Chapter 143: Pain and Laughter |
"Bang!"
"Go!"
Two sounds rang out simultaneously.
Wyatt reacted quickly. As the masked man raised his hand, Wyatt extended one hand and pointed toward him.
What followed was a series of violent explosions.
Invisible "bullets" shot out one by one from the fingertips of those gentlemen and ladies, hitting the window glass of the private room and shattering it into pieces.
These people had been ordinary just seconds ago, but all of them gained extraordinary abilities in that instant.
Even if it was only one type—the same type for everyone.
Bang, bang, bang.
When they approached the sofa where the three were seated, the bullets scattered like fish in water avoiding rocks, hitting the wall behind them and leaving countless holes.
The glass broke, but the fragments defied intuition. They didn't fly inward or outward. Instead, they shot outward like flying blades, violating the laws of physics.
These glass shards, like knives, struck the people outside. Some cut their bodies, some embedded themselves directly into flesh. Blood splattered instantly.
Yet the masked man's own invisible bullets seemed to lag by a second.
They only appeared after he and Wyatt clashed.
Pfft!
Wyatt's right index finger exploded.
Outside the private room, those elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies were hit by the broken glass, but instead of being affected, wisps of blood-red steam rose from their wounds.
Their eyes turned crimson instantly. The steam from their wounds didn't dissipate but swirled around their bodies.
Samuel suddenly felt pain across his body, as if countless glass shards had cut him and countless bullets had hit him.
At the same time, his right index finger felt as if it had been shattered by a bullet, sending a sharper pain that nearly overshadowed the rest.
"Oh?"
He roughly guessed what the masked man had done.
It seemed he had connected Samuel's senses to everyone else's.
There were dozens of people present. After the glass fragments hit them, the pain from those wounds appeared to transfer to everyone in the vicinity.
The masked man outside the window unconsciously clenched his fist.
It seemed this shared sensation wasn't just targeting the three inside but included the user himself.
The masked man looked into the private room and said softly:
"People can never truly empathize with one another..."
"If they could, there wouldn't be so many conflicts in the world..."
"And... and..."
He seemed to hesitate.
"Mutant..."
"What were you thinking when you committed those crimes?"
"Why couldn't you empathize with humans?"
Samuel noticed he could clearly feel the masked man's emotions.
This seemed to be one of his abilities too.
Anger.
Only anger.
Nothing else.
The masked man raised both hands, making a conducting gesture.
At his command, the gentlemen and ladies outside the private room bent down—some picked up broken glass from the floor, others pulled shards from their own bodies, and some grabbed knives and forks from tables.
Just as Samuel thought they would charge at him, he watched them instead drive the sharp objects into their own palms, slice open their skin, and cut into their own bodies.
One wound after another appeared, bringing fresh pain to Samuel, Wyatt, and Allenay.
Samuel glanced sideways at the prince sitting on the sofa.
Allenay only pursed his lips, his face turning pale.
Enduring the pain of dozens of people and the agony of Wyatt's shattered finger without a sound.
Samuel turned to Wyatt and saw his finger had healed.
"Is that 'true anger'?" Samuel pointed at the masked man outside.
Wyatt paused, then shook his head.
"No..."
Before he finished, a sudden change occurred.
The next moment, intense pain struck.
Pain!
Bone-deep pain.
Samuel looked outside and saw those people still with red eyes.
They were no longer satisfied with stabbing glass into their palms or slicing open their skin.
They panted, roared, and brought the glass to their nails, stomachs, eyes...
They pried off their nails, gouged out their eyes, tore open their skin, and pulled out their intestines.
At that moment, even in their frenzy, they squeezed out screams of agony from their throats.
"Ah!" Allenay cried out in pain.
The torture of dozens of people was synchronized onto one person. Even though the Fifth Prince wasn't pampered, he couldn't bear it.
The masked man had already collapsed to his knees from the pain, but he showed no sign of stopping.
"Mutant..." he muttered again.
But the next moment, a bracelet on Allenay's wrist lit up, freeing him from the sensory synchronization.
Fighting off the residual pain, Allenay quickly stood from the sofa, leaned back, propped himself up, and flipped backward behind it. Then he fell backward, lying on the ground.
But when his back hit the floor, he didn't stop. Instead, he continued sinking, merging directly into the floor.
He appeared on the ground like a painting, entering the floorboards.
He turned himself into a painting.
Thus avoiding the shared pain.
As Allenay resisted, the masked man outside didn't stop either.
He tremblingly raised both hands and clapped them together hard.
Slap!
Samuel suddenly found all his senses connected.
His sight, hearing, smell, and touch all perceived "pain."
This feeling was novel, unlike anything he had experienced before.
So he slowly rose from the sofa, spread his arms, and didn't resist.
Rip.
His skin split.
Crack.
His bones broke.
Pfft.
His organs bled.
This didn't come from "injury" but purely from "pain."
His skin, bones, organs... all had been granted the ability to "empathize."
They gained sensation, feeling the pain of dozens of people self-harming simultaneously.
They cracked from the pain.
Samuel could hear his skin whimpering faintly, his bones screaming in agony.
"Wow..." Samuel's face was pale from the pain.
"Awesome..."
He let out a sigh, and the corners of his mouth curled upward.
Truly remarkable...
He withdrew his outstretched right hand, extended his index and middle fingers, pressed them to the corners of his mouth, and pushed them up.
