Chapter Thirty-Six: The Murderous Mansion of Seriel

  Name: Starlight

  Scale: Small

  Squad Leader: Rod Alante

  Team member: 1 person

  Location: None

  Level: 1

  Obscurity: unknown and unheard of

  Facilities - Training Room (cannot be built), Bedroom (cannot be built), Hall (cannot be built), Tower (locked), Study (locked), Alchemy Lab (locked), Forge (locked)

  Looking at the system prompt floating in front of his eyes, Rode couldn't help but feel a bit helpless. This was far lower than the starting point of the game. In the game, when players formed a guild, the system would approve their application and give them a base after confirming that they had met the requirements. Now, he didn't even have a base to begin with. But thinking about it carefully, in the game, players could only apply for a guild after completing several tasks, whereas he was just an empty-handed swindler. Originally, in the Dragon Soul Continent's game, NPC mercenary groups rarely had bases, so this wasn't strange at all.

  The top priority is for Rhodes to purchase a stronghold as the center of the mercenary corps.

  Of course, this is something that requires spending money. Fortunately for Rode, he wasn't completely out of luck.

  A crisp knock at the door was followed by Lijie walking into the guest room. After a night's rest and changing her clothes, the girl looked much more spirited. With a lively and sweet smile on her face, she greeted Luo De.

  "Mr. Rhodes, I'm ready."

  "Alright, let's go."

  Roder stood up and walked towards the door, while Lijie followed him with a gaze mixed with curiosity and doubt.

  Lijie didn't understand Rode's idea at all, she neither agreed nor disagreed. Because before discussing those practical issues, there was a more practical issue to be dealt with - no money.

  Adding the reward given by Mais earlier, as well as the gains from the two stone statue safes in Misty Town, Rod and Lize currently have 1,000 gold coins. Although after arriving at Deep Stone City, Rod entrusted Lize to sell most of the gems and crystals in her hand, ultimately gaining 2,500 gold coins. However, this is not enough to buy a house. Not to mention that Rod has set his sights on the highest level of the ground floor, which is the noble district, where even the most marginal places have houses with sky-high prices, who can afford it?

  But now, following Rod on the road to the upper district, looking at the young man's confident expression, Lije also couldn't hold back her curiosity, she also wanted to see how Rod was going to use this money to buy a house in the upper district. But if it was just buying property, why would he tell himself to prepare for replenishment in advance? There wasn't much to explore in Deepstone City anyway.

  This can't be intended for robbery, right?

  Looking back on what Rode has done in the past, this possibility also seems to exist.

  Upper district, southwest corner.

  Unlike the clean, tidy and magnificent mansions around it, what appeared before Rod and Lizzie was an old house that had been eroded by time. The walls were covered with dense vines crossing over each other, and the weeds that no one had dealt with had almost grown to knee height. The originally spacious courtyard now looked like a mess, littered with trash and feces left behind by stray cats and dogs. The entire sky was also gloomy, without a single ray of sunshine.

  A chill wind blew by, accompanied by a pack of wild dogs' cries that seemed to come from nowhere, causing Lijie to shiver involuntarily.

  The moment she stepped into the courtyard, the girl keenly felt a change as drastic as ice and fire, two extremes of heaven. The upper district outside was quiet, clean, peaceful and serene. But this courtyard was abnormally cold, chaotic, and dead silent. The contrast between them was as stark as that between a magnificent palace and a desolate burial mound.

  "Mr Luo, Mr Luo De, are you really planning on buying this place?"

  The girl subconsciously hugged her own body and asked in a low voice.

  "Not intentionally."

  But unexpectedly, Luo De simply waved his hand without even turning around.

  "I've already bought it."

  “………………”

  One second, two seconds, three seconds.

  "Huh?!!"

  Lijie's eyes widened in astonishment, completely disbelieving the answer she had just heard.

  "You've already bought it?"

  "That's right, the other party only wants 500 gold coins, it's really a cost-effective deal."

  "Five hundred gold coins?!"

  Lijie was stunned for a moment, then she covered her mouth in surprise.

  "This is Seriel's Murder House!?"

  The mention of the Seryll manor is almost universally known throughout Deepstone City. The Serylls were once a third-rate family in Deepstone City, but unlike other families, their rise to prominence was due to art sculpture - in other words, they developed and grew through their stoneworking skills.

  Among them, the most outstanding one is Martin Seryll, the former head of the Seryll family. He has an unimaginable talent in sculpture, especially when it comes to human figures. The characters he carved are all vivid and lifelike. And for this reason, he was also known as a master-level figure in Deepstone City.

  But all this changed because of a stone.

  When Seriel was twenty-nine, he received a block of white stone excavated from the Deepstone Mine. No one knew what madness had seized this great master, but he actually took the stone home on the spot and said that he wanted to create an eternally perfect work of art.

