Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

These particularly deliberate cases could always trigger a media frenzy to the greatest extent. Once erupted, all media would dive in one after another, with people debating and counter-debating, and experts taking turns to quarrel, while the victims' families would attend seven to eight interviews a day.

Generally speaking, when public opinion fermented to this extent, it was detrimental to the local state and government. To maintain social stability, they should exercise some control.

More coincidentally, whenever there was an outburst of public opinion, local areas would concurrently see the emergence of corruption and bribery cases, or someone irresponsibly leaking disadvantageous news about certain individuals, or even the death of a significant figure.

This led to grim prospects for controlling public sentiment, and eventually, hardly anyone would intervene.

Combining various features, Shiller hypothesized that apart from the initial hotel tragedy truly being influenced by the Outer God, all these strange occurrences might have been artificially orchestrated.

It's not to say it was like filming a movie, the tragedies might have really happened, and they indeed involved phenomena beyond human capabilities, but such dangers were controlled by certain individuals.

The weirdness and monsters were real, it's just that there were people who could utilize these elements to harness their own benefits.

This also aligned with the previous inference about Joker's ultimate goal. He wanted everything to be a man-made disaster, so that after Batman had saved the world, he would realize his real adversary was not some natural disaster, but the fellow men he was striving to save.

Theoretically, the Church's development trajectory wasn't very scientific. Merely with these methods, they shouldn't have been able to achieve their current status. However, since Shiller himself was clergy of the Church, he didn't delve into these details.

Understanding his true identity and having a hypothesis about the odd origin of this world meant the house investigation wasn't in vain.

Still, Shiller needed to find Old Sirteck. Having such a hypothesis, he must have known something, and that sailor's journal was also suspicious—Shiller needed more information from him.

After browsing through several bedrooms briefly, Shiller found traces left by wheelchair tires in one of them, suggesting it might have been Mrs. Sirteck's room.

Now, only the garage remained unchecked in the entire house. If this couple had any place left to hide, it would either be the garage or beneath it.

Before heading to the garage, however, Shiller summoned the Transcendent and asked, "Do you have any mental defense skills? Ones that can prevent a decrease in my mental health value…"

"No, resisting mental attacks depends on your Will. If you had allocated more points to Willpower initially, you naturally could resist minor mental attacks."

Shiller's Willpower was actually not low, but from the current situation, it seemed to hardly be effective.

Shiller then thought for a bit and asked, "Then, do you have any physical defense measures, like Shield skills?"

The Transcendent pondered and said, "There's no skill that conjures a Magical Shield out of thin air like in games, but you can acquire Blocking Mastery. This would lower the dice check values when you block."

"Is this effect common in Mastery skills? Do you have Will Mastery?"

"Your initial skill significantly recovers mental health value, why are you always worried about this?"

Shiller shook his head without explaining too much and then thought aloud, "Is there a skill to avoid possession by the weird?"

"Isn't that what Clairvoyance is for?" The Transcendent explained, "At full level, Clairvoyance can almost detect all supernatural phenomena. If it comes at you, you just dodge, right?"

"This thing can also be dodged?"

"Of course, but you have to use the right method to dodge."

Shiller seemed to understand a bit. Clairvoyance probably allowed seeing the characteristics of the weird. Once he recognized the traits, he could nearly guess how to dodge or even potentially how to restrict them. This was the qualitative change brought by a full-level skill.

Realizing this, Shiller felt a bit more at ease. He then started to contemplate if he had any weaknesses.

"Do you want to acquire this?" The Transcendent suggested, "It seems only you can acquire this skill."

"What is it?"

"Cthulhu Mythos."

"I can read, but what does this skill do?"

"It helps you recall some knowledge about the Cthulhu Mythos."

"I don't need to recall, I already know…"

"But you can't mention it because it's from outside the game, and are you sure you know all the spells from the Cthulhu Mythos?"

Shiller instinctively seized on the key point, saying, "So I will encounter these later?"

"Actually, this skill wasn't supposed to be available with regular Skill Points. It requires encountering mythical creatures to earn Points, but because no other player's class has the prerequisites to recall mythological knowledge, only your class could possibly allow it, so you're allowed to use regular Skill Points exceptionally."

Shiller thought for a moment and understood the meaning of the Transcendent, in this world's setting, the Cthulhu Mythos had never existed consistently, nor was it commonly known to the general public.

They were not here to investigate because they knew something about the myths beforehand; in fact, they were not investigators at all, but a group of ordinary people with ulterior motives.

