“Plop!”

It was impossible to tell how long she had been falling when Everly’s body suddenly struck something thick, damp, and heavy.

It was like molten lava—a dense, viscous substance that enveloped her completely, restraining her body as it dragged her inward. Before long, a faint pop sounded, as though she had pierced an invisible membrane. The suffocating pressure of being tightly wrapped around instantly eased, and Everly felt herself being “spat out” by whatever had swallowed her.

Thud!

Her body slammed onto a hard surface.

Before the pain even registered, the first thing Everly noticed was the damp, salty smell of the sea breeze.

A torrential downpour raged around her. Lightning split the sky as thunder roared overhead, while fierce winds lashed the sea. Raindrops the size of beans pelted her face and body, cold enough to sting her skin. Within moments, her thin clothing was soaked through. The icy wind cut through the drenched fabric, making her shiver uncontrollably.

For some reason, the ground beneath her pitched and rolled violently.

Supporting her aching head, Everly struggled to her feet and looked around, only to discover that she had landed on the deck of a wooden ship.

The vessel was built in an ancient style. Several enormous sails hung from its towering masts, billowing under the force of the storm. A lone lantern swayed at the bow, casting its dim light over a gray-white figurehead carved in the likeness of the Sea God. Mounted on either side of the hull were two metal cannons, the kind seen only in historical films. Their brass surfaces, weathered by years of wind and sun, were tinged with a faint green patina.

Not a single person was aboard.

Looking more closely, she spotted several splashes of blood across the deck and along the outer walls of the cabin. Washed by the relentless rain, the stains had faded into an ominous pale crimson.

The raging storm at sea, the appearance of the wooden ship, even the bloodstains on the deck—all of it matched the painting “Encounter” that Everly had seen in the gallery.

Having already experienced the previous painting-world, Everly immediately realized that she had, in all likelihood, fallen into Shelly’s second painting.

“Seriously… does it ever end? One painting wasn’t enough, now there’s another…”

Don’t tell me I have to fall into every single painting before this is over. Even a novel wouldn’t dare write something like that!

Splash!

As if to confirm Everly’s suspicion, a gigantic dark purple-black tentacle suddenly burst from the sea beside the wooden ship.

Its surface was covered in wart-like protrusions, while its underside was lined with countless suction cups. Rising from the eerie green seawater, it coiled around one of the ship’s masts. The tremendous force made the entire vessel lurch violently to one side.

The rain-soaked deck was treacherously slippery. Caught off guard, Everly lost her footing and nearly fell.

Fortunately, another tentacle emerged from the opposite side of the ship moments later. It draped its enormous weight across the vessel, balancing the load on both sides. The wooden ship groaned and creaked before slowly righting itself.

Seizing the opportunity, Everly dashed into the cabin.

She had already tried calling upon the sea, but just as before, the ocean in this world was almost impossible to communicate with, barely responding to her summons.

With the storm raging and the freezing weather, if she accidentally fell into the sea, there were only a few possible outcomes awaiting her: drowning, freezing to death, or being eaten by the owner of those tentacles.

She had to save herself.

Based on what she had learned from the previous world, Everly suspected that the world inside “Encounter” also had a source of corruption. If she could eliminate that source, she should be able to destroy the painting and escape.

As for whether leaving this painting would simply drop her into another one…

She couldn’t afford to worry about that now.

Compared to the monstrous tentacles beneath the sea, the wooden ship was as fragile as a toy. It wouldn’t last much longer before being dragged under.

No matter how terrible the next world might be, it couldn’t possibly be worse than this one.

The wooden ship was the only man-made structure on the entire ocean. If there really was a source of corruption in this world, there was a ninety-percent chance it was somewhere aboard this vessel…

Of course, it was also possible that no such source existed.

If that was the case, Everly could only chalk it up to bad luck.

After all, she wasn’t a god. She couldn’t control everything.

Time was running out.

Using her phone as a flashlight, Everly hurriedly searched through the empty ship.

The vessel looked centuries old. The floors and walls were entirely made of wood, with no electric lights, wiring, or any other signs of modern technology. Wherever her light reached, the corridor’s floor was mottled with bloodstains that had yet to dry completely, and the air was thick with the metallic smell of fresh blood.

There was blood everywhere—but no bodies.

Nor were there any traces of monster slime, flesh, or other remains.

Everly crouched beside one of the larger pools of blood and lowered the flashlight for a closer look. It wasn’t long before she found a trail of fresh, dripping blood leading away across the floor.

Looking more carefully, she realized the same was true of every other bloodstain. Each one was surrounded by droplets stretching off in the same direction, as though some immensely powerful being had slaughtered everyone here and then carried the bodies away.

The ship was enormous, with far too many rooms to search one by one.

Everly decided to follow the blood trail straight to its source.

She sprinted down the deserted corridor, chasing the crimson droplets.

Halfway there, the tentacles outside apparently did something to the ship again. The vessel, which had been relatively steady until now, suddenly began pitching and rolling violently once more.

Caught completely off guard, Everly was tossed around as though she had been thrown into a washing machine on its spin cycle. Helplessly, she bounced with the ship’s violent motion, one moment being hurled hard against the cabin ceiling, the next crashing back down onto the grimy wooden floorboards.

By the time the ship finally steadied, she had been flung from one end of the corridor all the way to the other.

The good news was that the place where every trail of blood converged…

…was the cabin at the very end of the hallway.

When she had transitioned into this world, none of the equipment she had gathered in the previous one had come with her—not her protective firefighting suit, not the crossbody bag at her waist, nor any of her weapons.

As a result, Everly found herself suffering another bout of her “insufficient firepower syndrome.”

Before entering, she looked around, picked up a thick wooden club lying in the corridor, and held it across her body as a makeshift weapon.

Then she raised her leg and kicked the locked cabin door open with all her strength.

Bang!

With a dull crash, the door flew open.

By the light of her phone, Everly caught sight of a small figure whose back looked strangely familiar.

It was a little boy.

He had short, close-cropped blond curls and was dressed in a black children’s suit with polished black leather shoes. Everything about him carried the unmistakable air of the modern world, completely out of place in his surroundings.

Everly had seen someone dressed almost exactly like that only this morning—

Her half-brother, Thomas.

She remembered that when the tentacle had dragged her into the painted world, Thomas had been pulled in as well.

Ordinarily, encountering someone she knew in such a bizarre and desolate place should have been a relief.

Instead, the sight of the boy sent chills racing down her spine.

Because the way he was standing was deeply unnatural.

Battered by both the raging storm and the giant tentacles in the sea, the wooden ship had been rolling back and forth without pause. The deck tilted left, then right, rarely staying level for more than a moment.

Everly had excellent balance, yet even she couldn’t avoid swaying with the ship. Whenever it listed too sharply, she had to spread her feet apart and brace herself against the wall just to stay upright.

The boy in the room was different.

With his back to Everly, he stood perfectly still in the center of the cabin. No matter how violently the ship tilted, his legs remained perpendicular to the floor, and his small body stayed rigidly “upright.”

At first glance, he looked less like a living child than a plastic mannequin glued to the deck.

No normal human being could stand like that.

The flashlight on her phone wasn’t very bright, illuminating less than two meters ahead. From the doorway, aside from the obviously abnormal Thomas, all she could see beyond him was a vast expanse of oppressive darkness.

Everly took a deep breath.

Keeping close to the wall on her right, she tried to slip past Thomas and explore deeper into the room.

At that very moment, another loud crack rang out from the ship’s port side.

It sounded as though part of the hull had just been crushed.

A torrent of seawater surged into the ship, sending violent tremors through its interior as the vessel suddenly listed at an even steeper angle.

Loose objects went tumbling in every direction with a cacophony of clatters and crashes. A framed painting hanging on the wall came loose and slammed straight into Everly’s head with a heavy bang.

Fortunately, sensing danger an instant beforehand, Everly had dug her fingers deep into the gaps between the wooden wall planks while kicking desperately against the floor with both feet. Only then did she manage to avoid sliding away.

She kept herself from falling—

But not her phone.

It slipped from her grasp, tumbled onto the floor face-down, and skidded away along the slanted deck.

The bright beam from its flashlight slid with it, sweeping across the room and driving away the darkness that had shrouded its center.

By the light of the moving phone, Everly finally saw what lay in the middle of the cabin.

It was a mountain of corpses.

Countless human bodies, still dressed in tattered medieval sailors’ uniforms, had been piled one atop another into a towering heap. Beneath it spread a massive magic circle covering the center of the room.

The corpses looked as though someone had first filleted every scrap of flesh from their bodies and then boiled them alive.

Only skeletal frames remained, with a few miserable shreds of meat clinging tightly to the bones. Hair, skin, muscle, internal organs—everything else had vanished.

As the flashlight beam shifted across the grisly mound, its surface glittered faintly.

Looking closer, Everly realized that every corpse was encased in a thin layer of translucent gelatinous material.

It resembled hardened syrup or peach gum. Once solidified, it had become remarkably tough, binding the entire heap firmly to the deck and forming a gigantic amber-like tomb of corpses.

Having only just escaped the previous world, Everly recognized the substance immediately.

It was a secretion produced by the monsters.

Both the surfaces of their bodies and their internal organs were capable of producing this sticky, viscous slime.

The corpses in the mound had been reduced to that horrific state.

There was no way the gelatinous substance could have been secreted by the bodies themselves.

Which meant…

Could it be… had they once been swallowed by a monster? Were these corpses vomited back out after being digested?

Before Everly could fully process the horrifying thought, the ship groaned once again under unbearable strain.

The floor tilted sharply.

She suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath her feet. By the time she frantically grabbed the frame of a painting hanging on the wall to steady herself again, her phone had already changed direction and slid across the floor, coming to rest at Thomas’s feet.

One of the boy’s polished black shoes stopped it in place.

The flashlight, now pointing upward, illuminated him from below.

He still stood exactly as he had when she first entered.

His body remained perfectly perpendicular to the deck, utterly motionless.

His clothes were immaculate. His neatly curled blond hair was perfectly in place. His fair, chubby cheeks were full of the youthful softness unique to children, and his innocent-looking face bore not a single bruise, scratch, or speck of dirt.

As Everly looked at him…

He slowly rolled his eyes to meet hers.

Staring straight at her.

Spread across the boy’s face was an exaggerated smile, the corners of his mouth stretched almost all the way to his ears.

The flashlight shining from below cast deep, shifting shadows across his features, making that smile appear even more sinister.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Maintaining eye contact with Everly, the boy slowly parted his lips.

His voice was low and hoarse, echoing throughout the cabin.

“Bzzzz…”

The next instant, a piercing ringing exploded inside Everly’s ears.

It was a language she had never heard before.

Yet those obscure, incomprehensible syllables seemed to possess a strange, unnatural power. They burrowed through her ears into her mind, transforming into countless venomous snakes that writhed through her brain, tearing it apart from within.

It felt as though her head had been struck by a massive hammer.

The world before her eyes began to twist and distort.

Through the haze, Everly saw the shadows on the boy’s face begin to move.

Like living ink, they slowly spread outward, devouring every trace of light around them.

Only one thing remained perfectly clear.

That smile.

That smile alone stayed etched into Everly’s vision, like a nail driven through her eyes, bringing with it an indescribable, searing pain.

The grin spread wider.

The corners of the boy’s mouth split farther and farther apart…

Until, at last, his jaws could no longer bear the strain.

Riiip!

With a sickening tearing sound, the flesh split apart. Deprived of all support, his bloodied lower jaw sagged limply downward.

Right before Everly’s eyes, the boy’s mouth stretched into a grotesquely elongated “O.”

It was a bottomless black abyss.

A faint rustling followed.

Several thick, reddish-black tentacles slowly emerged from the edges of the black void, prying it open even wider before crawling out into the real world.

Her younger brother, Thomas…

had become an incubator for the tentacles.

<< TOC >>

**TN

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” The phrase is the famous fictional chant from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, commonly translated as: “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”  

The post Rules Ch.291 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

“Boom! Rumble!”

“Bang! Bang bang bang!”

“Splat! Splat splat!”

Everly barreled through the harbor in a fire truck, crashing recklessly from one obstacle to another and creating an enormous commotion.

Any monster that got in her way—whether mutated humans or sea anemone tentacles—was met head-on. She neither swerved nor slowed down. Trusting in the fire truck’s rugged construction, she kept her foot planted on the accelerator, plowing straight through them, sending countless monsters flying or crushing them beneath the wheels. Before long, the windshield was plastered with yellow and green slime.

Fortunately, all that muck made the truck’s exterior extremely slick. Even when monsters managed to latch onto the sides with their tentacles and suction cups, a sharp turn of the steering wheel was usually enough to fling them back off.

Ignoring every traffic rule imaginable, Everly drove wildly for nearly ten minutes. She literally forced a path through piles of monsters and wreckage before finally reaching the southeastern container yard she had been aiming for.

The magic circle she had spotted earlier was just ahead. Following the road a little farther would bring her right to it.

Along with the magic circle were more than a dozen slowly writhing flesh-mound monsters.

Everly still had no idea how these creatures attacked. However, considering that the flesh-mound monsters had been transformed from cultists, were much rarer than the mutated humans, and would probably qualify as elite enemies in any game, she suspected their combat strength was only likely to be greater, not weaker.

The fire truck’s water tank still contained more than half a tank of highly flammable gasoline.

If she drove too close and one of the flesh-mound monsters damaged the fuel tank, triggering an explosion that caught her in the blast, the consequences would be disastrous.

To avoid taking that risk, Everly decided to keep her distance.

The flesh-mound monsters remained active only around the magic circle, while the fire truck’s high-pressure water cannon had a maximum range of sixty meters—more than enough to cover the entire area where they roamed.

She brought the truck to a stop about thirty meters from the magic circle.

Click!

As soon as the fire truck came to a stop, the mutated humans chasing it surged forward like a tidal wave, surrounding the vehicle. Their tentacles lashed out frantically, hammering the truck’s body with a deafening barrage of clangs.

