Cathulhu Online, MUNYA!

Chapter 264 – Cat Dad's Enemies Meets Mannequins

The stairs to the B1 floor had two functions.

First, it split the intruders into small groups by misleading their senses to take a hidden passage, which guided them to other sections of the B1 floor.

Second, it generated illusions of the intruders, tricking their allies that their friends followed or traveled with them. Whenever the intruders split up, illusions of their friends, who had taken another path, were created and disguised as their comrades.

There was no trap along the way, giving the intruders a false sense of security. By the time they entered the B1 floor, the illusions were dispersed, and the dungeon's sanity rules were activated.

Meowmeow explained the functions of the B1 floor to the spectators in the boss room. Taotie, Mimir, Ifrit, Nymph, and everyone looked at the map and the live stream with interest.

.

.

Butter Tank, Dog Eater, Explorer, Cherry Popper, and Alzheimer were lost in the strange maze with yellowish wallpaper. The team followed the backrooms nerd, who was the most knowledgeable in this type of maze.

They came up with a method to explore the maze by sticking to the left side. Explorer also wrote several X marks on the walls whenever they found a corner or an intersection.

An hour later, the group took a short break and glanced at their sanity bar.

94%

It gradually decreased, but the sanity-draining rate was slow. The team let out a sigh of relief that nothing had harmed them yet.

"Say, nerd. How big is the level 0 again?" Cherry Popper was curious about the size of the dungeon.

"About six hundred million square miles. I doubt this dungeon is that big."

"S-S-Six million WHAT?!"

Cherry's scream echoed in the maze. The men turned to her and covered her mouth.

"Are you crazy?! You'll attract the local monsters here!"

"…"

Explorer sweated profusely. He gulped and looked around. Fortunately, no entity showed up.

After resting for 10 minutes, they continued moving. As usual, they traveled while keeping their hands on the left wall.

Proceeding further, they came across a dark section without the fluorescent light. Suspicious thin yellow pillars stood close to each other, forming a weird prison cell that blocked the entry to the large area inside.

To the left, the party saw found the pillar array. In front was a long dark corridor. As for the right side, it was a long yellow wall.

The group stopped at their feet. Dog Eater came to the front and activated his skill, checking the path in the dark.

"No traps. Just a dark corridor," reported Dog Eater.

"What about hidden creatures or entities? Have you found any?" Explorer was still concerned.

"None. All clear."

"…"

Everyone but Explorer was relaxed but the latter had a bad feeling about this. Since they couldn't turn left due to the strange thin pillars, they proceeded forward. Alzheimer immediately turned on his flashlight to look ahead.

As soon as the light shone, the party immediately drew their weapons.

Behind the thin pillar array, which they couldn't go through, a hundred mannequins faced them. Their smiley emoji face, which was written in blood, stared at them.

Explorer exclaimed, "Facelings? No, mannequins from the supermarket level?!"

The mannequins didn't move. They simply stood there, peeking at the intruders from the other side of the pillar wall through the gaps.

Butter frowned for a moment before he laughed.

"BAHAHAHA! That scares me. They got stuck on the other side of the map! They're glitched!"

The other teammates snickered as they agreed. But as usual, Explorer didn't think that it was the case.

"L-let's go. We need to get out of this area, FAST! If we accidentally noclip into them, we'll be sent to LEVEL 171! That's Danger Level 5!"

"Enough with your geek knowledge. They're just a bunch of stupid monsters."

Butter dismissed Explorer and asked Alzheimer to continue their journey. They continued walking in leisure.

The mannequins stiffly turned after Butter Tank, but they didn't walk after them. Aside from Explorer, nobody noticed it.

"Shit! If they run into a bone thief with that mindset, we'll be wiped out!"

Explorer ran after Butter in panic. After he caught up with the group, he turned around to look behind him. However, the mannequins weren't there anymore.

Explorer got goosebumps. His knees shook, and the strength of his legs left him. He knelt and fell on all four, panting and sweating.

Cherry heard the noise of water and turned around. Upon noticing how pathetic Explorer was, she mocked him, "Get up, drama queen. We'll ditch you here if you don't stop annoying us!"

Explorer clenched his chest and gnashed his teeth, "You people don't know the gravity of the situation! The entities are stalking us! We're in danger, and we have to escape from here, NOW!"

"That's it. You can move on your own! Butter, let's leave him behind."

Explorer bit his lower lips. He made his decision, "Screw you and your ignorance! I'm out! You can keep going if you want!"

