"That's right," he began. "Everything that happened today, including using my power to influence the choices in 'The Story Within a Story,' was all part of my plan. The mont you stepped into that hospital, my success was sealed. Even if Mr. Candle had ended the story early to enter the hospital in his true form, it wouldn't have changed a thing."
So spoke the Corpse Gentleman.
"The Believers of Lies are known for pulling off the unexpected," Mr. Hood couldn't resist retorting. "Talk like that, and you'll regret it soon. I've heard plenty of failures say the exact sa thing over the past six months."
Mr. Hood couldn't help but be sarcastic.
"Unless a god descends or a miracle happens, this story can only have one ending. You could never guess who your true enemy is. It is a being beyond your wildest imagination."
Back in the hospital ruins, Jenkins was startled by the appearance of the four explorers, but he stuck to his plan. He swiftly gained their trust with the power of his lies and, in doing so, obtained the crucial items they carried: the letter and the skeleton from the underground morgue locker.
After inspecting the letter, he casually burned it. He tossed the skeleton onto the rubble of the collapsed building and warned the explorers not to touch it again. Then, paying no mind to what the four were doing, he walked over the ruins to the spot above where he rembered the morgue to be. Flas stread from his sleeve to the ground, the fiery drops scattering into a shower of sparks.
The flas began to burn through the building's wreckage. The process was incredibly slow, but it was working. At the sa ti, Jenkins swung his sword, hacking away at the boards and stones blocking the underground entrance. It took him nearly half an hour before he finally made it back into the subterranean morgue.
Just as he suspected, the Corpse Gentleman had hidden things from them. Although the stairs leading down had collapsed, the morgue itself was completely untouched. The earthquake hadn't caused any damage at all; not even a chip of paint had peeled from the walls. His earlier warning to flee within three turns had clearly been a ruse to drive everyone away from this place.
"As the storyteller, the Corpse Gentleman can conceal certain details—like how the building collapsed but the morgue didn't—but he shouldn't be able to arbitrarily control the story's direction..."
As he thought this, he glanced at the rows of morgue lockers. He then quickly backed up to the wall opposite them, and the black Twin Demon behind him lunged at the lockers with a maniacal laugh.
Boom! After the deafening crash, the morgue lockers remained unscathed. Jenkins fell into deep thought.
"It seems Mr. Candle was right," one of the players observed. "These lockers are the key."
Around the table, the players watching the scene began to discuss this new developnt. For safety's sake, they hadn't directed their explorers into the basent, but they could still see Mr. Candle's actions within the unfolding scene.
Thunder bood outside. The earlier earthquake had driven everyone into the streets, fearful of even stronger aftershocks. Through the window, the four of them could see the chaos. In the downpour, the crowded streets were full of people without umbrellas, yet no one dared to take shelter under the awnings of the roadside shops.
Normally, it's rare for fog to form during a heavy rain, but now a mist was spreading through the city. It was a thin, white fog that made the world feel unreal, lending a dreamlike quality to everything outside the window.
Jenkins had seen all this when he first arrived in the city, so he knew he had to act quickly.
Seeing that the Twin Demon was useless, he stared blankly at the lockers for a good while. Then, trusting in the luck of his Destiny's Stage, he simply opened the third locker from the bottom on the far left.
Klang! With a loud clang, the locker was pulled wide open. It too was empty, but its inner walls were covered in straight lines connecting raised red dots, reminding Jenkins of a circuit diagram.
"That's... that's a Thought-Energy Device!"
Magic Miss suddenly exclaid from her seat at the table.
"Sorry, what did you say that was?"
Mr. White Cat asked.
"It's a Thought-Energy Device! Have none of you heard of it? It's a peculiar device invented by the ancient giant races to take over the bodies of smaller species. Its functions are ntal control and spiritual displacent. This is one of the oldest known supernatural arts, irrefutable proof of the brilliant civilizations of antiquity! Oh, honestly, do you people even read? How could you not know this?"
"So what does its appearance here an?"
Apparently, Mr. Hood hadn't heard of it either.
"Engraved thought-energy patterns are used for direct ntal control. I rember now—what the Writer found before leaving the hospital, those were engraved patterns! And the red patterns drawn with special ink are for spiritual displacent. The forr ans that one of the lockers Mr. Candle found before he left must have contained a body that was under the long-term control of this device. The latter ans that this morgue... it's a laboratory used by the mastermind to switch bodies!"
"The morgue is a laboratory? So... the demigod Corpse Gentleman is the owner of this lab?"
Hathaway guessed, unconcerned that the person they were discussing was sitting right beside them.
"No, the Corpse Gentleman is not the master here."
The Corpse Gentleman's tone was still level, but it carried a chilling quality. He turned his flat gaze on Hathaway, who instinctively tried to lean back, only to be stopped by the back of her chair.
"The Corpse Gentleman... is the one being controlled."
"The Corpse Gentleman... is the one being controlled... Who on earth could raise a corpse into a demigod and then control it...?"
Down in the underground morgue, Jenkins had reached the sa conclusion. After all, Alexia's knowledge of these Thought-Energy Devices was no less than Magic Miss's. Now that he had found both the engraved control device and the red-ink displacent device, it ant a complete Thought-Energy system was present here.
The core of this system is the true user, who controls multiple bodies; the rest are just external modules. Only the powerful races from the ancient mythological epochs could operate such a device. Alexia had been clear that humans and similar small-bodied creatures were simply incapable of using this technology.
"The two most important functions of the Thought-Energy Device are both located in these lockers. That ans this place isn't far from the mastermind controlling it. The entrance to the mine... it must be here!"
He squinted, thinking for a mont, and felt the ground tremble again—another aftershock. The upward passage he had just cleared seed to have collapsed once more, but Jenkins paid it no mind.
He looked at the nearly one hundred morgue lockers before him, considered for a mont, and then picked another one at random.
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