Chapter 223 - 222: That Is My Asher

Chapter 223: Chapter 222: That Is My Asher

"They’re so stupid," I muttered with a frown, crouching down to carefully inspect the ground.

Since this was a movable maze, there had to be seams between the walls and the floor, visible to the naked eye.

Considering what happened on the seventeenth floor, the killer must have preset some of the sequences—like releasing poison gas, switching the lights, and moving the walls to form the maze, all on a timer.

Asher had cleared some of the roadblocks for us ahead of time, but unfortunately, the killer was one of us.

He wasn’t about to let us get through this so easily. He still had other cards to play.

So... the killer had deliberately waited until no one was looking to paint those bloody arrows, guiding everyone straight into a hazardous zone.

"Ah!" Screams and the sound of tearing flesh erupted from the other side of the wall.

Just as I’d expected, they had run into danger.

"Snakes! There are snakes!"

"Ah!"

Madeline Quinn frantically pounded on the wall. "Zeke! Zeke, are you guys okay?"

There was no response.

Clearly, they had their hands full.

"Cece, do you know how to open this wall?" Madeline Quinn asked, looking at me nervously.

"Why would we open it?" I looked back at her, confused. "If we open it, we’ll die too."

We were only safe because they were in there. "We can use this chance. I can get you out of here."

I got up, walked over to a wall with a visible seam, and knocked on it. It was definitely movable. "Follow me."

Madeline Quinn looked at me in disbelief, as if she couldn’t believe those words had come from my mouth. "Cece... what’s wrong with you? Zeke and Felix are in there... We..."

"Can the two of us save them? Since it’s something we have zero chance of doing, why waste time getting ourselves killed?" I had no idea what was going through her head.

’We can’t save them. Going in there would be a suicide mission, wouldn’t it? So, instead of throwing our lives away, we should leave now. What’s wrong with that logic?’

Madeline Quinn stared at me blankly and slowly backed away. "You’re not Cece... Who are you?"

My expression darkened, and I frowned. "The maze walls shift. They triggered a trap, and we can’t get in right now. So, you should come with me. We’ll get out of here, find the exit, and wait for them on the next floor."

Madeline Quinn looked at me with fear, tightly gripping the dagger in her hand.

It was like she was convinced I wasn’t Cecilia Caldwell.

I couldn’t be bothered to explain further. "If you don’t want to die, then follow me. Lucas Grant isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but it’s not entirely impossible for him to escape. Besides... Felix Foster is with them. They won’t die."

Madeline Quinn hesitated for a moment but ultimately followed me.

I walked to the wall, found the pressure plate that triggered the mechanism, and stomped on it.

The designer of this maze was a genius. In a chaotic situation with many people, this pressure plate would inevitably be stepped on, triggering the mechanism early and causing the walls to shift.

I led Madeline Quinn into another space, one so immaculately white it seemed to be without a single speck of dust.

The moment we entered, the walls shifted again, sealing me and Madeline Quinn inside this new space.

"Stay put. Don’t move," I warned, looking at Madeline Quinn.

Madeline Quinn stood where she was, not daring to move a muscle.

I took my dagger, jabbed it forcefully into a crack between the floor tiles, and when I pulled it out, a bizarre scream came from the floor. The blade was stained with blood.

Heh...

’What kind of things was that lunatic raising down here?’

If I chose the wrong path, the things underground would swarm out, and Madeline Quinn and I would be eaten until not even a bone fragment was left.

"Cece... what’s... what’s down there?" Madeline Quinn asked, her voice trembling.

Obviously, she could feel it too—there was something beneath the floorboards.

"Rats..." I said indifferently. "If I choose the wrong trigger and the correct path doesn’t appear, then we will both die."

Down below were man-eating rats.

Madeline Quinn swallowed hard, sweat already soaking the hair at her temples.

"Stay where you are. Don’t move. If you move around and trigger a trap, I won’t save you," I warned her, slowly backing up until my back was against the wall.

Madeline Quinn didn’t even dare to breathe too loudly.

"Cece..." Madeline Quinn was terrified. Rats were her greatest fear.

I gestured for her to be quiet and slowly crouched down.

Drawn on the immaculate white floor was a blueprint of the maze, with the exit at its center.

On this floor, the safe passage was in the center.

The maze itself wasn’t hard—a flood-fill algorithm could find the optimal path. The challenge was that the walls were on a timer, constantly rearranging themselves.

And stepping on the wrong tile would trigger other dangers.

"Countdown commencing... 10... 9..."

That bizarre voice echoed in the space again.

Once the countdown ended, if we hadn’t found the right way out, the maze would automatically transform.

When the walls moved, the rats below would swarm out. We’d be trapped in here and eaten alive, chewed to death by the horde.

Madeline Quinn was already panicking, too scared to move from her spot.

"5... 4... 3..."

Just as the countdown was about to end, I stepped on a floor tile in the corner.

In the nick of time, I had solved the series of numerical equations associated with the maze diagram and picked out the corresponding floor tile.

The walls of the room shifted, but at the same time, another wall slid open, and countless rats crawled out from the cracks in the floor.

I quickly dodged into the next room and looked back at Madeline Quinn. "Come on!"

But the rats were out, and she was scared... She was too afraid to move.

"The wall will close automatically in ten seconds! Hurry!"

I yelled at Madeline Quinn.

But she was so scared she was jumping all over the place as the rats on the floor swarmed towards her. "Cece... save me."

She was terrified of rats, and with them all over the floor, she had nowhere to step.

In her panic, she stepped on another trigger, and the walls began to move.

It was too late.

"Madeline Quinn..."

Just then, a thought crossed my mind.

’Leave her to her fate...’

As I watched the wall close inch by inch, I met Madeline Quinn’s desperate, pleading gaze.

"Dammit..."

My head throbbed. Just before the wall sealed shut, I darted back into the room.

The dagger in my hand pierced a rat’s body. I reached out, grabbed another that had crawled onto Madeline Quinn’s back, and slammed it dead on the ground.

Madeline Quinn screamed, threw her arms around me, and cried her lungs out.

’I think I’m growing numb. I can’t really comprehend her fear...’

But it was clear she was on the verge of a breakdown.

I glanced around. We had missed our chance. Getting out now would be difficult... unless someone opened the door to this room from the outside.

But the chances of them getting in were even lower than the chances of us killing all these rats.

And more and more rats were crawling out of the cracks in the floor; there was no end to them...

CLICK! Just as I was about to collapse from exhaustion, the wall directly in front of me slowly slid open.

On the other side... was a floor covered in dead jackals...

’Does that lunatic think this maze is his personal zoo?’

As the wall slowly opened, I saw him in that room... Asher, covered in blood, his eyes crazed from the slaughter.

For a moment, my body went rigid.

I stood up straight, emotionlessly crushed a rat that had crawled onto my shoulder, and opened my mouth to speak to him, but no sound came out.

Asher stood amidst the corpses, his patient’s gown so stained with blood its original color was unrecognizable. He looked like Satan emerging from the depths of Hell, bathed in blood.

From the night he disappeared until now... he must have been killing nonstop.

The moment he saw me, he could no longer hold himself up and collapsed to his knees.

The grime and blood couldn’t hide the fiery intensity in his eyes.

He smiled at me, his voice hoarse. "Cece... I killed them all..."

He killed them all.

’We could finally walk safely to the exit for the next floor.’

A sudden, sharp pain shot through my throat. I walked towards him, step by step.

That boy who should have been so bright and radiant... that was my Asher...