Eldritch Horror Theatre

Gene's faith might not have been the strongest, but his fear of death more than made up for it.

Even though the orange eyes opened at a torturously slow pace, he managed to restrain himself, keeping his own eyes squeezed shut and remaining completely silent the entire time.

That control vanished the moment the detonation occurred, and he snapped his head down to stare at his own body.

There were no obvious external signs, but once his head dropped, he couldn't lift it back up.

His body, already trembling from blood loss, suddenly went completely slack. It was as if every bone had been ripped out of him, leaving him slumped there like a pile of mud.

Fortunately, that wasn't the only change. The chlorophyll in his body was also receding at an astonishing rate.

The results didn't look too bad.

As the higher entity who had brought down the Calamity, Fu Qian naturally had a much clearer grasp of the effects.

Even without activating Mythical Form, detonating a Calamity on a believer had still caused massive devastation.

Along with the bones themselves.

By now, nearly half the skeletal tissue in Gene's body had shattered.

Slumping over was getting off lightly. If he didn't possess the physique of a transcendent, he likely wouldn't have survived at all.

And his death would have undoubtedly dragged the other Greed Worms down with him.

As it stood, at least his condition had stopped deteriorating.

"Gene... how are you holding up?"

Judging by the supplicant's earlier reaction, Laywoman Tooth-Throat seemed to have guessed what was happening, yet she was still badly startled by his current state. She couldn't help but ask with cautious concern.

"I'm fine..."

After an agonizing wait, Gene finally managed to force the words out, though his head remained slumped forward.

...

"Did you receive a boon?"

Laywoman Tooth-Throat blanked for a moment. Snapping back to reality, she hurriedly reached over and righted his head.

Even though she had suggested the prayer, she clearly hadn't been entirely confident it would work.

After all, while they had received responses from "Him" before, those responses had rarely been positive. She had only proposed the idea out of sheer desperation.

"...Yeah."

Though Gene's voice sounded slightly strange, he couldn't quite mask the sliver of excitement trembling within it.

"The problem is indeed solved, but I seem to have lost my mobility for now... I can't even feel parts of my own body."

Don't be so demanding. You just prayed to the King of the Abandoned Prison Who Governs Calamity—this outcome is about as gentle as it gets, alright?

As the one dispensing the blessing, Fu Qian heard him perfectly well and scoffed inwardly.

"You'll live!"

Briefly stunned by this outcome, Laywoman Tooth-Throat quickly collected herself and performed a rapid check of his vitals, her voice firm.

"You might be paralyzed, but the internal damage isn't actually that severe. I can't do much for you right now other than stop the bleeding, but after that, we need to find a way to reach Laurie."

Not giving Gene a chance to argue, she laid out the plan while carefully lifting him over to the side and easing him down.

"Alright."

Gene had to catch his breath from the exertion before he could reply. Yet, as Laywoman Tooth-Throat bandaged his waist, his rigid posture was visibly more relaxed than before.

"So, what exactly was all that about earlier? Who ambushed you, and what in the world is this 'Tumor Flower Blooming'?"

Seeing he was stable, Laywoman Tooth-Throat didn't let him off the hook, pressing him for the answers he'd promised earlier.

...

"Our target today was indeed someone from Siren..."

With his head propped up so he could see his own body, Gene's emotions had noticeably stabilized. He quickly began his explanation.

"But the target wasn't just alert—he had an escape route prepared in advance. The moment we struck, he triggered a transcendent item and vanished."

It sounded like Laywoman Tooth-Throat's initial theory hadn't been far off the mark.

No matter how delicately he phrased it, Gene had indeed gone out acting as muscle for Anjing—and it had been a coordinated group operation.

"We were well prepared, of course. We tracked him down quickly using a marker we'd left on him... only to find his corpse.

"Someone had been waiting for him along his escape route. They turned him into an unrecognizable monster. By the time we arrived, his body was undergoing its final collapse...

"If I hadn't reacted as fast as I did, I would have died right there alongside the other two..."

He spoke in a low murmur, unable to hide his lingering dread as his gaze fell upon his own hand, which had finally returned to a normal human skin tone.

"Was it because of that thing you just had? Is that when you got infected?"

Finally understanding what he meant when he said they had been ambushed by a third party, Laywoman Tooth-Throat's voice was laced with disbelief.

A straightforward assassination had somehow unraveled into a convoluted trap.

Just from Gene's brief recounting, one could feel the terrifying degree of control the mastermind held over the entire situation.

Both the hunters and the prey had been played for absolute fools.

"Yes... you can think of it as a special poison designed specifically to target transcendents.

"It's extremely rare. Almost no one possesses it except for a certain group of lunatics."

Forced to take shallow, agonizing breaths, Gene's voice grew faint as he confirmed her theory.

"A group of lunatics?"

The answer caught Laywoman Tooth-Throat completely off guard.

He actually knew who was behind it?

"That's right. Those people had no intention of framing anyone. They went through all this trouble simply because they weren't strong enough to take him head-on. They had to painstakingly engineer an opportunity, and it's obvious they've been waiting for a very long time.

"The Benevolence Society... have you heard of them? They believe transcendent humans are the filth of the world."

As he uttered the name, Gene's expression grew conflicted—a mix of bitter hatred and the exasperated helplessness of dealing with a dangerous village idiot.

"Never heard of them... Transcendent humans?"

Admitting her ignorance, Laywoman Tooth-Throat was equally baffled by his specific phrasing.

"Exactly. Transcendent humans only. To them, other transcendent creatures are the natural spirits of the world. Because of this, they harbor an absolute, bone-deep hatred for the large corporations that hunt those creatures for materials."

Recounting the organization's philosophy, Gene couldn't hide his sense of absurdity.

"Aren't they transcendents themselves, though?"

After a brief silence, Laywoman Tooth-Throat began to piece the situation together, though she couldn't help pointing out the obvious hypocrisy.

"Heh... how could that be the same? They see themselves as the avenging guardians chosen by the world. True penitents."

Gene sneered.

"They wield poisons bred from the world's filth, spreading it to all sinners."

Extreme eco-terrorists? An entire group of them?

Completely understanding Gene's conflicted emotions, Fu Qian couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

While he had seen his fair share of similar fanatical cults, clinging to such a philosophy in a world like this was... peculiar, to say the least.

Speaking of people like that, he actually knew one—Delanlai from the Ash Sea.

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