Chapter 122: Is Obscure, Hard-to-Understand Spicy Romance a Troupe Tradition?

‘I seriously suspect Bacchus knows me too,’ I mused, resting my chin on my hand with a look of deep, scholarly contemplation.

Otherwise, how could every single Operator he sends my way be so perfectly tailored to my exact tastes?

Take him, for example. He was a flamboyant, big-tailed pink feline. With such a vibrant, eye-catching color palette, there was absolutely no way the original Doctor—the Ghost of Babel, rampaging across Terra—could have missed him. If Tabo had been leading a march one day and suddenly spotted a giant pink leopard in the wild, wouldn’t he have immediately thrown a Pokeball at it?

And if he accidentally let it escape? He would have become utterly obsessed, racking his genius brain to develop specialized, high-tech containment weapons just to capture the elusive beast.

, once caught, if Tabo discovered that this magnificent pink leopard dealt incredibly rare Neural Damage—a damage type almost no enemy in the current meta had any resistance to—would he build him or not?

He would absolutely E2 max him, even if it bankrupted Rhodes Island. Looking at it through the lens of pure tower defense logic, it made perfect sense.

I have always been a decisive man. After efficiently arranging for Muluo and Yato to run interference and restrain the Playwright, pointing them off in some random direction to clear the stage, I patted Rosmontis on the shoulder with a mysterious, commanding aura. Naturally, I let myself fall to the back of the formation.

Glancing left and right through the gloom of the castle corridors, confirming the coast was entirely clear, I finally dropped the mastermind facade.

“Bacchus?” I called out in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper. “Bacchus!”

The oppressive silence of the crimson halls was my only answer.

Alright, time to change tactics. I cleared my throat, pitching my voice into a teasing, theatrical lilt. “Oh my~ I wonder who the Doctor’s absolute favorite Operator is? Is there a certain someone hiding in the dark that I simply must bring on every single mission?”

The dim firelight of the wall sconces flickered violently. A rose-red shadow stretched and swayed against the stone for a long, agonizing moment, before finally failing to restrain itself. The darkness peeled back, revealing his form.

“After all these years, Doctor, you remain exactly the same…” a voice murmured, smooth as aged wine and heavy with melancholy. “Casually bestowing empty sweet nothings upon me, only to trample my fragile sincerity underfoot.”

Bacchus lowered his head, feigning deep sorrow. He stood silently in the shadow of the flickering wall lamp, a breathtakingly beautiful man shedding invisible tears. “My Commander is harder to chase than the scorching sun. He burned my remains to ash, yet rose from those very ashes himself, leaving me behind in the cold.”

Poetic. Way too poetic!

I nodded, maintaining a mask of solemn gravity. “Of course! Do you have any idea how hot the core of the sun is? When I wield my Heaven-Burning Divine Weapon, the DPS output is vastly hotter than that.”

Bacchus fell dead silent.

A long moment passed before he finally released a heavy sigh, his tone practically overflowing with bitter resentment. “Doctor, you could at least feign a little pity for me. Or has your amnesia truly rendered you this heartless? You certainly didn’t display this kind of frigid attitude toward that wandering knight back then.”

That’s my uncle, you dramatic feline, how could it possibly be the same… I grumbled internally.

But I didn’t let his guilt trip distract me. I kept my gaze locked dead ahead, my voice dropping into a cold, absolute command. “Come out of the shadows.”

Bacchus waved a hand dismissively. His long, elegant hair and the hem of his coat fluttered despite the dead air of the corridor. He tipped his hat in a flawless, gentlemanly salute. “After all these years, I have long grown accustomed to keeping company with loneliness and the dark. You arrive, entirely unannounced, and immediately wish to drag me back into the blinding sunlight. Are you not afraid I might resist?”

Oh, playing hard to get, aren’t we?

I threw another glance over my shoulder, double-checking that Yato and the others hadn’t doubled back to ruin my interrogation. Satisfied, I turned back with a faint, dangerous half-smile. “Come out first. Then we’ll talk.”

