Eldritch Horror Theatre

That was why everything had its value.

The watch Fu Qian had swiped was, undeniably, just an ordinary item.

Yet in this delicate moment, its sudden alarm instantly shifted the atmosphere.

For a moment, it wasn't just Fu Qian who fell into deep thought. Sitting across from him, Patches also stared intently at his hand, wearing a faint, ambiguous smile.

"You seem quite fond of that thing!"

"Of course. A mechanical watch is standard issue for any successful man!"

Fu Qian spouted nonsense while his mind raced.

First, he had set the alarm himself. In a situation where every second counted, he wouldn't do anything pointless. It had to have a purpose.

He was always precise with his timing; he didn't need extra reminders.

And he would be doing it on the enemy's home turf.

So his purpose for doing this was most likely to leave himself a contingency plan.

To sum it up, the alarm wasn't a reminder. It was a correction.

It was a message left by his past self for his current self, meant to counteract any cognitive tampering he might suffer during their confrontation.

He remembered setting the alarm, but he couldn't recall his motivation for doing so, forcing him to reason it out all over again. That alone proved he had indeed been influenced.

Therefore, this contingency was meaningful.

And under the effects of cognitive tampering, a simple time would be almost useless.

He couldn't possibly have overlooked that at the time.

Thus, the time itself had to imply a robust conceptual message—one entirely independent of everything else, since everything else was already unreliable.

Furthermore, this message had to be simple and intuitive to him.

So, 7:50, or 19:50... what special meaning did this time hold?

Wait a minute. Fifty—

In a flash of realization, Fu Qian looked up at Patches.

"Just a boring toy."

The entity was critiquing his response.

"To forsake the joys of exploring life and will, and instead waste precious cognitive capacity on such things—it is simply blasphemy!"

"I understand. I can tell you lean more toward Flesh and Blood Ascension."

Fu Qian nodded knowingly.

"Coincidentally, so do I."

Before his voice faded, hundreds, even thousands of tentacles erupted explosively from his body.

In that brief moment just now, he had figured out the time's meaning.

The key lay solely in the latter half. Fifty had arrived—it was high noon.

This message told him he needed to go all out and pop his ultimate to instakill the enemy.

Just a single number, merely the second half of the time.

What a simple, crude, yet beautiful vehicle for a message.

I truly am a genius!

Amidst his self-praise, even though the cognitive perception in his head told him he had to kill Goya after eight o'clock to complete the mission, Fu Qian attacked without hesitation.

He was always a confident person, especially when it came to his past self.

Compared to earlier, the overwhelming swarm of tentacles even looked different.

No longer the familiar black-and-red biomass, the tentacles now manifested as an almost void-like black, resembling gaping wounds torn into the fabric of space.

Pinpricks of starlight linked into lines, dotting the black interior and making them look even more mesmerizing and hallucinatory at a glance.

This was his Mythical Form after advancing to the Original Sin Sage. He had used it once before to maximize his damage when killing Hamadus.

Unlike most demigods, since Fu Qian's usual combat form was already quite inhuman, the transformation into his Mythical Form didn't drastically change his appearance or fighting style.

To Fu Qian, this form felt more like a further release of restraints.

Free from the shackles of flesh and even will, it brought the sheer exhilaration of fully unleashing his power.

In the past, considering his Rank limits, maintaining this state carried the risk of dropping his SAN Value, so he rarely used it.

This time, he went full throttle without a second thought.

"Calm down. Even jokes have their limits!"

As the target of the assault, Patches finally displayed the strength of a demigod.

Amidst an inescapable, heaven-encompassing net, he crossed space in an incomprehensible manner the very next second, appearing perfectly intact in the gaps between the tentacles.

He even had the leisure to advise Fu Qian to calm down in the tone of a victim.

Unfortunately for him, a mist of blood immediately erupted across his body.

What a joke. When he said he was going full throttle, he naturally meant throwing out ultimate and basic skills all at once.

After launching his attack, Fu Qian had stealthily mixed in a few Air Bullets. As Patches continuously evaded, he eventually crashed right into them.

"Fascinating! To think you would actually attack right now... I was certain I altered your intentions."

Now injured, Patches's tone finally turned icy.

"You did alter them."

Fu Qian controlled the sky full of tentacles, aiming them at Patches like javelins. Interspersed with the occasional Air Bullet, he forced his opponent into a deadly game of bullet hell.

