Eldritch Horror Theatre

As Bai Jinting died once more, a sensation akin to waking from a dream washed over him.

”The finals you’ve all been waiting for are about to begin! Fighters, please enter the arena!”

Yet as his senses returned, the very first thing Fu Qian heard was the announcer’s impassioned voice.

Sure enough, he was back.

He had just distinctly felt himself waking up. Was this simply shifting from one dream to another?

Was this Endless Nightmare Mode?

Bai Jinting’s mocking voice still seemed to echo in his ears.

Fu Qian paid it no mind, simply pushing the door open and stepping out.

He leaped, climbed, and dodged his way up until he stood on Bai Jinting’s viewing platform once again.

”So it turns out I wasn’t lying, was I?”Bai Jinting blinked at Fu Qian, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

But halfway through that blink, an Air Bullet blasted him into the sky.

”Two.”

Fu Qian kept count. He experienced the sensation of being pulled from the dreamscape once more, and the familiar voice returned to his ears.

”The finals you’ve all been waiting for are about to begin! Fighters, please enter the arena!”

Open the door, leap, climb, and dodge. After completing this exact sequence of actions for a third time, Fu Qian confronted Bai Jinting once again.

The man shook his head and sighed, looking at him with the pity one might reserve for a fool.

”Everything you are doing is utterly meaningless...”

”Three.”

Fu Qian didn’t bother replying. He simply ticked off the next number, and Bai Jinting was blown to pieces once more.

...

”Has the slaughter completely gone to your head?”

”Four.”

...

”A pointless struggle.”

”Five.”

...

”This is entirely in vain. You cannot change a thing.”

”Six.”

...

”Have you completely given up?”

”Seven.”

...

Fu Qian tirelessly exited the preparation room time and time again, repeating the same routine and slaughtering Bai Jinting in a variety of ways.

Eventually, Bai Jinting’s demeanor began to shift.

What started as cynical mockery gradually morphed into a choked speechlessness.

By the time the kill count hit forty, Bai Jinting finally broke down.

Faced with Fu Qian’s relentless approach, he started trying to flee.

But against a man who had continuously reloaded the sequence dozens of times and could complete the kill with his eyes closed, there was nowhere left to run.

”What the hell are you trying to do...”

Right before he was blown to pieces yet again, Bai Jinting stared at Fu Qian in utter despair.

”Like I said, the moment you used the word ’again,’ I already knew what I was going to do.”

”If everything here was just a perfect, identical repetition, then this nightmare would truly be inescapable.”

Fu Qian looked at him with a pleasant smile.

”But having you as an audience changes things.”

”As long as you remember the experience of every single death, my actions aren’t just meaningless repetition.”

”In my experience, people are incredibly impatient. They love to throw around words like ’countless’ and ’forever,’ but you’ll often find they use them to describe a number that hasn’t even hit three digits.”

”So I highly doubt if this protection of yours can genuinely withstand countless deaths, resetting all of this over and over again.”

”To test that theory, I’m going to run a little experiment and set a small goal for myself.”

Fu Qian blinked.

”I’ll start by killing you 999 times.”

”That little act of yours earlier wasn’t so much about generously giving me advice as desperately trying to paint a picture of utter despair, hoping to guide my thoughts toward suicide.

”I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I killed myself, but my instincts tell me it wouldn’t be anything good. If I actually went through with it, I’m afraid the consequences would be... heh!”

”So, die.”

”You are simply... completely unreasonable!”

”You don’t understand, please call me a Child of Platinum!”

...

Fu Qian had always been a selectively patient person.

As long as something caught his interest, he didn’t mind spending more time on it, repeating the most mind-numbingly tedious tasks with astonishing patience.

Honestly, if Bai Jinting had been truly cautious, he should have pretended nothing had changed when he saw him the second time.

That would have forced Fu Qian to waste far more time searching for other variables.

Unfortunately, in his eagerness to show off, the man had openly admitted that his deaths would reset the dream, making him the only known variable in this entire nightmare prison.

As long as it was a variable—even if it was just a changing statistic—it was worth grinding. That was the basic standard of a top-tier gamer.

Of course, he couldn’t really blame him either. The level of obsession—or perversion—some people possessed simply lay far beyond Bai Jinting’s comprehension.

”You... you lunatic!”

Faced with Fu Qian closing in step by step, Bai Jinting let out another despairing cry.

You mean the Dark Moon madmen? Sorry, but compared to that bunch, I still fall a bit short.

”Forty-one.”

...

”Fifty-nine.”

...

”Sixty-nine.”

...

”Ninety-nine.”

...

When Bai Jinting was blown to pieces for the 138th time, his agonized wail echoed through the White Tower for a long time.

By now, Fu Qian had grown so familiar with the sequence that he could do it all with his eyes closed.

But this time, the dreamscape did not reset.

Fu Qian opened his eyes. Before him lay Bai Jinting’s mangled corpse; this favored one was now completely devoid of life.

Sure enough, there was a limit.

138. The man’s definition of ’forever’ was truly shallow.

Unfortunately, while it hadn’t reset, the dream wasn’t over either.

Fu Qian peered down at the chaotic crowd still milling about below.

Almost at the same time, he felt the gaze of some special entity lock onto him.

The next moment, a heavy weight pressed down on him. It felt as though something had been superimposed upon his body, forging a special connection between his very existence and the entire dreamscape.

What is this?

Fu Qian clenched his fists, feeling the subtle ripples his movements sent through the surroundings.

Now that Bai Jinting is dead, has the gaze of that ’great entity’ he spoke of shifted over to me? Have I become the new King of the White Tower?

Don’t tell me I have to kill myself next?

No.

It only took a second for Fu Qian to dismiss the idea.

His own vitality was leagues beyond anything Bai Jinting had possessed.

If he killed himself right now, the most likely outcome would be triggering another reset, and then he would be forced to repeat the process over and over until he completely broke down.

The number required for that would likely be astronomical.

Not to mention the possibility of genuine death, resulting in a mission failure.

There was another problem, too. Judging by what had just happened, even if he died, there was no guarantee that the entity’s gaze wouldn’t simply shift to someone else, creating a new King of the White Tower.

Whatever the case, suicide was strictly an option of last resort.

Fu Qian shook his head. Since the Containment Failure prompt hadn’t appeared yet, it meant there was still a way out.

Bai Jinting had been right about one thing, though. The gaze of the ’great entity’ wasn’t necessarily a response to some devout prayer; it could simply be that its attention had been drawn by something unique.

That brought up an important question: why exactly had Bai Jinting attracted the attention of the mysterious entity behind all this?

If it was because of their bizarre limb grafting technology, then Lu Ming and his people should have been much stronger candidates.

So, what made Bai Jinting so special?

Fu Qian pondered the matter for a moment before looking toward the cage-like elevator beside him.

At the very beginning, the King of the White Tower had ridden this exact contraption down.

Fu Qian stepped forward and stood on it. The elevator began to slowly ascend, climbing steadily toward the very top of the White Tower.

Looking down at the ant-like crowd below, he finally somewhat understood why Bai Jinting had liked riding it so much.