Eldritch Horror Theatre

Even though they hadn't evacuated when called, the people here clearly anticipated potential disasters.

At the very least, these successive layers of tightly sealed doors were somewhat unusual.

Fu Qian didn't linger. Prioritizing his own safety, he carefully searched the two bodies.

Unfortunately, he found nothing of value.

The incident level clearly hadn't been deemed too severe. Neither of them carried firearms; they were exclusively armed with standard riot batons.

Given his preference for a peaceful approach, Fu Qian usually carried Mercy, but he rarely packed much ammunition. After firing two shots earlier, he only had nine bullets left in total.

By the look of things, he wouldn't be able to replenish his most lethal means of attack on the spot.

Still, this situation had been genuinely hard to predict.

In previous missions, his abilities and Items were either outright restricted—meaning he couldn't equip Mercy at all—or completely unrestricted, which made the gun's power far inferior to his bare hands. He had never had any reason to play the marksman.

The Walkie-Talkie had been unusable for a while. Aside from that, he only found a set of Keys that obviously belonged to the doors.

This obviously held little significance for Fu Qian.

In the time it would take to test the Keys one by one, he could have already forced the doors open and left.

Ultimately, after looting the bodies, Fu Qian only brought along a single baton.

...

This was the place.

After forcing open several doors in quick succession, Fu Qian stood in a familiar Corridor. Not far away, a corrupted with broken legs was struggling to crawl toward him.

Naturally, given that its arms were also severely deformed, crawling proved rather difficult.

Having inflicted this brutal injury in the first place, Fu Qian had no intention of waiting for it. He simply pulled out his tools and began unlocking the door.

The room before him was none other than the one housing the safe that contained Henry.

That was right. Fu Qian hadn't risked coming out to strike directly at the enemy's heart; he had come here to confirm one thing.

Click!

The door sprang open, and a red light, a few shades brighter than the one in the Corridor, immediately spilled out.

However, this time, Fu Qian didn't rush inside. Instead, he stood in the doorway, squinting as he surveyed the room.

Was there someone in the corner?

Although the light was dim, Fu Qian could clearly see a figure sitting on the ground in the corner where the safe was kept, clutching his head with both hands.

Roar!

In the brief moment he spent observing, a hoarse roar rang out.

The crippled yet relentless corrupted had finally crawled close enough, eagerly raising its head to unleash another roar.

Unfortunately for the creature, its target ignored it completely. After confirming that the figure in the corner remained motionless despite the roar, Fu Qian stepped inside, slammed the door shut on the corrupted, and wedged the riot baton into the door handles to bar it.

This piece of loot he had brought along successfully spared the sedatives from being used as a makeshift doorstop.

"What's your name?"

After confirming there was no one else in the room, Fu Qian dispensed with the pleasantries. He walked right up to this peculiar figure and dragged over a Chair to sit down.

"Oliver."

Surprisingly, his question actually caught the attention of the man on the ground.

The stranger lifted his face from between his knees and answered in a hoarse voice.

Not good!

The moment he saw the man's face, Fu Qian couldn't help but frown.

He was quite young and had a somewhat dashing, handsome appearance. Unfortunately, large swaths of glowing fluorescent patterns were currently spread across his sharply contoured face, converging into a bizarre shape.

His condition was much more severe than the corrupted outside, yet he didn't display any aggression.

Furthermore, the man clearly wasn't wearing a standard uniform; his attire looked more like an experimental lab coat.

A genuine staff member?

"What are you looking for here?"

With his thoughts racing, Fu Qian immediately followed up with another question.

Although the man's attire suited the room, Fu Qian didn't believe Oliver was carrying out his normal duties.

The reason was simple: the Laboratory before him didn't look much different from his last visit. It was far too clean to be in active use.

"Oliver..."

Unfortunately, exactly as he had feared, even though Oliver was "looking," his eyes were completely unfocused.

In response to Fu Qian's second question, he simply stared blankly for a few seconds before repeating his own name.

"Where is Henry?"

Already mentally prepared for this, Fu Qian moved straight to his third question.

"Henry..."

This question seemed to evoke a slight reaction from Oliver.

However, he merely muttered the name to himself a few times before falling silent again.

He had most likely come looking for the cat, but sadly, he was in no condition to provide any valuable information.

Having drawn his conclusions, Fu Qian stopped asking questions. He walked over to the safe in the corner and began his technical work.

Oliver still showed no reaction, simply staring blankly as Fu Qian worked.

Meow!

As Fu Qian finally popped the safe open, a familiar meow echoed out.

Henry... was actually inside.

Gazing at the familiar black-and-white coat in the darkness, Fu Qian let out a silent sigh.

Its voice was quite a bit hoarser than before, though.

Indeed, after miraculously vanishing from his waist, the cat was sitting inside the safe just like last time, appearing relatively unharmed.

However, its eyes were shining far brighter than before... and its aggression had intensified significantly.

Without even blinking, Fu Qian snatched the leaping Henry out of the air, swapping hands to hold the cat firmly by the scruff of the neck.

Even immobilized like this, the cat's struggling was noticeably more violent than the last time.

"So, even hiding in the dark won't shield you from the influence of that color?"

Fu Qian shook his head and sighed.

In truth, this was exactly what he had come down here to confirm.

During his earlier discussion with the team members, they had concluded that falling deeper into corruption might actually present a better opportunity to complete the mission. However, Fu Qian was not inclined to take that route.

Otherwise, he would have just let the corrupted take a few bites out of him on the way here.

As far as Fu Qian was concerned, intentionally doing so would be akin to setting a ticking timer on his own life when the situation remained unclear. It simply wasn't a good idea.

If anything, he had been trying to figure out if there was a way to suppress this corruption.

And when tackling this problem, the first thing Fu Qian had thought of was Henry, locked down here.

Although they had shifted into a different space-time, without his rescue, there was still a high probability that the cat would be locked inside.

If the influence stemmed from the ubiquitous color, then Fu Qian wanted to know whether this near-absolute darkness could block it.

Sadly, reality proved otherwise. Henry's condition could only be considered marginally better than those of the two dogs.

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