C90: Exploring The Rest, That Which Remains
Allow this chapter to serve as a notice that I can do good, professional writing. My brain just doesn't work like it's supposed to and I get distracted which lowers the quality which is how you get everything up till now.
Also i keep forgetting that when I copy over from patreon. it doesnt retain the double spacing I put in between each paragraph to make i easier to read. so eff it. ill fix it myself. As I post this, I fixed last chapter, and no I do get this this problem when I copy over from my regular chapter writing page.
8/14/26
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Returning to the and spending a few silent moments next to the gravestone. A somber mood passes over me that I struggle to articulate.I gradually shed every piece of clothing on me until I'm left with just my hunter set. The original scars I saw across my chest on it are gone as well. I know that the Doll said she had made repairs. So when she approaches, I pop the question.
"Doll, when I gave this outfit to you way back when we first met. What did you fix?" My voice is low as my eyes turn to the garden to my right. A garden where I can sense Gehrman resting. A humble mumble escapes his lips. A message to an old friend by the name of Lawrence and how he is getting too old. My eyes return to the Doll who looks at me, having shed all my layers.
It has been so long since I wore only a single set of clothing, like a normal person. Yet I've undergone so many crazy changes in this…one night. A vileblood hunter, a nox hunter, whatever that is, now finally an Eldritch hunter. Since the beginning I've grown less and less human. At this point, I've reached a point where the line between man and beast is non-existent. I must ponder the way forward but I also must end this nightmare, forever. Thus, I await The Doll's answer.
"There were hundreds of various cuts across the whole set. Your hat had been worn down but I noticed you left your initials there so I left that be. I saw the singes and burns of both beasts and half man-things that sought to cook you. Be it in dungeons or in Yharnam. "
"I bore witness to your struggle, the spirit you put forth…as a human. You struggled, you fought with all your life. Yet as you are now, you held no regard for your own life. You simply die over and over again, paying no regard to your injuries."
"So you knew I was constantly bleeding out from my arms?"
"Your arms, my lord?" She asks and looks down. I can see it on her face, the silent confusion apparent on her face as she kneels beside me. She takes my right hand between her both. She lifts it up and kisses the back of it. There is a warmth to it. A proper caring warmth that I feel undeserving of when I have long proclaimed my 'ownership' of her yet have not properly treated her as my companion.
I've failed to be worthy of her gentleness. Yet she does not make any movement to besmirch me. She continues to be gentle. Even as she tears off a portion of her own dress to wrap my wounds. I can tell based on the few moments I've shared with her. She hopes that this would at least slow the bleeding down. A bleeding that can never end. A bleeding that represents my curse. The illusions that fool me no longer.
Not since Adeline revealed to me the truth. A truth I was not prepared for. A truth that allowed me to finally see past the haze of memories that my gamer half was inflicting upon my original hunter-self. It is not that one is a nuisance. It is likely the moon presences work to make me subservient to its goals when there is a whole other Yharnem across the bridge that I barely explored.
It's not important to me as I already know the eldritch truth. I already know of the miniscule little fights between the great ones and the baby great ones which was why I was likely resurrected to propagate the slaughter further. The emotional blow was certainly greater against everyone I know if I was to return, whether they knew the real truth or not.
Doll took her time to make sure the ripped dress coating was secure around my arms. While they are gradually becoming stained. The pressure is reducing the blood flow there so it's leaking less. Like a tourniquet.
"Be careful, Dear Hunter. Please don't lose yourself anymore than you already have." Her words barely more than a whisper as I place my hands upon hers now. "I will try".
She nods and rises, returning to her resting spot. Her head turns back to look at me before she vanishes out of sight.
'Sigh'. I rise back up and use the shrine to return to the corpse pit.
Upon doing so, I pass by Ludwigs decapitated head, one that was dead. Either shock from talking to itself or killed by Simone. I rise the steps once more and hear the chattering of the fool that prays for the hunters of the church. I use the underground jail key to open his cell and step inside.
I find a ronin hunter slowly bashing his head in against the wall. I step up beside him, leaning against a wall where a patch of blood is dripping down from, the receptacle that the hunter here is using to mold himself anew.
"Ya know what brudda. Back in third grade, I too started bashing my head in repeatedly against walls and tables after being told by a girl that I was her boyfriend."
"Allow me to use your body to demonstrate how much force I used back then as a child" I grab the back of his head and properly pull back before crushing this man's frontal lobe against the wall. He flops over dead and I squat down before saying.
