A Psychiatrist's Bizarre Game Journey / Dream of the Mist

Zhou Ke'er immediately turned around and went back upstairs with her sword in hand. Through the student council president's corpse, she could see the black-armored monster standing quietly in the middle of all the corpses on the floor, silently bowing its head as if in mourning.

That's strange. They're clearly two irreconcilable enemies, so where does this inexplicable mourning come from?

Zhou Ke'er instantly teleported to a short distance in front of the black-armored monster, her longsword humming slightly, signaling to the creature to snap out of its daze that someone was approaching.

The monster turned to look at Zhou Ke'er upon hearing the sound, a look of confusion appearing in its murky eyes. It seemed unable to understand why it had reappeared here after seeing Zhou Ke'er go downstairs just moments before. However, it no longer had the rationality to think clearly, quickly dismissing the question and roaring hoarsely at Zhou Ke'er in a deep voice: "Evil... Ghost... Expel! Kill!"

As it roared, it slowly approached Zhou Ke'er step by step, without ever stepping on or scraping against the corpses beside it.

Zhou Ke'er was also a little surprised—did this thing know what it was saying? It claimed to be expelling evil spirits, but didn't it look at its own appearance? Wasn't it more like the evil spirit itself than Zhou Ke'er? This thing was shouting about expelling evil spirits... It was strange no matter how you looked at it!

Wait a minute… Zhou Ke’er suddenly realized that the reason this guy lured her here from the rooftop wasn’t to induce her to break the restrictions, but to use the restrictions to seal her, this “evil”, here.

Good heavens, what is this? Being in Cao Cao's camp but having one's heart in Han? Even the wicked have their treacherous side?

Zhou Ke'er immediately pointed to herself, then raised her sword and pointed it at the other person, saying seriously, "I am not evil, not strange, you are the evil."

The black-armored monster paused, its eyes revealing a mixture of confusion and slight annoyance. This seemed to restore its reason and thoughts somewhat, and it replied in a muffled voice, "I am not an evil entity! I am a human! Here... as a guardian!"

Zhou Ke'er raised an eyebrow and immediately asked, "You're human? Okay... then may I ask who you are? What's your name, and what do you do?"

"I am……"

Pain and struggle were evident in its eyes. As it recalled and pondered, the pain surged like a tide. It couldn't help but clutch its head with both hands, as if it were experiencing immense torment. "I am... Xing Diansheng? No, I am not... I am... I am here, everyone... I am not... them. I am the obsession of all the humans who died on this level!"

Its speech was initially fragmented, but after discovering its identity, it seemed that as its memories returned, its rationality gradually returned, and its speech became much smoother.

"I am the obsession of all the dead, I am the last guardian of this floor, I am the last line of defense."

The creature in black armor gradually cleared its eyes, but this transformation was not stable and was likely only temporary. As time passed and it was further corrupted by evil, it would forget its identity and everything else, wandering aimlessly around the area, remembering only the guardian.

What are you guarding?

Zhou Ke'er suddenly asked.

It was taken aback upon hearing this, its previous imposing manner abruptly halting, and it subconsciously replied, "Humans, the remaining humans and domains in this building."

"Humans? Where are there any humans left in this building now?"

Zhou Ke'er had already scanned the entire building with her eerie powers, and there wasn't a single living thing there. Not even a cockroach, let alone a human. "What exactly are you protecting? Do you really know?"

"Impossible, impossible! Humanity cannot become extinct!"

The man in the black armor looked resistant, resolutely refusing to believe: "I believe...they!"

"Okay, let's go take a look together. If we really see the 'them' you're talking about, then we can say these things."

Zhou Ke'er didn't want this guy to continue clinging to things that no longer existed; wouldn't that be too pathetic? Rather than wandering here like a dead soul, burdened by heavy shackles, it would be better for him to be freed sooner.

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720. Ruins Exploration (Part 7)

That's enough with the hypocrisy—everything Zhou Ke'er said above, including her seemingly serious inner thoughts… was all fake.

So Zhou Ke'er said she would take the other person down, and approached the man in black armor, and then...