"I have to say, the strategy you chose was logical and effective."

"Once you confirmed my resolute killing intent, you didn't try to reverse it. Instead, you came at it from a lateral angle, quietly altering my concept of time. The difficulty of doing that was undoubtedly much lower."

"Up until a moment ago, I believed my plan was to wait until the screaming ended before killing you. I completely failed to realize this contradicted my original goal."

"Thinking back on it now, when you spoke to me using their faces, you deliberately mentioned specific times. The manipulation started right then."

"A rather brilliant method. Subtle, imperceptible, and pervasive."

"It's a pity I set an alarm."

"Cold, rigid, and boring, but it comes with reliability. That is the beauty of machinery."

"And the only message it conveyed to me was that this very moment is your time to die."

"I know this contradicts the thoughts in my head, but I'm just that confident in myself."

"Bastard!"

As they spoke, Patches sustained wound after wound under the barrage of tentacle javelins and Air Bullets.

In theory, this entity's abilities were truly unpredictable and deeply mysterious. Even as a demigod himself, Fu Qian hadn't noticed when his thoughts had been warped.

If not for the alarm, he very well might have just sat there until eight o'clock passed, failing the mission in total confusion.

But at the same time, the opponent was clearly not a melee fighter.

Once it came to actual blows, his frontal combat capabilities fell woefully short.

Sure, maybe he wasn't exactly weak, but who could blame Fu Qian for being utterly indestructible!

A few seconds later, Patches's body could no longer evade in time. The tentacles pinned him squarely to the wall.

"You know this has no effect on me."

Covered in wounds, Brother Patches maintained his calm demeanor.

"I look forward to our next meeting."

"And given what you've done, I won't be this polite next time."

"Likewise."

Fu Qian nodded.

"But is there any point in saying that now? Doctor Goya."

At Fu Qian's final address, Patches froze for a moment before a flicker of abnormality crossed his face.

Unfortunately, before he could express any parting sentiments, dozens of tentacles merged into a Mythical Form Biochemical Demonic Arm and completely crushed his head.

[Current task completed. Designation 2-155 Containment successful.]

'Are there really only these four?'

As he finished off his opponent, a prompt sounded in his ears, instantly lifting Fu Qian's mood.

Even though he hadn't hesitated to strike just now, he couldn't completely rule out the possibility that Patches had been putting on an act the entire time to cover for the other contestants.

As for why he had called that entity Goya at the very end, the reason was simple. If he wasn't Goya, how could his mission be completed?

The Warehouse might have been exploited, but that didn't mean certain established rules could be broken.

Since his assigned task was to eliminate Goya, then conceptually, Goya must still exist.

Regarding this situation, even though the final Patches had seemed incredibly lifelike, Fu Qian had a different interpretation. Rather than believing Patches was the original consciousness of that body and the four of them—including Goya—were just faces he could switch at will, there was another explanation: Goya's essence hadn't changed, and Patches was still a product of self-deception.

Through a special covenant, Goya and his three partners could indeed transform into one another, or even coexist within a single body. Fundamentally, however, they were still themselves. Patches was the fake.

Regardless of whether the name was correct or not, the Patches who had spoken to him and the entity behind the Nether Steed were highly unlikely to be the same being.

Otherwise, it was hard to imagine that a demigod-level entity with such a complete will could be taken down by him so easily.

The entity he had just spoken with was very likely merely a concept pieced together by the self-deception of those four contestants.

After all, the core premise of the covenant required treating the fake as real.

The state of those four—taking Goya as an example—was most likely Goya tricking himself into believing he was Patches disguised as Goya.

...

Even as the familiar Warehouse appeared before his eyes, Fu Qian's mind was still running in circles over this tongue twister.

As for the line he had shouted right before dealing the killing blow, it hadn't affected the outcome. It was mostly just born out of his own twisted sense of humor.

From the looks of it, because of the setup created by this group of SAN Value hunters, he needed to kill a total of four targets to destroy this 'ritual.'

Based on his previous experience, the first three to die would absolutely never break their state of self-deception, maximizing their ability to confuse him.

At the same time, they felt no fear. In their minds, this death was likely akin to sleep talking—it wouldn't become reality, and they wouldn't even remember it.

Only when the other three were dead would a special switch trigger in the final survivor, lifting the self-deception and causing them to flee for their lives by any means necessary.

