Chương 125: Chapter 125: As a captain, it’s not too much to recruit crew members, right?
Amamiya quietly pushed open the door, scanned the corridor carefully, and then turned back, whispering:
"You can come out now."
The two girls followed his lead, tiptoeing cautiously out of the captain's room.
"The hallway is so dark," Umi muttered softly.
Just like the captain's room, the corridor was dimly lit, with no lights to guide the way. It felt cold, the only source of light being the faint, slanting moonlight filtering in.
"According to the parchment, this ship has three floors. We're on the lowest one right now..."
Amamiya quickly took stock of their surroundings, his eyes darting around.
The lowest deck was not a safe place. If a monster appeared, they'd be trapped like rats with nowhere to hide. Their immediate priority was clear—leave the bottom deck as quickly as possible. If they could, they should explore the entire ship and find a good hiding spot to survive the hide-and-seek game.
"Let's move up," he gestured towards the stairs.
Holding their breath and stepping lightly, the trio made their way cautiously up the stairs. When they reached the second deck, Amamiya suddenly froze, his eyes focused ahead.
"Amamiya-kun..." Umi started to ask, but before she could say more, he quickly covered her mouth.
"Don't speak. We're lucky we haven't been spotted," he whispered urgently.
Umi blinked rapidly, signaling her understanding.
"Let's see what kind of monster we're dealing with."
Still holding her mouth tightly with both hands, Umi peeked from behind Amamiya, her pretty face barely visible as she glanced down the corridor.
In the faint moonlight, a tall, broad-shouldered figure stood ahead. Its dark blue body was imposing. It wore a pirate's hat, and in its left hand was a crabb hand. Marine parasites like conchs and scallops encrusted its face, emitting a menacing and evil aura.
"Hey, it's the evil ghost captain!" Umi whispered in wide-eyed amazement.
Hayasaka's reaction was one of shock as well.
Though she'd heard plenty about horror games, this was the first time in her life she had come face-to-face with an actual ghost.
All the rational scientific thinking she had cultivated over sixteen years shattered in that instant.
Something was undeniably wrong with the world.
Compared to them, Amamiya observed even more details.
A message flashed before him:
---
[After careful observation, you gather the following information:]
[Pirate Captain: Davy Jones]
[Alignment: Chaotic Evil]
[Every pirate captain is driven by chaotic evil, and Davy Jones stands out as one of the worst. Avoid any physical contact with him—touching him will result in instant loss of control over your own body.]
---
[Weakness: Unidentified... Even Sherlock Holmes couldn't immediately figure this one out. Keep gathering information.]
[Note: My name is Davy, not Jones. This ship is called 'Flying Dutchman', not 'The Flying Dutchman'.]
---
The ghostly captain stood in front of a door. He reached out, but instead of turning the handle, his arm simply phased through the wood, followed by his entire body. Moments later, the ghost captain vanished into the room, passing through the door as if it were made of air.
"It can walk through walls?" Umi gasped, clutching her chest in relief. "Good thing we got out in time."
If they had tried hiding in the room, hoping to avoid detection, the ghost captain would have passed right through the door and trapped them with no way to escape.
"Let's go the other way."
Amamiya shifted his gaze and led the two girls to the other end of the corridor.
They moved with great caution, but fortunately, no other monsters crossed their path during the tense journey. After a few moments, they carefully emerged onto the deck.
"It really is a ghost pirate ship," Amamiya muttered.
The silver moon hung in the sky, casting a faint, eerie light. Amamiya walked over to the ship's edge and peered down. The sea below was black as ink, with no discernible waves. Surrounding them was an endless expanse of thick fog, with no land in sight. It was as if the ship itself was the last thing left in the world.
It became clear that the "hide-and-seek" game was between the players and the ghost captain, with the playing field confined entirely to the ghost ship.
The ship resembled the infamous 'Jackdaw'(from Assassin Creed), though this one was in a state of ruin. The hull was battered, with the deck showing signs of damage from cannon fire. Pirate bones lay scattered in various corners, and the entire ship was encrusted with marine parasites—coral, oysters, shells, and barnacles clung to the surface like a creeping infestation.
Amamiya looked up, spotting the ship's ragged sails. The faint, weathered emblem of a skull and crossbones fluttered in the night breeze.
"Um... what if we jump into the sea and swim far enough away? Couldn't we escape the ghost captain that way?" Hayasaka whispered. "We only need to survive for two hours without getting caught. The water doesn't seem too cold right now. If we grab a piece of wood and float on it, we should be able to make it."
