Chapter 123: The Chapter Where Mu Luo Finally Gets His Revenge!

“Doctor, tell me… what do you consider the most vital asset for an actor upon the stage?” Bacchus’s voice drifted through the gloom, unhurried and theatrical. “Is it their technical skill? Their vocal projection? The grace of their movements, or perhaps their sheer capacity for improvisation?”

He trailed behind, no longer bothering to melt into the shadows. His tail, mangled and broken, the pale gleam of exposed bone catching the dim light, swayed with a casual rhythm. He followed as naturally as a shadow, seemingly entirely numb to the agonizing injury.

The perks of a chaotic evil alignment were certainly convenient. Without any prompting, Bacchus casually spilled the very secrets Wis’adel and Młynar had only vaguely hinted at, offering them up like morbid gifts to win favor.

“It is immersion, Doctor,” the Troupe Leader answered his own question, a dark fondness bleeding into his tone. “I truly savored those days as your silent, loyal pawn. And you… you were all too happy to wield my talents to topple that decaying, millennia-old structure. The betrayals, the sweet temptations, the quiet, invisible guidance… I gave you everything. Yet, you never placed the same trust in me that you so freely offered those Sarkaz.”

“Even though I executed your will at the cost of my own life, you kept me at arm’s length. You did not even grant me the courtesy of knowing you had left something hidden within my own castle.”

Bacchus stepped closer, his gaze locking onto the Doctor with a pitiful, almost obsessive intensity. “Tell me, Doctor. Is it only those who have bared their darkest, most wretched resentment before you, those whose fatal weaknesses you hold firmly in the palm of your hand, who can finally make you feel at ease?”

‘Otherwise?”Can love be burned as fuel?’God, why was this wasteland of a world so endlessly exhausting? Everyone loved to climb onto their high horse, pass judgment, and then act as if they were speaking from a place of deep, earnest concern. They all operated under the delusion that deep down, the Doctor was inherently kind, and that all his past atrocities were merely tragic choices forced by cruel circumstance. Now, they were all lining up to offer him a chance at redemption, expecting him to tearfully bare his soul so they could all join hands and build a beautiful, utopian Terra where everyone lived happily ever after with the fluffy little animals.’You do not get to claim this is not your true nature just because my tactical choices do not align with your moral compass,’ the Doctor complained internally, mentally baring his teeth in sheer frustration. But this time, the usual dry, mocking smile would not form on his lips.

He had to admit, this regression was taking a toll. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain that detached, lighthearted gamer mentality, that comfortable distance where everything felt as effortless as skipping through a visual novel’s dialogue tree.

He picked up his pace, hurrying down the corridor toward where Rosmontis and the vanguard team had pushed ahead. But Bacchus clung to his heels, chattering incessantly, drowning the silence in the ghosts of the past.

“Doctor, why exactly did you betray them that second time?” Bacchus mused, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Even now, the memory is pristine. I can still see the look of absolute, shattering disbelief on Theresis’s face. Not even the most masterful actor in my troupe could feign that level of pure shock. Tell me… how did it feel? Knowing that their first instinct was not to draw their blades and strike you down, but to frantically scan the room for mind-altering Arts?”

The Troupe Leader sighed, a sound of genuine artistic frustration. “Forgive my presumption, but I have rehearsed the final act of The Twilight of Babel countless times within the theater of my mind. Yet, no matter how I twist the narrative style, no matter the genre… it always ends on a hazy, beyond understanding shadow. Your shadow.”

Bacchus’s implication was crystal clear. In a grand betrayal that laid bare the ugliest depths of human nature, the Doctor was the only anomaly. He had no discernible motive. No logical reason.

The Doctor had not expected the first person brave enough to bluntly ask, ‘Are you completely sick in the head?’ to be the Troupe Leader. He had put his money on Kal’tsit.

Then again, lunatics were usually the boldest of the bunch.

“The reason?” The Doctor did not even bother to feign anger. He kept his voice flat, tossing out a perfunctory, utterly hollow excuse. “I just thought it would be interesting. That is all.”

Faced with such a blatantly lazy lie, Bacchus’s face fell into a mask of deep disappointment. He opened his mouth to press the issue, but suddenly, his towering figure began to warp and compress. Thick, dense fur erupted across his shrinking form, and in the span of a single blink, the terrifying master of the Crimson Troupe had condensed into… a tiny, fluffy pink leopard cub.

For a split second, the Doctor just stared, completely failing to process the tactical advantage of this transformation. But the very next moment, a familiar figure stepped out from the oppressive darkness of the corridor.

“Doctor? You did not run into any trouble, did you?” Mu Luo handled the gloomy, familiar halls alone. Despite his best efforts, the Pythia could not entirely mask the nervous tremor in his voice; the traumatic shadows of his past in the troupe still clawed at his heart. “I was worried you might accidentally stumble into those lunatics from the troupe, so I doubled back…”

The little pink leopard cub blinked. ‘?’

