Chapter 320 - 85: The Clockmaker’s Deal

Eight days remained until the end of the event.

In real-world time, that was eight hours.

The minute hand had just passed the hour. As the clock struck midnight, the chimes rang out, falling on Gale’s ears like a piercing death knell.

When the hour hand reached eight, if the contamination within his body wasn’t completely purged, then he would be "dealt with" as well.

The office he was in had been thrown into a wrinkle of the world. Such a place might seem stable, but everything within it—even time, space, and concepts—was as fragile as a soap bubble, ready to be destroyed by the slightest touch.

Once the eight hours were up, the entire office, along with him inside it, would be given that slight "touch" and instantly perish.

At that moment, both Spirit and matter would cease to exist. He himself would be utterly erased from existence.

Lying on a sofa that was almost impossibly soft, Gale watched the clock, trying to burn every minute, every second, into his memory. He prayed for time to slow down.

He was certain he had prepared himself to face death with composure, but now that it was truly upon him, he still felt an overwhelming sense of panic.

He desperately wanted to write down how he felt, but sadly, he could no longer make contact with the outside world.

Everything in the room was contaminated. This contamination was highly insidious; any physical object he touched could be latently contaminated and had to be isolated and destroyed.

Of course, the outside world could still communicate with him, as long as it was strictly one-way.

Watching the pendulum swing, Gale could understand the other administrators’ decision. Still, he couldn’t figure out how he had been contaminated.

His skin, covered in tentacles and pustules, was perfectly fine. The compound eye on the back of his head gave him a complete field of vision with no blind spots. His wrinkled tongue allowed him to taste all sorts of flavors, and his six pairs of ears even let him hear the whispers of an Ancient God.

’What’s wrong with me?’

Just as Gale was beginning to wonder if it was the other administrators who had the problem, the speaker in the room crackled to life.

Jade Rabbit’s nauseating voice came through. Its low tone was like a cup of bitter wine, leaving a long, lingering aftertaste.

"Senior, I assume you can hear me. There are only eight hours left until your sentence is carried out."

’I know. And I find it regrettable. You’re disposing of a Warrior who has touched the truth. You will all regret this one day.’

"The Adventurers have reached the sixteenth floor and will soon be taking on the boss of the seventeenth. Bian reports that your probability of being rescued is rising, but it’s still only around twenty percent."

’Twenty percent is already quite high. The thought of finally being able to sever all ties with you mundane mortals makes me beside myself with joy.’

"The Divination Master performed a reading for you. The result was The Hanged Man. She didn’t comment on the result, only saying to do what we can and leave the rest to fate."

’That old crone. Sooner or later, I’m going to use my tentacles to kill her. I bet her intestines would make for a fine work of art.’

"Finally, please don’t give up hope. Hang in there, Gale."

’Just get lost.’

The call ended. Gale stared at the door, where a row of eyes opened and closed in a steady rhythm.

His room had become a filthy mess. Every object was like a candle in a fire, melting from the heat and fusing into a single, disgusting, multicolored mass.

And Gale sat in the midst of this twisted, turbid pile of things, watching the wall clock in front of him, quietly awaiting his end.

After ending the call with Gale, Jade Rabbit let out a long sigh and looked at the large screen at the front of the office.

This screen projected the actions of all the players, calculated each one’s contribution in real time, and converted those contributions into a success probability, allowing the other administrators to monitor the situation.

Gale was well-liked among the administrators, and his strength was in the upper tier. He was considered one of the more senior members.

In *Abyss*, however, the more you knew, the faster you died. It was the ignorant who could play here happily, attributing all the bizarre and grotesque phenomena to "game mechanics" and thereby avoiding the latent cognitive hazards.

The administrators, who knew so much of the truth, were undoubtedly the ones most susceptible to corruption by the Abyss.

No one knew the origin of the contamination, just as no one knew the origin of the Abyss.

All they knew was that there was a method to project an administrator’s contamination outward, allowing them to purposefully dispatch players to various dungeons to eliminate it.

It was the only thing they could do.

The success probability on the screen was constantly fluctuating. The overall probability was slowly decreasing with the passage of time, yet the players’ actions were causing it to gradually rise.

The entire process was like a war between entropy and negentropy, with the final result displayed as a red number: "21%."

This was the probability of Gale’s rescue. It had slowly climbed from 5% to 21%, something that had never happened before.

At the center of the screen, Duan Fei’s contribution was undoubtedly the largest.

From publishing the Witch’s Notes to clearing out the Celestial Wing Knight Order’s stronghold, he had, through a series of small actions, continuously raised the success probability until it reached 21%.

The contributions of other players were equally important, but without Duan Fei as the catalyst, none of it would have been possible.

Bian watched Duan Someone on the screen and said to a nearby administrator, "Keep a close eye on this player. He might be our superior one day."

Bian’s personality was just like his namesake, the mythical beast that symbolizes law. He never joked.

When he said that, it meant he genuinely believed Duan Fei could become his superior.

Just as the group was observing the screen, they saw the success probability suddenly plummet. The contamination throughout the entire dungeon began to increase rapidly.

Amid the blare of red alarms, they watched the contaminated area expand at a frightening rate. Some mysterious force had begun to invade the final section and was spreading its corruption.

Then, one of the split-screen windows expanded. Nemo’s face appeared, quickly filling most of the screen.

"Good evening, my dear administrators," the face of Nemo said with a smile. "Although I can’t see your expressions right now, I imagine they must be quite something to behold."

"Clockmaker?" Bian asked, his brow furrowed.

"That’s right, the Clockmaker, just borrowing this fellow’s account for a bit," the Clockmaker said with a laugh. "We’ve crossed swords many times, but this should be our first time actually speaking, shouldn’t it?"

The Clockmaker was currently inside the event dungeon, a restricted zone that was inaccessible to administrators and served as his personal sanctuary.

That was why he could communicate with the administrators so brazenly, without fear of one of them coming to eliminate him.

After his greeting, the Clockmaker pointed to the pocket watch in his hand and said, "Right now, there are eight hours until Gale is done for. Let’s make a deal. If you tell me the whereabouts of the Creator, I’ll let Gale go. The Creator’s location in exchange for one of your quality administrators... I’d say that’s a pretty good deal, wouldn’t you?"