Chapter 4622: Desperate Escape (Part 1)

Dark, damp, enclosed. Eyes opened, consciousness returned. Erik just regained consciousness and felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder.

He turned his head and saw an iron ring as thick as two fingers piercing through his collarbone; the 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 his right hand couldn't even fully extend, so he could only sit against the wall. Within the reach of his left hand, there was only one leg of the bed.

"Damn it..."

He couldn't help but mutter to himself. Just slightly turning his head pulled the muscles in his shoulder, making him dizzy and almost unable to concentrate.

Erik took a deep breath and began to analyze how this start came about. He moved his eyeballs to scan the situation in the room, and when he saw the iron bars on one side of the wall, he realized he was in a prison cell.

There was no light source inside the cell, only a torch on the wall to the right outside the cell, but the flame was very weak, only illuminating the area near the bars. After his eyes adapted to the darkness, he could only barely see half of the room.

Erik found that he was fixed to the wall on the right side of the room, in the middle section, with a bed on his left, and a small bedside table to the left of the bed; there was nothing else.

He used his intact left hand to grope slowly on the damp ground until he grabbed the bed leg. His index finger felt some uneven places on the inside of the bed leg, as if something was stuck there.

Erik pulled his hand back, sniffed his fingertips, and smelled a distinct stench of rot. He thought, the bed leg is metal, even if it rusts in a damp environment, it shouldn't have this smell; this is more like the smell of rotting food.

He was very familiar with this smell. When he was in the concentration camp, he didn't know how many times he had rummaged through the swill thrown away by those soldiers to find leftover scraps to fill his stomach. He knew the stages of decay of every kind of food and the smells they would emit like the back of his hand; it's just that those years had passed too long, and now they were a bit blurry, but when he smelled this smell again, the scenes of the past surged up.

But how could food be stuck on the inside of the bed leg? No matter whether the character he was playing had been locked here, it was completely unreasonable to get food in that place. Under such difficult conditions, not a single bit of food could be wasted. Erik had seen too many people fighting for food like dogs.

He continued to move his body while enduring the pain, stretching the chain as much as possible to leave more room for his left hand to move. Erik had always been able to endure pain; this wasn't entirely because of his childhood experiences, but because he always wanted too much, and physical pain couldn't occupy half of the space of mental anxiety.

Erik took a deep breath, continued to grope for the bed leg with his hand, and used his fingernails to dig at the uneven place.

He felt something fall off, and there was a very obvious dent on the surface of the bed leg.

Continuing to dig hard, he finally felt a large clump of things fall off, feeling like bread that had been squeezed tight. When he reached out to touch it again, a hole appeared where it had been uneven.

"Ah, common little tricks," Erik leaned against the wall, trying hard to lift his eyelids, letting the sweat caused by the pain flow down the sides of his eyes, "When I was in a prison in Virginia, there would be inmates who hid important things in the table legs, usually using the handle of a spoon they had hidden to hollow out the inside of the table leg; this is very easy to deceive the eyes of the prison guards."

Erik groped around, but there was nothing in the hole. So, Erik went to touch the piece of bread again. After he crushed the bread, he found a small key inside, which felt like the key to the cell door.

Unfortunately, he couldn't leave even with the key, because he was currently nailed to the wall. Because of the height limit of the chain, he couldn't even stand up, and he was at least two meters away from the cell door.

This obviously couldn't be a dead end. Erik groped again within the range of the wall he could reach; there was fine sand on the ground, which rubbed his skin painfully, but he didn't touch anything. He turned his head to look at his right side again, and borrowing the weak light outside the cell, he saw that a brick on the end of the right wall was different.

Erik turned over, faced the wall, and reached out with his intact left hand, wanting to reach that brick. But he found that even if he stretched the chain to the longest, he was still about a palm's distance away.

This distance isn't long, but it isn't short either. In any case, it's impossible to reach it by challenging the limits of the human body, and Erik didn't want to lose a collarbone right from the start, so he had to use tools.

But within his line of sight, he didn't see any tools he could use. There was no mattress on the bed, no straw mat, and there was nothing under the bed. The metal bed frame was also very heavy and couldn't be lifted at all.

Erik looked at the key in his hand again. In a general puzzle game, the props obtained at the beginning couldn't be completely useless except for solving the final puzzle. Thinking from this line of thought, the key must have some other uses besides opening the door.

This is a very ordinary key, with a metal circle bent out at the top and key teeth at the bottom. Erik rubbed the key teeth and found that the tooth at the very end was a triangle, and the bottom was relatively sharp.

Erik reacted immediately. The entire cell was composed of bricks as long as an adult's forearm, and there were gaps between the bricks, but because of the age, what was filled wasn't something like cement, but ordinary mud. This means that as long as he spent some effort, he could dig the bricks out.

In the cellar of a forest village in the Balkan Peninsula, he had used this trick to ambush militia; he only needed to loosen the mud connecting the bricks first, and when people were kicked against the wall, the whole wall would collapse and bury them. Caught off guard, even enemies with guns would have no power to fight back.

