"What was that just now?" Modak asked confused, only just seeing the remnants of the fake wall that had hidden them just now. But Silvia barely even knew herself. She just moved without fully realising it herself.

  "I... I don't know... I just awakened a new skill? I'm level 7, just how..?" she asked, staring at the system message in front of her eyes.

  "Wait, skill? That was a skill just now? You can just paint things like that? Just in the air?"

  "Uh... I guess so?"

  While she was still trying to mentally catch up to what just happened, Silvia felt herself grow weak, and everything went white for a moment. Close to fainting, she dropped down onto a chair. She could also already tell what this was. Her mana was close to bottoming out. That had taken basically everything she had.

  "You okay?" Modak asked, placing his hand onto her shoulder. Though, he quickly flinched and pulled his hand away. Those magical spikes stuck in his hand made him both extremely numb and sensitive to the slightest things. It was a quite weird sensation. But Silvia didn't notice, and just nodded.

  "Yeah, I'm okay, I just need to wait and recover my mana a bit. But I guess we really lucked out, huh? I mean, if I hadn't gotten that skill, we might be..." Silvia went pale as she realized exactly what situation she had just gotten them out of, "... we might be dead right now."

  "But hey, we're not! So take it easy. Let's just relax and wait for Ryan, okay?"

  "You're right, let's do that!" the elf agreed, "Also, are you feeling better?"

  "A little. I am still figuring this whole thing out. But I think I'm well on my way. Actually, this might help push me over the edge to figuring out how to actually use my aura."

  Ryan pushed the plastic key into the lock and twisted it around. It opened up with a slight click, and the door almost immediately fell open.

  He took a few deep breaths as he put the backpack down next to the door. It was time to take down the last area boss. Ryan felt so close. This would be rough, for sure, but after this, it would hopefully be a clean ride all the way home. As long as they could avoid Richard after this, everyone could just get out of here and get to a safe place.

  "Let's do this," Ryan stepped through the door and started walking up the stairs into the attic. Whatever was chosen as the area boss of this place, it was going to be a rough ride. But as long as the gimmick was figured out, hit was possible to get rid of the boss easily enough. Like the vampire; the moment that Ryan showed it some blood, it went wild and could be killed in just a moment.

  The moment he got up into the attic, Ryan slammed down Gregor's machine so that the robot could get started setting it up, while Ryan himself started looking around. Depending on what you could find up here, there were supposed to be clues as to what the boss was.

  Circus attire would give you a murderous clown, old toys would give you a creepy little kid. But when Ryan saw what he was dealing with, he was both quite worried and glad. It was woodcarving tools, which hinted at the marionette. Runar had warned him of this one in particular, because it was especially dangerous. It could trap the opponent in its threads and tie them down, but that wasn't even why Ryan didn't want it.

  "Why'd it have to be a fucking doll..?" he shuddered. Maximus and Gregor stared at him, taken aback. Even Gaia and Jester, inside of their domains, looked at him confused, "Don't look at me like that! I know it's ironic, since I love building models, but these dolls are... different. It's creepy as hell that they move, you know?"

  The spirits' stares continued, "Okay, it's different with you guys! I don't know why it's different, but it just is, okay? You know what, when we get home later, I'll show you why I hate horror-themed dolls. It's this absolutely terrifying movie, and it's just... urgh, you don't even want to know. But you will, when I show you that movie," Ryan tried to explain. The spirits didn't seem particularly convinced, though that didn't make too much of a difference right now anyway. They just had to focus on what they were about to deal with.

  While Ryan continued looking around, he suddenly started hearing something. It was a laugh. A creepy, echoing laugh. Ryan shuddered immediately as he turned around. On the other side of the cluttered room, in front of the dirty, grime-covered window, was a puppet hanging off threads that didn't seem to connect to anything at all.

