How to remove folder name from URL path without interfering links like the homepage?

Note: the domain is not online it’s made in localhost

Here’s a complex problem I am facing right now on my project is that I want to remove the folder name from the URL from

http://www.example.com/pages/contact-us

to

http://www.example.com/contact-us

Hence removing the /pages/ in this case –

This is my file structure-

Now to access the files we have to access the pages then contact-us first so to remove this I have used this .htaccess code below –

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1.php [L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}s/+pages/([^s]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (?!^pages/)^(.*)$ /pages/$1 [L,NC]

When I use this the URLs can be accessed without using /pages/ but the homepage shows

So what should be the .htaccess code so to open the homepage without any errors and also please mention if this would kill my SEO and what’s the fix?

Please note if I need to tell you more, I have added these codes to the .htaccess file before adding the above code and it worked perfectly fine…

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html [NC,L]

Options -Indexes

php_value display_errors 1
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html .htm 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/$
RewriteRule (?!^pages/)^(.*)$ /pages/$1 [L,NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (?!^pages/)^(.*)$ /pages/$1 [L,NC]