Chapter 345: Chapter 345

The source of the black mist was an eye on the man's right arm. His sleeve had been torn to shreds, allowing Jenkins to see the Cursed Object—a demonic eye with a malevolent glare.

Jenkins muttered, flicking his right hand. A sliver of light shot out from the silver band coiled around his arm.

The Thousand-Eyed Priest held up his left palm, and an orange demonic eye snapped open in its center. His body turned illusory, like a shadow, and the sliver of light passed right through him before vanishing.

"It doesn't matter who you are. You die today!" the man declared to Jenkins, his face contorted with rage.

Jenkins’s heart sank. He knew that in such a confined space, with two or more demonic eyes active at once, he had no hope of dodging.

Perhaps equally worried about being discovered by the people on the surface, the man wasted no more time probing his strange opponent. He ripped open his tattered clothes, and dozens of eyes on the front of his body blinked open simultaneously.

Jenkins scrambled for a nearby pile of lumber, but the eyes opened faster than he could move. His left arm, too slow to evade, was coated in a layer of frost, leaving it feeling numb. A dark energy seemed to crawl up his back, but it was quickly dissolved by the immense life force within his body.

Flames licked along his arm, thawing the frost, but just then he felt an itch on the back of his neck. He instinctively turned his head to see a spider the size of a human face, its vicious chelicerae gaping open. Its compound eyes and the fine hairs on its legs were terrifyingly clear.

Chocolate scrambled up his collar to his shoulder and kicked the spider off of Jenkins.

"Good kitty!" he praised.

Chocolate brushed Jenkins’s face with her tail before slipping back inside his collar. Jenkins didn’t dare show himself again, holding his breath and listening for footsteps as he hid behind the lumber pile.

But hiding wasn't a solution. He thought for a moment. The situation wasn't dire enough to use his divine power just yet, so he decided to risk another method that had just occurred to him.

If it all blew up in his face, he could always resort to his divine form to fix it.

A buzzing sound filled his ears—those wretched eyeball-flies again. Jenkins pressed his right hand against the lumber pile, and flames instantly erupted.

Using the fire as cover, he climbed to the top of the stack and looked down, his gaze meeting the eye on the man’s shoulder.

"Let's see you dodge this!"

The Thousand-Eyed Priest leaped into the air, the large eye on his chest already gathering energy. At the same time, with a grating screech like scraping glass, the eyes on the man’s back tore themselves from his body. Trailing nerve bundles, they scuttled like insects onto his shoulders and fixed their gazes on Jenkins. Orıginal content can be found at n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net

A black shadow once again emerged from Jenkins’s back, hurtling toward the man below. Another deafening explosion rocked the residential basement, leaving it on the verge of collapse.

Amidst the smoke and thunderous noise, Jenkins crouched low and scurried to the wall, then dove into the tunnel that had not yet fully closed.

He didn’t rush to leave. Instead, he twisted around with difficulty and pressed both hands against the earthen wall behind him.

With an excessive outpouring of Spirit, a solid concrete barrier materialized, completely sealing the passage.

If not for the two massive increases to his Spirit capacity today, he never would have been able to create a volume of concrete this large.

He scrambled forward along the passage and, as expected, heard a rustling sound from the soil nearby. He breathed a sigh of relief; if the cultist had decided to retreat, he would have been in real trouble.

It seemed that moving on all fours allowed his Cat's Grace ability to work more effectively. In any case, the Thousand-Eyed Priest failed to catch up to Jenkins before he saw the tunnel exit far ahead.

But he could see the man had already carved out a new tunnel not far behind him.

A-01-1-0034, Replica Shop of Mr. Prank. It was located in the basement of a residence, horizontally parallel to the room where the two had just been fighting.

After crawling out of the tunnel, Jenkins saw that its exit was on the side of the basement staircase. Looking down, the crude walls gradually transitioned into white tiles, as if two passages had been abruptly and crudely joined together. The tiles were covered in continuous, strange patterns, with dirt caked over the topmost design, marking the tunnel’s beginning.

This phenomenon was the Replica Shop's corrosion of its surroundings.

At the bottom of the stairs was a wooden door. A miner's lamp hung above it, illuminating the entire area for Jenkins. Below the lamp, a wooden sign was crookedly nailed to the door:

[Replica Shop of Mr. Prank. All Customers Welcome!]

The words were written in the modern common script, but the handwriting was atrocious—worse than Jenkins's own when he had first arrived. He suspected it was a child’s scribble.

The urge to enter the shop grew stronger as he approached. It was a form of psychological suggestion to attract customers, and for this reason, the Church’s teams had only cordoned off the exterior without posting guards directly at the door.

But the Church did have security measures underground, which he had likely already triggered.

He waved at the man who had just pushed through the earthen wall, and amidst his furious glare, Jenkins leaped down, crashing through the Replica Shop's door with his shoulder.

"Goddess be praised, this knock-off isn't scary in the slightest!"

He snapped his eyes open to the sight of a warm, burning stove. The layout was very similar to Pops Antique Shop, except the display windows looked out onto distinct layers of earth.

Papa Oliver had said that time inside the Replica Shop was independent of the outside world. Even if Jenkins left now, the Thousand-Eyed Priest outside would still be frozen in that same furious expression.

This was one of the reasons he had been discovered so late on the second 31st day.

There were some differences from the antique shop. Unlike Papa Oliver, who intentionally kept his merchandise in a jumble, the shelves here were neatly lined with familiar-looking items.

A record player was playing soothing music. In a corner, a small tree was planted in a pot, and the floor beneath it had been dug out to create a small pond.

"Welcome! Oh, this time we have quite an impressive guest!"

A shrill, grating, childish voice echoed through the room, tinged with a slight reverb. Looking up, he saw a crudely made puppet sitting on the counter, its joints exposed. Its eyes were black buttons, its nose was a carrot, and its mouth was just a piece of paper with a gaping, bloody maw drawn on it.