Falling into the Abyss

“How is he now?” From the other side of the communicator came an elderly female voice.

Observing the screen in front of him, Roland said, “He had a conflict with some Eves and showed his mutated form. Now, the Third Empire will no longer allow us to enter Black Gate. However, he isn’t protesting against that.”

“Is that Eve priest dead?”

“It was confirmed. Ethan Eldridge seems to accept that, too. He now refuses to talk to anyone and is staying in the room by himself.”

The screen in front of him showed Ethan’s suite. In the luxurious cabin, there were needle-sized cameras everywhere. Ethan’s every move was under his observation. At this time, Ethan sat motionless by the bed, looking straight ahead like a statue. Roland’s brows wrinkled. “He hasn’t slept, and he’s just sitting down on the bed in the same position.”

“Maybe we can use his companion,” the female said, “Didn’t you hear him say he was going to Earth?”

“You mean, I should let them go?”

“Not just let them go, but help them to leave,” the female voice said with a cold voice, “Since such a hot potato can neither be killed nor controlled, let the Earth Union deal with him. Don’t bring him back to the Ophiuchus Alliance. We have his DNA sample now, so maybe we can develop a vaccine to treat the plague. Before that, we should be careful to avoid contact with him and do not behave in a way that may irritate him.”

“I understand,” Roland said, and the connection was cut off. Then, he sent an encrypted message to another Earth Union informant.

“Target Number 6 is about to return to earth, and we may induce him to meet Target Number 4.”

After sending this message, he looked up and found that Ethan had moved on the screen. He slowly took off his coat, lifted the quilt up, and lay down.

Was he going to sleep?

Since coming out of the medical room, Roland had never seen Ethan sleep. He thought that after mutating, Ethan no longer needed to sleep. But it didn’t seem to be that way?

Ethan tucked himself in and closed his eyes. Roland made himself a big cup of coffee and planned to stay up tonight, staring at the quiet person on the screen.

Ethan had a good sleep and hardly moved for more than two hours. In the third hour, however, something strange happened. Many tentacles of different thicknesses stretched out from under his quilt and spread over the bed like black water. Those terrible, barbed, scaley, or worm-like soft tentacles grew out like black blood vessels in all directions, even winding up the walls, covering everything in their way. The original snow-white walls were almost covered with black now. Even the peeping camera could only see the scene in the room from the gap between the tentacles. Roland had to keep switching cameras to view what was happening inside.

It seemed that this room, or even the entire ship, may need to be completely destroyed after Ethan left……

Ethan’s sleep was no longer stable. There was a furrow between his eyebrows, and his body slightly spasmed. He seemed to be afraid. His body curled up under the quilt, and his tentacles also contracted towards the center for a moment. He turned over, and several tentacles lifted the quilt, revealing the nightmarish scene under it.

Roland could hardly see Ethan’s body. All he saw were tentacles, twisting and wriggling like snakes, and the tentacles were shaking disorderly. In the twisted black mass, only Ethan’s pale face could be seen clearly. He was lying in the middle of the filthy tentacles, unconsciously continuing to struggle in the dream. Roland felt sick and nauseous. He took a big sip of cold coffee and looked away for a moment.

It was so crazy that he had lived with this man for a while…… Thinking of this, the urge to vomit grew even stronger……

All of a sudden, something happened to the screens that were shooting him from different angles.

Something, something shapeless, was falling down little by little. It seemed to be some kind of transparent medium in which light was unusually refracted and distorted. But suddenly, something in the medium slowly opened, just like a mouth. Looking at it from the screen, it was like there was a weird twist in the space above Ethan.

Roland got closer to the screen and rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was not dazed.

What……was that?

That thing separated over Ethan, as if the whole space, including Ethan, was being sucked into the gap, and all the images grew distorted. At this moment, Ethan suddenly opened his eyes. All the tentacles suddenly started to dance at the same time, swinging wildly in the air as if all of them were struggling. He saw Ethan raise his hands in front of him as if afraid of being touched by something. His struggle was so intense that the entire ship was shaking.

Roland hesitated, wondering if he should send someone in. But after considering, in this situation where they were not clear of anything, if he rashly let people in, he was afraid that unexpected consequences would happen. It was too risky.