Mixed in among them were sea anemone tentacles that had emerged from who knew where. They were clearly more intelligent than the mutated humans. Climbing onto the mutants’ bodies, they repeatedly slammed themselves against the windows, aiming directly at Everly inside the cab. They resembled giant fleas that felt no pain, throwing themselves at the glass over and over again.

In an instant, the scene descended into utter chaos.

Fortunately, fire trucks are built to withstand fires and explosions, with exceptionally sturdy construction. Had it been an ordinary vehicle, it probably wouldn’t have survived the monsters’ relentless assault.

Everly didn’t even consider using the door. Setting aside whether the monster-blocked door could still be opened, even if she managed to push it open, she’d be swarmed the moment she stepped outside. That would be nothing short of s**cide.

Instead, she escaped through the roof hatch above the driver’s seat.

The truck’s high chassis turned out to be an advantage. The monsters, caught up in their frantic assault, hadn’t yet managed to climb onto the roof. Seizing the opportunity, Everly climbed out through the hatch, sprinted across the steel framework of the aerial ladder mounted on top of the truck, and in just a few strides reached the ladder’s turntable platform at the rear.

The moment the monsters noticed her moving, they swarmed after her like fish chasing irresistible bait.

The turntable was a small open-air platform that served as the aerial ladder’s main control station. The ladder’s power switch, hydraulic control levers, acceleration and deceleration buttons, and every other control were all located there.

The platform stood less than a meter above the ground, putting Everly well within reach of the mutated humans and sea anemone tentacles below. But she had no choice. To activate the aerial ladder and the high-pressure water cannon, she had to operate the controls from the turntable.

Fortunately, Everly had studied how to operate the aerial ladder beforehand.

After sprinting to the turntable, Everly took advantage of the brief window before the monsters caught up. Her hands flew across the control panel with a rapid series of clicks. She pressed the aerial ladder’s power switch, pulled the hydraulic lever, adjusted its height and direction, and aimed the ladder straight at the magic circle ahead.

Creeeak…

As she pressed the final button, the aerial ladder mounted above the cab began to rise slowly under the force of the hydraulic pump.

By then, however, the monsters chasing Everly had already reached her.

She leaped upward, grabbing the ladder’s steel frame firmly with both hands. Planting one foot against the platform, she pulled her center of gravity upward while whipping both legs through a full one-hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep, kicking every monster that had crowded around her and sending them flying.

As she tucked her legs back in, she used the upward rebound to push off the ladder frame again. Her body rose nimbly, and within moments she had climbed to a height of nearly two meters.

“Raaagh!”

Seeing this, the monsters below became even more frenzied.

Packed shoulder to shoulder, they shoved and climbed over one another. Within moments, they had unintentionally formed a sloping ramp made entirely of their companions’ bodies beneath the truck.

Using that grisly ramp as a foothold, the monsters in the rear charged forward with furious roars. Mimicking Everly, they grabbed onto the ladder with hands, feet, and tentacles alike, scrambling upward in a desperate race to catch her.

Perhaps because they had extra tentacles to aid their grip, the mutated humans climbed the ladder with astonishing speed, gradually threatening to overtake Everly.

She had only climbed halfway when the first monster reached her feet.

To shake it off, Everly shifted her posture, straddling the steel framework of the ladder with her legs spread apart while gripping the rails with both hands. Then she drove her left foot hard into the creature’s grotesquely twisted octopus-like head.

The kick burst its skull open in a spray of pulp, and its limp body slipped from the ladder, tumbling to the ground below.

She had barely climbed a little farther after kicking that monster away when another one was already at her feet.

If it had only been the mutated humans, it wouldn’t have been so bad. The real problem was the sea anemone tentacles hitching rides among them. The slightest lapse in attention, and one would suddenly spring forward, just like a facehugger from a sci-fi horror film, lunging straight for her vital areas. Even with her fireproof suit on, those little monsters were more than enough to make her life miserable.

Fighting off monsters while struggling upward, Everly finally climbed into the personnel basket at the very tip of the aerial ladder, drenched in sweat.

Fortunately, once she had a stable platform beneath her feet, dealing with the monsters that climbed up after her became much easier.

Everly carried several melee weapons with her. Drawing the machete strapped to her waist, she dispatched the pursuing monsters as effortlessly as chopping vegetables. Then she hoisted the high-pressure water cannon onto her shoulder, aimed it at the magic circle on the ground diagonally ahead, and opened the nozzle.

Whoosh!

The pale-yellow gasoline shot from the nozzle like a high-speed arrow, streaking toward the magic circle below and blasting the ritual items arranged upon it in every direction.

“Roooar!”

The flesh-mound monsters guarding the magic circle immediately sensed something was wrong. Their massive bodies slowly turned, and the dark, hollow eye sockets of the skulls embedded atop them all fixed upon Everly on the aerial ladder. Deep, muffled roars echoed from within their bodies.

Everly was not the kind of person to quietly endure being threatened.

Seeing them roar at her, she immediately swung the water cannon toward the flesh-mound monsters and sprayed them without the slightest hesitation.

The high-pressure stream slammed into their bodies like an invisible water blade, gouging deep dents into their flesh. Before long, the monsters’ tough outer skin was sliced open by the razor-sharp jet, exposing an interior as porous and spongy as a giant sea sponge.

Inside those sponge-like cavities writhed countless crimson tentacles.

The pressurized stream severed them within the monsters’ bodies. The tentacles convulsed violently as large quantities of yellow-green pus poured from the freshly cut wounds.

As the yellow-green fluid spilled onto the ground, a chorus of sizzles rang out.

Everly watched as the hardened concrete was eaten away, deep grooves rapidly appearing wherever the liquid flowed.

The yellow-green bodily fluid was actually corrosive!

Everly silently congratulated herself for not charging in recklessly. If she had fought the flesh-mound monsters up close and been splashed with that corrosive fluid, she would have been in serious trouble.

After drenching both the magic circle and the surrounding monsters with gasoline from the high-pressure water cannon, the fuel tank finally ran dry.

Letting out a long breath, Everly tossed aside the water cannon. Gripping the railing of the personnel basket with both hands, she fixed her eyes on the fire truck’s cab below, swung herself forward, and jumped.

Thud!

She landed heavily on the roof of the cab, the impact sending a dull ache through her knees and shins.

But she had no time to worry about the pain.

Seeing her jump down, the monsters on the aerial ladder immediately followed, raining down like dumplings dropped into boiling water. Most of them crashed onto the ground or the truck’s rear compartment, but several landed directly on top of the cab.

To avoid being surrounded, Everly gritted her teeth against the pain and used both hands and feet to kick every nearby monster off the roof. Then she dropped back into the driver’s seat through the roof hatch, started the engine, and slammed the accelerator, driving straight toward the magic circle.

Since the aerial ladder was still extended, monsters continued to tumble from its framework as the truck sped forward. They crashed onto the roof with a constant barrage of loud bangs and thuds.

Everly ignored every single one of them.

Her entire focus was on driving. She smashed through anything that blocked her path, and when the truck was finally close enough to the magic circle, she seized the moment.

Cracking the driver’s window open just a little, she pulled out a windproof lighter.

Click.

The flame sprang to life.

Without hesitation, Everly tossed the lit lighter through the gap in the window, sending it straight onto the nearest flesh-mound monster.

She didn’t even bother closing the window afterward.

The instant she threw the lighter, she yanked the steering wheel, floored the accelerator, and sped away as fast as the fire truck could carry her.

“Whoooosh—BOOM!!”

The fire truck hadn’t made it very far before a pillar of flames shot into the sky, followed immediately by a deafening explosion.

The blast wave slammed into the vehicle. The side windows could no longer withstand the pressure, cracking with a sharp crack as spiderweb fractures spread across the glass. The instrument panel’s cover shattered into countless fragments, spraying Everly’s face with shards.

Ignoring the pain, she stubbornly kept driving.

The entire truck felt as though it had been thrown into a giant washing machine, lurching violently—one moment soaring into the air, the next crashing back down. Since Everly wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, she was tossed around helplessly inside the cab, her head ricocheting between the steering wheel and the rear seat like a pinball. She nearly threw up.

It wasn’t until she finally escaped the blast radius that she looked up—

—and was met with a breathtaking sight.

Have you ever seen a watercolor painting on a wall during the rainy season, after moisture has seeped into it?

Drops of water gather under gravity into thin streams that trickle down the wall. As they pass over the watercolor, the pigments dissolve into the water, blending with neighboring colors. The result is curtain-like streaks of color trailing downward, as though the painting had grown the flowing train of a formal gown.

Now, right before her eyes…

A painting was doing exactly that.

The title of the painting was “The World.”

The distant sky looked as though it had been painted onto a canvas. Heavy with moisture, it bled downward, shedding white tears.

Beneath the sky, the deep-blue sea caught those tears. White and blue mingled together, and where ocean met land, even more blue-and-white droplets formed.

By the time the effect reached the harbor, the colors became increasingly chaotic. The crimson steel frameworks, the charcoal-gray buildings, the yellow crane booms, the green shipping containers…

Everything within sight that possessed color began to resemble melting wax.

Twisted and distorted, every hue was pulled downward into long, flowing streaks of color, as though the entire world itself were dissolving into wet paint.

A damp, chilly sensation slid across her palm.

Everly looked down and discovered that, at some point, the steering wheel in her hands had also begun to melt, collapsing into a rapidly sagging mass of shapeless black.

It wasn’t just the steering wheel.

Her fireproof suit, the driver’s seat beneath her, and even the fire truck itself all seemed to have been made of papier-mâché. They softened, became waterlogged, and slowly caved inward.

Caught completely off guard, Everly lost her footing and fell helplessly into an ocean of color.

Countless colors swirled together, blending into a filthy, murky brown-black.

Enveloped by the sea of pigments, Everly smelled that familiar odor once again—

the stench of rotting flesh, mixed with the pungent scent of turpentine.

The thick, acrid, murky fumes rushed straight into her nose, making her head swim and her stomach churn with nausea.

She thrashed desperately, struggling through the viscous sea.

Riiip!

Amid the chaos, the faint sound of paper tearing came from somewhere.

In the next instant, weightlessness overtook her.

Once again, Everly began an uncontrollable fall.

…

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.290 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Everly and Misha had once bought tacos from Wendy’s, and she remembered that the shop’s main entrance faced southeast.

Using the taco shop as a reference point, she quickly determined the four cardinal directions and roughly identified her current location as the center of Gilosha.

With her bearings established and a map in hand, finding the harbor wouldn’t be difficult.

The human mutation outbreak in Gilosha had erupted with shocking suddenness.

At the time, the raging radiation sickness had already been brought under control. The city’s residents had returned to their normal routines and resumed traveling around the city.

As a result, the streets were littered with vehicles that had crashed into one another. Among them were plenty of smaller means of transportation, such as bicycles and motorcycles.

Time was of the essence.

Everly promptly “borrowed” a motorcycle parked by the roadside—one that still had its key in the ignition. After casually wiping away the bloodstains splattered across it, she swung onto the bike and sped off.

The city’s roads were in terrible condition.

Moreover, it was obvious that the closer she got to the harbor, the more extensive the destruction became.

The buildings were increasingly devastated, while the roadsides were strewn with ever greater amounts of blood and dismembered body parts.

By the final stretch of the journey, the road itself was almost completely covered with mangled flesh, severed limbs, and gelatinous slime.

The air reeked with a nauseating stench of blood and decay.

Everly had no choice but to slow down and drive with extreme caution. Otherwise, the motorcycle’s tires would easily lose traction, sending both the bike and herself crashing to the ground.

After nearly twenty minutes of careful riding, she finally arrived at the harbor marked on the map.

The ship carrying the ancient relic statue was somewhere out on the distant sea. Everly had no idea of its exact location, making it difficult to search for.

But she had a fairly good idea where the cultists’ ritual array was.

When the Gilosha mutation incident had occurred, a video filmed from atop a high-rise building had circulated in one of Misha’s group chats.

By sheer coincidence, the person recording it had inadvertently captured what appeared to be members of the Dagon Order performing a ritual.

There weren’t many high-rise buildings near the harbor, and Everly remembered that the background of the overhead video had shown one particular corner of the docks.

Combining those two clues, she quickly identified a building on the harbor’s southern side.

Corresponding to that building were the harbor’s southwestern and southeastern corners.

With a motorcycle at her disposal, searching those two areas one after the other should have been a simple task.

However, not long after entering the harbor, Everly realized she had been far too optimistic.

There were monsters in the harbor.

She had assumed that the only creatures trapped inside this painted world were herself and the Weeping Mother with her child.

She hadn’t expected there to be other monsters.

These creatures closely resembled the mutated humans that had appeared in the videos from the Gilosha incident.

They still wore the clothes they had been dressed in as humans. Their bodies were coated in thick layers of yellowish-white slime. Some had heads transformed into those of octopuses, while others had arms—or other body parts—that had become writhing tentacles.

Each one was grotesque in its own way.

All of them were vicious and highly aggressive.

For some reason, instead of throwing themselves into the sea, these monsters had remained within the harbor area, wandering aimlessly.

The moment Everly entered, the roar of her motorcycle engine attracted their attention.

In an instant, more than a dozen monsters charged toward her.

They ran with astonishing speed. As they sprinted, blobs of slime splattered onto the ground with wet plap-plap sounds. Once the slime dried, it quickly became the same translucent gelatinous substance Everly had noticed scattered throughout the city.

She hadn’t even had time to grab a harbor map before the first monsters were already upon her.

If there had only been the few directly in front of her, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

She could have turned them into human speed bumps and sent them straight to the ground.

But perhaps drawn by the commotion, fresh monsters continuously poured out from every corner of the harbor.

As far as the eye could see, they came in dense, overwhelming waves.

It was even more horrifying than kicking over a nest of cockroaches.

She couldn’t win.

There was simply no way she could fight them all.

To avoid being overwhelmed by the monsters, Everly gripped the handlebars, made a sharp 180-degree turn on the spot, twisted the throttle to its limit, and sped back out of the harbor.