Under such circumstances, the character settings of others determined that they were unlikely to come into contact with similar knowledge. It was illogical to expect an ordinary doctor or lawyer to recall knowledge about Dagon upon seeing a Deep Diver.

Since these things had never appeared in the common man's field of vision, not even the Church had any records of them, where could they possibly have gained such knowledge? Not to mention recalling it upon sight.

Furthermore, even beyond the game, the situation was much the same. Only Shiller, Joker, and Primary Universe Batman had some understanding of this, even Bruce didn't pay much attention to it due to his lack of interest. Joker and Primary Universe Batman's knowledge wasn't deep, barely aware of Cthulhu and Nya. Marvel might know something about the Eye Demon, but only Shiller was proficient in this area.

So, if none of them chose this skill now, they would be completely in the dark about these matters. The Transcendent might have broken the rules fearing they would be annihilated here due to a lack of information.

"Are you sure it wasn't Greed pointing a gun at your forehead forcing you to agree?" Shiller knowingly asked.

"Haha, don't joke, he couldn't beat me anyway." The Transcendent laughed dryly, and now Shiller was sure Greed had indeed forced him to agree by pointing a gun at his forehead.

Since the Transcendent had said so, Shiller decided to select the skill. His two skill points could only afford level 1, but this skill could go up to level 5. Thus, Shiller asked,

"Can I earn points by encountering mythical creatures?"

"Fighting with mythical creatures will grant you additional skill points," said the Transcendent. "By the way, someone has already earned some points."

Shiller's heart sank; he guessed Batman might have gone to the docks, but he hadn't expected them to have already started fighting.

Shiller wasn't very hopeful about the outcome of Batman's fight against the possible mythical creature, as such entities greatly counteracted Batman, whose most precious asset was his sanity.

That was a miscalculation, Shiller thought. He should have gone with Batman. Then he could have helped restore Batman's mental health, but now they had split up, giving the enemy a chance to pick them off one by one.

Shiller collected his thoughts, entered the garage from a door inside the house, and as expected, found nobody there, but there was a door leading to a basement.

Before heading down, Shiller scanned the area with clairvoyance but saw nothing special. After descending, he put on the night vision goggles, gripped a crowbar tightly, and moved forward with light steps.

After exiting the cellar, he indeed ended up in an underground cave and ahead was a clear passageway, from which faint sounds were coming.

Shiller approached the limit of his clairvoyance range, then activated it and immediately saw a woman's figure.

The woman was seated, and the outline of her organs was clearly visible, exposed by numerous tiny shimmering points circling and fluttering around the organs.

Her body continuously shuddered as though she was vomiting. However, Shiller saw that her upper respiratory tract had been altered, or rather removed, and a respiratory device on her chest helped her lungs exchange air, while a tube inserted into her stomach seemed to be for feeding.

Shiller immediately realized that this was probably a containment measure for the monster inside her body.

Recalling what Greed had mentioned about people vomiting out their organs, Shiller suspected the monster might reside within human organs and spread through the air.

The way the light points gathered suggested the former, and the need to vomit out the organs was to expose the light points to air.

No wonder Greed said that Joker would certainly die if unprepared. The equipment on the woman must have a way to release the light points, and if one didn't know the rules, merely breathing would draw the light points into their body, inevitably leading them to expel all their organs.

But now that he had seen it, Shiller naturally had a way to deal with it.

The enemy didn't know he had night vision goggles; in such a dark space, whoever could see clearly had a tremendous advantage.

Using the night vision goggles, Shiller first surveyed the cave ahead, and besides this tunnel, there was another passageway to the woman's left that seemed sizable enough for an adult to enter normally.

There was a man beside the woman who seemed to have heard something and placed his hand on the device on her chest.

It seemed this was his method of killing using the monster, but Shiller wasn't about to give him that chance.

Shiller took a deep breath, held it, closed his eyes, and relying on his memory, sprinted explosively to the woman's side.

He heard the man twist some button, making a clicking sound, but the next second, Shiller had already grabbed his neck, pulled him down from the chair, and with the greatest speed entered the left passageway.

Continuing along the passageway, he reached another cave, but Shiller still felt it wasn't safe. He could hold his breath for at least another minute, so he simply took the man through several twists and turns to a cave completely away from their previous location and threw the man on the ground.

To prevent any more tricks, he immediately took the gas mask from the man's face and put it on himself, then finally spoke, "Are you Silv?"

"You bastard!! You..."

"Okay, I'll change the question," Shiller picked up the crowbar and smashed it on the man's ankle. After his scream of agony, he asked,

"Are you Silv?"