The moment the Spear of Longinus pierced his mental world, Luo Shu felt a sharp sting in his mind.
He immediately entered his mental realm to see what had happened.
By the time he arrived, he saw the spear gradually dissipating within his consciousness.
It doesn't seem that powerful…
If it was just a momentary sting, Luo Shu could endure it.
But he soon realized he was wrong.
Just before Luo Shu had activated his anti-memetic state, more than one person had already seen him.
And now, more Spears of Longinus came one after another, relentlessly thrusting into his mental world.
The continuous stinging sensation left Luo Shu dazed for a long moment.
Though the spears eventually dissipated, dozens of corpses now littered the beach of Dunkirk. Worse, Luo Shu realized that the mental strength he had painstakingly built up had been significantly drained.
The most obvious sign was that his consciousness had visibly shrunk!
A single Spear of Longinus couldn't kill him, but if this kept happening, he would eventually be worn down to death.
Once Luo Shu entered his unobservable state, the people on Dunkirk's beach could no longer see him.
The "lucky" ones who had seen him were the few dozen who had been closest and fastest.
Now, they were all dead.
Those further back, blocked from view, narrowly escaped—both a stroke of luck for them and for Luo Shu.
The survivors regained their senses. When they saw the dozens of corpses ahead, their minds immediately flashed back to the text-meme apocalypse incident. Screams erupted as they scattered in terror.
Watching the beach gradually empty, Luo Shu felt an ominous premonition.
That attack had clearly been a memetic effect—another move by "God."
While a single Spear of Longinus wasn't deadly, its true horror lay in sheer numbers.
Luo Shu didn't know how many people were infected with this meme, but he was certain the number was staggering.
Last time, "God" had unleashed the text meme, killing hundreds of millions.
Once you're used to sin, you stop feeling its weight. This time, "God" would act without restraint, deploying even crueler methods.
Luo Shu conservatively estimated that at least a billion people carried this meme. If each spear drained a fraction of his mental energy, he could withstand maybe 10,000 attacks—far fewer than the number of potential carriers.
The reason "God" had chosen this weapon was simple: the sheer number and global spread of its hosts.
In this world of anomalies, wherever there were people, there were followers of Jerusalem's major religions.
No matter where Luo Shu fled, he would face attacks from the meme-infused Spears of Longinus.
In other words—the entire world was his enemy.
Numbers and distribution were only two of the meme's advantages.
The third was its ability to inflict continuous mental assaults, leaving its victims dazed and helpless.
If Luo Shu were struck unprepared, the result would be death by sheer disorientation.
Standing on Dunkirk's beach, Luo Shu sensed the danger—but he still lacked a full understanding of its scope.
With his anti-memetic state active for another half-hour, he decided to use the time to travel to Paris.
His plan? Release an anomaly there, drawing the local Foundation site into containment efforts.
This isn't recklessness—it's necessity.
If he didn't act now, gathering more anomalies for his arsenal, he'd be left waiting for death.
Without hesitation, he had his pickup-turned-transformer resume its ground-effect flight along the coast, veering inland at Le Havre to speed down the Seine toward Paris.
An hour later, he arrived in the French capital.
Parking beneath the Grenelle Bridge, he stood by a miniature Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower looming a kilometer northeast.
Night had fallen. The Left Bank's Grenelle docks were alive with lights and crowds, an illusion of peace.
His two uses of unobservability had been exhausted, leaving him with mere minutes of concealment.
He slipped into a nearby fashion boutique to disguise himself.
For better cover, he even activated a newly acquired thaumaturgical shapeshifting ability.
As described in the Anomaly Compendium, the transformation was deeply unpleasant—like maggots crawling beneath his skin, itching and nauseating.
In reality, it was his muscles and bones reshaping themselves.
Thirty seconds later, it was done. Luo Shu stepped before a mirror to inspect his new form.
And what did he see?
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Seriously?!
Does thaumaturgical shapeshifting have a sense of cultural appropriateness?
Come to Paris, turn into Quasimodo.
Was this what the Compendium meant by "you'll end up looking like a monster"?
Would he become the Armless Venus or Medusa if he went to Greece?
He had no time to dwell on it.
The moment his transformation completed, his anti-memetic state expired.
Instantly, the boutique fell eerily silent.
Every customer and clerk turned toward the "hunchback."
They weren't staring out of curiosity—they were locked onto him via the Spear of Longinus meme.
The meme didn't track by sight but by mental signature.
Within a kilometer, Luo Shu was detectable.
Only SCP-055's unobservability could block it.
The final strike, however, required line of sight.
That was the meme's sole weakness.
In that instant, everyone in the store saw him—and collapsed dead.
A dozen spears stabbed into Luo Shu's mind, leaving him stunned.
When he came to, the streets outside were roaring with noise.
Footsteps. Hundreds of them.
The boutique's glass doors shattered under the crush of bodies.
Now, Luo Shu understood: the Spear of Longinus was everywhere.
This wasn't just Dunkirk—this was global.
Luckily, he stood by the changing rooms, hidden from the street.
He activated sensory isolation, cutting off the infected's sight.
But while it blocked their eyes, it couldn't stop the meme's mental lock.
A surreal scene unfolded.
The infected surged toward him, guided by the meme's pull—yet their eyes saw nothing, leaving them unable to "fire" the spears.
In moments, Luo Shu was surrounded by blank stares, hands grasping at empty air.
Invisible, he forced his way out of the boutique, aiming for the riverside and his escape.
At this point, reaching Site-06-3 was impossible. He needed to hide somewhere remote, somewhere without people.
Only after countering the meme could he resurface.
But as he pushed forward, he realized—he couldn't reach the Seine.
The Grenelle docks were flooded with infected, all converging on him.
Everywhere he looked: a sea of faces.
For the first time, Luo Shu truly felt it—
He was an enemy of the world.