Chapter 639: What Have You Caught a Scent of This Time?

Seeing Ange and his group, bringing Nightmare Shaye along to clear out the bugs, hurried back to the main plane in high spirits; after cleaning Nightmare Shaye out of every dark corner of Meishencheng, they discovered that Nightmare Shaye could no longer be found anywhere on the entire plane.

"Where did it go hide? Strange as can be — fine if it doesn't come, but what's the meaning of coming and then hiding?" After mobilizing the entire plane for a sweep, Lord Nai Ge said, thoroughly vexed.

The "entire plane" here really meant the entire plane; with Seeing Ange's current power, once mobilized, they truly could ascend to the heavens and burrow into the earth to patrol the four seas, absolutely missing no corner.

But even after combing the underground caves with bugs several times, they still could not find a single trace of Nightmare Shaye.

If it had never come, that would be one thing, but in the corners of Meishencheng they had already swept up a batch of "hair strands," proving Nightmare Shaye had been there.

Seeing Ange cupped those "hair strands" in his hands and played with them, making Nai Ge Li Si's scalp crawl: "Why on earth are you playing with something so disgusting? Be careful it burrows into your flesh."

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Seeing Ange took off his hat and revealed bare bone — where would there be any flesh?

Nai Ge Li Si slapped himself across the mouth — spoke out of turn.

Anthony, receiving intelligence reports back from all sides, said with a troubled look: "This is bad — we don't know where it's gone. We can't keep up this high-intensity search forever; if we stop and let it quietly grow in some unmonitored spot, that'll be real trouble."

Two "troubles" in one sentence — enough to give Anthony that feeling — speaks volumes about just how troublesome it was.

Seeing Ange, however, shook his head: "No fear, no growth."

Anthony paused, then nodded: "Right, I overlooked that — without fear, it can't grow. So it needs to lurk where people gather, best of all a human city. I'll issue a Supreme Edict of Hope, listing it as a heretic; anyone who spots its trace must report immediately."

Nai Ge Li Si agreed: "Let's also scatter some bug eggs out there, ready to defend against Shaye at any moment."

A siege against Nightmare Shaye thus ended with a flash and a fizzle; no one knew where Nightmare Shaye had hidden, or why it had shed only a tiny bit of blood before stopping — was it anemic?

……

The Haunted Park recently gained a very impressive illusionist; his illusions were unnervingly real, giving people a fully immersive feeling, and his grasp of the threshold was razor-precise — he could always squeeze out that last sliver of fear without pushing the visitor over the edge into collapse.

What's more, his illusions were highly targeted; different people saw different scenes, and even within the same illusion, each person fixated on a different focal point.

In the same scene, a boy saw the girl he adored leaving with a middle-aged man; the middle-aged man saw a beauty about to go off with him, while his wife stood right beside him.

A student saw his exam paper handed in — not a single word written on it; a teacher saw a stack of papers, not one of them passing.

A mage saw elements brimming everywhere, yet couldn't cast a single spell; an alchemist saw decades' worth of treasured materials all smashed to shards by some brat.

Every scene presented the visitor's deepest fear, then pulled back just as they were about to break — walking the entire course in that on-the-brink state left everyone with jelly legs when they left the park.

Nightmare Shaye returned to the rest room, tallying the day's harvest, feeling a dreamlike unreality about it; over this period, the fear gathered each day equaled what it used to gather in half a month or more.

No need to keep a whole host of intelligent beings, no need to raise them from childhood — just scare them, and the harvest was richer than before?

Though this fear wasn't pure, it had the advantage of being a constant stream; some customers who'd been scared half to death a few days ago came back again a few days later, and brought their friends along too.

If this could go on like this, couldn't it just lie back and rake in fear? It wondered whether the intelligent beings here could sustain this pace day after day.

"Not a bad haul." A voice rang out suddenly; Nightmare Shaye's heart jolted, and it turned its head to see a flame slowly kindle in a brazier in the corner.

Careless — it hadn't noticed anything odd about that brazier; the place had too many unfamiliar things, defense was impossible at every turn. It had been spotted. No — kill it.

It turned its head and glared viciously at the brazier, just about to strike, when the brazier said, unimpressed: "All right, all right, can't you tell I'm a demon too? We're family, no need for posturing. You're a fear-demon, right? Pretty clever, knowing to come to a place like this to harvest fear — nice haul. Looks like you're no low-level sort. What do I call you? You can call me Lord of Terror."

Nightmare Shaye paused — a demon? Lord of Terror? Had it misunderstood something?

Nightmare Shaye decided to hold off for the moment and, going along with Lord of Terror's words, asked: "Lord of Terror? A demon? What kind of demon?"

Lord of Terror said, peeved: "That's pretty rude of you. Lord of Terror — of course that means Demon Sovereign. Did your mother never teach you the basics of demon ranks?"

"The basics? She never taught me." Nightmare Shaye said.

Demons as a planar species were far beneath its level; among the intelligent beings it kept, there was no demon species either.

"Oh, then it's not your fault — that's your ancestors' failing. Demons go from lesser imp, to imp, then to…" Lord of Terror patiently explained the demon ranks.

"Got it now? Demon Sovereign is the god of the demon race, the sovereign of the demon plane. You should address me as Demon Lord." Lord of Terror said.

Nightmare Shaye didn't answer, but asked back: "If you're the sovereign of a plane, then what are you doing here?"

"Heh-heh, heh-heh." Lord of Terror said with an awkward chuckle: "Just wandering around, seeing if any fool… ahem, handsome fellow wants to sign a contract with me. How about it — interested in signing a contract? I know plenty of these Haunted Parks, I can take you to gather fear anytime."

"No need, thanks." Nightmare Shaye refused — it was no fool.

"Really not signing one? I also know methods for purifying fear — want to learn?" Lord of Terror tempted.

"No need." Nightmare Shaye tightened its grip, and the mottled "fear" was refined into pure fear.

"Not bad technique, passable, I suppose." Lord of Terror said insincerely: "So, do you have any other desires? Speak them — maybe I can grant them for you?"

Nightmare Shaye thought for a moment — it seemed to have no desires; its greatest desire was gathering fear, which was its food, but that desire was already well satisfied here.

"How boring — clients like you are the ones I hate most. I'm off, goodbye." Lord of Terror realized it was wasting time, and in embarrassment and anger snuffed itself out.

A long, long time later, Anthony and Nai Ge Li Si were still brooding: "Where on earth did this Nightmare Shaye go hide?"

"I tell you, Seeing Ange, stop planting these Shaye things, will you? They're not real hair vegetables, honestly." Nai Ge Li Si said, disgusted, then caught a sneaky, furtive figure out of the corner of his eye.

"Shamara, what is it you've caught a scent of this time?"