Eldritch Horror Theatre

A hundred years of solitude—nothing surpassed this.

Although they were not a single family, if someone were willing to examine the historical Holy Grail Cult from a similar perspective, they might well conclude it suffered some curse of fate.

”Constantly losing personnel, yet remaining completely unaware of it until their very destruction”—this wasn’t just idle talk.

Due to the properties of the Other Shore, once someone entered, any information about them in the outside world was erased—just like Old Man Feng’s previous encounter.

For the Holy Grail Cult outside, the same held true for these failures who had left their legacies behind...

Professional, collaborative investigation was just that efficient. Fu Qian could practically outline the origin of these traces and the fate of the Holy Grail Cult that had played such a crucial role.

It was uncertain what had originally driven the people of this organization to explore this place.

Given their habit of digging around everywhere, however, it wasn’t particularly strange.

Unfortunately, what they faced this time was a true Road of No Return.

The very first person to enter was likely the first failure, Mien, who soon discovered he could no longer leave.Because his information had been erased, the cult outside remained completely ignorant of the situation, making a rescue impossible.

Gradually falling into despair, he had to rely on himself to decipher the mysteries of the Other Shore.

Perhaps due to his sensitivity to the concept of the eye, or perhaps by pure coincidence, he found the House of Graffiti and even applied his expertise to deduce the Other Shore’s power imprints.

This process was fraught with fallacies and obstacles, which was why the initial patterns looked completely different from the current ones.

Then, perhaps because survival had simply become too difficult, or perhaps because his mental energy was exhausted and all hope turned to ash, he chose to leave behind his findings—and his failure.

After carving his name and posthumous title into the stone, he either went willingly to his death or turned himself into a vessel in the form of a Human Flesh Holy Grail.

Those who vainly attempted to harness power could never escape the fate of entering the game as a piece. And with no way to transmit a warning to the outside, a second ignorant victim arrived one day, inheriting and repeating the very same cycle.

...

Did this count as an alternative kind of legacy?

Charging forward wave upon wave, ignoring the tragic fates of their predecessors, inheriting mistakes to seek the truth until they finally obtained the correct answer—and still, they couldn’t change their ultimate destiny.

Fu Qian’s gaze swept over those names once more. It seemed they could be matched one-to-one with those mangled corpses.

During this process, the Holy Grail Cult outside had waxed and waned, like a wound constantly suffering from blood loss without anyone realizing it.

It was hard to say whether this was the direct cause of the cult’s demise. But in short, after long ages, those who vainly tried to see through the mysteries of Deities had reunited on the Other Shore in this peculiar way.

Trapped inside an already-dead husk, their final intention as failures was merely to manifest their small insights for those who came after.

These included the House of Graffiti, the giant mark in the Church, and even the Blood Faces he had seen when his first mission failed.

The special properties of that Stone Seat were likely related to them too.

It was just a pity that the latecomers were truly dense. First, Old Man Feng resorted to burning zithers and cooking cranes, treating the Stone Seat as a mere tranquilizer.

He had even conveniently suppressed a bunch of others along the way, denying them any chance to use their intelligence.

The subsequent Brother Zhao Ran actually had decent luck, discovering the Laboratory and the secret manual.

Unfortunately, that man lacked ambition, merely copying what he saw and blindly following the Road of No Return.

These were the so-called cruel tricks of fate.

In fact, if not for his own good research habits—suggesting that the Witch use this brief time to explore together—even these cruel tricks of fate would have remained unknown, utterly annihilated by history.

”It might be full of mistakes and failures, but it still counts as an alternative kind of brilliance.”

As Fu Qian sighed over this, the Witch beside him—clearly able to empathize a bit after his explanation—offered a soft remark.

”Indeed. So, is there a way to send them out?”

He completely agreed with the notion of an alternative brilliance. However, as Fu Qian nodded, he unexpectedly raised a new question.

...

”Are you sure?”

The Witch didn’t hide her confusion at the Knight’s overly compassionate thought.

”Setting aside the fact that, other than the only one that is still intact, the rest can’t even be considered remnant souls anymore. Whether they leave or not has completely lost all meaning.

”As I said before, to me, this world is all there is. There is no such thing as the outside, so there can be no concept of throwing them out.”

Yet, even though the Knight’s request was somewhat bizarre, she still patiently explained why such an operation was both meaningless and impossible.

”Then let’s make an assumption,” Fu Qian pressed. ”Regardless of whether it’s possible, if the situation I mentioned really happened, what would it cause?”

Professor Fu was particularly stubborn today.

”Hmm... if that were the case, by my estimation, this place would very likely collapse in short order.”

Faintly realizing that the Knight wasn’t having a sudden burst of goodwill but had an ulterior motive, the Witch frowned in thought for a moment before offering a deduction.

”This place’s nature of erasing all related information from the outside world is a rather pure and extreme authority. That would normally be fine, but as it happens, it is also a corpse.”

Not only that, but a moment later, she even provided her reasoning.

”Although I don’t know where these mausoleum-type buildings inside came from, the only reason an already thoroughly dead husk can stably exist for a long period must, to a certain extent, rely on this authority.

”And although ’they’ are weak, they have ultimately been branded with an imprint. That would very likely cause a paradox to emerge.

”For example, if they clearly went outside but still retained a certain nature of having their own information erased, the Other Shore’s fragile and extreme definitions of inside and outside might collapse as a result. Being a corpse to begin with, it would be powerless to adjust.”

So that was it. Was that why that mission had to be executed back then?

Fu Qian listened intently, letting out a long sigh at a certain point.

Although he had previously judged that Old Man Feng belonged to the absolute lowest tier, possessing the worst degree of fusion with the Other Shore—no matter how bad it was, it was still there.

Unlike Li Weixuan and the others, his prolonged use of the Stone Seat had ultimately led to a certain degree of fusion. The Blood Face imprint he saw back then was proof of this.

And the strategy used during his initial failure proved that the old man’s method had already reached a critical threshold. Add Li Weixuan to the mix, and it was highly likely that the chunk of Ambergris would have been large enough to make it out.

However, the Warehouse didn’t accept that method. Thus, if he wanted to leave this place and complete his mission objective, the only way was to do exactly what he had done: using Old Man Feng and the others as fuel to refine, achieving a medium degree of fusion. That was tantamount to eliminating this hidden danger.

As for what to do if his own departure also caused instability?

Simple. The moment the mission was completed, the Warehouse would yank him away. There wouldn’t be any paradox at all.

Furthermore, because of the forgotten attribute granted by the Other Shore, his identity as a student of the Academy would also automatically vanish. It wouldn’t even require any extra effort to erase.

Such a cunning calculation. And to think he had assumed it was actively expending effort to help him keep a low profile.