Becoming a God Starts with Acting-Chapter 176: [Blizzard Manor] - Prophet’s part (23)

"Captain Drake, can we talk a bit about Saphen?" Luis suddenly spoke up, his eyes still fixed intently on Saphen.

Hearing his name mentioned, Saphen tightly grasped Drake’s hand and hid behind him.

Drake supported the boy gently and said in a soft voice, "Don’t be afraid, they’re all friends."

Saphen said nothing.

Only then did Drake turn to Luis and speak slowly:

"All you need to know is that Saphen will be the key to whether we make it out of this dungeon. So protect him to the very end. Honestly, we might not have even gotten out of the maid’s room without him. There are some things I just canll you all."

Luis fell silent after that.

The others looked at Saphen in silence.

Saphen took a small step forward, no longer hiding behind Drake but still kept his head down, not daring to meet their eyes.

Drake felt that Silvanus’s instruction to stay behind and protect Saphen was frankly pointless—up to this point, Saphen had been helping them. Drake hadn’t done much for the boy aside from scaring off those who tried to approach him.

In truth, Silvanus didn’t particularly care about that. He just needed a convenient excuse to complete his storyline. After all, he wasn’t weakening at this point—he was actually getting stronger thanks to the dungeon leveling up.

The audience especially loved the trope of an influential person pretending to be weak. Besides, he needed time and space to gather more intel, so he crafted the story this way.

Based on the information collected so far—from clues within the dungeon and the viewers—Silvanus had identified the chef, Ethan, as an essential character. Possibly even the key to the dungeon, with a close connection to it. But he didn’t yet know what that connection was. They needed to investigate further.

Entering Ethan’s room would be a significant opportunity.

It was also about time he started revealing his abilities.

But first, Drake led the group to knock on the kitchen door.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Loud noises echoed from inside, sounding like a cleaver repeatedly chopping through bones—a sound that made everyone instinctively cringe.

Ethan didn’t even bother coming out to open the door. The rules had changed. The kitchen was now a forbidden zone. Maybe Ethan was even waiting for them to step inside so he could butcher them all at once.

"Let’s go,"

Drake said in a deep voice, taking Saphen’s hand and heading toward the chef’s room.

The door opened easily, and as soon as the room was revealed, a loud "BANG!" roared from the kitchen as if the whole place was about to collapse.

Fiona furrowed her brows and looked toward the kitchen. The door remained tightly shut, showing no signs of opening or cracking.

Ethan’s room appeared before them at that moment—dim and gloomy, starkly contrasting to the blinding light outside.

Still, Drake and the others didn’t hesitate and stepped inside.

"BANG!"

As soon as they entered, the door slammed shut with force.

Harry groped along the wall, quickly switching on the light. Darkness vanished instantly, revealing a room that looked completely different from its earlier gloom—it was now rather bright.

There were no meaningless decorations in the room. Just a single bed—no table, no chairs.

There wasn’t even a wardrobe in the room—no one could tell where Ethan kept his clothes.

"This room looks brand new..." Luis paused, then said lowly, "It feels like no one lives here."

Fiona couldn’t help muttering, "Judging by the way that chef looks, it feels like the kitchen is his real room."

She wasn’t entirely wrong.

The group searched through the chef’s room and easily found his journal.

"This is going so smoothly it’s making me uneasy," Harry muttered. freёweɓnovel_com

After all, getting information inside a dungeon was never supposed to be this easy.

Drake opened the chef’s journal.

The handwriting was atrocious—like worms squirming across the page—but Luis could still read it.

His calm, steady voice slowly filled the room:

[Today, Vincent killed a bunch of servants again just because one of the maids spilled water on the floor! He’s a terrifying monster! The butler didn’t say a word—he even ordered Nana and Sana to bury the bodies in the rose garden! Those bright red roses look nauseating!

Vincent seems to be targeting me. It’s disgusting. He wants the butler to cook me—I don’t want to die!

Today, the butler even brought me a servant’s corpse and told me to cook it! So revolting, but I couldn’t refuse. I have nowhere else to go besides this mansion!

Vincent has lost it again. He’s killed all the servants in the castle—only Sana and Nana are left. Will it be my turn tomorrow? No!]

