Chapter 54: Starting Capital
Su Xiao felt as if needles were piercing his entire body. The surrounding walls, upon contact with the orange light, emitted a scraping sound of *zila, zila*, as if there were some invisible sharp object within the orange light, scraping against the wall like a boning knife.
Su Xiao identified the source of the strange noise. He leaped backward, landing on a higher step behind him.
After steadying himself, his mind felt dizzy, double vision appeared before his eyes, along with a blurry orange halo. The color was murky and glaring, carrying an inexplicable sense of eeriness and distortion.
A few minutes later, Su Xiao's senses calmed down somewhat. Contrary to his expectations, at the deepest part of the nightmare, there was no big boss waiting, but rather something called the Swollen Eye.
In his dazed state moments ago, Su Xiao had seen a large mass of flesh ahead. This fleshy mass was round in shape, with optic nerve-like connective tissue growing from its rear. Inside this mass, nearly three meters in diameter with exposed flesh, was a large eyeball.
This large eyeball had a white sclera and a black pupil, as if it were a normal eyeball magnified thousands of times. Being stared at by it caused sanity values to plummet, likely dropping by about 34 points per second.
In just that brief moment, Su Xiao's sanity value had dropped to 322 points. According to the prompt from Reincarnation Paradise, as long as he endured the Swollen Eye's gaze for 60 seconds, his resistance in this area would greatly increase, and he would also receive a gift from the large eyeball, though what exactly was unknown.
Forget 60 seconds, Su Xiao couldn't even last 10 seconds. To withstand this thing's gaze for 60 seconds, he would need at least 2,040 points of sanity or more.
*Zila, zila~*
The orange light emitted by the Swollen Eye's gaze scraped the walls and steps, leaving them pitted and uneven.
Su Xiao wrote a string of words on the wall. Half a minute later, Bubu Wang and Baha replied with a single word: 'Empty.'
This meant that in reality, at the end of the underground passage where Su Xiao was, there was no Swollen Eye. Perhaps the Swollen Eye's true body was elsewhere, or perhaps this thing only existed in nightmares without a real-world counterpart. Su Xiao leaned toward the latter.
The source of the strange noise had been found. The appearance of Nightmare Eternal Watch Town was almost certainly due to the Swollen Eye. The next step was simple: destroy this thing.
A crystal spike nearly two meters long appeared in Su Xiao's hand. Since he didn't have Banishment on his sleeve right now, he would have to use this as a substitute. As for slashing out an arc-flying blade aura, he could do that, but the power of such a blade aura wasn't great. To improve control, he would inevitably sacrifice cutting power.
Just as Su Xiao was about to manipulate the crystal spike to fly diagonally downward, he suddenly remembered something: the bonus from the [Church Knight Head Bucket].
Equipment Effect: Mind Containment (Passive). While wearing this equipment, sanity value upper limit is temporarily reduced by 50%, but the rate of sanity value decrease is greatly suppressed.
...
Su Xiao thought of the [Church Knight Head Bucket] now for a reason. His other equipment, including Dragon-Slaying Flash, couldn't be brought into the nightmare, but the [Sun Church Set] came in without missing a single piece, and all its bonuses were active.
This made Su Xiao think that the followers of the Sun Church occasionally entered such nightmares, which was why the [Sun Church Set] had developed such characteristics.
The current Sun Church had different philosophies from before. The [Sun Head Bucket] increased sanity value upper limit by 50%, but resistance in this area decreased somewhat. This was clearly about bolstering sanity value to extend the time for exploring nightmare-like areas.
For dealing with slow sanity value decline, the [Sun Head Bucket] was better, treating sanity value like health and stacking the upper limit.
The Sun Church's previous head bucket, the [Church Knight Head Bucket], reduced sanity value upper limit by 50% but granted high resistance in this area.
Against situations where sanity value plummeted, the [Church Knight Head Bucket] was better, cutting 'health' to give stronger 'defense.'
Su Xiao considered whether there was a possibility that the former Sun believers occasionally encountered beings like the Swollen Eye, which was why they needed such high sanity resistance.
Nowadays, Swollen Eyes had become rarer, and nightmare-like areas had increased, so the Sun Church gradually changed the head bucket's characteristics to improve the survival probability of Sun followers.
Su Xiao tried to take out the [Church Knight Head Bucket] from his storage space and succeeded. This gave him more confidence that the Sun Church Set had strong adaptability to nightmares.
Removing the [Sun Head Bucket], Su Xiao put on the [Church Knight Head Bucket]. There was a faint scent of shampoo inside the head bucket, likely left by Molei.
After changing head buckets, Su Xiao walked down the steps. After a few steps, orange light shone from ahead, and a dazzling halo appeared before his eyes. His vision began to double.
*Zila, zila...*
Within the orange light, sounds like glass scraping came from all around. Su Xiao no longer felt the intense pain all over his body from before, only mild dizziness from the glare.
[Prompt: You are being stared at by the Swollen Eye. Your sanity value decreases by 2 points (Exclusive resistance exemption, greatly reducing the rate of sanity value decline).]
Seeing this prompt, Su Xiao knew his guess was correct. Judging by the Swollen Eye's form, it wasn't too hard to kill.
The double vision gradually disappeared. Su Xiao had somewhat adapted to the orange light shining toward him. He squinted and looked around. A painting on the right wall caught his attention.