Besides, Ethan was still a threat.

He immediately ordered that the entire corridor near Ethan’s apartment be sealed off and no one is allowed to approach. At this time, that kind of transparent thing on the screen seemed to have stretched out, and Ethan’s tentacles were wrapped up. A very strong burst of heat occurred where they touched, and there was the sound of an explosion. Sparks splashed as the cabin was set on fire. Accompanied by the harsh sound of the alarm, the fire extinguishing device on the ceiling was automatically triggered, spraying out a lot of water.

The explosion rocked the ship, and Roland stepped back. He nervously checked the damage to the mainframe. Fortunately, the mainframe reported that there was no fatal damage. At present, the repair robot had been sent out to repair the ship.

Even louder than the alarm was Ethan’s cry of pain. Only his tentacles that were touched seemed to be burnt, and the long tendrils turned to smoke and dust. He quickly put away the tentacles that had not been caught, as if he suddenly remembered something, and he hurriedly ripped open his pajamas and wiped the strange badge on his chest with his hands.

After the emblem was completely removed, all the tentacles were already sucked back into his body. Ethan didn’t dare to breathe. He lay motionless on the bed, watching the twisted space above him constantly shaking. From time to time, tongue-like objects protruded from the mass of material, moving around as if they were looking for something.

After about an hour, the fire was put out by the automatic device. The whole apartment was in a mess, but the strange transparent substance seemed to gradually dissipate, just like a gas that had never existed.

Ethan sighed and got up from the bed. He cut a somewhat sorry figure as he stumbled into the bathroom with the support of the furniture.

Roland recorded it all. He leaned back in his chair, his mind spinning.

So…….Ethan was not invincible. That transparent thing…seemed to be able to hurt him?

And the badge that he quickly erased…  He initially saw it on Ethan’s body when he first rescued him……

Who gave him the emblem? What did it have to do with the transparent matter? Was it related to Ethan not sleeping all the time?

.

Ethan sat in the bathtub, letting the cold water fall on him. He was burning all over and felt as if he was about to burn up……

His breathing pace had not returned to normal, and his heart was beating fast enough to burn through the rest of his life. He shook his hands and lifted his wet forehead. A sharp pain allowed him to discover that the fingernails of his middle and ring fingers had fallen off, and the skin of his fingertips had become black and carbonized and did not heal as quickly as before.

It turned out that this was what happened when forces of Disorder and Order came into contact…… He would be severely burned, and the other party……the huge creatures with all kinds of eyes in his dream would also vaporize a little when they came into contact with him.

He was not even an individual fully imbued with the forces of Disorder. If the gods of Disorder collided with the gods of Order, he was afraid the power generated would be more terrible than the energy released by the encounter of positive and negative matter. Both sides would annihilate each other in that collision, and the two energies would mix. What would happen after that……was something he couldn’t imagine.

Well, if he was injected with the solution of God of Order’s egg now, it would be equivalent to injecting sulfuric acid into his blood vessels……

He might die……

If he died, would that mean that he wouldn’t have to live in the state he was in now? Could he finally rest? Would that be a better choice?

He placed his hand on his left chest, where the emblem should have been. Now, there was nothing left of Tanisiel.

“Live well and see the sunset in place of me.”

This was Tanisiel’s last request.

Live well.

Ethan hugged his body in the cold water and let out a tired sigh.

After taking a bath and changing clothes, Ethan left the room. All the armed soldiers retreated in fear when they saw him coming out, and no one dared to step forward. Fortunately, Roland’s order arrived: Martial law was lifted.

Obviously, Samuel also felt the previous explosion, but he was cordoned off by the soldiers. He was relieved to see Ethan come out.

“What were you doing?” Samuel looked at him up and down and soon found the blackened middle and ring fingers on his right hand. “Why does your hand look this way?”

“It’s no big deal,” Ethan said.

“It’s all burnt. How is it not a big deal! Hey! Do you have a doctor here?” Samuel yelled at the soldiers, but all of them looked at them as if they were facing an enemy. No one answered, and they all walked away quickly.

Ethan gently pinched Samuel’s shoulder and said in a kind of patient manner, as if he was coaxing his girlfriend, “I’m really fine. They will heal in two days. Don’t cause a fuss over a minor injury.”

