Chapter 145: Let’s Play a Game |
On the underground first floor, the party venue was submerged in blood.
Hearing Wyatt’s reminder, Samuel suddenly realized that his connection with Evina and Celt had indeed weakened significantly.
“Whoa, a feint in the east while attacking in the west.” Samuel said with a grin.
“Aren’t you worried?” Wyatt asked.
“What’s there to worry about?” Samuel replied cheerfully.
“True.”
Wyatt’s expression remained unchanged, but suspicion stirred within him.
What was this all about?
He lowered his head slightly, gazing at the ground beneath his feet.
He should have been well aware that he almost certainly couldn’t kill Allenay under Ethen’s watchful eyes, let alone with Samuel present.
Was he hoping for help? He knew perfectly well that Wyatt couldn’t…
Then Wyatt thought of Evina.
If it was for that siren named Evina…
Wyatt considered it, then immediately dismissed the thought.
No, that shouldn’t be it.
He loathed Mutants, but that hatred stemmed from the Mutant Uprising.
He was fully aware that Evina was a clone Samuel had created using the Siren Law Rhyme, with no inheritance or blood ties to the Mutant Uprising.
If he had stumbled upon her on the road, he would have killed her without a second thought.
But going out of his way to come here for such a thing didn’t align with his nature.
It was too troublesome and time-consuming.
There were many places where chaos would erupt the moment he left, so there was no way he would abandon his posts for a Mutant completely unrelated to the Mutant Uprising.
Thus…
Wyatt tilted his head slightly, casting a sidelong glance at Samuel behind him. Suddenly, a thought struck him.
Could it be that Samuel…
Had been… deemed a “Law Inscriber”?
“Huh?” Samuel picked his nose and let out a confused grunt.
“No, it’s nothing.” Wyatt shook his head.
The eye above his head rapidly expanded, swelling to encompass the entire room.
The surrounding blood was instantly pressed to the ground, compressed into a thin layer.
Allenay, who had been standing within the wall, finally stepped out and casually pressed his hand downward.
The blood, along with the gentlemen, ladies, and the golden masked man, was all crushed into the ground, turning into a painting.
…………
Inside the proto-Divine Realm.
Evina, beneath the umbrella, watched the blood pool around her as she pondered a countermeasure.
After the Dragon Bone Umbrella had opened, the blood at her feet had been repelled beyond the umbrella’s influence, creating a small patch of dry ground beneath her.
But now, she had no idea what to do next.
Tap, tap, tap.
Footsteps echoed.
Someone approached from behind Evina.
Evina slowly turned to see a middle-aged man with brown hair.
He was handsome but expressionless, his hair slightly disheveled.
He was the “true Wrath” Samuel had spoken of.
He was “Wrath.”
“Why did you choose to become a siren?” Wrath suddenly asked.
Instantly, a wave of oppressive pressure surged within Evina’s heart.
It weighed heavily on her, impossible to shake off.
Yet she still grinned.
“It’s fun.”
Her answer was straightforward.
Hearing this, Wrath’s expression remained unchanged. He simply closed his mouth and nodded slightly, signaling his understanding.
He offered no judgment, no evaluation of whether the answer was good or bad.
The next moment, Evina’s eyes flew wide open.
Every sensation the villagers had felt just before dying at her hands—pain, dryness, anger, bloodlust, terror, and the feeling of their bodies being shattered, churned together, scattered like water’s surface—all surged into her at once.
Hundreds of sensations, hundreds of people’s worth of feelings, hit Evina simultaneously.
Her eyes bulged, their light fading.
She was overwhelmed by the agonizing pain, nearly dying from it.
This pain pierced straight through the protection of the Dragon Bone Umbrella.
Wrath watched silently, saying nothing, doing nothing.
Slap, slap.
Two gentle taps on her shoulder instantly dispelled the pain.
Samuel suddenly appeared behind her.
“Hey~.” Samuel placed one hand on Evina’s shoulder while waving with the other at Wrath.
Wrath didn’t respond, instead pointing upward and making a gesture like hooking something and pulling it down.
Above their heads, the black sun suspended in the sky began to descend.
It fell straight down, pressing directly toward them.
The sun had only descended a tiny bit when immense gravity materialized out of thin air. The ground instantly caved into a crater dozens of meters wide, and the surrounding temperature soared violently.
But it kept falling.
“Whoa, impressive.” Samuel couldn’t help but clap.
Ripples spread behind him, and Celt stepped out.
The moment he emerged, he saw the black sun descending above.
“Holy crap.” Celt looked up and saw the sun dropping significantly.
“Yeah, that’s the sun, all right.” Samuel nodded with a smile.
But Celt didn’t seem worried.
“Good thing I didn’t bring Sereia in here.” Celt shrugged and shook his head.
“Heh.” Samuel chuckled, stepped out from under the umbrella, and raised his hand toward the sun above.
“Well then, I’ll just—”
But suddenly, time stopped.
