My Avatar Is Becoming the Final Boss-Chapter 43: Fury

As he reached the edge of the attic, a sudden downpour started outside the window. Amid the crashing sound of rain, Ji Minghuan looked at the locked wooden door, slid the Binding Restraint through the hole, and unlatched the lock on the other side.
Then he retracted the strap, pushed open the door, carefully stepped out without waking the girl behind him, and descended the stairs.
Returning to the library after so many days, Ji Minghuan glanced around and slightly twitched his nose, taking in the smell of old books. He couldn't remember how many mornings and evenings he'd spent breathing in that scent.
By now the rain outside was pouring harder, the wind slamming every window of the library with loud bangs.
But Ji Minghuan’s focus wasn’t on the building—it was on the staircase at the edge of the library leading downward.
He moved cautiously, silencing his footsteps as he approached the basement entrance. Step by step, he ventured into the dark and arrived at the iron door he’d been forbidden to touch.
He pressed the Binding Restraint against the iron door. Like rainwater, its sensory extension seeped forward, revealing the scene behind the door.
Narrow, damp, oppressive—maybe it really was just an ordinary basement.
Ji Minghuan lifted his right hand, eyes cast downward at the lock. Using the pitch-black Binding Restraint, he carefully executed a series of fine-tuned maneuvers and silently unlocked the door one layer at a time.
Then with a soft clang, he pushed open the door. Behind it was a passageway that led into pitch-black darkness.
Still in “Binding Restraint Camouflage” mode, he slowly walked deeper into the basement. It wasn’t what Ji Minghuan had imagined. There was no sign this was the Research Facility. The more he saw, the more this place just looked like an ordinary basement.
That was when the sharp sensory feedback from the Binding Restraint picked up a faint sound of breathing.
Under the mask, Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow and moved toward the source. He descended another flight of stairs and came to a corner.
He raised his right hand and extended the Binding Restraint.
The Binding Restraint’s senses were especially sharp in the dark. Deep in a cramped corner of the basement, he saw a black-haired girl in tattered clothes. Her right hand and ankle were chained to a nearby stone pillar. Her body was covered in injuries—mostly bruises.
Through his sensory feed, Ji Minghuan saw her face clearly.
He froze for a second, then his eyes widened slightly in the dark.
He had seen this girl when he first entered the orphanage. Her name was Xu Keyin. Both of them were frail and sickly, often huddled in the corner of the playground reading together. Eventually, they became friends. They didn’t talk much, but she was one of the very few people Ji Minghuan genuinely considered a friend.
Then one day, she suddenly disappeared—without any warning, like snow vanishing in the palm of your hand.
Soon after, the old headmaster ed her disappearance to the police, but despite years of investigation, there were never any leads. The case eventually ended unresolved.
Everyone at the orphanage, including Ji Minghuan, believed she was either dead or kidnapped by human traffickers.
No one ever imagined that the girl had been locked in this basement the entire time. While they lay comfortably in their dorm beds at night, she leaned against a cold, damp wall, forcing herself to fall asleep.
Only one person could have done this. Only one person had the keys to this basement:
—the Headmaster.
[Card Event No. 1 Completed. Reward acquired: Event Card — “Caged Bird.”]
Seeing the wounds covering the girl’s body, Ji Minghuan’s pupils contracted.
He tried to open his mouth, but no words came out.
His bangs fell over his eyes behind the mask, the corners of his lips twitching slightly. Every Binding Restraint wrapped around his body was faintly trembling, drawing back its senses as if refusing to let him witness the girl’s misery any longer.
After a moment, he slowly raised his head and, with a blank expression, looked toward the surveillance camera in the basement—as if locking eyes with whoever was behind the screen.
.............
.............
Three minutes later, inside the Headmaster’s office.
Outside, rain pounded relentlessly. The old headmaster wiped his hair with a hot towel, entered the office holding a cup of tea, and sat at his desk. Just as he was about to open the computer and review the surveillance logs, the window behind him suddenly burst open. A black strap coiled tightly around his neck and yanked him back against the chair.
“Talk... who took Ji Minghuan and Kong Youling away a month ago?” Black Cocoon deactivated “Binding Restraint Camouflage,” revealing himself, and whispered by his ear.
“I... I don’t know...”
The headmaster’s face turned red. His hands clutched desperately at the strap around his neck, like he was strangling a black serpent. But the Binding Restraint didn’t budge—its suffocating grip dragged him into a drowning abyss.
“You don’t know? Oh right, there are always ways to make you know.”
With that, Black Cocoon wrapped the man’s lower body with the Binding Restraint and activated the newly acquired skill—“Binding Restraint Verity.”