How had Bacchus never realized this defective product of an actor possessed such reckless bravery in private?

Mu Luo’s gaze dropped, finally noticing the furry little creature sitting at the Doctor’s feet. Without a second thought, he scooped the cub up, handling it as casually as he would his own pet snake. Under the pink leopard’s wide, utterly disbelieving stare, the snake-man absentmindedly scratched its soft belly.

“Doctor, you were only out of my sight for a few minutes,” Mu Luo sighed. “How did you manage to pick up another stray already?”

The Crimson Troupe kept a menagerie of beasts for their twisted performances. There were the rabid hounds that rushed the audience at the curtain call, the vicious beasts whose scratches inflicted endless bleeding, the heavily mutated Hound Pro breeds… Mu Luo assumed this was just another oversized dog raised by some eccentric troupe member. As a Pythia, his knowledge of mammalian canine breeds was spotty at best.

The Doctor’s brain shifted into overdrive, processing the scene at terminal velocity. He ran a rapid mental simulation of Mu Luo’s immediate mortality rate if he were to casually mention, ‘By the way, the thing you are cuddling is your Troupe Leader.’ The projected survival odds were absolute zero.

Decisively, the Doctor chose to play along.

“Exactly!” The Doctor clapped his hands together, projecting forced cheerfulness. “It is an [Unexpected Encounter] node reward. Amazing drop rates on this floor, is it not?”

Bacchus let out a few disgruntled, high-pitched feline grunts, but surprisingly, he did not fight the indignity. He even rolled over slightly in Mu Luo’s grip, exposing his pale pink belly, practically demanding the actor continue grooming him.

Just as the Doctor raised a hand to intervene and stop this surreal display, Mu Luo smoothly executed an action so deeply shocking it nearly stopped the Doctor’s heart.

The snake-man casually pried the little leopard’s hind legs apart, leaned in for a closer inspection, gave the area a gentle, evaluating squeeze, and delivered a devastatingly casual observation.

“Oh, it is a male. By the way, Doctor… are things down there usually this small for dogs?”

The pink leopard froze. Every muscle in its tiny body locked up, its furry face contorting into an eerily human expression of absolute, soul-crushing horror.

‘Oh my god.’

Now it was a matter of national security. The Doctor absolutely, under no circumstances, could ever let Mu Luo know what he was actually holding.

Lunging forward, the Doctor snatched the little leopard right out of the Pythia’s hands, pressing the trembling cub firmly against his own chest. His grip looked gentle, but underneath, he was locking the creature down with the force of a hydraulic press.

“Maybe it is just too young!” the Doctor blurted out, his voice a pitch higher than usual. “It will be perfectly normal when it grows up. Mu Luo, do not overthink the lore implications of a random mob!”

But Mu Luo, entirely oblivious to his brush with death, did not drop the subject. He even reached out, trying to tug the cub back out of the Doctor’s arms. “Doctor, please. Most of the animals in the troupe are treated as disposable props. They have not been dewormed or vaccinated. Let me carry it. It might look clean, but I guarantee it is crawling with parasites.”

In the span of thirty seconds, amidst the Doctor’s suffocating, eerie silence, Mu Luo had managed to say every single thing he would not have dared whisper in a lifetime.

If the snake-man had been a forgettable nobody in the troupe before today, that was over. Even if Bacchus somehow developed amnesia and forgot the Playwright’s very existence, he would never forget Mu Luo.

The Doctor was rapidly running out of dialogue options to defuse this.

The little leopard crushed against his chest had gone dead silent. In the grand theater of life, unexpected encounters and joyous laughter during a reunion were considered the most touching of scenes. But this specific brand of laughter was… a bit too undignified for a mastermind.

Bacchus had only shifted into this harmless form to enjoy the dramatic irony of reuniting with an old friend right under the noses of Kal’tsit’s operators. But before the curtain could even rise on his performance, his own former actor had dumped a metaphorical bucket of filth over his head!

His purity! His terrifying, enigmatic image! A higher being generally would not care about the mundane opinions of mortals, but the Doctor might actually take this seriously!

Sensing the pink leopard vibrating with the urge to drop its disguise and slaughter the room, the Doctor quickly shoved his gloved hand directly into the cub’s mouth.

‘Bite me if you dare!’Just as this silent, desperate Protect Mu Luo operation reached its climax, the heavy doors at the end of the corridor came into view. The figures of Rosmontis and the other two vanguard operators were already waiting in position.’This is the final floor, right?’

The Doctor smoothly withdrew his hand from the leopard’s jaws, acting as if he had not just prevented a murder, and waved to the trio ahead. The cold, calculating mastermind persona snapped back into place flawlessly.

“Let us move,” the Doctor commanded, his tone shifting into crisp, tactical authority. “Consider this the final [BOSS] fight. Rosmontis, do you have the confidence to pull off another solo-core combat record?”

[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!]