Eldritch Horror Theatre - Ch. 97: King of the White Tower (19)
With Bai Jinting's second death, a sensation akin to waking from a dream washed over him.
"The finals that the audience has been waiting for is about to begin. Now, please welcome the fighters to the stage!"
However, as Fu Qian regained his senses, the very first thing he heard was still the host's excited voice.
Back again, as expected.
It clearly felt like waking from a dream just now. Was it going from one dream into another?
An endless nightmare mode?
Bai Jinting's mocking voice seemed to still echo in his ears.
Fu Qian didn't care in the slightest and simply opened the door and walked out.
Jumping, climbing, dodging, until he once again stood on the platform where Bai Jinting was.
"Facts prove I wasn't lying, right?"
Bai Jinting blinked at Fu Qian, his tone dripping with thick sarcasm.
However, he only got halfway through his blink before an Air Bullet blasted him into the sky.
"Two."
Fu Qian counted, experiencing the sensation of being pulled out of the dream once more, hearing the familiar voice in his ears again.
"The finals that the audience has been waiting for is about to begin. Now, please welcome the fighters to the stage!"
Opening the door, jumping, climbing, dodging. After completing this series of actions for the third time, Fu Qian faced Bai Jinting once again.
This time, the latter shook his head and sighed, wearing an expression full of pity for an idiot.
"What you're doing is completely meaningless..."
"Three."
Fu Qian didn't answer him, simply counting the next number as Bai Jinting was shattered to pieces again.
...
"Have you been completely consumed by bloodlust?"
"Four."
...
"Futile struggle."
"Five."
...
"You are completely in vain. You can't change anything."
"Six."
...
"Have you completely given up on yourself?"
"Seven."
...
Tirelessly, Fu Qian opened the door from the prep room time and time again, repeating the exact same set of movements, killing Bai Jinting in various ways.
And the latter's attitude finally began to change.
From the initial cold mockery to eventual speechless frustration.
By the time the kill count accumulated to forty, the man finally broke down.
Facing Fu Qian's relentless attacks, he started attempting to flee to other places.
However, against Fu Qian—who had continuously reloaded dozens of times and could now pull off the kill with his eyes closed—he had nowhere to run.
"What exactly are you trying to do..."
Before being smashed to pieces again, Bai Jinting looked at Fu Qian with a face full of despair.
"I said it before: from the moment you said 'again', I had already made up my mind."
"If everything were a completely identical repetition, then this nightmare would indeed be unsolvable."
Fu Qian looked at him with a smiling face.
"But having you as an audience makes it different."
"As long as you remember the experience of each death, what I'm doing isn't meaningless repetition."
"Based on my understanding, many people lack patience, so much so that they love abusing words like 'countless' and 'forever'. In fact, you'll find they're often used to describe quantities under three digits."
"So I highly doubt whether the protection you receive can truly allow you to face countless deaths and reset all this over and over."
"To verify this point, I am preparing to run a trial and set a small goal."
Fu Qian blinked.
"I'll kill you 999 times first."
"Your posture earlier was less about generously offering me advice and more about trying your hardest to play up the despair, thereby guiding me to consider suicide.
I'm not sure what would happen if I committed suicide, but intuitively, it's definitely not a good thing. If I actually did it, the consequences would likely be... heh heh!"
"Therefore, die."
"You are simply... unreasonable!"
"You don't understand. Please call me the Son of Platinum!"
...
Fu Qian had always been selectively patient.
As long as something caught his interest, he didn't mind spending extra time on it, repeating incredibly boring attempts with astonishing patience.
Actually, if Bai Jinting had been careful enough, the second time he saw him, he should have pretended nothing had changed.
That would have wasted more of Fu Qian's time trying to find other variables.
What a pity. To sound cool, this guy even spilled the beans that his death would reset the dream, making himself the only known variable in this dream prison.
As long as there is a variable—even if it's just a change in a statistic—it's worth grinding. This is the professionalism of a top-tier player.
Of course, he couldn't really be blamed. The level of obsession (perversion) of certain people probably exceeded his comprehension.
"You... lunatic!"
Facing the approaching Fu Qian, Bai Jinting once again let out a despairing cry.
Are you referring to the Dark Moon Madmen? Sorry, compared to that bunch, I still fall a bit short.
"Forty-one."
...
"Fifty-nine."
...
"Sixty-nine."
...
"Ninety-nine."
...
When Bai Jinting was pulverized for the 138th time, his wails echoed within the White Tower for a long time.
By this point, Fu Qian was so familiar with the process that he could finish it with his eyes closed.
But this time, the dream did not rewind.
Fu Qian opened his eyes. Before him was Bai Jinting's broken body; this favored one of a god had completely lost all signs of life.
There was indeed a limit.
138. This guy's definition of "forever" was shallow indeed.
Unfortunately, even though it didn't rewind, the dream didn't end either.
Fu Qian looked at the still-chaotic crowd below.
Almost at the same time, Fu Qian felt the gaze of some special entity.
The next moment, his body felt heavy. It seemed as though something had been imposed upon him, creating a special connection between his existence and the entire dreamscape.
What is this?
Fu Qian clenched his fist, feeling the ripples his movements caused in his surroundings.
After Bai Jinting's death, the gaze of the "magnificent entity" he spoke of had shifted to me? Did I become the new King of the White Tower?
Was he supposed to kill himself next?
No.
It took only one second for Fu Qian to veto that idea.
His vitality was vastly stronger than Bai Jinting's.
If he killed himself now, the most likely outcome was triggering the rewind again, and then he would need to repeat the process over and over until completely breaking down.
That number would very likely be astronomical.
Not to mention the possibility of just straight-up dying and failing the mission.
And there was another issue: based on what just happened, even if he died, it was hard to guarantee the entity's gaze wouldn't just shift to someone else, creating yet another King of the White Tower.
No matter what, that was an absolute last-resort option.
Fu Qian shook his head. Anyway, the 'Containment Failed' prompt hadn't appeared, which meant there was still a way.
Bai Jinting was right about one thing: the gaze of a magnificent entity might not be a response to devout prayers, but merely its attention being drawn by something special.
Then the question arose: Why did Bai Jinting attract the gaze of the mysterious entity behind this?
If it was because of the bizarre Grafting technology, then Lu Ming and the others should have been more competitive candidates.
What was so special about Bai Jinting?
Fu Qian pondered, looking at the cage-like elevator next to him.
Early on, that King of the White Tower had ridden this thing down.
Fu Qian stepped forward and tried standing on it. The elevator slowly began to ascend, climbing all the way toward the top of the White Tower.
Looking down at the ant-like crowd below, he somewhat understood why Bai Jinting liked riding this thing.
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