Edward Mori

Remaining time:

3 hours 50 minutes

Several large red lanterns were rehung around the single-story house.

With the darkness and torrential rain, the red lanterns' light only reached about a dozen meters around the house.

Han Dong was observing and waiting on the second floor of the house.

He was waiting for Edward Mori to be killed by the evil spirit... then the plan would enter its final stage.

However, the plan did not proceed as he had envisioned.

Amid the downpour.

A young man covered in petroleum, limped toward the house.

This person was Edward Mori.

Moreover, the Steam Prosthetic he had spent a fortune having made and installed seemed to have sustained some damage. It was no longer as flexible as before.

"Akaman is an evil spirit, and an event character is also an evil spirit... No! Why are there two evil spirits? There was clearly no such information in the intelligence."

A grave mistake had driven Edward into a desperate situation.

Edward had mistaken Possessed Chen Li for the evil-spirit host in this event, so he had never suspected any of the other team members.

Of course, Han Dong was partly responsible for this mistake.

When the team split up, Han Dong had ordered Chen Li to wear red and follow Edward while carrying a kitchen knife.

This made Edward even more convinced that Chen Li was the evil spirit.

Thus, when he later encountered Akaman, he completely let down his guard.

The fact that he had not died was already unbelievable.

Even De Leon, the bald martial artist who swung sledgehammers in the factory, had vanished without even making a sound when he encountered the evil spirit while fully alert.

Yet Edward Mori had somehow escaped what should have been certain death.

He had even fled all the way back to the house area.

He stared at the house where the lanterns had been rehung.

Combined with the system notification he had received—"Number of surviving team members: 3"—which included the evil spirit Akaman... it meant that only Edward and one other person were still alive.

Edward was a fairly meticulous schemer. His mind raced as he recalled certain details from the past few days.

At that moment, someone's words echoed through Edward's mind.

"My name is Valen Nicholas... I was born with a weak body and stay at home with nothing to do. But when I'm bored, I study linguistics, so I should be able to serve as the translator."

"Captain... I'm not feeling well."

"Captain, I need to rest for a while."

"Then let's split up like this... Akaman and I will form a team."

The frail young man who stopped to catch his breath after walking only a short distance on the mountain road—Valen Nicholas—appeared in Edward's mind.

As for Nicholas.

From the very beginning, Edward had regarded him as the least worrying translation tool. With Nicholas's physical condition, there was no way he could survive.

Leaving Nicholas until the end as a tool to buy time had been Edward's plan.

But Edward had been completely wrong... A weak body did not mean one had lost the chance to survive.

Monica was dead, and Akaman was the hidden evil spirit.

Facing the house with its large red lanterns hanging high.

Edward's "sunny" and "friendly" side vanished completely. His face twisted viciously as he bared his teeth and said:

"Brother Nicholas, you're really heartless!

I considered your weak health and let you rest in your room every day. I led the team in completing all the basic preparations... yet in the end, you actually set me up.

With a body like yours, you still want to become a Returner?

You'll die sooner or later anyway... so you might as well become my stepping stone."

Yet Han Dong did not appear in response to Edward's furious shouts and taunts.

Instead, only a woman in red, cradling a baby doll in one arm and carrying a kitchen knife in her right hand, slowly walked down the second-floor corridor and returned to her "Room 6."

The eerie sight left Edward drenched in sweat.

Even now, he could not determine whether Chen Li was human or ghost.

At the same time.

On the muddy mountain path, a crawling evil spirit was also slowly approaching the house.

However, something was not quite right with the evil spirit. It was moving more slowly than before.

Its face was injured, seemingly sliced by some sharp weapon and scorched by intense heat. The corners of its mouth had split completely and turned pitch-black, making it horrifying to behold.

A thin tongue extended from its burned mouth, and a faint, unrefined British accent could be heard:

"This person... really does have some skill! It hurts so much, just like when Father used a branding iron on me. But this feeling really is nostalgic."

It was not necessarily a death sentence.

From elders who had passed through Destiny Space, Edward Mori had learned that no matter how dangerous the various events in Destiny Space were, there was always a Way Out.

One such Way Out was "restriction."

Another Way Out was the weakness of the dangerous creature itself. Once one could reveal or perceive "its" weakness, one could repel it to some extent and gain a chance to escape.

Most evil spirits feared fire. That had been part of the intelligence Edward purchased... but there were also rare exceptions that not only did not fear fire, but could absorb it.

If he had encountered the latter, Edward would definitely have been finished already.

But under normal circumstances, his luck should not have been that bad.

Besides its ordinary steam-powered function, which greatly increased his strength and punching speed, Edward's Steam Prosthetic.

Was also fitted internally with a combustion device and a small nozzle.

Fire-breathing.

That was right... this was one of Edward's Trump Cards.

It was the Trump Card he would need if he failed to manage the timing properly and the evil spirit came after him.

However, because the embedded flamethrower was expensive, Edward could only afford to install a standard model with a small fuel capacity. Its fuel had been completely exhausted in his earlier direct confrontation with the evil spirit.

Even the combustion pipes had been damaged. Even if he had time to refuel, he would not be able to breathe fire again.

Standing before the house, Edward tried his best to remain calm... to think, to find a way to break the deadlock.

"There's only one way I can survive... Find that brat Nicholas and kill him immediately!

I can now say with one hundred percent certainty that Akaman is the evil spirit, but I still cannot completely confirm whether Possessed Chen Li is an evil spirit.

Even in a four-star novice event, it is absolutely impossible for two evil spirits to appear! This special event character, Chen Li, was most likely instructed by Nicholas to pretend to be an evil spirit and mislead me.

That must be it!

This was all Nicholas's conspiracy!

That filthy, cunning rat... where exactly is he hiding?"

Edward truly was talented and qualified to survive... Being able to calmly analyze the situation at such a moment made him "excellent," and he had also prepared thoroughly.

Unfortunately, he had already made a huge mistake.

Just as Edward began searching the house, Han Dong sat on a bed upstairs, his fingers interlocked into a triangle as he pondered the matter.

"Edward actually survived a direct encounter with the evil spirit... As expected, encountering an evil spirit does not necessarily mean death.

No choice, then. Since Edward isn't dead, I'll have to change the plan on the fly."