Swish——

Those empty, lifeless eyes seemed to sense his gaze, squirming and adjusting their aim. They instantly switched from a lazy and dissociated state to a predatory offensive intention. The weird and terrifying evil was so evil that it made people's scalp numb in an instant.

Suddenly it swept over his limbs and bones.

Klein held his breath unconsciously.

The rationality that returned in time suppressed the instinctive move to retreat. He vibrated his vocal cords and made a slightly trembling voice to stop the girl from stepping forward and pushing the door open.

"Stop! Behind your back...do you know you have eyes growing on your neck?"

The girl turned her back to him and remained motionless, and even the sounds seemed to disappear completely, falling into a heart-stopping silence.

Klein took a small step back, then summoned up the courage to call her name: "Alice...?"

After a few seconds that were as long as the passage of time, the girl with brown hair and green eyes turned around. There were no strange eyes on her delicate and charming features, she did not pull out a weird and inhuman smile, and she did not pretend to be deep and serious.

"There is no Alice here." She raised her hand and tucked a strand of hair that was blocking her vision behind her ears, frowning slightly and said, "I'm Claire, don't call me by the wrong name again. As for the question you mentioned

…”

In the breathless silence, Klein heard the sound of his heart beating, the blood flowing vigorously in his blood vessels, and he also heard her say:

"Now that you have discovered it, there is nothing we can do..."

Damn it! Has she become completely mutated and wants to kill people and silence her?

The body of the Extraordinary in the "Assassin" path reacted one step ahead of his judgment, using both offense and defense to step on ghost-like steps. His movements were quick and sharp, and he was able to bully Alice in the blink of an eye.

He swept his legs to make him unbalanced, twisted his arm joints to make him unable to resist, and locked his legs to the opponent's knees and thighs, causing the girl with no fighting ability to completely lose her mobility. Only then did he realize that he was locking her with his body.

He pressed her back to him on the corridor floor paved with wool carpets.

Legs touching legs, bodies touching bodies, ambiguous but also extremely dangerous at a close distance.

"It hurts... be gentle!" The girl who was completely restrained by him seemed to take a breath, "I haven't finished speaking yet, why are you so anxious... Hey, I won't tease you anymore, we were not discussing those four things just now.

Is it an oil painting hanging in a room? An oil painting with portraits."

"go on."

Klein grasped her wrists with one hand and pressed them to her waist, leaning her upper body forward. With the other hand, he carefully brushed away the long, slightly curly brown hair scattered on the nape of her neck and back, opened her dress, and took a clear look at the delicate hair.

Excess material on skin texture.

one two three……

Three bulging eyeballs, weird eyes without eyelashes and eyelids, stared intently at his every move. The contrast between the inorganic whites of the eyes and the dark irises was so stark that it was so disgusting that it could even remind people of

The compound eyes of some insects.

"Well -" Alice struggled for a moment, then relaxed her body strength as if giving up on herself, and sighed, "Those four oil paintings are probably some kind of cursed medium. Whenever a qualified candidate appears, they will

Malice is separated and implanted into the body of the cursed person, seizing the dominance of consciousness... So unfortunately, there are four kinds of evil spirit fragments from different sources mixed in my body now, which are reflected in the abnormalities in appearance.

They must be the eyes you see."

Seeing that her reaction to the answer seemed to be normal and her speaking speed was relatively smooth, Klein was about to relax when his expression suddenly changed and he realized a fatal problem: The two of them have been acting together so far. If Alice

He was quietly cursed by those oil paintings, but what about himself?

He clearly saw the lady in one of the oil paintings turning her eyes to look at him. Could he himself have been cursed?

As if she could read minds, Alice corrected in a dull voice:

"No, we don't stay together all the time. Have you forgotten, every time I use the extraordinary ability of 'Apprentice' to pass through the door and open the door lock for two or three seconds, I am alone with my back to those oil paintings?

of."

"In other words, the conditions for the curse are..." Klein opened his mouth and concluded, "Being alone and facing away from the oil painting..."

"I also need to add that the curse can only be passed on in the dark. This is what I learned from the mouths of the four noisy evil spirits. It should not be wrong."

"…Who did you ask this from?"

Klein felt his forehead jump, and his worries about whether he was cursed suddenly seemed to have been stepped on by a brake, and he was stuck in a position where he could not go up or down.

"The four evil spirits that got into my body, or should I say the condensation of broken pieces of curse." Alice raised her fingers in boredom, tapping her knuckles lightly with a hidden rhythm, "They

The strength of the cursed evil spirit is not high, but it is noisy enough and too stubborn. There is no corresponding magic... Without the corresponding ritual magic, it will be difficult to kill them completely. However, these weak and dirty evil thoughts seem to

When he found that he couldn't take away the control of my consciousness, he simply chose to destroy me."

Hearing this, Klein turned his gaze to the three eyes staring at him:

"So this is the manifestation of evil thoughts attached to you?"

"You can just crush them and they'll be fine. I've tried it and it doesn't hurt or bleed." Alice said nonchalantly.