Before the opponent could react, he thrust his sword deep into the gap between the helmet and shoulder armor, slashed it forcefully, and then kicked it hard with a kick imbued with evil energy, knocking it to the ground. What followed was the longsword that had penetrated deeply into the opening of the helmet.

"!!!"

The creature in black armor immediately let out a painful shriek, its entire body surging with an eerie black aura, seemingly trying to shake Zhou Ke'er away. However, Zhou Ke'er was already on guard, and in its current state, it was simply unable to do such a thing.

"Why... what are you doing?!"

The creature in black armor roared, its eyes filled with astonishment and confusion—if Zhou Ke'er hadn't pierced its eyes with her longsword, it would have had that look in its eyes, "Why did you attack me?!"

Zhou Ke'er's lips curled into a triumphant, arrogant smile. She leaned down, gripping the hilt of her sword and twisting it around inside the other's skull, while chuckling as she replied, "You... While my intelligence may not be up to the level of a strategist, I'm not a complete idiot. Did you really think I was some naive child? I must say, your acting is absolutely terrible, full of flaws from top to bottom."

Ha, its words just now were far too suggestive. Knowing that Zhou Ke'er had a way to bypass the restrictions and directly enter the next level, what was its purpose in acting like this? Zhou Ke'er didn't need to explain, did she? Wasn't this just an open scheme to get Zhou Ke'er to take it down? Such a simple trick, it was easy to see through at a glance.

Moreover, putting aside the fact that the other party's acting was full of flaws, even the excuses it used were full of loopholes: it actually said that it was an aggregate of human obsessions. Zhou Ke'er almost burst out laughing. As someone who had received Tavel's knowledge about the supernatural that encompassed almost everything, Zhou Ke'er was essentially carrying a search engine with her at all times, which could answer any question instantly and was all-encompassing. Whether such a statement was true or not could be verified with a simple search.

While it's true that evil can be constructed from human obsessions, it could never be in this form. This guy opposite me is a genuine, authentic "ghost"—though slightly different from ordinary ghosts. As for what those differences are… don't worry, you'll find out soon enough.

However, if it weren't for Zhou Ke'er here, it would be really hard to tell whether what it said was true or false.

"Damn it! You deserve to die!"

The black-armored monster didn't question Zhou Ke'er about its weaknesses, as it was pointless. It could only continue to resist, trying to break free from Zhou Ke'er's control, roaring, "You made the absolute wrong choice! You understand nothing—you have no idea how powerful 'it' is! You can only submit to it; its power is unmatched…you can only…"

Zhou Ke'er raised her foot and stomped hard on the guy's helmet, leaving a huge dent. Her face was full of disdain and scorn: "Submit to 'it'? Although I still don't know what this so-called 'it' is, but...submit to it? That's the funniest joke I've heard all day. You little brat, you really know how to make me laugh. Who do you think I am? What do you think I am?"

At this point, Zhou Ke'er narrowed her eyes, grinned, and revealed a chilling smile, looking utterly deranged: "If it can please me, maybe I'll give it a chance to be my dog."

If an unsuspecting person saw this scene, they really wouldn't be able to tell which guy was the villain, since Zhou Ke'er looked just too much like a bad guy.

"Arrogant!" Gu

A dull thud came from under the helmet that Zhou Ke'er had stomped on, and two words were barely squeezed out.

"puff"

Zhou Ke'er drew her longsword and stabbed it diagonally into the gap between the helmet and the shoulder armor. Then, with a flick of her sword, she sent the helmet flying off the black-armored monster. Using her evil power, she controlled the flying helmet to stop it in mid-air and let it land steadily on the ground to avoid hitting the nearby corpse.

Beneath the helmet was a sinister-looking head, barely resembling a human—after all, how could a human head have seven or eight faces, and these faces constantly changing? Each face displayed a ferocious expression, twisting and roaring incessantly, not only looking quite creepy but also feeling utterly disgusting.

No wonder he could still keep talking even when Zhou Ke'er stepped on his head. It turns out he has other faces and other mouths that can talk.

