The instant Nyx spoke those words, a virtual panel materialized out of thin air before Lin Qiye's eyes.
"
Nyx treatment progress: 3%
Reward conditions met. Beginning random draw from Nyx's divinity abilities...
"
Immediately after, a virtual lottery wheel appeared and began to spin at blinding speed!
Lin Qiye could see that the wheel was divided into at least twenty-odd segments, all of them roughly equal in size—meaning his odds of drawing any given ability were the same.
"Night Descends, Eyes of Dimming, A Thousand Falling Stars, Star-Splitting Art, Darkflicker, Kin of the Night, Transcendent Fertility..."
The abilities streaming past on the spinning wheel left Lin Qiye dizzy—but he couldn't shake the feeling that something very strange had been mixed into the pot...
What the hell is Transcendent Fertility? That counts as a divinity ability?!
If he drew that one, would he even need to find a wife? Could he just... produce a pile of divine children by himself?
Hm? Actually, that doesn't sound half bad...
At the same time, Lin Qiye noticed that in one corner of the wheel there was a single narrow black sliver, different in size from all the other segments—about 1% of the whole.
The name of that divinity ability was "Unknown."
Unknown? What was that supposed to mean?
Not that it mattered. With his god-awful luck, Lin Qiye was confident he could spin a thousand times and never land on that "Unknown."
Lin Qiye took a deep breath and locked his eyes on the wheel. At a thought, it began to slow!
The pointer swept across ability after ability—and finally came to rest on one segment.
"Starry Night Dancer..." Lin Qiye read the words and sighed in resignation.
By the sound of it, this one was several classes below the likes of Star-Splitting Art or A Thousand Falling Stars. Still, could be worse... at least it wasn't Transcendent Fertility.
That luck of mine. Never fails.
The moment the pointer stopped, the wheel gradually dissolved, leaving only the four words "Starry Night Dancer" hanging quietly in the air, their color deepening.
Lin Qiye reached out and closed his hand around them!
The words collapsed into a ribbon of black light and poured into his body!
Lin Qiye felt some mysterious energy remaking his body at incredible speed—soul and flesh alike seemed to be rinsed clean through. The comfort of it was indescribable!
A truly wondrous feeling.
The state lasted roughly five seconds. When it finally faded, Lin Qiye could clearly feel that his body was no longer the same.
Before his eyes, several more lines of small text slowly surfaced.
"
Starry Night Dancer:
In the night, your speed, strength, endurance, and recovery are five times their normal measure;
In the night, your presence is difficult to perceive;
In the night, your power to intimidate other creatures is greater;
You have gained the ability to communicate with other nocturnal creatures.
"
Reading this, Lin Qiye couldn't help sucking in a breath of cold air!
For an ability with such an unassuming name, it was absurdly strong! Never mind the rest—five times his speed, strength, and endurance alone was already monstrous!
Even with his thoroughly, hopelessly average physique, if he entered some triathlon at night, he'd shatter Guinness World Records without breaking a sweat!
A fivefold boost would push his body right up against the human limit!
And that was with his baseline being ordinary. With systematic training, Lin Qiye didn't dare imagine what he could grow into.
To say nothing of the stealth—and the ability to communicate with nocturnal animals. That was already flatly beyond the human category.
Lin Qiye tamped down the excitement in his chest and took a deep breath.
He truly had no intention of joining the Night Watchmen, and no desire to trade blows with mythological creatures. But he was still a high school boy. To claim he felt no yearning at all toward supernatural power—impossible.
Besides—only by growing stronger himself could he better protect his family.
Lin Qiye finally settled his heart and turned his gaze back to Nyx.
She was watching him tenderly at that very moment, stroking his hair with one hand, murmuring to herself, "Thanatos, where did you wander off to for three thousand years? Do you have any idea how much I missed you..."
Lin Qiye sat there in silence, and the look he gave Nyx was complicated indeed.
It was just as he'd guessed. The Nyx of today couldn't tell her own children from a flower vase. How could she possibly tell that Lin Qiye wasn't her child?
Her longing had become illness; she hallucinated everything around her into her children. But... bottles and jars weren't people. They could never respond to her.
So the moment Lin Qiye appeared—something that breathed, moved, and called her Mother—Nyx had come alive, as if she'd finally found the anchor for her soul!
This was the first step to opening her heart—and the reason the treatment progress had jumped straight to 3%.
"Thanatos, do you know how much your little brother missed you? Give him a hug." Nyx, smiling, lifted the vase in her hands up to Lin Qiye's face.
Lin Qiye: ...
With no way out, Lin Qiye accepted the vase and made a show of petting it.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the rest of his "little brothers and sisters" in Nyx's arms...
and his whole body jolted!
Cradled in Nyx's arms were several bottles and jars with labels pasted on them, each a different color.
And on one of those labels, Lin Qiye clearly read a line of large text.
—Haloperidol (Divine Use).
Lin Qiye stared at it, his mouth falling open wider and wider...
Haloperidol? Why does that name sound so familiar?
Wasn't that one of the drugs on the list that asylum doctor wrote out for him this very day? And those two extra words after it... Divine Use?
In that instant, something clicked—and Lin Qiye was suddenly beside himself!
He pressed the vase back into Nyx's hands and said hurriedly, "I'll be right back!"
Then he was off like a gust of wind, up to the asylum's second floor, to a room at the end of the staircase.
The medicine storeroom.
The door stood open—Nyx must have been in here before; how else would she have carried off so many "little brothers and sisters"?
Lin Qiye strode in, searched around, and finally stopped before an enormous metal cabinet, the light in his eyes burning brighter and brighter.
Before him stood an entire wall of medicine!
The variety was staggering, and the great majority were drugs for treating mental illness—including the haloperidol he'd just seen, chlorpromazine, and a large stock of sedatives.
And after every drug name, the same two words had been appended: "Divine Use."
A smile curled onto Lin Qiye's lips. He should have thought of it sooner! This was an asylum for treating gods. A hospital naturally had a medicine store—and the drugs in it were special formulations designed for divine constitutions!
He couldn't bring real-world medicine into the asylum—but he could find its counterparts here, medicine that worked on gods!
Suddenly, everything looked a great deal simpler.
Lin Qiye picked out several of the drugs from the doctor's list and ran back downstairs to Nyx's side.
"This one—this one is once a day, two tablets... and this one, three times a day, one tablet each... You have to remember to take them!"
Nyx gazed at Lin Qiye with rapt attention, as if a flower were blooming out of his face, apparently not hearing a single word.
"Haah... never mind. I'll just come feed them to you myself every day." Lin Qiye sighed, resigned, at her reaction.
Expecting a severe mental patient to remember her own medication schedule—that really was asking too much of her.
But at those words, a smile burst across Nyx's face.
She smiled with her whole heart.