Chapter 53: Sanity Plummeting
Su Xiao put away the [Old Dream Egg]. Although this item was Charm-type, it wasn’t "trash," because items of this kind were very valuable—no Summoning-class contractor would refuse them.
After dealing with Pig Brother, the roadblock pig, Su Xiao walked along the street. The doors on both sides of the road were tightly shut. He had already roughly figured out the situation in Nightmare·Eternal Watch Town. He had previously considered whether, in Reality·Eternal Watch Town, waking up all the townspeople would eliminate the danger here. The answer was no—it would actually be more dangerous.
If someone was killed or awakened in reality, the monsters projected in the nightmare wouldn’t disappear. On the contrary, if the real body died or woke up, the nightmare monsters would lose their weakness.
Take Pig Brother as an example. Just now, Bubu Wang and Baha had woken up Pig Brother in reality. The Pig Brother in the nightmare didn’t disappear, but it weakened for a while—that was the opportunity.
If Bubu Wang and Baha woke up or killed a target on their end, that target would weaken in the nightmare, and Su Xiao would take the chance to kill it.
If all the townspeople in reality were awakened, the nightmare would become lively—monsters everywhere on the streets.
Su Xiao stopped in front of a civilian house and lightly marked a scratch on the door. This was the second roadblock. There were many floating threads on the street, all extending from above this house. If he didn’t deal with the monster townspeople inside, he wouldn’t be able to move freely in the town.
After a while, the number 30 appeared on the door ahead. It was Baha’s signal that he and Bubu Wang were in position. In 30 seconds, Su Xiao could make his move.
Counting down 30 seconds in his mind, Su Xiao kicked the door open. Almost simultaneously, a roar came from inside the house.
A few seconds later, Su Xiao rushed out of the house holding a blood-stained serrated long blade. With a *bang*, he closed the door and wiped the blood off his face. The monster townsman he had just killed was like a blood-spraying guy. One slash, and the amount of blood sprayed—when Su Xiao was in his teens, he once saw a car accident break a fire hydrant. The blood-spraying guy’s output was no different from that broken hydrant.
As soon as Su Xiao closed the door, blood seeped out from the door cracks and window gaps. This scene indicated that the interior of the house was already filled with blood.
Not only did killing the blood-spraying guy yield nothing, but Su Xiao also felt he had made a wrong choice. Killing him might not necessarily be better than having the streets full of tentacles. This blood-spraying guy wasn’t unbeatable before death, but after death, he seemed to become so.
Su Xiao lost interest in the other nightmare monsters nearby. The [Old Dream Egg] dropped by Pig Brother was indeed valuable, but it might be a low-probability event. Besides, his stay time was limited—losing 1 point of Sanity every 6 seconds felt terrible. Killing the blood-spraying guy was already a wrong choice; he couldn’t be tempted by gains anymore.
Ignoring the house behind him that was spraying blood from every gap, Su Xiao walked quickly along the street. Not far ahead, he heard a wanton laugh.
“Hahahahahaha……”
Su Xiao looked at a window by the street, sealed with iron bars. Since the glass was blocked by wooden boards, he could only see light through the gaps in the boards.
Hearing this wanton laugh, Su Xiao had a feeling that someone without sanity couldn’t laugh so wantonly.
*Ding, ding, ding.*
Su Xiao tapped the iron bars with his serrated blade. The wanton laugh behind the window abruptly stopped.
“A newcomer? Or a fool from the Queller family?”
The voice behind the window carried a sharp, caustic tone, full of hostility toward Mayor Queller’s family.
“Your whole family are fools. Who needs you to save them? Since you’ve woken up in the nightmare, get out of this nightmare.”
The wanton woman’s voice grew softer, shifting from sharp and caustic to desolate and sorrowful.
This wanton woman had a complex attitude toward Mayor Queller’s family—or rather, everyone’s emotions were complex.
“They’re all dead.”
Su Xiao spoke. He wanted to know what kind of existence this woman was.
“I knew it. I knew it. Our courage is dead. Hehehehehe……”
The woman’s laugh gradually became manic.
“What… are you?”
“You want to know? Telling you won’t hurt. I’m a… slut addicted to the nightmare. One day, I couldn’t leave the nightmare anymore, and my consciousness woke up. I’m trapped here. There’s a pig on the street that eats us, so I only dare to hide here. I’m trapped in a place I once longed for. Ironic, isn’t it?”
The wanton woman’s tone grew a bit lazy. This time, Su Xiao was sure—this woman had gone mad.
Continuing along the street, Su Xiao walked while trying to listen to his surroundings.
