The ancient stone walls seemed to drink in the faint morning light atop the mountain.
Shadows lurked in many a corner of the old castle, and behind every door could lie an untold secret.
The cold masonry and dim corridors, tainted by the impending threat of slaughter, felt all the more chilling.
The party maintained a delicate distance between one another as they walked through the castle corridors.
Looking out the windows, they could see only mist-shrouded forests and the faint silhouettes of valleys in the distance; everything appeared hazy and mysterious.
As Blood Clan dependents, the two traitors could draw upon the blood masters' authority only when the masters were awake. The habits of the Blood Clan generally saw them retreat to a safe haven at daybreak, sealing themselves away from the light and sinking into slumber, awakening only when darkness fell.
Consequently, the traitors had only one opportunity each night to invoke the unknown, terrifying authorities of the Counts.
On this opening day of the five-day killing game, none of the challengers had fallen yet, and their side was at peak strength. Unable to call upon their masters' authority, the two traitors dared not attempt a direct two-against-ten battle.
Instead, they wisely disguised themselves as ordinary challengers.
Naturally, the daytime reconnaissance strategy became simple: everyone stayed together, and no one was permitted to leave the others' sight.
This forced the traitors to move with the group, leaving them unable to commit murder or advance their hidden objectives during the day.
Likewise, it would drastically slow the traitors' progress.
Ascending the stone steps from the sanctuary hall and winding through the upper corridors, they reached a second-floor mezzanine gallery that provided a clear view back down into the ground-floor hall. Venturing further inside revealed three locked, spacious bedrooms, several washrooms, and storage areas, but the most striking feature was a two-story library connecting the second and third floors.
Crafted from dark mahogany, tall and ornate carved bookshelves ran along the walls up to the ceiling, packed with ancient tomes from the Horning Empire, including archaic manuscripts and precious maps. At the center stood a writing desk furnished with a quill and an inkwell—evidently where the castle's owner, Sir Caligula, had once studied and worked.
Yet Frey had no intention of having everyone waste precious hours scouring old books for clues. He simply led the group up the library's spiral staircase to the third floor.
From the third floor to the fifth, aside from three locked bedrooms on each story, they found Sir Caligula's private quarters, a council chamber, a forge, an armory, a weaving room, an atelier, an apothecary, watchtowers, and more.
Many of the castle rooms they passed seemed full of potential clues.
Yet the Detective showed no interest in them whatsoever.
Acting as though he had seen straight through every distraction, he marched in a straight line toward the single, most efficient course of action he had already decided upon.
After a thorough three-hour sweep through the interior, the challengers finally confirmed that the five-story castle was reinforced with potent defensive spells capable of repelling exceptionally strong assaults, with individually bolstered barriers placed on the bedrooms in particular.
With three rooms on each floor from the second to the fifth, there were exactly twelve safe bedrooms, and every challenger already carried a magic key in their pocket to unlock the doors and windows of their assigned room.
With this, the mechanics of the Shadow World became clearer.
Once night fell and the blood masters awakened, granting the traitors access to their authorities, staying gathered together would likely allow the two traitors to slaughter everyone in one fell swoop.
Thus, the obvious nighttime strategy was to disperse and hide inside the safe bedrooms.
Even if the Blood Clan authorities included offensive or curse-breaking abilities that could shatter a bedroom's defenses, the restriction of only one use per day—combined with the absolute rationality the Shadow World always maintained—meant they could likely breach at most one or two safe rooms each night.
The more concentrated their lodging, the higher the chance of multiple challengers being wiped out in a single night; the more scattered they were, the fewer casualties they would likely suffer.
If the traitors were not uncovered soon, five days would be more than enough for the two of them to kill off every remaining challenger.
Because the occupants of each bedroom had already been made public before the Shadow World began, challengers holding critical roles were in grave danger—none more so than the Detective.
The only way to evade danger was to share a room with a challenger one could trust.
And the challengers would have to protect the Detective even at the cost of their own lives; they had to prevent the traitors from assassinating him on the very first night.
The earlier the Detective died, the more overwhelmingly this Shadow World would tilt toward a traitor victory!
Conversely, with clever misdirection or a flawless psychological gambit, it was entirely possible to make the traitors waste the night on an empty room!
Having completed their survey of the castle's layout, the group followed Frey back down to the ground floor.
Frey headed to the kitchen and larder to gather some portable provisions, stuffing them into a leather crossbody bag he had found upstairs, before stopping by the wine cellar to pick up several bottles of sweet white wine.
It was nearing nine in the morning.
Before the towering double doors, sunlight surged freely through the window frames and filtered through the stained glass in the dome, casting shifting patterns of brilliance and shadow across the dim interior.
Frey pushed open the massive doors, and the group followed him out of the ancient castle for the first time. The dazzling sunlight struck them with unprecedented intensity.
At last, they could see the castle in the clouds in all its glory.
Stepping past the threshold and looking back, the intricate carvings on the old castle walls stood out sharply in the morning light. The limestone walls contrasted vividly with the lush green forest, while the suspended terrace on the top floor and the soaring spires cut an imposing figure amidst the drifting clouds and mist.
Now, Frey instructed everyone to head to the edge of the cliff to verify whether the intelligence from the [Geographer] and the [Lawyer] was accurate.
If their claims held true, the credibility of two people would rise substantially.
Encircled by mountains and dense woods, the castle sat surrounded by lush greenery, rendered all the more eerie by the bleakness of autumn.
Twelve figures moved through the woods, the tension mounting with every step.
The mist-shrouded trees loomed like eerie specters, and a shallow brook turned into a mysterious pathway vanishing into the fog.
They knew the real purpose of this trip was to check on the state of the bridge.
In just five minutes, guided by the precise directions the [Geographer] had provided, they arrived at the cliff edge.
The sight before them was horrifying: the road leading to the city-states was severed by an enormous chasm.
Even before they peered over the brink, the drop of eight hundred meters and the chasm's width of over a hundred meters struck them with sheer visual shock.
Just as Lanqi had predicted, the hundred-meter-long bridge had indeed been destroyed.
It was as though someone had deliberately trapped everyone inside this ancient castle.
It had to be the work of the traitors using their Blood Clan authorities prior to the start of the Shadow World.
An eight-hundred-meter plunge, a gap of over a hundred meters to the opposite side, and the airspace denial of the national defense barrier effectively cut them off from the rest of the world, leaving them prisoners on an isolated island of stone.
In this bleak, chilly morning, everything remained an impenetrable mystery without a single lead.
And just as the shattered bridge pushed everyone's mood toward the brink of despair—
Frey, like a detective on the verge of cracking the case wide open, walked toward the cliff edge all by himself!
Chapter 125