Then it was supposed that was the end of this person's life—no, the salvation of a person in despair.
Jester hadn't expected to meet someone this strong willed, although this someone was already dead.
A pity. Perhaps if we met while alive, he would've been worthy to stand together with me.
But there's no use regretting.
Jester resolved himself that as long as he gets the chance to escape; which probably wouldn't take long, he would take this skeleton with him.
He then went out of the special room, walking to the stairway.
He was met with what seemed to be the sewer of this house – a dim, badly lit underground room, the floor being covered by stagnant water in the alike swamp. The walls were made of stone, while the ceiling was just made of brown wooden planks.
The sewer had a small vent connecting to another side, barely enough for jester to crawl on.
After seeing nothing valuable in the room, he slowly crawled in the vent.
After what seemed to be a long while, he stumbled upon a fork in the vent, with three underground tunnels in front.
Jester focused on hearing, but after hearing not even a single drop of water, he just randomly made a choice.
Going right is always right!
Still crawling on the tunnel, he finally went inside a room where he could stand comfortably. The entire room was made of stone. In the room was a wooden table with what seemed to be a small square object on top of the table.
Jester leaned closer to see what the object was.
It was a painting. More clearly, a broken painting—because this one clearly was only one piece of the original painting, with uneven edges that looked like the original painting was ripped into pieces.
It had an black background covering most of the piece of painting, with the corner of the right side having a small, white-like dusty leg with grime just hanging on the corner. It looked like a worn-out leather teddy bear, judging by how the leg had obvious patches and white cotton dangling out. He tucked the small ripped piece of painting to his pocket, then went and crawled back to the fork in the vent.
Picking the left, he came across another room, although quite small containing an green cage after a while of crawling into the tunnel. The green cage featured a rat which probably died quite sometime ago out of hunger, judging by how horridly smelly the room was. Jester didn't care about the smell, but the rat itself.
Seeing nothing special near the rat or the rat itself, he teared the dead rat apart with bare hands.
Yes. He ripped off the rat's body into two.
As expected, something solid flung off after the rat which seemed to be a blue cogwheel.
If a useless rat was placed in a green cage, and in such a hidden tunnel nonetheless, i wouldn't believe it even if my mother told me.
Jester knew from the moment he saw the contents of the note that this haunted house required people to abandon all emotions, to only focus on your very survival to escape, which was why he teared the rat apart without any guilt or fear—although he still wouldn't experience those useless emotions even in the real world.
An invisible force seemed to be preventing him from putting anymore objects in his pocket, so he just held the blue cogwheel with his left hand. Jester guessed that this phenomenon was one of the many invisible rules in this world.
He didn't know what the cogwheel was used to open, nor where, so he just temporarily kept it in his hand.
Arriving into the fork again, this time he went into the middle.
After some time of crawling, seemingly going longer than the previous two tunnels combined, he finally, with sore hands and feet, arrived on the stairway of a room.
The interior of the room was made of light-brown planks. The room had two very small square windows, and a vase on top of a wooden table near the stairway. The tunnel connected to a stairway of an unknown room and floor in the house. Jester still couldn't figure out just how absurdly large this entire house was.
He placed the blue cogwheel on the table before he walked up on the stairs and reached the basement of the house, seemingly containing what seemed to look like an garage.
The garage featured a broken-down car, practically impossible to fix due to the heavy damages it experienced. There was a wooden table with gasoline cans and engine parts next to a door with a diamond-shaped window, inside was a broken sauna.
But then, suddenly!
"Snap!"
At that moment, Jester's head suddenly snapped to the top of the staircase in the garage, heading to the base floor!
Because he found—a pair of white, pupil-less eyes looking straight at him, at the top of the staircase!
An old woman with a white bloody dress and an nauseating face with blood red teeth was grinning wildly at him from above!
Seeing she was found, Granny immediately shrieked and ran straight below to the garage!
Within less than a fraction of a second, Jester already reached out to the main door key in his pocket, flicking it exactly straight to one of her eyes without any hesitation!
"Screeech!" Granny stopped in her tracks, then abruptly teared off the key that hit her right eye with blood dripping from it!
The key, now dripping with blood, fell to the ground with a loud thud after being flung by her. Jester immediately made a run for it, reaching straight for the stairway downstairs and then to the vent!
Seeing her target try to escape, Granny immediately chased him with a baseball bat, completely disregarding her right eye's blindness!
Jeser grabbed the vase from the wooden table near the stairway downstairs, crushed it with one hand, and then collected the pieces of the vases with the sharpest edges with both hands. He then immediately threw all the pieces into the left and right eyes of granny, who was about to reach him. Seemingly a long process, but in reality, the entire scene from grabbing the vase to throwing the pieces of glass to granny's eyes took less than a single second.
Granny once again wailed in even greater pain and agony as both of her eyes were immediately blinded and pierced by sharp pieces of glass, throwing her baseball bat in front after she was blinded, hoping to hit Jester. However, seeing the baseball bat mid-air, Jester just slightly turned his torso sideways without any pain, just enough for the baseball bat to almost graze him!
Jester finally reached the tunnel, crawling straight to it without looking back. Meanwhile, Granny finally recovered a part of her vision after a dozen seconds. Seeing her baseball bat just laid flat near the tunnel, with her target successfully escaping, her eyes turned from white with blood to straight up pure, vivid red as she choked with anger, echoing throughout the whole house.