The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

When morning came, the White Bell rang.

The purple glow of the mirage faded from the mansion, and at the same moment, a single sentence appeared before the participants’ eyes:

{The number of participants is now 8.}

Everyone froze inside their rooms as they read the message.

Then they rushed out of their rooms.

Doors opened, and they emerged into the corridors one after another.

Aldric reached the main hall first, followed by Kaiden, Garrick, and Sylvan. Talia, Bran, and Mirai soon joined them, with Ravian arriving last.

Eight.

They stared at one another for several seconds, as though each were mentally counting the people again, refusing to believe the notification.

Garrick spoke in an unsettled voice.

”That’s impossible... We stuck to the plan.”

No one answered him. None of them could find the right words.

Aldric swept his gaze across their faces once more before realizing which name was missing.

”Elena,” he said.

All eyes turned toward the corridor leading to her room, and then they looked at one another one last time.

After that, they rushed toward her room.

Her door was closed, but the lock had vanished when the night ended. Aldric pushed it open, and it slowly swung inward as a faint purple light seeped from within.

Elena was there—or rather, her corpse was.

They found her body curled up beneath the copper pipe in the wall, utterly drained of life energy, as though she had tried to get away from it but had not had enough time—not that escaping would have saved her anyway, since the communication had already taken place.

No trace of vitality remained in her body.

Her skin had withered and clung to her bones, while her entire body had turned a deep purple, matching the mirage that still danced inside the room and had yet to disappear completely.

Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was frozen at the beginning of a scream that had never escaped.

No one needed to examine her to understand how she had died; it was obvious that the killer had communicated with her at some point, and the mirage had done the rest...

Her features remained frozen in the terror she had felt during her final moments.

Garrick took a step back.

”But no one communicated with her after we put the plan into effect. She wasn’t even selected in the draw,” Garrick said.

”Then one of us concealed their communication with her,” Sylvan said sharply.

Aldric did not respond or allow himself to be drawn into the argument, because he alone understood just how serious their situation was...

His plan had enabled them to monitor every known instance of communication, yet the killer’s hand had still reached Elena inside her locked room, and they had no idea how or even when.

’He isn’t playing by our rules...’ Aldric thought as his wide-eyed gaze moved across the seven people standing before him. Yet no amount of staring would help him here.

’He’s playing by his own rules. He didn’t even concern himself with our plan or how to break it; he simply found another way.’

The participants’ gazes began shifting from one person to another, and the wariness that had united them yesterday turned into open fear.

Ravian, meanwhile, remained behind them, calmly observing the corpse.

Then he raised his eyes toward the copper pipe fixed above her, as though noticing it for the first time.

Aldric’s plan had not failed, but neither had it fully succeeded. Its only problem was that it had gone up against Ravian.

The plan had succeeded in giving them a temporary sense of security, and that was all the killer needed to reach one of them the moment their guard slipped.

Had Ravian been in their place, he would simply have sealed that opening in his room instead of leaving it as it was. In fact, he was certain that most of the people here had focused on their plans and on avoiding communication while overlooking the most important thing: the structure of the place in which communication occurred—the mansion’s layout and the number of ways one person could communicate with another through it.

There were simply far too many such ways, yet even that only barely placed the killer on equal footing with the other participants, because even now, the advantage still belonged to them, not Ravian.

All it would take was two witnesses and one bold person.

That was why...

’The unstable ones must be eliminated first,’ Ravian thought, his gaze moving among three specific people.

An old man, a burly man, and lastly, a young man with dark blond hair.

Amid all this, however, one person seemed strangely at ease, which genuinely surprised Ravian.

Unexpectedly, that person was Mirai. Although she also looked somewhat worried, she was still the most relaxed among them.

Ravian continued watching her for several more moments, his eyes studying her closely as he tried to determine the reason for her composure, but as he had expected, prolonged staring was of little use—especially in a place like this, where sight might be the last thing one wanted to rely on.

Ravian’s gaze then shifted toward the third girl—or rather, the second now that they had lost one of them that morning—Talia.

At that moment, she was the most anxious and pale of them all, her body trembling ceaselessly.

Then the words began hissing from her lips.

”We’re going to die...”

”We’re going to die...”

”He’s toying with us! That killer is toying with us, and he’ll kill us one after another!” Talia screamed as she collapsed to the floor in terror.

Everyone flinched at her sudden scream as Mirai and Sylvan rushed toward her, with the others following—Ravian among them, of course.

”Talia! What’s wrong?” Mirai asked as she knelt beside her on the floor of Elena’s room.

But Mirai was even more shocked when Talia recoiled from her in terror, refusing to be touched.

”Stay away from me!”

”Do you want to kill me this time?!”

Talia screamed as she crawled backward, away from both Mirai and Sylvan, while Sylvan stood frozen in place at the sight of her hysterical state.

Mirai stopped where she was when she saw Talia’s condition.

”Calm down, Talia... We only want to make sure you’re all right. Panicking won’t help,” Mirai said, keeping her distance.

Talia shook her head violently, staring at each of them in turn.

”You only care about saving yourselves, so you don’t care about me. You just don’t want to lose someone you can use as bait, do you?!” Talia’s voice continued to rise as the terror in her eyes grew.

”Kikikiki...”

Then that deep, cracked voice returned, once again shaking everyone standing in the room to their very core.

”One of you has already died on the very first night?” the unknown entity said with a laugh.

”What a truly pathetic group you are.”