amaotonovel Chapter 4629 Desperate Escape (1)
Chapter 4629 Desperate Escape (1)
Chapter 4629 A desperate escape (Part 1)
Dark, damp, and enclosed. He opened his eyes, his consciousness returning. Just as Eric regained awareness, he felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder.
He turned his head and saw an iron ring, as thick as two fingers, piercing his collarbone. The iron chain was rusty, and the other end was nailed to the wall. The iron rod was deeply embedded in the wall, slightly crooked, but unbreakable.
The chain was less than a meter long, and he couldn't even fully extend his right hand, so he could only sit against the wall. The only thing he could touch with his left hand was one leg of the bed.
"Damn it..."
He couldn't help but mutter to himself. Even a slight turn of his head would strain his shoulder muscles, causing him so much pain that he felt dizzy and could barely concentrate.
Eric took a deep breath and began to analyze how this situation had come about. He scanned the room with his eyes, and when he saw the iron bars on one wall, he realized he was in a prison cell.
There was no light source inside the cell, except for a torch on the right wall outside the cell, but the flame was very weak, only illuminating the area around the bars. After the eyes adjusted to the darkness, one could barely see half of the room.
Eric found himself pinned to the right wall of the room, in the middle. There was a bed to his left, and a small bedside table to the left of the bed. There was nothing else there.
With his undamaged left hand, he slowly groped his way across the damp floor until he grasped the bed leg. His index finger touched the inside of the leg, finding some uneven surfaces, as if something was stuck there.
Eric pulled his hand back and sniffed his fingertips, catching a peculiar, putrid smell. He thought the bed legs were metal, and even if they rusted in a damp environment, they shouldn't smell like this; it smelled more like rotting food.
He was very familiar with this smell. In the concentration camp, he had sifted through the swill thrown away by the soldiers countless times to find edible scraps to fill his stomach. As a child, he knew the stages of decay of each type of food and the smells they emitted, but those years had passed too long ago and were now somewhat blurred. However, when he smelled this smell again, those past scenes surged up.
How could food be stuck to the inside of the bed? Regardless of whether his character had been locked here before, it made no sense for food to end up there. Under such dire conditions, not a single grain of food could be wasted. Eric had seen far too many people fighting over food like dogs.
He continued to shift his body, enduring the pain, trying to straighten the chains as much as possible to give his left hand more room to move. Eric had always been very tolerant of pain, not entirely because of his childhood experiences, but because he always wanted too much, and physical pain could not fill even a fraction of the space for his mental anxiety.
Eric took a deep breath and continued to feel around the foot of the bed, scratching at the uneven spot with his fingernail.
He felt something fall down, and there were obvious dents on the surface of the bed leg.
He continued to pry, and finally felt a large clump of something fall off, like a tightly squeezed piece of bread. When he reached out to touch it again, a hole appeared in the previously uneven surface.
“Ah, a common little trick.” Eric leaned against the wall, struggling to lift his eyelids so that the sweat that had slipped down his face from the pain would run down the sides of his eyes. “Back in the Virginia prison, prisoners would hide important things in the legs of tables, usually by using the handle of a hidden spoon to hollow out the inside of the table leg. It was easy to fool the guards.”
Eric felt around inside, but there was nothing there. So, Eric reached for the piece of bread. After crushing the bread, he found a small key inside, which felt like a prison key.
Unfortunately, even with the key, he couldn't leave, because he was currently nailed to the wall. Due to the height restriction of the chains, he couldn't even stand up; he was at least two meters away from the cell door.
This was certainly not a certain death trap. Eric used his left hand to feel around within the wall he could reach. There was fine gravel on the ground that stung his skin, but he couldn't find anything. He then turned to his right and, in the dim light from outside the cell on the right, he saw a brick at the far end of the right wall that looked different.
Eric rolled over, turning to face the wall, and reached out with his good left hand to try and reach the brick. But he found that even when he stretched the chain to its maximum length, it was still about a hand's width short.
The distance wasn't particularly long, but it wasn't short either. It was impossible to reach it by pushing the limits of human endurance, and Eric didn't want to lose one of his collarbones right off the bat, so he had to use tools.
But as far as he could see, he saw no usable tools. There was no mattress or straw mat on the bed, and nothing under it. The metal bed frame was too heavy to lift.
Eric looked at the key in his hand again. In typical puzzle games, the initial item you receive can't be completely useless except for solving the final puzzle. Thinking along these lines, the key must have other uses besides opening doors.
It was a very ordinary key, with a curved metal circle at the top and key teeth at the bottom. Eric stroked the key teeth and found that the very last tooth was a triangle with a sharp bottom.
Eric immediately realized what was happening. The entire cell was made of bricks about the length of an adult's forearm, with gaps between them. However, likely due to their age, the gaps weren't filled with cement or anything like that, but rather with ordinary mud. This meant that with a little effort, the bricks could be pried off.
