Eldritch Horror Theatre

Now this was professionalism.

Even the most insignificant things held value that could be exploited.

If he hadn’t dangled the promise of a favor to motivate Jill’s group earlier, this Third Knight might not have shown up so quickly.

If his guess was right, the situation before him was actually quite straightforward.

Realizing she could use it as a bargaining chip, Madam Jill—whether moving with the others or acting alone—had clearly come here searching for La Nina and opened this very cell.

Unfortunately, she had found nothing. In her disappointment, she hadn’t even bothered to close the door properly.

This explained both the scent of a woman and the open door.

As for the Wanderer before him, he truly hadn’t lied. From this angle, he could see into the cell; there was indeed a prison uniform alongside its accompanying confinement restraints.

However, not only was there no corpse, but even the hatched Scarlet Angel was nowhere to be seen.

The most obvious explanation was that the Wanderer Knight, just like Pestilence before him, had manifested using the Scarlet Angel as an Anchor Point.It had simply still been undergoing metamorphosis when Jill came to investigate, so she hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

However, the faint scent she left behind had, in a sense, acted as a catalyst, helping him cross paths with the Third Knight much sooner.

This might beg the question: wasn’t it a bad thing for the Third Knight to appear so quickly?

After all, if just one more arrived, the mission would instantly fail.

This was the benefit of being well-versed in relativity. That possibility certainly existed, but given how the first two knights had acted, Fu Qian was inclined to believe they weren’t deeply connected to one another. In other words, the speed of their Descent was relatively independent.

In that case, with the Third Knight appearing earlier, wouldn’t the time interval between him and the fourth knight be relatively longer?

What was especially comforting was that, so far, this one didn’t seem averse to conversation and clearly harbored a deep obsession.

”So, what does your wife look like? Let me see if I’ve run into her.”

Having made it clear he wasn’t bored enough to lock the Wanderer back in, Fu Qian tossed out the casual question.

...

”You haven’t seen her.”

While the Wanderer Knight wasn’t averse to conversation, his thought process was truly something to marvel at.

”If you had seen her, you would absolutely know she is the one I am looking for.”

He turned his head at Fu Qian’s words, looked him up and down intently, and immediately shook his head.

An interesting logic. It even sounded strangely understandable.

”Then the scent of the woman you smelled definitely doesn’t belong to your wife, because I’ve seen her.”

Unbothered by the dismissal, Fu Qian directly applied the knight’s own formula to deliver a rather pessimistic answer.

Swish—

Taking about two seconds to digest the answer, the Wanderer Knight swung his arm without the slightest warning amid a bizarre sound. Simultaneously, a pale, slender construct manifested on his arm.

Shaped like a phantom claw and colored like a bloated corpse, its speed was unbelievable.

But the wound healed even faster.

It swept across Fu Qian’s chest, feeling every bit as fierce as an attack from Classmate Su Gao, effortlessly leaving a slash in its wake.

The very next instant, however, the wound firmly knitted itself back together.

Even when Fu Qian deliberately tried to slow the healing down, he couldn’t stop it much.

That was right—this miraculous change did not stem from the Thug’s self-healing capabilities, but from the very nature of the attack itself.

For the wound appearing on his body, healing seemed to be its essential property.

It was such a contradictory method. In all his years of wandering the jianghu, Lu Mou had actually... seen something like it before.

Indeed. The moment he felt this change, Fu Qian immediately thought of a certain Ring on his person.

Ash Bestowal.

The attacks no longer damaged a target’s flesh, but instead caused The Deep to accumulate on their body. Once that accumulation reached a certain threshold, they would be directly banished to Unseen Hill.

Not only did this feel similar, but there was genuinely some kind of accumulation occurring.

As the wound healed, something else spread throughout his entire body in near-synchrony.

Even in the formidable state of the Resplendent Tyrant, he could vividly feel the violent corruption within it—maybe even a sense of familiarity?

As he carefully savored the sensation, Fu Qian couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret that a second claw hadn’t come swinging at him.

The reason for that was simple: he had swung his own hand at the exact same time.

The result was the Wanderer Knight flying backward, half his body smashed to an unrecognizable pulp.

...

”I am starting to agree with you now. That scent doesn’t belong to my wife.”

Fu Qian didn’t pursue, and the Wanderer didn’t flee.

On the contrary, once he found his footing, he walked right back over without the slightest hesitation. With the demeanor of a friendship forged through conflict, he acknowledged Fu Qian’s earlier claim.

Accompanying this shift in attitude was a bizarre sight: his pulped shoulder was rapidly healing at a speed no slower than Fu Qian’s own recovery.

It wasn’t the power of flesh and blood.

As an expert in this exact field, Fu Qian easily made that judgment.

It wasn’t that the other party possessed a flesh-and-blood vitality even more exaggerated than his own, but rather that the ”pain and injury” was radiating outward.

It radiated into his surroundings, rapidly restoring his own body in the process.

He wasn’t making it up; the evidence was right in front of his eyes.

Along the path the Wanderer took to walk back, even the stones he passed seemed to rot and decay, seeping out a scorched blackness.

By the time he took his final step, that exaggerated wound had completely healed.

And because they were so close, Fu Qian could clearly feel a portion of that pain radiating onto his own body. As a result, that earlier sense of familiarity climbed even higher.

They truly lived up to the name of the Knights of the Apocalypse; every single one of them possessed a unique skill.

Fu Qian marveled inwardly.

At first glance, this ability was even more of a cheat than his Ash-Bestowing Ring.

Any damage could be transferred to others. While rapidly healing himself, he could even force his opponent to accept the very damage they had dealt.

Although he wasn’t yet certain what sort of change this accumulation inside his body would trigger once it reached a certain threshold, this aspect alone was already ridiculously overpowered.

Of course, he hadn’t used the Dimensional Poison just now, so it was hard to say what would happen under those circumstances.

And if he just went all-out and pulverized the guy into dust, he wondered if the Wanderer would still have the ability to transfer that damage outward.

”You are remarkably strong. I might be able to extract more clues from the process of killing you.”

The Wanderer surprisingly hadn’t forgotten to return the flattery. As the phantom claws flashed on his hand once more, he gave Fu Qian his due credit.

Yet, while his earnest tone was convincing, there was also a considerable amount of confidence behind this death sentence.

His earlier judgment was spot on. This man truly harbored a profound obsession and an absurd level of conviction when it came to finding his wife.

Fu Qian, who had always excelled at squeezing value out of others, knew exactly what the Wanderer meant by that last sentence.

Whether Fu Qian knew the whereabouts of his wife or not, in the process of being forced into death, he might just drop some valuable clues in one way or another.

”How could you—”

However, the Wanderer, who had been poised to strike as he spoke, ultimately never brought down that second claw. And for the very first time, his tone wavered.