Contractbound

He had taken the sheet of the lone statue at the end of the storage room and was surprised by what he saw. It was not a statue of a woman underneath the white sheet, but rather, a genderless human. The strangest thing about the statue was not its androgynous body, but its face. There were countless squirming maggots there, which were surprisingly alive, instead of facial features. The maggots, each one was the size of a palm, were reaching out from the face, trying to make contact with whoever lifted their cover. His sense of danger was frantically telling him not to come into contact with the maggots at all costs, and Valentine wasn"t that curious to find out what the consequences were if he touched them.

Watching the statue closely, its skin looked very humanlike, although he couldn"t touch it because of the maggots. Its hands were missing, as well as its lower body. There was only the torso that wasn"t clear if it belonged to a man or a woman. The statue had no hair either. Staring at it for too long gave Valentine a feeling of dread that made him somehow wanted to just embraced the statue and let the maggots get out of the face and cover his whole body. He was about to shoot it to stop the feeling but remembered that the blood bullet only worked on lesser evil spirits.

"Who even made this statue? What is it for?"

The more he looked at it, the more questions arose in his mind. It was just bizarre.

"More homework for you, G," he said while covering the statue back with the white sheet. He didn"t want to leave it out in the open for fear it would turn into yet another enemy he had to be wary of inside that big mansion.

Valentine backed away from the maggot statue and proceeded to walk out of the room. He had found something useful at least in the previous room, with which he could probably create a yellow spiritual mixture for the yellow seal. He wasn"t an art expert, however, so he didn"t know if the combination of his blood and the light green liquid would create the correct yellow.

From the storage room where he was, he had to walk down the corridor and exited through two doors until he was back at the main hall. Then he had to take the door by the staircase before finally, he reached the living room. The door with the yellow seal was the one right ahead of him.

He didn"t approach the sealed door right away. He needed to find some kind contained where he could mix his blood with the liquid. He remembered that there was a shelf there, and there might have been some broken tableware inside. His memory had served him right; inside, there were indeed some broken dishes which he could use for mixing the solution. However, he didn"t think he could use any of those ceramic dishes to carry the black liquid without it touching his skin, so for that purpose, he would need another container.

Valentine picked up the dish that was in the best condition among the others and placed it on the table. He then took out the light green liquid from his briefcase and opened the lid of its bottle container. He poured just enough and kept the rest because he knew he would need it to mix for the other seals. He then slit his palm and let a little drop of blood mix into the liquid.

The green liquid was surprisingly able to mix well with his blood. He used a long piece of a broken dish as a whisk and stirred the solution. The light green liquid got a little bit of deep red blood and slowly turned into a shade of yellow. It wasn"t exactly the same shade as the door, but he didn"t have any other choice.

He could see the color perfectly because he had deactivated his night vision. Since the house required good color vision, he would activate it only when it was too dark to see with his normal vision, or when he needed its boosted eyesight.

Carrying the plate carefully on his right hand and his briefcase on his left, he walked closer to the sealed door and splashed the yellow mixture all over it. The mixture stopped midair and gradually spread around, forming the same pattern as the marking of the seal. They then combined and disappeared, breaking the seal on the door.

"Another seal undone. Whoever designed this whole thing deserved a pat in the back, with a dagger,"

With the seal broken, he now could reach into the door handle without his hand being stopped midair. Valentine twisted it and pushed the door open, and he was pleasantly surprised to find it unlocked.

The place behind the door was the other side of the corridor that had a blockade near the bathroom. On this side, there was a window with little sunlight, unlike the other side, so he didn"t have to worry about the black monster coming for him. In that short corridor, there were only two doors on the wall opposite him. Valentine tried the door closest to him first and entered yet another bedroom.

The bedroom on this side of the mansion looked similar to the ones on the other side. Valentine, who had been keeping track of the positions of the rooms in the mansion, started to see a pattern. It seemed that the mansion was built symmetrically, with the two sides mirroring each other, safe for the staircase.

Inside the bedroom, there was the usual wardrobe. He came closer to it and checked the inside s.p.a.ce, but found nothing. On the broken bed, there was no journal page that he could read. However, there was something of interest in that room; there was a large gla.s.s container without a lid. He could use it to carry either the black liquid or the white goo. He stuffed the container inside his briefcase and moved along.

He approached the other door, which was closer to the blockade, and opened it. Contrary to his expectation, it was not a bedroom this time, but a completely empty room. There wasn"t any giant wardrobe, bed, or any broken remains of an object. There was only dust there. Since he wasn"t interested in dust, he quickly left the room. However, he suddenly stopped in his track.