  The puppet looked rough. It looked like it was carved by an amateur. It was uneven, and cracked. Only had one ear and its head looked like it was still half a stump. Ryan had never tried woodcarving before, but he was sure that even he would be able to make something better than that. No wonder someone threw it up here.

  "Alright, let's take this thing down a notch, shall we?" Ryan cracked his knuckles and glanced over at Maximus. The moment he averted his gaze even slightly, the puppet was pulled away to the side, into the darkness behind some boxes stacked up in the corner of the attic. As it disappeared, it just left behind some more laughter that seemed to echo out of every single dark corner in this place.

  "It's fine, Ryan, there's nothing to be... scared of, it's just going to... it's just going to pop out of a random corner, stab you, bite you... give you splinters, and you're going to slam it down and break it. That's all. You're fine!"

  Instinctively, he turned the horn of shapeless water into a large axe, holding onto it tightly with both hands. He, then, of course, was just looking around himself, trying to catch the puppet moving around. Ryan was standing over Gregor and his rifle, so that the robot could shoot at it immediately the moment he saw it. Right now, Maximus was also waiting inside of his domain, ready to jump out the instant the puppet appeared somewhere in the corner of Ryan's sight.

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  They were just standing there for a few moments, until Ryan realised that this wasn't the way this worked. The puppet wouldn't just come jumping out at him. He knew that he had to do this himself. With a slight groan, he walked to the other side of the attic, trying to glance behind the boxes that the puppet had disappeared behind of.

  Ryan looked into the darkness, trying to poke his axe into it. Almost the instant his eyes got used to the darkness, that creepy laugh got louder an the puppet jumped out from behind Ryan, from between some other boxes. The moment Gregor saw it, he shot at the puppet, managing to hit it straight into the side of the head. The wood splintered a bit, but the bullet didn't penetrate all too far just yet.

  But at the same time, Maximus jumped out of his domain and tried to cut into the marionette's wood. His sword was cloaked in golden flames, as the attack was still infused with some holy energy. Ryan had no idea what exactly they were dealing with here, but there was always the possibility that this puppet was some kind of undead as well? After all, how else would it be moving? In the movie that scared the shit out of Ryan, the puppet was possessed by a ghost, so maybe this was the case here as well.

  Though, rather than the holy energy doing anything, the fire seemed much, much more effective. Not only did was the cut quite deep, but the puppet seemed actively scared of the fire that had deeply singed its wooden body.

  Ryan also turned around, trying to swing his axe at it, but by then, it was already dragged back by those half-invisible threads. The gimmick in this fight was pretty obvious, as far as he was concerned. They just had to cut the threads, and the puppet would die.

  But how the hell were they supposed to do that? It was moving way too fast, and it seemingly could move freely through the darkness of the room. Not to mention, the threads were almost invisible. You could see them just so slightly moving up from the puppet's wooden body, but not even an arm's length from where they started, they were completely invisible. So they would need to try and cut as close to the puppet's body as possible, which of course, was pretty damn hard when it kept moving around so... randomly.

  Whenever the puppet jumped out at Ryan, Gregor and Maximus would almost always get an attack in, and even Ryan managed to cut into it sometimes. He felt a bit annoyed that he was the slowest out of the three of them, but that was fine. He was in a pretty rough state right now, so this really wasn't so bad.

  But the more injured the puppet became, the clearer it was that Ryan was right; they had to cut through the threads, there was no other way to kill it. Hell, Gregor had hit it in the head so often that it seemed like they would be able to see through to the other side at any moment. This thing had no other weak-spots. But even when Ryan or Maximus did manage to get a slash at the threads holding it up, nothing seemed to work. Like the edges of the blades just slid right off before being able to cut through them. Maybe it was because they were moving around too fast or weren't taut enough.

  So... Ryan did have an idea. It might be reckless, but he didn't want to continue on for too long. He had already pushed past the two hours. He really, really had to get back to the others now.