“The shadows are the natural curtain for the opening of a grand play…”

“Come out.”

“I won’t.”

Bacchus finally abandoned his flowery, theatrical script, huddling stubbornly tighter into the darkest corner of the alcove.

Seeing that diplomatic communication had completely broken down, I stopped wasting my breath. I casually raised a hand, channeling just enough Arts to threaten the structural integrity of the wall lamp casting his precious shadow.

Forced out of his hiding spot, Bacchus stumbled forward in a thoroughly disheveled state. He knew my reputation all too well—if he didn’t comply, the madman of Babel might actually blow a hole in the castle just to test the structural physics of the area.

“I didn’t know you would return…” Bacchus muttered, his gaze averting from mine. “So I haven’t maintained my tail or my wounds for all these years. This reunion is terribly lacking in dramatic flair…”

I froze.

His upper body was still clad in that elegant, flamboyant attire, every inch the aristocratic performer. But his lower body was a waking nightmare. It was shockingly semi-transparent, fractured into a shattered, crystalline state. Through the dense, jagged gaps of his fading form, I could faintly glimpse the horrifying ruin of his internal organs. It was a wretched, visceral sight, beautiful and grotesque all at once.

No wonder he had desperately wanted to hide in the shadows.

I stared, my mind racing. If Tabo were here, he would probably be absolutely heartbroken to see his prized Operator in this state. But luckily for my sanity, I am not him!

I pushed the rising dread down and pressed the interrogation. “Is this current state of yours a side effect of dying and resurrecting? And more, how exactly did you end up looking like a shattered glass sculpture?”

Bacchus shot me a deeply resentful, wounded glare. “I was not resurrected. I am merely relying on my unique Arts to avoid being found by death’s embrace… As for how I ended up like this, Doctor, do you truly not possess even the slightest guess?”

Enough! You’re making me sound even more like a heartless scum!

He finally closed the distance between us voluntarily. The dying fire in the wall lamp flickered over his face, casting long shadows over his unhealable, gruesome wounds. Moving with a fluid grace strikingly similar to Młynar’s—yet somehow even more elegant and tragically noble—Bacchus tapped his chest with one hand and bowed deeply. The motion deliberately exposed his vulnerable nape to me, an ultimate gesture of submission.

“Doctor, you are being a bit too lacking in self-confidence,” he whispered, the heavy, intimate tension in the air practically suffocating. “Some madmen are just like that. Even if you betrayed us all, even if you stood against the entire world, there are those who would stay by your side without a second of hesitation, accompanying you down into the abyss to the very last moment.”

He looked up, his eyes burning with a dark, suffocating devotion. “It has nothing to do with right or wrong. It has nothing to do with the cost. Those of us who remained have all left behind our lives to commemorate our foolish, unyielding loyalty to you. Do you have any idea how overjoyed I was to hear the rumors of your resurrection? Old friends are connected by the soul, Doctor. Pushing me away so cruelly… I feel heartache too, you know.”

I stared at him. “…”

Damn riddle-monger.

So who exactly were we fighting in the end? And why did he have to suddenly drop such a heavy, emotionally devastating speech, making it look like I was the ultimate villain who abandoned his most loyal dog?

I stood frozen, holding the portable lamp in one hand, while my other hand was currently trapped in Bacchus’s tight, desperate grip. He remained bowed, radiating an intense aura of ‘you aren’t allowed to leave until you say you missed me,’ putting me in an incredibly difficult position.

The strange, obscure spicy romance tension had just skyrocketed!

I suddenly realized, with a wave of sheer horror, that the Crimson Troupe was entirely composed of male Operators. The gender imbalance in this faction was completely off the charts.

Oh no. Who can I call to balance this guy out?! Why are the romantic, tragic entanglements left behind by Tabo scattered literally everywhere across this godforsaken land!

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent! 🙇‍♂️):

Massive thanks for reading and supporting the operation!]