Erik didn't choose the brick closest to his left hand, because his arm couldn't stretch, and the digging speed wasn't fast enough. He chose the brick to the left of that brick, the distance was suitable, and his arm was easy to exert force.

Erik began to dig along the brick. Although the mud filled in it wasn't loose, it could be dug. Judging from the feel, this brick wouldn't be very thick, and it was estimated that it could be dug out in ten minutes or so.

But Erik felt that things weren't that simple. Although he was nailed through the collarbone at the start, having to endure severe pain to reason, do this and that, he felt that the difficulty now was still a bit simple, not even comparable to the difficulty of being chased by arms dealers in Honduras and escaping after being locked in a container.

Where did Charles go? They entered the dungeon together; it makes no sense for him to escape here while the other party can sit back and enjoy the fruits. Charles is probably also facing great danger.

Thinking of this, he didn't save his strength anymore and began to dig at the fastest speed. Counting the seconds in his heart, at about seven minutes, the brick was already movable. At ten minutes, he finally dug the brick out.

The brick was a bit heavy; when he turned, he had to straighten his arm and lift the brick to reach the other brick. Having just experienced long-term digging, his hand was already a bit sore, and he tried several times without success.

Erik rested for a few dozen seconds, breathed hard a few times, and sweat soaked his gray T-shirt. He gritted his teeth, lifted the brick again, and smashed it toward the brick with the abnormality. With a "bang," that brick was smashed in.

Erik let out a long breath; his line of thought should be correct.

"Bang, bang, bang." Smashed it three or four more times, and with a "clatter," the brick actually fell to the next room. Following that, a large amount of water sprayed out from the gap.

Is it a water prison opposite? But this is obviously not right; the wall he was leaning against behind him wasn't that thin. If there was only one layer of bricks, the knocking action he just made would have been enough to make the wall collapse.

Just as Erik was thinking about what was going on, after the brick fell, a hand reached out from the gap.

Erik widened his eyes in surprise, but soon he saw through the weak light outside the door that it was Charles's hand; he could recognize it.

The other party made a gesture toward him, and Erik understood it immediately. He had injured one side of his shoulder, and the other party might not be able to speak, which indicated that he might be soaked in water. Unfortunately, abilities were restricted in the dungeon, and Charles couldn't communicate mentally with him.

Soon, something reached over from the gap where the brick fell. Erik narrowed his eyes and looked carefully; it was a crowbar. But what was this used for?

Erik looked left and right; he suddenly thought that there was a hole in the bed leg where he had dug out a piece of bread, and there wasn't much connection left, so it wasn't that hard. He only needed to hook the bent front end of the crowbar into the hole, and he should be able to break the bed leg.

But this is irreversible. Erik had to know what the use was after breaking the bed leg. There were no clues to be seen above the bed; Erik tried hard to lower his head, wanting to see under the bed. The collarbone was pulled and hurt again, but it was more of a numbness. Seeing Charles made him feel energized, and the dopamine almost made him forget the pain.

At this time, Charles's hand reached over again and pointed toward the head of the bed. Erik roughly understood; he observed carefully for a while and found that this bed actually only had three legs originally.

Now, the one that was hollowed out was the leg on the lower left, and there was no leg on the upper left. Three legs were barely able to support it stably, but if this leg on the lower left also broke, the whole bed would fall to the left. But what was the significance of falling down?

Just then, Charles made another gesture—"Quick!"

Erik's heart rang with alarm bells. He knew Charles very well; if it weren't a matter of life and death, Charles would never urge him to solve the puzzle. His most common words were "take your time," "don't rush, Erik," "it will be fine soon"—something must be wrong on his side!

Just when he was anxious, Erik saw that in the darkest corner, which was the upper left corner of the bed, there was something like a lever, which was in a raised state now. If the bed fell, it should smash this lever down, which must be connected to something.

Erik didn't hesitate anymore, hooked the hole with the crowbar, and pried it outward violently. Although the bed leg was slowly bending, the speed was too slow; Erik really couldn't wait, so he gritted his teeth and smashed it toward the bed leg with a ruthless force.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

In just three hits, the bed leg collapsed directly. With a "bang," the bed smashed down to the left. The moment the lever was smashed down, dirty and turbid water gushed out from the gate on the side, spraying for dozens of seconds, almost flooding the entire ground of the room, before finally stopping.

Because it wasn't far, Erik was soaked all over, but he heard a low breath from the other side.

"Are you okay? Charles?" He leaned against the wall and asked, panting.

"I'm fine, I was just trapped in a water prison, only my hands could move, and the water level kept rising. If you were ten seconds slower, I would have probably drowned." The other party's panting had a damp chest sound, but it was still very gentle.

Erik let out a long breath; fortunately, his speed was fast enough. Every decision he made was decided quickly and executed firmly, but if he were a second slower, his teammate would have been killed at the start.

The two of them fell silent for a second, realizing at the same time just how difficult this game would be.