In the lounge, Owen, whose eyes had once again been dazzled blind, lay sprawled on the sofa without any concern for his appearance. The ravings emanating from the elderly man who had lost control earlier had dealt a severe blow to his fragile mind.
Rubbing his forehead, he looked at Cyril with a complicated expression. Though he said nothing, the meaning in his eyes was obvious:
"Did you torture a Beyonder until he lost control?"
Cyril decisively shook his head. "No, I didn't. It was the influence of the statue in the safe."
"He should have been on the Secrets Suppliant Pathway to begin with, with an unstable mental state. Combined with my provocation and the presence of the True Creator statue, he suddenly lost control."
As he spoke, he looked up at the ceiling overhead. After confirming that the out-of-control fellow had no intention of smashing through the floor and coming down to hunt them, he relaxed slightly.
An out-of-control Beyonder was far more dangerous than a normal Beyonder, especially when the other party was clearly contaminated by the True Creator.
At the same time, he heard waves of frantic footsteps in the hallway outside, rushing upstairs. Clearly, the Loud Noise and flash he had created earlier had alerted quite a few people.
"Monster!"
"Help..."
Bang! Bang!
Very soon, cries of alarm from the crowd and the sound of gunfire came from upstairs.
Cyril took out Jacob's Wallet again. There were quite a few gold pounds and gold bars in the safe upstairs. As long as his luck was not too terrible, he could eventually "take" some out after a few tries.
The next second, he pulled out a brass-colored bullet from the wallet.
At the same time, the gun in some unlucky person's hand upstairs misfired.
He glanced at it. There were no runes engraved on the bullet; it was merely an ordinary pistol round. He casually tossed it aside and began feeling around again.
Then he pulled out a stack of brand-new five-pound notes. There were roughly a hundred of them, meaning that with one casual grab, he had gained five hundred pounds.
After putting away the gold pounds, he eagerly reached into the wallet again.
He then obtained two crumpled ten-soli notes;
A fruit knife stained with scraps of flesh and blood;
Three gold bars;
A stack of one-pound notes;
A pair of red underwear with a hole in the back, still somewhat warm to the touch;
Half a minute later, the screams and gunfire upstairs abruptly ceased. All that remained was a faint dripping sound echoing through the air, like a faucet that had not been fully turned off.
Cyril stopped rummaging through Jacob's Wallet, casually tossed the gold false tooth he had just taken out, still covered in bits of vegetable leaf, into the corner, then looked at Owen.
After a brief rest, the latter had recovered. He was silently gathering up the things Cyril had taken from that bizarre wallet. Two of them belonged to him: a Citrine Pendant and a white shirt.
After a second of silence, Owen decisively spread out his shirt, tossed the useful items such as gold bars and gold pounds onto it, then rolled it up into a bundle.
Bang!
Crash!
The sound of shattering glass suddenly rang out as a blackish-red monster of flowing flesh and blood smashed through the window and leaped in from outside.
Cyril reached out and tugged at the air, creating a lightless curtain from nothingness that covered the flesh monster.
The next second, the Black Curtain lost control and transformed into writhing shadows, lashing out at him.
"Damn!" Cyril cursed, but his hands did not stop. Using Object Manipulation, he propped up the coffee table beside him and placed it in front of himself.
Boom~
The solid wood coffee table shattered instantly, but Cyril and Owen, who had been behind it, had already vanished. The bundle wrapped in the shirt from the sofa beside them had disappeared with them.
The blackish-red flesh monster paused, then surged toward the window it had just smashed through.
On the first floor of the casino, inside that washroom from earlier, Cyril and Owen passed through the wall and came face-to-face with a middle-aged man washing his trousers.
Cyril looked at the man's face, then at the trousers in his hands, and somehow understood what he was thinking. As long as he soaked the trousers completely, then wrung them dry, no one would be able to tell that he had wet himself earlier.
The two sides stared at each other awkwardly for a second before Cyril sincerely apologized:
"Sorry for the trouble."
"You..." The middle-aged man washing his trousers opened his mouth.
Just then, the washroom door was pushed open from outside. A burly, heavily haired man roared furiously into the room:
"Which son of a bitch locked the washroom from the inside? Don't you know this is a public place? You... you guys..."
Seeing three people crammed into the tiny space before him, one of whom had even taken off his trousers, the furious burly man suddenly lost the ability to speak.
After a long while, he backed away while closing the door and said weakly, "Isn't it crowded with so many people in there? Uh, no, I mean, sorry for the trouble."
The washroom door had barely closed before he opened it again. Looking conflictedly at the three people inside, he said:
"Y-you guys hurry up. I'm about to burst."
After saying that, he hurriedly shut the washroom door again.
Only after the washroom door had fully closed did the middle-aged man at the sink finally come back to his senses. He hurriedly put on his dripping wet trousers, backed away, and warily looked at Cyril and Owen, who had suddenly appeared behind him.
"What do you... want..."
Looking at the empty washroom behind them, he looked around in disbelief. His face went from red to white, and without caring that his trousers were still dripping, he rushed out of the washroom as though ghosts were chasing him.
At the same time, he silently made up his mind that he would never come to this casino again. No, he would never go to any casino again.
Elsewhere, Cyril and Owen, completely unaware that they had just persuaded a gambling addict to turn over a new leaf, had already left the casino and arrived on the empty street outside.
Owen looked at the casino building, which had suddenly become noisy, and asked worriedly, "What about that Beyonder who lost control?"
"Although most of the people here are gang members, there are also ordinary people. And an out-of-control person can move around."
"Of course we let professionals handle it," Cyril said.
Remembering what had happened before, Owen quickly asked, "Report it to the church again?"
"Not this time." Cyril shook his head slightly. Under Owen's puzzled gaze, he stepped forward, raised his right hand high, and snapped his fingers.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of Loud Noises erupted like thunder, accompanied by repeated blinding flashes, as though a powerful Beyonder from the Church of Storms were creating a thunderstorm here.
The high-frequency Loud Noises and flashes continued for over ten seconds. Realizing that he did not have much spirituality left, Cyril lowered his raised hand, turned to Owen, and said:
"Let's go. Back to the South Bridge District, then to Harvest Cathedral. Since we faced an out-of-control person contaminated by the True Creator, it would be best to have clergy perform a purification."
Owen had just been about to nod when a soft murmur, as though it had sounded right beside their ears, suddenly echoed through the air:
"The True Creator?"
As the voice echoed, thick bluish-green vines, each as wide as a baby's arm, descended all around them and covered the surrounding area like torrential rain.
They wound and intertwined, rapidly forming a forest that stretched upward layer upon layer, with no end visible overhead.
In the blink of an eye, a swing woven from bluish-green vines suddenly appeared before them. Sitting upon it with her legs crossed was a chestnut-haired woman.
She was tall and exceptionally beautiful. She wore an Intis-style women's shirt beneath a brown, patterned captain's coat, paired with off-white trousers and boots that nearly reached her knees. She looked like the captain of a pirate ship.
Looking at the mysterious space woven from intertwining bluish-green vines around them and the woman before him dressed like some pirate captain, a name suddenly sprang into Cyril's mind: Bernadette.
The instant that name surfaced, the woman on the swing turned to look at him. Her tone carried both amusement and seriousness.
"You seem to know me?"
"Uh..." Cyril froze for a moment. He even suspected that she might be a Spectator... That was far too perceptive, wasn't it?
Only after spending a long time around Spectators would one realize that a Clown's control over facial expressions was one of the finest survival skills in the world.
Reining in his wandering thoughts, he looked at the woman seated above him and shook his head slightly.
"I don't know you, but I have some guesses."
Before you continue