Monster - Chapter 114
Chapter 114: Dream Castle - Pleasure
The knocking on the door outside was urgent, making one feel irritable in this dark, silent castle. Lou's expression was surprisingly calm. She got up and walked outside. As she neared the bedroom door, she turned to instruct Lin Sandie, who was walking behind her.
"This is Enzo's main base. Someone at his level would leave himself an escape route. Look for a secret passage entrance in the room."
Lin Sandie nodded. Although Lou's words were casual, she didn't ask any more questions, decisively turning back into the room and raising the red phone.
The only light in the room was from the phone's flashlight, scanning back and forth.
Lou returned to the half-collapsed outer office, pulled up a chair, and sat down. On her still-exposed arm, dark gold circuits pulsed with a faint light, and the knocking from outside abruptly stopped.
The sudden stop of the irritating knocking only made Lin Sandie pause for a moment before she continued to search for the secret passage entrance as Lou had instructed.
A scan with the phone yielded nothing.
"Look for any abnormal wear and tear. For example, parts that have become smooth or have an unreasonable number of fingerprints." Lin Sandie held up the phone, slowly shining it on various spots.
Have you thought of me since I died?
A sudden question popped up on the phone's screen.
Lin Sandie paused. Her deep eyes glanced at the phone as she calmly retorted, "Do you want to die again?"
The red phone fell completely silent.
Lin Sandie pressed the button to turn off the screen, preparing to search on her own.
But the screen of the self-aware red phone remained lit, displaying a video screenshot of a spot in Enzo's bedroom. It even had text typed over it: The table lamp on the bedside table is abnormal.
Lin Sandie walked expressionlessly to the lamp and began to inspect it.
"Asking such questions is meaningless. I won't treat you as Yan Ting," Lin Sandie said in a low voice, as if talking to herself.
"Even without Lou, I had plenty of opportunities to kill Yan Ting."
"It's just that before, I had to consider the retaliation my family would face after I killed her."
"After losing my family, for a time, I felt that living was meaningless."
"So don't presume to think I still have feelings for Yan Ting, alright? It makes me sick."
"I'm saying this to a phone because you are a useful phone. If a phone has too many features I don't want, you know what I'll do, don't you?"
The red phone's screen flickered violently, like an emotional outburst. But under the gaze of Lin Sandie's emotionless eyes, it eventually seemed to come to its senses and compromise, silently and humbly continuing to display the original screenshot.
A useless phone would be unhesitatingly destroyed and discarded by Lin Sandie. There was no middle ground; that was how she had always decluttered her life.
"I'll take that as us reaching a consensus." Lin Sandie's fingers found a raised button inside the lampshade. She pressed it, and the headboard of the large bed beside it began to creak, folding downward to reveal a pitch-black secret passage leading down.
Taking a flashlight from her Space Bag, Lin Sandie shone it into the passage, revealing a section of stone steps leading down. Nothing else was visible.
Lin Sandie climbed inside and scanned the secret passage with her flashlight, finding a button in a corner.
She glanced down at the time; finding the passage hadn't taken long. Just as Lin Sandie was hesitating whether to call out to Lou, footsteps approached from outside.
Lou walked toward the passage, pulling down her sleeves as she went.
"Let's go."
After Lou and the Doberman had also squeezed into the passage, Lin Sandie pressed the button she had found. The entrance to the secret room sealed shut, leaving only the light from the flashlight in her hand.
"Will those zombies follow us in?"
"They will. It's just a matter of time. Although I've dealt with everything still moving in the basement, Tree will definitely find a way to get the other zombies from upstairs to come after us," Lou explained, walking past Lin Sandie to take the lead.
"Can they still be killed?" Logically, the zombies outside had already been killed once by Cheng Gui. Tree was just using the "Trojan Horse" to control their corpses again, so Lin Sandie didn't quite understand what Lou meant by "dealt with."
"I gouged out their eyes and chopped off their arms."
"Oh."
"Good thing they're already dead… otherwise Pie would kill me," Lou muttered under her breath.
"Even if their brains are destroyed, Tree can still control the bodies?"
"Yeah. If skills like Cheng Gui's—talking people to death—weren't so rare, I'd consider cutting out our tongues."
"…"
"When facing an enemy, you must be as cold as the dead of winter, understand?"
"I completely agree with that." Lin Sandie nodded, though she thought to herself that this was most likely something Lou's "Blade Sheath" had taught her.
