Chapter 2788: The Feast of Nightmares (Part 7)

Clearly, the head chef's evaluation of this group of people was not wrong. They were not interested in gourmet food; they often frequented this restaurant only because it was the restaurant of the Wayne Hotel and only received celebrities and dignitaries. They only treated this place as a social occasion and had no respect whatsoever for the so-called chef and food.

Someone picked up a pen with trembling hands, scratched their head, and wrote down a few words, but most were just some general evasions. Some remembered a few sentences and began to write furiously, but without knowing the cause and effect, it sounded like an aimless travelogue.

Some found that they couldn't write any background story at all, so they simply started from the flavor of the food, picked up their wine glasses, tasted the wine carefully, and wrote down their own feelings.

Others chose to communicate with the people next to them. Without a doubt, under the elimination tournament system, no one wanted to tell others the answer. Everyone clutched the paper in their hands tightly; they didn't want to be the one eliminated.

This restaurant was very spacious, but only half of it was in use, with about twenty tables set up, four people at each table, nearly 100 people in total. Eliminating only the bottom 10 this time was already considered quite merciful. People all thought they wouldn't be the one who wrote the worst.

Time passed second by second. When it reached more than a minute, someone finally couldn't help but break down. A man in a suit threw his pen away and began to curse loudly.

"What the hell is going on here? Why am I staying here? I've had enough! I'm leaving right now!"

He stood up and took a step to walk out, but clearly, the spine hanging from the ceiling wouldn't let him go so easily.

The man pushed his chair away and turned around. The moment he took a step to walk out, he felt his neck itch, and everyone else revealed expressions of terror.

The man's spine was pulled out completely.

From the interface connected to the spine hanging from the ceiling, an entire complete adult male spine was pulled out. The nerves slowly spread downward, then separated the bone segments of that spine and absorbed them into the ceiling.

The man fell down, dead with his eyes wide open.

Screams rang out one after another in the restaurant, but everyone sat in their chairs without moving. They just opened their mouths wide, their jaws trembling constantly, and curled up with pale faces, like quails drenched in rain.

Shiler didn't pay attention to these abnormalities; he was writing his answer seriously. Shiler didn't feel he had a natural advantage just because this idea was his, although it appeared so on the surface.

He let the head chef do what a head chef should do, and what a head chef should do was nothing more than make delicious dishes and then introduce them to the guests. The head chef had indeed done so.

And as the person who proposed this suggestion, Shiler could anticipate things earlier, listen carefully when the head chef was explaining, memorize everything, and then write it down on paper. It seemed this could guarantee his safety.

But in fact, it wasn't that simple at all.

Shiler didn't truly treat this head chef as a human just because he seemed capable of communication and had his own likes and dislikes. He wasn't a human at all; he was a puppet controlled by a monster, or perhaps the monster itself. All his rationality had been influenced by madness and could not be speculated upon using human common sense.

He only said that the 10 people who wrote the worst would become ingredients, but he didn't say what was considered "worst." Perhaps someone would think that for the dignity of a head chef, it must be that the less one wrote, the more it proved they didn't listen to the lecture, and the more it proved they didn't respect the head chef, so naturally, it would be judged as worst.

But things might not be like that at all. The other party was just a monster. He could completely act without the logic of a head chef. When he needed to disguise himself as a human, he would come up with a set of rules that seemed logical. When he didn't need to disguise himself as a human, he would throw everything to the back of his mind. That was what monsters were like.

And if one thought more maliciously—judging by the experience of the 19th floor—Shiler didn't think this was impossible—this might be a trap set by the monster for Shiler.

He didn't take Shiler's advice at all. He pretended to follow it just to toy with humans once again. He pretended to follow Shiler's suggestion and changed the game, but he could find another reason to judge what Shiler wrote as worst, even if Shiler had written down everything he said word for word, without a single error.

Only the Joker, who played games with Batman, would stubbornly follow a rule. The monsters of the Cthulhu mythos would only install time bombs on the two buttons of a dilemma, letting them explode randomly.

Therefore, Shiler never arrogantly thought he held the initiative. This was always a chaotic game. The only things that could be utilized were the collision of chaos and chaos, rather than hoping the monster would truly follow any rules.

Shiler looked at the paper in front of him. Although the head chef might not take action against him so quickly, he had to be cautious. Thus, he had to answer as comprehensively as possible and also leave a backup plan.

Shiler began to write furiously. He wrote very fast, and his handwriting was slightly sloppy, with the strokes between letters somewhat connected, but this achieved exactly the effect he wanted.

Jeremiah seemed to be writing something as well. Shiler wasn't worried that his communication with Jerome would expose his intelligence, because if he were in the past timeline, the future Jerome wouldn't be able to tell Jeremiah about himself directly.