"Here, I'll give you a chance to live—I'll ask, you answer. If your answer satisfies me, I'll let you go, how about it?"

Zhou Ke'er's expression turned slightly serious, a malicious glint flashing in her eyes. A cold smile played on her lips as she leaned down, pressing the tip of her longsword against the other person's neck, and asked.

Several faces showed expressions of anger and humiliation. If it were a weaker Gui, he probably would have already lost his last shred of reason and fought Zhou Ke'er to the death. But this guy still swallowed his anger and answered in a sullen voice, "Ask away!"

That's why the more powerful a ghost becomes, the more "human" it becomes. Falling into a ghost is a process of losing "humanity," but as a ghost constantly grows stronger, it is also a process of regaining "humanity." How interesting—except that what is gained is mostly the dark side of human nature, such as cowardice, greed, and bullying the weak—it's like purifying negative aspects of human nature.

As Zhou Ke'er thought about this, a conjecture suddenly came to her mind, a... very interesting conjecture.

But he didn't ask that directly. Instead, he started with a very simple question: "First question... what exactly are you? Don't lie to me—I know the answer to this question, I just want to confirm: will you answer my question honestly?"

"..."

Several faces displayed a grotesque expression intertwined with disgust, struggle, guilt, and twisted pain as they answered with great difficulty: "I am... the collection of all the fallen who have submitted to 'it.' We have been stuffed into a shell by it, enduring endless suffering."

"Oh, a traitor, is that it?"

Zhou Ke'er scoffed: "You guys are really stupid—what the 'it' you're talking about wants isn't your surrender at all. What do you think you are to it? Do you know why you made it act like this? Because it doesn't care about you traitors who surrendered. What it cares about is..."

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721. Ruins Exploration (Part 8)

Zhou Ke'er trailed off halfway through her sentence, looking at the black-armored monster with a mocking expression, as if she were trying to pique people's interest.

As expected, the black-armored monster didn't hear the rest of the story and immediately pressed on, "What exactly does it care about? Tell me!"

"What it cares about is..."

Zhou Ke'er narrowed her eyes, her gaze filled with a cold smile. She leaned down and whispered a few words slowly: "I'm not going to tell you."

Before the other party could say anything more, Zhou Ke'er severed its head with a sword. The foot that was standing on the other party instantly emitted black mist like tentacles, completely enveloping the creature's body and beginning to digest and devour it.

Zhou Ke'er's eyes were filled with coldness as she spoke softly to the armored monster, which was now completely silent and being slowly devoured by her: "You don't really think I'm going to tell you, do you? If you think I'm the kind of person who can have a happy chat with a monster like you in a place like this, you're really underestimating me."

If Zhou Ke'er's guess is correct, what the monster "it" craves and seeks is "humanity," not the evil inherent in all monsters, but the truly noble aspects such as courage, perseverance, and sacrifice.

It sounds absurd, doesn't it? To be honest, Zhou Ke'er was initially amused by this conjecture that suddenly popped into her head, and subconsciously thought it was a joke. But the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed—after all, the more you lack something, the more you want to have it.

This is not a baseless speculation. Judging from the fragments of information left in various places and the words the monster just spoke, in the final, all-out attack that led to the annihilation of this base academy, "it" did not directly participate. It wiped out the entire base academy with just its minions.

In other words, the being that can command all the monsters must be far stronger than anything else, perhaps even stronger than all the other monsters combined. Given this, destroying this base academy would be an easy task for it—but it did not do so.

It dispatched countless treacherous attacks to the base academy, plunging the entire academy into a fierce struggle against a great calamity. In this slow, insidious process of death, what exactly did it want to see?

One possibility is that it was driven by insidious and despicable motives. Since it had already lost those noble qualities, it wanted to see these people lose them as well—so it created this situation to see the ugliness that humanity would reveal before facing death, thereby satisfying its own filthy and despicable psychology.

Another possibility is that it has lost other elements of "humanity" and therefore wants to relearn and acquire these elements from elsewhere. The brilliance of humanity displayed by people during times of calamity is exactly what it needs.

Both possibilities exist, and both are indeed related to "human nature".