Strangely enough, the moment she crossed the harbor’s boundary, the savage creatures immediately abandoned the chase.

Reluctantly, they retreated into the harbor, dispersed, and resumed wandering around.

Everly hid at a nearby street corner and observed them for a while.

In her judgment, there could only be one explanation for their behavior:

They were guarding something.

Horror Movie Survival Rule #1: Pay attention to the hints.

The cultists’ ritual array was hidden somewhere in the harbor.

Could that be what the monsters were protecting?

Very likely.

But that made things much more troublesome.

Everly was alone, and the weapons she had were limited.

Meanwhile, the harbor contained an absurd number of monsters.

If she had to kill them one by one, who knew how long it would take?

Time wasn’t on her side.

Earlier, she had passed a skincare advertisement and happened to glance up at it.

She discovered that the model pictured on the poster had progressed beyond merely wearing an eerie smile.

Several red-and-black tentacles had silently emerged from the figure’s eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears.

They had broken through the boundary between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, protruding from the surface of the poster itself.

When Everly walked past, they seemed to sense the presence of a living person.

The tentacles writhed frantically across the poster, repeatedly reaching toward her with tips lined with razor-sharp fangs and claws, trying to seize her through the air.

Fortunately, they were still too short to reach her.

For the time being, they posed no immediate threat.

But Everly knew that if she delayed much longer, it was only a matter of time before those revolting things broke free of the paper and entered the real world.

She had to act quickly.

For the next stretch of time, Everly remained hidden outside the harbor, conducting a series of experiments on the monsters inside.

The results of her experiments showed that, regardless of whether the monsters still possessed recognizable eyes, ears, noses, or other human sensory organs, their vision, hearing, and sense of smell remained exceptionally sharp.

That meant it was practically impossible to sneak past them using the usual zombie-movie tricks—such as masking her scent with foul-smelling substances or keeping perfectly silent.

There was, however, one piece of good news.

By chance, Everly discovered a fire station nearby.

A fire engine was still parked inside the garage, and its keys hung on the wall of the nearby duty room.

The truck had likely been assigned specifically for fighting fires around the harbor.

Its chassis sat high off the ground—about 1.2 meters (nearly 4 feet)—and its oversized tires could easily traverse rubble, steep slopes, and even collapsed sections of buildings.

The body was built from high-strength steel, giving it excellent fire resistance and stability.

Mounted on the rear were a water tank and an extendable ladder.

The firefighting equipment wasn’t particularly difficult to operate.

After only a few attempts, Everly managed to open the lid of the water tank.

Perhaps to prevent rust from forming inside, the tank was currently empty.

Perfect.

An empty tanker was exactly what Everly wanted.

After spending a little time familiarizing herself with the controls, she stepped on the accelerator.

In the span of a single second, she completed the transformation from a bright, cheerful college student into a fire truck driver.

Following the directions on the map, she drove straight to a nearby chain gas station.

Relying on the truck’s high ground clearance and rugged construction, she forcefully shoved aside the smaller cars blocking the pumps until she had squeezed the fire truck between all four fuel dispensers.

She then inserted all four fuel nozzles into the opening of the empty water tank at the back.

After that, she ran into the convenience store, grabbed a stack of prepaid fuel cards, activated each pump, and had all four dispensers simultaneously pumping gasoline into the tank.

The filling process took another ten minutes or so.

While she waited, Everly also took the opportunity to gather a few useful supplies from the convenience store.

Once the tank was about two-thirds full, Everly shut off the pumps and drove the fire truck—now loaded with highly flammable fuel—to the tall building on the south side of the harbor.

The building was in complete disarray.

Tables, chairs, and other furniture lay overturned everywhere, and every few steps she encountered another large pool of dried blood.

Fortunately, since it stood outside the harbor, there were no troublesome monsters lurking inside, and the elevators were still functioning normally.

Everly took the elevator all the way to the rooftop.

Using a pair of binoculars, she surveyed the harbor below.

It didn’t take long before she found what she was looking for.

The ritual array was located in the harbor’s southwestern corner, surrounded by several stacks of shipping containers.

It looked almost exactly like it had in the video.

The only difference was this:

In the video, the ritual array had been encircled by a dozen or so cultists dressed in black robes.

Now, surrounding the array were a group of enormous masses of flesh draped in black cloaks.

They were, quite literally, mountains of meat.

Perhaps because of the ritual’s influence, the cultists below had completely lost every trace of their human form.

Their bodies had grotesquely swollen and warped.

Their bones had seemingly melted away.

Their heads, limbs, and torsos had fused together into enormous heaps of soft flesh that sprawled limply across the ground, resembling gigantic human-flesh slugs.

Only the skull-like halves of human faces protruding from the tops of their bodies, along with the black cloaks covering their backs, still hinted at what they had once been.

Like the other monsters in the harbor, these flesh-mountains were on patrol.

Centered around the ritual array, they tirelessly wandered within a radius of roughly twenty meters.

Whenever the angle was favorable, Everly could even see countless fleshy tendrils writhing beneath the monsters where they touched the ground.

Those appeared to serve as their “feet.”

As the gigantic flesh monsters crawled along, their damp, tentacle-like appendages left behind trails of translucent gelatinous slime.

The scene was so bizarre, so mentally disturbing, that it was enough to make anyone feel sick to their stomach.

And yet, Everly couldn’t afford to look away.

As she watched, Everly carefully studied the monsters’ patrol patterns.

She needed to identify their routines, plan the safest route from the harbor entrance to the ritual array, and prepare several backup plans in case something went wrong.

When she finished her observations and left the building, she discovered a fourth thing scattered across the ground, in addition to the bloodstains, severed limbs, and gelatinous slime:

Living, crawling tentacles.

They weren’t very large—about the size of an adult’s hand—and resembled flattened sea anemones.

Around the outer edge of each creature writhed a dozen or so crimson-and-black tentacles.

At the center was a circular, sucker-like mouth, its rim lined with several dense rows of razor-sharp teeth, giving it an utterly horrifying appearance.

Despite their small size, these anemone-like creatures possessed astonishing jumping ability.

Whenever someone passed by, they would hide in dark corners, then suddenly spring out in an ambush.

All of their tentacles would flare open at once as they lunged forward, using the tooth-filled sucker in the center to bite their victim.

Fortunately, Everly had been worried that the gasoline-filled fire engine might explode in flames.

To be safe, she had deliberately put on a firefighter’s protective suit.

Although it did absolutely nothing to keep her warm, it completely blocked the first sea-anemone creature’s attack.

At the same time, it alerted Everly to the existence of this new kind of monster.

As for where they came from, it didn’t take her long to find the answer.

They had fallen out of the eerie smiling portraits.

As time passed, the dangers lurking within the painted world were steadily escalating.

She had only spent a short while on the rooftop gathering information.

Yet by the time she came back down, the portraits lining the streets had changed again.

The smiles on their faces had disappeared.

In place of their eyes, noses, and mouths were enormous black holes.

And writhing their way out of those dark openings…

…were countless crimson-and-black sea-anemone creatures.

Transitioning from two dimensions into three apparently required an enormous amount of energy.

As a result, the sea-anemone creatures didn’t emerge very quickly.

But that hardly mattered.

There were simply too many human images scattered throughout the city, and there seemed to be no upper limit to the number of sea-anemone creatures each portrait could spawn.

For now, there still weren’t that many of them.

But if she allowed this to drag on…

Everly didn’t even dare imagine what the city would become.

Fighting back a wave of goosebumps crawling over her skin, she sprinted back to the fire truck.

She slammed her foot onto the accelerator.

Once again, she charged straight toward the harbor.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.289 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

The situation was not looking good.

Five minutes earlier, Everly had watched with her own eyes as the large and small monsters were blown to pieces. Their scattered flesh was ignited by the gasoline, charring into black ash. Even the ruins surrounding the two monsters were caught in the blast, triggering a second collapse.

Yet five minutes later, as the smoke gradually cleared, the bricks, shattered stones, chunks of flesh, and black ash on the ground suddenly began moving on their own, as though they had grown legs.

The broken bricks reassembled themselves. Displaced stones slid back to their original positions. The scattered pieces of flesh crawled toward one another and fused together. The burnt black ash gathered into heaps, transforming back into fresh, living flesh…

The entire process was silent and astonishingly swift. Every blink brought a dramatic change to the scene before her eyes. In less than half a minute, the ruins that had collapsed a second time reverted to the state of the first collapse, while the large and small monsters that had been blown apart pieced themselves back together like jigsaw puzzles. Flesh wriggled in from every direction, reconstructing them into the human figures from Scars.

What was even more bizarre was that this restoration occurred only within the area enclosed by the painting’s frame—that is, the portion of the painting visible to people in the real world.

Outside that boundary, everything remained exactly as it had been. The black scorch marks left by Everly’s explosion, as well as the shards of broken glass scattered across the ground, stayed untouched. It was as though the mysterious force that restored everything simply ignored anything that people outside the painting couldn’t see.

Everly couldn’t explain the mechanism behind it. The only thing she was certain of was this:

The “door” had not appeared.

Just moments ago, she had genuinely managed to kill both monsters—if only briefly. But after the explosion, amid the devastation, she had seen nothing resembling a “door” or a “key.” If something like a “key” really existed, surely it couldn’t have been blown to bits in the explosion. No movie would ever handle it that way!

A faint sense of foreboding crept over her.

Her original hypothesis… was probably wrong.

Perhaps the way to leave the world inside the painting wasn’t hidden within those two monsters after all. She would have to search elsewhere for an escape.

Of course, that decision carried its own risks. But Everly was willing to take the gamble, because what had just happened had already proven one thing: simply killing the large and small monsters accomplished nothing.

She had killed them once, and no “door” had appeared. There was no reason to believe killing them a second time would produce a different result. On the other hand, if she didn’t kill them, a single poke from either monster was enough to trigger mutation, making it impossible for her to search their bodies directly.

Staying here any longer would only waste time.

She needed to change her approach—find a new lead, or at the very least discover a way to stop the monsters from reviving.

As soon as she made up her mind, she acted.

Turning around, Everly retraced the route she had taken earlier.

Something came back to her.

While searching the surrounding area for useful items before, one of the nearby buildings had struck her as strangely familiar.

She was certain she had seen it somewhere before, but the impression had been too faint for her to recall where. Besides, at the time her priority had been gathering supplies and dealing with the monsters, so she had pushed the thought aside.

Now that she thought about it, however, that building might be the breakthrough she was looking for.

She decided to take another look around it. If it managed to jog her memory, whatever she remembered might help her find a way out of this place.

She followed the road for a while.

Before reaching her destination, Everly suddenly stopped and looked around in confusion.

Something felt… off.

On closer inspection, it was indeed the same road she had walked before. The dilapidated buildings lining the street looked exactly as they had earlier, with no obvious changes.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was different.

What was it…?

Standing where she was, she carefully surveyed her surroundings. She even took out her compact mirror and used it to inspect the blind spots behind her.

Her brow slowly furrowed.

She couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, yet her mind kept insisting that something had changed.

As a result, the next stretch of her journey became agonizing.

If her footsteps grew even slightly louder, she’d have the unsettling illusion that someone was following close behind her.

If the wind stirred a curtain in a nearby window, her heart would race, convinced that someone was hiding behind it, secretly watching her.

Suspicious of everything she saw, she pressed on. By the time she finally returned, following her memory, to the dilapidated building, Everly was drenched in cold sweat.

It was a shop located on a street corner.

The storefront had been heavily damaged. Its entrance and signboard had both been destroyed, lying crookedly on the ground. At the doorway remained a large pool of blood mixed with mangled pieces of flesh.

Walking up to the shop, Everly used a wooden stick to lift the fallen signboard, which was smeared with a layer of translucent gelatinous slime.

The first thing she saw was a line of garbled characters painted in bright red.

In the upper-right corner of the sign was the image of a smiling red-haired, freckled girl holding up a taco.

The moment she saw the girl, Everly instantly remembered why the building had seemed so familiar.

It was the logo of Wendy’s, a local street-food brand in Gilosha that had been around for more than fifty years.

According to the story, the logo was modeled after the founder’s youngest daughter, Wendy. Her identity as a family member, together with the innocent, cheerful smile on her face, continuously conveyed the brand’s image of serving homestyle tacos, making customers naturally associate it with quality ingredients and clean, hygienic food.

Gilosha was the city where Everly and Misha had changed planes on their way to university.

Since their layovers there were usually quite long, the two of them would take the opportunity to explore the city and have some fun.

And Wendy’s slow-braised pork tacos and spicy shredded chicken tacos were famous local specialties, so naturally neither of them had missed the chance to try them.

No wonder the place had seemed so familiar to Everly—Misha had brought her here once to eat tacos!

But…

Wasn’t there something wrong with Wendy’s sign?

The surge of excitement lasted only an instant before Everly noticed something strange.

She lowered her head and examined the logo inch by inch.

The cartoon girl held a taco in one hand, wearing a red-and-white checkered dress. Her eyes curved into crescent moons with delight, while the corners of her mouth stretched almost to her ears, forming a smile that looked bright and cheerful at first glance—but the longer one looked at it, the stiffer and more unsettling it became.

The worst part was that staring at the smile for too long created the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched with malicious intent.

A storefront sign like this could never make customers think of the warmth of home.

Everly’s heart suddenly skipped a beat.

At last, she realized where the strange feeling that had haunted her all this time had come from.

Faces.

Along the way, every human image she had seen—store signs, display posters, street graffiti, mannequin figures…

…every single one of them was smiling.

And not an ordinary smile, either.

They all wore eerie, uncanny smiles, the kind that looked almost human but somehow not quite.

The first time she had passed through this street, all those faces had looked perfectly normal.

So why had they changed when she came back?

Were they really just ordinary pictures?

Or were they living monsters in disguise?

Everly forced herself to steady her ragged breathing and looked at the sign once more.

Perhaps it was only her imagination, but the girl’s smile seemed even wider than before.

Her eyes, drawn with simple black lines, stared fixedly at Everly. They seemed filled with resentment and malice, like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to sink its fangs into her.

