Eldritch Horror Theatre

An Offspring could not represent itself. For all her extreme behavior, the statement made a twisted kind of sense.

The white dress tore apart as flesh and blood splattered outward.

Sarah's mental state was far more volatile than usual. She transitioned into frantic self-mutilation without a second's hesitation.

A pity, then, that Fu Qian fluidly sidestepped in perfect sync. He used the extra face sprouting from his shoulder to shield himself from the spray, leaving his own body spotless.

He couldn't help it. The transformation might have been abrupt, but to a seasoned professional accustomed to dealing with freaks, it hardly qualified as a Mental Shock.

And by the look of it, Sarah wasn't planning to limit herself to mental assaults.

Tearing open her abdomen hadn't unleashed any other bizarre entities.

Yet the grotesque act seemed to trigger a hidden switch. Lady Sarah's body began to rapidly inflate. The swift, even expansion of her flesh almost resembled an airplane's deploying emergency slide.

In fact, the sheer scale of her swelling would easily rival one.

Aside from the massive face looming mere inches away from him, it was easy to picture the rest of Sarah's body stretching deep into the dark corridor, wedging her into the space like a cork.

Heh...

The monstrosity apparently hadn't lost all consciousness. Her gargantuan mouth parted slightly, releasing a sound that could loosely be interpreted as a chuckle.

Before Fu Qian could react, the swollen mound of flesh seemed to lose its frictional grip. It began to "flow" down the steps, perfectly molding to the walls.

Wedged in so tightly, the friction tore raw, gaping slits across her stretched skin.

As Fu Qian studied the mixture of blood and grease oozing from the wounds, the crying echoing within his mind violently spiked.

...

So she intended to use this to trap him down here?

It certainly fit their goal: doing whatever it took to stop him from venturing out into the dark.

Last time, Sarah's role had been to feign an invitation to leave. In reality, she was serving as a grim warning, intending to scare him off with her miserable end—a masterclass in psychological warfare.

But since that trick failed once, it obviously wouldn't work a second time.

Dorian's alternative was simple enough. In an act that felt like laying his cards on the table, he leveraged the boon festering in Sarah's body, swapping to a purely physical blockade.

Though this method was perhaps a little too physical.

Fu Qian felt he could practically study fluid dynamics just by watching her corpse.

Her body was still multiplying, pouring down the stairs as if pumping sausage filling into the Underground space.

The flow was sluggish, however, leaving him just enough room to dodge for the time being.

The real headache was the resurgent crying echoing in his mind.

It wasn't that the influence of the two Hilarias had been suppressed, allowing the sobbing to bleed through.

Their presence hadn't waned in the slightest; if anything, it was building toward a new peak. The wailing had simply intensified at an even more absurd rate.

For a fleeting moment, Fu Qian almost felt as if a God were weeping right at him, rather than some Offspring.

And the consequence of that wasn't just his consciousness buckling under the dual mental assault. There was also—

Squelch!

Taking a step back to delay the avalanche of Sarah's flesh, Fu Qian plunged his fingers straight into his own left breast.

This time, what he yanked out wasn't a clump of congealed blood, but a still-beating heart.

Rip!

His other hand didn't sit idle. He plunged it right into the bloody hole in his chest, ripping out a mass of coagulated blood many times larger than the heart itself.

Exactly. Just as the crying had breached the boundaries of the dream, the curse it carried followed right behind.

As the wails reached deafening pitches, the intensity of the Heart Strike surged along with it.

It was a good thing he was a professional. Had it been any other Tier 2, they would have been hard-pressed to survive that.

Thanks to his impromptu surgery, the Heart Strike lost its anchor point, temporarily neutralizing the threat.

Casually stuffing the organ back into his chest, Fu Qian evaluated the "mouth" embedded in the fleshy mound before him.

Clearly, the creature could no longer produce any meaningful syllables.

"Well said!"

That didn't matter. He could speak for the both of them.

With a thunderous roar of absolute agreement, Fu Qian unleashed his Gospel Shockwave at maximum power, blasting it directly into her face.

The weeping of a true God? Then cry a little louder for me!

...

It did, in fact, get louder.

A gospel capable of delivering enlightenment to one's fundamental spirituality was extraordinary indeed.

In that instant, the wailing in his mind violently swelled, threatening to completely overwhelm the dual presence of the two Hilarias.

Roar—

Simultaneously, an agonizing, frenzied shriek tore out of the deformed maw, harmonizing with the mental screams to form a morbid duet.

Still not quite enough, it seemed.

Despite the intense discomfort, Fu Qian listened closely and ultimately arrived at a pessimistic conclusion.

He hadn't unleashed the blast out of some sadistic urge. When that weeping—sounding as if it belonged to the higher entity itself—first echoed, he'd genuinely harbored a sliver of hope.

Could this power, boasting such a lofty Rank and penetrating force, serve as the breakthrough he needed to escape his current predicament?

This operation was a two-way street between him and Dorian. The doctor needed to throw everything he had at him, and Fu Qian needed to face everything the doctor could muster.

It was just a pity that, despite how smoothly things were escalating, the boon manifesting within Sarah ultimately proved underwhelming.

It posed a respectable threat, certainly, but at its core, it was merely another potent force native to his own parallel timeline.

Bang—

And it seemed it had finally reached its limit.

With a muffled detonation, a tidal wave of grease and pulverized flesh exploded outward.

Pummeled by the Gospel Shockwave, Sarah endured a moment of eerie stillness before she simply couldn't take any more, violently detonating.

A deeply revolting stench flooded the air. Caught at point-blank range, Fu Qian bore the absolute brunt of the blast with zero room to dodge.

Even so, his face remained largely spotless, shielded perfectly by the fleshy "high collar" he'd skillfully molded over his shoulders.

Not that he didn't have other, more specialized ways to evade—Blood Crusade, for instance.

But using it would likely cause the two Hilarias to fall off, forcibly terminating the dual salvation process. He had no desire to see that happen.

A moment later, as the remains of the fleshy barricade sloughed down into a puddle around his boots, Fu Qian gave his clothes a quick shake and continued up the stairs.

The dawn remained out of reach. There was still work to do.

In theory, there should still be three—no, four people waiting in the Church above.

As he climbed, his clarifying senses picked up a faint signal—one that was as surprising as it was welcome.

Stepping off the final stair and back into the Church, a filth-covered Fu Qian naturally cast his gaze toward what should have been an empty seat.

Long hair. Male. A stranger with high cheekbones.

He sat practically mirroring the Felt Hat Man's position across the room, his entire body rigid with absolute terror.

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