Chapter 215 – The Leak Expands

Chapter 215 – The Leak Expands

Patrolling all the corridors and classrooms of the East Building took roughly thirty minutes, after which the West Building still needed a round of patrol as well. Every floor of both buildings had a small logbook for check-in records, hung in a record box by the stairwell entrance. Any situations discovered during the patrol had to be noted on the forms as reference for the next patrolling “Guardian”—Little Red Riding Hood was already thoroughly familiar with this patrol routine.

Yu Sheng followed alongside Little Red Riding Hood, watching her go about these tasks. He could see she performed them with exceptional diligence, carrying an air of almost sacred duty as she passed each room and wrote down each record.

Yu Sheng felt he could understand her feelings—An-Ka-Ai-La was gradually awakening, and tomorrow the children would be transferred to that valley. After that, regardless of what happened—whether the Fairy Tale crisis was ultimately resolved or the Twilight Angel broke free of control—this might be her very last time patrolling this place.

“Not long ago I was still planning a comprehensive search of the entire Orphanage, still arranging patrol and inspection schedules for the underground facilities, and now we might be leaving tomorrow,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed softly, a touch of self-deprecation in her tone. “It really is… quite sudden.”

“Plans can never keep up with changes,” Yu Sheng said quietly. “Things are always like that.”

Little Red Riding Hood pressed her lips together, and after several seconds of silence, she suddenly spoke in a very small voice: “Everything will be fine… right?”

“Of course,” Yu Sheng said with a faint smile. “We’ve already prepared for every contingency. Whether An-Ka-Ai-La launches an assault against you in reality or in the Dreamscape, we’ll block it.”

Little Red Riding Hood looked into Yu Sheng’s eyes. After a moment, a hint of a smile surfaced in the depths of hers.

“Let’s go check the Underground together. The King is leading its ‘guards’ on a tunnel patrol and should be finished by now. Let’s see what the situation is on its end.”

“Alright.”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood descended together to Underground Level Two. After entering the connecting tunnel and walking toward the West Building for a short while, they spotted the King lounging lazily atop a fire equipment cabinet. Three figures clad in black leather armor with hooded masks stood quietly on guard nearby. The moment Little Red Riding Hood appeared, the three figures immediately heightened their alertness, but then quickly relaxed, nodding in somewhat stiff and mechanical acknowledgment toward Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood.

“Oh, you’re here, meow,” the languid Tabby Cat raised a paw and waved, seeming completely unbothered by Yu Sheng’s presence. “Both underground levels are checked. Nothing at all. I was just thinking about finding somewhere to take a nap.”

“Good work,” Little Red Riding Hood stepped forward and scratched the fur on the King’s back. “Did you do a thorough check near that ventilation shaft from before?”

“Obviously. I even crawled into the ventilation duct myself to take a look,” the Tabby Cat yawned. “Even if something does happen, it’s not going to be on this exact night of all nights—what are the odds of such bad lu—”

A vague strain of music from somewhere unknown suddenly cut off its muttering.

The underground tunnel fell silent in an instant. The King froze mid-stretch, its body rigid in place. Yu Sheng felt his Spiritual Intuition give a sharp “ping,” and though that blurred, fleeting music was extremely faint, it seemed to have pierced through something, echoing through his perception.

He snapped his head up to look at Little Red Riding Hood, meeting the girl’s wide-eyed stare.

Then, the gentle, elegant, languid music sounded again—clearer this time than before, as if it were playing right on the other side of the wall!

The fur on the King’s tail instantly bristled. Even that characteristically deep, magnetic documentary-narrator voice wavered: “Holy shit, no way—I’m just an innocent little kitty cat…”

“Quiet!” Little Red Riding Hood immediately cut off the cat’s mumbling. From the shadows beside her, numerous wavering wolf silhouettes materialized at once, every wolf with ears pricked, listening to every sound in the underground tunnel. After several seconds, she spoke with a grave expression. “It’s a court dance—the Bloodstained Court? At this hour it could also be the Eternal Ball… No, time in the Dreamscape doesn’t correspond to real-world time…”

Noise abruptly intruded into the gentle, elegant melody. Then came the sound of something shattering, interspersed with the crackling roar of burning flames and the rapidly distorting, off-key screech of the music.

Little Red Riding Hood finally pinpointed it—the sound was coming from behind a wall on the left side of the tunnel.

“Over here!”

The girl shouted urgently, then led the wolf pack racing toward the source of the sound.

Without a word, Yu Sheng broke into a sprint after her. The assassin-garbed figures followed swiftly, and the King leaped directly onto one of the assassins’ shoulders. At the same time, it swiped a paw at the empty air beside it, and in the blink of an eye, several figures dressed as mages and warriors materialized from thin air. They instantly formed some kind of combat formation, providing cover along the left, right, and rear of the tunnel as they ran forward alongside Little Red Riding Hood and Yu Sheng.

