changing until they formed an eye-like shape, staring at Dorothy.

After a few seconds of the eye gazing at Dorothy, the scratches twisted again, this time forming words—two languages Dorothy could read: Prit Writing.

The text read:

“Verification passed, welcome back, Knower.”

Immediately after, the entire wall vanished, revealing a hidden passage.

‘So it is…’

Dorothy smiled slightly at the passage and then turned to see the purple-red gas creeping up to the doorway. Without hesitation, she led her puppet into the passage.

Soon after Dorothy entered the passage, the wall reappeared, sealing the room back into a single-entry secret room. The inscriptions on the wall changed back to scattered marks.

More purple-red gas flooded into the room, gradually filling the final chamber. The wall that could appear and disappear seamlessly merged with the entire room, creating a sealed space with no gaps for the gas to seep through.