Eldritch Horror Theatre

One of humanity's most naive tendencies was refusing to admit defeat, always trying to spin a bad situation into a good one.

This mindset subconsciously warped their perception of the odds of success.

Unfortunately, the belief that man can conquer nature was nothing more than idealism. If you sliced into a bomb while chopping fruit and insisted the explosion was just a heat treatment, you were only deceiving yourself.

"Mind if I ask what method you plan to use to suppress the curse when the time comes, Old Man?"

His philosophical musings concluded, Fu Qian looked at Camus and asked the question with absolute sincerity.

"How naive do you have to be to think I'd answer that?"

Camus's physical body was still crumbling, and visibly faster than Fu Qian's.

Yet he paid it no mind, dragging his deformed frame forward as he spoke.

"Of course, it doesn't really matter if I tell you. A simpleton like you could never use the method anyway."

"Got it. So it's not a universal solution, but something that relies entirely on your own abilities, right?"

Fu Qian nodded thoughtfully, appearing largely unfazed.

"Not bad! Shame there's no prize!"

Camus's laughter echoed directly inside Fu Qian's mind.

His physical body had completely melted into a puddle of rotten flesh on the floor; speaking aloud was no longer possible.

Hovering above the remains, however, was a semi-transparent spiritual body identical to his original form. It closed in on Fu Qian and raised its right hand.

But the moment the spirit's fingertips touched Fu Qian's chest, Camus suddenly froze, sensing something wrong.

A row of razor-sharp Spikes had erupted from his target's chest, piercing straight through the clothing to intercept the hand.

He was a demigod, after all. Had the curse spread that quickly?

Just as that shocked thought surfaced, an even more horrifying scene unfolded in Camus's vision.

The young demigod's body seemed to instantly lose all its bones. Centered at the waist, he folded completely in half like a piece of paper.

At the same time, dense layers of flesh and blood along his back writhed and tore apart, expanding rapidly.

A sense of extreme danger washed over Camus, but before he could react, the folded torso had already formed the upper and lower jaws of a colossal mouth.

The next moment, the massive maw clamped shut, swallowing his semi-transparent spirit whole.

"It's wrong to judge people by their appearance."

After swallowing Camus, the colossal maw shrank rapidly until it returned to the shape of a normal human mouth.

Simultaneously, the mass of flesh spawned on his back elongated. A new head and limbs stretched outward, swiftly reshaping back into Fu Qian's original form.

He snorted, speaking down to Camus's remains on the floor.

"I might look like a physical brawler, but I'm actually a man who fights with his brain, using cognition as my power."

"And the highest state of wisdom is something you people with poor appetites will never understand."

Fu Qian snapped his fingers as he spoke.

The swallowed spirit of Camus dissipated completely in bitter resentment, and his brief 175-year life drew to a close.

At the same time, Fu Qian noticed something new taking root deep within his consciousness.

...

So this was how it worked?

Fu Qian looked down at himself.

The next moment, his newly reconstructed body slowly turned ethereal.

This was the ability Camus had just displayed, which he had now acquired through Insight.

It was a rather unique sensation. He wasn't simply discarding his physical flesh, but containing it in an entirely different form.

As the ethereal state spread over his whole body, the Ring and equipment he had just embedded in his flesh were drawn into the same state.

The only pity was his clothes. As ordinary items, they had not only been torn during his transformation, but were now completely incapable of withstanding the shift, crumbling entirely into dust.

Fu Qian was now standing stark naked.

As the transformation was completed, the terrifyingly potent curse clinging to him came to an abrupt halt.

Though it wasn't completely purged, its spread had undeniably slowed to an absolute crawl.

It looked like this was the method Old Man Camus had been planning to use.

It was indeed pretty good, and now it was his.

In truth, Old Man Camus had clearly made the mistake of optimistic adventurism, biased toward believing that the Divine Blood Curse combined with his own abilities would strip Fu Qian of the power to resist.

But against a demigod armed to the teeth, even while afflicted by a curse, there were still far too many ways to dispose of the Old Man.

In fact, if he hadn't deliberately observed the situation, Camus wouldn't have even had the chance to unleash the curse.

It was Old Man Camus's later explanation that swiftly convinced Fu Qian to use Insight to resolve the problem.

The final spoils were quite impressive. So far, he could confirm two abilities.

The first was his current ethereal spirit form. As for the second—Fu Qian looked up at the reveling crowd.

There was no doubt they had all descended into individual madness. Despite the massive commotion just now, not a single person had so much as glanced in his direction.

The next moment, Fu Qian passed through the crowd. In a special manner, his spirit merged with the young man who had been the first to jump onto the table, concealing the final traces of his presence.

This was his second newly acquired ability: parasitizing a target's body in a highly covert and special manner.

Not long after he had set all this up, a pitch-black veil descended over the Cafe, seeming to sever it from the Real World.

Time seemed to stop flowing. The frantic revelry evaporated, and the crowd instantly slumped to the floor in a deep sleep.

The next moment, the door Camus had never managed to reach slowly opened, and two figures stepped inside, one after another.

Immediately, their attention locked onto the grotesque puddle of flesh on the floor.

Ravaged by the Divine Blood Curse, the physical body Camus had abandoned had completely lost its human shape, radiating a chaotic, depraved aura.

"What happened here?"

One of them, a man with a thick beard, frowned and asked his companion.

"It looks like a curse. Careful, don't touch it."

His companion, an Old Lady completely swallowed up in a heavy black robe, answered in a raspy voice.

"Are you saying there was a conflict here? But we hadn't even arrived yet."

The bearded man was visibly shocked as he scanned his surroundings.

"Their frantic behavior earlier certainly looked like Camus's doing, but it seems we were a step too late."

"Camus is a remarkably cunning guy. Don't take things for granted," the Old Lady's raspy voice continued.

"Take everything back, including these people."

"Regardless of whether the one who appeared here was the real Camus, our intel was clearly sound. A danger is brewing here in Dunis."

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