Crack!

Without hesitation, Everly raised the wooden stick and smashed the sign bearing the girl’s image to pieces before striding away from the shop.

Although she had witnessed something deeply disturbing, she couldn’t deny that this trip had yielded an important discovery.

Wendy’s was a local brand exclusive to Gilosha, with no branches anywhere else.

That gave Everly an important clue:

The painting Scars had most likely been created with Gilosha as its setting.

At the exhibition of Shelly’s final works, the paintings had been arranged in chronological order according to the creation dates written on the backs of the canvases. Since Scars was displayed first, it meant it was the very first painting Shelly had completed after shutting himself away in his studio.

There was another piece of information as well.

The lawyer, Charlie, had once told her that at the end of August last year, Shelly had returned from a research trip and immediately secluded himself in his studio to begin painting.

Late August of last year.

Gilosha.

A city reduced to ruins.

The weeping mother transformed from a human into a tentacled monster.

And the Dagon Order totem depicted in Self-Portrait…

Putting all the clues together, Everly arrived at a bold hypothesis:

Shelly’s research trip had taken him to Gilosha.

After all, July through August of last year was exactly when Gilosha experienced the outbreak of radiation sickness and the mass human mutations. The devastated city and the mother’s grotesque transformation both matched the events of that disaster perfectly.

As for why the streets in the painting were completely deserted, there were two possible explanations.

The first was that, to heighten the painting’s tragic atmosphere, Shelly had deliberately omitted both the mutated monsters and the fleeing survivors from the background.

The second was that by the time he gathered his reference material, the mutation incident was already nearing its end. The mutated humans had been drawn to the ancient relic statue aboard the ship, flocking to the shoreline before throwing themselves into the sea, leaving the city’s streets eerily empty.

Verifying the theory wouldn’t be difficult.

Although every written word in the city had turned into incomprehensible squiggles, non-textual images remained unchanged.

All Everly had to do was find a newsstand, locate a local tourist map, and compare the city’s layout with that of Gilosha.

As luck would have it, there was a newsstand on a street corner only a few hundred meters away from the taco shop.

Everly quickened her pace and headed straight for it.

Once she noticed the unsettling changes in the city’s human images, the entire place became every bit as terrifying as a haunted house.

Standing outside the newsstand and peering through its window, Everly saw that whether it was the posters hanging on the walls or the newspapers and magazines spread across the counter, every single human face printed on them was staring directly at her through the paper.

Without exception.

They all wore enormous, unnatural smiles, their mouths stretched impossibly wide, the corners pulling all the way back to their ears.

It even seemed as though those smiles were gradually growing wider with the passage of time.

Everly had no idea what would happen if they continued to change.

But judging by the logic of horror movies, things would only get worse, never better.

So she ignored the creepy images—which, for the moment at least, were unable to attack her—and hurriedly searched through the pile of newspapers until she found a local map.

First, she confirmed her suspicion that this place really was Gilosha.

Then, following the illustrations on the map, she headed straight for the harbor on the city’s western side.

The reason she was going to the harbor was simple.

She had previously investigated the Gilosha incident and knew that the city’s mutation had originated from two separate sources:

the ancient relic statue aboard the ship, and the ritual array painted across the harbor district by the cultists.

The Weeping Mother and her infant had also been transformed under the influence of those two things.

That realization inspired a new hypothesis.

Perhaps, if she could eliminate the source of the city’s corruption, she would be able to escape from the painting.

After all, the world inside the painting was merely the effect of the mutation.

Without the cause, the effect should cease to exist.

Wouldn’t that amount to destroying the painting from within, albeit indirectly?

The theory was at least plausible.

And if it was plausible, then it was worth trying.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.288 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

When Everly fled from the ruins, the weeping woman had still barely resembled a human. Aside from the tentacles that had burst from her shoulders, the rest of her body had not yet undergone any mutation.

Yet in the span of only a few dozen seconds, by the time the woman’s attention had been drawn by the little monster’s cries and she charged over for revenge, her appearance had changed completely.

The skin covering the woman’s upper body had split apart into dry, cracked plates like drought-stricken earth. From the fissures, not only bright red muscle tissue but also countless tentacles protruded. Her face had suffered the worst of the transformation—even the places where her eyes and mouth should have been had become fertile ground for writhing tentacles.

And yet, her lower body remained entirely human.

The result was a grotesque creature with a grotesquely swollen upper body perched atop two thin, stick-like human legs. As she staggered forward with great difficulty, she looked like a walking bouquet of writhing tendrils, her appearance unsettling to the extreme.

The larger monster moved slowly, but the sheer number of tentacles covering her body gave her an exceptionally long reach. Although the tentacles had completely overtaken where her eyes should have been—meaning she should have been unable to see—she could still pinpoint Everly’s location with uncanny precision. Like a volley of arrows, countless tentacles shot toward Everly with a rapid whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

Left with no other choice, Everly darted between abandoned vehicles, weaving and dodging through the obstacles around her until she finally escaped the larger monster’s attack range.

By running, she had successfully avoided the monster’s tentacles—but at the same time, she lost her chance to finish off the little monster.

Fortunately, the larger monster’s true target was not Everly, but the little monster pinned to the ground.

Once she had driven Everly away, she gave up the pursuit. Instead, she knelt beside the little monster and gathered it into her arms, her forearms completely covered in writhing tentacles as she embraced the creature lying on the ground.

“Say she has no maternal instincts, yet the moment she heard her baby crying, she rushed over to help. But if you say her maternal instincts are strong…” the scene that followed said otherwise.

Without even bothering to pull out the steel pipe, the larger monster grabbed the little monster on both sides and gave it a violent yank toward herself.

Riiip!

With a sickening tear, a long gash split open across the little monster’s head as the woman wrenched it free from the steel pipe.

Yellow-green fluid and what looked disturbingly like intestines spilled out through the opening in its skull. The little monster’s body went limp, collapsing bonelessly before gradually ceasing to move.

The larger monster seemed completely unaware that anything was wrong.

Lowering her head, she gently adjusted the now-loosened swaddling cloth before cradling the little monster back into her arms. Then she stood, swayed unsteadily back to the ruins, resumed the kneeling, weeping posture she had held before, and froze once more into the exact composition depicted in the painting.

“…”

Watching the entire scene from a safe distance, Everly couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Wasn’t she trying to kill me just now? Why did she stop chasing me halfway through? And what’s with going back to her original position? Does the larger monster have to periodically return to the pose from the painting?

After pondering it for a while, Everly decided she needed to find a way to kill both monsters.

Earlier, she had stabbed the little monster with the steel pipe. Although it had been injured, she herself had suffered no adverse effects. That meant these monsters could be attacked—destroying them wouldn’t trigger some disastrous consequence where damaging the painting also killed the people trapped inside it.

Moreover, the two monsters were the central figures of Scars and the most extraordinary beings in this painted world. They might well possess the key to returning to reality.

Perhaps if she killed them, she would immediately escape from the painting.

With that in mind, Everly temporarily withdrew from the ruins and headed deeper into the city.

She needed to find a weapon.

Most of the items she carried had been used up during her battle against the gallery’s tentacles. At the moment, aside from the Weather Balloon and the Sacred Tree Bracelet, she had nothing with significant combat value left. And neither of those was something she could use casually.

Because the state of Ascamona enforced strict firearms regulations and prohibited the open carrying of guns, Everly hadn’t brought one with her to the exhibition.

As a result, she now had practically nothing. She was starting from scratch, and there was no way she could defeat those monsters with her bare hands.

Everly reasoned that since the cars lining the streets were tangible enough for her to tear off a hood and pull out a steel pipe, perhaps she could find something equally useful elsewhere in the city.

She picked a road at random and proceeded cautiously, keeping her guard up as she walked.

The surroundings remained eerily quiet. Only the occasional strains of music drifting from storefronts along the street broke the silence.

Other than the larger and smaller monsters, Everly didn’t encounter another living soul. The only signs that this place had once been a thriving metropolis were the scattered flesh and severed limbs lying everywhere, along with the vehicles clogging every road.

Whatever catastrophe had reduced the city to this deathly silence must have struck with terrifying suddenness.

Passing an open-air café, Everly stepped inside to take a look.

Among the overturned tables and chairs, she found a half-eaten slice of cake still sitting on one of the tables. Beside it rested a small women’s handbag containing bank cards and cash.

If the disaster had given people even the slightest chance to react, the bag’s owner would never have abandoned it on the table.

What struck her as strange was that, judging by their design, the banknotes looked almost identical to U.S. dollars. Yet the writing printed on them wasn’t any language Everly recognized.

The characters twisted and sprawled across the paper like a child’s random scribbles, utterly devoid of any discernible pattern. Even two bills of the same denomination bore completely different text, with no similarities whatsoever—something that should have been impossible in the real world.

In fact, it wasn’t just the money.

Everything Everly had seen written since arriving here—street signs, shop names, advertising slogans, and more—appeared in the same incomprehensible tadpole-like script.

At first, she had assumed the painting was based on a country that spoke an obscure language. But now it seemed more likely that the written language of the painted world itself had somehow become corrupted into meaningless gibberish.

The unintelligible writing made Everly’s search for supplies much more troublesome.

Every time she passed a shop, she had to walk up to the display window—or go inside altogether—just to figure out what kind of business it was.

After spending far more time than she’d expected, Everly finally gathered everything she needed. Along the way, she also stumbled upon a gun shop.

Although the store had clearly been looted at some point and many of the weapon racks had been stripped bare, she still managed to pick through the firearms, ammunition, and equipment scattered across the floor and recover quite a few useful items. It was, by all accounts, a fruitful haul.

On her way back, she passed a clothing store and decided to stop in and change out of her women’s business suit.

The temperature inside the painted world was already low. Whenever the wind blew, icy drafts slipped through the gaps in her clothing, chilling her from head to toe. She could even see faint wisps of vapor every time she exhaled.

Everly had no idea how long she would be trapped here. Her business suit was too thin and awkward for combat, so she wanted to replace it with something warmer and easier to move in.

The racks in the store were filled entirely with summer clothing, further suggesting that the catastrophe had occurred during the summer.

Fortunately, there was a stockroom in the back, where the previous season’s autumn and winter clothing had been stored. Everly picked out a fleece-lined tracksuit, removed her suit jacket, and pulled it on.

She had assumed that would be enough to keep out the cold.

Instead, the moment she stepped outside, a gust of wind swept over her. It felt as though she had fallen into an ice cave. Rather than warming up, the cold pierced even deeper into her bones.

Has the temperature dropped again?

Cold weather dulled muscle responsiveness, and with another fight against the monsters looming, Everly wasn’t willing to risk even the slightest disadvantage.

So after remaining outside for only a short while, she hurried back into the clothing store and put on a thin wool sweater over her other clothes.

“Hss…” she hissed through clenched teeth.

It turned out that adding the extra clothes had made virtually no difference. Even with the sweater on, it wasn’t long before Everly was as cold as she had been before.

What on earth is going on? Could it be…

After standing there in thought for a while, Everly returned to the clothing store and changed back into her own women’s business suit.

Sure enough, when she went outside again, she still felt cold, but not with that eerie sensation of icy drafts seeping through her clothes from every direction.

That led Everly to a disturbing suspicion.

The objects in this painted world were false.

They looked like clothes, but they provided no warmth when worn. By the same logic, the food and water scattered throughout the city would probably do nothing to satisfy hunger or quench thirst, no matter how much she consumed.

It was terrible news.

As a living person, Everly could still grow tired, thirsty, and hungry inside the painted world.

Without food or water, an ordinary human could survive for about three days. But as time dragged on, the body would become progressively weaker. Eventually, she’d lose the strength to move, lingering on with little more than the barest semblance of life.

That meant she had to find a way out of the painting as quickly as possible, while she still had the strength to act.

Putting the matter of clothing out of her mind, she slipped back into the only garment that could actually keep her warm—her suit jacket—gathered up her newly acquired weapons and equipment, and hurried back to the street where the larger and smaller monsters had been.

After being away for some time, she discovered that the larger monster had somehow reverted to her original human appearance from Scars.

When Everly arrived, the woman was seated before the collapsed building in exactly the same posture and with exactly the same expression as in the painting, cradling her infant as she wept in utter stillness.

At first glance, she looked less like a living person than an astonishingly lifelike wax figure, radiating a strange, almost sacred beauty.

Wait… the larger monster can turn back into a human?

The unsettling development was so unnervingly sinister that Everly felt her scalp tingle.

Having learned her lesson from their previous encounter, she didn’t rush in recklessly. Instead, she found a spot with a clear line of sight, arranged the items she needed one by one, then dropped to the ground, put on her protective gear, pulled her old friend—the Barrett—out of the weapons crate, aimed at the woman’s head, and gently pulled the trigger.

“Bang!”

After a deafening gunshot, the woman’s head exploded like a watermelon, blown to smithereens. Blood, brain matter, flesh, and bone flew everywhere, staining the ground around her a mix of red and white.

“Bang!”

With the second shot, Everly hit the swaddled bundle in the woman’s arms.

The fragile bundle, along with the infant inside, was split clean in half by the immense force, sending blood and a translucent, gelatinous fluid flying in all directions.

Bang!

For the third shot, Everly kept up the assault, aiming at the larger monster’s knees.

The fourth struck its abdomen.

Then came the fifth.

The sixth…

Everly knew there was no way the monsters would die that easily.

She refused to let her guard down. Round after round, she fired into the vital areas and major joints of both creatures, continuing until every last bullet she had was gone. Only when the two monsters had been reduced to limp, mangled heaps of flesh did she pick up the homemade incendiary bombs she had prepared in advance, rush forward, and hurl the gasoline-filled glass bottles at them one after another.

She had thrown only a few bottles when the larger monster’s body began to regenerate.

Countless tiny buds of flesh sprouted from the woman’s wounds. Some rapidly swelled into the same fleshy tentacles Everly had seen before, spreading out around the woman as a protective barrier. Others fused together, growing into muscle, bone, and skin as they reconstructed her ruined body.

