Girl Doesn’t Die in Fairytale Town: Chapter 38 – The Sketchbook and the Reading Club
Meanwhile, the townspeople-guests had surrounded them, blocking their path.
Their expressions gradually became vacant, their repetitive pleas growing hoarse and low.
“Stay… feast… enjoy… happy…”
In this situation, Grifres didn’t hesitate. He summoned his soul spear and swung it at the guests surrounding them.
The souls of these ordinary people were no match for Grifres’s soul spear. With each swing, their forms and souls were instantly annihilated.
But then, Grifres’s eyes widened slightly.
“How…?”
Right before his eyes, the souls re-coalesced. In less than a second, they were completely restored.
Their bodies also reappeared, their expressions vacant, like puppets.
“This guest is a bad person!” The doll Little Tini shrieked, darting around frantically. “A bad person! A bad person! A bad person!”
As its screams echoed, the townspeople turned and swarmed towards Grifres, a dense mass of moving corpses.
“Bad person… bullying Little Tini… destroying happiness…”
They slowly reached out towards Grifres, their hands transforming into twisted, dark claws, identical to the monsters from before, as they approached him.
Grifres’s expression darkened. He continued to swing his spear, but the townspeople, after being annihilated again and again, instantly revived.
“Just go, you idiot!” Hua Qiling shouted at Grifres, who was now trapped in battle. She and Luo Yan had almost reached the dining room door. “Didn’t you say ‘carefully following the “rules” is more important than brute force’?”
“…Understood.” Grifres took a deep breath. With his ability ineffective, he had become too focused on fighting.
After calming down slightly, Grifres swung his spear, clearing a temporary path.
Then, before the townspeople could revive, he teleported to the doorway, leaving them behind.
“Go!”
Seeing this, Luo Yan immediately stepped out of the dining room, the other two following closely behind.
As they left the dining room and entered the other parts of Natalie Manor, the scenery shifted.
After a moment of dizziness, Hua Qiling and Grifres gasped.
Empty…
Not in the sense that there was nothing there, but… truly empty.
An endless expanse of white, with only a few objects floating bizarrely within it.
Like the chandelier above, the fireplace beside them…
It resembled a video game environment that hadn’t fully loaded.
“Just as I thought…”
Luo Yan looked around, her suspicions confirmed.
These half-loaded objects, in Luo Yan’s eyes, were incomplete drawings.
“What’s going on?” Hua Qiling asked nervously.
“This should be a dream world constructed from little Tini’s drawings,” Luo Yan whispered. “I should have realized it sooner. The scribbles we see, the bizarre scenes, the doll Little Tini’s deliberate actions… they’re all from little Tini’s drawings, imbued with her wishes.”
“Mrs. Natalie is using all of this, creating this cage to trap me… She’s stalling for time!”
This crude dream world was easy to see through. Even if they were completely trapped, escaping was only a matter of time.
And time was exactly what Mrs. Natalie needed.
After the failure of the “Atonement Day” ritual, she needed to use more drastic measures against Luo Yan.
“No wonder…”
Grifres relaxed slightly. Some of his previous questions were now answered.
Like the unkillable residents, the unpredictable spatial shifts…
However, even without Luo Yan’s explanation, he would have eventually realized this was a dream world, though it would have taken some time.
Hua Qiling, on the other hand, was still completely lost.
“What? What scribbles? What wish…?”
“We need to find the breaking point and leave here before this dream world is fully constructed,” Grifres said gravely, ignoring Hua Qiling’s confusion. “So, Miss Luo Yan, the thing you said you wanted to find is…”
“Yes, that’s right,” Luo Yan continued walking briskly. “Little Tini’s sketchbook. This dream world is constructed based on its contents. It’s in little Tini’s room.”
Even though the environment wasn’t fully rendered, this dream Natalie Manor still corresponded to the real Natalie Manor. Everything existed, even if they couldn’t see it clearly.
Luo Yan was so familiar with this place that she could navigate it even with her eyes closed.
Soon, she reached a seemingly blank white space.
Grifres and Hua Qiling caught up. Luo Yan grasped the invisible doorknob and pushed the door open with a creak.
“…”
Although they hadn’t stepped through the doorway, the moment Luo Yan opened the door, they found themselves inside the room.
“Ta-da!” The doll Little Tini suddenly reappeared, its voice clear and melodious once more. “Welcome to… little Tini’s reading club!”
Grifres instinctively stepped back, trying to leave the room, but it was too late. The closed door offered no escape.
Hua Qiling had been here once before, so she was relatively calm. She carefully observed the surroundings.
Little Tini’s room was almost identical to what she had seen before, the only difference being the family portrait on the wall. Everyone’s faces had been erased, replaced by mosaic-like black patches.
Luo Yan ignored the doll Little Tini. Her target was little Tini’s sketchbook.
She immediately went to the bedside table and opened the second drawer where little Tini always kept her sketchbook.
But… the drawer was empty.
“Impossible!”
Luo Yan’s pupils constricted. At the same time, Hua Qiling’s voice sounded,
“Miss Luo Yan… look, what’s that doll holding? Is that the sketchbook you mentioned…?”
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