Only upon bursting through the door did Annan realize sothing was terribly wrong.
The sll of alcohol, the scent of char, the stench of blood, the odor of gunpowder...
In an instant, Annan deduced everything upon slling these odors.
Without a doubt... before him was a band of pirates who had already boarded and were now pillaging the ship.
Using alcohol and rockets in their strategy, they promptly dissolved the sailors’ resistance.
But the sailors simply cradled their heads in their hands, ceasing to resist and allowing the plundering.
The reason was probably quite simple.
They had to put out the fire quickly... otherwise, everyone on board would die at sea.
So they didn’t even have the heart to fight—if they couldn’t quickly satisfy the pirates’ appetite, continuing the standoff would likely an death for all.
They were rely a rchant ship, after all.
This wasn’t about defeating pirates, but allowing as many people and as much cargo as possible to survive...
And the pirates did not kill them all. They were only transporting the people and goods from the deck.
It was probably so kind of agreent. After moving part of the cargo, they would leave them ti to put out the fire...
Annan saw a woman in her early twenties, with pale skin and a slightly plump figure, looking towards him in horror.
And she was being dragged onto the pirate ship by two pirates.
"—Daddy!"
She looked at Annan and shouted loudly.
...But why?
That didn’t seem like a cry for help born of desperation.
It was shock and fear—
"—Hmm."
Suddenly, a strong choking sensation made Annan grasp his throat involuntarily.
He gasped for air, but the world before him suddenly began to take on a hallucinatory aspect.
The surrounding world, in the blink of an eye, was tinged with many bizarre colors—cyan, blue, green, yellow, purple—the colors danced fleetingly, and he felt an intense choking sensation in his chest.
The strong sense of vertigo made Annan kneel on the ground unwillingly.
"Yo, looks like we’ve got ourselves a Transcendent gentleman," soone sneered.
"Seems like he’s even a Priest," another comnted.
After Annan burst through the door, his possession of a silver blade imdiately alerted the pirates.
But the pirates remained surprisingly calm.
Being targeted by a Transcendent, yet not showing any sign of panic.
Annan looked over, but he couldn’t make out their faces.
Their faces were incredibly blurry, like passersby in a dream.
Mocking gazes converged on him from all directions.
"—Can’t even your barrier stop your curiosity?"
The pirates sneered, "This is the high seas, after all."
"Such a death wish."
In that instant, as he hovered between life and death, Annan beca aware of everything.
The detective’s fear... what exactly was it?
He was a stowaway, or perhaps a Transcendent who had committed cris in another country.
Unable to use the subway, he chose to board this passenger ship to cross the border.
But for a detective who was a Transcendent... the Mist-filled air above the high seas was lethal poison, beyond cure, hence he could only stay in the fully sealed barrier at the bottom of the ship’s cabin.
Yet he happened to encounter a pirate raid.
No, it might not have been a real raid... since those pirates didn’t even have faces. If it were a real nightmare, then extracted directly from recorded nightmares in the dream world, they definitely would have faces.
After all, this wasn’t sothing that truly happened, but a speculative nightmare constructed purely out of fear.
—Or rather, it was the detective "hoping," or "fearing," that pirates would take his daughter away.
Was it because his daughter was reduced to bones? Or because she simply died in a fire, or sothing else...?
In any case, the outco was certain—his daughter died on the upper floors.
And he knew it all too well, yet he couldn’t leave the corridor; he could only think in silence.
He could only stand there, thinking calmly... doing nothing else, just like a true "detective." The "fire" blocking the exit represented his rationale for not witnessing the truth for himself; the scorched marks on the wall foreshadowed that his daughter "died in the fire."
—Even knowing everything, he could neither save people nor take lives, trapped in the "Desperate Predicant of the Knowledgeable."
...Really... how does my brain even work... at a ti like this...
Annan’s consciousness began to blur.
Is this what a Transcendent feels upon entering the Mist?
His heart ached terribly, he couldn’t catch his breath;
The voices around him twisted, becoming distant;
The world before his eyes turned into bizarre and glaring colors;
His head buzzed with a relentless, intense tallic ringing;
His skin felt as if it were burning, the pain unceasing—
...So it’s not turning into a demon, huh?
To be burnt to death by a curse... would that be alright...?
This first life of mine, I’m afraid, will have to be left here.
Such a thought crossed Annan’s mind.