Recalling how she would touch the back of her neck from time to time just now, Klein's expression suddenly became a little exciting:

"...Is this what you were doing just now?"

"Otherwise? Are you going to continue to put pressure on others like this? You are very courageous, Miss Jarno."

Ah this...

Realizing that the girl under him actually took the opportunity to nudge him with her leg, as if she was coquettishly sweet as her voice, and also as if there was some kind of hidden threat hidden behind her tone, Klein reacted immediately and suppressed his face.

The rising heat loosened the physical restrictions on her.

"This was an instinctive defensive measure for safety reasons. You can't blame me for overreacting."

Klein emphasized in his heart that this was just self-defense and had absolutely no charming thoughts. At the same time, he took the initiative to help Alice, who had a resentful look in her eyes, and dusted off the dust on her skirt honestly.

Alice patted her chest, which was a little hard to breathe, and rolled her eyes at him completely abandoning her image.

"Have some faith in me, okay? Even the evil thoughts want to take away the dominance of my consciousness, so I think too highly of them. What's more, when you get closer to this place, after approaching this golden double door, the four evil spirits are more or less

They all became silent, and I could feel that they were full of fear of what was inside the door... Well, but they themselves didn't know what they were afraid of, and couldn't ask for any decent information."

"Those cursed evil thoughts are afraid of things inside the door, and you expressed that you want to open the door and take a look inside..." Klein tasted it silently a few times, and suddenly felt an illusory toothache, "Aren't you afraid that there are things worse than those inside the door?"

Is oil painting more dangerous and a more deadly curse?"

"But fear will not solve the problem, advance the exploration progress of the game, and will not help us obtain useful information." She spread her hands, "No matter what kind of game, victory will only be a medal for the brave."

Klein, who calls himself a keyboard debate expert and a strong theoretical expert, was not to be outdone and pointed out:

"He who has courage alone and does not consider the consequences is not called brave. It is just pure recklessness."

"So, do you want to say that I am this kind of person?" Alice crossed her arms slightly unhappy.

Klein wavered between the two options in his mind, and finally nodded slightly, choosing to express his true thoughts:

"At least, you today, now... give me the feeling that you don't care too much about your own safety. Do you think that this place is just an illusion, a kingdom of dreams that even if you die, you just have to start over?

Can you ignore danger, ignore things that threaten your safety, and let go of all worries to satisfy your curiosity?"

"...Well, it may be difficult for me to deny what you said." Alice's momentum suddenly weakened a bit, "But this is not the reason for you to secretly use the 'Instigator' ability on me, so - okay,

So, I have some bad news here, are you interested in hearing it?"

Regarding her clumsy change of topic, Klein's heart skipped a beat, and an ominous premonition suddenly arose:

"Logically speaking, there shouldn't be good news and bad news at this time, and then you ask me which one I want to hear first."

Alice blinked and smiled:

"Because I have already told you the good news in advance. The cursed evil thoughts failed to seize control of my consciousness, so they could only retreat to other parts of the body, causing me some minor troubles... As for the bad news, that's all.

Thing: The level of destruction caused by the cursed evil thoughts seems to be a bit severe. This body can last for another hour at most, which is probably the limit."

"You mean you can live for another hour at most?"

Klein stared at her blankly, watching her calmly raise her hand to hold the foreign object on the back of her neck, exerting slight pressure on her knuckles, and then let go of her hand without changing her expression, as if nothing had happened.

"There is nothing we can do about this, unless we can find a way to purify those cursed evil thoughts within an hour."

Alice expressed her attitude with her expression: she felt that the probability of such a miracle happening was almost infinitely close to zero.

Purify curses, evil thoughts, evil spirits... Hey, it would be nice if I still had the Sun Flame Talisman on hand... Uh, no, the Sun Flame Talisman is a little too powerful. I have to borrow the "Mutated Sun Holy Emblem" again.

Divine blood can be used to create purification spells... But firstly, coming here is not reality, and secondly, if there were these detours, Alice would have been exposed countless times in this round of exploration...

Klein thought for a moment and expressed his thoughts:

"We should at least give it a try and try to find if there are magical items in the palace that can access the 'sun'."

Glancing in the direction behind him, Alice suddenly raised her lips, revealing a smile that was so cunning that it didn't look like she was entering a countdown to her life:

"Speaking of which, the corresponding metal of the 'Sun' realm is gold. The holy emblem of the 'Sun' is also designed with lines clustered to form a pattern, right?"

Awakened by her straightforward reminder, Klein suddenly turned around and looked at the exaggerated and heavy double doors.

Isn’t it? Can it still be like this?

But if you think about it carefully, it may not be completely unreasonable...

After all, she said that evil thoughts are afraid of what is behind the door. It may be a curse that is more terrifying than the previous oil painting, and it is equally likely that it is the "sun" that can purify them...

After quickly weighing the pros and cons and the gains and losses, Klein made a judgment and motioned the girl to stand further away:

"You step back, and I will push the door open. If there is danger, I will close the door immediately and retreat."
To be continued...