When the 5 minutes were up, the waiters walked over to collect the slips of paper. A lady sitting on Shiler's other side stared enviously at Shiler's full slip of paper. She took the initiative to strike up a conversation: "You must have listened very carefully, right? Then do you still remember the next dish..."

"My apologies, madam, but this was just a coincidence." Shiler explained, "I just happened to be interested in wine, so I listened to a few sentences and added some of my own understanding. But for the next few dishes, I'm afraid I'm powerless."

All the slips of paper were collected. The people in the restaurant waited anxiously for their judgment. The head chef, who had walked back to the kitchen, appeared quickly. The slips of paper in his hand were more than 10.

Everyone's gaze focused on him, and he appeared very satisfied. When he smiled, the nasolabial folds outlined an arc at the corners of his mouth, making the muscles on his entire face appear exceptionally relaxed.

"Very good, friends. Your answers surprised me very much. I mean... surprisingly rotten."

The head chef's expression suddenly darkened. Everyone's heart skipped a beat. They knew their life and death were now tied to this man's whim. If he wasn't happy, everyone's chance of survival would become much smaller.

The head chef suddenly lifted a hand. A woman sitting on the right side of the table at the end of the room suddenly stood up uncontrollably. She reached out to pick up a table knife in terror.

*Slash! *

The head fell, and the spine was pulled out. Her body was carried away by the waiters next to her, and a burst of fragrance soon came from the kitchen.

The crowd was even more terrified, but looking at the blood-red spines pressed against their necks, no one dared to move recklessly.

The head chef took out a piece of paper unhurriedly and began to read. The things on it were incoherent, and even wrote some things about pop singers. It sounded like an essay written by an elementary school student.

Without a doubt, this was what the woman had handed in. And after the head chef finished reading, he looked around the field and found that some people seemed to be relieved, while others became nervous.

Everyone present was a smart person. By comparing the quality of the answers read by the head chef, they could roughly compare whether they would be the one eliminated. Those who felt relieved clearly wrote better than this woman, while those who were very nervous wrote about the same as this woman. They realized they might be eliminated, so they were both terrified and flustered.

But no one was stupid enough to choose to run away again, because they knew they couldn't escape. The atmosphere of panic permeated the restaurant, and the head chef seemed to enjoy all of this.

He cast a look of approval toward Shiler. Although Shiler didn't feel half happy, he still nodded perfunctorily.

Immediately after, the head chef killed two more people: an old man with silver hair and a woman dressed in heavy makeup, and read out their answers one after another.

Without a doubt, they were equally perfunctory. The old man wrote with a bit of cultural level, but it had nothing to do with the theme, and the woman was basically equivalent to illiterate; the level of grammar made one wonder if she was American at all.

This time, the head chef didn't kill them first, but read their answers first, and exhausted all vocabulary to belittle what they wrote, watching them go from anger to despair, and finally, as expected, their cervical spines were pulled out, they fell to the ground, and their bodies were transported to the kitchen.

Afterward, the head chef slowed down. He read the answers word for word, one by one. Sometimes after reading the first sentence, he would change to another piece of paper, just so that people in the field wouldn't realize too early whether their names had been read.

Everyone was on the verge of collapse under this huge pressure. Two more people couldn't bear such great pressure, screamed, and wanted to run away, and were undoubtedly killed.

And the head chef announced an even more cruel piece of news: these people who hadn't been selected were not on the list of 10 people. In other words, no matter how many people screamed and ran away, he still had to eliminate 10 people using the answers handed in.

After those with poor psychological quality were eliminated, this mental torture finally passed. The head chef finished reading the last piece of paper. Everyone let out a long sigh, and quite a few people collapsed directly onto the tables.

But the head chef took out another piece of paper.

Some people began to cry, some had numb expressions and didn't care about anything anymore, and others had already begun to want to commit suicide with a table knife.

"Next, I must read to you all the work of this great writer, from Mr. Nyarlathotep. He wrote the best among everyone. I have to say, he respects me the most among you all. Not only did he write down my words word for word, but he could also cite classics and analyze them deeply. For this, I am willing to give him a chance to be exempted from the next round."

The head chef began to read the manuscript Shiler had written passionately. Shiler's expression didn't change at all, and everyone else looked toward him, because the head chef pointed in his direction after the introduction.

Only his age looked like a doctor here, so everyone's gaze fell on him, with resentment, envy, ill intent, and some containing complex emotions.

Shiler remained unmoved, sitting in place with a calm and composed expression. When the head chef looked over for the last time after reading the manuscript, he saw Shiler make a cross on his chest.

A trace of disdain flashed in the depths of the head chef's eyes. ===== CHAPTER 2789 =====