Eldritch Horror Theatre

All sounds fell silent amid the swaying shadows of the trees.

The spot the old car pulled into wasn't a particularly remote location, but the entire courtyard and the building itself possessed an intense sense of age.

Hidden away among the trees, it felt all the more gloomy and oppressive.

Not to mention that right now, from this angle, the half-moon was perfectly bisected by the house's Spire.

The fairly bright moonlight still failed to illuminate the dark roof tiles, dialing the eerie atmosphere to the max.

In short, despite turning off the main road barely a dozen meters ago, it felt like they had crashed headlong into a horror movie.

"Are you kidding me?"

One immediate effect was that Brother Ruthless, whose blood had been boiling just moments ago, completely forgot to keep venting. After staring blankly for a few seconds, he roared at Butters in a tone that said are you kidding me.

Yet even this roar was kept to a hushed whisper.

"This place is so far from the road, and you're telling me you saw something flashing inside when you drove by? And that room you mentioned—"

Brother Ruthless pressed on, pausing mid-sentence to closely examine the spot Butters had pointed out.

"Leaving aside those ridiculously high windows, there's no way you could have seen anything from that angle on the road."

Although Ruthless Guy seemed a bit hot-tempered, he had a sharp eye for detail and had quickly found evidence to back his claim.

And to be fair, he wasn't just talking nonsense; everything he pointed out was a fact.

The spot Butters had indicated was practically a blind spot from the road outside.

"You're completely right."

As it turned out, Butters didn't even try to argue. Putting a little distance between himself and Ruthless Guy's face, he countered with a cold question.

"But isn't the whole reason we came here to find something that would be impossible for ordinary people?"

...

'Oh?'

That statement was heavily loaded with information.

While Ruthless Guy was left briefly speechless by Butters's retort, Fu Qian was thoroughly intrigued.

He hadn't been idle during their exchange; he had already carefully inspected the surroundings.

It was indeed a bizarre place, but whether the sort of thing Butters described would actually happen here was hard to say.

Although Butters's argument did perfectly counter Ruthless Guy's skepticism—they were here to find the supernatural, so why complain about what shouldn't be visible from the outside?

Coupled with their conversation on the way over, the situation was already quite clear.

At some point while passing by, Butters had spotted a peculiar flashing light coming from inside this house. Today, he had tracked down two of his good friends and driven back to explore it together.

Furthermore, judging by the circumstances of the previous scenario, the car most likely belonged to Wolf.

Regardless, a dark night, a deserted wilderness, an abandoned house, and wildly curious youths—it was an overwhelmingly classic recipe for courting death.

But now there was another question: how did they interpret that "impossible thing"?

"...But you never mentioned beforehand that we were coming to a place like this."

Faced with Butters's well-reasoned argument, Ruthless Guy's momentum was finally momentarily suppressed, though he still looked rather disgruntled.

"So what are you afraid of? Ghosts?

The Night Watchers made it perfectly clear that those things don't exist."

Unfortunately, Butters understood the essence of pressing an advantage and instantly let out a cold laugh.

"But it's not just ghosts. If this really involves the transcendent, do you honestly think something appearing in a place like this wouldn't be dangerous?"

Ruthless Guy was still unwilling to back down.

"A, place, like, this... is only a few steps away from the main road." Butters still answered smoothly, deliberately emphasizing the other's exact words.

"If there was really something dangerous here, would the Night Watchers allow it to exist?"

"They also said that reaching the Transcendent Tier is purely a matter of talent, but couldn't there be many kinds of talent? What if seeing things that others can't see counts as one?"

He spouted this off effortlessly and with airtight logic. It had to be said, Butters was astonishingly persuasive in this moment.

It was almost as if he had secretly convinced himself of this very logic many times before.

...

'So they didn't come here just for thrills, but to seek out a fortuitous encounter?'

Although he still hadn't said a word, Fu Qian's final doubts had been answered.

It was clear that Butters had fully mentally prepared himself for this trip. Even though his previous words were aimed at Ruthless Guy, they were undoubtedly the very answers he had reached by questioning himself time and time again.

And this mindset wasn't even that hard to understand.

Because of the existence of an organization like the Night Watchers—which would normally be almost impossible to believe in—this world had formed a peculiar ecosystem.

The transcendents could summon the wind and rain, possessing power so immense they could already be called "New Gods."

Yet ordinary people still lived out their peaceful years, maintaining a modern social system that was largely immunized against the temptations of the transcendent.

That was how it appeared on the surface, at least. But the true depths of the human heart were hard to say.

Unlike the world Fu Qian grew up in, the fantasies of power held by young people here actually had real-life success stories paraded right in front of them.

The itch caused by such a reality was not something that simple self-hypnosis could suppress.

...

It was apparent that the itch in Brother Ruthless's heart had also been stoked; under Butters's barrage of questions, he was ultimately left speechless.

"The opportunity is right here. How you choose is your own business.

You can just walk away right now while Wolf and I go inside... or you can stick around, take a look, and wait to see if the flashing light I told you about really shows up when the time comes."

Butters was clearly very satisfied with this reaction and took the chance to land one final psychological blow.

"So what time was it when you saw it last?"

Having settled back into his seat, Ruthless Guy kept his hand on the car door but ultimately didn't get out. He stared silently outside as he asked.

"What time is it right now?"

Carrying a soaring momentum like a rainbow, Butters finally turned his head to look at the other passenger.

"Seven twenty-two."

Fu Qian didn't even need to check the watch on his wrist again; he simply gave him the time directly.

"It should be soon. Just to be safe, we don't have to rush in right now. We can walk around to check the surroundings, and once we see the flash I talked about, we can figure out a way to open the door."

Such a starkly reliable performance clearly left Butters immensely satisfied, and he quickly laid out a rather sensible plan.

"No need."

Unfortunately, in the very next moment, he received a flat denial from Mister Wolf, who was already the first to open his door and step out of the car.

'Isn't this mission getting a bit too ridiculous?'

As the two people in the car jumped in surprise, Fu Qian stared at a corner of the building, sighing deeply.

Although it was faint, he had been keeping a close eye on the spot Butters mentioned, making him the first to spot the bizarre change.

Translucent, glowing in red and blue fluorescence, it looked both like a cluster of mushrooms rapidly sprouting from nothing, and like a swaying jellyfish planted in the dirt.

The moment it entered his field of vision, a peculiar, indiscernible sound began to echo through his mind.

'It was one thing to be restricted from using abilities and Items, but to actually have to deal with something in the transcendent category?'

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