"Actor's" Ability

Luo Lin hummed a tune as he skillfully gathered the vessels needed to brew the potion. He then took out an iron box from the cabinet. Upon opening it, he found the auxiliary materials required for brewing the Actor potion. Aside from pure water, they were mostly ordinary spiritual materials, such as black sunflower powder, dragon's tooth grass powder, and so on.

Luo Lin unhurriedly added these auxiliary materials one by one into the beaker. Then, he took out Medici's blood gem and placed it into the beaker. As if a chemical reaction had occurred, flames instantly erupted from the liquid inside the beaker.

Luo Lin watched the changes in the beaker without any panic. With a flip of his hand, the main ingredient for the Actor potion, a fragment of Nyarlathotep's power, appeared in his hand.

Luo Lin threw the fragment in, and the flames quickly disappeared. The surface of the liquid in the beaker condensed into crystal-clear ice crystals at that moment.

Beneath the ice crystals, however, the streak of red flame had not completely extinguished. Instead, it burned within the liquid, much like the immortal flowers Luo Lin had seen before. The rose-like blood-colored flame burned within the ice crystals, appearing beautiful and dreamlike.

"Honestly, this potion is getting prettier and prettier, but it looks less and less like something drinkable. Won't taking a gulp of this really burn my throat?" Luo Lin looked at the flame-like immortal flower with a strange expression. After a moment's thought, he still picked up the beaker and downed it in one gulp.

The sensation upon entering his mouth was first ice, then heat. Luo Lin felt as if he were shifting back and forth between an ice and fire world. Afterward, all temperature changes vanished, and Luo Lin's consciousness felt like it had fallen into a bottomless abyss, with only darkness and chaos surrounding him.

This was madness enough to make an ordinary person lose themselves. However, in this unfathomably deep darkness, Luo Lin suddenly saw a streak of red flame. The moment he saw the flame, his scattered thoughts instantly cleared up.

He skillfully began to gather his thoughts, breaking free from the darkness and chaos, and then opened his eyes.

"So that's how it is. Auxiliary materials really do have the effect of reducing the chance of losing control..." Luo Lin stroked his chin, a thoughtful expression on his face.

If the effect wasn't obvious when he took the Sequence 9 Troublemaker potion, it was now with the Sequence 8 Actor potion. Luo Lin finally understood the significance of the auxiliary materials in the potion formula that were related to higher sequences.

It was like the only black dot on a white piece of paper. Because it was different from Nyarlathotep's power, it formed a distortion and madness completely different from Nyarlathotep's power itself. Yet, this madness happened to become a guiding anchor, preventing one from being swallowed by the darkness and chaos contained within Nyarlathotep itself.

Simply put, it was using poison to fight poison, using chaos to counter chaos, and using madness to fight madness.

"However, the two forms of madness, in a certain sense, perfectly cancel each other out, achieving a balance. If this trend continues, when I advance to a higher sequence, won't the primordial will directly confront Nyarlathotep's madness?"

Luo Lin made a judgment in his heart, a strange expression on his face as he muttered. Then, he happily began to sense his newly acquired abilities.

The Actor potion first further strengthened his spirituality. Secondly, it brought the core ability of the Actor potion, "Thousand Faces."

This ability was somewhat similar to Faceless, but not as strong. It allowed Luo Lin to slightly alter his facial features, with a modification range of about 10%. It wasn't a huge change, but for Luo Lin, who was already a master of makeup, a 10% adjustment combined with makeup gave him the confidence to completely transform into someone else.

Moreover, although "Thousand Faces" had limited changes to facial features, it allowed one to freely change hair and eye color, saving Luo Lin the trouble of not being able to find colored contact lenses in this era.

In addition to this, the Actor potion also granted Luo Lin the ability to create illusions. Although the coverage of the illusionary realm was not large, it looked sufficiently realistic.

Secondly, the core ability of the Troublemaker, "Emotion Manipulation," also received a boost. It evolved from being able to control individual emotions for a short period to directly controlling group emotions, with the current limit being around 10 people. As the potion digested, this number was likely to increase.

"Finally, my observation skills, mental fortitude, and learning ability have also been further enhanced. I can capture vague thoughts from others like a Mind Reader, and the speed and power are much stronger than before. I'm probably not weaker than other Sequence 8s who focus on direct combat."

"And the ability Medici's gem gave me is flame manipulation. In fact, due to Medici's own uniqueness, I can relatively easily control multiple flames simultaneously. This undoubtedly effectively compensates for the Actor's lack of offensive power," Luo Lin made his final summary. Even he couldn't help but click his tongue:

"Hiss, the [Actor] sequence is outrageously strong. I feel like I can now face a Sequence 7 without fear, even without borrowing anyone else's power. With prior preparation, I can even contend with a Sequence 6. However, the digestion difficulty is also not small, basically equivalent to digesting four or five normal Sequence 8 potions."

"But..." Luo Lin felt the digestion progress of his Actor potion, and his expression became subtle. "I seem to have digested about one-fifth. Why? Could it be because I've been using alts to fool people recently?"

The "Actor" sequence, as the name suggests, should have its core in playing a role and performing. This point undeniably coincided with Luo Lin's actions during this period.

As a professional troublemaker, Luo Lin had always been diligently playing various alt characters, strictly adhering to their personas in front of outsiders, and using these alts to "deceive" big shots like Pallez and Azzik. Thinking about it this way, it didn't seem strange that the potion had partially digested ahead of time.

"So the direction of the Actor's role-playing is to play a role like an actor. Uh, it sounds like a nesting doll..." Luo Lin couldn't help but complain.

"But it's probably not just that. Actors always have to perform on stage, so to completely digest the Actor potion, I probably need to perform certain acts while maintaining my persona? And it would be best if these performances had an audience." Luo Lin pondered, stroking his chin, and gained some ideas for his future role-playing.

He thought of Zylingus and then of Ince Zangwill, and he had several plans for his future performances as an Actor.

However, digesting the Actor potion is not urgent. I'll first look at the next sequence. Hmm, Sequence 7 Mask Weaver. The auxiliary material requirement is a high-sequence related item from the Abyss or an alien pathway? Luo Lin raised an eyebrow, thinking of the situation of the Rose School in the original work, and then thinking of Sharon, Maric, and others, his eyes showed more thought.