Same familiar feeling, same familiar formula.
The moment he saw that unfinished word on the blood-stained mirror in the bathroom, the taboo switch in Elias's brain was forcibly flipped.
It was like clicking on a pop-up on a virus-laden webpage.
"Don't remember!"
"Close your eyes! Don't make the connection!"
In his mind, Edmond's panicked roar instantly exploded.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
The human brain has a damned association mechanism, especially for memories of extreme terror.
When he saw the spelling of that name, Elias uncontrollably thought of the forbidden name on the island that had nearly cost him his life—Abysis.
There was no physical attack, nor any magical light and shadow.
With the link of memory, a thick, suffocating salty-fishy stench instantly materialized from the void, tightly surrounding Elias's body.
The smell was like a hundred tons of rotting kelp and dead fish piled in a sealed room and fermented for three months.
At the same time.
Prone on the cold floor tiles, the cultist Isha, who had just been confused by the severed connection, suddenly twitched her nose.
Her mangled face, devoid of eyeballs and tongue, actually managed to squeeze out a trace of hair-raising ecstasy.
It was as if she smelled something that made her mouth water.
"Yi... yiya!"
Isha excitedly opened her mouth, the mangled half-stub of her tongue churning frantically in her oral cavity as she screamed incoherently.
Thick globs of viscous saliva dripped from the corners of her mouth onto the floor tiles, and she began to writhe madly on the floor, attempting to move toward Elias.
It was a believer welcoming a miracle.
But for Elias, it was simply hell revisited.
He was instantly swallowed by that inexplicable power spanning space and time.
Pain!
Elias felt his stomach begin to cramp violently.
Every bone in his body was trembling, letting out overburdened creaks.
On the bright side, this time, his seven orifices didn't bleed like before.
This wasn't because the curse had weakened.
Instead, it was a bloating sensation as if his spirituality were about to burst from his body.
He felt like a balloon forcibly filled with high-pressure gas; the veins under his skin bulged high, and that massive spirituality was rampaging inside him, ready to blow his physical body apart at any moment.
And then transform into something indescribable.
"Urgh..."
Elias painfully supported himself against the sink, gripping the cold ceramic tiles tightly to keep himself from slipping.
Simultaneously, the familiar whispers bypassed his physical eardrums and echoed directly in the depths of his mind.
"Abyss... Abysis... in... the tolling of the bell..."
"The tide... is... about to... come..."
"I... shall... return... through... death..."
This time, the content of the whispers differed from what he had heard on the island, but they remained vague; every syllable carried contamination and madness, attempting to drag his sanity into the bottomless deep sea.
"Shut up! Get out of my head!"
Elias roared madly in his mind, desperately holding onto his last shred of clarity.
About ten-odd seconds passed, or perhaps it felt as long as a century.
The moment the ominous aura surrounding his body finally receded like a retreating tide and the pressure vanished.
Elias felt with horror that something living was crawling out of his mouth.
It was a slippery, slimy sensation with suckers.
Splat.
A black tentacle the size of an adult's palm forcibly squeezed out of his mouth, instantly suctioning itself onto his cheek.
And he could feel more things crawling up from the depths of his throat.
With the sensation of foreign objects blocking his gullet, extreme nausea and the urge to vomit followed.
"Urgh—!!!"
Elias leaned over the sink and began to vomit frantically.
This time, what he vomited was no longer the simple mixture of black rotten meat from before.
Squish, squish.
Accompanied by a tooth-aching sound of things dropping, he could feel that he had vomited more than one thing.
One was even currently clinging tightly to his face with its tiny suckers.
Elias suddenly ripped the thing off his face and slammed it into the basin.
With the aid of 【Darkvision】, he finally saw the true nature of those things.
They were several lumps of black xeno rotten meat the size of sea urchins, but their surfaces were covered with dense, grayish-white eyes like dead fish and rings of small mouths filled with sharp teeth.
In the sink and on the floor, they frantically waved their tiny tentacles, letting out sizzling, strange shrieks.
"What the hell is this fixed drop?!"
Elias looked at this scene, nearly going insane.
"How is there even a version upgrade?!"
Last time it was just vomiting a lump of inactive tentacle meat; this time he vomited an entire nest of living xeno-forms with eyes and teeth?
"Your spirituality has increased, so the effects of the spells targeting you have also scaled up."
In his mind, old Edmond's voice was also somewhat weak; it seemed the aura of that high-level existence just now had also made things difficult for him as a spiritual body, and his tone even carried a trace of pity.
"The higher the spirituality, the more concrete the contamination and mutation one endures."
"We need to find a way to circumvent this spell effect; we can't let you trigger it directly like this anymore. Your physical body won't be able to withstand many more instances of such high-intensity spiritual overflow."
"Circumvent?"