"Pretty strong huh. Now by rite, you too wield 1% of my own headbashing prowess. Rejoice" I nab his fit as a final homage to the man. The Yamamura hat, khaki Haori, the old hunter arm wraps which I layer over Doll's dress' dressings, and the wine hakama.
Honestly a pretty bland set all things considered but with this I can commit further crimes of cultural appropriation against the Japanese that trapped me in this world.
Moving along, I get some more kin coldblood before finding a war pick from a random church hunter locked away. They were hostile from the start, likely already maddened but not transforming since they had been able to be 'lost' in blood but rather their own madness. I then manually made my return to the research hall via the lift.
I then properly approached Siii-mone. "Hiya bud, need something?"
He shrugs as he looks inside the hall. "I see you already got the ladders set up properly. That means you are but one step away from approaching the next great barrier. You must ascend the Astral Clocktower and kill Lady Mar-agh" I grab 'simon' by his throat, lifting him against the wall.
"Sorry bud, but I feel I heard you wrong. So I would appreciate it if you changed your tune when I see you again. Just know I don't like whatever you were planning to say" A violent tone seeps out of my mouth as it takes all my effort to not just snap his neck. Instead I throw him behind me. The sensors of the autopsy lift bring him back down while I re-enter the research hall.
Shaking my head of the annoyance, I return to Adeline who doesnt seem to look different but she once again asks for more brain fluid so I give her the 2nd vial I got from the one on the rafters before departing from here. She had also given me a key before I left so I use that to open the way to the door on the other side of the entrance of the research hall. That leads to an area that is strangely familiar.
Below me is a flower garden with a bunch of the bubble head patients standing around or playing with the flowers. I can sense deep arcane energies surrounding them. So to avoid the needless fight, I just yoink all the items here which turned out to be another kin coldblood 10 and a blacksky eye. Looking at the stats, it seems to be my strongest arcane damaging hunter tool. I test it out and shoot the beam which I manually manipulate to maneuver around and take out 4 of them at once. I nod my head and think, 'hey, that's pretty good'.
I use this tactic once more and take out the rest of the patients here before smacking apart the japanese style window/door which leads to a much higher section of the lower chapel section just above beds near the jail passage. I realize that the chest I see on the right side is where I got that Kin coldblood in the first place. I see no point in dropping down and potentially reuniting with Simon so I just retrace my steps by jumping back up the balcony and that is where I reunite with Adeline for the third time.
She is missing from her chair. I hear giggling behind the door and look around to see a slime on the floor; looking exactly the same as the other 2 I've 'hit' to get the brain fluids before they regenerate. I don't like the look of this.
"Oh, hello... One last time, will you fetch Brain Fluid, just one last time? The murky murky, mushy fluid that will make me whole. The sticky sound whispers to me. So very close, right into my ear. My head, just a head, that's all there is. I need my baptism. Please I beg of you... I want to be something…" laughter. She laughs, before returning to say plip plop, splish splash.
I stand there for a few moments before taking out the saw spear. I turn it around and bump the back end of it against her 'body'. Even if it was just a tap, the force of my 'blow' was enough to squish her like the other 2 before her. When she melts, the final brain fluid appears which I collect with a disturbed expression hidden behind my hunter headpiece.
It takes all of 2 seconds for her to regain her spiry form where she once again asks for the brain fluid. I…I give it to her once more.
Drinking her own brain fluid she seems to shimmer for a moment as she makes her ecstasy known.
"Ahh, ahh! slurping noises Ahh! Aahh! I see a shape. My guide, I see your voice, clearly, as it bends and bleeds. My own, revelation... just for me…" giggling... "Thank you. For everything... Really, I used to be nothing…" giggling....She laughs once more and I barely get to say, "You were never nothing. Misguided perhaps but never nothing" before she vanishes by turning into smoke like all over things in this world that 'die'.
[You have obtained the Milkweed Caryll Rune.]
I blink and stare where she used to be before riding the elevators up and hopping onto the elevator staircases where I get a clear path forward to the giant doors ahead of me.
I turn back and gaze upon the research hall. It is both familiar and unfamiliar. I had witnessed dozens of horrible experiments, both on the church's own people as well as the natives of the hamlet. Dozens of altercations with the people of the church to stop their inhumane actions and hundreds more of actual fights that I got into against them to protect these people.
I still don't remember what happened after that except for a few clips in my head that tell my own brain of what happened and I will likely need to find Mar to find out the whole truth. If she is even here.
I stand and recall all the things that I remember, leaving these memories here as I proceed to climb to the top and hopefully find what I'm looking for.
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Word Count = 2055