My ‘Healing’ Game
Chapter 242: Unnamed Hope

Chapter 242: Chapter 242: Unnamed Hope

The madman’s words cannot be pondered deeply, yet Han Fei, in order to thoroughly investigate the true nature of the Butterfly, not only reflected deeply upon the words on the wall but also prepared to jot down every single character.

By the time he had memorized a great portion, the living room door opened, and Xu Qin walked in from outside.

"The number of living people in the building has decreased, and the situation doesn’t look good. We should try to get our hands on some masks as soon as possible and then leave this place."

"Do we have to use masks to leave?" Han Fei was somewhat puzzled. "The Flesh Factory in Beast Alley has already been destroyed, so the rules here must have also changed."

"The Manager of Beast Alley is a mystery; all the rules are set by him. As long as he’s not dead, we still have to follow his rules." Xu Qin touched upon the most crucial point. In the Deep World, all Special Buildings have their own Managers, and until a Manager’s death, they control everything within their building, being both the authors and enforcers of its rules.

"Does nobody know who the Manager is?"

"No one has ever seen him—that is, no one has survived after knowing who he is, which also indicates how terrifying he is." Xu Qin shared her concern. "Being able to control such a vast area and operate independently, the Manager of Beast Alley must be incredibly powerful."

"I get it. So, what’s our next move?"

"First, let’s check the Writer’s room. If we truly can’t complete the task of finding people, then our only choice will be to kill the person who issued the task." Xu Qin was very straightforward, and this woman possessed a certain special charm.

The three of them quietly left the room and, under Xu Qin’s guidance, avoided all the traps along the way and came to a room on the fourth floor.

"Is this the Writer’s room?"

As they pushed open the door and saw the scene within, Han Fei was momentarily stunned.

In the Deep World, the Writer’s room was different from the real world. The walls, the cabinets, the desk—everywhere were placed Butterfly specimens.

It seemed the Writer had turned every type of Butterfly in the entire world into specimens, collecting them all in his room.

In reality, the Writer’s room contained nothing related to Butterflies, but in the Deep World, it was a complete reversal, as if all critical clues had been kept by the Writer within the Deep World.

"It seems the Writer foresaw that the Butterfly would surely erase everything related to itself." In fact, the Butterfly went even further, not only erasing all traces of its existence but also killing everyone seeking to uncover its secrets, leaving no loose ends.

Only in the Deep World could Han Fei see the Writer’s real room and witness the true self of him.

The Writer’s pen name was Spider, but there wasn’t a single item related to spiders in his room. Instead, there were books and specimens everywhere related to Butterflies.

His research on Butterflies had reached an obsessive level; he wasn’t just pursuing the tangible Butterflies but also searching for things bearing a resemblance to Butterflies in appearance, as well as legends and Kaidan involving them.

"Looking at these, would you think the homeowner is an entomologist?" Xu Qin joined Han Fei as they entered the room. "Don’t be fooled by appearances. The homeowner’s profession and everyday life have nothing to do with Butterflies. He suddenly went mad at a certain stage."

Standing in the middle of the room, no matter where one looked, they could see the beautiful patterns on Butterfly wings, but after a while, they started to feel nauseated and terrified.

The patterns on the wings seemed like evil eyes, spying on the hearts of the living.

After searching the living room, Han Fei entered the study, and the moment he pushed open the door, he was again shocked.

The walls of the entire room were covered in some kind of pattern, and standing in the middle of the room felt as if wrapped in the massive wings of a Butterfly.

The dazzling, dreamlike wings were now giving Han Fei a suffocating sensation; he could hardly imagine how the Writer could have worked here at all.

"Butcher’s Home is the Atrium of the Spider, and these patterns must be the embodiment of something inside the Writer’s heart."

Rummaging through the bookcase and opening drawers, Han Fei spent a long time before he discovered something very strange.

In the Writer’s room, there were piles of various books, but his own written works were conspicuously absent.

"It seems like the people in this building only know about the Writer, but they don’t know his pen name is Spider, which feels a bit odd," Han Fei said, looking up towards the window and noticing another anomaly.

In the real world, where the Writer would hang wind chimes at his window, here hung something that resembled an amulet.

Stepping on a chair to take down the amulet, Han Fei accidentally touched the ceiling and made an unintended discovery: a layer of the ceiling had been hollowed out.

With both hands, Han Fei dislodged a wooden plank covered in paint, and a cascade of butterfly corpses fell from above.

"How many butterflies has he killed?"

Among those butterfly corpses, Han Fei found a handwritten draft.

"Player number 0000, please take notice! You have successfully discovered a hidden mission item—Unnamed Hope (Incomplete)."

That draft had no name, no table of contents, it was more like musings.

Blowing off the fragmented butterfly wings from it, Han Fei flipped through the draft to check.

"I don’t know when it started, but the world I saw began to change. I recorded everything I witnessed, and although it was clearly reality, everyone who read it claimed it was a story."

"Perhaps you are also curious about what I actually saw? It all started with a dream..."

The first half of the manuscript was similar to Persona Number Eight, with butterflies appearing in dreams, attempting to enter reality through the Writer.

Unlike Persona Number Eight, however, whether in dreams or reality, the butterflies never succeeded in killing the Writer.

He evaded the butterflies’ assassination attempts time after time, and eventually even contemplated counter-killing the butterflies.

Through continuous encounters, the Writer slowly discovered something—the Butterfly was real and came from the deepest corner of the dream world, a corner that seemed to connect to a world filled with despair and pain.

The other appeared in the form of a butterfly, but behind its wings, the Writer gradually saw the shadow of a person.

Initially, the Writer suspected that the other was someone like himself, capable of seeing another world, but with increased contact, he started to waver, feeling that the Butterfly seemed to have flown out of that world saturated with despair and pain.

Han Fei felt he was getting closer to finding the Butterfly’s true form. While reading the manuscript, he even memorized it completely in one go.

When reading reached its most intense point, Han Fei suddenly found that the most critical latter half of the draft had been torn off, as if someone had been there before him.

"The only ones who could’ve found this place are the other Personas; who could have taken the remaining part?"

Now, Han Fei faced two choices: to kill everyone to find the draft or share the secret with all the personae in the building.

"How about it? Any clue?" Xu Qin pointed to the mask on her face, and Han Fei immediately understood her implication.

"It seems unlikely that we’ll find the Writer anytime soon; let’s proceed with the other plan instead."

The manuscript was an item identified by the system; Han Fei directly added it to his item bar. He took one last look at the room enveloped in butterfly wing patterns, then walked with Xu Qin towards the room of Persona Number Six.