Chapter 4625: Desperate Escape (Part 4)

The faint, flickering candlelight by the door cast the entire room into a flickering ochre color. The side profile of the man leaning against the wall with his head hanging down reminded one of the mountain peaks in the last second of the sunset. His straight and sharp eyelashes moved slightly. The moment he opened his eyes, it was as if a storm had been stirred up in the room.

Consciousness returned, he continued to lift his eyes, and then let out a slight gasp. He turned his head to look at the collarbone on his right side.

He coughed twice, tilted his head back, and pressed it tightly against the wall. He reached out and fiddled with the iron chain on the collarbone ring; sharp pain came from his right shoulder, every branch of the dense nerves was screaming, but he only blinked his eyes.

After a long while, as if remembering something, he suddenly laughed. He tilted his head and lifted his eyes to look at the bed on the other side, then turned his face back to look at the candlelight, and then, groped upward along the iron chain, tracing the general outline of the collarbone ring with his fingers.

Without a doubt, this was an instrument of torture, not an ornament used to show personality in some punk culture. The metal ring, about two fingers wide, was completely sealed and pressed tightly against the collarbone bone, without any gap at all. It was absolutely impossible to pry the iron ring open in any way. The iron chain and the iron rod ring buckle were cast as one piece, without any gaps, and they couldn't be opened either.

Touching the edge where the collarbone ring met the skin, his fingers did not stop exploring, but continued inward, and with a force toward the upper connection point, his body trembled violently. His fingertips inserted into the wound.

Inward, downward, until he touched the back of the collarbone ring, and then explored toward the other side, discovering that the metal ring buckle was embedded in the bone. Because the shape of the collarbone from the inside out gradually rises, the edge of the buckle near the shoulder ground a groove into the collarbone, and that happened to be the thinnest part of the collarbone.

The moment he pulled his finger out, his body trembled again. Wiping the blood on the hem of his clothes, he clenched his hand into a fist, pressed his index finger against the lower edge of the collarbone, inserted his thumb into the wound, groped all the way inward, and touched the groove where the collarbone ring was worn on the outside.

His index finger pushed forward, pressing against the outside of the collarbone. His thumb nail caught into the groove, and he pried upward with force.

"Uh!!!!!"

Sweat slid down from his forehead, and then his whole body felt as if it had been soaked. After the gap was further enlarged, he changed his posture, extended his fingers from the wound below, locked his shoulder with the strength of his right arm muscles, and exerted force with both his left hand and right hand simultaneously, prying upward fiercely along the groove.

Crack!

The bone cracked, but it was not a transverse fracture, but a diagonal crack inward from the groove. This is also the case for most fractures. He had to reach in again, pinch the side of the collarbone with the buckle, pull it outward bit by bit, until the diagonal crack became larger and larger, and then pry downward again.

"Uh!!!!!!"

Crack.

The two sections of the collarbone were finally completely dislocated. Fresh blood and bone fragments flowed out along the enlarged wound. He pushed the buckle with his hand, found it wouldn't move, so he had to continue to exert force until the two sections of the collarbone were completely separated. Using his fingernail to catch the bottom of the buckle, he pushed it fiercely toward the shoulder side.

Crack! Clatter!

The buckle finally left his body, along with the iron chain, and hit the wall. He sat on the spot panting heavily, and after a long while, he rubbed the collarbone back into place with trembling hands, and could even barely lift his right arm.

Then he stood up with the support of his intact hand, and after checking the bed board, he looked under the bed. After finding the lever under the bed, his eyes fell on the bed leg. He squatted down to check carefully, found the key and the notch, and then kicked the bed leg fiercely with his foot.

Bang! Bang... Bang!

Click!

Whoosh—!!!

Murky water gushed out. Soon, the sound of faint gasping came from the opposite room, followed by loud cursing.

"What the hell is going on! Why am I in the water?! Anatoli! Anatoli! Where are you?"

"I'm next door to you." Anatoli's Adam's apple moved, he wiped the sweat on his forehead with his hem, and walked over to squat down and check the wall. His index finger soon touched the loose brick, and after standing up, he kicked it fiercely twice. With a bang, the brick flew over.

"Ouch!" Lucifer screamed, "What are you doing!"

"Get out of the way." Anatoli said.

"I can't get out of the way!" Lucifer pulled the chain forcefully, "I'm tied up. There's a lock here, do you have the key..."

Clang! Anatoli threw the key over through the notch.

Lucifer fumbled to open the chain. Anatoli looked over there through the notch, but then caught a glimpse of the crowbar beside Lucifer's hand.

"Give me that thing." Anatoli pointed to the crowbar.

Lucifer seemed to have just discovered the crowbar, picked it up with some surprise to look at it, and then said: "So I was supposed to use this thing to save myself just now? But I didn't find it at all just now..."

"Give it to me first." Anatoli emphasized.

Lucifer passed the crowbar over through the notch. Anatoli hooked the curved hook of the crowbar onto the wall brick and exerted force fiercely, prying off a wall brick. Immediately after, it was the second, the third...