DING

<Explorer has left Claymore Guild!>

The notification message stunned Butter, Cherry, Alzheimer, and Dog Eater. A few seconds later, they smirked and laughed.

"This is just a game, dude. Why so serious?"

"If we die in the game, we'll just lose a level and an item. True, we might not be able to enter the game for 24-72 hours. What's the big deal?"

"I know right? Nerds are mental."

Butter shook his head and ignored Explorer, "Let's go. He left us, then he can take care of himself."

The party kept on walking forward. As for Explorer, he turned back and sprinted toward the brighter area, running away from the group.

.

With Alzheimer's flashlight, they enjoyed the trip through the quiet area without the buzzing noise of fluorescence lights. Because they kept walking in a straight line, they soon came across a dead end.

"Dead end. Let's go back and take another path," Butter sighed and turned around.

"Wait, boss!"

Dog Eater stopped them. He patted the yellowish wall several times as if he sensed something. After touching everything at random for two minutes, Dog Eater's hand sank into a section of the wall as if he dipped his hand into a pool of water.

"Found it! This is an illusion wall. I detected an illusion trap earlier, boss. This might be a hidden passage. We might find more clues if we go through here!"

Cherry laughed and patted the back of Dog's head. "Good boy! You're more useful that a certain nerd!"

Butter and Alzheimer nodded in approval. The gnome pointed his flashlight at the illusion wall, and a new path was open for them. Because the hidden passage was located on the right side, they changed their course and moved along with the new dark hallway.

The path was narrow at first. But when they came out from the dark area, they found a small bright room with the same fluorescence light. However, there was a ladder, which was placed next to the wall with an open ventilation hole.

"A vent?"

Alzheimer shrugged, "We have a good flashlight. I can go in and check the vent."

Dog Eater also volunteered, "I can detect traps. How about you let me borrow that flashlight, and I'll scout the place for you."

"Oh, sure. Don't run away with my money, though," Alzheimer handed over the flashlight to Dog.

"Actually, you can come with me. No, let's go together. The last person should take that ladder with you. Store it in your inventory since we might need it to climb some other places."

The group agreed. Everybody climbed and crawled into the small claustrophobic meaning inducing duct vent.

Moving through the tunnel, they reached a small room with red fluorescence lights. They climbed out and explored the new area.

Different from the previous area with nothing but yellowish wallpapers, random pillars, and an endless maze, this place looked like an area inside a building. Moreover, a modern electric signboard "Exit" was attached to the ceiling above the door in front of them.

"An exit?" Cherry was delighted.

"This area is kinda red. It's bright but red," Dog Eater walked toward the exit and peeked outside. He saw a long corridor that resembled a hospital's corridor. Many signboards and posters were attached to both sides of the walls, and several doors could be seen from afar. Aside from that, Dog Eater saw nobody.

Alzheimer pointed his flashlight to cancel out the dark red light. Like Dog Eater, he saw no monster here.

"A long hospital corridor, boss. What's next?" Reported Alzheimer.

"What else? We move on. Let's check the rooms one by one. Remember that we got through a secret area. This might be a dungeon's safe zone or a secret resident area of our enemies. Maybe we can find their treasure here."

The group snickered and moved along. They leisurely walked along the corridor and approached the doors on the sides, one at a time.

"Locked."

"It's locked here."

"Same. Can't enter."

All the doors were locked. They went back to Butter, who also failed to open a door.

"Dog, do you have a lockpick skill?"

"I have. This might take a while though. I have to play a mini-game when I use it."

"Just do it, then. Since they're all locked, there might really be treasures inside!"

"Okay!"

Dog Eater knelt in front of a locked door and brought out three pieces of metal sticks. He inserted a hook stick inside and twisted it around. It took him a minute before the door let out a CLICK sound.

The rogue gave Butter and the party a thumbs up. He collected his tool and twisted the doorknob.

The people behind him were all excited to see what the room was like. They gathered behind Dog Eater.

But as soon as Dog Eater pushed the door open, his face turned white.

Inside the room was a storage room with a tall ceiling. However, the only things inside were creepy mannequins with bloody written faces. From a rough estimation, there were at least a thousand in this gymnasium-sized area.

All of them turned toward the intruders in unison!

"BAD!"

"BAD!"

Then, a siren broke out. The mannequins clattered as they moved, running toward Dog Eater and his party members.

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

A dozen doors in the corridor were also slammed open. Each room, a thousand mannequins rushed out and chased after the intruders.