When The Silver Bell Of Charlotte's Pharmacy Rings (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 169

Tae Mi slowly stretched his leg over the cold, damp floor. A terrifying pain, as if his knee were about to split apart, pounded through his foggy, sluggish mind and jolted him wide awake.

Cursing under his breath, he gently massaged his aching knee. At first, even the slightest touch threatened to make him scream, but he held back and slowly exhaled. Pain, after all, was something to be soothed—not confronted head-on. Trying to fight it directly would be even dumber than attempting to wrestle a bear barehanded.

As the pain in his knee eased slightly, a new worry poked its head up: how to escape this place. Tae Mi recalled something Captain Barrett—Charlotte’s father—once told him while ruffling his hair.

〈Life is an endless chain of worries, Tae Mi. As soon as you solve one, another follows right behind. If you start getting tired of them or afraid, life will swallow you whole. Your goal should be to smash them one by one.〉

But smashing them is way too hard, Tae Mi thought, letting out a hollow laugh as he lowered his head. It was one thing for worries to keep piling up—that he could accept—but this…?

Closing his eyes, Tae Mi took a sharp breath and tried to gather his scattered thoughts into focus. He recalled the general outline of the mansion he’d seen from afar and the location of the entrance leading down to the cellar.

‘It’s dark, but the air isn’t stuffy—so there must be some opening connecting to the outside…’

There were no windows in the cellar. Though the space reeked of something deeply rotten and the heavy, musty scent of mold—as if buried among books untouched for a century—it wasn’t hard to breathe. That meant there had to be some kind of ventilation opening somewhere. But where?

“Damn it… I wish there was at least one other living person here, conscious or not.”

Tae Mi grumbled. Behind the bars opposite him lay the Grimmel couple, both already looking like corpses side by side. Though Mrs. Grimmel’s condition seemed worse… either way, given a bit more time, both would end up the same.

The chain wasn’t particularly short, yet it still made movement difficult. It was unbearably heavy, and with his injured leg, Tae Mi couldn’t even move freely within the narrow cell.

‘Why was a space like this built in the first place? Judging by the bars, it’s clearly not something new—made just a day or two ago. Were people imprisoned here until they died, or what? Wait a moment…’

Tae Mi repeatedly approached the bars and then stepped back. Frowning, he reached through the bars and touched the lock. A solid metal lump met his fingers—but it felt smooth, not rough. In contrast, the bolt securing it was coarse. Though made of iron, patches of rust had formed here and there, making it rough to the touch.

‘So it wasn’t originally a prison. Maybe it was used to store things? Though it’s rather damp… perhaps the dampness made it unsuitable for storage, so they just abandoned it.’

It was truly regrettable that Grimmel was already dead. Had he been alive, Tae Mi could’ve questioned him about all sorts of things… though whether Grimmel would’ve answered was another matter entirely.

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