Eldritch Horror Theatre

Deception was a dangerous game.

They did say reading increased one's wisdom. In that moment, Fu Qian felt as if he had brushed against the traces of a specific title—the Fool.

On one snowy night, he had played the young Mister Wolf. With the constitution of a completely ordinary person, he had trudged through act after act of a holiday festival gone wrong, as if he had stumbled into a cliché horror movie.

The transitions between them had been perfectly seamless, completely ignoring spacetime, and there had been exactly five acts from beginning to end.

That number alone made it hard not to draw comparisons to his current situation.

Not to mention that the Containment Conditions for that task had been to "correctly complete all scripts."

Combined with the heavy notebook in his hand that contained exactly five lines of text—two of which were just numbers without content—it was simply too difficult to chalk it up to pure coincidence.

That was right. Aside from the first and fourth acts, only the second line out of the remaining three contained any text—

[Light and Shadow Cannot Judge Each Other]

After all, if anyone dared to write a lab report like that, they would undoubtedly suffer their mentor's full-rage ultimate strike.

In short, while careful consideration revealed many differences, the moment this script appeared, the connection between Etched Intellect and All Fools' Day could no longer be ignored.

Next came an unavoidable higher entity: the "Fool." He had even masqueraded as His image in front of the Greed Worms.

Whether this was His formal title or just a moniker like Tyrant remained uncertain. But in Fu Qian's career as a Scavenger alone, this mysterious higher entity had already appeared more than once.

And the mighty authority involved seemed fundamentally linked to deception and the very essence of supernatural power.

His reasoning stemmed, on one hand, from the All Fools' Day that those teenagers had loved and wildly celebrated.

Setting aside the holiday's name, the sudden appearance and disappearance of supernatural gifts had caused a group of restless minds to completely lose their balance, ultimately brewing a bizarre theatrical play. It carried a heavy flavor of absurdity.

On the other hand, there were two even more obvious task rewards: the Blood and Wine and Blood he had obtained during that specific mission, and the earlier Fool's Idol.

The former's effect was to directly confuse concepts, making it completely impossible to distinguish between blood and wine.

Later, he had even used it against Yuhun, slowing down his efficiency in "understanding" everything during their clash.

The latter's effect was, up until now, perhaps the most unique of all—as long as physical contact was maintained long enough, it would directly erase supernatural power, turning the target into an ordinary person.

If that did not touch upon the essence of supernatural power, what did?

Furthermore, with just a little recollection, one would realize that these two portions of authority were considerably reflected in the current script.

For example, the beginning of the world and the Transcendent Terminus—subjects that, at a glance, clearly involved the essence of supernatural power.

Then there was the Lord of Intellect's "weaving correctness" ability, which corrected fallacies to allow supernatural power to be expressed in a more primal, pure form... Its relationship to that essence seemed even more direct.

As for deception—did Etched Intellect not count as a deception?

At least those teenagers had been living in reality. Right now, he was standing directly in a spacetime fallacy theme park, even holding its script in his hands.

...

Of course, there were also parts that didn't quite match up.

For example, at first glance, the correlation was still much higher with the fourth act; any Fool-like elements prior to that were far less obvious.

Could it be that, just like the Chief Judge and the others, the Fool had merely left traces here, revealing Himself slightly in the fifth act in this manner? And that He was not the absolute mastermind behind Etched Intellect?

Honestly, this was indeed a more grounded theory, and it truly couldn't be completely ruled out.

But one detail greatly weakened this possibility—what lay before him was the fifth act, not the fourth.

He had already analyzed earlier that the "title" of the first act perfectly matched his experiences from his previous visit.

This meant the script's content wasn't limited to these four seamlessly connected sessions of Etched Intellect; it even incorporated the previous one.

One could not underestimate this slight difference. It was an act akin to breaking the fourth wall.

This meant the power behind the script was based either on Etched Intellect itself, on the Inverted Lake, or on his own cognition as the Mechanical King of the Abandoned Prison...

Regardless of which one it was, it seemed to have already exceeded the scope of a simple higher entity's residual elements.

In fact, this was also why he had paid so much attention to the numbering issue earlier. The devil always hid in the details.

As for what came next, it was the most important question of all: which of those three elements was this manifestation of the Fool's power based on?

"Tyrant—"

Unfortunately, his intense brainstorming session was interrupted the very next second by a shout.

...

There was no need to ask; it came from Rom down below.

It was the same form of address, but he sounded as if he had just woken from a dream—showing less bewilderment than before, while his hatred had grown much clearer.

What a pity. Such emotions were completely commonplace to Fu Qian. He merely gave a symbolic lift of his eyelids, offering a tiny sliver of attention.

He had to admit that compared to before, not only had Rom's mental state improved, but even his physical body seemed somewhat invigorated—

Not only did the blood color in the crystallized parts of his body grow richer, but actual blood was even seeping out.

The parts not filled with crystals were splitting open into hideous wounds, exposing deformed flesh and blood that induced physical nausea with just a single glance.

More importantly, these wounds appeared to be giving birth. Struggling "spiders," looking exactly like the mother body, crawled out one by one.

There were dozens, even hundreds of them. At a glance, they were absolute one-to-one replicas; even the crystallized fillings on their bodies were entirely identical.

It seemed they had inherited the hatred as well. The successfully birthed small Roms clung tightly to the mother body, not forgetting to bare their fangs and brandish their claws in Fu Qian's direction, their "eyes" gleaming with the same blood-red hatred.

However, this was human nature. Fu Qian did not mind the exponentially increasing hatred. Instead, his gaze fell upon them, continuing to spot more wounds.

Facts proved that even smaller Roms were continuing to crawl out from the small Roms' bodies...

Bearing the same blood-red eyes, baring the same fangs and claws.

And then came tiny, tiny Roms...

A literal animal fractal?

Endless Generations of Descendants. This phrase seemed to have received its most intuitive demonstration at this moment.

However, to Fu Qian, considering that His Excellency Rom wielded a certain degree of authority over the Order of Blood, and the things he did were always completely underhanded...

Such a scene, while grotesque, still was not difficult to understand—Smack!

Accompanied by a crisp sound, Fu Qian reached a hand behind his head and casually flicked something away, then continued to lower his gaze, ignoring it completely.

"Not enough. I need Overthinking."

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