In the cellars of forest villages in the Balkans, he once used this tactic to ambush militia. All he had to do was loosen the soil holding the bricks together, and when he kicked a person against the wall, the entire wall would collapse and bury them. Caught off guard, even armed enemies were powerless to resist.
Eric didn't choose the brick closest to his left hand because it wouldn't allow him to fully extend his arm or dig quickly enough. He chose the brick to the left of it, which was a good distance away and made it easier to exert force with his arm.
Eric began digging along the bricks. The soil inside wasn't exactly soft, but it was still manageable. Judging from the feel of the bricks, they weren't very thick; he estimated he could dig them out in about ten minutes.
But Eric felt things weren't that simple. Although he had his collarbone pierced at the start and had to endure the excruciating pain to reason and do this and that, he felt the current difficulty was still a bit too easy, not even as difficult as when he was being hunted by an arms oligarch in Honduras and escaped by being locked in a shipping container.
Where is Charles? They both entered the instance together; there's no reason for him to escape while the other party reaps the benefits. Charles is likely in great danger as well.
With that in mind, he no longer held back and began digging at top speed. Mentally counting down the seconds, after about seven minutes, the brick became movable. After ten minutes, he finally dug it out.
The bricks were quite heavy, and he had to straighten his arm and lift one brick to reach another when he turned around. His hands were already a little sore from digging for a long time, and he failed to reach one after several attempts.
Eric rested for a few seconds, taking deep breaths; sweat soaked through his gray T-shirt. He gritted his teeth, picked up the brick again, and slammed it down on the abnormal one. With a loud bang, the brick was dented.
Eric breathed a sigh of relief; his thinking must have been correct.
"Bang, bang, bang." After three or four more blows, with a "clang," the brick actually fell to the side. Then, a large amount of water gushed out from the gap.
Is that a water prison on the other side? But that's clearly not right either. Eric struggled to turn his head and look up; the wall behind him was much thicker than that. If it were only one layer of bricks, then the way he had just struck it would have been enough to make the wall collapse.
Just as Eric was pondering what was going on, a hand emerged from the gap after the brick fell.
Eric's eyes widened in surprise at first, but he quickly recognized Charles's hand in the dim light from outside the door.
The other person gestured to him, and Eric immediately understood. He himself had injured his shoulder, and the other person was likely unable to speak, meaning he might be submerged in water. Unfortunately, abilities were restricted in the instance, preventing Charles from communicating with him telepathically.
Soon, something emerged from the crack where the bricks had fallen. Eric squinted for a closer look; it was a crowbar. But what was it used to pry open?
Eric looked around and suddenly remembered that there was a hole in the corner of the bed where he had pried out a piece of bread. The remaining connecting part was not much and therefore not very strong. He just needed to insert the bent end of the crowbar into the hole, and he should be able to break the bed leg.
But this was irreversible. Eric needed to know what the point of breaking the bed legs would be. There were no clues above the bed, so Eric strained his neck to look underneath. His collarbone ached from the pulling, but he felt mostly numb. Seeing Charles invigorated him; dopamine made him almost forget the pain.
At this moment, Charles reached out again and pointed towards the head of the bed. Eric roughly understood, and after observing carefully for a while, he discovered that the bed actually originally only had three legs.
Now, the leg with the hole in it is the lower left leg, while the upper left leg is missing altogether. The three legs can still barely provide stable support, but if the lower left leg also breaks, the entire bed will tip to the left. But what's the point of it tipping over?
Just then, Charles made another gesture—"Quick!"
Alarm bells rang in Eric's mind. He knew Charles very well; if it weren't a matter of life and death, Charles would never urge him to solve the mystery. His most frequent phrases were "Take your time," "Don't rush, Eric," and "It'll be alright soon"—something must have gone wrong on his end!
Just as he was getting anxious, Eric noticed something in the darkest corner, the top left corner of the bed, that looked like a lever, and it was currently raised. If the bed fell, it would probably smash down this lever, which must be connected to something.
Without hesitation, Eric picked up a crowbar, hooked it into the hole, and pried it open with all his might. The bed leg was slowly bending, but the speed was too slow. Eric couldn't wait any longer. He gritted his teeth and, with a burst of fierce strength, slammed it against the bed leg.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
In just three moments, the bed legs collapsed. With a loud bang, the bed slammed to the left. The instant the bed rail was struck, filthy, murky water gushed out from the nearby sluice gate, spraying for several seconds and almost completely flooding the room before finally stopping.
Because he wasn't far away, Eric was soaked to the bone, but he heard a low breathing sound coming from the other side.
"Are you alright, Charles?" he asked, leaning against the wall, panting heavily.
"I'm fine. I was just trapped in a water prison. I could only move my hands, and the water level kept rising. If you had been ten seconds slower, I probably would have drowned." The other person's breathing was wet and labored, but still gentle.
Eric breathed a sigh of relief; thankfully, he was fast enough. Every decision he made was made quickly and executed decisively; if he had been even a fraction slower, his teammates would have been killed at the start of the game.
They both fell silent for a second, realizing at the same moment how difficult this game would be.