Eldritch Horror Theatre

An unavoidable Death Rattle, one that even locked directly onto its target.

He had gleaned a lot in a short time, but the situation was going from bad to worse.

Three Brain Jellyfish had left behind triple the Star Dismemberment Power, and there was absolutely no sign of the effect lifting.

Thankfully, the King of the Abandoned Prison possessed overwhelming vitality. Anyone with a weaker constitution would not have been strolling through this so casually.

He could only conclude that the Ash Sea was every bit as perilous as reputed.

Stargazer No. 3, who had served as his guide, had fallen in the blink of an eye. With a sigh, Fu Qian continued forward.

As the saying went, wealth is found in danger. Couldn't those three Death Rattles be considered three inherited wills?

As a fellow academic, how could he let that halt his progress?

Whatever dangers lurked at the fall point, they were only making him increasingly curious.

Fu Qian abruptly turned his head, his gaze once again falling on the wall beside him.

This time, there was actually a door on it, although it was oriented horizontally.

The deeper he ventured, the more palpable that chaos became.

The wall before him looked as though it had been violently crumpled into a ball of paper.

Fu Qian, of course, hadn't stopped because he had discovered some hidden pattern, notes, or dragon runes on the wall. The reason was much simpler: he seemed to have startled a new jellyfish.

Crack!

The next instant, the structurally mangled door was forced open.

The space revealed beyond it was no longer a corridor, but a sunken platform.

It had clearly been circular originally, but it had obviously suffered devastation. It was crumpled and tilted, the entire structure nearly crushed into a triangle.

In one of those corners, Stargazer No. 4 was already in position, glowing brightly—

Then came number five...

And number six...

Number Seven...

A sweeping glance revealed a dense cluster. A full double-digit number of Brain Jellyfish were gathered around a massive hourglass.

The latter had long been destroyed, exposing its complex internal structure and glass-like sand.

Unfortunately, before Fu Qian could even offer a greeting, a violent wave rippled through the jellyfish. Pulsing one after another, Star Maps began flashing across their heads.

...

They weren't even going to give him a chance to communicate?

He had to admit, while the scene wasn't overly spectacular, the overlapping glow of the Star Maps gave off a strangely divine aura.

It had nothing to do with worshipping a Divine Entity. It was purely the wisdom born from gazing up at the sky, allowing one to instantly grasp the romance of the Stargazers.

Of course, stunning visual effects aside, the pressure of triggering a massive wave of Death Rattles the moment they met was enough to cause sheer Suffocation.

This particular group of Brain Jellyfish appeared far more unstable than the previous three. Merely sensing an intruder was enough to trigger a collective stress response.

As for the reason—was this place strictly off-limits?

Criticizing his opponents for fighting dirty would be an incredibly pointless exercise.

The moment he registered the scene, Fu Qian's mind went to work deducing the reason behind it.

The most intuitive conclusion was a matter of location.

On one hand, the area simply looked distinctly important, practically reeking of being a highly classified sanctuary.

If one viewed the jellyfish as former Stargazers, it was easy to picture them all gathered here, freely debating academic theories.

On the other hand, that unique hourglass was clearly an object of extraordinary significance, perfectly aligning with Stargazer No. 3's claims.

Was this it, then... the fall point?

As someone entirely unburdened by aesthetic prejudice, Fu Qian had long since grown accustomed to the jellyfish's bizarre appearance along the way. He had even used his biological expertise to try and deduce which side was technically their front.

Although it had just been a casual thought at the time, right now, that curiosity was paying off.

He could tell that, although the jellyfish were clustered around the hourglass, the moment he disturbed them, they hadn't been facing the hourglass itself, nor each other. Instead, they were all uniformly facing another direction—a tangled mass, a Stack of objects resting on the platform.

Yes, as far as Fu Qian was concerned, "Stack" was the only word that adequately described it.

It was incredibly messy, but it was hard to dismiss it as a random pile of discarded garbage.

The core of the mess was composed of cylinders whose exact purpose was impossible to determine.

The larger ones were thick enough to serve as ornaments on a building.

Yet their excessively plain, unadorned surfaces seemed to contradict that sort of purpose.

As for the smaller ones, some were visibly curved, terminating in ends as sharp as thorns.

The entire Stack consisted of those items mixed with a few other miscellaneous objects, all violently intertwined in a posture that bordered on ostentatious.

Furthermore, the faint, underlying sense of order buried within it instantly reminded Fu Qian of his first time seeing a cloud chamber.

Ultimately, the mass took up a significant portion of the platform, completely obscuring whatever lay at its core.

And according to Fu Qian's judgment, that was exactly what the jellyfish had been collectively staring at.

...

Right next to the Twelve-Faced Hourglass, the calculated fall point, strictly off-limits...

He had to admit, a multitude of traits were lining up perfectly, which only made him all the more interested in whatever lay beneath the Stack.

Granted, actually walking over there did not seem like it was going to be an easy feat.

The brief burst of brilliance was immediately followed by dead silence. Fu Qian's arrival had thoroughly shattered the final shred of peace in this place, and the resulting backlash was colossal.

The Star Dismemberment Power triggered by the double-digit Star Maps had not been diluted in the slightest. With the inescapable tracking of a soul-lock, every single layer of power crashed down on him at once.

The pressure spiked instantaneously. Even the King of the Abandoned Prison could no longer afford to simply ignore it.

Riiip!

A familiar scene played out as one of his arms was forcibly stretched and deformed—no, not an arm.

Looking closely, the appendage being violently torn from his body no longer resembled a human limb at all. Instead, it had morphed into a distinctly mollusk-like tentacle.

Furthermore, the tentacle didn't even look particularly biological. Covered in regular geometric patterns, its cold, hard lines and seamlessly interlocking joints perfectly highlighted the beauty of machinery.

This wasn't just the King of the Abandoned Prison—this was the mechanically remastered version.

In the face of the tearing force of the Stars, Fu Qian chose returning to simplicity and true nature, directly shedding any unnecessary cosmetic pretenses.

Naturally, this didn't negate the dismemberment power. In fact, due to the fluid nature of his new form, the efficiency at which his body was being stretched and warped actually increased.

In the blink of an eye, Fu Qian's body erupted as if he were unleashing the Myriad Tentacles ultimate move. Any remaining trace of humanity was completely gone.

But that was fine. If anything, he found himself quite well-adapted to this state.

As the tentacles tore and shifted, they anchored onto the platform, dragging him step by step toward the Stack.

Because the violent tearing force of the Stars never paused for even a second, an utterly bizarre spectacle unfolded—

Fu Qian's entire body looked like stretched taffy. With every step he took, his physical form became increasingly wild and unrestrained.

He was stretched to the very breaking point, yet he absolutely refused to snap. Bearing this far more relaxed and malleable form, Fu Qian dragged himself, step by grueling step, right up to his target.

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