Eldritch Horror Theatre

'The penalty for failing this task actually scales exponentially?'

Fu Qian stood in the darkness, silent for a few seconds as he confirmed his SAN Value loss.

He had to admit, the price of doing the exact opposite had turned out much steeper than anticipated.

In those few seconds, every task he had received so far flashed through his mind, quickly leading to a likely conclusion.

Excluding the ultimate objective to escape the Furnace, that had been his sixth task since arriving.

When he failed the first task, his SAN Value had dropped by only a single point.

Going by the simplest calculation, if the penalty doubled with each task, the sixth would cost exactly thirty-two points.

'Not exactly good news!'

Fu Qian sighed inwardly.

If it truly followed this pattern, failing the next task would cost him sixty-four points.

[Current task updated: Escape Sheriff Stan's pursuit until dawn.]

Right on cue, a new prompt appeared in his mind.

'Sheriff Stan? He's the one leading the manhunt against me?'

Fu Qian pondered the new prompt.

Without a doubt, the tasks shifted continuously to match his situation.

If he had chosen to surrender earlier, this wouldn't be his next task. Most likely, he would have been told to clear his name instead.

It was still a long time until dawn. Thanks to ditching the car early and proceeding on foot, he had bought himself a little time.

However, losing the vehicle also meant his radius of movement had shrunk dramatically.

Once Sheriff Stan's men found the abandoned car, they would almost certainly set up checkpoints and begin a grid search of the surrounding area.

Even so, Fu Qian was confident he could handle it.

Right now, he cared more about a different question: why?

Why was Sheriff Stan in such a frantic rush to find him?

Such a drastic reaction had to have a specific reason behind it.

If the task failure penalty really did scale exponentially, his margin for error would only shrink the further he progressed.

After losing those thirty-two points, his current SAN Value sat at a mere 185. That meant he could afford to fail exactly one more time; after that, another failure would instantly reduce him to a vegetable.

'I don't have much time left!'

Merely completing the tasks wasn't enough. He had to use this window to figure out a way out of the Furnace as quickly as possible.

As he had reasoned earlier, the chances of the police reacting this quickly solely because of the Joseph incident were incredibly slim.

Sheriff Stan locking onto him had to stem from something else entirely.

Considering how few memories he had retained, he racked his brain and could only pinpoint one issue that might have triggered this: the corpse behind the storage room door.

'Does Sheriff Stan know about that corpse? Has he been secretly keeping an eye on it?'

'Does he suspect Daniel and I might have discovered what was behind that door? Is that why he's reacting so violently?'

Fu Qian silently weighed the possibility.

'If that's true, the people in this place sure have a lot of secrets!'

Amid his musings, another police car drove up the road and slowly pulled over to the curb.

Under the glow of the streetlights, a gaunt, middle-aged man stepped out of the back seat.

Though his hair was greying, his gaze was remarkably sharp as he scanned the area.

'Is this Sheriff Stan?'

Noting the man's uniform, Fu Qian shrank further into the shadows.

The man swept his eyes over the surroundings but found nothing out of the ordinary. Surrounded by several officers, he finally headed upstairs.

'This is going to be a long night for Medea!'

Fu Qian thought to himself as he watched the group's movements.

The man had clearly come here for Medea, and there was a ninety-nine percent chance he wanted to squeeze her for information on Fu Qian's whereabouts.

Actually, if he had strictly followed the earlier prompts, he would be up there waiting for the sheriff right now.

Testing his footing to confirm the wound wouldn't hinder him too much, Fu Qian slipped away along the shadows.

He had nothing to worry about when it came to Medea. Neither she nor Daniel knew much about him.

Not to mention, given what had happened earlier, Medea would undoubtedly be trying her hardest to cover her own tracks. She was highly unlikely to tell the complete truth.

As for himself, his absolute first priority was to get as far away from this area as possible before the lockdown tightened.

But that still wasn't enough. Considering this might be his last margin for error, he had to find a way to gather more information.

In fact, Fu Qian already had an idea.

As the saying went, fishing in troubled waters. If he wanted more information to surface, he naturally had to muddy the water first.

After sneaking through the darkness for some distance, Fu Qian flagged down a taxi and gave the driver an address.

The driver, a bald, burly man, narrowed his eyes and sized Fu Qian up before finally motioning for him to get in.

"Right here is fine."

Some time later, Fu Qian instructed the driver to pull over at a secluded spot along the road.

After paying his fare, he pulled out two extra bills and handed one to the driver.

"Wait for me here. I'll be back out in fifteen minutes."

"I'm only waiting fifteen minutes."

The driver took the cash and glanced up at the building by the road.

He clearly didn't appreciate Fu Qian's tone. However, the allure of the money won out.

"Good."

Fu Qian didn't waste his breath. He opened the door and stepped out.

He hadn't just picked a random spot to run to. That building up ahead belonged to Daniel's family.

He had specifically confirmed its location while wandering around after dinner.

And at this exact moment, he could easily imagine Daniel's family being extremely busy.

Therefore, instead of actually going up and knocking on their door, Fu Qian found a spot in the driver's blind spot and concealed himself.

A little over ten minutes later, Fu Qian watched as the taxi that had brought him flared its headlights and drove off without a second of hesitation.

Evidently, since he hadn't returned on time, the driver wasn't going to stick around.

'That should just about do it.'

Fu Qian nodded to himself.

Fleeing in a taxi was a move the police would track down sooner rather than later.

He had never planned to use it to hide from them. In fact, he did it specifically so they would track it.

As things stood, he could already imagine the response Sheriff Stan would get when questioning the bald driver:

"That's right, I did pick up a guy like that."

"He got to his destination and told me to wait fifteen minutes, said he'd be right out. Too bad he never showed up when the time ran out, so I just drove off."

Any normal person hearing that description would come to an obvious conclusion: he had connections with Daniel's family, had paid them a late-night visit, and had never reemerged.

And once Sheriff Stan accepted that narrative, it would be time to put the strength of Daniel's family to the test.

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