Compared to these, the moment those depraved people surrendered, it lost all interest in them. It had already witnessed their ugliness, and the glimmer of humanity within them had vanished. They were utterly useless to it—casually kneading a few people together to create such a monster clearly demonstrated its indifference.

It's clearly just a trick, yet people still pursue these things in a despicable or hypocritical way; it's truly disgusting.

Zhou Ke'er stepped forward, her entire demeanor instantly hardening. She assumed a contorted yet aesthetically pleasing pose and said in a deep voice, "I, Zhou Ke'er, have been labeled as a so-called mentally ill person. If I don't like someone, I'll use schemes and tricks to make them suffer a terrible fate. Those innocent, pitiful souls are often deceived by my facade, even becoming my dogs. Even those mentally unstable individuals fear my existence and acknowledge me as their big brother..."

However, even so, I know... what truly disgusting evil is! Evil is those who, apart from me, exploit and trample on the weak for their own selfish reasons!

"It! You bastard, that's exactly what you've done, not even sparing children! All the victims harmed by you are dead; their hope, their resentment shouldn't have vanished so meaninglessly... So, I will punish you!"

As Zhou Ke'er finished speaking, a clap of thunder suddenly rang out in the dark red sky, and a bolt of lightning flashed through the window, illuminating the dark corridor for a moment and revealing Zhou Ke'er's resolute face.

Just then, as if something had responded, specks of light floated out from the corpses on the entire floor, gradually converging in front of Zhou Ke'er to form a human-shaped phantom. His face was indistinct, for he was all those who had fallen asleep here—he slowly reached out his hand to Zhou Ke'er.

Zhou Ke'er reached out and grasped it as well, and then she heard countless voices ringing in her mind. First, countless different words and "hopes" murmured incessantly, and finally all the voices converged into one sentence: "From now on, everything is in your hands!"

The fluorescent light diffused into Zhou Ke'er's body, and under this illumination, Zhou Ke'er seemed to possess a certain divinity.

This is the last remaining soul of all the humans who sacrificed themselves here, the convergence of all their unwillingness and hope before death. Under such great power, they even resisted true death, preserving their last trace of existence for countless years.

If we regard this entrustment and transfer of hope as another form of faith, then the current situation can be considered a large-scale and purely voluntary sacrifice.

In this way, Zhou Ke'er became a "deity" who had received the self-sacrifice of her believers, and her essence changed. Compared to the "god" who only had one believer not long ago, Zhou Ke'er has now truly stepped into the realm of becoming a "deity"—provided that he successfully completes this task and eliminates that so-called "it".

Otherwise, he would lose the faith he had gained by betraying his only followers.

With a stomp on the armor remnants left by the monster that had been devoured, Zhou Ke'er smiled and walked back to the rooftop. Her wings flapped suddenly, and she soared into the sky. Her expression was solemn, as if some kind of deity had descended upon her.

He addressed the entire academy, proclaiming, "Your sacrifices, your legacy—please allow me to witness them, to inherit them, to bear them, and to realize them! Please entrust your legacy to me!"

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722. Ruins Exploration (Part 9)

As expected, just as Zhou Ke'er had predicted—there was no response whatsoever; instead, several malicious gazes were directed at him, both overtly and covertly.

However, this was precisely Zhou Ke'er's intention. He never expected that by simply flying up, raising his arms, and shaking his body, the entire academy would bow down in worship. After all, it was uncertain whether there were any remaining souls here, like those in the previous floor, left behind from those who had transformed into an array with their bodies. His goal was to lure out the other monsters here, intending to complete the journey quickly.

There wasn't much time to waste here any longer. Zhou Ke'er vaguely sensed that something was wrong with her current state and that she needed to quickly resolve the matter here and go home.

Normally, Zhou Ke'er would have left immediately in this situation, but he had just been entrusted with a vow and couldn't just run away. After all... although Zhou Ke'er's moral bottom line was very flexible and his principles could be changed at will, the vows he usually broke were ones he maliciously deceived others into believing. As for other serious entrustments, he could still distinguish between what was important and what was not.