Eldritch Horror Theatre

Now this was a master of the dreamscape. Excellency Patches certainly hadn’t been blowing hot air.

Roaming freely with a snap of his fingers, taking whatever he wished, rendering any attempts at secrecy as clumsy as burying one’s head in the sand—

It was safe to say that in this realm of unbridled freedom, Excellency Patches vividly demonstrated what it meant to be truly unbridled.

As for why he could go to such lengths, Fu Qian figured it likely had a lot to do with the dreamscape itself.

The Deity’s residual dream had expanded from the Laboratory to the entire Archipelago, affecting everything within it.

In fact, according to Patches, this wasn’t just an illusion confined to the mental world. It existed in a bizarre state of coupling—or superposition—with reality.

To the extent that whatever befell a person in the dreamscape would genuinely project onto their physical body the moment they woke up.

Under these circumstances, as one of the ancient Gods who naturally shared the authority over dreams, stirring up trouble here yielded twice the result with half the effort. It was no surprise he possessed this level of power.

There was even a vivid example of that ’burying one’s head in the sand’ right in front of them. It was shaped like a fetal egg, its surface a translucent membrane filled with pale yellow fluid.

The heads of Old Man Lu and his companion floated inside, their eyes shut tight.Having left and returned in the blink of an eye, Fu Qian and Patches were once again standing in the ruins of the Laboratory.

And this exact scene was suspended in one of its corners.

His earlier judgment had proven correct. Old Man Lu and his companion hadn’t left after all.

Instead, they had concealed themselves to the greatest extent possible using this grotesque method.

Even though he currently lacked Transcendent Perception, Fu Qian could somewhat understand the principle behind it.

Beyond using this form to hide, Old Man Lu and his companion seemed to have halted all intake of external information, which conversely ensured that their own presence leaked as little as possible.

After all, he had done something similar himself while attending the Clamor Festival in Dunis.

What was even more grotesque was that under these conditions, their limbs were still in a fragmented state.

Two heads and eight limbs simply drifted in the amniotic-like fluid, connected only by thin tentacles in the center. It brought to mind the complete metamorphosis taught in biology classes.

What a pity. Despite such painstaking effort, with a single snap of Excellency Patches’s fingers, they were now as conspicuous as stars in the night sky.

Fu Qian sighed inwardly.

Furthermore, the two weren’t even conversing vocally. They seemed to be communicating through telepathy or some similar method.

Yet even this was casually broadcast by Excellency Patches, making their head-in-the-sand self-deception all the more vivid.

Of course, looking on the bright side, given the form they were currently displaying, it looked like these two were thoroughly locked together. The team he had single-handedly assembled back then had been quite a success.

”Heh—didn’t you tell me to stay put no matter what? Why can’t you wait all of a sudden?”

Neither Fu Qian nor Patches rushed to wake the two pretending to be asleep.

And sure enough, Kikuchi was also awake. Although usually the more irritable one, his mood was surprisingly stable right now, his words dripping with sarcasm.

”Idiot!”

Old Man Lu made absolutely no effort to hide his anger.

”There is something very wrong with that guy. He seems to know everything, yet he wants nothing—it reminds me of our last encounter, which resulted in us ending up like this.”

”I don’t catch your drift. You said yourself that being like this isn’t entirely a bad thing—”

Realizing that Old Man Lu was being serious, Kikuchi reined himself in a little.

Rather than continuing to mock him, he expressed a fair amount of satisfaction with their combined form.

It actually made sense. Before teaming up, these two had only been at Tier 4.

Although the parts they had acquired through limb grafting were awe-inspiring, reaching the level of a High-Tier Transcendent had been a virtually impossible dream.

Not to mention that even the more senior Employee No. 001 had abandoned the limb grafting route to seek the enlightenment of the Law.

And while their current appearance was a bit grotesque, they were now indisputably Divine Beings.

”That is exactly why I feel something is wrong—we didn’t know what his motives were back then, but did he know we would end up in this state?”

Old Man Lu’s voice deepened as well, and the implication of his words was chilling.

”Are you saying he did it on purpose? That when he did all that back then, he had already planned for today?”

Kikuchi wasn’t slow-witted either. He immediately grasped the horrifying implication and voiced his disbelief.

”I don’t know, but it’s clear we can no longer take things for granted. We thought we had hidden ourselves well, but this is tantamount to surrendering all our initiative—”

However, Old Man Lu indicated that he couldn’t even confirm this bad news.

All he knew was that if it proved true, the two of them were in a very bleak situation.

”For all we know, he might be looking down from above right now, laughing at how we look.”

Good grief, had he actually given Old Man Lu psychological trauma?

While the scenario was accurate—he really was examining them from above—Fu Qian maintained that he certainly wasn’t laughing.

Furthermore, perhaps he really had engaged in the kind of ’fattening up for the slaughter’ that the old man described.

For instance, the assassin bro in the Furnace had successfully helped him comprehend the power of the Other Shore.

But as for the situation here in the Archipelago, he hadn’t actually over-engineered anything.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered treating them as a scientific research project at the time, but considering that Ibu was guarding this place and thoroughly detested things like limb grafting, he had guessed their odds of survival were quite slim.

All in all, this reunion could be considered a pleasant surprise, though it seemed to have genuinely frightened the parties involved.

”That isn’t even the most important part—if you think I was just scaring myself earlier, there’s one thing that appeared the exact moment he entered this place.”

It still wasn’t over. Amidst Kikuchi’s silence, Old Man Lu’s voice dropped even lower.

”No walking on the walls—”

Realizing instantly what he was referring to, Kikuchi’s response came through gritted teeth.

”Exactly. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence! So that guy must have some grand scheme for coming here this time. If we stay in hiding like this, we’ll only give him endless room to operate—”

Lu Ming subsequently arrived at an ’indisputable’ conclusion.

”They’re all here. Which piece do you want?”

The heavy atmosphere inside the egg hadn’t affected the outside world in the slightest. Having listened to the inner thoughts of the two individuals alongside Fu Qian, Patches asked with a chuckle.

Even though Fu Qian had stated earlier that these two were the core, Patches hadn’t questioned it at all, choosing to bring him straight over.

And right now, pointing at the various parts inside, he looked for all the world like he was offering to slaughter a fresh catch to order.

”That one.”

And Fu Qian actually placed an order.

Only, what he pointed at wasn’t any of the two old men’s limbs, but one of the tentacles connecting them.

Oh?

This behavior of ’buying a crab just to eat the twine’ was undoubtedly somewhat irrational, but Patches didn’t say much, simply grasping at the empty air once more.