At that point, the writing stopped. The following pages were violently scratched through, some even torn apart. When the writing resumed, it was shakier—each letter trembling, as if madness was seeping from the pages themselves:

[Thank goodness, Vincent finally got seriously ill. I’m safe now.

I don’t understand why Alexander is still loyal to Vincent. He’s clearly insane! Sana and Nana, too—just a bunch of lunatics!

Thank goodness Vincent got sick. I hope he dies. A house full of maniacs!]

From that point on, the scrawls just repeated the word "crazy" over and over again, the pen digging into the paper so hard that it tore through several pages.

No further entries followed. Once Vincent fell ill and Ethan no longer had to live in constant fear, he stopped writing in the journal.

The entire room fell into a long, heavy silence.

Finally, Bella suddenly laughed:

"I honestly thought we were about to get sucked into the journal again—ha ha, that’s how these things usually go."

Fiona scoffed coldly, drawing a glare of disdain from Bella.

At that moment, Luis spoke slowly:

"Our mission is to uncover the secrets of this mansion, to bring everything to light so the darkness doesn’t consume us. Before we read the butler’s journal—he portrayed Vincent as a kind and virtuous master."

Alice nodded and added,

"But Ethan’s journal says the opposite. He believed Vincent was a cruel man with cold-blooded behavior beyond comprehension."

And if everything Ethan wrote was true... then Vincent was a cold-blooded monster.

"We can’t just trust either side so easily. How can we possibly know which one is telling the truth?" Fiona couldn’t help muttering.

At that moment, Drake’s gaze swept over the spotless, pristine room that looked like no one had ever lived there. In a low voice, he said, "What matters is the true nature of this place."

Drake’s concern was understandable—but Silvanus had seen everything through the live broadcast room. Nothing had changed. This room was like this, with nothing hidden.

[Ha ha ha, Ethan is special.]

[Look at those tear-stained journal entries he wrote—so convincing, ha ha ha.]

[The hardest part is choosing who to believe, right?]

Based on the viewers’ reactions, Silvanus was now pretty sure that Ethan’s journal couldn’t be trusted. But then, why had he written it? The words themselves didn’t feel fake at all.

[The hardest part is that Ethan’s emotions feel too real—humans can’t usually tell the difference.]

[He believes it’s true, ha ha ha. How can a normal person make sense of a madman?]

[That thing is almost here...]

Almost the instant that the last comment appeared, the door to the room swung open wide, and blinding light from outside flooded in, nearly dazzling Drake and the others.

At the same time, a faint white mist drifted into the room. Before the group had time to react, the cold voices of Sana and Nana rang out:

"This new batch of servants is so slow—do you expect the butler to come and wake you up personally?!"

Their voices overlapped in unison again, wave upon wave—but this time, they had more emotion than when the group first encountered the two maids. You could hear it: Sana and Nana were angry.

"What the hell is going on?!" Drake nearly roared. Since entering the dungeon, no one had ever heard him shout like that.

The others had also started to notice their current situation. They were all now wearing maid outfits.

Yes—maid outfits!

Harry lifted the hem of his ankle-length skirt, gave a little twirl, and looked delighted.

"Ha ha ha! This is actually kinda fun..."

Luis, standing nearby, couldn’t help elbowing him in the stomach.

Harry doubled over, wincing at Luis, about to curse—until he noticed Luis staring straight ahead.

Frowning, Harry followed his gaze—then couldn’t help but press his lips tightly together, his face strained.

There stood Drake on the other side of the room, arms hanging stiffly at his sides like a robot—or a statue.

The maid outfit he wore could barely contain his massive muscles. The whole thing looked like it might burst at any moment.

"BANG!"

Drake lifted his leg and kicked a nearby chair, flying. As his calf-length skirt flared up, Fiona immediately lunged forward to cover him, tugging the puffy skirt down in a panic:

"Captain! The entire continent is watching—you can’t flash them!"

Everyone else: "..."

She was Drake’s teammate—her word choice was certainly... direct.

[Ha ha ha, I bet beneath Drake’s skirt lies a mighty dragon!]

[Exactly! Nothing to be ashamed of! Fiona, get out of the way!]

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