Eldritch Horror Theatre

[SAN Value +99]

No wonder everyone loved using this number. It sounded even richer and more satisfying than a flat 100.

The Warehouse hadn't been bluffing. As the Umbilical Cord went down, a staggering number popped up, pushing his SAN Value straight back into the triple digits.

Directly consuming an item that had repeatedly worked miracles still felt like a bit of a waste.

But that was how research worked: the required investment was always far steeper than imagined.

Feeling absolutely no heartache, Fu Qian surveyed the once-again silent Abandoned Prison.

Admittedly, despite the absolute quiet, it was still far better than when he first arrived.

Between his first and second rounds of solidifying them, the Vacuum Flowers had flourished into a lush, triple-digit cluster.

Paired with the neatly arranged circular platforms, the realm now boasted both natural beauty and architectural structure, no longer the barren wasteland it had been.

Fu Qian tied the Ribbon over his face once more.

...

A riot of blooming flowers.

When he took off the Eldest Son's Vision in the dead silence, Fu Qian was undeniably even more satisfied with the sight before him.

Part of it, naturally, was the absurd increase in sheer quantity.

The Vacuum Flowers really did scale with his SAN Value. Unlike his previous minor gains, this was an explosive surge.

At a glance, there were exactly 177 new blooms.

To be fair, he had expected that much. It wasn't particularly surprising.

The biggest visual shock was that beyond simply multiplying, the Vacuum Flowers had grown incredibly distinct. Their lines were far sharper, comparable to upgrading from standard definition to Blu-ray.

Was this really it? The true nature of the SAN Value.

This change seemed to finally validate Fu Qian's theory.

Not only did it represent a bond with the world's underlying rules, but the number itself reflected the depth of that bond?

As his SAN Value skyrocketed, the projected Vacuum Flowers grew clearer. It was an incredibly straightforward explanation.

It also perfectly aligned with his previous conclusion: the SAN Value represented a connection to the world's fundamental laws, and that connection could be explicitly quantified.

Except this number didn't intuitively represent a pool of remaining sanity, but rather something akin to a charged shield.

As long as it wasn't depleted, he was safe from any real threat.

But the moment it hit zero, a special immune response would trigger, inviting a violent backlash functionally identical to a death curse.

He had wondered if eating the Umbilical Cord would alter this dynamic, but the results were ultimately ideal.

Today's tests had yielded a massive haul of data.

Building on this conclusion, the relationship between the two core parameters of SAN Value and inspiration seemed much clearer.

...

Snap!

Snapping his fingers, Fu Qian once again solidified all the Vacuum Flowers while thinking of a certain attribute of his that had recently run into issues.

[Increases perceptual ability toward intangible entities.]

This was the Warehouse's original description for inspiration.

His subsequent experiences had indeed proven this true. For example, during his first encounter with Su Gao in the Old City, he had been the only one who could see the cipher text on the Ritual Notes.

It also applied to the issue of bringing skills and equipment into missions. He had once tried to rationalize it by assuming his inspiration was so much higher than his predecessors that it appeared as though he had no carry weight limit.

After all, from a purely logical standpoint, if it were tied to his SAN Value, that number had wildly fluctuated many times, frequently dropping below triple digits. Yet his carrying capacity never seemed to hit a ceiling, which clearly didn't add up.

By process of elimination, the most likely culprit was his 99 points in inspiration.

But why?

Linking inspiration to carrying capacity was a rather abstract design choice, even for a video game.

But now, combining the definition of the SAN Value with the aforementioned two-way connection, there seemed to be a more vivid explanation: synchronization rate.

Yes, inspiration was not simply Transcendent Perception.

If the SAN Value represented an outsider's bond with the world's fundamental laws, then could inspiration represent how deeply he, having synchronized into this world, was able to touch its essence in return?

According to Goto Hi, his predecessors generally didn't have high inspiration, but their mission operations never seemed hindered by it. Even their Transcendent Perception functioned normally.

Yet when it came to him, the mission rewards for this stat were aggressively boosted, while the mission difficulties also seemed noticeably higher.

Beyond the fact that the Warehouse had decayed to a certain extent and the world was riddled with scars, could this discrepancy also stem from his overly strong subjective initiative?

Not only was he handling historically complex "wounds," but he was also involving far more elements and operating with a higher level of "immersion." Was that why he received such rewards?

And as those rewards piled up, it became even easier for him to touch the deeper layers of the world.

For instance, upon reaching 99 points of inspiration, he had sifted through the Residue of a Divine Trait and found the very thing that allowed him to incarnate as the Original Sin Sage.

It was a mutual progression. The battered state of the Warehouse, combined with his own behavioral habits, had rapidly power-leveled an account with max inspiration.

And whenever such an account synchronized into a mission, its extreme affinity with the world's essence pushed the synchronization rate to its absolute peak. That was why he could drag so many items across time and space...

But it wasn't without its drawbacks. The closer he got, the easier it was to get hurt.

Ultimately, it made his SAN Value far easier to burn through. Even after incarnating as the King of the Abandoned Prison, he still found himself frequently losing 1 point.

This even seemed to explain why his inspiration stopped growing once it hit 99—

100 percent synchronization didn't exist. 99 was the hard limit.

He would always be an outsider, someone who only "synchronized" into this world through a makeshift "safety protocol" like the SAN Value.

No matter how flawlessly he performed, there would always be an invisible ceiling.

Unless he had chosen the other path back in the Ash Sea and incarnated as the Mechanical Tyrant of the crystallized apocalypse.

...

Fascinating. Everything seemed much more logical now.

His thoughts racing, Fu Qian had quickly pieced together an explanation for several of his longstanding foundational questions.

And if this theory held up, it even offered guidance for his current predicament.

Transcendent Perception and inspiration were relatively independent. The former was likely being suppressed right now, rendering him somewhat blind and deaf.

But his inspiration had always remained intact. The proof lay in the earlier unrestricted mission, where he had still been able to bring in a monstrous skill like the King of the Abandoned Prison and synchronize into the spacetime of the old ones.

Furthermore, there were the actions of Excellency Patches to consider.

Why would there be a ritual designed to scam the Warehouse?

Looking at it now, the SAN Value really was a rare commodity. It was a specialty exclusive to a Warehouse Manager.

What Patches the Deceiver sought to steal wasn't some cliché concept of sanity, but a resource conceptually linked to the fundamental laws of the world.

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