If she kept throwing the bottles now, the tentacles would easily swat them out of the air.

Using tricky angles, Everly managed to land several more throws. Only after she’d exhausted every bottle did she sprint back to her Barrett, level the rifle at the two monsters, and fire the single precious armor-piercing incendiary round she had been saving.

BOOM!

The explosion thundered across the street.

A shower of sparks erupted, and in an instant, the two monsters before the ruins were blasted into countless fragments.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.287 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Everly’s suspicion was quickly confirmed.

She hadn’t walked very far along the debris-strewn road before a collapsed building came into view.

A young woman knelt before the ruins, cradling a blood-soaked swaddled infant in her arms. Her head was bowed as she wept in grief.

In a deserted city, suddenly spotting another person was terrifying.

Everly froze mid-step. She immediately slipped behind a nearby car, using its frame as cover while cautiously observing the crying mother holding the baby.

The woman looked exactly like the central figure from Shelly’s painting Scar.

It wasn’t just her face. Her expression, clothing, the swaddled infant in her arms, and even the ruined building behind her all matched the painting perfectly. From the right angle, the entire scene overlapped almost exactly with Shelly’s artwork.

If that was the case, then there was a ninety-percent chance she had fallen into one of Shelly’s paintings.

The next question was: How was she supposed to get out?

Everly had never seriously considered such a scenario before, but she had seen plenty of anime and films with similar premises.

Generally speaking, if someone was accidentally trapped inside another dimension, there were two ways to escape. One was to break the dimensional barrier—in Everly’s case, that would mean destroying Shelly’s painting. The other was to locate the doorway connecting the alternate world to reality and leave through it. In some cases, finding the key to open that door was also necessary.

Even destroying the painting could be divided into two possibilities. One was for the trapped person to destroy it from the inside. The other was for someone in the outside world to destroy it from the outside.

However, the second method required extreme caution. In some horror stories, tearing apart a painting that had trapped a living person could also “tear apart” the person inside along with the painting. Unless there was absolutely no other choice, it was best to avoid resorting to that approach.

The tentacle crisis had erupted far too suddenly, leaving Everly with no opportunity to contact the outside world. For the moment, she had no one to rely on but herself.

She remained crouched behind the car, observing for a while.

Throughout that time, the mother never moved from her original position. She didn’t shift an inch—not even her eyes blinked.

She wasn’t making a sound as she cried, either.

The behavior was so unnatural that Everly began to wonder whether it was really a person at all, or merely an incredibly lifelike statue.

Waiting around indefinitely wasn’t a realistic option. If this painted world was anything like the cabin in the woods she’d encountered before—where the longer one stayed, the more their strength was drained—then every moment of delay only put her in greater danger.

After watching for a while, Everly cautiously called out toward the woman.

“Hello—!”

It was only a soft call, but in the deathly silence around her, it sounded startlingly loud. The drawn-out echo bounced off the surrounding buildings, and when it returned to her ears, it somehow sounded unfamiliar—as if someone else nearby were imitating her voice.

There was no response.

The woman remained exactly as she had been, utterly motionless.

After trying once more and still receiving no reply, Everly decided to act.

She pried half of a broken engine hood off a nearby wrecked car, held it in front of her chest like a shield, and slowly advanced toward the woman while keeping a wary eye on her surroundings.

The closer she got, the stronger the woman’s eerie, inhuman quality became.

She possessed an appearance almost indistinguishable from that of a real human. The texture of her skin was clearly defined, the anguish on her face was vivid and lifelike, and even the pink conjunctiva at the corners of her eyes could be seen in fine detail.

Yet a closer inspection revealed something deeply unsettling.

The woman never blinked.

Nor did her chest ever rise or fall with breathing.

No living person could remain in such a state forever.

The moment she realized that, the woman’s almost perfectly human appearance stopped feeling reassuring and instead plunged straight into the uncanny valley. As Everly drew closer, the angle shifted until the woman’s hollow, glassy eyes were fixed directly on her. Her pitch-black pupils resembled warped mirrors, reflecting Everly’s figure in grotesquely distorted shapes.

A cold breeze swept past, and the hairs on the back of Everly’s neck stood on end.

The city was chilly, with the temperature feeling somewhere around 15°C (59°F). Everly was wearing nothing more than a women’s business suit, and after staying outside for a while, she could already feel the cold.

What was strange was that the crying woman was dressed in a floral spaghetti-strap summer dress.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

Stopping a short distance away, Everly made one last attempt to speak to the woman.

The result was the same as before.

The woman didn’t move at all.

Giving up on courtesy, Everly held her makeshift shield—a broken car hood—in one hand and gripped a steel pipe she’d picked up in the other. Every muscle in her body tensed, prepared to turn and run the instant anything looked wrong.

She edged forward little by little.

Once she was close enough, she stretched out her arm and gently poked the woman’s shoulder with the steel pipe.

To her surprise, it didn’t feel hard.

Instead, it was soft, with a solid framework beneath the surface—remarkably similar to a human body.

So… what exactly was this thing?

Everly was just about to move the pipe and poke somewhere else when she noticed something moving beneath the spot she’d touched.

She focused her gaze.

It was like the scene that had played out earlier in the gallery’s side room all over again.

The woman’s smooth skin suddenly bulged outward into irregular lumps, as though a writhing mass of insects were crawling beneath it.

…Seriously?

The instant Everly saw that, she decisively began backing away.

Horror Movie Survival Rule #28: Never turn your back on the enemy.

Worried that the monster might attack from behind, Everly was careful not to take her eyes off the woman, even as she retreated.

Because of that, she witnessed the bulge on the woman’s shoulder swell from the size of a ping-pong ball to that of a human head.

The skin over the shoulder stretched to its limit, becoming a translucent, flesh-pink membrane. Through the thin layer of skin, she could see the sphere filled with a semi-transparent, viscous fluid. Countless long, slender shapes writhed inside it, twisting and distorting the swollen sac into grotesque, ever-changing forms.

Rip!

With a sickening tearing sound, the swollen sac on the woman’s shoulder suddenly burst open.

Sticky fluid splashed everywhere as seven or eight bright crimson tentacles shot out from inside. As if they had eyes of their own, they lunged straight toward Everly.

The tentacles were unbelievably fast—more like bullets than living creatures. As they hurtled toward her, Everly could even hear their shrill whistling through the air.

Unfortunately, the area around the woman was a wide-open space with no cover to hide behind.

Left with no other choice, Everly planted her makeshift shield on the ground, crouched behind it, and braced the car hood with both hands and her shoulder.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The next instant, an immense force slammed into it.

The engine hood shuddered violently under the barrage, each impact producing a heavy metallic crash. Even with her hands behind the shield, the vibrations sent sharp pain shooting through her arms.

Fortunately, the hood was sturdily built. The volley of tentacles failed to punch through it, leaving only several deep dents in its once-smooth surface.

Having survived the first attack, and before the tentacles could gather enough momentum for a second, Everly wasted no time. She grabbed the steel pipe and bolted.

She had barely run a short distance when an eerie pat… pat… sound came from beside her feet.

She looked down.

The sight was so revolting that she nearly jumped straight into the air.

Chasing after her at ankle level was a monster wrapped in a swaddling cloth.

The creature was only about the size of a Pomeranian.

Its head was elongated into an oval shape like that of a squid. Its eyes were enormous—two jet-black orbs like oversized light bulbs set on either side of its head. By contrast, its nostrils and mouth were absurdly tiny, squeezed into the narrow gap—barely two finger-widths wide—between the eyes, making it resemble the stereotypical extraterrestrials seen in science fiction.

Below the alien-like head was a flat, oval body supported by countless short, slender legs.

Everly honestly didn’t know how to describe it.

Looking only at its torso, it somewhat resembled a giant isopod—except its head and body seemed to be oriented in completely different directions.

Although its face pointed upward as if it were lying on its back, the upper side of its torso was covered by a smooth, hard, dark brown carapace. Its vulnerable underside was hidden beneath it, from which countless soft, flexible appendages extended. They clustered together in a nauseating mass, making it impossible for Everly to determine what kind of creature she was looking at.

The thin legs glistened with sticky slime. As they scraped against the ground, they dragged long strands of transparent mucus behind them. Yet despite their appearance, they moved astonishingly fast.

The creature reminded Everly of a centipede. Dozens of tiny legs flailed in a chaotic chorus of pat-pat-pat, and she couldn’t begin to understand how they worked, yet somehow they carried it even faster than she could run.

Judging from the bloodstains on the swaddling cloth, it was very likely the baby that the woman had been holding.

Just what on earth had Shelly been painting? Couldn’t he produce something even slightly less horrifying?

Its appearance alone was grotesque enough to give anyone nightmares.

What was even more shocking was that the monster had a second form.

The moment it caught up to Everly, it suddenly arched its rear upward like a praying mantis preparing to strike.

Everly had plenty of combat experience. The instant she saw its posture, she knew an attack was coming.

She reacted instantly, darting sideways to evade.

The next second, with a sharp whoosh, two bright crimson appendages shot out from an organ on the little monster’s rear that appeared to be its anus.

They looked somewhat like the coiling tongue of a frog, yet also resembled the specialized feeding tentacles of a squid. Each fleshy red appendage ended in a suction-cup-like structure. When they lashed out like whips and struck the car beside Everly, a dull thump rang out.

The suction cups clung with tremendous force.

They actually pulled the entire car sideways.

Luckily, Everly had reacted in time.

If those things had struck her instead, she didn’t even want to imagine the consequences.

Her thoughts raced, but her hands never paused.

Taking advantage of the little monster’s missed attack—its suction-cup tentacles still stuck to the car and unable to retract—she gripped one end of the steel pipe with both hands, aimed at the grotesque creature below, and drove the sharpened tip downward with all her strength.

Thud!

The steel pipe pierced straight through its head and wedged itself into the crack between the paving stones beneath, pinning the monster firmly to the ground like a giant nail.

Concerned that the creature’s shell might be too hard to penetrate, Everly had deliberately aimed for its head.

For almost every animal, the head was a vital point. Destroy it, and the animal died.

Clearly, that rule did not apply to supernatural creatures.

Despite having its skull impaled, the little monster remained as lively as ever. It yanked its feeding tentacles free from the car, whipping them wildly through the air in a threatening display. Then it opened its tiny mouth—packed with razor-sharp teeth—and let out a piercing, ear-splitting cry.

“Waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”

Yes.

Even though its body had mutated beyond any resemblance to a human infant, its voice was that of a perfectly ordinary crying baby.

The jarring contrast instantly sent goosebumps racing across Everly’s skin.

Her hand tightened around the steel pipe. She was just about to follow Horror Movie Survival Rule #15—always finish off a downed monster—when she heard the unmistakable whistle of something slicing through the air behind her.

In that critical instant, she threw herself forward into a diving roll, narrowly avoiding the ambush.

When she scrambled back to her feet and looked behind her…

Well then.

Apparently, the baby’s mother had heard its “complaint” and had come to avenge her child.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.286 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Shelly’s final painting was titled Self-Portrait.

Judging from the title, Everly had assumed it would simply be a portrait of Shelly himself.

It was nothing of the sort.

There wasn’t a person in the painting at all.

Instead, it depicted an old door.

Its material was impossible to identify. The grayish-white door was covered with countless tiny black specks.

Carved crudely into the center of the door were numerous twisted, bizarre runes. Everly recognized almost none of them.

Except for the largest symbol at the very center.

It was so familiar that, even now, it still appeared in her nightmares from time to time—

Two concentric circles, one large and one small. Inside the inner circle was an equilateral triangle. From each side of the triangle extended several winding, tentacle-like appendages. At the exact center of the triangle was another small circle resembling an eye.

It was the cult emblem she had seen aboard the Golden Anchor.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

A shrill bark erupted from beside her feet.

At the same instant, the danger warning bestowed upon her by her Lamia Mother was triggered, sending a sheet of cold sweat racing down Everly’s back.

This is bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad!

The warning had come far too late.

It hadn’t reacted until the moment she laid eyes on Self-Portrait.

She shot to her feet in a single motion.

What exactly does this painting mean? Why would Shelly paint this symbol? And what connection did he have to the Dagon Order’s Secret Decree?

Question after question flooded her mind—

Only for Everly to forcefully shove every one of them aside.

The truth behind all of this was secondary.

She could figure it out after escaping. And if she couldn’t, she could always dump the questions on the SAI. As long as it didn’t interfere with her inheritance, she wasn’t about to worry about the rest.

The priority right now was getting out of the viewing room.

Years of surviving horror scenarios had taught Everly one thing: if she stayed here any longer, something terrible was almost certainly going to happen.

Yet the moment the thought of fleeing crossed her mind, the painting on the wall underwent a horrifying change.

It moved.

Right before the eyes of every spectator, the tightly shut door in the painting slowly creaked open by a narrow crack.

An eerie crimson light seeped silently through the gap.

Emerging with the red glow were countless writhing black tentacles.

Each one was as thick as an adult’s thigh, their slick surfaces covered in wart-like protrusions. Their massive, slimy bodies forced the door wider, squeezing through the opening as they jostled one another, each struggling to emerge first.

They extended through the crack in the painted door—

And then beyond the picture frame itself.

“My God… what is that?!”

Someone in the waiting area gasped under their breath.

No one answered.

Everyone had been stunned speechless by the impossible sight unfolding before them.

The painting was… growing.

Soft, fleshy pink tissue was rapidly spreading outward from the edges of the canvas. It expanded with astonishing speed, like dye blooming through water, or mold racing across a damp wall. In the blink of an eye, it had engulfed the wooden frame and spread across a large section of the exhibition wall.

A closer look revealed that it resembled living human flesh.

It had fine skin textures, pores, bulging veins, and thick, twisted tendons beneath the surface.

Its blood vessels pulsed rhythmically.

The entire mass even expanded and contracted slowly, as though it were breathing.

Meanwhile, under the relentless pressure of the tentacles forcing their way through, the narrow crack in the door was being pried wider and wider.

An even more intense crimson radiance poured through the widening gap between the tentacles and the door, flooding the entire viewing room.

