Eldritch Horror Theatre

[SAN Value -10]

[SAN Value -10]

[SAN Value -10]

...

As the activation prompt for Pseudo-God Incarnation rang out for the twelfth time, the situation finally took a gratifying turn.

At this point, Fu Qian could barely maintain his human form.

Aside from a conceptual head and a single hand—tasked with wearing the mask and digging out kidneys, respectively—the rest of his body had been completely let go, left to operate on its own.

A crimson web, its glare rivaling the moonlight overhead, completely enveloped him.

The reason this change felt gratifying was that Emperor Yasui looked even more resplendent.

After all, happiness is born from comparison!At this moment, Yasui Tokiyuki looked more like an Emperor than ever before.

A magnificent hexagonal Crown rested on his head, which had lost all its facial features.

Below that head draped a majestic, gorgeous robe formed by clustering layers of blood membrane.

The only problem was the patches of fleshy tendrils wriggling and swaying across the magnificent robe, looking exactly like maggots breeding in spoiled meat.

Crimson semicircles of Dislocation formed the most dazzling patterns across its surface.

Thanks to Fu Qian’s relentless efforts, his opponent’s level of pollution had successfully surpassed his own.

As they say, the deeper the depravity, the greater the joy. The man had likely already caught a glimpse of bliss—wait, it seemed that wasn’t the case.

”You must die today!”

Hearing Yasui Tokiyuki’s roar emanate from who knew where, Fu Qian realized he still needed to work harder.

”I’ll take your word for it.”

His body was immediately cleaved in two, and the hand on one half plunged into the layers of blood membrane once again, ripping out a handful of fragments.

It still hadn’t triggered.

Out of a dozen attempts at kidney-digging, he had only managed a single triple-hit. As expected, someone with terrible luck really shouldn’t rely on critical strikes.

”Za Warudo!”

...

[SAN Value -10]

”If I go mad, the materialization of notoriety will uncontrollably trigger once more.”

Returning once again, Emperor Yasui finally raised a new point, expressing a considerable degree of universal concern.

”Alright, let it trigger.”

Using an arm that could only maintain three fingers, Fu Qian dug in for another strike.

”This is my domain. I can leave at any time. Your actions are completely meaningless.”

Unexpectedly, Yasui Tokiyuki really didn’t fight back. Even the ink-black humanoid figure slowly dissipated, showing immense sincerity.

”Give up this place, which is so closely connected to the core of your authority? Setting aside whether you can completely sever the connection, if this place is thoroughly polluted, it would be no different from death for you, wouldn’t it? You won’t do that.”

”The reason I was willing to enter your home turf was because I believed you wouldn’t run away from it.”

Unfortunately, Fu Qian did not accept his sincerity.

Of course, he didn’t launch another strike—simply because he lacked the strength.

As his injuries worsened, his recovery efficiency was growing poorer by the second.

A single rest was only enough for him to unleash one Visceral Attack.

”I truly do not understand your motives. If this is out of some so-called sense of justice, well, humanity is just like this. You can’t change anything.”

Yet Yasui Tokiyuki refused to give up.

”But you’ll be dead.”

Fu Qian smoothed his no-longer-existent hair and took off his mask.

...

Thanks to Yasui Tokiyuki not fighting back, the efficiency of this rest didn’t drop too drastically.

In the dim Warehouse, Fu Qian looked down at his barely cohesive humanoid form. He wasn’t in a hurry to pick up the mask.

Having reached this point, how could Yasui Tokiyuki not know he wouldn’t give up?

Yet he had stubbornly refused to fight back, insisting instead on spouting a bunch of nonsense.

When things are abnormal, there must be something sinister at work.

The next moment, he sealed his five senses to their absolute limits and activated an Imprint deep within his soul.

...

Truly excellent!

Relying purely on a faint shift between light and dark to sense the setting sun outside the window, Fu Qian sighed inwardly.

At this moment, he was sitting in his familiar living room in an unprecedented form.

In this state, time in the other world would flow synchronously.

So he couldn’t stay for too long.

Shouts echoed in his mind, but his voluntarily sealed perception minimized his reverse influence on them to the absolute limit, ensuring he wouldn’t inadvertently get Young Master Qin and the others killed.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

After silently counting five seconds, Fu Qian activated the Imprint and returned to the Warehouse.

[SAN Value -10]

Almost instantly, Pseudo-God Incarnation activated, and he donned both masks.

Was this... a nuclear explosion?

When he reappeared on the moon, the Red Moon was already close at hand.

Feeling the indescribably intense heat and the fading—yet still blinding—Sea of Light, Fu Qian clicked his tongue in wonder.

Just as expected, Yasui Tokiyuki’s earlier posturing had been a ploy to stall for time and brew a killer move.

Even without facing it head-on, he could still sense the terrifying might of that strike.

He could see that the countless human faces beneath his feet had been annihilated, and even those further away had stopped squirming, frozen solid like glass.

And atop that glassy surface, Fu Qian spotted a writhing mass.

The Crown was completely deformed, and the magnificent robe was in tatters. Only the crimson patterns shone brighter than ever.

To maximize the deception, the man had even used himself as bait, failing to fully escape the blast radius of that apocalyptic explosion.

What a pity that fast-forwarding the clock by five seconds had caused him to miss this spectacular scene.

Who said a time stop where you couldn’t move was meaningless?

”You...”

Yasui Tokiyuki only had time to project a single word with his mind before he was interrupted by a Visceral Attack.

And Fu Qian removed his mask once more, absolutely refusing to drag out the fight.

...

[SAN Value -10]

Dispel, recover, return. Facing the even more unrecognizable mass, Fu Qian attempted another strike.

To his pleasant surprise, even though it was nearly impossible to tell the inside from the outside of his target, the Visceral Attack actually triggered successfully.

Ever since he gained the ability to conceptually dig out kidneys, the criteria for determining injury seemed to have become conceptual as well.

The only shame was that, although it was true damage that bypassed everything, its power still remained within the Demigod Realm.

Simply put, it bypassed damage reduction, but the damage numbers had a limit.

Otherwise, against a target that clearly leaned toward the Psychic Type, it wouldn’t have required so many hits.

With a sigh, Fu Qian took off the mask once again.

However, this time, the scenery before him didn’t change.

”Caught you...”

Instead, Yasui Tokiyuki’s slightly crazed voice rang out.

...

”Did you really think I wouldn’t notice a trick like briefly jumping out of reality?”

”Did you really think that aside from indiscriminate damage that ignores friend and foe, I had no way to deal with you?”

”No matter how high your status is, fourteen times is enough for me to lock onto that connection...”

”Now, face your final death match.”

”Bad news: you won’t become a legend, because that is an honor reserved for the dead. Instead, you will suffer the torment of Eternity—to the point where you’ll deeply yearn for the kind of peace Ariel had.”

As expected of the legendary Tier 1, brimming with tricks and strength.

Facing the declaration flashing through his mind, Fu Qian didn’t skimp on his praise.

”Well played.”

Amidst the resurging ravings, he tapped the part of his body resembling a head, and a Transparent Handbell appeared in his hand.

With a crisp chime, a silence so brief it was imperceptible flashed by, and the scene before his eyes flowed away with it.

Even beneath this transcendent fluctuation, the already dazzlingly intoxicating Red Moon finally found an opening to slip in, breaking through the final boundary.

How did the saying go again? Eternity is nothing but a fool’s fantasy, and even rationality is merely an illusion.

The final scene Fu Qian saw was that robe crashing to the ground, crumpled into a ball like origami.