Chapter 45 "It"

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(Combat Chess: You can repeatedly simulate battles between yourself and your enemies in your mind. You may choose either an enemy you have just encountered or one you have fought before, allowing you to predict your opponent’s moves. Each battle simulation takes one minute. The better you understand your opponent, the more powerful this skill becomes. It can be used once every twenty-four hours.)

“I’m sure you all know that I’m a professional military chess player, and military chess itself is essentially a form of battle simulation. So I made my choice without hesitation.”

“As compensation, I recruited the Observer. He’ll assist us in battle.”

“The Observer is physically formidable. His greatest ability is that he cannot die. His second is his dismemberment state, like the one we briefly saw earlier. If he wishes, having three heads and six arms would be no problem.”

“Finally, the Observer can cause large-scale explosions. You’ve all witnessed that yourselves.”

Chen Tianyu picked up where she left off. “I’ll explain the rewards I received as well. First is the Full-Moon Crossbow, which Wu Que and Zhang Deshuai have both seen. I was a little dazed at the time and failed to notice that the weapon’s damage scaled with faith, so its power isn’t particularly impressive.”

“For my second reward, I also chose a random attribute point. Unfortunately, I was unlucky and it went into Dexterity.”

Wu Que could deeply sympathize with that.

His own fifteen points of Dexterity had practically been pried out of the Snake Woman’s throat.

Chen Tianyu continued, “As for the third reward, I chose a skill called Absolute Focus.”

(Absolute Focus allows a Dream Mender to enter a psychic state for a short period, greatly enhancing all attributes and imbuing attacks with psychic damage. A Sensory attribute of forty is required. It can be used once every eighteen hours.)

After the two newcomers had finished introducing their skills, they turned their eyes toward the two veterans.

Zhang Deshuai leaned back in the sofa and said lazily, “My ability is the physical alteration of various properties, such as density, mass, gravity, and direction of movement. You’ve already seen most of it yourselves.”

With that, he stretched, sinking deeper into the sofa as though he had no intention of elaborating further.

Wu Que had long since grown accustomed to his attitude. He gave a dry chuckle and began introducing his own abilities.

He spoke only of his close-quarters combat skills, then mentioned Ancient Dragon Lightning and his newly acquired Ready Stance. As for the inseparable Black Blade, he vaguely described it as a reward he had received during his last dream expedition, then grafted the passive ability Blood Collection onto the explanation.

After Wu Que finished describing his abilities, the group once again fell into a long silence.

The Observer resumed playing military chess with Wang Shuhan. Chen Tianyu was rather impatient, and when Doctor Deng Ming still failed to appear, she could not help complaining.

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“Does being a doctor mean you can be late for no reason? Then what are our taxpayers’ hard-earned taxes for?”

“This is a private hospital. There isn’t even any social insurance or housing fund.”

The moment he finished speaking, Doctor Deng Ming’s voice came from the corridor. He slowly walked to the spot where he had prepared the medicines the day before, removed his white coat, and put it back on.

Once he was properly dressed, he carefully smoothed out the wrinkles in his clothes. Then he took a cigarette from his pocket, placed it between his lips, and lit it.

Although his actions were identical to those of the previous day, everyone clearly noticed that even the smoke he exhaled was trembling faintly.

Doctor Deng Ming was afraid of something.

With the cigarette clenched between his teeth, Deng Ming looked around at everyone and spoke helplessly.

“All right, I admit it. I’m terrified. Could you stop looking at me like that?”

“I’m just an ordinary person derived from ‘It,’ so please let me quietly finish this cigarette.”

After hearing that, everyone politely averted their eyes, granting Deng Ming ample time to enjoy his smoke.

After a while, Deng Ming’s voice came again. “All right. Follow me now.”

He turned and walked toward the corridor behind him.

The Dream Mender team resembled a group of elementary schoolchildren who obeyed their teacher without question. After gathering their personal belongings, they rose one after another and followed behind Deng Ming, the Observer among them.

The corridor was unnaturally quiet. The intermittent sound of dripping water and the increasingly pungent smell of disinfectant constantly aggravated their already fragile nerves.

At the end of the corridor stood a large milky-white door. Deng Ming drew a deep breath and took a brass-colored key from inside his coat, but he hesitated for a long time without inserting it into the lock.

He turned toward the Observer and handed him the key. “You do it. You can’t die, can you? Besides, this is your first time meeting ‘It,’ isn’t it?”

The Observer froze for a moment, then raised one rough hand and rubbed his face vigorously before accepting the key from Deng Ming.

He walked to the door and, imitating Deng Ming, drew a deep breath. He inserted the key into the lock, yanked the door open, and walked inside with his head lowered.

Seeing the Observer enter, Wang Shuhan followed without hesitation. Zhang Deshuai and Chen Tianyu entered after her.

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Wu Que followed behind them, then turned back toward Deng Ming. “Doctor Deng, aren’t you coming in?”

Deng Ming’s expression grew even more troubled. Trembling, he said, “I’ve seen ‘It’ too many times already, yet even when I gave it everything I had, I couldn’t hurt it in the slightest.”

“It’s no exaggeration to say that ‘It’ has become my personal demon. So go in first. I still need to prepare myself.”

Wu Que thought for a moment, but ultimately said nothing. He turned and walked through the door.

Inside stood an operating table covered with a sterile drape, a pack of surgical instruments gleaming coldly, and a large assortment of medicines.

Albuterol, terbutaline, and a whole collection of strangely shaped medicine bottles.

Behind the operating table, in the depths of the room, a humanoid monster was curled up.

Its entire body was covered in slimy, faintly luminous black-green scales. Countless tentacles spread from its body like a writhing nest of serpents, their ends sprouting sharp hooks and foul, sticky suckers.

Its back was covered with irregular growths resembling fleshy buds. From time to time, these buds flashed with blue-green fluorescence, as though they were mysterious symbols from some ancient ritual.

Its eyes were like two bottomless black holes, as if formed from the abyss itself, capable of peering into the deepest fears and despair within the human soul.

Wu Que knew that the monster before him was ‘It.’ Although its appearance was horrifying, in the mind of Wu Que, a devoted enthusiast of Cthulhu culture, ‘It’ probably ought to look exactly like this.

Wu Que studied his teammates and found that none of them looked well. Wang Shuhan in particular had retreated all the way to the doorway.

To ease her tension—or perhaps his own—Wu Que teased her, “A Cthulhu-type monster’s appearance can be pretty bizarre, but you don’t have to hide all the way by the door.”

Wang Shuhan’s reply not only made him break into a cold sweat, but everyone else present as well, with the exception of Doctor Deng Ming.

“What Cthulhu-type monster? ‘It’ is obviously a mecha soldier covered from head to toe in metal armor!”

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