The two walked through the underground passage Enzo had prepared as an escape route. The first section was unlit. After about fifteen minutes, they arrived before a slightly ajar wooden door from which a strange, faint blue light emanated. Lou didn't push it open, instead looking around as if she had a toothache, searching for another path.
"What is it?"
"Before we came to the castle, Enzo was probably 'playing' in this room. But because of the emergency, he rushed back to the surface without cleaning up, and then he never came back."
"How do you know?"
"This room in front of us is also a magical item." Lou felt her toothache worsen. As she spoke, she told Lin Sandie the results of her eye scan.
Name: Pleasure Room
Rank: E-Class
A room that allows people to obtain pleasure. Must be used by two or more people.
Positive Effect:
Upon entering the room, one's body and mind will experience pleasure. If one has wounds, their healing will be accelerated.
Negative Effect:
After entering the room, one person must experience a level of pain during pleasure that reaches the room's preset threshold in order to leave.
After hearing Lou's description, Lin Sandie was stunned for a good while before it dawned on her. She started to feel a toothache coming on as well.
The so-called Pleasure Room, the so-called requirement of two or more people, the so-called pain threshold that must be met to leave—isn't this just a paradise for people with certain niche sexual fetishes?
Lin Sandie held no prejudice against such preferences—as long as it didn't bother others, it was fine. But to participate herself? That was something she absolutely could not accept.
"Why would something like this suddenly be here? Is there another way? Can we go back?" Lin Sandie fired off three questions in a row, already looking back the way they came.
"We can't go back. The way back is already blocked, and there are all those zombies. It doesn't look like there's any other path here…" Lou said, pushing the ajar door fully open with her flashlight. It revealed what looked like a very ordinary room, the only extraordinary feature being a wall hung with numerous props.
Lin Sandie gripped Lou's wrist tightly.
"Lin Sandie, why are you so nervous?" Lou looked at her with a mischievous smile. She hadn't seen Lin Sandie this tense outside, but now she was so nervous that a cold sweat was beading on her temples.
Lin Sandie glared at Lou, saying nothing.
"Don't worry. No matter what, I definitely won't let you be the one in pain," Lou said, a statement that was strange in multiple ways.
With that, she lifted her foot to step into the room.
But Lin Sandie only tightened her grip on her wrist. No matter what, Lin Sandie wished Lou would explain things better and not always make decisions on her own, as if she understood everything just like Lou did.
"If the pain doesn't reach the room's required threshold, what will you do? Chop off your own hands and feet?"
"It won't come to that. This is just for fun. If Enzo could get out, we definitely can too." Lou pulled back on Lin Sandie's hand, dragging her into the room with the alluring blue light.
Lin Sandie stumbled, pulled inside unprepared.
The moment they were both inside, the door immediately shut and locked automatically.
Lin Sandie shot Lou another hateful glare, but the latter was already looking at the props, clicking her tongue in wonder.
Taking a deep breath, Lin Sandie was in no mood to admire the items with Lou. After scanning the room, she saw another door on the side and immediately walked over to try and open it.
But as soon as Lin Sandie twisted the handle, a thermometer-like object hanging above the door began to glow red, and the handle wouldn't budge.
After entering the room, one person must experience a level of pain during pleasure that reaches the room's preset threshold in order to leave…
Lin Sandie thought about the room's damn negative effect and tried to regulate her low spirits. She prepared to press hard on the wound on her temple when she "felt pleasure" to see if that would let them leave.
"Lin Sandie, the bed in here is so soft~" Lou was already sitting on the large bed in the center of the room, bouncing on it forcefully a few times.
"Don't sit there." Lin Sandie looked at Lou coldly. She found she couldn't control her own emotions at all; or rather, her emotions were now being completely led by Lou.
"Why?"
"It's too dirty!" Lin Sandie irritably pulled Lou up from the bed. "Who knows what kind of people have been on it. Don't sit there!"
"Lin Sandie, you really need to work on your mysophobia~" Lou fell back against Lin Sandie. "If you become a Guide and go to a place with scarce resources, where you have to drink from the same cup and eat from the same bowl as others, wouldn't you be so disgusted you'd kill yourself?"
"That's different."
"How is it different?" Lou wrapped her arms around Lin Sandie's waist, her voice full of seduction.