The light evoked images of rivers of blood flowing through the depths of hell, molten magma boiling beneath the earth’s crust, and the long, cataclysmic supernova of a dying red giant.

It was terrifying.

Dangerous.

Mysterious.

It inspired instinctive fear, yet at the same time possessed a strange allure, compelling anyone who looked upon it to keep staring… and staring…

The more they watched, the deeper they sank into its spell.

The deeper they sank, the more they watched.

Bizarre whispers and fragmented murmurs filled their minds, yet no one realized the danger approaching. Instead, they remained utterly entranced.

Charlie, the lawyer standing closest to Self-Portrait, was the first to be caught in its influence.

Like everyone else, his mind had been completely captivated by the crimson glow. He stood motionless.

The instant the red light bathed his body, the renowned attorney reacted as though he had been thrown into a blazing furnace.

His mouth flew open, releasing a bloodcurdling scream.

As he screamed, his body began to warp grotesquely.

His bones softened.

His spine collapsed inward.

His head sagged limply onto his shoulders like a deflated balloon.

Beneath his skin, countless long, slender shapes writhed frantically, burrowing through his flesh and pushing outward, raising dozens of tent-like bulges across his body.

Riiip!

When the swollen protrusions reached their limit, his skin split open with a sickening series of tears.

From the bloody openings, slick tentacles burst outward.

In the span of only a few seconds, a living human being had transformed into a hideous mass of writhing tentacles crawling across the floor.

“AAAAAAAHHHH!”

“No! No!”

“Run!”

The horrifying sight of the lawyer’s transformation briefly shocked the crowd out of their trance.

The small viewing room instantly erupted into screams.

People shoved and trampled one another in blind panic, desperately trying to escape.

But they had realized the danger too late.

Creeeak—!

The sound of the door swinging open echoed through the room.

In the next instant, crimson light erupted outward, flooding the entire viewing chamber in an ocean of scarlet.

Beneath that blood-red radiance, everyone’s bodies began to change.

People screamed as their flesh collapsed like wax melting beneath an open flame.

Their skin became nothing more than stretchy, empty sacs, while their flesh and bones dissolved into foul-smelling, viscous slurry.

Grotesque tentacles writhed wildly inside those human skins, bulging them outward into horrifying lumps. Within moments, the fragile skin could no longer contain the monsters growing within.

It split apart.

Amid flying blood and shredded flesh, countless tentacles burst free like grotesque fireworks, unfurling themselves in every direction.

The entire viewing room became a sea of flesh and tentacled monstrosities.

By then, Everly had already escaped from the small viewing room and sprinted into the adjoining corridor where the earlier paintings were displayed.

The crimson light couldn’t turn corners, so in theory, this hallway should have been relatively safe.

Yet she had barely entered it when a sharp tearing sound sliced through the air behind her.

She glanced back.

More than a dozen enormous black tentacles were surging after her like giant serpents.

They moved with terrifying speed.

In the blink of an eye, the writhing mass had already reached her.

Everly threw out one protective item after another.

Each defensive tool she possessed was shattered before the tentacles as easily as an eggshell crushed beneath a boot.

Should I use the Weather Balloon… even if it means taking everything down with me?

She hesitated for only an instant.

By then, thick tentacles had already wrapped tightly around her arms, legs, and waist.

The slime coating their surfaces seemed to possess a numbing effect.

Everly felt the icy mucus soaking through her clothes and touching her skin.

The strength drained from her body almost instantly.

She lost all sensation in her limbs, becoming as limp as a dead fish.

Helpless, she could only lie slack within the coils of the tentacles as they lifted her effortlessly and carried her back toward the viewing room engulfed in crimson light.

The viewing room had become a vision of hell.

The masses of flesh and tentacles that the audience had transformed into writhed like enormous lumps of living putty. At some point, they had fused together into a single gigantic mass of flesh.

Countless tentacles lashed and writhed wildly within the crimson light, as though celebrating at some grotesque carnival.

Amid that sea of blood-red flesh, one patch of bright color stood out conspicuously.

It was a little boy with terror written all over his face.

He had the same golden hair as Everly and a pair of clear, ocean-blue eyes.

It was her half-brother, Thomas.

While everyone else had grotesquely mutated beneath the crimson light, only he and Everly had remained completely human, untouched by the transformation.

Like Everly, the boy had also been captured by the tentacles.

These were not the fleshy tentacles born from the audience’s mutations.

They were the black tentacles extending directly from Self-Portrait on the wall.

Having seized both Everly and Thomas, they dragged the two utterly helpless humans straight toward the source of the crimson light—

The painted door hanging on the wall.

Bzzz…

The instant they were pulled through the doorway, it felt as though they had passed through an invisible membrane.

Every sound from the outside world vanished.

In its place came a piercing drone accompanied by endless streams of meaningless whispers flooding Everly’s ears.

It was as if someone had overturned a painter’s box.

Thick layers of color poured across her vision like liquid paint, completely obscuring everything before her.

Red.

Black.

Green.

Blue.

Purple.

Yellow…

The stench of rotting flesh mingled with the overpowering odor of turpentine, wrapping itself tightly around her.

A violent wave of nausea surged through her stomach.

Everly screamed in agony as she continued to fall—

Down…

Down…

Down into the endless abyss of swirling colors.

…

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself standing on a desolate, ruined street.

This appeared to be part of a once-thriving metropolis.

Looking around, Everly saw nothing but modern skyscrapers stretching in every direction. Through the gaps between the buildings, she could even make out the LED billboard on a distant high-rise, which was playing a familiar advertisement for a brand of liquid foundation.

…Where is this?

Wasn’t I just pulled through the doorway by those tentacles during the exhibition? Why have I suddenly ended up here?

Frowning, Everly quickly found a corner bordered by walls on three sides and ducked into cover to inspect herself from head to toe.

When the tentacles had seized her, she’d been certain they were about to kill her.

Instead, they had dragged her through the door and deposited her in this bizarre place.

She wasn’t injured in the slightest.

The Eye of Horus amulet, the Weather Balloon, the Sacred Tree Bracelet, and all of her other protective items were still with her.

Her phone was still in her pocket as well.

Unfortunately, it had no signal whatsoever.

She couldn’t make an emergency call, leaving it nothing more than a useless slab of glass and metal.

All things considered…

This was a scenario Everly knew all too well.

A classic “isolated island” opening.

She pushed the other questions to the back of her mind.

The first priority was figuring out exactly where she’d been sent.

Everly adjusted the positions of the protective items she still carried, making sure she could draw them instantly if danger appeared.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped out from behind cover and cautiously entered the street.

It was eerily quiet.

Not a single person was in sight.

Some terrible disaster seemed to have struck this place.

Cars were scattered haphazardly across the road, many overturned or smashed together. Every few steps, she came across blood splattered across the pavement and walls, along with severed human limbs and mangled chunks of flesh.

Mixed among the bloodstains were occasional patches of transparent, gelatinous material.

The moment Everly saw those translucent masses, she was instantly reminded of Shelly’s painting—

Scars.

Horror Movie Survival Rule #1: Pay attention to the hints.

The more Everly looked, the more convinced she became.

Whether it was the architecture lining the streets or the traces left behind on the ground, everything closely resembled the scene depicted in Scars.

And the last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was being dragged into Shelly’s Self-Portrait by those tentacles.

Could it be…

Had she somehow fallen into the world inside Shelly’s paintings?

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.285 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

The posthumous exhibition would run for a total of half a month.

Since all of the guests invited on the first day were prominent figures, the exhibition would not be open to the public in order to avoid causing a commotion. Only invited guests were allowed to attend on opening day, while the general public would be admitted starting on the second day.

Even so, the area around the gallery was packed with cars on the first day of the exhibition. Crowds of curious onlookers had gathered, along with reporters carrying cameras and long telephoto lenses.

When Everly arrived at the entrance, a swarm of unscrupulous reporters had surrounded a mother and son dressed in black, noisily bombarding them with pointed, provocative questions.

Everly recognized the exhausted-looking woman at a glance—she was Sophia, Shelly’s second wife. That meant the blond, blue-eyed little boy beside her was, in all likelihood, Everly’s half-brother, Thomas.

Out of curiosity, she took a second look.

Sure enough, Thomas’s facial features bore quite a resemblance to Shelly’s. As long as he didn’t grow up awkwardly, he would probably become quite a handsome young man.

Looking at it that way, fate hadn’t treated Shelly too poorly after all.

Sophia and Thomas had often accompanied Shelly to public events, making them highly recognizable. By comparison, Everly—the daughter from his first marriage—was practically a mystery to the public.

As a result, when Everly took the invitation letter her lawyer had given her and walked confidently toward the gallery entrance in full view of the crowd, the reporters merely glanced at her in puzzlement. Unable to recognize her face, they quickly lost interest and returned to pestering Sophia and Thomas.

Everly entered the gallery without any trouble.

Her lawyer, Charlie, and his assistant were already waiting in the entrance hall. The moment he saw Everly, he stepped forward to greet her warmly and introduced his assistant.

“Mr. Shelly’s will stipulates that the heir must view every single work in this exhibition. During your visit, my assistant will record the entire process on video and keep it on file. I hope you won’t mind.”

Everly nodded in understanding.

Compared to the tens of millions she was about to inherit, being recorded on video was hardly a big deal.

The lawyer still needed to wait at the entrance for Sophia and Thomas. After a brief exchange, he stepped aside and gestured politely toward the gallery.

“Please.”

Everly nodded in return and, accompanied by the assistant, passed through the entrance foyer, officially beginning her tour of the exhibition.

The collection consisted entirely of paintings Shelly had produced during his period of seclusion.

These works marked a dramatic departure from his previous style. No longer confined to traditional Western myths and legends, he had ventured into subjects he had never explored before.

The very first painting, Scars, was set in what appeared to be a modern city.

Something catastrophic had happened there. Traffic had ground to a halt, the city lay in ruins, buildings were battered and crumbling, and blood was splattered across the streets and walls alongside patches of translucent, gelatinous-looking matter.

At the center of the painting, a mother knelt alone in the deserted street, clutching a swaddled infant in her arms as she wept in silent anguish. Although the artist had deliberately chosen a low-angle perspective, avoiding a close-up of the baby, the sheer agony on the woman’s face and the bloodstains covering the blanket made it painfully obvious that something terrible had happened to her child.

The painting possessed extraordinary emotional power.

After standing before it for only a short while, Everly felt a tightness in her chest. Despair and suffocating oppression washed over her from the canvas.

She took a deep breath and moved on to the second painting, Encounter.

This one was an entirely different style.

Judging from its title, one might easily assume that Encounter told a romantic story of a man and woman meeting for the first time.

In reality, however, its protagonist was a sailing ship caught in a violent storm.

The sky was shrouded in dark clouds, streaked with lightning and filled with thunder. Amid the raging tempest, a frail wooden vessel pitched helplessly on the towering waves, listing precariously as though the next swell would overturn it.

More terrifying still, the storm was not the ship’s greatest danger.

A closer look revealed that enormous tentacles were coiled tightly around the vessel’s hull.

These tentacles emerged from the deep sea, painted in eerie shades of dark green. Their surfaces were covered with wart-like protrusions and countless suckers, giving them a grotesque, terrifying appearance.

The ship’s lanterns were still lit, yet not a single living soul could be seen aboard. The artist had smeared chaotic streaks of crimson across the deck and the cabin walls, the ominous splashes of red subtly hinting at the crew’s fate.

The painting itself was executed with bold, unrestrained brushstrokes and dominated by cool colors. Compositionally, the sailing ship had been deliberately reduced to a tiny presence within the frame, while the crashing waves and octopus-like tentacles were rendered on a massively exaggerated scale. The stark contrast instinctively impressed upon the viewer just how insignificant humanity was, reinforcing the painting’s pervasive atmosphere of dampness, coldness, and danger.

Its mood was so distinctive that, after staring at it for a while, Everly could almost detect the faint scent of the sea lingering in the air.

The painting was clearly one of the exhibition’s favorites, with a large crowd gathered before it. One man in a loud floral shirt was even crying openly.

The fellow—who looked every bit the artist—pressed both hands to his chest like a stage actor and proclaimed dramatically before the painting that it had struck him with overwhelming force, that his heart had been utterly pierced by this magnificent masterpiece.

Oddly enough, no one around him seemed to think he was exaggerating. Instead, they nodded in wholehearted agreement. Some even found themselves tearing up as they continued to gaze at the canvas, just like the flamboyantly dressed man.

“…”

Were artists always this eccentric?

Or was there actually something unusual about this painting?

Following Horror Movie Survival Rule #1—Pay attention to the hints—Everly cautiously gripped the Eye of Horus amulet beneath her clothing, the most reliable protective charm she owned, and studied the painting once more.

The amulet gave no reaction whatsoever, and she herself couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary about the artwork.

Was I just imagining it…?

Perhaps she simply lacked any artistic sensibility and couldn’t resonate with the painting the way everyone else seemed to.

After thinking it over, Everly concluded that the chances of stumbling into another horror scenario here were extremely low.

After all, strictly speaking, both she and Shelly were people who shouldn’t even exist.

Remember? When she was still an infant, she and her father had been caught up in the “Foul Stench” incident at the Mayflower Apartments. If Everly hadn’t used the cross her grandfather had given her to burn Shelly awake, prompting him to grab her and flee the building, both of them would have died there.

In other words, on the original timeline—the one in which Everly had never transmigrated—their predetermined fate had been to die as expendable cannon fodder in the Mayflower Apartments disaster.

Once the two of them were dead, no subsequent horror scenarios could possibly revolve around them anymore. By “couldn’t revolve around them,” she meant that no new horror story could feature either of them as a main or significant character. After all, dead people couldn’t exactly climb back out of their coffins.

Of course, that was different from someone like the perpetually unlucky Everly, who might simply be walking down the street one moment, accidentally stumble into a horror scenario the next, get swept into the ensuing chaos, and find herself forced to shoulder the burden of fighting against it.

