Chapter 1455: Chapter 1455

"You didn't tell your parents about the closet?"

Jenkins asked, a faint smile touching his lips as he lifted his teacup and took a long, satisfying sip. The story the boy was telling was the very same one he had read in the "Black Town Secret Records".

"I told my mother, but she thought I was imagining things. I told my father, but he's too busy with work to listen to me. But the feeling of being watched never came back after that. I'm sure it's gone for good."

The boy, Jason, answered.

"I must correct one of your mistakes. In the Elven language, there are five third-person pronouns. When describing a terrifying existence—something above mortals but below the gods—one typically wouldn't use the pronoun you chose." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ Nov3lFɪre.ɴet

"I'm not particularly skilled with Elvish, and only the Elven royalty really cares that much about pronoun usage. In most cases, it's used much like human languages, with only three third-person pronouns... Wait, do you have Elven royal blood? Oh, my apologies, then. I was indeed using it incorrectly. You truly are a good teacher."

Little Jason said, perching on the edge of his bed. He braced his hands against the mattress, his slippered feet swinging back and forth in a steady rhythm, his face beaming with the innocent smile unique to a child.

"And where have your parents gone?"

"But today is Sunday. I imagine in a remote town like Black Town, there wouldn't be any work that needs doing on a Sunday, would there?"

"Then I must have remembered wrong. They might have gone to church for service."

Little Jason amended with a smile.

"Actually, I don't know if it's Sunday either. I was just making that up."

Jenkins changed his tune, setting down his teacup and staring into the slightly murky liquid.

"It seems you're quite certain something was once in your closet. So, do you know where the thing that lived in your closet went?"

"No, sir. I don't know. I've never even seen it."

"Not even when you looked in the mirror this morning?"

"Sir, you shouldn't joke like that."

The boy's face still held a smile, but he changed the subject. "Alright, I think we can start our lesson now."

"My apologies, I don't recall the topic for today's lesson. Perhaps you could remind me."

"Our lesson is on dreams and consciousness. Have you forgotten?"

The boy looked into Jenkins's eyes, and Jenkins looked back into his. Though they were human eyes, all Jenkins could see was an inky blackness.

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

"If you're waiting for me to pass out, I'd advise you to give up on that idea. Your sleeping tea has no effect on me. As for trying to pull me into a dream with your supernatural abilities... I'm sorry, but I'm quite skilled at manipulating dreams myself."

As he spoke, he rose to his feet. The boy shot up as well, but before he could leap out the window to escape, Jenkins struck him to the ground with a single punch.

"An Abyssal One, isn't it?"

He tossed the scale he had picked up earlier onto the floor.

"I honestly didn't recognize what this was at first. But you shouldn't have said so much to me."

That last punch, vicious and precise, had landed squarely on little Jason's chest. He now lay on the floor, clutching his chest and coughing uncontrollably.

"Of course. Legend says your race was born from the very concept of fear. After wreaking havoc upon the material world in an ancient epoch, you were exiled by the gods to some terrible realm beyond it. Your very existence is like a permanent aura of fear, and you grow stronger by feeding on the fear of intelligent beings. Left unchecked, any Abyssal One that returns to the material world is a monstrous creature capable of causing a regional, extinction-level disaster."

Jenkins was well aware of how terrifying the Abyssal Ones were, as he had read about this type of creature during his past investigation of the Cup of Hidden Fear (B-03-01-8383).

"Any adult member of the Abyssal One race is at least equivalent to a level 6 human Enchanter. But since you initially only dared to hide in a closet, gathering emotional energy by scaring a child, I suspect you must have been severely injured when you entered the material world. Is that right?"

He asked, reaching out to grab the boy on the floor. But the boy dissolved into black smoke, slipping through Jenkins's fingers.

"Your forms are not fixed. That's another key piece of evidence that leads human and elven scholars to believe you were born from the concept of fear."

Standing his ground, Jenkins scanned his surroundings. The house was devoid of light, save for the dim rays filtering through the windows, making the place feel like a haunted house.

"There aren't many legends or records about Abyssal Ones, but it's generally believed that your most significant external supernatural traits are pulling people into dreams and your intangible forms. However, Abyssal Ones also have a very distinct weakness..."

He drew his cane, his eyes clearly seeing the traces of the creature's spiritual aura moving through the air.

"You are extremely afraid of light!"

He thrust the cane forward, and the gem at its tip erupted with a brilliant radiance, instantly flooding the entire room with white light.

In the blinding light, Jenkins felt his cane pierce something soft. A piercing shriek erupted in front of him, and a bone-chilling fear nearly made him drop the cane and stumble back, but he managed to resist the unnatural reaction.

When the light faded, Jenkins was once again alone in the boy's room. The only difference was a small pile of black dust on the floor in front of him. Jenkins crouched, took a pinch between his fingers, and sniffed it before frowning.

A single whiff of this dust could paralyze an ordinary person with fear; it had to be the remains of the Abyssal One. This was a crucial material for certain rituals, but unfortunately, he couldn't take items from the past back to his own time.

The fifth page of the book didn't appear, nor did Jenkins wake up in his bed. So, he left the room and briefly searched the entire house, eventually discovering a hidden chamber in the basement.

The hidden chamber was vast, its floor arranged into a horrifying ritual site with blood and some foul-smelling substance. At the edge of the site lay three severely decomposed human bodies—two adults and a child, huddled together. It had to be the Jason family.

In the pocket of the adult male corpse, Jenkins found a diary that chronicled everything that had happened here.

Coincidences might exist in this world, but they are often just inevitabilities in disguise. The strange house standing isolated in the woods was not without reason. In reality, little Jason's parents were never good people to begin with.