Umi's eyes brightened. "That sounds like a solid plan."
But Amamiya shook his head. "That's assuming the sea holds no other dangers."
Unfortunately, the tips he received earlier had made it abundantly clear that escape wasn't an option.
---
[You decide to throw a teammate overboard as a test. Unfortunately, your teammate gets eaten.]
---
Amamiya glanced at Hayasaka and walked over to a pirate's corpse lying near the deck's edge.
The pirate had long been dead, reduced to a pile of bones, barely maintaining any semblance of human form.
Amamiya crouched, picked up one of the scattered arm bones, and tossed it into the calm sea below.
Seconds later, a splash erupted.
A ghostly shark, half of its body rotted away, leapt from the water, snapping the bone into its jaws before disappearing back beneath the surface. The black sea rippled momentarily before returning to its eerie stillness.
"Well, that settles it," Amamiya dusted off his hands and looked at Hayasaka. "The sea is a dead end."
Hayasaka stood there speechless.
This defied all logic! A half-rotted shark that could still leap out of the water for food? Was this some kind of crossover from 'Sharknado'?
"It looks like jumping into the sea isn't an option," Umi murmured, hugging herself and shivering slightly. Suddenly, a thought struck her. "Wait, it's so quiet on the ship... Do you think it's just the three of us playing hide-and-seek this time?"
As if on cue, a terrified scream echoed from within the cabin.
No explanation was needed—another unlucky player had been caught.
Amamiya raised an eyebrow. "I'll go check it out."
The hint from earlier made it clear that the ghost captain had some weakness, so it was crucial to gather more information.
"Let's go together," Umi insisted. "People who wander off alone in horror movies are always the idiots who die first. It's too dangerous to go alone."
Hayasaka didn't say anything but silently followed behind them. As a novice in this situation, relying on others was the smartest course of action.
'I, Ai Hayasaka, am nothing if not rational,' she thought to herself.
The three of them approached the deck entrance, preparing to re-enter the cabin.
"Wait a minute, Amamiya-kun," Umi suddenly said, slapping her forehead. She turned toward Amamiya with a spark of realization in her eyes. "Couldn't we use the hamster cloak we drew yesterday?"
Amamiya paused for a moment to consider before replying, "You might as well take it out and give it a try."
Umi nodded and promptly retrieved the hamster cloak from her in-game storage.
"Huh?" Hayasaka's eyes widened slightly in disbelief.
Magic? No, it had to be telekinesis, or perhaps some form of portable storage space. A whirlwind of possibilities flashed through her mind. If she had such an ability, her infiltration and reconnaissance skills would skyrocket. She could also use it to stash weapons, drastically lowering the difficulty of any game. Even that ghost captain earlier—surely, a well-placed anti-tank rocket would have finished him off.
Seeing Hayasaka's intrigued expression, Amamiya clarified, "It's just a game function. The backpack can only store in-game items, not anything from real life."
"...I see."
Hayasaka's excitement immediately faded. The Queen of Arms dream she had so briefly entertained was shattered before it even had a chance to take root.
When Amamiya put on the hamster cloak, he was surprised to discover that it adjusted its size according to his body. What had initially seemed small now fit him perfectly.
The three of them decided to test its effectiveness and quickly realized that the cloak worked best when the wearer remained still. However, once they moved, the concealment effect diminished significantly.
"That makes sense," Amamiya said, satisfied with the results. "If you could move freely without being noticed, it wouldn't be camouflage; it'd be invisibility."
Hayasaka, always inquisitive, asked, "The cloak works kind of like the hood from 'Assassin's Creed'. So why call it a hamster cloak?"
"Probably because of its color," Umi mused, tilting her head. "Either way, if it works, that's all that matters."
"Let's go," Amamiya said as he pulled the hood over his head, signaling it was time to move. He led the way down from the deck, with the two girls trailing closely behind. The ghostly quiet of the ship settled in once more.
Back inside the cabin, the distant screams had grown faint and sporadic, signaling that the unfortunate player caught in this twisted game of hide-and-seek was nearing their limit.
"On the first floor," Amamiya said, his keen senses quickly identifying the source of the sounds.
The trio cautiously crept down the stairs, stopping at a corner where they could peer into the corridor.
"Hey, why is there no one here?" Umi whispered, clearly puzzled.
"It's not that there's no one," Hayasaka murmured, her brow furrowing slightly as she pieced together the situation. Biting her lip, she leaned in closer. "They were probably hiding in one of the rooms and got caught."