Elias wiped the slime from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"How? Close my eyes and not look at the words?"
"The line of text itself has no effect."
Edmond analyzed quickly.
"It's just a trigger, evoking the whispers and contamination in your memory."
"The word on the mirror isn't even complete; only half was written."
Edmond said.
"If it had been finished, in that instant just now, both you and that cultist would have exploded into mincemeat."
"It was likely written by this person; perhaps her eyes and ears were her own doing."
While listening to old Edmond's explanation, Elias looked down at the floor.
Several pieces of the xeno rotten meat he had just vomited hadn't fallen into the sink but had slid down his lapel onto the bathroom tiles.
The small monsters were writhing on the floor, trying to find a dark corner.
"Can this be prevented?"
Elias asked, panting.
"Yes, as long as you have a transcendent item that provides shielding, you can block this memory-level trigger."
Edmond replied.
"Well, that sounds like good news."
Elias said coldly.
"Then I think we should..."
Before he could finish.
"What the hell!"
Elias suddenly stepped back as if seeing a ghost, his back slamming hard against the bathroom doorframe.
In reality, the scene before him was indeed more terrifying than seeing a ghost.
Rather, it was disgusting.
Because Isha, the cultist who had been lying on the floor, upon hearing the sound of the rotten meat hitting the ground, pounced like a hungry wolf smelling blood, driven by her fanatical perception of the Divine Lord's aura.
Her hands were tied behind her back, so she could only use her chin and face to nuzzle.
She precisely located the several lumps of writhing rotten meat tentacles on the tiles.
Then, she opened her tongueless mouth.
She didn't hesitate for a second, nor did she have any trouble chewing.
She bit into a lump of tentacles as if tasting the most delicious nectar in the world, stuffing it into her mouth in one go.
Crunch... squelch...
The sound of teeth chewing on cephalopod-like cartilage and bursting juices echoed within the cramped bathroom space.
Black fluid flowed from the corners of Isha's mouth, but the expression on her face was one of extremely distorted ecstasy and satisfaction.
She was actually eating the monsters Elias had vomited—monsters tainted with the pollution of an evil god!
"..."
Elias's worldview completely collapsed at this moment.
He watched the woman feeding frantically; the last bit of stomach acid was forced up, but he swallowed it back down.
Insane.
This world was completely insane.
Elias wiped his mouth harshly with his sleeve and looked away in disgust, not wanting to stay here for another second.
"I have to leave this place immediately."
Elias's tone was cold and resolute.
Even if the Seventh Agency was downstairs, he had to go; the level of perversion in this room had exceeded all limits.
"I agree."
Edmond's voice also became extremely uncomfortable.
"This female cultist is even crazier than I imagined!"
"She's been completely brainwashed."
Elias supported himself against the sink with one hand, took a deep breath, and slowly raised the newly captured elemental revolver with his other hand.
The dark muzzle pointed at the head of Isha, who was still chewing on the rotten meat on the floor.
She alive was a liability.
She was a cultist who knew the Divine Lord's aura; although she had no tongue, who knew if she had other ways to relay information to the Mist Veil Society?
"Shoot her?"
Elias asked in his mind, his finger already on the trigger.
He was no saint; in this fucked-up world, sending such a monster to meet her lord was the only mercy.
"Forget it."
Edmond analyzed calmly, stopping Elias's impulse.
"If you shoot her now, the gunshot won't just disrupt the hotel's operations and cause a riot, it'll also easily attract the police."
"And it'll allow the Seventh Agency to find you even faster."
"Those investigators are already tracking you; firing a shot is like launching a flare to tell them 'I'm here'."
"While the Seventh Agency wouldn't necessarily do anything to you once they've cleared your identity and faith—they might even have to thank you."
"Thank me?"
Elias lowered the muzzle slightly.
"Thank me for ridding the people of a menace and cleaning up a perverted cultist, right?"
"Are they going to give me a medal of honor?"
"Ridding the people of a menace? Don't be naive."
Old Edmond ruthlessly punctured his fantasy.
"They'll thank you for handing them the credit! Not only will the kill count as theirs, but so will the performance metrics."
"And..."
Edmond paused intentionally, pointing out the most critical part:
"As a dangerous transcendent item involved in a case, that elemental revolver you just got your hands on would have to be surrendered."
"..."
Elias's expression instantly froze.
His gaze fell upon the elemental revolver in his hand, which had just automatically loaded six colored spiritual bullets and felt incredibly good to hold.
This was gear he had just scavenged from the cultist's suitcase after a brush with death.
This was his well-deserved compensation for mental distress.
It was also his capital for survival in this dangerous world!
Hand it over? Forfeit it?
They want to snatch a treasure from a pauper?
"Damn it, if he touches my elemental revolver, I'll destroy his entire heaven!"
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