"Wait," Lucifer shouted, "you aren't going to tear down this whole wall, are you?"

"I checked, this is not a load-bearing wall." Anatoli said, "Stay far away, don't get hit."

Lucifer opened his mouth, clearly still wanting to say something, but with a bang, another brick flew over. He nimbly ran to the corner on the opposite side of the room.

Anatoli didn't pry the bricks with brute force, but with technique. He needed to wedge the crowbar in the right position first and use the lever principle to bring the bricks down. It looked much more troublesome than just smashing, but in reality, it was very efficient. Even for those wall brick gaps that hadn't been corroded, as long as the crowbar could wedge in, it could be pried off.

It could be seen that Anatoli was very skilled in using the crowbar, one could even say it was superb. Lucifer couldn't help but ask: "How do you know how to do this too?"

"Because I can't just wave my hand and conjure up a house out of thin air." Anatoli said while working, "Building a house requires bricks, and new bricks are expensive, so when moving, you have to tear down the old house completely and take it with you, including the walls and stairs."

"Oh." Lucifer could only say this, "Well, I didn't expect you to know how to do this. I've never seen you do this kind of work."

"Heh." Anatoli laughed, he said, "How do you think I escaped from the dungeon under the Lava Mountain? By chanting magic?"

Lucifer wasn't familiar with this place name, but mentioning the dungeon, he remembered that when he once sent people to hunt down Anatoli and the Soviet soldier squad in hell, it seemed to be a fire demon troop under Azazel that forced them into a dungeon. But later, they still managed to escape.

At that time, when he heard this news, he just cursed Azazel for being useless. However, by that time he had already failed many times, and didn't really want to think about how this group of people escaped.

"So you dug your way out?" Lucifer asked.

"That's right." The bricks pried down by Anatoli were scattered all over the floor, and the hole had already expanded to the size of half a person.

"But it's very hot there, and there's magma." Lucifer thought for a while and said, "Didn't you dig into magma?"

"Almost. Once, magma did flow out in the passage, but we blocked it quickly. After that, we would judge where there was magma and wouldn't dig in that direction."

"Too magical." Lucifer exclaimed, "That's a dungeon left over from ancient times, I dare say even Azazel hasn't been in there. If he went in, he might even get lost."

Bang! Another brick was pried off. Anatoli stepped back a bit, judged the size of the hole, and crawled in with his head down. The hole was just big enough for one person to pass through.

The moment he saw Lucifer after crawling over, Anatoli was stunned.

"How do you have wings???"

Lucifer flapped his wings: "How could I not have wings? I'm an angel."

"I know, but this dungeon restricts abilities..."

"Yes, I can't use superpowers." Lucifer said, "But wings are my organs, just like your heart and lungs, they were there when I was created. You can't not bring your heart into the game, right?"

"I thought everyone would be restricted to human form."

"Then how do those animal-form superheroes get in?"

Anatoli was speechless.

Lucifer explained: "Dungeons that restrict abilities don't force everyone into human form. If that were the case, the existence of other races wouldn't be able to play. To be precise, it turns them into their most original form. Those who were cats become cats after entering, those who were dogs become dogs after entering, and those who were angels will also be angels after entering. Of course, except for Bruce, his wings weren't his to begin with."

"But you can't fly."

"Yes, because I didn't rely on wings to fly in the first place." Lucifer said, "When God created angels, he gave them wings, but not for them to fly with wings. Wings only have a decorative function, we rely on superpowers to fly. Without superpowers, we can't fly."

"How come they didn't turn you back into the First Light?"

"Dungeons that restrict abilities don't allow mysterious existences." Lucifer said, "If mysterious existences want to participate, they must sign a consent form and participate in the game with a realistic image closest to their original form. This is my realistic image."

Anatoli sighed softly, waved his hand at him and said: "Stand aside, let me see if there are any clues here."

Lucifer nodded, he just wanted to step back, when he sniffed lightly: "There's a smell of blood, are you injured?"

"I was also tied to the wall just now." Anatoli said briefly. He soon saw the water outlet on the ceiling, he held the crowbar and gestured, finding that it was difficult to reach the very inside of the water outlet with the crowbar, so he walked over and picked up a brick.

He waved his hand at Lucifer again, letting Lucifer step back a bit, and threw the brick upward forcefully himself.

Bang!

Clatter!

The brick and the key fell down together. Anatoli walked forward to pick up the key, but Lucifer kept staring at his right arm that wasn't moving much.

"Is your arm injured?" Lucifer asked, "How did you get injured?"

"Fractured." Anatoli said. He walked to the door with the key to try, and indeed opened the door, then stood by the door and thought for a moment, and after a sudden realization, said: "So the normal process doesn't require breaking the collarbone?"

"What?" Lucifer didn't quite understand what he said.

At this time, Anatoli had already walked out of the door, and found that outside the door was a closed corridor, and there was another big door to open. So he walked back to the room he was in before.

Lucifer also walked in, subconsciously starting to observe the things in the room, and then, upon seeing the blood-stained collarbone ring, the feathers on his wings stood on end. ===== CHAPTER 4626 =====