Valentine remembered something important that he had completely overlooked when seeing the dust. The Leyaks had been dropping purple crystal fragments. If he could somehow grind them, he could spread them on the purple seal to break it.

Still inside the empty room, he reached into his briefcase and took out a small purple crystal fragment. He pressed hard against it with his finger to gauge its hardness and found out that it was harder than he thought. He would need something very strong to shatter it, but currently, nothing came to mind since he didn"t know what was available and what was not in the mansion. Graham"s Order wouldn"t work either because asking the crystal to break itself would count as asking it to inflict self-harm.

He put the crystal inside his pocket and exited the room. As he was doing so, his sense of danger was triggered. Something was approaching him rapidly from the left side of the corridor. It was a Leyak!

Valentine quickly went back into the room and stayed away from the door so he wouldn"t be too close to it. The thing can suck up his lifeforce just by being in the proximity. He readied his gun, which still had two bullets left inside the cylinder and aimed at the door. The moment the thing entered the room, he would shoot it right away.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of my presence no longer a secret!"

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of the sound of this gunshot a secret!"

Drip drip...

The distinct sound it made was heard quickly getting closer to the door.

Click...

He heard the door being opened and waited intently. One second, two seconds... Nothing came out of the gap.

Suddenly Valentine felt weak; His lifeforce was getting sucked out of him from behind!

He quickly rolled to get away and saw the Leyak had somehow got behind him. He quickly drew his gun and shot it.

Bang!

That would have been the sound of his gun being shot, but since it was concealed, there was no sound coming out of it. The Leyak in the room melted quickly because of the bullet and left a small crystal fragment. Meanwhile, Valentine was reloading his gun because he had only one bullet left in the chamber.

"That thing can teleport now? Is it getting stronger somehow?" asked Valentine rhetorically,

"Is it related to the seal, perhaps? The only thing I can think of now is that they get stronger the more seals I break. That will be problematic since there are over a thousand in this house, G" he made a guess.

He didn"t want to find out how the Leyaks would turn out if he had broken all the seals in the house. A teleporting one was already many times more dangerous than a regular one because they can suck the lifeforce of their victims by just being in their proximity. At least for now, they still couldn"t phase through walls or doors.

He picked up the purple fragment and put it in his pocket. He quickly went out of that empty room and went towards the toilet near the main hall where the black liquid was. He needed to test something.

The faint sounds of doors being opened and then closed again could be heard repeatedly in that empty mansion. Valentine quickly got back to the room with dangerous black liquid in the sink. It still looked the same as when he first saw it, and still gave off a very dangerous feeling.

Valentine came closer to the sink and took out the gla.s.s container he had just found. With his gloved hand, he very carefully scooped a lot of the black liquid without letting it touch his hand. Before confirming his theory, he wanted to do something else first, so he exited from the toilet and stood in front of the door in the main hall that somehow had a black marking on it.

He splashed some of the black liquid, leaving a little for his experiment, and it stopped midair; the same reaction as the previous actions with the seals. The black liquid seemed to indeed be spiritual in nature because it quickly formed the same pattern as the mark and then broke the seal. The main entrance seal was now broken, so he pushed open the heavy door and slowly he the gap got bigger and bigger until it was enough for him to slip through at any time. His escape route was now cleared.

Valentine looked at the remaining liquid in the container and saw that it was more than enough. He took out one crystal fragment from his pocket and dropped it to the container, letting it came into contact with the dangerous substance inside.

Hiss!

A sound that was similar to when a drop of water touched the surface of a very hot pan was made by the purple fragment. The black liquid quickly enveloped it and melted the crystal fragment, which created a small amount of very dark purple solution inside the gla.s.s container.

Valentine dropped another crystal fragment into the solution and the same sound was heard again. The fragment quickly melted and combined with the liquid inside. Now, he had enough amount of liquid to spray all over the door with the purple seal, where he was heading to at the moment without wasting too much time.

Although the sun outside was still shining, he felt like he had spent too much time inside the mansion. It would be very dangerous for him to be there when the night fell, so he had to quickly grab the ancient book and made a run for it, and if possible, not break all of the seals in the mansion because the outcome was unknown.

He walked through the left display room and arrived at the corridor that was on the left side of the obstacle. That was where the purple sealed door was. His right hand moved upward quickly and the dark purple liquid inside got splattered all over the s.p.a.ce centimeters away in front of the door. It then created a complicated pattern that was similar to the one on the door and combined with the door marking, effectively breaking the seal. Valentine grabbed the door handle and twisted the cold, metal object. He was pleased to find out that it was not locked, which mean less work for him, and entered the large room ahead.