Chapter 41: Clown Anomaly

Adam and Hook were immediately struck by a sense of discomfort upon seeing this.

In this memory, Chloe wasn't just abusing the dog, she looked as if she were trying to kill it! The dog was howling in agony as it was struck by the wooden stick over and over again.

……

"This is not what you described. This situation is a lot more serious!" Kim Hee-cho couldn't help but avert his gaze from the horrific scene taking place before his eyes. "What she's doing here is illegal! If her actions had been caught by a flying surveillance camera, she would've definitely been apprehended by Mechguard officers."

"I know, I know... That's why I didn't tell you the whole truth. I apologize, but I had no choice."

Scenes from one's psychic world couldn't be used as legally incriminating evidence as they could be depicting figments of one's imagination, so there would be no concrete evidence that this had ever happened as long as she didn't admit to it.

"Don't worry, we're not enforcers of the law, it's just that this really is very uncomfortable. Your daughter seems like a perfectly fine young woman. How did she become like this?"

……

"Should we stop her?"

"No, let's wait and see what happens."

In the real world, Adam and Hook would've definitely intervened to stop her, but seeing as this scene was unfolding in the psychic world, it had already taken place, so they couldn't change anything. The only thing that they could change was Chloe's mental state.

The only piece of good news here was that after the two of them waited for a while, Karen showed up on the scene.

Somehow, she managed to find Chloe as she was abusing the poor dog in the dark alley, and she immediately began hurling a torrent of abuse at her daughter after witnessing what she was doing.

"Have you gone insane? My god, what the hell are you doing?" Karen scolded her daughter while untying the dog, and it yelped in pain and horror as it rushed away.

Even though Karen was appalled by what her daughter had done, she still carefully inspected her surroundings, and she was quite relieved to see that there were no flying surveillance cameras around. "What is wrong with you? Why would you do that to a dog?"

"Shut up! A stripper like you has no right to educate me!"

Slap!

Karen gave her daughter a vicious slap upon hearing this, and what followed was a heated verbal altercation between the two. Chloe was blaming her mother for all of her woes, but Karen wasn't just going to take the accusations without retaliation.

She didn't sugarcoat her words at all as she mercilessly hurled all types of insults and derogatory terms at Chloe. When it came to insulting someone, the two of them were simply on completely different levels.

"My goodness, she's putting even the fastest rappers to shame!" Adam was getting lightheaded just listening to her. "As expected of a seasoned veteran on the nightclub scene!"

"She's definitely getting the upper hand. Chloe's gone completely quiet now."

In the face of Karen's rampant verbal barrage, Chloe finally stopped talking.

After venting her fury, Karen also recovered her sense of reason. She inspected the surrounding area, and after confirming that there were no Mechguard officers around, she hurriedly left the scene with her daughter.

This incident had clearly had a severe impact on Chloe as well, and that was why she had such a clear recollection of it.

"She definitely has some serious issues. I recall that many serial killers start off by abusing animals."

"That's right, there are many cases of that. First, they abuse animals, then they kill animals, and they eventually move on to preying on children and the elderly. This is a very typical sequence of progression," Hook replied with a nod. "We were taught this at the academy."

"It looks like Chloe's problems are more severe than we imagined. Let's keep looking. If there are any other traumatic events in her memories, we should be able to find them."

Adam nodded in response.

With that, Hook commenced his psychic world exploration.

He and Adam searched through various types of events and scenes throughout Chloe's memories, but they found nothing that was worthy of note.

The memories that had left the deepest impressions on her were ones that applied to everyone, such as being scolded by her mother, falling out of relationships, pre-exam stress, etc.

However, after some exploration, Hook was still able to find something a little strange.

"The timeline matches up between here and here. Prior to this point, she had no issues at all, but after here, she began to display behaviors like short-temperedness, excessive anxiety, and animal abuse."

After working for several hours, the two of them had finally found something that was not quite right.

On this day, Chloe and a few of her friends had gone to a speakeasy. It was clear that this was an illegal establishment. A legitimate pub would've refused entry to children who hadn't yet come of age, but Chloe and her friends were able to easily sneak their way through, and soon, they were sipping on beverages that they shouldn't have been in contact with at all at their age.

During this time, some adult men had approached them to flirt, but thankfully, the girls knew their boundaries, and nothing out of line happened.

After a fun night out, the girls began to depart one after another.

On the surface, there didn't seem to be any problems with this memory, but after viewing this memory multiple times, Adam caught sight of a sinister figure.

It was a man who was seated alone in a dim corner, downing one cup of strong liquor after another. As aforementioned, some of the adult male patrons of the pub had expressed interest in Chloe and her friends, but their attempts at flirting would always be turned down, and they would go off to search for other women.

In contrast with those men, this man hadn't approached Chloe and her friends, nor did he appear to have any friends of his own. All he did was occasionally glance at the group of girls in silence.

The fact that he's featuring so frequently in this memory indicates that Chloe has already noticed him, but his features are blurred. Does that mean she's only noticed him, but hasn't paid particularly close attention to him?

Adam was pondering the situation as he took a sip out of a drink in the noisy speakeasy.

Unfortunately for him, drinks served in another person's psychic world were extraordinarily bland.

"There's something wrong with him..." Through his magnifying glass, Hook could see very dense black lines leading to the man. "He's full of sinister intent, but there are no other memories related to him, which means that Chloe has concealed this memory because she doesn't want anyone to see it, but that's not going to stump me."

Steam began to billow out of Hook's body as he spoke. The steam permeated throughout the entire speakeasy, and the mist that had uncovered Kim's nesting dream and internal space on the last mission appeared once again.

This was Hook's special ability, Mist of Truth.

"You were right."

Within the dense mist, Adam was able to see the man's true appearance for the first time, and he was wearing a clown mask with hooked spikes all over his entire body. It was clear that he was an anomaly.

"This emotional anomaly doesn't appear to be as powerful as the scarecrow, but we already agreed that I'm not going to fight any anomalies."

Back in Kim's psychic world, the scarecrow had been as tall as a two-story building, and it had stemmed from the fear and trauma deep in Kim's heart. It had been like a deity of evil and destruction, almost altering her psychic world at will. In contrast, this clown anomaly was only around two to three meters tall, and even though it was equipped with a bloodstained dagger, it was nowhere near as fearsome as the scarecrow.

This indicated two things, the first of which was that its impact on Chloe wasn't as severe as the impact that the scarecrow had had on Kim.

This was also reflected in Chloe's real-world situation. Before receiving treatment, Kim had already been under such severe psychological duress that she was completely bedridden. In contrast, Chloe still looked relatively normal, and part of that could be attributed to the fact that she was putting up a strong front, but at the very least, on the surface, her issues didn't appear to be all that severe.

The second insight that this presented pertained to the period of time in which the anomaly had been residing in her psychic world.

If an emotional anomaly weren't taken care of in a timely fashion, there was a chance that it could slowly become more powerful over time. Chloe was already at the animal abuse stage, perhaps she would become a murderer if the anomaly were allowed to grow unchecked any further. Powerful emotions could become more and more potent over time, and that would fuel the growth of the anomaly.

The incident with Kim had potentially taken place early in her childhood, which meant that the emotional anomaly had already resided in her body for some years.

In contrast, it appeared that this incident had taken place within the last two years, as evidenced by the fact that she didn't look much younger in this memory than she did in the real world.