Based on that reasoning, Everly believed the odds of encountering a horror scenario at this exhibition were fairly low.

After all, the organizer of this exhibition was Shelly—a man who, by all rights, should have died more than twenty years ago. On the original timeline, it should have been impossible for any new horror story to branch off from him.

Naturally, all of this was still just speculation. It had never been proven, and likely never could be. Even so, Everly remained cautious about everything that happened today.

After lingering in front of Encounter for a while, she moved on to the next painting.

The works that followed were equally devoid of anything remotely beautiful or comforting.

One depicted an abandoned fishing village beneath the cover of night. A crimson moon, like a bleeding eye, hung coldly in the sky, staring down at a beach covered in strange, unnatural patterns. In the moonlit sea floated more than a dozen bizarre creatures that were half human and half fish.

Their appearance immediately reminded Everly of the merfolk she had encountered during the Golden Anchor incident. However, in early Western mythology, merfolk had often been portrayed as ugly, horrifying, and grotesque beings rather than beautiful sirens. As a result, she couldn’t be certain whether the two were actually connected.

She saw a bloody and macabre witches’ gathering. More than a dozen scantily clad witches with twisted, grotesque faces danced wildly around a bonfire deep within a forest. Suspended above the flames was a large cauldron, and inside it, the dismembered remains of a human corpse stared blankly outward with wide-open eyes, its hollow gaze fixed on whoever stood before the painting.

She saw a vast, magnificent cosmos that was as awe-inspiring as it was terrifying. Upon the surface of an unknown planet covered in concentric ring-shaped craters, white, toad-like creatures lay prostrate in reverence, worshipping a colossal, egg-shaped being covered with countless breasts and fish-like fins…

Every painting bore a bizarre title that had seemingly nothing to do with its subject matter. And the farther she progressed through the exhibition, the stranger the works became. By the final few paintings, Shelly’s use of color had become so audacious that it seemed to transcend human comprehension. The lines he painted appeared almost alive, writhing wildly across the canvas in chaotic motion, making the viewer’s eyes ache just from looking at them.

Everly felt that Shelly’s artistic expression was a little too avant-garde. Despite being a university student, she stared at the paintings for ages without the slightest idea what he was depicting or what message he was trying to convey.

Surely he hadn’t just suffered a mental breakdown from too much stress and started splashing paint around at random…?

Feeling a little guilty for the thought, she glanced at the crowd gathered around the paintings.

Unlike Everly, the renowned critics and artists in attendance lavished the bizarre, almost incomprehensible works on the walls with the highest praise. A few particularly sensitive viewers became so overwhelmed that they had to brace themselves against the wall as they vomited. They cried uncontrollably while retching, making it impossible to tell whether they were moved to tears by the art itself or simply overcome with physical nausea.

Oh no…

Just seeing someone else’s vomit was starting to make Everly’s own stomach churn.

She took a deep breath and encouraged herself to hang in there a little longer.

There was only one painting left.

Once she finished viewing it, she would have fulfilled the final prerequisite for inheriting the estate—and from then on, she’d be on the fast track to a life of wealth.

Compared to that kind of money, a little physical discomfort and emotional trauma were completely worth it!

With that in mind, she made her way to the very back of the exhibition hall.

There, a small viewing room had been partitioned off by low walls. Mounted on the tall wall at its center hung a painting completely concealed behind a heavy blackout curtain.

This was Shelly’s final work before his suicide:

Self-Portrait.

According to reports, when everyone forced their way into his studio, Shelly had already drawn the curtain over the painting. His s**cide note had been found lying beside the frame.

In the note, he wrote that this was the finest work of his entire life, surpassing every painting he had ever created. He specifically requested that it be unveiled publicly at the exhibition, in front of all the invited guests.

As a result, no one yet knew what the painting actually looked like.

The small viewing room had been furnished with a waiting area containing several rows of chairs. Quite a few visitors who had already finished touring the exhibition were seated there, patiently waiting for the unveiling of the final masterpiece.

The paintings in the previous galleries had raised everyone’s expectations for Self-Portrait to extraordinary heights.

Had Shelly made such a claim in the past—that he had created a work surpassing The Sea Demon Under the Moon—the critics would probably have greeted it with skepticism. But after seeing the astonishing and revolutionary new works he had produced during his final period of seclusion, they now believed his words might well be true.

In the final moments of his life, that man had achieved the one breakthrough that had eluded him his entire career.

And they, the recipients of his invitations, had the privilege of witnessing that historic moment.

Because of this, everyone eagerly anticipated the unveiling of the last painting. Even though they had to wait, no one complained; they waited with remarkable patience.

Everyone except Everly.

She genuinely didn’t think the earlier paintings were enjoyable at all. If anything, she found them revolting—like the kind of thing that left you mentally contaminated. The longer she looked at them, the more uncomfortable she felt physically as well.

…Then again, maybe she was simply exhausted from yesterday’s long journey.

Either way, she just wanted this exhibition to end as soon as possible so they could hurry up and move on to the inheritance proceedings.

Feeling less than enthusiastic, Everly walked into the waiting area and casually took an empty seat.

After another half hour of waiting, everyone in the exhibition had finally finished viewing the earlier paintings and gathered in the small viewing room. Among them were Everly’s bargain-bin stepmother and her half-brother.

“Now that everyone has arrived, I will proceed, in accordance with Mr. Shelly’s final wishes as stated in his will, to unveil this painting before you all.”

Lawyer Charlie took on the role of master of ceremonies.

Walking up to the tall wall, he raised a pair of scissors and carefully cut the cord securing the curtain. Then he grasped the edges of the heavy fabric and gently pulled them apart.

With a soft shhh as the silk curtain slid aside, a massive portrait was revealed before the assembled guests.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.284 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

Ten million dollars in inheritance!

Everly knew painters could make good money, but she’d never had any connection to the industry herself. She had no concept of how much the works of a top-tier artist could sell for.

Besides, whenever her deadbeat father “dropped some gold coins”—that is, reluctantly sent her money—it was usually only a few tens of thousands of dollars at a time, and he always acted as though parting with the cash was killing him. After enough of those experiences, Everly had naturally concluded that the man wasn’t particularly successful and simply couldn’t hold on to his money.

But the truth was…

The one without money had been her all along.

The gullible one had been her, too.

While she and her grandfather, Old John, had been scraping by at their rundown gas station, working themselves to the bone, her deadbeat father had been living in a sprawling mansion several hundred square meters in size, practically walking on gold-plated floors, leading the empty yet luxurious life of the rich.

That old bastard!

He was that wealthy, and he still pinched pennies whenever he sent her money?

How did he have the nerve?!

Tears of sorrow began to flow—straight out of the corner of her mouth.

Clenching her fist, Everly couldn’t help but slam it onto the table with a loud bang.

“I’ll attend the posthumous exhibition on time.”

“Very well.”

With Everly’s confirmation, the lawyer promptly arranged a time and place to meet her the following day.

After finally hanging up the lengthy call, Everly sat down at her computer desk and began furiously typing away at the keyboard.

Although she had agreed without hesitation, Everly actually had plenty of doubts about the whole affair. The only reason she had accepted so readily was because Shelly was offering far too much money to resist.

After all, sayings like “wealth cannot corrupt me” were fine to spout in theory. But in real life, who wouldn’t want to inherit ten million dollars, reach the pinnacle of success overnight, and spend the rest of their life doing absolutely nothing?

She had agreed to go, but before setting off, there were still many things she needed to figure out.

The first was her deadbeat father’s death.

The news reports she found online all stated that “police have ruled out homicide,” but were vague about the exact cause of death. The lawyer, on the other hand, had been much more specific—he had plainly said that Shelly had died by s**cide.

Everly found that difficult to believe.

She simply couldn’t picture her deadbeat father as someone who would take his own life.

Back when she was still an infant, Shelly had been nothing more than an impoverished, unknown painter. He had barely had a penny to his name and had survived on the insurance payout left behind by her late mother, Rachel. Those had been truly desperate days.

If he hadn’t given up on life then, why would he suddenly choose s**cide now, after finally achieving both a successful career and a happy family?

She browsed several well-known art communities and traditional painting forums online, searching for discussions about Shelly. Buried among the conversations of art enthusiasts, she found a few clues.

In the end, it all came back to the same old issue.

It had been mentioned before that the art world generally regarded The Sea Demon Under the Moon as the pinnacle of Shelly’s artistic achievement.

Even now, Shelly had continued producing new paintings, and his reputation in the art world had only grown larger. Yet no matter how many new works he created, none of them ever managed to surpass The Sea Demon Under the Moon.

As a result, more and more people had begun to argue that Shelly’s masterpiece had simply been a flash of inspiration from an otherwise mediocre painter—a lucky accident. In their view, all the paintings he produced afterward represented his true level of ability.

Through that one stroke of luck, Shelly had seized wealth, fame, attention, and prestige that had never truly belonged to him. He was a despicable fraud—a thief who had stolen a reputation far beyond his actual ability, all style and no substance.

For a painter who had devoted his entire life to art, there could hardly be a crueler judgment.

[I was lucky enough to attend one of Shelly’s exhibitions a few years ago. A reporter actually shoved a microphone in his face and asked whether The Sea Demon Under the Moon had really been painted by him, implying he’d hired a ghost painter. Shelly’s face twisted with rage.]

[Haha, and you’re actually feeling sorry for him? He rode a lucky break and his good looks to fame, enjoying rewards that far exceeded his talent. Isn’t it only natural that he’s suffering the backlash now?]

[Give the jealousy a rest. You say Shelly painted The Sea Demon Under the Moon by luck? Then why hasn’t anyone else gotten ‘lucky’ and painted another masterpiece like it? Or do they just not feel like it?]

[Honestly, I think Shelly had already been showing signs of depression back then. Artists tend to be emotionally sensitive. Even if they act like they don’t care, they’re often trapped by their own thoughts inside… If I remember correctly, he hasn’t appeared in public for nearly six months. His assistant said he’s been shut away in his studio. I suspect his depression got worse.]

[…]

[Breaking news from a reliable source: Shelly’s death was neither an accident nor a homicide. He wrote his will in his studio before taking his own life! That makes the depression theory seem very likely. Poor Shelly. I hope he’s finally free from the world’s harsh judgments and has found peace. R.I.P.]

…

Everly continued browsing several more discussion threads.

She found that public opinion was remarkably consistent.

The overwhelming majority believed that Shelly had been unable to create another painting that surpassed The Sea Demon Under the Moon. Crushed by years of criticism and mounting pressure, he had eventually developed a mental illness and died by s**cide.

Everly couldn’t help recalling the chance encounter she’d had with Shelly at the Gilosha Art Exhibition six months earlier.

Back then, reporters had hounded him like a pack of hyenas, relentlessly asking whether he’d already exhausted his talent and had nothing left to offer. They had nearly driven Shelly into an explosion of rage.

If someone had to live in that kind of environment day after day—constantly belittled and criticized—it would be a miracle if they didn’t develop psychological problems.

Seen from that perspective, Shelly’s death almost made sense.

Having more or less convinced herself, Everly set the matter aside and turned her attention to gathering other information she cared about.

Her search included, but was not limited to:

Charlie the lawyer’s background.

The current situation in New Alder City.

The history of Clester Gallery.

The list of guests attending the posthumous exhibition.

Transportation to the exhibition.

Any cities she might have to pass through along the way.

By the time she’d finished investigating everything, it was nearly dawn.

After weighing all the information, Everly rated the trip’s risk level as “low.”

Charlie was a well-known estate attorney with an excellent professional reputation. He had handled inheritance cases for numerous wealthy clients and had no notable scandals attached to his name.

The exhibition mentioned in the will would be held in New Alder City. Although it wasn’t the state capital, it was the largest and most prosperous cultural and tourist city in Ascamona State. There were direct flights from Concord, the capital of New Osebuch State, to New Alder City, and after landing, she could simply take a taxi straight to the gallery.

New Alder City itself had been quiet lately. There were no reports of anything resembling the kind of large-scale disasters she’d experienced before. Clester Gallery, where the exhibition would be held, appeared to be an ordinary gallery located in a busy downtown district. It wasn’t in some remote location, nor did it have any troubling rumors surrounding it.

As for the guests, just as the lawyer had said, they were all prominent figures in the art world. A few had less-than-stellar reputations, but none seemed like the sort who would suddenly lose their minds and start attacking people at an art exhibition.

All in all, aside from the rather unusual condition attached to claiming the inheritance, Everly couldn’t find anything suspicious.

So, as agreed, she met with Lawyer Charlie the day after receiving his phone call.

The lawyer filled Everly in on a few more details about Shelly.

Just as she’d read on the forums, Shelly had long been plagued by public criticism because he was unable to surpass his own masterpiece. The pressure had become so intense that he had been seeing a psychologist on a regular basis.

At the end of August last year, after returning from a trip to gather artistic inspiration, Shelly secluded himself.

He shut himself away in his studio on the outskirts of New Alder City, spending every day painting in isolation and refusing to see anyone.

If a servant hadn’t noticed that the previous day’s meal had gone untouched and informed Sophia out of concern, no one outside might have realized he had already died.

Before marrying Sophia, Shelly had signed a prenuptial agreement.

The agreement stipulated that if either spouse died, the surviving spouse would have no claim to the deceased’s personal assets.

As a result, Shelly’s will bypassed Sophia entirely and divided his estate solely between his two biological children.

Everly had no idea which of them had proposed the agreement or why the other had agreed to sign it. All she knew was that, after hearing about it, she couldn’t help thinking that wealthy people’s relationships were remarkably pragmatic. Even between husband and wife, finances were kept strictly separate.

After meeting with the lawyer, Everly requested leave that very afternoon. She also gave Old John a call to let him know that his son-in-law, Shelly, had died and that she was about to leave to claim the old bastard’s inheritance.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Old John asked after a long silence.

“No need. Ascamona State is pretty far away. It’d be too exhausting for you to make the trip. Just stay home and wait for my good news. I’ll call you once I get there.”

“Then… are you… all right?”