  At first, everyone didn't take this matter to heart. After all, as an art master, Seriel was pursuing this. However, the nobles had a lot of private talks and began to discuss what kind of masterpiece this art master would produce. At the beginning, Seriel's performance was also very normal. He locked himself in his room and stared at that stone for a whole week without leaving the house. This made more people start to look forward to the new work of the art master. They thought that if they could make the art master so hardworking, he would definitely carve out the most perfect work.

  But then things started getting stranger and stranger.

  Seriel's maids began to disappear one after another, and no one knew where they went. As a noble family, the Seriel family also sent out many people to search for them, but what was strange was that these people seemed to have evaporated into thin air, disappearing without a trace.

  It wasn't just the maids, but there were also rumors of people disappearing in the surrounding areas from time to time. For a while, the upper district was filled with anxiety. And after that, something big happened at Seriel's house too - Seriel's wife and their precious daughter had gone missing as well.

  At this point, the people in the family couldn't sit still anymore. They didn't care about Master Seriel's perfect artwork and came to his door one after another, hoping he could investigate this matter. However, when they opened Master Seriel's door, everyone was stunned.

  The entire room was filled with severed limbs, and Seriel's wife and daughter were now just two cold corpses hanging from the ceiling. The art master sat calmly in his chair, stroking a sculpture of a woman beside him.

  The rest is easy.

  The crowd quickly apprehended Seriel, and he also admitted to killing the missing women. However, he believed that their deaths were justified for the sake of elevating and perfecting his art, and that they had given their lives in a noble and respectable manner.

  This explanation would not satisfy anyone, and soon, the Lord of Deepstone Castle sentenced Seriel to death. However, what happened next left everyone stunned: upon learning of his impending death, Seriel suddenly escaped from prison like a madman. To capture Seriel, the Deepstone City Guard, the Mercenary Association, and even many nobles sent people to pursue him. But what no one expected was that the originally powerless art master actually took down over a dozen advanced warriors and hundreds of soldiers before finally collapsing in exhaustion in his own sculpture studio, ceasing to breathe.

  This heinous crime shocked Deepstone City, and the topic of curses began to spread gradually. Many people believed that the stone was full of evil spirits, which tempted the art master and turned him into a ruthless killer. And the sculpture, which everyone called the culprit, mysteriously disappeared from under the guards' noses on the second day after Seriel's death!

  For a time the entire Deepstone Castle began to become unstable, and Serriel's sculptures from before were smashed by many people, and after that, this matter was selectively forgotten by everyone.

  Unfortunately, although Seriel is dead, it seems that he still can't forget about attracting people's attention.

  First, a noble family who had been on good terms with Seriel came to take care of the estate, but after they moved in for a month, they were found dead from starvation in the dining room, while the rotting and stinking food in front of them was untouched.

  The second victim was a wealthy merchant who moved here from afar two years later, and in order to integrate into the local high society as soon as possible, he bought this house despite warnings. However, his ending was not much better than that of his predecessor - half a month later, it was discovered that the entire family of the rich man, along with their servants, had all hanged themselves in their own rooms, as if they were going to heaven together in a harmonious manner.

  The terrible events that occurred twice in a row made everyone subconsciously avoid this haunted house, and even the Deep Stone City found it difficult to deal with this property. Under duress, they could only put up a very low price for sale, whoever wanted to buy it would do so... It's not bad, selling such a house for 500 gold coins is still a great temptation for many people who don't have money but yearn for it. As a result, someone else bought the property again, and this time the owner was slightly more clever. He not only spent a lot of money to buy the property but also spent money to renovate the entire house inside and out, and even hired a team of strong and cunning mercenaries before moving in with confidence.

  But this time it was even more unlucky, perhaps the house itself was enraged by the low price sale, without even a buffer period, and directly came to an end, on the second day after the owner moved in, there was no longer any light in this house - as for those mercenaries, they also disappeared.

  This time everyone doesn't even want to confirm, anyway the result is already a foregone conclusion, it's obvious.

  Lijie had been in Shen Shi City for so many years, and she was naturally clear about the rumors of this mansion. Only now did she know that Luo De had done such a dangerous thing behind her back, and she immediately jumped up.

  "Mr. Luo, do you know where this is? This is actually..."

  "Of course I know."

  Rod waved his hand, thinking that he not only knew the cause but also the consequences, and even the hidden rewards and BOSS inside were clear. Seriel's haunted house was one of the top ten exclusive tasks in Deepstone City, and it was also Rod's first completed hidden task, so he naturally had a deep impression of it. However, unlike when he was caught off guard and busy at the time, he now had enough preparation to deal with this hidden task and BOSS.

  "Don't worry, it's just a house, and... I'm already prepared."

  By the time they got here, Rod and Lizzie had made their way through the overgrown garden to the front gate, where the dark interior was clearly visible through the rotten gates. Rod reached out a hand to place it on the gate, then turned his head to look at Lizzie's tense face.

  "Are you ready?"

  ;