[Binding Restraint Verity: Forces a person bound by your Binding Restraint to speak the truth.]
“No identifying features... they were completely wrapped up.” the headmaster croaked.
“What do you remember?” Black Cocoon asked word by word, his voice rumbling like thunder.
“I remember a symbol on their uniforms under their coats.”
“A symbol? What symbol?”
“Let me go... let go of me, I’ll draw it for you, I’ll draw it!” the headmaster rasped.
Hearing that, Black Cocoon loosened the restraint slightly and tossed a pen on the floor with the Binding Restraint like throwing food to a dog.
The headmaster picked up the pen, slid off the chair, knelt to the floor, and with a trembling hand, drew a hexagram—one circle in the middle, surrounded by a larger circle connecting all six points.
Under his mask, Ji Minghuan froze. That symbol had appeared before in the memories of his No. 2 game character.
After losing his mind, Xia Pingzhou’s former teammate, “Traffic Light,” had become a maniac who hunted Exorcists. He left behind a hexagram at every crime scene, along with a line of Latin:
—Sodalitas Salvifica (Salvation Society).
The hexagram in his memory and the one the headmaster just drew... were exactly the same.
Why did Traffic Light leave that same symbol and the Latin phrase for “Salvation Society” after his murders?
“Salvation Society...” Black Cocoon repeated the Latin phrase left by Traffic Light, narrowing his eyes. “The people who took me and Kong Youling had that same hexagram on their uniforms. Could it be... the Instructors came from this group called the ‘Salvation Society’?”
He tapped the computer keyboard with the Binding Restraint. A moment later, he said, “All surveillance footage from those two days is missing?”
Clutching his aching throat, the headmaster gasped, “That was their demand... I had no choice!”
Black Cocoon sat down in the swivel chair, tilted his head, and pressed his gloved fingers together. “Let me guess—you got quite a few perks from them, didn’t you?”
“No, absolutely not! I only thought it would be better for those two kids if—”
Black Cocoon wrapped him in the Binding Restraint again and used “Binding Restraint Verity” to force the truth.
“I... I got two hundred thousand from them.” the headmaster corrected himself, his voice barely recognizable.
“You sold your conscience for money. You handed over these parentless kids—kids nobody would care about even if they vanished—to monsters.” Black Cocoon said slowly. “Why? Did the money really mean more to you than the safety of those two children?”
As he spoke, his gaze drifted to the safe in the corner of the office.
The headmaster muttered, “Th-they threatened me!”
“If they really threatened you... then why didn’t you it to the Reality-altering Esper Association?” Black Cocoon interlocked his fingers and tilted his head. “Or are you saying even the Esper Association couldn’t deal with them?” He paused. “That’s not it, is it? You were never threatened to begin with.”
As he spoke, the Binding Restraint suddenly shot out, grabbed the safe hidden inside the bookshelf, and slammed it to the ground with force.
With a loud bang, the safe shattered. Amid arcs of electricity splashing like flowing water, metal fragments flew in all directions. A letter fell to the floor.
Black Cocoon picked up the letter with the Binding Restraint, tore it open, and glanced inside to find a thick wad of banknotes.
He used the Binding Restraint as a substitute for his right hand to flip through the bills, confirming the total amount.
"Two hundred thousand yuan," Black Cocoon did a quick count, "So... just for two hundred thousand, you sold your soul and handed over the orphanage kids to some unknown people, without a care for their future. Did you ever, even for one second, feel the slightest bit of guilt, Headmaster?"
"You’ve misunderstood."
"Oh? You’re sure... I’m the one who misunderstood?"
Black Cocoon’s previously casual tone shifted. He slowly raised his mask, his deep eyes locking coldly onto the headmaster’s face.
In the next second, the Binding Restraint hurled the headmaster out the window, sending him plummeting ten meters through the storm, only to yank him back just before hitting the ground and slam him hard into the floor. He skidded several meters before crashing into the tea table.
Soaked by the rain, the headmaster looked like a drenched rat. He lifted his head, his face twisted with terror, pale as he stared at Black Cocoon’s mask.
"It was my fault... it was all my fault."
He rasped, stumbling to his knees in panic.
"That girl you locked in the basement and abused day and night... how do you explain that?"
"It was all my fault, all my fault..." the headmaster trembled all over.
"You won’t even try to explain?"
"Spare me... please forgive me..."
"Alright, I forgive you," Black Cocoon said calmly. After all, he thought, no one holds grudges against the dead.
As soon as he finished speaking, the pitch-black Binding Restraint surged forward like a tide, gently lifting the headmaster, then slithering like thorny vines over his thighs, spiraling up around his waist, and finally wrapping around his neck.
