The Last Gentleman-Chapter 297: Warm-up

Catherine brushed aside six tentacles dripping with black liquid and stepped forward in her little leather shoes to face Yi Chen.

“William, have you ever experienced nightmares before?”

Otherwise, even if your adaptability is high and you quickly mastered the essence of the nightmare I shared with you, it wouldn’t be possible for you to use it so skillfully so quickly.

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To even evolve such [Nightmare Limbs] on your own body is simply too incredible~”

“I did have a period of time when I had long nightmares, but it’s been so long that I don’t have much of an impression anymore. I remembered it just now because I swallowed the lump of sugar you gave me, Catherine.”

“The natural affinity everyone has for you must come from the similarities between us.

Since you have self-awareness and some understanding of dreams, I’ll skip the basic teaching.

Alright~ let’s hurry up and start the game… Oh, right! There’s one thing I need to remind you of, although it’s already written in the contract, I still need to emphasize it to you.

To ensure fairness, William, you are absolutely forbidden from directly or indirectly exposing your identity during the nightmare game, and you cannot join forces with outsiders to engage in despicable acts that lead them to give away points.

If I find you using your identity to collaborate with Dreamers and making small moves, I will be very upset.”

“Hmm… wait a moment.

Since I have completed the [Nightmare Transformation] so quickly, should I still have some time? Although I understand some nightmares, there are still some things I want to ask you about.”

“Sure~ ask away! You gentlemen of the human race are more capable than I thought, even the ordinary teams penetrate deeper faster than I expected.”

“Why are nightmares expressed in the form of octopuses and tentacles? Why do people affected by nightmares exhibit a ‘smiling’ feature?”

“[Octopuses and Tentacles] are one of the boss’s favorite elements. I’m in charge of making octopus balls at the circus’s picnic and some dinners.

After I officially joined the core group of the circus, I was granted the ability of nightmare Pathological, and its physical manifestation is this octopus form, just because the boss set it up that way.

Everyone in the circus has a type of food they are best at, so everyone can participate in the important cooking process and enjoy the best food supply.”

“Circus… boss… everyone is proficient or corresponds to a type of food?”

Yi Chen gleaned a lot of information from these words,

and he could even conjure up a quite frightening pathological power in his mind, potentially a new force unlike anything from the Old World Source Epidemic Area.

At the same time, Yi Chen also recalled the first time he tried tentacles, which indeed tasted delicious.

Catherine seemed to realize she had said a bit too much and quickly covered her mouth with crossed hands.

“Hmm~ I seem to have said some things I shouldn’t have.

As for the [Smile], that’s related to my profession in the circus.

By the way! This is my identity card, if I lose the game and flee, you can still contact me through this card in the future.”

Catherine reached into the neckline of her dress and pulled out a unique card that was reflective in black and white.

On the front was a personal likeness of Catherine holding a black and white umbrella made from human joints and leather in her hand, sticking out her butt and leaning forward to greet the people outside the card.

The backside bore a strange black and white smiling face,

and upon seeing this smiling face, Yi Chen could immediately associate it with all the people in Zion City who had ever smiled at him, whether friendly or malicious,

as if this smiling face combined the features of everyone’s smiles.

In the two corners of the card, [JOKER] was printed, like a ghost card from a deck of playing cards, but the simple black and white colors seemed to only correspond with the lesser joker.

Yi Chen did not refuse and decisively took the card.

Anything directly related to Catherine should be preserved as much as possible, even if it must be of use in the future, or might even allow us to touch upon the mysterious circus behind her.

“Alright~ Let’s begin.”

Catherine extended her right hand, and with a crackling sound, octopus tentacles immediately grew from her palm, carrying ink as they drew five doors on the sidewall.

“Let’s use these five ordinary squads as ‘foreplay’, to get you accustomed to the use of nightmares, before we officially begin our game face-off.

Be careful~ Even though they are ordinary squads, they are existences on par with you, William. Don’t get killed by them because you’re unfamiliar with the ways of nightmares.”

Facing the five doors that Catherine had constructed, Yi Chen didn’t choose any of them. Instead, he mimicked her method, using his own tentacles to draw a “door” to the area where one of the squads resided.

He learned on the fly, creating something quite stable,

“William, the speed of your learning… isn’t it a bit too fast?”

Yi Chen didn’t reply at all, he quickly stepped into the black door he had created.

Whoom!

In the blink of an eye, he arrived at a scene similar to a power station, except it was still uninhabited;the dream squad would need to create another staircase in the dream to reach this level.

Utilizing the remaining time, Yi Chen began to remodel the space while embodying the nightmare persona,

much like a dream builder,

first trying to move the safety door with his tentacles,

then attempting to stretch, bend, and fork the passage, creating brand new paths and intersections, making the previously simple cyclical structure more complex.

Eventually, he transformed the place into a complicated maze with extremely high area similarity. The labyrinth’s design was also somewhat influenced by the orphanage,

Once the squad arrived, Yi Chen would have absolute initiative with the terrain.

He himself tore open the walls with his tentacles, hiding within the environment, waiting for the dream squad’s arrival.

Before long.

In the central area of the dream space, a nightmare staircase was created.

Descending was a five-person squad,

The hidden Yi Chen immediately locked onto the squad’s ‘death row inmate’. This person had a clear gap with other members of the squad, and he himself emitted an intense aura of unease.

The man’s projection in the dream was astonishingly attired in just an apron, in a butcher’s dress, not gentlemanly in the least and truly greasy;from the creases of his abundant flesh, a blend of oil and sweat oozed continuously.

He seemed very hot, as every step he took left a footprint behind.

Or perhaps this heat stemmed from the agitation of his innermost desires,

the fervent wish to kill others, since as a ‘death row inmate’ he had been confined for so long without the freedom to move and release his desires.

“I remember reading about this man in a magazine studying fallen gentlemen during my indiscriminate reading of various books, trying to enhance my ‘intelligence’.

‘Breeder’ Blanklin

Born into a farmer’s family in Lebus Town and raised with pigs, Blanklin, at the age of fifteen, was unexpectedly noticed by a passing gentleman. Without any systematic training, merely by helping at home with breeding and slaughtering pigs, he managed to pass the exam as a gentleman with high marks.

When he broke through the ‘Limit of Man’ and garnered the title of ‘Pork Maker’, he suddenly took emergency leave from Zion,

and returned alone to his hometown—Lebus Town, where he took more than ten days to slaughter everyone in town and stitched together a giant human-pig totem in the town center.

He’s a ruthless one… better keep him separated~ His aura is clearly stronger than the other gentlemen, and he holds greater use. “