And just then, from the corner of his eye, Yu Sheng caught sight of something else—on the ceiling of the tunnel ahead, a patch of shadow had appeared out of nowhere. That shadow looked like layers upon layers of rose bushes, blooming and spreading in an explosive burst under the dim lighting. Thorns jutted out from within those shadows, as if trying to break free from the shadow’s constraints, trying to pierce into the real world!

But before Yu Sheng could call out a warning, the shadow of the rose thicket vanished in an instant, leaving only a patch of grime accumulated over the years on the ceiling.

Little Red Riding Hood moved like the wind, rounding a corner into a branching tunnel in the blink of an eye. Two Shadow Wolves burst from the air behind her and slammed open an iron door marked “Storeroom.”

Brilliant light poured out from behind the iron door. A vivid red carpet surged out from behind it like wildly spreading blood, spilling into the underground tunnel and proliferating outward. Yu Sheng saw that inside the “storeroom” was a vast, magnificent hall where countless twisted, ecstatic bodies danced. They wore dazzling court attire—every gown, every formal suit exquisitely crafted and resplendent—yet their faces were absurd and grotesque, as if smeared on with paint. Those features rendered in garish pigments laughed maniacally, and a voice shrieked above the increasingly distorted, off-key music—

“The prince wants those crystal slippers—cut off her feet!”

A thunderous roar erupted. Everything in the hall began to collapse. The real-world “storeroom” and the phantasmal “great hall” seemed to overlap. Yu Sheng saw a section of the nearby ceiling cave in at one corner, and through the hole in the roof, he watched a Pumpkin Carriage ascend through thick smoke and rumbling, hurtling toward the distant sky.

But in the very next second, several enormous searchlight beams pierced through the night. The East and West Buildings of the Orphanage had somehow transformed into towering structures surrounded by barbed wire and heavy concrete fortifications. In the blink of an eye, cannon fire thundered from the tops of the towers, tongues of flame sweeping across the sky. Yet the instant that ferocious anti-aircraft fire struck the Pumpkin Carriage, the carriage seemed to collide with an invisible door and vanished into the night in the blink of an eye.

Then all the phantasms disappeared—including the two anti-aircraft towers, including the collapsed and damaged ceiling, including the “warehouse” overlapping with the ballroom. Yu Sheng felt a brief moment of disorientation, and then everything before his eyes returned to the “normal” appearance of the underground tunnel.

As if nothing had happened.

But Yu Sheng already knew what this was.

“The leak is expanding!” he shouted, then reached out and gave a sharp slap on the shoulder of Little Red Riding Hood, who seemed momentarily stunned. “Quick, go wake the children right now! Wake everyone you can, have them all assemble on the first floor, and wait for me to open a door!”

“Understood!” Little Red Riding Hood nodded swiftly, but then seemed to remember something. “What about the ones trapped in ‘subsets’?”

“Don’t worry about them for now—you saw it just now. If they’re in real danger, their consciousness will enter the Wasteland for refuge,” Yu Sheng said rapidly. “Right now, evacuate in batches first. Make sure the youngest children aren’t affected by the nightmare leakage!”

At this, he thought quickly for a moment, then added: “I’ll send Ailin to the Wasteland right now to explain the situation to the people who’ve already ‘fallen’ in there.”

“Understood!” Little Red Riding Hood nodded firmly, then turned to the Tabby Cat beside her. “King, summon all your Royal Guard knights. Go protect the people still in ‘subsets’—don’t let their physical bodies in reality come to harm!”

The King said nothing. It simply swung its paw with force. In the next second, all the adventurers around it vanished, and a fully armed regiment of heavy knights appeared in the underground corridor—towering figures nearly two meters tall, clad in adamantine armor brimming with magical radiance, blades in hand, deep shadows beneath their helmets, radiating an overwhelming presence.

These “Royal Guard knights,” who looked as though they could flatten a Demon Lord’s castle, marched forward in silent, perfect unison. At a single “meow” from the King, they swept through the underground corridor at astonishing speed and disappeared from Yu Sheng’s sight.

Little Red Riding Hood also nodded to Yu Sheng, then sank into the shadows along with her wolf pack, vanishing from the corridor in the blink of an eye.

“…Everyone’s so damn cool.”

Yu Sheng muttered under his breath, then quickly oriented himself and began striding forward while calling out in his mind: “Ailin, come in.”

The Little Doll’s voice appeared immediately: “Hearing you loud and clear! What’s up?”

“Split your attention and get to the Wasteland immediately. There should already be Fairy Tale members who lost their fights taking refuge in there. Tell them that their nightmares are leaking into reality, and the children are being evacuated ahead of schedule. Tell them not to panic—once their respective ‘subsets’ calm down, they can return to reality and head straight to the first floor of the East Building to assemble. I’ll open a door there to send everyone to the valley for refuge. Got it?”

“Got it got it how come you always run into these emergencies I’m heading there now be careful if something actually breaks through get the people out first don’t try to tank it if you die that’s one thing but if the others can’t run then they’re really dead ow bit my tongue…”

(End of Chapter)