If he wanted to escape, he would likely need to work out the truth behind the "fire," perhaps waiting in place for a while... or simply being burnt to death by that fire.
But that was not what Annan desired.
"Since that’s the case..."
Annan coughed violently, spitting out a fragnt of a bright inner organ.
——If he was going to die anyway.
He might as well go out with a bang!
He lifted his head, his pupils flashing with a spectacular glow.
It was the spark that burst forth when overflowing curses and souls clashed against each other.
——Expend a silver coin, use "Eternal Youth".
Annan regained so strength.
He suddenly leaped forward, beheading the pirate closest to him with a single sword strike!
Bang, bang!
In that instant, as two gunshots rang out, Annan was hit in the abdon and thigh.
And in the mont before the pirate’s head hit the ground.
The last silver coin in Annan’s hand ignited with brilliance.
——Silver Blade Strike!
The Sharp Object in his hand suddenly shone with a dazzling light.
The silver weapon transford in the blink of an eye into a brilliant silver light held in Annan’s grasp.
With all the strength he could muster, Annan swung his sword.
A crescent-shaped silver blade, about three ters long, swiftly grazed the waist of "Detective Mr." across the deck, bisecting all pirates, crew mbers, passengers, and even the mast!
"Cough..."
Blood filled Annan’s mouth.
As he looked at his "daughter" who was cut in half by his own hands, a thought flashed through his mind.
Not dying from the fire of rationality, but being recklessly killed by himself who had rushed out of the safe house, along with the murderer whose identity he did not even know...
Would the naless Detective Mr. be satisfied with such thoughts?
"Probably not..."
Annan murmured and collapsed on the deck, where he was the only one, gradually turning into gray-black stone.
The next mont, Annan suddenly woke up.
She realized she was kneeling at the beginning of a dimly lit corridor.
...Had she not moved a step after entering the corridor?
But her posture was the sa as when she left the nightmare, which was sothing she needed to pay special attention to.
She didn’t know how much ti had passed... If she referred to the last nightmare, was it just a mont?
Annan touched the back of her left hand.
As expected, the wound on her hand had disappeared.
She opened her status bar again:
Health: 100%
Erosion Rate: 2%
...No increase in erosion rate? Well, that’s normal, after all that was just the false Mist...
However, her health had suddenly been completely restored...indeed, it was because she had already died once, wasn’t it?
Is that how the save point chanic works? Instead of providing another chance to challenge, just restoring full health...I see, I see.
Annan took a deep breath and slowly stood up.
"It’s...the Wolf Kiss Ritual, right."
She quickly pushed the Detective’s mories out of her mind.
Maybe she would encounter sothing related to this in the future... But for now, what mattered most to Annan was to complete Miss Bella’s nightmare, so she could beco a Transcendent.
Two more lives... huh?
Annan no longer expected to solve the puzzle in one go.
At first, he harbored the thought, "Since this is my own nightmare, maybe I can solve it 100% on the first try." But after dying once, Annan had cald down.
He hadn’t even completed the three side missions and had already lost one life.
Moreover, it was not a no-skill instakill flag but the legitimate difficulty of the instance...Even if he tried again, it would be nearly impossible to complete with full health.
——Who knows if in the "Detective" instance, the fire would spread on its own if he stayed still?
"Maybe I should bring the players into this nightmare?"
Annan muttered to himself.
But what use would that be?
To see how they would deal with it under the conditions of a live broadcast?
But for Annan, that probably wouldn’t hold any particular value... What Annan truly needed to solve was Bella’s nightmare, or in other words, his own nightmare. And those dozens of innocents’ Nightmare Shards differed with each visit... Rather, wasn’t the real significance for players in "how to avoid triggering these nightmares" to prevent aninglessly losing health?
"Roguelike horror ga, huh... They might like that. A horror ga where the cheat code doesn’t work..."
In a sense, it’s a genre that ends up in the sa place as the gallery.
Let the players take charge of finding those specific spots that trigger the nightmare traps then.
If Annan’s guess was correct...in the sa "type of location," the nightmare that could be triggered should be the sa.
Let’s go check out what exactly the Wolf Kiss Ritual is and what tricks it hides...
If worse cos to worst, try teaming up with the players!
If he could team up with four people, and each person had three lives, that would amount to twelve lives——
——This filled Annan with determination.
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