Eldritch Horror Theatre

"So they really are all here."

Looking down into the pool Ais indicated, Fu Qian saw no reason to doubt her claim.

Anyone could count. At a glance, he could easily spot three heads.

A second glance easily picked out six hands.

Both the heads and the hands looked far more normal than Sophia's had.

The only problem was that they all sprouted from a single torso.

Unlike the one holding Sophia, this pool was completely dry.

In place of water sat a massive, tangled clump of flesh where the boundaries between the bodies had completely melted away.

Though all signs of life were gone, a close inspection revealed the exact order the three bodies had fused together.

But their thrashing had been entirely pointless. The harder they fought, the more their flesh and bones churned together like melting wax.

The acidic, rotting stench from earlier was oozing straight out from beneath this deformed lump of flesh.

Unlike Sophia's tank, this pool seemed to have been used as a waste vat.

Once Ais had squeezed every drop of value out of these three earlier victims, she tossed them in here one by one.

Now, having shown off her handiwork, she was watching him with a peculiar expression, seemingly eager to see how Fu Qian would react.

"Feel free to inspect them. Don't be shy—"

Fu Qian immediately cut her off. Stepping right up to the edge, he grabbed one of the arms, inspected it closely, and quickly reached a conclusion.

"They don't have Weapons on them."

"I took them," Ais said. "...That's also why they died."

Rather than deny it, Ais frankly admitted to stripping the Sacred Cloths off her test subjects.

"Weren't you worried about contamination when making that kind of contact?" Fu Qian asked.

"At the time, I hadn't considered the risk that the Vacuum Flower might be hiding in their flesh."

She met his casual concern with a cold reply.

"So, how many did you strip off?"

Completely unfazed by her attitude, Fu Qian casually tossed out the question while shifting to inspect one of the heads.

...

"Why ask that? Three people obviously means three—"

However, once Ais processed what he was actually asking, her eagerness to answer suddenly vanished.

In response to her faltering, Fu Qian simply met her eyes with a placid look.

"Two."

Gritting her teeth slightly, Ais amended her answer.

That made more sense.

Fu Qian looked away.

In Ais's ultimate plan, his trio wouldn't be carrying Weapons. There was no way she hadn't tested that exact scenario in advance.

Especially with so much test material at her disposal.

At least one of these three had to have been a no-gear test run.

"And they died quickly once it was removed?"

Done inspecting the head, Fu Qian did not continue probing the mess, but instead stared thoughtfully at the deformed corpse.

"A mutated anatomy like this was never going to survive for long to begin with."

Ais didn't deny it. Mirroring his posture, she watched with a cold expression.

"Judging from the results, the one who wasn't wearing a Weapon died the fastest. The life states of the other two were clearly sustained in some unique way, just like Sophia over there."

"Even their body size was maintained reasonably well."

Fu Qian didn't question Ais's claim, even going so far as to point out the silver lining for the three victims in the pool.

"That's only because they weren't exposed to the Vacuum Flower for very long—so is this your great takeaway?"

Unfortunately, Ais was clearly unimpressed by this observation.

It made perfect sense to observe the effects across different exposure durations, and Sophia had taken on the role of the extreme stress test.

Fu Qian didn't mind Ais's attitude; he even approved of her methodology.

"Are there any others?"

"No, just the four of them."

Seeing that Fu Qian genuinely seemed ready to give up, Ais dropped any pretense of patience and snapped back stiffly.

"I mean in this entire Underground facility."

"...No to that, too."

Realizing what he was actually asking, Ais frowned and shook her head.

"Are you worried that someone else might be affected even without making direct contact? Relax. There isn't a single living soul left in the entire Underground facility."

"That's good. Your caution is commendable."

In truth, Fu Qian had reached a similar conclusion on his walk over, so he had little reason to doubt Ais's claim.

"So, since the Vacuum Flower isn't here either, what's our next move? Does Excellency Lord of the Rings have a plan?"

Ais clearly didn't care for his praise. Sneering, she very practically steered the conversation back to what other ideas he might have.

"Of course I have an idea. But who said it isn't here?"

The Lord of the Rings obviously didn't care for her attitude either. Giving her a look normally reserved for the mentally deficient, he raised the hand he had just used to touch the corpse.

His five fingers were still five fingers. But silently, tiny, rounded fingernails had bloomed across his skin, spreading all the way from his palm to his fingertips.

It really was inside!

The moment she saw a mutation that had absolutely no business appearing on a normal human body, Ais visibly shuddered, whipping her head around to stare into the metal pool.

...

It wasn't inside, of course.

Perfectly understanding Ais's emotional state, Fu Qian kept quiet, letting her fully savor this bountiful moment.

He had morphed the fingernails himself, of course. Aside from its visual shock value, the three-headed, six-armed corpse possessed nothing else of note.

The same was true for Sophia earlier.

Fu Qian was absolutely certain that, within the limits of his perception, they weren't harboring anything special.

However, after enduring blow after blow, Ais's subjective initiative had clearly grown somewhat unstable.

If he wanted her to honestly cooperate with his upcoming plan, a little appropriate psychological intervention was required.

As for why he hadn't mimicked the webbed mutation between Sophia's fingers, and instead went with a brand-new look?

Motivation required the right methods, especially when tailoring the approach to the individual.

Ais might be anxious, but that didn't mean she wasn't suspicious.

Given the highly variable nature of these mutations, if he presented the exact same symptom, she would likely succumb to Overthinking and suspect he was faking it.

Besides, this look wasn't entirely a product of his own imagination; he had plagiarized the idea directly from Old Man Henry.

Back in the Sacred Night Capital, when facing his putrid domain, Fu Qian's palm had already bloomed once.

In Fu Qian's view, these kinds of micro-mutations on otherwise normal limbs often delivered a much stronger visual shock.

"Let's go."

Happy times were always fleeting, though. Not giving Ais any more time to savor the surprise, Fu Qian waved that very hand right in front of her face.

"Go where?"

Jolted back to reality by the eye-catching mutation, Ais blurted out the question, but her immediate reaction was to look Fu Qian up and down.

"A mutation like this... aren't you worried about your own body?"

"To bring them to the Workshop, of course," Fu Qian replied. "And no—I'm not worried."

With a gleam in his eyes, Fu Qian used the hand—its fingernails already spreading across the back of his hand—to push up a pair of nonexistent glasses.

"I am quite certain this is the call of destiny."

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