The painting looked pitted and blurry, barely showing a humanoid figure. The humanoid had one hand behind its back, the other arm extended horizontally, with its index finger pointing to the right.
After a moment's hesitation, Su Xiao made the same pose. A few seconds later, his index finger pointing to the right caught the Swollen Eye's attention. Its pupil also tilted to the right, causing the orange light shining on Su Xiao to dim slightly.
[Prompt: You are being stared at by the Swollen Eye. Your sanity value decreases by 1 point (Corresponding resistance exemption, greatly reducing the rate of sanity value decline. The Swollen Eye's gaze has shifted, reducing sanity value decline by 50%).]
Su Xiao kept his left hand behind his back, his right arm extended horizontally, and his right index finger pointing to the right.
After less than half a minute, the Swollen Eye finally reacted. There was nothing on the right; it still needed to stare at Su Xiao.
Seeing this, Su Xiao lowered his right arm, put his right hand behind his back, extended his left arm horizontally, and pointed his left index finger at the left wall.
After changing direction, as expected, the Swollen Eye's pupil shifted to the left, again looking at what was on the left wall, as if asking: 'What are you pointing at?'
The Swollen Eye's reflex arc was mysteriously long, nearly half a minute. When the Swollen Eye found that there was also nothing on the left wall, its gaze refocused on Su Xiao. Sixty seconds had passed.
[Prompt: You have endured the Swollen Eye's gaze for 60 seconds.]
[Your resistance to 'Turbid Light' is permanently increased by 120 points. Except for a few elite individuals, you can exempt most of the Swollen Eye's gaze on you.]
[Because you endured the Swollen Eye's gaze for 60 seconds, you will receive 'Turbid Light Seal'.]
[Turbid Light Seal: This is a consumable item that cannot be brought out of this world. It can release 10 seconds of Turbid Light.]
...
Su Xiao didn't see the [Turbid Light Seal], but soon he found where it was. The orange light in the Swollen Eye in front of him quickly retracted, forming a triangular light seal within its pupil. Almost simultaneously, the same triangular light seal appeared at the center of the head bucket Su Xiao was wearing. It was first imprinted, then gradually faded away.
This was a good thing. When fighting an enemy, suddenly activating this would inevitably cause the enemy's sanity value to plummet. Although the enemy would undergo mental beastification, before that, the enemy would be confused for a while. This opportunity was enough for Su Xiao to finish off the enemy.
After forming the [Turbid Light Seal], the Swollen Eye became weak. The optic nerve-like connective tissue behind it wrapped around it, squeezing it with brute force to shrink it.
*Zheng.*
A flash of blade light. A section of the Swollen Eye's optic nerve was cut off. The next second, the Swollen Eye was wrapped tighter and tighter by its own optic nerve, shrinking from three meters in diameter to half a meter, then to the size of a basketball, a fist, until it turned into a small point emitting a faint orange light and disappeared.
Su Xiao changed the head bucket he was wearing. After putting on the [Sun Head Bucket], his sanity value reached 172/545 points. Having lost so much sanity, Su Xiao didn't feel emotions like irritability, just very sleepy.
*Bo~*
A ripple spread around him. Seeing this, Su Xiao quickly rushed out of the underground passage, heading straight for the three-story small building of the mayor's house.
When Su Xiao felt the world around him beginning to shake, he lay down on the bed in the second-floor bedroom of the mayor's house. A few minutes later, everything around him collapsed with a bang.
With a loud crash, everything around shattered. Su Xiao felt himself sinking into pitch-black water. At the dark bottom of the water were streaks of orange light—thousands of Swollen Eyes. Deeper still were pale arms desperately reaching upward.
Su Xiao suddenly opened his eyes and sat up from the bed. He had woken from the nightmare. A wet, slippery sensation came from his hand. In his grasp was a section of the Swollen Eye's optic nerve.
Leaving the three-story small building, Su Xiao nailed a sign to the door. On it was a small section of the Swollen Eye's optic nerve and four words: 'Source of Strange Noise.'
The task required making the source of the strange noise public. Leaving this behind, someone would soon see it.
"Woof."
Bubu Wang ran over from the street. Baha also flew down and landed on Su Xiao's shoulder. With the two of them, Su Xiao walked along the streets of Eternal Watch Town toward the outskirts.
Facing Su Xiao's figure, the first rays of the sun rose from the horizon. The nightmare was long, but dawn had come.
[Prompt: Faction Task: Strange Noise of Eternal Watch Town has been completed.]
[You have received 7,830 faction reputation points (originally 4,500 points, initial evil faction increases faction reputation gain by 45%).]
Adding the reputation he had before, Su Xiao's Sun Church reputation reached 12,086 points. This meant he had starting capital. After returning to the Sun Church, he could use the [Covenant Emblem: White Dragon] to earn reputation without leaving home, exchanging for items like [Scroll Fragment], [Steel Box], [Sun Flame: Explosive Brand Imprint], [Solidified Sun Blood Crystal: Extra Large Block], and so on.
Combined with the two faction permissions of "Cost Price Purchase" and "Return," the speed of earning reputation would be even faster.
Unaware of the situation on his side, Su Xiao, who planned to return and quietly make a fortune, didn't know that Zuiyasi, Wude, Molei, Yueshitu, Lilim, and the others were in the middle of a war with the Blazing Sun Lord. Over there, they were beating each other's brains out.