This showed just how resolute the covenant forged by Goya and the others truly was. It was likely by using the self-identity of Patches as an Anchor Point that they could so freely engage in various forms of self-deception.

But what about the fear of death?

If the final one died, all four of them would truly die. It was entirely different from being trapped in the false samsara from before.

Fu Qian's parting remark had been to see if Goya's Dao heart would collapse under that kind of threat.

Unfortunately, judging from his final reaction, there might have been a slight moment of instability, but at most, it only left him bewildered and his thoughts in chaos.

From the moment the covenant was established, Goya and the others had already lost the ability to sever the cognitive identity of Patches from themselves.

...

'Interesting, but also a bit troublesome!'

This covenant was undoubtedly the most bizarre one Fu Qian had ever encountered.

It was practically a blatant robbery of the Warehouse.

If he hadn't been a professional task runner, any other contestant likely would have suffered catastrophic losses.

In fact, based on Patches' description, it was obvious that more than one predecessor had already fallen victim to it.

[Task Evaluation: Assassin of Lies]

As he pondered, the task summary chimed in his ears.

[Thanks to the strict hierarchical system within the organization and the corresponding generous resource support, every member of Anjing Company possesses an intense desire for promotion, pursuing it by any means necessary within the rules.

Goya Ulrich, being one of the most fanatical members among them, showed immense interest upon first discovering the Nether Steed.

Ultimately, under his persuasion, the company's higher-ups decided to support his research plan, granting Goya control over a massive amount of resources.

However, this was only the surface. Goya had actually realized the true nature of the power behind the Nether Steed the very first time he came into contact with it.

The tests conducted at the expense of massive resources were essentially nothing more than providing it with nourishment, even showing signs of spiraling out of control.

Thanks to your efforts, this risk of losing control has finally been eliminated.

Having lost Goya, this test—which required enormous investment without ever showing any results—will soon be abandoned.]

[Kills: Cynthia, Kuraki Eiko, Gao Ya's Substitute, Goya Ulrich]

[Reward: SAN Value +31]

[Special Reward: Delusion Step Ring]

[Current SAN Value: 145, Current inspiration: 99]

[Would you like to play the event recap?]

'That's not right!'

However, the content of the task prompts made Fu Qian frown deeper and deeper the more he listened.

'Isn't this task summary a little... too normal?'

It was exactly the idealized version. It completely glossed over the bizarre twists and turns, let alone his monumental contributions.

It was like facing a formidable enemy, with the boss giving a strict order to scrounge up a hundred thousand arrows to fight off the opposing army, only to just nod and say 'good job' when you handed them over the next day.

They only looked at the requirements and the results, completely ignoring the fact that you had actually led a charge straight into the enemy camp and 'borrowed' them by holding a blade to the enemy general's head.

Failing to be perceptive down to the smallest detail like this, it was no wonder they were taken advantage of by others!

Fortunately, there was a special reward, otherwise he would have suffered a massive loss this time.

[Name: Delusion Step Ring]

[Type: Ring]

[Effect: An exquisite condensation of the authority of deception. Despite its seemingly thick and heavy appearance, it bears almost no weight.

Once activated, your next step can freely land on any position within a certain range. Cooldown between uses is one hour.]

[Note: A Ring, as a token of faith, has always been a capable assistant to lies.]

This thing didn't seem too bad.

Fu Qian rubbed a dark silver Ring in his hand.

Indeed, just as the description stated, the Ring looked extremely simple and heavy, yet when resting in his palm, he could barely feel anything.

The next moment, Fu Qian slipped the Ring directly onto his left pinky finger.

After attempting to activate it, he took a step forward and instantly appeared behind the long table.

'A fantastic gap-closing skill!'

Fu Qian nodded in satisfaction, recalling the sensation from just a moment ago.

The effect of the Delusion Step was likely akin to a direct distortion of spatial concepts, allowing him to briefly break free from limitations like speed and distance.

This was likely the same type of ability Patches had used to dodge his attacks earlier.

However, the hour-long cooldown dictated that it could only be used for strategic purposes; it hadn't reached the level of an utterly unreasonable divine artifact.

'It still seems like it doesn't do justice to the difficulty of my task!'

In Fu Qian's eyes, the amount of exercise in this 'warm-up' had genuinely exceeded the limits. Being given a divine artifact wouldn't have been too much to ask.

'Whatever, always look on the bright side. At least after this battle, I've taken another step toward the Lord of the Rings achievement.'

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