Eldritch Horror Theatre

Not only had snapping the flowers failed to fell anyone, a new blossom had even regenerated at blinding speed?

Taking in that burst of vitality, Fu Qian twirled the three roses between his fingers, feeling their cheapness all the more keenly.

They seemed utterly worthless. All the weight Serana had placed on them earlier now looked completely misdirected.

The thing really was nothing more than an unconventional bloodline chart—the kind that patched itself right back up if a piece was torn away.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, Fu Qian kept his eyes on the other two spots where he had plucked the flowers.

Sure enough, just a fraction of a second later, the exact same thing happened: the plucked blossoms grew right back.

The regrowth itself was rather unconventional too. Instead of budding and blooming step by step, lurid buds of flesh sprouted from the snapped stems, creeping upward to rapidly outline the exact same floral shape.

More than a flower blooming anew, it looked like a severed limb regenerating.

Then again, that certainly matched the sound they had made when he snapped them off.

The Seranas seemed to have noticed the change as well.Each of them cast a glance over and kept walking away without a trace of lingering attachment, showing no intention of coming back to inspect it.

Clearly, they shared the same takeaway from the scene: these few symbolic flowers had just become even cheaper. And in that case... even if the things were gone, did it really matter at all?

Unfortunately, though great minds think alike, Fu Qian was in no hurry to join them in checking out the dome. Instead, he kept studying the roses in his hand.

As the saying goes, misfortune harbors fortune. Since when was worthlessness not a value of its own?

Earlier, worried that these flowers might be tied up in too much, he had held off on a certain go-to research method while weighing the risks.

Looking at it now, though, there seemed little need to worry that using Insight on one would destabilize the dream—

Like a magic show starting out of nowhere, Fu Qian brought his palms together and tucked one of the roses into his other hand.

When he opened his hands again, not a trace of it remained.

...

So it really didn’t matter at all?

Having smoothly formed a mouth in his palm and swallowed one of the three roses, Fu Qian seemed to have verified his earlier assessment once again.

Forget poisonous—it was completely bland and flavorless.

For one thing, the dream still looked stable; for another, Insight hadn’t even turned up a negative skill. Of course, it wasn’t as if nothing had changed at all. After using this skill to eat and drink his fill for so many days, it seemed he had finally run into an undercooked mushroom.

Since swallowing that rose, Fu Qian noted that the view before his eyes had grown somewhat peculiar.

Specifically, the ubiquitous red had genuinely begun to flow like blood.

He had just described the rose vines as a bloodline chart given form, and now that image was growing even more vivid and alive.

Of course, that alone wouldn’t be enough to compare it to eating bad mushrooms.

What stood out most was that this flowing ”red” seemed to be a living creature.

This went far beyond a simple texture swap. At a glance, the thing conveyed the sense of a remarkably complete, unified system.

The metaphor he had applied to Serana earlier—a caterpillar that ached all over from a single poke—seemed to fit just as well here.

It was like a two-dimensional creature sprawled across the surfaces of the building and everything in it, bestowing every bit of the vivid color filling his eyes.

And that brought an unpleasant problem with it.

As someone standing inside the Church, even though Fu Qian still retained his normal colors, he couldn’t avoid having the surrounding blood-red light cast across him.

Right this moment, what that meant in practice was that this peculiar two-dimensional creature was gingerly creeping up his body, as if hoping he too would merge into the whole. Truth be told, this sort of push for conversion actually suited a place like a church rather well.

”Thanks for the ushering, but shouldn’t you tell me about your Heavenly Father and Savior first?”

Although Insight hadn’t given him a glimpse of the Red Moon’s face, Fu Qian had no intention of taking that out on anyone else.

And while faith didn’t really suit his temperament, contrary to what most people might expect, Fu Qian actually held a fair amount of respect for that kind of ideological choice.

So much so that as the ”red” crept up his body, he wasn’t in a rush to drive it off, merely reminding the other party that it seemed to have skipped a step—oh?

Interestingly enough, the reminder actually seemed to work.

Fu Qian didn’t get a verbal reply, but after a brief pause, the ”red” actually seemed to slowly ebb away.

...

Could such a thing really happen?

Fu Qian had seen just how persistent missionaries could be, making it hard to imagine them backing off over a single remark.

To say nothing of whether his meaning could even get through to a two-dimensional creature.

Yet the change was unmistakably happening, forcing him to consider why. Had his brain gone bad? Were all of these hallucinations?

Ordinarily, that was no doubt the core reason people saw all sorts of bizarre things after eating bad mushrooms.

Toxins attacking the brain, hijacking the visual system, and the like.

Especially since he really had just eaten something unclean.

Going by his past experience with Insight, the act was faintly akin to opening up a firewall and actively accepting external data.

So even if the Rank of this place wasn’t absurdly high, with the victim actively cooperating, it really was possible for the dignified King of the Abandoned Prison to get poisoned and start hallucinating.

It was an easy enough explanation to reach, but a problem came right along with it—it made sense, yet it was boring.

The whole reason he had eaten that rose was that he still hadn’t seen a trace of the Red Moon.

One must never lose sight of the original goal. No matter how hard Serana was fighting over there, the greatest significance of this dream so far didn’t lie in her opportunity for advancement.

Rather, it lay in using her advancement opportunity as a link to successfully secure a chance to interact with the Red Moon.

Unfortunately, from the looks of it now, the Red Moon’s cognitive layers were compartmentalized surprisingly well.

Because of the contamination from the name Annalise, she had answered the broadcast of the Blood Clan’s Offspring.

And because of the suspension bridge effect from the Seed of Writhing, she had grudgingly fulfilled the duties of the Progenitor of the Blood Clan, opening up this advancement dream for Serana.

Yet beyond that, there wasn’t another trace of her in here.

It was as if she kept these things strictly separate, knowing full well that this was what the name Annalise was supposed to do.

Not even a trace of the Seed of Writhing had turned up so far.

That was why Fu Qian had risked destabilizing the dream and chosen to test a flower with Insight.

If it carried even a faint hint of ”Mother,” he might have been able to confirm the Red Moon’s condition, or perhaps even find a chance to communicate.

And all he got out of it was a bout of food poisoning?

For Fu Qian, that was undoubtedly an answer he hoped to disprove.

Fortunately, when it came to disproving it, he did have a few ideas in mind—

Flexing his fingers, he pulled the same trick again, making a second rose vanish into his palm.