Eldritch Horror Theatre

Dragging him into the trap right along with her? She really had spared no expense.

Fu Qian listened intently to the report, casting another quick glance at his gripped wrist.

Serana had openly confessed to her malicious intent, and her overall line of thinking matched what he had imagined.

The rose really was the key.

Merely holding that thing in hand seemed enough to briefly elevate one’s status, letting the holder share a measure of the Blood Clan’s glory.

And deep within that two-dimensional realm, certain special elements could then exert a targeted effect.

As for those clones charging in wave after wave to throw themselves into the paintings in the meantime, the goal wasn’t to go all out exploring the mysteries as she had claimed, but to strengthen the lineup meant to drag him down with her right now.

Just as Serana said, they were part of the price she paid.

Having extra heads certainly had its perks. Sacrificing a portion of oneself to perish together with an opponent was a tactic whose scale was ordinarily nowhere near this easy to control.

Right now, it could actually be calibrated down to a single percent.Come to think of it, back on the Witch’s side, hadn’t he run into another two-dimensional enthusiast from the Blood Clan whose name seemed to be Jacques?

Like red eyes, did this count as one of their racial traits too? Thinking back to that young man he had met on the rooftop, even Fu Qian had to marvel a little.

It wasn’t even pure nonsense. After all, that branch of the Blood Clan in Laerdin had another title for themselves—the Children of the Stars.

True, the name suited that False Starry Sky well, and even the nature of their abilities matched up completely.

Yet could the resemblance to the name ”Starry Sky Rose” really be sheer coincidence?

Don’t forget, that False Starry Sky was practically proven to be the handiwork of the First Generation Dark Moon.

And Their connection to Annalise was dead-certain to come from the very same lineage.

Was it possible that They had casually brought this whimsical notion of the Progenitor of the Blood Clan along to Laerdin?

Really, how could two character-creation ideas ever line up by sheer coincidence like that?

”Never mind those details. Try to describe that thing specifically.”

Even after successfully tracking down a bunch of possible distant relatives for Serana, Fu Qian kept his tone strict.

With a casual wave of his hand, he signaled her not to lose sight of what mattered over minor details.

Compared to a trivial matter like mutual destruction, the core issue right now was still what she had discovered after throwing herself into that two-dimensional realm.

”...It really is hard to describe specifically.”

Serana sounded a bit dazed already, unconsciously repeating what she had said earlier.

”Then describe it without being specific.”

Fu Qian didn’t let her off the hook, clearly dissatisfied with words like binding and confinement.

”Its position... is everywhere.”

Unfortunately, Serana’s aptitude seemed limited after all. After laboriously weighing her words, she settled on a phrase that wasn’t much of an improvement.

”Didn’t you say earlier that it existed inside the paintings? You’ve expanded the scope that fast?”

Sure enough, Professor Fu remained dissatisfied, sharply pointing out the inconsistency.

”I really didn’t put it rigorously enough. It isn’t limited to the spots covered by patterns—it’s on the surface of everything.”

Self-contradiction was a serious problem, so Serana hurried to correct herself.

”The surface of everything? Does that include those flowering vines too?”

Passing his inspection was never going to be that easy. Fu Qian gave a cold smile and gestured toward where the three flowers gathered overhead.

”...No, it’s the surface of this building, whether overhead or underfoot. The rose vines are different from them.”

Under his steady prodding, Serana was finally starting to get the hang of it.

Not only was she choosing her words more carefully to describe what she had actually found, at that very moment a bizarre humanoid silhouette even swam all the way along the surface of the structure down to his feet, backing up her claim.

...

Not bad.

Staring at the change underfoot, Fu Qian wasn’t the least bit worried that the thing would yank his leg; he simply felt deeply gratified by this hard-won progress.

Was this why His Excellency Master Yuhun had once said that language was a medium of communication riddled with fallacy?

For someone without professional training whose own logic wasn’t all that rigorous to begin with, describing a situation clearly was no easy task.

And the problem went far beyond mere communication.

When you cannot describe something accurately, the underlying reasoning tied to it easily ends up rough and crude as well.

Take Serana, for instance—after making a discovery like this, her very first reaction was merely that she could use it to set a trap? Why would such a binding force targeted specifically at the Blood Clan exist here?

Why did it exist across the surfaces of the building while the rose vines alone remained untouched?

Given the contents of her Tier 2 ritual, those questions should have sprung to mind by instinct.

[Under the guidance of the Starry Sky Rose, find the Blood Nova at the bottom layer of the dreamscape]

Taken on their own, those two questions might offer no clear angle, but paired with this line, the answer became simple—

The Blood Nova wasn’t here, which meant this place was not yet the bottom layer of the dreamscape.

And as he had guessed earlier, Annalise, as the Progenitor, most likely wouldn’t go out of her way to make things difficult for the little ones.

So when Blood Clan Offspring entered this ”second-deepest layer of the dreamscape” and felt a pull present across every surface, wasn’t it only natural to imagine that it was a call from the bottom layer of the dreamscape?

Yet Serana’s very first reaction was to use it as a prison cell?

All he could say was that, no matter what, someone of this caliber would never make it into his Laboratory.

”You discovered this pull while trying to put yourself into the paintings?”

Rather than actually voicing such discouraging remarks, Fu Qian chose to dial himself down and guide her step by step.

”Yes, and that’s also why I had to transmit it to you that way... If I could have sensed it just by standing here, perhaps I would have taken it for the Progenitor’s call.”

The facts proved he hadn’t guessed wrong. Even this discovery had stemmed from his own guiding suggestion to ”walk into the paintings.”

What Serana added even sketched out her train of thought to some extent, as if she were trying to defend her own logical reasoning—

It was only after turning two-dimensional that she discovered this power, and in turn realized she could never come back.

Precisely because of that restriction, Serana had taken it for a curse—a hazard along her path of pursuit rather than a gift to the Blood Clan.

And so, instead of looking any deeper, she chose to use it as a dirty trick against someone else.

To be fair, there was a tiny bit of reasoning behind it—just not much.

Just because she didn’t sense the summons right away, she decided there wasn’t much goodwill in it, rather than trying to ask why?

And why wasn’t it on the rose vines?

Wasn’t that progression of thought a little too single-track?

”At the same time, has there been no progress in your attempts to find the roots inside the paintings?”

Though criticizing her inwardly, Fu Qian didn’t let it show on his face, continuing to check on the other angle of approach.

”None—”

Her voice sank even lower, though before the word had fully left her lips, Serana seemed to finally remember something and looked up toward the dome.

Gratifyingly enough, the other three versions of her fluttering up there hadn’t come to a complete halt; they were still waving their sharp claws one after another, trying to trace out the root system.