The Binding Restraint looped once, tied a knot—a death knot—and suddenly tightened.
Black Cocoon narrowed his eyes, silently watching.
The man’s body twitched violently, his face flushed red as he struggled. Then, like reeds cut at the stalk, his arms slowly drooped, and his head slumped down. His eyes, still wide open, stared at the floor—lifeless.
In the midst of the blood-soaked silence, a tall black shadow stood motionless.
Under the mask, Ji Minghuan’s face was unreadable. He twitched his nose slightly as the smell of blood rushed into his nostrils.
A deathly stillness enveloped the office. Outside, wind and rain lashed the window, sweeping in at an angle and lifting the hem of his coat.
"Still too impulsive... If the Instructor finds out the headmaster died at Black Cocoon’s hands, he’ll start suspecting me."
He murmured softly in the sound of the rain.
After a long silence, Ji Minghuan reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his phone, and held it to his ear to call Gu Qiye.
"Who is this?" came the response quickly.
"Mr. Blue Arc... I need your help," Ji Minghuan said through the voice changer, trying to maintain his usual playful and composed tone, though his voice came out slightly hoarse.
"You again..."
Hearing his voice, Gu Qiye’s tone darkened.
"Come to Saint Dilly Orphanage..." Ji Minghuan said expressionlessly. "The headmaster’s office. There’s a body here. I need you to cover for me—say the cause of death was ‘suicide by hanging.’"
"You killed someone?"
Black Cocoon didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said in a low voice, "There’s a girl in the library basement. One look at her, and you’ll understand why the headmaster had to die. That’s all I’ll say... If you won’t help me, I’ll expose your identity."
There was a long silence on the other end. "I’ll go there and see for myself. Then I’ll decide whether to help you."
Gu Qiye paused, his tone growing heavy, "Let me be clear—if I don’t want to help, even if you expose my identity, I won’t care... I won’t help a criminal. That’s my principle."
"Fine," Black Cocoon said after a beat. "By the way, that girl in the basement..."
"What about her?"
Under the mask, Ji Minghuan was quiet for a moment. He turned his eyes toward the rain outside the window and said slowly, "I want you to find her a good place to live. Let her go to school like a normal kid. Get her the best therapist... If she wants to be alone, give her time. Don’t force her."
He paused. "And most importantly... don’t ever let her near this orphanage again. She’s suffered enough. Don’t make her relive it."
At that, Black Cocoon curled his lips self-deprecatingly. "You know, Mr. Blue Arc, I don’t know if there’s anyone else in this city I can trust besides you. It has to be you. I trust only you. You must be the one to take her away. See her get better with your own eyes. Or I won’t forgive you."
Gu Qiye was momentarily stunned on the other end of the line.
He could tell—Black Cocoon’s tone had completely changed. There was no trace of sarcasm, none of the usual cynicism. It was like a lonely, cold child clenching his fists, desperately pleading.
"I don’t know what happened yet... but I’m coming to the orphanage right now," Gu Qiye said.
"See you."
With that, he hung up. Ji Minghuan stared blankly at the headmaster’s body on the floor, then at the hexagram symbol he had drawn. He slowly turned to face the rain-soaked city.
"Salvation Society... get ready for me."
The Binding Restraint slithered up his body like a black serpent, wrapping every inch of his skin. A thunderclap cracked through the storm, illuminating the tall black silhouette by the window—then he vanished, as if blown away by the relentless gusts of wind.
.........
........
Three minutes later, in the library basement.
A streak of deep blue lightning flashed through, arcs of electricity sweeping out in all directions, clearing the darkness like a storm flattening overgrown grass. Gu Qiye came to a halt. He was still wearing casual clothes, seemingly without time to change into his combat uniform.
In the fading light of the arc, he saw the girl in the dark.
He paused, then raised his right hand, gathering lightning at his fingertip for illumination. He carefully examined the wounds on her body and the chains binding her limbs.
"B*stard..."
He muttered under his breath, his face twitching slightly. He stepped forward, and with a gentle pulse from his lightning-wrapped hand, the chains snapped one by one, clattering to the floor.
Gu Qiye gently picked up the girl, taking care not to aggravate her bruised joints.
She opened her eyes, terror in her gaze. She tried to speak, but seemed to have lost her voice. Her lips trembled slightly: "Head... master, he... he put me..."
Gu Qiye lowered his eyes and softly said to the girl in his arms, "It’s alright now... you’re safe. The headmaster... he’s never coming back."
As the words fell, his figure once again turned into a sharp bolt of lightning and vanished on the spot.
That day, rain poured down over Lijing. The entire city was shrouded under a gloomy sky, but the residents huddled by their heaters watching TV, passing a quiet, uneventful morning.