Eldritch Horror Theatre

It was truly wondrous: once a seemingly absurd hypothesis was introduced, everything suddenly made perfect sense.

The entity spanning across time was not the suburban Small Town, nor the entire world, but Laerdin itself.

There was no grand curse enveloping everything, then; this anomalous power acted solely upon a single city.

In comparison, this was clearly a much simpler, more effortless explanation.

The Nightmare, the bottom of the lake, the secret room.

Under the gazes of the four leaders of the Fallen Star Clan, Fu Qian pulled something out and opened it.

It was a damaged Pocket Watch, its back cover engraved with strange writing.

Fu Qian remembered every single word. His entire experience of transforming into a worm and serving as an otherworldly escort flashed rapidly through his mind.

The paintings that had appeared in the Art Gallery...

The Mist that descended suddenly from the heavens...

The various Nightmares...

The Order, caught completely off guard...

Even the unique Pocket Watch that seemed as though it could be called "her"...

All along the way, under the cruel exploitation of extreme efficiency, the "burning" of every faction and individual seemed to have finally paved a path to the truth.

When he first arrived in this world, his judgment had been that the reality of the Painting World was concealed, and that the world inhabited by The Order possessed the attributes of a Nightmare.

One of his reasons was the Witch telling him this was a desperate apocalypse.

An existence like Laerdin was clearly somewhat incongruous with that.

However, as he subsequently drove the various factions to break past their limits and find evidence for his theory, more and more signs pointed to the opposite: the place before his eyes was actually a sanctuary blessed by gods, a secluded haven.

Meanwhile, the imagined ruined apocalypse had taken place within a fleeting foggy day where time had almost lost all meaning.

Even his mission objective firmly corroborated this point, allowing him to realize immediately that the Fallen Star Clan before him was nothing more than a tragedy of self-deception.

...

Even so, Fu Qian had never forgotten that there was more than one slightly jarring detail.

For instance, the harvest in his hand, which had initially been treated as a loophole in the Nightmare.

At the time, his understanding of the writing on the back of the dial was that it was a special reflection within the Nightmare of the Countess, who had used the Pocket Watch as a Soul Casket.

Yet if the Laerdin governed by the Law was indeed reality, how should this writing be explained?

Was it an epitaph casually engraved by the Witch after she sent all the individuals out of the Painting World?

The Pocket Watch, it had to be noted, had been verified multiple times to possess no Transcendent Tier aura whatsoever.

It was natural enough to understand the Rayson couple's digestion of their Painting World experience through dreams as the Witch's casual doing—an act to help them integrate into the world without being rejected.

But wasn't it a bit too deliberate to do the same for a Pocket Watch entirely devoid of life?

Aside from that, there was another detail—one that had puzzled him the moment he entered this mission.

This was clearly Laerdin, but it looked vastly different, with significant changes occurring in numerous places.

His initial understanding was that it might be related to the inherent instability of the Nightmare itself.

But now, with the concept of Ancient Laerdin introduced, everything seemed to have a much smoother explanation.

First of all, the memories Frankie and the others experienced were indeed true.

The scene where the Stars collapsed and The Order fell had genuinely occurred in history. The apocalypse had indeed arrived in its wake, and Laerdin had not escaped it.

During this process, Frankie and the others, carrying the Dislocation between the Nightmare and reality, had abandoned the Stars and fallen into the Nightmare.

As a result, many years later, the clumsy awakened ones in their eyes had actually "dreamt" of a reborn Laerdin.

This made them even more convinced of the malice and absurdity of that Nightmare.

However, the true situation was that this was a Laerdin from ancient times. Under some special influence, it had returned from history to reality, bringing the intact Law along with it.

To them, history stopped at that very moment. Everything that happened afterward did not exist.

This was also the reason why the special writing had appeared inside the Pocket Watch.

The Nightmare, the discarded pieces, the ruins—all the anomalies were the original apocalyptic scenes reinterpreted and accommodated from the perspective that Laerdin had never been destroyed.

For example, the discarded pieces were the product of a time curse, and the Painting World, which should have been reality, exhibited the perfect qualities of a Nightmare.

Laerdin and the Law forcefully defined and explained all of this with an overbearing posture, forcibly erasing any logical inconsistencies.

This had even misled him at one point. For instance, after entering this mission, he had actually tried to confirm the time—and the result was that two obviously different cityscapes shared almost identical dates.

Because of this, he hadn't heavily doubted the historical attributes of the outside Laerdin right away.

It wasn't until the contradiction between Frankie's memories and reality just now that his thoughts were provoked once more, prompting him to look for possible flaws in the time span.

The reason why Frankie and the others, as church hunters, didn't know names like Olinter was also simple: that was already ancient history.

It was just that under the power of "interpretation," everything was forcibly integrated into the logic of Laerdin's perspective, altering temporal perception as a result.

As for the writing on the Pocket Watch, that was similarly a manifestation of this effect.

The Witch had not done it, and even the Nightmare perception of the Rayson couple might not have been her doing either.

Every individual integrated into Laerdin would go through this process of being "interpreted."

Most people became victims of the Nightmare, while the Countess, being excessively unique, ultimately ended up in this form.

This was also why the Nightmares collectively appeared a month ago.

There might not have been a lack of existences with properties similar to the Painting World among them, but for the sake of rationality, they were uniformly transformed into this format.

...

It seems the Health Bar I lost over this past hour was well worth it!

Amidst his rapidly flashing thoughts, Fu Qian finally let out a sigh full of emotion.

Under this much smoother deduction, the probability of the Witch still being alive had obviously increased significantly.

The question now was: in what form had she "integrated"?

This could clearly help deduce where to find her.

"Excellency Grimshaw, what exactly did you mean by the names you mentioned just now?"

Seeing that Fu Qian seemed to have finished his contemplation, Madam Xia, who was standing to the side, finally couldn't help but ask.

"They are veteran victims of the Stars this time around."

Fu Qian turned his head, his gaze sweeping meaningfully over everyone.

"It looks like Your Excellency has finally figured it out. Our sharing wasn't in vain after all."

Observing Fu Qian's expression carefully, Frankie clearly wasn't that easy to convince.

"If you don't mind, we'd like to know more about the supreme Dark Moon you mentioned."

"Of course I don't mind. In fact, I was just thinking about that myself."

Fu Qian was surprisingly agreeable. He took a step forward, looking down to inspect the three Pools of Origin.

Just when everyone thought he was organizing his words, his figure flashed, and he unexpectedly lunged straight for the Bronze Ring Fish.

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