Twenty minutes later, Raymond put down his pen, ending the test.
"So, have I recovered?" 'David' still had that creepy smile on his face.
Raymond scoffed inwardly, feeling a bit annoyed.
He had to admit, the Shadow King was unbelievably boring.
He actually sat there and seriously went through the entire test without doing anything extreme.
Raymond had expected him to try some tricks to disrupt the test and give him an excuse to end it early.
But instead, the guy played along for the full twenty minutes.
As for the results? That was obvious.
Even without being a professional psychologist, anyone could tell that this 'David' was nothing like his usual self. His answers' logic and accuracy weren't even the main concern.
No psychologist would judge a patient's mental state based on test questions alone.
If it were just about logical answers, Dr. Beth wouldn't have stopped Raymond before.
"To be honest, you won't pass the test in this state," Raymond said, shaking his head.
"Oh? Is that so… what a pity." 'David' smiled.
But despite his words, there wasn't a hint of regret on his face.
Anyone could see that he didn't care about the result at all.
"Raymond… That is your name, right? Do you think I have a chance of recovery?" 'David' stared directly at Raymond, his lips curling slightly.
"I don't know," Raymond answered casually.
"Who could know? If I did, would I still be in here?"
'David' nodded and smiled. "I see… then I'll trouble you with this. Oh, and I don't want him to know I exist. Understood?"
As he spoke, his eyes suddenly flickered with a golden glow!
Raymond's mind screamed in alarm. He instantly realized 'David's' intent, but before he could react, a wave of dizziness hit him, and his vision blurred…
At the same time, the system prompt appeared in his mind again;
[You are under mental corruption attack from Amahl Farouk.]
[Corruption level: Weak. Would you like to spend 10 Universal Points to remove it?]
Of course, remove it!
With a single thought, Raymond immediately converted 10 of the 50 Exploration Points he had just earned into Universal Points, which were automatically deducted by the system.
As soon as the points were spent, the dizziness disappeared completely.
"That was a mistake." Raymond, now fully alert, felt a wave of lingering fear.
'David'—or rather, the Shadow King—had just proved that he saw through Raymond's act. This sudden attack was a test, an attempt to manipulate his mind.
Now, Raymond realized he had made a serious misstep.
His mistake was pretending not to notice 'David's' sudden personality shift. It was way too obvious—anyone could see it, even without professional knowledge. For someone like Raymond, a supposed psychology expert, to miss it? That was impossible.
Fortunately, the Shadow King couldn't have guessed that Raymond actually knew his true identity. At most, he probably assumed that Raymond had mistaken him for one of David's many personalities.
Raymond's act of playing along could have been seen as a way to avoid provoking this 'alter'. If not for that, the attack wouldn't have stopped at just a minor mental corruption attempt.
Still, Raymond was irritated.
If he hadn't just earned those 50 Exploration Points, the Shadow King's attack would have succeeded.
And if it had? Even without thinking, Raymond knew the outcome—it would've either erased his memory of this encounter or planted a subconscious compulsion to keep it secret.
"You started this… Just wait and see." Raymond made a silent vow to settle this score someday, but his face remained calm and composed.
This brief encounter with the Shadow King had made him truly feel the reality of this world for the first time.
Until now, whether dealing with the hospital staff or David, he always carried an unshakable sense of superiority—born from his 'Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint' of this world.
He knew things about this world that no one else knew. He knew people's fates before they happened.
That illusion of control made him see them almost like NPCs in a game.
But the Shadow King had just shattered that illusion.
Even with all the information he had, the Shadow King still outmaneuvered him and almost caused him a major setback. Had it not been for the system, he would have lost.
This experience made one thing clear—if he kept underestimating people as if they were NPCs, he wouldn't even see his own death coming.
In a way, he had to thank the Shadow King for this harsh wake-up call.
"What happened? Why did I fall asleep here?"
Just as Raymond was planning his revenge, David suddenly jerked awake, shaking as if he had just come out of a trance. His face was filled with confusion.
"Whatever, I'm heading to the library. Want to come?" David stretched lazily, unable to remember what had just happened and deciding not to think about it.
"I'll stay here and rest," Raymond shook his head.
"Alright, see you later." David didn't mind and left without another word.
"Memory tampered with again?"
Raymond muttered to himself as he watched David walk away.
David's reaction made it clear—he had no memory of the Shadow King using his body for that test. He didn't even remember Raymond offering to help in the first place.
Considering how excited David had been when Raymond first suggested the test, it was obviously important to him.
Yet now, he didn't even mention it.
That meant he had completely forgotten about it—or worse, the Shadow King had planted the idea that the test was already over. Either way, it was the Shadow King's doing.
And this wasn't the first time.
The Shadow King had been inside David for thirty years, constantly altering his memories.
For example, David had always believed that he had a big yellow dog when he was growing up. In reality, his family had never owned a dog. The Shadow King had created that memory out of nothing.
A yellow dog that only David could see.
And that was just one of many such manipulations.
Piece by piece, the Shadow King was warping David's mind, pushing him toward paranoia and eventual madness.
"Sick old bastard… I'll kill you one day." Raymond grumbled coldly.
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