Chapter 84: Ch82. Pain as a teacher (6) - [Hidden Piece]
Shinji took a slow, measured step forward, eyes locked on the chained figure suspended in the chamber. The sheer size of it made him hesitate for the first time. The thing wasn’t moving, but it was breathing.
And that was enough to make his skin crawl.
The obsidian-black chains pulsed faintly, as if they were not just holding the creature in place but actively suppressing it. The system message still flickered in his vision:
[You have witnessed the bearer of the - Hidden Piece (001/365)]
The weight of those words settled in his chest like a stone, three hundred and sixty-five pieces. A puzzle scattered across this twisted world.
An enigma laid bare for everyone who reached level 50 to see, or so Sarissa had thought, because there he was, on the verge of reaching that said breakthrough, and yet...
As soon as he received that [Classpect] thing from The [Unspoken One], he had unlocked the secret clue that led him to this place.
And he had found it before anyone else.
So many questions whirled in Shinji’s head, but at that very moment, all that mattered was what lied before him. The indescribable creature that held the first hidden piece to... Clearing the game? Becoming something else? Changing the world back to what it was before The Glitch?
’It doesn’t matter.’ He shook his head ever so slightly, as if afraid to disturb the impossible being’s slumber, its name almost embedded in the system’s glitched tag on top of it.
[Lesser Devil: Hastur’s Tulpa]