  And so, the next time the puppet came around, neither Ryan, Gregor, nor Maximus did anything. Instead, they just let the puppet attack him. It opened its large, clattering mouth and chomped down onto Ryan's shoulder. It felt like he got stuck in some kind of vice. He closed his arms around the puppet so that it couldn't get away, like he was hugging it, and watched as Maximus jumped out and cut through the threads.

  Exactly, Ryan definitely saw him cutting through the threads this time. Even so, they were still there. Was this not how you had to kill this thing?

  "Fucking Runar, you never tell me the most important things about these places! Urgh!" He yelled loudly, while the puppet was trying to pull away from him. But Ryan didn't let it. He still had one more card up his sleeve. He started just dragging himself, and the puppet, over to the nearby stairs. If they couldn't kill the puppet, they just had to drag out the one controlling it.

  Taking a deep breath, because he was sure this was going to hurt, Ryan threw himself down the stairs. But instead of actually falling, he was actually just held by the threads as well. Plus, if he let go now, it felt like the puppet would take a massive chunk of his shoulder with it, so he was not going to do that.

  There was one more thing he could try, though. Ryan was already basically horizontal, with his feet still up at the edge of the stairway, while his upper body was held up by the puppet and its threads.

  "Gaia!" Ryan yelled out. He didn't like doing this, but he forcibly summoned the golem, right on top of himself. Even at just her smallest, she was still a one-metre tall pile of rocks. He remembered how heavy that box was when he first put her together. And unsealed, she was about ten times heavier than that. And so, Gaia's weight pressed down onto Ryan. And since he summoned her so that she would land on the puppet's back as well, Ryan didn't need to worry about accidentally letting go.

  Instead, though, he could tell that the sudden impact was enough to dislodge something above him, and he could feel himself falling again. So that he wouldn't be crushed to death, Ryan unsummoned Gaia, and let himself fall down onto the ground. He hit the stairs in an awkward way and had all the air forced out of his lungs, but at the very least he dragged out whatever was manipulating the puppet.

  The cloud of dust that was dragged up quickly revealed that, just as Ryan thought, it was another ghost. Just that it wasn't possessing the puppet. Seeing his chance, Maximus jumped at the ghost and cut through it, again killing it in just a single go, the same as the basement ghost.

  Ryan let out a loud yelp while gasping for air as the notification appeared above his head.

  [You have killed a Level 24 -Ghost Puppeteer Boss-]

  "M-Mhm..." Ryan slowly stood up, slamming the puppet down onto the ground annoyed. His shoulder was more than just sore. Luckily it didn't actually tear anything off, "Sorry for... using you like that Gaia. But we couldn't have done it without ya."

  The golem still seemed a bit perplexed, while Ryan climbed back up the steps. In the middle of the attic now stood a small pile of coins and a corresponding statue. However, just a moment later, confetti rained down from above him as another 'perfect completion' certificate appeared in the air.

  "Yes! Thank the gods," Ryan tore it out of the air and grabbed the statue before picking up Gregor and his rifle, which the robot had already folded back together, "Let's just get out of here."

  Ryan pushed everything into the almost fully-stuffed backpack and carefully put it on. It was pressing down onto exactly the spot that the puppet had chomped down on. But this was nothing. He could deal with it. He was fine.

  Without further ado, Ryan rushed out of the building. He just had to get to the gift shop where Silvia and Modak were waiting, and everything would be fine. Immediately, he rushed out of the haunted house, and almost immediately began sprinting to the gift shop. His ankle was still hurting, and his legs were in pretty bad shape in general. He had a few broken ribs by now, and it was hard to just breathe evenly at the moment, but even so, he just had to hurry.

  Silvia and Modak had to be worried out of their minds. Before long, Ryan got to the gift shop, pushing open the door without a moment's hesitation. Inside, Modak and Silvia snapped their heads around, startled. But the moment all three of them realised what this situation meant... well, they let just let out a simultaneous, long sigh of relief.

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