SIAHG 55

Chapter 55

The crown prince lifted a white porcelain plate stained with bright red blood.

“You’re saying I have to wash this? I… as I mentioned, I’m not good at doing the dishes. I’ll try my best, but how do you clean something like this? Suddenly, the palace maids seem amazing.”

Sian took the plate from the crown prince’s hands and examined it, then checked the sink area.

“With this kind of stain, it’s impossible to just wipe it off. However, there’s no dye in the blood, so I don’t understand why it soaked in. Also, it’s not just this plate you placed here, but other things too. The stains are all over. It seems like cleaning these stains is a condition for washing the dishes.”

“If we fail… we might become the next ingredients for the meal…! Let’s wash it quickly!” Max blurted out what everyone was silently thinking.

The survivors who were dragged away from the banquet hall with broken plates had led to these chilling thoughts. Typical Max.

The sink was completely dry. Yeniel scanned the surroundings.

The crown prince asked in confusion, “What are you looking for, Lady Yeniel?”

“In kitchens like this, important information is often left on notes to be passed on to the next person. I’m wondering if there’s a clue left in that form,” Yeniel said and immediately began inspecting the thin cookbook near the sink.

“Lady April, would you like to help too?”

I quickly turned through the pages of the cookbook. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before something fluttered out of the pages I was holding.

“Hmm?”

It was a small note.

I read it first.

What if it said we need to offer a human sacrifice, like a dungeon of offerings?

But thankfully, it wasn’t that type of message. Still, the eerie atmosphere made the note seem like something out of a horror game.

Feigning innocence, I tilted my head and showed the paper to the others. Yeniel extended her hand.

“Lady April, may I see that?”

“Sure!”

I handed her the note.

“How to clean the dishes containing the meal.
Go to the external kitchen near the back gate of the mansion to fetch the cleaning agent.
The key for the third compartment in the external kitchen is left there.”

“The back gate of the mansion? We’re on the 3rd floor! Could it be that we can go all the way down to the external kitchen on the 1st floor?” Max said, his face bright with hope, but Sian shook his head coldly.

“This is the mansion of a grand sorcerer. Remember the 4th floor was filled with nonsensical cities and dungeons? It’s probably ‘an external kitchen on the 1st floor simulated on the 3rd floor.’ Strictly speaking, this isn’t the 3rd floor, but more like the inside of a monster from the banquet hall.”

Suddenly, the thought crossed my mind—if this is inside the monster’s belly, could we perhaps open the windows of the mansion?

I casually approached the window while pretending to observe the kitchen.

The window in one corner of the kitchen was quite large.

At that moment, I doubted my own eyes.

Bloodied shadowy hands were already positioned outside the window, like they were waiting for us.

They swayed, as though they had clearly noticed my simple thoughts.

“What? Why are they here too? Just don’t open the window.”

I quickly turned my eyes away, pretending not to see anything.

“Where could this external kitchen with the cleaning agent be?” Yeniel looked around.

The headless servants in the kitchen all appeared to be busy. It didn’t seem like a good idea to interrupt them.

“We can’t just enter anywhere…” Max closed his mouth.

The kitchen had many doors, but the atmosphere suggested we shouldn’t enter just anywhere.

Most of the doors looked ominous.

In fact, from some of them, sounds like bang! bang! echoed—things were either trapped or wanted to break out.

Yeniel grabbed everyone’s attention.

“It seems they want us to do our job properly. If we disturb the monsters preparing the banquet, it might not be good. It’s better to stay cautious. Let’s all keep an eye out and report anything unusual.”

The team resumed searching. Nothing else stood out to me.

“What is this? There wasn’t anything here just a moment ago. Graffiti? How childish.”

At that moment, Max, who had been inspecting the bottom of the cupboard, picked up a scrap of paper, muttering in frustration.

“That’s not graffiti. It must be a clue. If it appeared just now, it’s definitely a clue.”

Yeniel turned her head, and both Sian and the crown prince looked at the scrap of paper Max was holding.

It seemed everyone realized except Max.

Yeniel, as if used to it, spoke to Max.

“Sir Max, could you please hand me that scrap of paper?”

“It’s here. Lady Yeniel. Someone drew a line as graffiti. I thought it might be some sort of code, but…”

The crown prince, slightly aghast at Max’s ignorance, gave him a pointed look.

“Max… Thank the Lady Yeniel and Sian. It’s thanks to those two that you’re still alive in this alternate world.”

It was said with a lot of sincerity.

Yeniel carefully examined the scrap of paper.

“Well, it really does look like some sort of graffiti.”

Strange lines were drawn on it.

From the torn edges, it seemed like the paper had been torn into several pieces. This was just one of them.

The problem was, we had no idea what the original paper had looked like.

“Hmm…”

The crown prince swallowed his breath.

“I figured it out.”

It hadn’t taken long, but Yeniel quickly recognized the identity of the paper.

“This is part of a map.”

“A map? What makes you say that?”

The crown prince looked surprised, so it seemed I wasn’t the only one who didn’t realize it was a map.

“Look at the shape of the edges. Usually, if you fold a piece of paper in half and fold it again, you end up with 8 equal parts. If we assume this has been folded 8 times, comparing these lines with the current kitchen path will give us the answer.”

Though I understood the concept, I couldn’t visualize it. It was only Sian who immediately seemed to have drawn it in his head.

“Anyway, if this is a map, we need to find the other pieces. Let’s look for them. Start from nearby. Every time we’ve had an unresolved issue, there’s always been a clue near the spot.”

As the crown prince suggested, we didn’t have to go far. We found pieces nearby.

“Lady Yeniel, is this piece correct?”

The crown prince found another scrap of paper near the sink.

“I found one too.”

Sian revealed a scrap he had found tucked between the very thin cookbooks nearby.

“I couldn’t find any!”

I checked the cupboard direction but really found nothing.

No one expected me to find anything, so the team responded nonchalantly. A short while later, the search for map pieces ended.

“It looks like this is all we can find. What a shame, it’s incomplete.”

The crown prince clicked his tongue at the incomplete map.

There were supposed to be 16 pieces of the map, but we had only found 9, leaving 7 pieces missing.

Some pieces were even entirely blank.