44: Chapter 44 Idols and Counterattack

The Noblewoman turned to Jinbao, who was already fast asleep on the other side of the sofa, and the black cat curled up in the chair, her tone becoming perfunctory and impatient:

"As for this dwarf and this female Rogue, they have no particular collection value. Just throw them to my pet as rations; it's been quite hungry lately."

Richard wanted to open his mouth to curse her.

His lips moved, and a low, garbled sound escaped his throat, but his tongue refused to obey, making it impossible to speak.

Everything before his eyes was rapidly darkening; The Noblewoman's smiling face was being devoured by the darkness from the edges, until finally, only a row of white, ghastly teeth remained in the center of his vision.

"Damn it, damn it! I was still too careless..."

Richard's consciousness gradually dissipated, as if sinking into the deep sea.

He did not know how much time had passed, but Richard was awakened by the sound of dripping water.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a row of iron torture hooks hanging above his head.

Hanging from the hooks were several metallic instruments he couldn't name, their surfaces stained with a layer of dried, dark brown blood.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of blood and disinfectant, seeping continuously from the cracks in the stone walls.

He had been stripped of all his clothes and equipment, left naked and tied to a wooden torture bed, his limbs secured by thick hemp ropes.

His ankles, wrists, and waist were each firmly bound by five separate ropes to the four corners and the central crossbeam of the wooden bed.

He tried to turn his neck, and only then did he see the full view of the room.

It was a stone dungeon, the walls carved from volcanic rock with a rough surface.

Standing against the wall was a row of ornate wooden cabinets with glass doors, neatly filled with glass jars of all sizes.

Each jar was filled with pale yellow formalin preservative, with various nauseating human organs soaking in the liquid.

Fingers, ears, tongues, a whole section of a spine, pieces of skin still attached to ribs, and so on.

Most numerous were human eyeballs; eyeballs of various colors floated in the sealed jars, each one appearing to stare at something in the very center of the room.

Richard continued to observe his surroundings, spotting an idol enshrined on a low stone platform in the innermost corner of the dungeon.

The stone platform was covered with a black cloth, and several unburnt black candles were lit around it; the idol's design did not belong to any deity system he was familiar with.

The idol's head was a twisted insect head, with protruding compound eyes and open mouthparts; its torso had six arms and four legs, with each arm holding something different.

Some held daggers, some held human eyes, and others held writhing venomous snakes.

The idol was covered in snake scales, with a pair of tattered insect wings on its back; the membranes on the wings had several holes, yet they remained in an unfurled posture.

That was not the holy symbol of any mainstream deity; it was a twisted and eerie cult of an evil god.

Richard swallowed hard, moved his gaze away from the idol, and began to force himself to focus on assessing his current situation.

Cecilia and the others were not here, and he didn't know what kind of danger they were in.

He had to save himself first before he could help his teammates.

He first tried to move his fingers; they could still move, which meant the ropes were tight but hadn't cut off his blood circulation.

He clenched his right fist hard, his forearm muscles tensing up; the hemp rope left a deep mark on his wrist but did not break.

He immediately thought of a solution.

He gritted his teeth and concentrated all his terrifying brute strength into his right hand.

His fingers bent excessively under the intense exertion, and his right thumb and index finger simultaneously emitted a crisp crack, snapping clean off.

Agonizing pain exploded from his fingertips and shot up his arm to his shoulder, but he did not stop.

The broken fingers made his bindings loosen slightly, and after continuing to exert force, he was finally able to break free from the hemp rope's restraint.

After his right hand was free, he used his broken fingers and his teeth to undo the restraints on his left hand, left foot, and right foot.

When he climbed off the torture bed, he swayed; the long period of immobilization had made his knees unresponsive.

His broken fingers trembled slightly at his side; the fingertips had already begun to swell, with large patches of purple-blue bruising seeping under the skin.

He limped to the wooden weapon rack in the corner of the room, grabbing a short-handled hand axe and a skinning knife from it.

The hand axe weighed about three or four pounds, the blade was reasonably sharp, and it felt handy to swing.

The knife had a very thin blade, suitable for close-quarters stabbing.

He tucked the knife into a makeshift belt at his waist, which was a strip of cloth torn from a tattered burlap apron by the wall.

He gripped the axe tightly in his right hand and limped toward the dungeon exit.

Just as he reached the center of the room, the black candles on the stone platform extinguished simultaneously.

The room plunged into a moment of total darkness, and the next moment, the cold white light of the magic lamps lit up again, illuminating a figure less than three steps directly in front of Richard.

A burly, masked freak.

It was a dark purple mask with a twisted crying face, very similar to the one Richard had seen in the coconut grove before, except that one had been a smiling mask.

This freak stood right in front of Richard, his entire body blocking the only exit to the dungeon.

The dark gray robe he wore had an indistinguishable texture under the magic lamp's light, its hem trailing on the ground, covering his feet.

Then, the robe was simultaneously stretched open from both sides; eerily, it was pushed open by even more arms.

Six arms extended simultaneously from both sides of his body, each arm longer than a normal human's, with joints that bent in reverse, moving in a way completely different from humans.

Each of the six hands held a different weapon.

A scimitar, a longsword, a sickle, a barbed short spear, a serrated dagger, and a pitch-black trident.

The six weapons turned simultaneously in the cold light, the metallic reflections tracing six intersecting white lines across Richard's face.

"Test subject, you shouldn't have woken up. Lie back down!" the Masked Man growled.

Richard's answer was to initiate a Charge, instantly swinging his sharp axe.

He took a step forward, stomped his right foot hard against the ground, and his body slammed toward the Masked Man as if launched by a spring.

The hand axe hacked toward the opponent's neck.

The axe blade tore through the air with a sharp whistle, but the scimitar and longsword crossed simultaneously to block the Masked Man, the axe blade chopping onto the intersection of the two weapons, metal clashing and sparking.

The opponent's remaining four hands launched a counterattack simultaneously!

The sickle swept horizontally from the left at Richard's ribs, the short spear thrust directly from the right at his waist and abdomen, the dagger slashed down from above at the back of his neck, and the trident stabbed upward from directly below at his abdomen.

Six weapons attacked simultaneously from multiple angles, leaving no blind spots and no gaps.