“Huh? I’m fine…”

At first, Everly didn’t understand what her grandfather meant.

Then, after thinking about it for a moment—

Oh, right.

She had almost forgotten.

Her father had died.

Most people would probably feel grief or a sense of loss in a situation like this.

After all, what child from a single-parent family hasn’t, at some point while growing up, longed for a father? Who hasn’t imagined having the same complete, loving family that other children seemed to have?

Human emotions are complicated.

Even if that father never actually raised them, news of his death can still be painful. It marks the end of any lingering hope of ever having a complete family, or of experiencing the fatherly affection they had always quietly wished for.

If Everly had been an ordinary person with no memories of her previous life, she probably wouldn’t have been any different.

But she wasn’t.

She retained faint memories of her previous life. Although she could no longer remember her parents’ faces, she did remember that she had grown up in a home with both her mother and father.

She knew what fatherly love felt like.

And she also knew that, compared to the mother who carried and gave birth to a child, a father whose only contribution was a moment of conception wasn’t inherently worth much.

If you were fortunate enough to have a responsible father, then by actively participating in raising his child, genuine affection would naturally grow.

But if you ended up with a father who had no sense of responsibility…

Then having him or not having him made little difference.

That was why Everly had never placed much hope in Shelly, the man who had abandoned her.

When she first heard of his death, she had sighed for a moment.

But soon afterward, the sheer joy of unexpectedly inheriting ten million dollars had hit her like a freight train, knocking every trace of sadness clean out of her head.

“I’m really fine,” she said honestly. “Shelly may have been my father, but he barely raised me at all, so… I just can’t bring myself to feel sad.”

On the other end of the phone, Old John seemed to chuckle softly.

“As long as you’re okay… Then I won’t come over and get in your way. Just be careful while you’re traveling by yourself.”

“Mhm. I will.”

After quickly wrapping up everything at school, Everly boarded a plane the following afternoon. Accompanied by the lawyer, she flew directly to New Alder City and checked into a local hotel that evening without incident.

Shelly’s posthumous exhibition would be held the next day.

There wasn’t even time to mourn the passing of her deadbeat father. Exhausted from the long journey, Everly fell asleep almost as soon as she climbed into bed.

The next morning, she put on the black women’s business suit she had purchased specifically for the occasion and took a taxi to Clester Gallery.

<< TOC >>

The post Rules Ch.283 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.

As the second semester of their junior year began, Everly made a shocking discovery—Misha and Orff were dating!

Orff was two years ahead of Everly and Misha. When the two girls entered their junior year, Orff had just graduated with his bachelor’s degree.

However, he had excellent grades and was deeply interested in the development of artificial intelligence. So after graduating, he applied to remain at the university for postgraduate studies. As a result, the three of them were still attending the same school.

The campus was huge, and graduate students and undergraduates didn’t interact much in their daily lives. Aside from the group chat the three of them shared, they rarely met in person. The chat mostly consisted of sharing gossip, with Misha doing nearly all the talking while the other two simply watched the drama unfold and applauded from the sidelines.

In any case, Everly combed through the entire chat history and couldn’t find the slightest hint that anything had been going on.

“So… when exactly did this start?” she asked in disbelief after learning the news.

“Mmm-hmm~ Not that long ago,” Misha replied with a casual shrug. “We’re just trying things out for now. I wouldn’t really call it officially dating yet.”

Just trying things out was shocking enough!

After all, at university, a cheerful, outgoing, and beautiful girl like Misha—who had friends everywhere—was incredibly popular. As for Orff… well, it wasn’t very nice to say this about a friend, but objectively speaking, a gloomy, introverted bookworm with his personality wasn’t exactly the type to exude much romantic appeal among people their age.

Misha explained it like this:

“I used to think he was pretty boring. But during winter break, remember how he helped you get back at those people who pulled that prank? Around that time, I’d injured my leg and couldn’t really go anywhere, so I spent all day chatting with people on my phone. That’s when I realized Orff is actually much more interesting than I’d imagined. He knows all sorts of random things, and if you tease him just a little, he gets embarrassed. It’s actually kind of adorable.”

As she spoke, Misha sat cross-legged on her bed with one leg propped up, doing her rehabilitation stretches while sharing her thoughts with Everly.

After more than two months of recuperation, the bones in her leg had finally healed. Walking around was no longer a problem, though she still couldn’t do any strenuous exercise and needed to take her recovery slowly.

Yet somehow, someone who had only just recovered from such a serious injury had actually gone out on a date yesterday. Everly was utterly dumbfounded.

“And then? You thought he was pretty interesting, so you accepted his invitation?” she asked.

“Haha, wrong!” Misha raised both hands and made a big X in front of her chest. “He’s more timid than a mouse. He overthinks everything and kept worrying that if I rejected him, we wouldn’t even be able to stay friends. There’s no way he’d have the courage to ask me out. I was the one who invited him first.”

As she spoke, she seemed to recall something amusing. Narrowing her eyes, she wore the sly grin of a cat whose mischievous scheme had succeeded. Lowering her voice, she leaned toward Everly as if sharing a juicy secret.

“Hey, did you know? He told me afterward that he’d actually already made up his mind to ask me out on April Fool’s Day this year. He even wrote a thick proposal for it.”

“April Fool’s Day? Don’t tell me it was one of those hopelessly cliché ‘If my confession fails, I’ll just say it was a joke’ plans?”

“Exactly!”

“Wow… that’s so lame.”

“I know! That bookworm is unbelievably lame!” Misha mercilessly teased him before covering her mouth and letting out a series of giggles, clucking like a little hen. “But that’s not even the funniest part. Yesterday, after dinner, we were taking a walk when a car drove past. I instinctively grabbed his arm and pulled him back—just held his hand for a second, okay? We were wearing such thick clothes that our skin didn’t even touch. And yet Orff turned bright red all over. When he stole glances at me afterward, his eyes were all watery. He looked just like a puppy. It was so adorable.”

“…”

That was exactly the sort of thing Orff would do. From Misha’s brief description alone, Everly could vividly picture the entire scene.

Still, Misha actually liked shy, introverted guys?

That surprised Everly. After all, in mainstream American culture, outgoing, charismatic men with strong social skills generally tended to be considered much more attractive.

Misha, however, didn’t think Orff’s quiet nature was a drawback.

“My own social skills are more than enough,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a little reserved. Whenever I feel like chatting, I’ve got a dozen friends I can talk to. Besides, other than being introverted, he’s actually a really great person. He’s thoughtful, has a strong sense of justice, is sincere, and would never have any ulterior motives…”

As she spoke, Misha counted off his good qualities on her fingers one by one. When she reached the end of the list, she naturally arrived at her conclusion.

“So I figured I’d give dating him a try. If we really aren’t compatible, we can always break up.”

“Mmm, you’ve got a point. Setting everything else aside, Orff’s character is definitely something you can trust,” Everly agreed with a nod, unilaterally bringing the somewhat sickeningly sweet conversation to an end.

It was just dating, after all.

If they were happy together, they’d stay together. If they weren’t, they’d break up. Simple as that.

As long as Misha was happy, Everly would support her.

She really wasn’t lonely.

Not even a little.

…

All right, maybe just a tiny bit.

Because after the two of them started seeing each other, they turned out to be unexpectedly compatible.

Before, every Saturday and Sunday evening, Misha would come home from work and Everly could immediately enjoy a delicious pizza that was still warm from the oven. But now there was an extra person—Orff. By the time the two of them came back from their dates, the pizza had long since gone cold.

Damn it… so annoying!

Everly was absentmindedly chewing on a slice of stone-cold pizza and trying to adjust her mood when the phone in her pocket suddenly began to vibrate.

Bzzz… Bzzz…

She pulled out a tissue, hastily wiped her hands clean, and took out her phone. The caller ID showed an unfamiliar number.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Am I speaking with Everly Minas?” A calm, middle-aged man’s voice came from the other end.

“Yes. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Miss Everly Minas, hello. My name is Charlie Carl, and I am Mr. Shelly Minas’s attorney. I’m sorry to inform you that your father, Shelly, died by s**cide yesterday in his studio.”

Everly’s eyes flew wide open.

“What did you just say?!”

Shelly… had taken his own life?

A man like him—successful in his career, with a wife and children—had actually died by s**cide?

This can’t be one of those scam calls… can it?

The man claiming to be a lawyer gave Everly little time to process the news before continuing in a steady, professional tone.

“I understand that this must be extremely difficult for you to accept. Please accept my deepest condolences. The reason I’m calling is that Mr. Shelly left behind a last will and testament before his death. According to his will, his estate is to be inherited jointly by you and Mr. Thomas Minas…”

Thomas Minas was Shelly’s younger son—Everly’s half-brother.

When Everly was in middle school, Shelly—who had spent years hopping from one relationship to another—had finally settled down and remarried Sophia, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman. Not long after the wedding, Sophia became pregnant. After ten months of pregnancy, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom they named Thomas.

When the child had just been born, Shelly had even called Everly to ask if she wanted to meet her little brother. She had refused.

She had never cared much about blood ties, nor did she have any particular affection for little kids. Still, the excuse she’d come up with at the time had been convincing enough that she’d managed to squeeze thirty thousand dollars in spending money out of her deadbeat father, who had been overflowing with paternal affection back then.

Doing the math, Everly’s half-brother should now be a little over four years old.

But…

“Wait a minute. This is way too sudden. How am I supposed to believe you’re not just making all this up?”

After all, Shelly was a famous painter. Anyone willing to do a little digging could easily uncover his personal information. How was Everly supposed to know that the person on the other end hadn’t simply researched her background and invented a story to scam her?

The lawyer’s tone remained completely unruffled.

“As for that, the news should break very soon. You can verify it yourself by searching online shortly.”

!!!

There was no need to wait until “shortly.”

Everly immediately reached out to Misha.

Without a word, she commandeered Misha’s phone, opened the browser, typed in the search terms one-handed, and hit Search.

Five seconds later, the search results appeared.

Right at the top was a freshly published breaking news headline:

“Yesterday afternoon, renowned painter Shelly was found dead in his studio. Following an initial investigation of the scene, police have provisionally ruled out homicide.”

“…”

Staring at the glaring headline on the screen, Everly found herself overwhelmed by a tangle of emotions.

This time, the lawyer, Charlie, gave her a moment to process the news before continuing.

“Mr. Shelly stated in his will that after his death, his agent would organize a posthumous exhibition of his works at Clester Gallery in New Alder City. The exhibition will feature previously unpublished paintings, including the final piece Mr. Shelly completed before taking his own life.”

“Only after both you and Mr. Thomas have viewed the entire exhibition will you become eligible to inherit your shares of the estate. Should either of you refuse to attend, it will be considered a voluntary forfeiture of your inheritance rights.”

“Why does inheriting an estate have to be this complicated?”

The lawyer answered matter-of-factly.

“According to Mr. Shelly’s own explanation, he hoped that through these paintings, you and Mr. Thomas would gain a deeper understanding of his character and inner world, so that even after his death, you would remember him forever.”

“…”

Knowing Shelly’s narcissistic personality, Everly doubted that “understanding his character” was his real objective.

More likely, what he truly wanted was for Thomas and her to forever remember that every cent they spent had come from him—to remain eternally grateful for his generosity.

True to her naturally cautious nature, a dozen questions immediately sprang to mind after a brief moment’s thought.

“When exactly is this exhibition? Where is it being held? Besides Thomas and me, will anyone else be attending? And what exactly counts as viewing the entire exhibition? Is there some specific requirement—like having to stand in front of each painting for a certain amount of time, or something like that?”

“The exhibition will be held three days from now in New Alder City, Ascamona State. Besides yourself and Mr. Thomas, Mr. Shelly also invited over a hundred guests, including well-known figures from the art world—critics, collectors, painters, gallery owners, members of the media, and art bloggers.”

“As for what constitutes viewing all the works, Mr. Shelly did not provide any further clarification in his will. Therefore, we will interpret it according to its plain meaning: both you and Mr. Thomas must have viewed every painting displayed at the exhibition in order to qualify for your inheritance.”

“I see. I understand the situation now. I’ll think it over on my end and get back to you later.”

With that, Everly was ready to hang up.

Of course, by “think it over,” she wasn’t debating whether or not to accept the inheritance.

She was evaluating the risks of making the trip.

Free money was free money—there was no reason to turn it down.

As her father, Shelly had barely paid Everly any attention over the years and had utterly failed in his responsibilities as a parent. Practically all of her living expenses had been covered by Old John. Even the occasional financial support from Shelly had only come after Everly repeatedly badgered him for it, and he had always handed over the money reluctantly, more out of concern for his own reputation than genuine fatherly affection. She had long harbored resentment over that.

A deadbeat father like that?

Wasn’t it only natural that, after his death, she should receive a share of his estate?

From what Everly knew, her scumbag father’s career had flourished over the years. She estimated that the old man had to be worth at least several million dollars. Even if she and Thomas split the inheritance and her own share ended up being smaller, she would still likely receive well over a million dollars. For that kind of money, making a special trip to Ascamona State was hardly an unreasonable price to pay.

Still, it was a long journey.

To be on the safe side, Everly decided she needed to investigate the situation thoroughly before giving the lawyer a definite answer.

The lawyer on the other end of the line suddenly added, almost as an afterthought,

“Miss Everly, Mr. Shelly’s total assets—including his real estate, securities, trust funds, bank deposits, artwork, and other holdings—are conservatively valued at over thirty million dollars.”

“How much?!”

Everly’s voice cracked in shock.

“If you successfully inherit Mr. Shelly’s estate,” the lawyer patiently repeated, “a conservative estimate is that you will receive at least ten million dollars’ worth of assets.”

“!!!”

There was nothing left to think about.

Forget investigating first—agree now, ask questions later!

<< TOC >>

**TN

Guess who’s back~ Back again~ ꒰ঌ(˶ˆᗜˆ˵)໒꒱

Nooooo, I was looking forward to Everly meeting Shelly again, now he’s suddenly dead. Darn it. (╥_╥)

The post Rules Ch.282 first appeared on A Wandering Potato.