How long passed was unknown.
It could have been a day, a year, or an instant.
In that frozen moment of time, it had no meaning.
The next instant, Samuel’s finger twitched, moving within this frozen time.
“Huh?” He was confused.
After all, he wasn’t a Law Inscriber, so there were things he didn’t understand.
In this world, Law Inscribers couldn’t go all out against each other.
If they did, it might attract special attention.
An eye opened above the proto-Divine Realm.
It was a pitch-black eye, composed of countless smaller eyes packed tightly together.
This eye looked down at the battlefield below.
Wrath’s attention was drawn upward, and he slowly lifted his head.
Samuel looked up, then down.
Suddenly, he understood.
What Wrath had done earlier seemed to be an attempt to lure out that thing.
He didn’t know what it was, but that was probably the gist of it.
“Ah… are we still fighting?” Samuel tentatively waved his hand.
The “Player” Law Mark instantly let Samuel realize that Wrath’s attention had been completely diverted.
“Fight him instead.” Wrath pointed casually.
The next moment, his form vanished.
“Huh? Who?” Samuel tilted his head in confusion.
“He’s gone to pick a fight with someone else.” A voice sounded from where Wrath had pointed.
It sounded like a middle-aged man.
“No Law Inscriber is willing to go all out against him,” said a middle-aged man in a white coat, appearing not far from Samuel and the other two. “So he agreed to my deal and helped me run an experiment.”
“Another one?” Samuel looked at the man in white, raising a hand to point at him.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am ‘Greed’.” Greed looked at Samuel.
“Hello, I’m ‘Stage’.” Samuel nodded, then moved to use his ability.
But suddenly, Samuel found that he couldn’t create illusions that could manifest into reality.
“Surprised?” The middle-aged man watched Samuel’s reaction, hands shoved into the pockets of his white coat.
“Yeah, a little.” Samuel nodded. “What’s going on?”
He asked directly.
Not caring at all that the two seemed to be enemies.
But Greed actually answered.
“I’ve actually been thinking about this for a long time.” Greed’s spectacles reflected the light.
“What is the illusion released by a Law Seeker?”
“What is the willpower generated by Law Seekers, or even ordinary people?”
“And how does the idealistic force generated by the 【Self-Only】 Law affect the world?”
“It’s Law, it’s Spirituality, it’s emotion.”
“But what are the emotions people generate? Why can emotions themselves affect the world?”
“In the end, I came to a conclusion.”
“A person’s emotions are related to their heartbeat, blood flow, and internal information factors, as well as the subtle brainwaves generated in their mind.”
He pointed to his chest and head respectively.
“So I concluded that as long as I can control electromagnetism, I can influence a person’s emotions.”
“But that’s only interference on a physical level.”
“If I add Spirituality and involve Law…”
“I can break through illusions and sever willpower.”
“Except for a very small portion that is completely idealistic, most illusions can no longer affect me.”
“And your ability to turn illusions into reality is also based on this.”
“That is, ‘fooling’ the world.”
“But before me, you can’t fool this world.”
“Impressive, impressive.” Samuel didn’t hold back his applause.
“Thank you.” Greed nodded.
“And this doesn’t just target your illusions.” He adjusted his spectacles.
“The Absurdity Clown’s power increases with the amount of ‘genuine joy’ around you. The hardest part is that both your joy and your enemy’s joy can become your strength.”
“My rank is high enough, so as long as I am joyful, I can provide you with a considerable amount of power.”
“And you yourself are the same.”
“Even though you’re just a Law Seeker, the rank of the ‘Singularity of Absurdity’ is equivalent to that of an ordinary Law Inscriber.”
He grinned.
“At least, in theory.”
Theoretically…
Samuel understood why he said “in theory.”
He raised his hand and slapped away a hand that had suddenly appeared on his shoulder.
“I didn’t get anything from you.” He said softly.
“Yeah, you got nothing.” Greed lifted his chin slightly.
“It’s not just me, is it?” He smiled, piercing through Samuel’s deception.
Samuel raised his hand and touched his chest.
“Fine, there’s me too.”
Getting into a fight with a Law Seeker of 【Ultimate Wisdom】 was the second worst thing in the world.
And the worst thing was not even knowing that a Law Seeker of 【Ultimate Wisdom】 had their eye on you, or how long they had been studying you.
But that said,
Couldn’t Samuel be considered half a “researcher” too?
“I see,” Samuel nodded. “So it looks like I’d be at a real disadvantage in a fight.”
“Yeah,” Greed nodded too. “Now, you can resist with all you’ve got.”
A layer of light covered his spectacles, obscuring his gaze.
Let me see…
The Singularity of Absurdity…
Samuel replied with a smile.
“Alright then, in that case, let’s play a game.”
A clamshell handheld gaming console and a game cartridge half the size of a palm appeared in his hand.
He inserted the cartridge into the console’s slot and flipped the lid open.
