Chapter 827: Only This Once

"What are these people doing?" The several Black Epaulets members hiding in the air and monitoring the scene exchanged bewildered glances. One of them said, "Could they be hiding something special?"

"Are you blind? Didn't you see that butler was holding a spider!" Another said with irritation, "Who would hold a funeral for a spider? They're probably messing with us!"

The group immediately realized they had been exposed. After reporting the matter up the chain, they left from above the castle.

This group was gone, but there would definitely be another one coming. Xu Huo asked Mr. Dong whether he could sense the situation around the castle.

The castle's grounds were quite expansive, with no other residences nearby. The area was open, and with the abundance of greenery, it was well-suited for ambushes and surveillance. However, the Black Epaulets choosing the air as their first option suggested they had some understanding of the castle.

"The area that the District 011 government has officially approved as the castle's footprint is all within my management range," Mr. Dong replied.

There were quite a number of castles in the ancient city district, and since they weren't completely isolated in the outskirts far from the city, the private grounds of these castles weren't particularly large. Xu Huo had seen Mr. Dong control the castle before and had assumed he was the same type of item as the Painting Woman. Now it seemed there were differences.

Mr. Dong's true form was likely connected to spiders. Likewise, he possessed a certain level of intelligence, but compared to the Painting Woman who maintained a human form, Xu Huo felt he was more like Yan Jiayu's stone lion.

"Then I'll trouble you to clean up the players spying around the castle."

Mr. Dong lowered his head slightly and performed a gentleman's bow. "It is my duty."

After nightfall, all the main lights in the castle were extinguished, leaving only a few small lamps still burning, barely enough to reveal the rough silhouette of the building against the dark sky.

Perhaps it was an illusion caused by the lighting, but while the castle's outer shape hadn't changed, every window seemed to have grown smaller. Large curtains fluttered outside the windows, and whenever they flipped, they would occasionally cast strange shadows that seemed real and unreal at once.

The rose walls planted in front of and behind the castle also seemed to grow on their own in the darkness, silently climbing toward greater heights, forming bizarre-shaped barriers that concealed the buildings deeper within. Overlong branches or flower stems would occasionally reach toward the outside of the garden, like grasping hands.

The Black Epaulets approached the villa from different directions. Their main objectives were the annex and the third floor of the castle ahead.

However, with the front rose wall now so tall, it seemed to carry a hint of the maze in the garden behind the castle. The Black Epaulets couldn't exactly walk through the front gate in plain sight. Once they plunged into the dense garden, they discovered that the exits at both the front and back of the garden had been sealed off by flower branches, forcing them to climb over the top instead.

The Black Epaulets were all equipped with special protective suits that helped conceal their figures, but crossing over those flower branches still inevitably left exposed skin scratched.

"This thing only stabs at whatever isn't covered." A player whose lip was bleeding complained, "If you ask me, we should just burn the whole place down. The Enforcement Department could come in under the guise of firefighting, and we could search wherever we wanted. Didn't the Captain say that Dr. Deng definitely hasn't left Rose Castle?"

"The old castle might have allowed that, but recently the butler here replaced all the plants inside and out with mutant species. Do you believe that the second you set a fire, these flowers would rush over to put it out themselves?" His colleague patted him on the shoulder. "Let's handle business first."

The group climbed up the outer wall of the castle and entered a balcony on the third floor. However, the last person to climb up suddenly had his foot slip, and he pitched backward!

The Black Epaulet in front instinctively turned to grab him, but grasped nothing. When he looked down, the person was gone!

"Ambush!" This person immediately retreated into the room. But just then, the window on the side suddenly slammed against the wall with a loud bang. In the field of view of the night-vision goggles, a pair of enormous red eyes emerged from below the window and rapidly magnified!

"Ahhh!" This Black Epaulet clutched his head and screamed. The people in front turned around and saw a giant spider biting down on his head and tearing at him!

"Help him!" The Black Epaulets in the same squad all struck out, throwing ice, fire, and poison gas at the creature. But after that flurry of attacks, not only did the giant spider fail to die or get injured, it became even more frenzied and destructive, while its body showed a gradual tendency to expand!

"Is this a mutant or an item!" One Black Epaulet shouted, "Our tools and items are useless against it!"

"Head for the corridor!" Another retreated toward the door, "It's too big to fit through!"

The squad immediately charged into the corridor. But the giant spider not only followed them, it crashed through the door without any obstruction and directly crushed one Black Epaulet's leg!

The remaining members fought while retreating. Unfortunately, no matter what they tried, nothing worked. And as time passed, the spider's body grew larger and larger, until it was nearly touching the ceiling of the corridor!

Seeing the situation turning bad, several Black Epaulets decided to retreat. Half of them drew the giant spider's attention while the others went back to rescue their injured companion, planning to split up and leave.

Unfortunately, before they could even run out of the castle, the spider had already collapsed half the building, swinging its massive legs to slash and kill both in the air and on the ground!

"This spider is way too big! Is it real or fake!" The Black Epaulets dodged the spider while using instruments to scan it. In the end, the results showed that half of it was real, and half of it was fake!

"We might be in an illusion!" One of them activated a device specially designed to counter mental control. As a series of low-frequency waves pulsed out, this player looked forward again and immediately breathed a sigh of relief. "This isn't a giant item! It's an illusion!"

However, his companion suddenly tackled him to the ground, narrowly avoiding a spider leg that came slashing down from above. Staring at the massive appendage buried deep into the ground, this Black Epaulet said, "Our instruments might be malfunctioning. And the detection results you saw aren't necessarily real either. This place isn't safe to stay in. Let's go!"

So this squad ran back out the way they came, fleeing the castle in utter disarray. On the way to the assembly point, they ran into two other squads.

The squad that had gone to the annex was in especially bad shape. Most of them had to be carried out, and their faces were all mottled with various colors.

"How did you end up like this?"

They all knew the annex housed many venomous spiders, but all of them were locked in glass cases. As long as you didn't touch them, there shouldn't be any problem. How could so many people get poisoned at once!

Two robots scanned their bodies. The male Cheng Bing reported, "All members show significant mental fluctuations, proving they suffered a mental attack within the past ten minutes. Aside from five members with deeper poisoning, the rest are all lightly injured."

Yes, they were all lightly injured. Even that Black Epaulet who had been carried out with his legs "crushed" by the spider was the same. When the female Cheng Bing's instrument stimulated him, he got right back up.

"Wait, there's a note on your back." The female Cheng Bing called him to stop, removed the note, and held it up to read. At the same time, she transmitted its contents through her camera feed to Ran Ying back in the Enforcement Department:

"Only this once."