“Is this a minor injury? How can I put down my heart and leave?”

The corner of Ethan’s mouth slightly rose, and he slightly tilted his head to look at Samuel. “Since you care about me so much, I’ll follow you.”

Samuel did not respond for a moment. “Ah?” He looked at Ethan carefully for a while, but he couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “Hey, are you kidding me?”

Ethan shook his head. “I’m serious.”

“How can that be! If you go to Earth now, you are seeking death! Don’t you know that the Earth Union now regards you as the number one most dangerous person!”

Ethan calmly replied, “But didn’t you always intend to bring me back to Earth?”

Samuel was stunned and frowned perplexedly. “What are you talking about? Why would I take you back?”

“I don’t know why you want me to go back, but I guess you want revenge.” Ethan walked past him to go to the public lounge not far away. His eyes drooped slightly. When he turned his back to Samuel, he showed a slightly dejected expression. “When I was in the pupa state, my range of perception became much wider. I heard you talk to the people in the Earth Union with the ten-thousand function sphere that Tanisiel gave you…… It should be Derek, right? I know you were planning it since you were on the Eves’ planet. Otherwise, you would not have been able to break into the basement of Tanisiel’s castle and save me by yourself. In addition, our spaceship route was originally in the direction of Moania, but it deviated from this route to the border between the Third Empire and the Ophiuchus Alliance. I don’t know how you did it, but according to your dialogue with Derek, I can basically be sure that you did it.”

His tone was calm and somber, without any sense of anger. He spoke eloquently as if he was simply stating a fact. He sat on the sofa with his back to Samuel, poured himself a glass of water, and took a few sips. He didn’t see the Omega’s gradually stiffening expression behind him.

“What I don’t understand is,” Ethan looked back at him and asked, “Why do I have to go back to Earth? As long as you don’t mind me and let them carry out that ritual, everyone you hate will be destroyed in the end.”

“No, you have to go back to Earth,” Samuel said in a low voice, “If you complete the ritual on the Eves’ planet, the God of Order’s eggs will explode immediately, and it will lead to the God of Order’s counterattack. Most of all, you are destined to go to Earth and destroy that evil country.”

Samuel looked at Ethan. “Don’t you understand? ‘When order collapses, worms whine in the empty earth, and shadows devour the whole galaxy. God’s Extradite will open the door of chaos.’ Now, the most crucial factor for the collapse of Order is the chaos in the Earth Union caused by the plague, the infection of the parallel universe, and the Lord Grace’s Association. If you take the worms to earth, both conditions will be fulfilled. The final shadow engulfing the galaxy may be related to the infectious expansion of the parallel universe, at least according to the news from Derek.”

Ethan frowned slightly. He didn’t know how Samuel knew so many things, including the parallel universe, a mission he didn’t participate in. Did the Earth Union convey that to him? And didn’t he just mention what Theonile had uttered during the Holy Spirit festival?

“Ever since Schneider’s death, I’ve had some strange dreams.” There was something wrong with Samuel’s expression at this time. His empty expression seemed like he was in a daze, which was completely opposite to his vivid appearance just now. “I dreamed of blood, blood everywhere, and I stepped on the bodies of those people. Everyone who killed Schneider, those who bullied my father, those who drove James crazy, those who forced me to disguise my gender, those who said I was guilty of killing a scum and threw me into a damned place like Forbidden City…… They all died, and if they were not completely dead, they were trampled by me, their faces blurred. I had blood on my hands, but it was not my blood. That dream was really horrifying. I could even feel how I trampled on the skulls of those people. At that time, listening to their screams……I felt so happy……so satisfied……”

His beloved was taken away from him again and again, and when he saw his beloved’s throat cut by someone, Samuel finally fell into darkness again. But this time, his fall was more complete.

His almost intoxicated expression made Ethan’s heart sink. He remembered that time when he felt something was wrong with Samuel. However, he always thought that it was because of the sudden loss of Schneider, so he did not think deeply about it.

But Samuel had not finished his monologue. “And then……a man garbed in all black appeared. He told me that if I want revenge, if I want my dreams to come true, I have to find a way to take you back to Earth.”

The author has something to say:

So, Samuel blackened a little. Of course, it was under the guidance of Ethan’s father……