In a dark little room.
More than ten children slept on a large communal bed.
They were all boys around twelve or thirteen years old.
Each one curled up, sleeping restlessly, not even daring to extend their hands outside the blankets.
"Hiss!"
The candle lamp on the left wall suddenly lit up.
The boy sleeping on the far left was startled by the candlelight and curled deeper into his blanket, kicking the boy to his right with his foot.
The boy who got kicked drowsily kicked the boy next to him in turn.
Like this, one kicked another, one kicked another, until the rightmost boy was kicked against the wall.
"Mmh..."
Saul let out a low groan, rubbing his dully aching knee. He climbed up groggily and sat in a daze for a moment to clear his head.
"Hurry up... if you're late, the wizard lord will turn you into flower fertilizer," the boy beside him reminded him like sleep-talking.
Saul pressed the old wound on his forehead. The slight stabbing pain cleared his mind, and his movements finally became nimble.
He quickly climbed down from the bed, put on the servant's clothes hanging on the wall, pushed open the door of the small room, and walked out.
Outside the door was a long, curved corridor. Every few meters on both sides of the corridor there was a door, with a lit candlestick on each side of every door. Their weak, dim yellow glow struggled to dispel the cold gloom in the corridor.
Saul looked at his left shoulder by candlelight.
There, a hardcover book no bigger than his palm was floating.
"It still hasn't disappeared? Maybe it's not my hallucination."
Ever since he had transmigrated a few days ago, that book had been floating above Saul's left shoulder.
Visible but intangible, and others couldn't see it either.
Saul had called out for a system, begged for a chip, but received no response. In the end, he could only attribute it to a hallucination caused by his head injury.
But hallucinations shouldn't persist for so many days without disappearing.
Whether it was a hallucination or not, Saul had his own tasks to attend to and no time to keep studying it.
The place where he was located was a wizard tower.
Since transmigrating, Saul had never left this tower.
Moreover, as a servant here, he had to get up around four in the morning every day to mop the floors of the corridors on the eleventh through thirteenth floors. There couldn't be any obvious stains or garbage left on them, or he would be chopped up to serve as flower fertilizer.
The corridor cleaning work had to be completed before the candle flames changed from dim yellow to bright white, otherwise, if he encountered wizard apprentices heading out, he might be captured for experiments.
Those wizard apprentices all looked strange and grotesque, with extremely bad and impatient tempers, as if death himself was chasing their butts every day.
Saul's predecessor had been killed by a wizard apprentice who hit him with a book. The corpse was thrown into the storage room and nearly disposed of as garbage.
When he crawled out of the storage room covered in blood, even the butler almost thought it was a ghost.
After the butler confirmed he wasn't dead yet, he immediately assigned him work. Saul didn't even have time to heal his wounds before being sent to work.
Until today.
Finishing his recollection, Saul first went to the storage room next to the dormitory to get a mop, bucket, and trash can, placed them on a small cart, and pushed forward.
The cart's wheels were said to be inscribed with silence spells to prevent disturbing those wizard apprentices with extremely fragile nerves.
Saul had carefully observed the patterns on them a couple days ago. Apart from mild dizziness, he gained nothing.
He yawned and began a new day's work in the morning chill.
The corridor was actually semicircular in shape, with doors every few meters on both the left and right sides.
Those doors had nameplates hanging on them, with characters on the nameplates representing room numbers.
The body Saul had transmigrated into was literate. Through several days of exploration, he had recovered some basic common knowledge from fragmented memories.
While cleaning the eleventh floor, Saul heard sobbing from behind a door.
Every time the crying sounded, the candle flames on both sides of the door would sway gently, the light and shadows flickering eerily.
Saul tightened his collar, all sleepiness frozen away.
He quickly pretended to know nothing, heard nothing, and rapidly finished mopping the floor there.
On the twelfth floor lived a strange person who liked to throw garbage at his doorstep.
Hair, torn paper, unidentifiable chunks of meat...
Saul had gotten used to proactively cleaning up when passing by.
He used the small shovel hanging by the trash can to collect all the garbage. As he turned to empty the trash, he heard a faint scraping sound.
He quickly turned around and saw the door behind him opened a small crack, with nothing but darkness visible beyond.
Saul immediately felt all his body hair stand on end. His hands trembling slightly, he wanted to run but feared the wizard apprentice in the room would consider his behavior disrespectful.
He had only been in this strange and terrifying place for a few days, but the lesson drilled into him most was to maintain the utmost respect and humility toward all wizard apprentices.
Saul was currently just a powerless twelve-year-old child with a frail body.
The powerful wizard apprentices could crush him with a finger.
As for wizards, hah, with his status he wasn't even qualified to see a wizard.
Saul waited with his heart pounding.
There was no movement from behind the door.
Time was pressing. Maintaining his vigilance toward what was behind the door, he mopped while keeping his eyes fixed on that crack.
Finally, he passed by, and that door was blocked by the curved corridor.
Saul's tense shoulders relaxed slightly as he pushed the cart up the slope to the upper floor.
The thirteenth floor.
As a transmigrator, Saul was quite sensitive to this number.
Even though he had originally been a materialist, coming to this eerie world with wizards and monsters, he still chose to be more cautious.
It was said that the previous servant responsible for cleaning had died on the thirteenth floor.
Saul had cleaned here a couple days ago too and found nothing abnormal, but this floor still made him uncomfortable.
That kind of fear where nothing had happened, yet his hair would still stand on end and his fingers couldn't help but tremble slightly.
Saul lowered his head and vigorously mopped the floor, using physical labor to dispel the unease in his heart.
However, what he feared most still happened.
When passing the third door, the door to Saul's right front... suddenly began seeping a pool of bright red blood from underneath.
The blood was bright red, viscous, with a heavy fishy smell.
At first glance, it was clearly nothing good.
The blood flowed to the middle of the corridor before finally stopping its spread.
According to the butler's requirements, Saul had to clean up all obvious dirt and stains.
He gripped his mop tightly, gritted his teeth, and steeled himself to approach.
Just then, the hardcover book on his left shoulder suddenly flew in front of his chest and opened with a rustling sound.
Saul was stunned. This was the first time the hardcover book had shown any change.
His heart leaped with joy. Could it be that his golden finger knew he was in crisis and had actively come out to save him?
Saul glanced at the blood on the ground while focusing most of his attention on the book.
The hardcover book froze on a blank page, where several lines of text rapidly appeared:
New Moon Calendar Year 314, May 21st,
While cleaning the corridor floor, you saw a pool of blood seeping from behind a door.
Although you felt terrified, in order to complete your task and not be turned into flower fertilizer, you steeled yourself and approached to clean.
But this floor was really hard to clean!
Why was there more and more blood on the ground the more you wiped?
You looked down and understood—it was your own body that was continuously bleeding!
The next day, a mummified corpse appeared in the wizard tower's garbage room.
Saul's legs went weak and he nearly fell into the trash can behind him.
He supported himself with the mop handle, looking at that pool of blood with lingering fear.
"So my golden finger is a death crisis warning system. In this terrifying and gloomy place, it's actually quite practical."
He never considered that this hardcover book would deceive him.
What value did he have to be deceived anyway?
Saul carefully pushed his cart, trying to go around that pool of blood. At this moment, the hardcover book in front of him changed again.
You are terrified of that pool of unknown blood and decide not to clean this part of the floor.
In the morning, because the floor wasn't tidy, you were called away by the butler.
The next day, new flower fertilizer was added to the greenhouse.
You felt very satisfied with your own stinky new form.
Saul: "..."
Damn! No matter what choice I make,
I will die.
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