Suddenly, Greed sensed something and leaned his head back.
A fist appeared exactly where he had been standing, brushing past his nose by a hair’s breadth.
“What’s this?”
He sidestepped again, dodging a fiery red fan that flew past him.
“King of Fighters, you’ve never played it?”
As he answered, Samuel pushed forward.
A white light cluster the size of half a person shot from his hand, hurtling toward Greed.
“No.” Greed answered, raising his hand as a bullet shot from his fingertip, shattering the light cluster. Then he ducked to avoid a green iron ball hurtling overhead.
“Then your childhood must have been pretty incomplete.” Samuel noticed the distance between them had unconsciously widened. A new cartridge appeared in his hand, and he inserted it into the slot.
The next second, a round ball with a mouth appeared beside Greed, swallowing him whole in one bite.
A second later, the ball bulged and burst open from the inside.
Greed just broke free from the ball when he found himself in a simple maze, with several similar balls wandering around.
Pac-Man.
Massive amounts of data converged in his hands.
A key materialized in Greed’s hand. He inserted it into the space beside him, twisted, and pushed.
Space was pried open, forming a rectangular door.
Greed took a step into the door, unhurriedly walking inside, and casually closed the door just before the ball could charge at him.
The moment he stepped out of the door on the other side, a spinning turtle shell came flying straight at him.
Greed instinctively flew upward.
With a *clang*, his head hit an iron block, knocking him back down.
In that brief moment of hesitation, the spinning shell slammed heavily into him, sending Greed flying backward.
And the block he had just hit ejected a mushroom, which arced through the air and landed squarely on Greed.
His body rapidly shrank, becoming only the size of a fist.
“So this is the Singularity…” His expression remained unflustered as he watched transparent barriers appear around him, sealing him inside a vertical rectangular prism.
“Ha, this really is…”
Before he could finish, a block fell from above.
Followed by more and more blocks.
Some were arranged vertically, forming long rectangles; others were four blocks together, forming squares. There were also T-shapes, staircases, and various other shapes.
Greed dodged left and right, easily evading the falling blocks, until the blocks at waist level around him formed a continuous line within this rectangular space.
Counting from his chest to his waist, it was exactly a horizontal line, filling one layer of the arena.
The next second, that connected layer disappeared with a burst of multicolored pixel effects.
Including the area from his chest downward to his waist.
“Data deletion?” Greed’s upper half fell, landing on his waist. “Targeting me?”
His lips twitched as this body died from being cut in half.
But soon, massive amounts of data converged, and a new Greed appeared.
“Quit playing around.” Celt warned. “He’s collecting your data.”
“Alright, alright,” Samuel took out a new cartridge.
It didn’t look like a game cartridge.
“This console can also play anime,” Samuel said, shaking it. “Want to watch?”
“I don’t know what anime is.” Greed replied, hands in his white coat pockets. “But your games are quite good.”
“I knew an old dude like you would like them.” Samuel chuckled lightly, inserting the cartridge.
*Invincible*
Cartridge: *Invincible*
Effect: The cartridge most respectful of group beatdowns on the entire web.
As long as the “team size is greater than three” rule is met, it can restrain anyone and initiate a group beatdown.
Control duration decreases as the power gap widens.
Five figures appeared around Greed, immediately beating him black and blue.
It looked completely disorganized and didn’t seem to have any special extraordinary effects.
But Greed found himself unable to break free.
However, he quickly analyzed the cartridge’s properties.
Clusters of data converged, and more and more Greed figures appeared.
Their numbers soon surpassed the five figures.
The suppression effect instantly vanished.
“Anything else, Singularity?” Greed extended his hand. “Let me see more of the ‘Singularity of Absurdity’s’ peculiarities.”
“You never planned to finish me off today,” Samuel immediately understood.
“Without enough data, I can’t guarantee I can finish you off either.” Greed smiled.
“Ah, how honest.” Samuel praised him.
“Then take a look at this.”
“A certain demonic ninja… eh, forget it.”
“Let’s go with this one.”
Samuel swapped in a new cartridge.
It didn’t seem to be a game cartridge or an anime cartridge.
It looked like a video cartridge.
He turned the console around, pointing the screen at Greed.
“The 3.2 story quest of a certain tidal wave! Anyone who doesn’t immediately fall to their knees crying upon seeing it will have their entire family struck by lightning!”
*BOOM!*
A white lightning bolt struck down, hitting Greed one after another, disrupting his electromagnetic field.
“Can we take him out?” Celt’s voice sounded in Samuel’s ear.
“Hard to say.” Samuel shrugged. “But ‘cry or die’ could easily be a minor boss in something like *Mysterious Recovery*. And this thing even targets families, so it’s probably on par with a Wish-Granting Ghost.”
“But the real priority right now is still breaking the electromagnetic field he created.”
“Then what were you doing before?” Celt asked, speechless.
“Duh, having fun.” Samuel answered without a shred of shame.