Umi fell silent, the weight of the realization sinking in.
That poor soul had been thrust into the same terrifying game—alone, stranded on this grim ghost ship. They had likely hidden in a room, trembling in fear, praying they could last until the game's end. But the ghost captain had found them, leaving no escape. How desperate must they have felt in those final moments?
Umi didn't want to dwell on the thought any longer. She bit down on her lip, then reached out, silently clutching Amamiya's hand.
Amamiya glanced briefly at the girl beside him before turning his attention back to the corridor.
The screams finally faded into silence.
Moments later, the ghost captain emerged from the room, phasing effortlessly through the door.
"The sixth room..." Amamiya muttered, his eyes narrowing.
To his surprise, a short-haired girl followed closely behind the ghost captain. Or rather, her ghost. Just like the captain, her spectral form walked straight through the closed door.
"Hey, what's going on?" Umi gasped, her eyes wide in disbelief.
Hayasaka's brows knitted slightly as she observed the translucent female ghost. The ghost's eerie blue hue, much like that of the ghost captain, gave off an unsettling aura.
At the same moment, a prompt flashed before Amamiya's eyes.
[Desperate Ghost Crew]
[Ghosts transformed by the Ghost Captain are bound to obey him without question.]
[There's an old saying—"An accomplice to evil is still guilty." As the Ghost Captain, why not recruit a few more crew members, like Davy Jones?]
As soon as he saw the phrase "accomplice to evil," Amamiya immediately grasped the peril of this hide-and-seek game.
Did you think it was simply players hiding from a ghost captain? Not even close.
The reality was more like a bio-infection scenario!
Each unfortunate player caught by the ghost captain would be transformed into a ghost crew member, tasked with hunting down the remaining players. The goal was to survive for 120 minutes, but if no action was taken, the ghost captain would soon have an army of ghostly crew members at his side, elevating the difficulty of the game to a near-impossible level.
Amamiya found himself missing that pink-haired idiot even more. If Chika were here, their combo of slaying evildoers and cleaning up thugs could come in handy. They could charge straight at the ghost captain, wrestle him to the ground, and have him begging for mercy. But, alas, she wasn't here.
The game had just become infinitely harder.
Meanwhile, the ghost captain gestured down the corridor, and the newly transformed player ghosts—now obedient crew members—bowed respectfully to him.
Even after becoming ghosts, it still remembers to bow? Has etiquette been ingrained into their very souls? Amamiya thought.
"She's coming," Umi whispered urgently, tugging at Amamiya's sleeve.
The ghost captain strode deeper into the ship, while the ghostly crew member—the transformed player—began heading toward Amamiya and the others.
"I see her," Amamiya said, his expression growing serious. He made a quick decision. "She's become the ghost captain's puppet. We can't let her spot us... Quick, we need to hide."
"Where should we hide?" Umi asked nervously, her voice rising with panic. "What about going back to the deck?"
"The deck's completely exposed. If the ghost crew go up there, we'll be spotted for sure," Amamiya replied, his gaze scanning the area before landing on a large box in the corner of the corridor.
Without wasting time, he cleared away the junk piled on top of the box and opened it. The wooden crate was just large enough to fit one person inside.
"Get in here."
He looked at Umi.
"Alright," she said, biting her lower lip. Without argument, she climbed into the wooden box. Although she knew she couldn't offer much help, Umi resolved not to become a burden at such a critical moment.
Amamiya closed the lid of the box, carefully covering it again with scattered debris. He then moved to open another wooden box, only to find it filled with junk.
Hayasaka's frown deepened as she looked at the second box. It clearly wasn't suitable for hiding.
The ghost crew member was approaching fast. There was no time left to inspect any more boxes.
Amamiya turned to Hayasaka, taking a deep breath before whispering, "I'm sorry..."
"..."
Hayasaka stared at him, her face blank.
He's going to sacrifice me. A logical choice, considering we're practically strangers.
Her mind raced. As a trained spy, Hayasaka would never sit idly by, waiting to die. She was already considering bolting for the deck when, unexpectedly, Amamiya lifted his hamster cloak, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her into his arms. Without missing a beat, he spread the cloak over both of them, enveloping her within its protective fabric.
"Sorry," Amamiya whispered, his voice low. "Just bear with this for a moment."
Tình trạng nguồn điện hàng tuần
-- Xếp hạng
Quyền lực 
-- Đá
Quyền lực