Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

The police station at Silent Hill was situated right at the center of the city, atop a small hill with a height difference from its surroundings, and adjacent to it was the fire department. Most importantly, it was only 20 meters away from the ancient tomb excavation site—separated only by a dyke-like distance.

This gave Malin quite a headache—according to Jiaxi Sheringham from the Royal Special Investigation Department’s Fourth Action Division, the harmful oddity should be in the basement. If Malin wasn’t mistaken, when he was beneath the ancient tomb, he might have been less than fifty meters from that painting.

Thankfully, it was just a painting. If it had been another type of proactive harmful oddity, say, a piece of armor that could move on its own—uh, not talking about Mira here, but the legacy full-body armor of the Level 1 Drurgen family.

This full-body armor came with a great sword and was an extremely dangerous proactive harmful oddity.

Here, let me explain: the proactive mode means that the harmful oddity can move on its own, and would actively select its victims. For instance, since the full-body armor became a harmful oddity a thousand years ago until it was contained by the action squad of the Royal Special Investigation Department, it had already created thousands of victims.

The Magic Carpet, however, was in passive mode. It would just hang there, and if no one was within its absorption range, it would start to ’move.’ This movement was usually an exchange with another painting nearby.

That’s also why this painting was always placed in a densely populated area—nothing would happen as long as someone was watching it. But if no one was looking, or if it couldn’t find prey within its domain, then once it had moved and absorbed someone’s memory, a real disaster would unfold. No one would know whose memory the painting had consumed, nor could they anticipate what magnificent scenery would appear on it.

Despite the unpredictability of the Magic Carpet’s behavior, it was absolutely capable of causing disasters, no less than the former.