*Sizzle~, sizz~*
The sound of scratching glass appeared again. After judging the direction, Su Xiao tried his best to ignore it. After a mild dizziness in his head, his Sanity suddenly dropped by 6 points. This was the risk of listening to that strange noise—the longer he listened, the more Sanity he lost after the noise stopped.
Current Sanity: 407/545 points.
Although time seemed plentiful, he still needed to hurry. If he had to fight certain enemies later, in the nightmare world, over a hundred points of Sanity might be emptied after just two or three attacks.
Following the source of the strange noise, after turning a corner, Su Xiao found that the street beyond the L-shaped turn was blocked. A giant centipede lay prostrate on the ground. Its carapace was dark blue-black, and its thousand legs were red. This proved that insects were already creepy at small sizes—they became even more so when enlarged.
Su Xiao tried listening to the strange noise again. At the cost of 3 points of Sanity, he confirmed that the source was beneath the giant centipede.
The idea of digging a tunnel flashed through Su Xiao’s mind. Digging a tunnel directly beneath a giant centipede was a fancy 360° spiral of suicide. Centipedes were incredibly fast at burrowing. If he encountered it underground, he’d be lucky to escape with his skin intact.
Su Xiao wrote on the steps by the corner: ‘Wake, kill, centipede.’
This time, Su Xiao gave a broad range—waking or killing the centipede were both acceptable. Meanwhile, in reality.
Bubu Wang and Baha saw the text on the steps and immediately took out detection devices to scan underground, searching for the target.
As the detection devices operated, Bubu Wang and Baha found that beneath Eternal Watch Town, there wasn’t even half an earthworm, let alone a centipede. This left them stumped.
“Woof.”
“Are you sure? The previous two were living things. You’re saying this one is a dead object projected over?”
“Woof!”
“Yeah, makes sense. I’ll trust you.”
Baha flew a hundred meters into the air and threw a flashbang. The dazzling light appeared. As the light dimmed and began to fade, Baha’s eagle eyes recorded every detail in the town. Suddenly, a relief on a pointed tower caught his attention—a centipede relief.
Baha swooped down, his eagle claws tearing the relief apart. Stone chips flew.
In Nightmare·Eternal Watch Town, a crisp *crack* reached Su Xiao’s ears. He looked around the corner and saw the giant centipede cracking apart. This puzzled him. The previous two enemies, when arranged by Bubu Wang and Baha in reality, only weakened in the dream projection. This one directly shattered. It seemed this enemy was vastly different from the previous two.
Su Xiao didn’t waste time writing with the gray pen to ask. He went to where the giant centipede had disappeared. There was nothing noteworthy on the street. An iron door on the right side of the street caught his attention. At this point, he could already hear that the strange noise was coming from behind that iron door, diagonally below it.
Arriving ten meters from the iron door, Su Xiao took a few steps forward and delivered a straight kick.
*Boom!!*
The air blast spread. Su Xiao maintained his kicking posture. The iron door was completely intact—not even a dent appeared. Instead, his foot went numb.
Su Xiao calmly withdrew his leg. He had been testing, and the result matched his expectations. He wrote two words on the iron door: ‘Open door.’
In reality, Bubu Wang and Baha followed the dots spaced every few meters on the ground to the iron door. Seeing two golden characters gradually appear on it.
Baha stepped forward. With a *click*, he tore the entire iron door off. It was easy—it was just an ordinary iron door. But in the nightmare, it was indestructible.
In the nightmare, Su Xiao stared at the iron door ahead. Under his gaze, the door gradually dissolved, eventually turning into smoke and vanishing in the air.
Opening the door so quickly meant Baha hadn’t used much effort. Indeed, coordinating with Bubu Wang and Baha in reality was the safest approach in the nightmare.
In the nightmare, after the iron door disappeared, a passage appeared. It was a sloping staircase descending downward. The darkness at the end seemed to lead to the Nine Nether Underworld. The chill from deep underground was carried by a ghostly wind, mixed with the *sizzle, sizzle* sound, sending chills down one’s spine. If Bubu Wang were here, he’d probably squeeze out a few drops of urine from fright.
Su Xiao descended the stairs. When he was about to reach the end, a murky orange light greeted him. Instantly, he felt as if his body was pierced by thousands of sharp needles. Several warnings appeared one after another.
[Warning: You are being watched by the Swollen Eye. Your Sanity decreases by 27 points!]
[Warning: You are being watched by the Swollen Eye. Your Sanity decreases by 38 points!]
[Warning: If you endure the Swollen Eye’s gaze for more than 60 seconds, your resistance of this type will greatly increase, and you will receive the Swollen Eye’s Gift, obtaining ???.]