Not just him, but everything around him, with creaking sounds, bent and tilted to the other side, all sharing the pain.
Even the walls, tables, decorations, and carpets were the same.
They too cracked, splitting open, revealing gap-like mouths, letting out screams of agony.
But Wyatt, further away, remained relatively unaffected.
Samuel knew he must have his own way to deal with the pain.
He could do it himself too, but he didn't want to. He wanted to experience this new feeling.
He felt all his senses blending together.
He saw pain, heard pain, smelled pain, tasted pain.
Just as he thought, this novel experience surprised him.
Every new sensation was worth savoring.
Allenay, hiding in the painting, seemed affected again, though much more mildly due to the painting's barrier.
He raised his hand and wiped at the "wall" in front of him, his form rapidly fading.
The painting actually erased itself.
But not completely—it left a faint trace.
He slowly walked toward the nearby wall, stepping up along the corner where the floor met the wall.
It seemed because the painting was largely erased, Allenay didn't feel much pain.
This performance delighted Samuel immensely.
"Haha!" The wounds on Samuel's body stopped whimpering and began to laugh.
His skin laughed, his bones laughed, his organs laughed. The walls, tables, decorations, and carpets around him all laughed.
The cracks caused by pain turned into mouths for laughter.
"Ha ha ha..."
The joyful laughter instantly dispelled the pain.
Because the "pain" around him also laughed, in a way no one could hear.
The wounds on those controlled gentlemen and ladies laughed too.
They laughed so hard they doubled over.
The intestines that had spilled out danced back into the stomachs, the popped-out eyes bounced back into their sockets. The wounds hugged each other as they laughed, and in the process, healed.
The masked man, curled up in pain, slowly lifted his head.
A gale suddenly swept through the sealed underground gathering space.
All the candles went out instantly, and smaller objects flew everywhere, crashing chaotically.
He seemed to want to fight against this cheerful atmosphere.
A trace of irritation quietly emerged in Samuel's mind, threatening to dispel the joyful mood.
But unfortunately, this irritation was quickly snuffed out.
Literally "snuffed out."
Samuel laughed as he pinched his temples and pulled outward, drawing out a strand of silver thread mixed with red from the spot.
It was somewhat like the "memories" he had pulled out of Miles' Domain before, but with more impurities.
Wyatt and Allenay also sensed the anomaly.
Allenay half-closed his eyes, touching his finger to his brow.
As a "Tuner," he was very good at handling such things.
Wyatt, without any visible action, had already freed himself from that irritable, anxious feeling.
The masked man's mouth under his mask opened slightly, and he took a breath.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Floor tiles flipped up, glass in private rooms exploded, and from below the ground and inside the rooms, torrents of blood-red water gushed out like a dam breaking.
This was the basement level. The masked man seemed intent on flooding the entire underground space, leaving them no place to hide.
The blood water surged into massive waves, crashing toward the three, filling Samuel's private room within seconds.
The pain outside had ended, but Allenay still stood in his painting, not coming out.
He was a Siren and could breathe underwater.
But this blood water looked far too wrong, so he chose to avoid it for now.
He looked outside the painting at Samuel and Wyatt, noticing a pair of spectacles had appeared on the ceiling above Wyatt, looking down.
The blood water around Wyatt diverted on its own, bypassing him entirely.
From above, a patch of eye-shaped dry ground was visible in the pool of blood water.
Samuel, on the other hand, made no effort to protect himself. He let the blood water splash onto him, rising from his ankles to his neck in seconds.
He only had time to sniff, and the blood water flooded over his head, quickly submerging the entire room.
It was human blood.
Samuel recognized the smell.
He stood in the blood water, eyes open, looking around.
He gathered his spirituality into his eyes, activating the spiritual sight that all Law Seekers possessed, to see clearly underwater.
Everything before him was stained a bloody red, but aside from that, it wasn't much different from swimming with open eyes.
A hand flew toward Samuel, reaching for his throat.
Slap.
Samuel snapped the Travel Guide shut and swung it forward against the viscous resistance of the water, smacking the hand away.
It was a similarly blood-red hand, grotesquely elongated and twisted.
But because of its color, it was nearly invisible in this blood-filled room.
The surrounding blood water grew thicker and thicker, on the verge of solidifying.
"This is getting disgusting..." Samuel grimaced in distaste. His body suddenly shrank, grew thin, and turned into a palm-sized paper doll.
Wyatt felt a lightness on his shoulder as an identical paper doll floated down from it.
The paper doll rapidly expanded, swapping places with Samuel.
Not only did they swap positions, but even the blood water clinging to Samuel was replaced along with the paper doll.
"When did you stick that paper doll on me?" Wyatt turned to look at Samuel behind him.
"Just now," Samuel replied with a grin.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the wall behind him, and reminded, "Your nephew got plastered into the wall."
"It's fine," Wyatt shook his head. "I think your situation is more urgent."
"What do you mean?"
"This isn't the real body," Wyatt's voice reached Samuel's ears. "Your Siren clone is probably in trouble."
"Huh?" Samuel blinked.
He realized then that his connection with Celt and Evina had grown much fainter.
It felt somewhat like when Ethen opened the proto-Divine Realm and brought Celt inside.
"Oh no!"
....
PS:
I'd like to recommend a book written by a group member.
"Peninsula: You're My Type."
If you're interested, go check it out.