Lin Sandie fell silent, letting Lou hold her. She waited, as if cheating, for the Scorpion to swallow her surging, tide-like emotions. Only then did she regain her usual tone and ask Lou, "Do you have a way out?"
"What about you?"
"I don't. I understand pain, but I don't know what could possibly make me feel pleasure in this situation."
"You don't know?" Lou rested her chin on Lin Sandie's shoulder, asking with a grin, her breath brushing against the other woman's ear.
"…I'd rather die than touch anything in this room."
"Alright, alright~ I just can't win with you~"
Lin Sandie was rarely so unreasonable and willful, so stubborn in the face of a life-or-death situation. But Lou, on the contrary, found it very humanizing.
Leaving Lin Sandie's embrace, Lou opened Leviathan's point shop and bought something.
"What's your plan?"
"I bought some pills, basically stimulants and aphrodisiacs. Don't worry," Lou continued, seeing Lin Sandie raise an eyebrow, "this kind of drug won't affect my mind. We're not going to have one of those dual cultivation scenarios from a wuxia novel. But these drugs will make my skin much more sensitive than usual."
Lou held a blister pack of pills in her hand. She popped them all out, stuffed them into her mouth, and tilted her head back to swallow.
"This way, when you hit me, my sense of pain will be heightened." Lou shot Lin Sandie a flirtatious wink.
…
This was utterly absurd.
Lin Sandie looked down at Lou. The latter had rolled her pant legs up above her knees and was kneeling on the floor with her back to Lin Sandie, her hands clutching a backless stool.
"Are you going to get the whip over there?" Lou turned her head to the side to look at Lin Sandie. The faint blue light reflected on her face, making her look relaxed and friendly. In contrast, Lin Sandie, the "abuser" standing to the side, had her lips pressed together, looking as if she were facing a great enemy.
Lin Sandie shook her head. Knowing she didn't have much time, she gritted her teeth, undid the belt on her trousers, and wrapped it around her hand twice to shorten it. Then, she slowly knelt beside Lou.
She looked up again at the object hanging quietly above the exit door—the "pain meter."
"Come on. It's okay if you hit other places. I'm pretty experienced," Lou said, looking like an old pro.
"Have other people hit you like this?"
"Not really. But human pain is a very useful thing. In the past, when necessary, I would inflict some physical pain on myself."
"What counts as necessary?"
"Situations like this, of course."
Lin Sandie took a deep breath, raised the belt in her hand, and brought it down hard on the calf of Lou's leg.
"Ah!" Lou cried out in pain.
Startled by her cry, Lin Sandie immediately stopped and looked at Lou's calf. A red welt had appeared on the delicate, fair skin.
"Not enough. Too light." Lou rested her chin on her arms and turned her head to say to Lin Sandie, "Didn't you eat, Lin Sandie? Put some force into it~"
If it wasn't hard enough, then why did you scream!?
Lin Sandie's entire face flushed red from the teasing. She pushed Lou's shoulder to keep her smiling eyes from looking at her, then raised the belt again and brought it down hard on Lou's calf.
Lou cried out again, but this time Lin Sandie didn't stop. Her gaze was feverish as she watched the skin where her belt landed. A red mark appeared, then deepened, and slowly, a bloody line began to surface. Goosebumps rose on Lin Sandie's skin, as if she were lost in the moment.
It wasn't until she heard Lou suck in a sharp breath that she stopped, trembling all over. Seeing Lou lying limply over the stool, Lin Sandie suddenly pressed her hot hand hard against the wounds on Lou's calf.
"That hurts!" Lou finally stopped screaming. Her body shot up abruptly, as if she'd been scalded.
Panting, Lin Sandie turned her head to look at the "pain meter." It showed that one of them had reached the required pain threshold, and they could now leave.
Lin Sandie got up, somewhat drained. She looked even weaker than Lou. She braced her hands on her knees, panting for a while longer before standing up straight and fastening her belt.
"Let's go."
"Okay." Lou, seeing that something was off with Lin Sandie, obediently followed her as they left the room.
"Lin Sandie, are you angry?" Lou asked cautiously.
Lin Sandie said nothing, but the heavy rise and fall of her chest revealed that her inner state was not as calm as her exterior.
"I was wrong~ Don't be angry~" Lou took Lin Sandie's hand.
"What were you wrong about?"
"I shouldn't have forced you to do something like this. It's not like there weren't other ways…"
Lin Sandie suddenly spun around, pushed Lou against the nearby wall, and kissed her forcefully.
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